The Highest Frontier (32 page)

In his box a light was blinking. The track light. Dylan tensed. The light was not there before, or had he missed it? Debris on the track, the latest harvest from space. A large flat chunk, too late to swerve around.

The car bumped up, like rolling up a ramp. The angle was slight, but enough to turn the car into a spinning projectile. Over and over the car turned, the lights of casinos and zooparks winking past, again and again. The entire egocentric universe revolved, over and over, around Dylan’s flying car.

Counting the turns, Dylan estimated landfall. He blinked the emergency jets, just a tap. The revolutions slowed, until the car at last came level. Several interminable seconds followed, Dylan counting every one. At last the car thudded back to ground. Dylan braked hard, until the tires glowed red. The car steadily slowed, at last stopping just past the finish line. His head still swam while his inner ears adjusted. Outside, all was still. The track walls, the zooparks, the Icarus, all completely still, like the day the first man landed.

For a moment, there was no sound from Gil. Then the Toynet CEO let out a breath, and a high-pitched laugh. “That was too good! I wet myself, but still, it was worth it. When can we go again?”

Outside, people were gathering, their arms waving, sausage-rolled tourists and security guards. The toybox lit up with messages, autograph inquiries, and ToyNews slow-mo playbacks of the last-minute near-disaster, the car rising up and turning over and over again before its agonizing return.

25

Thursday night, as the northern rainbow faded, Jenny had stood outside with Anouk and Tom watching her cottage dissolve. The cottage was surrounded by maintenance workers and coonskin-capped DIRGs. The DIRGs brainstreamed sniffers to crawl up the walls inspecting the doomed amyloid. Outside collected a wider ring of curious students and faculty children, including Tova with her twin towers. Searchlights flickered off their diads. No one else knew exactly what had happened; Jenny’s toybox spouted rumors of a drug bust. Her orchids were back with Abaynesh at Reagan Hall. Mary hadn’t been seen since the professor turned her in at Wickett Hall. What had become of the omniprosthete, and her smuggled ultraphytes?

The evening sun lit up the clay of the Spanish roof tiles. But now, the ruddy hues began to ebb from the tiles, fading to gray. The curve of the tiles puckered, and the roof peak sagged like modeling clay. The cottage walls buckled outward, and a window cracked open. The window pane drooped over like a tongue. With a thud, the upper story of the greenhouse pancaked down.

Jenny’s scalp crawled. She squeezed Tom’s hand.

Anouk brushed her arm. “It’s all right,
chérie.
You saved your plants, and you’ll download the rest again.”

Tom asked, “Will you be okay tonight?” Tom was the only one she’d told about the ultra.

“You’ll stay with me,” Anouk assured her. “Let’s be off, and get to our homework.”

Travis Tharp poked with a hook at the amyloid subsiding into the ground. Then the ground cratered in, as DIRGs sucked out the sediment. Dust to dust. Only the green tubes of the makeshift pump remained at the substratum leak, where the side wall had stood.

“Sure you’ll be okay?”
Tom’s hand was firm and warm.

In the news window Clive appeared, patting his immaculate dark locks. Hairstyle number nineteen. “Jenny, what’s the story?”

“Nada.”

“We know there’s a story, but we can’t locate your mother.” Her mother had to okay all her interviews. But her parents were still out of reach at Lake Taupo, thank goodness. Her mother took vacation seriously, especially when she was worried about Dad.

“Mama won’t allow it.”

Clive hesitated, patting his hair as if slightly nervous. “We can’t sit on this. We’d rather not report rumors.”

After Clive left her box, Jenny took a breath. “Anouk’s right. Let’s get our work done.” A hundred pages of Cuban ancient history, and for Hamilton, write an essay on political friendship. All to get done by eleven, time for enough sleep not to trip Coach’s sleep meter. If he’d even let her back in the cage.

*   *   *

Within Anouk’s icosahedral cottage, the sitting room pulsed and evolved. Jenny sank into a chair of black puffed pillows, only to feel it gradually expand around her, sprouting dark bubbles. The bubbles formed a Mandelbrot fractal, in which each sprouting bubble grew into a self-similar chair; nearly the same, but not quite. After about ten minutes Jenny’s fractal chair began to dissolve away, as its bubbles filled out into other chairs. Hurriedly she stood up.

Anouk had returned from her sunset prayers with Zari Valadkhani and Doc Uddin. Unperturbed by her dissolving seat, Anouk simply shifted to a newly sprouted chair while pursuing advanced calculations in her toybox. “It’s unhealthy to sit in one place too long,” remarked the
parisienne
. “One loses blood flow to the lower back. One must keep physically active.”

Jenny repressed the urge to observe that ballet turn-out ruined the knees. At last she sat on the floor, where a small woven rug held the only stable spot. The rug had a Persian pattern, red and gold, with angular figures of birds and goats, even a lion.

“A
sumak,
” Anouk told her. “Wool and silk, with authentic natural dyes.”

“The animals are cute.”

“It’s about Noah’s Ark.”

“Really?”

“The Qur’an tells the true Noah’s Ark,” Anouk emphasized. “The Ark came to rest on Mount Judi. And the olive branch was brought by a pigeon.”

“I see.”

“The chaplain gave me the sumak,” Anouk added. “For a Christian, Father Clare is a remarkably learned man.” She frowned. “He said the Qur’an forbids information theft.”

Jenny nodded, not daring to comment.

“I don’t steal information,” insisted Anouk. “I just borrow it.”

Jenny swallowed. “Anouk—what happened to Mary?”

“The professor arranged something.” Jenny didn’t ask how she knew. “Professor Abaynesh put her somewhere in the basement lab.”

“A room in the laboratory? That is odd.”

“They’re two of a kind, if you ask me.”

“No they’re not.” Mary was an Aspie omniprosthete who smuggled ultraphytes. A puzzle in the mirror.

Her EMS window blinked; another Ebola case in Huron, Tom’s dorm. Fortunately Nick covered it. She hoped Tom was okay.

“And now we’ve got an ultra.” Anouk got up and moved to a new chair. “Perhaps we could do our project on it. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Maybe.” That’s what Jenny had wanted before, to experiment with ultra. But now she wondered. “Tom says ultraphyte genes have gotten into pile worms—and maybe other Earth creatures.”

“So?” Anouk shrugged. “Our own chromosomes are full of alien DNA.”

“Earth viruses, over billions of years. Ultraphytes have only been here for twenty years. What if their DNA infects us?”

“RNA,” Anouk corrected. “They would have to copy it into DNA for our genes.”

“They change their own RNA superfast. They form a quasispecies.”

“That explains how Mary’s ultra got past quarantine. They mutated to a form the DIRGs could not detect.”

“Like a virus,” agreed Jenny. Hepatitis Q virus changed its genes so often that most of the viruses in a patient were as different as different species. No detector could be made to find them all.

“But most of the virus particles end up defective,
n’est ce pas
? So how could that be for ultra?”

“Ultraphytes are modular,” Jenny explained. “Different modules can take different forms. And they can discard defective modules.”

“That goes way beyond viruses. A virus is still a virus, no matter how far it mutates.” Anouk stepped out of her chair just as a long dark squiggle crossed the room and bubbled out three new ones. “I think Abaynesh should let us do our project on ultra. Goodness knows we’ve spent enough time in that dumb toyworld.”

*   *   *

Friday morning Jenny awoke, her head still spinning fractals, to find her toybox clogged with inquiries on the “Ramos Kennedy drug bust.” Spectacular footage of her cottage collapsing, a dozen different views. Her box overflowed with windows, local reporters who ordinarily would never bother her. Anouk helped her clean them out; but in the process she lost most of her playmates and newsfeeds. Too late to fix it, she slapped her diad on her forehead and rushed to get to practice on time.

Coach did not say a word to Jenny, nor did anyone else comment on her disastrous week. Everyone focused on their upcoming game with Melbourne’s Scorpions, their first of the season. After practice, Jenny waited till the others had left. She pulled off her slancap, her hair floating up around her face. Her pulse raced. She hated disappointing the coach.

Coach Porat hung upward from the side door. “So you’ve had better weeks.”

“There was no one else to take the call—” No point in excuses. “It won’t happen again.”

“Until next Wednesday.”

She looked away. A thousand meters below gleamed the river, and tiny skybikers circled like condors. Then she looked back and held his gaze.

The coach reflected, “To save a life comes first.”

“That’s right.”

“So I should save yours.”

Jenny swallowed. “I got enough sleep.”

“It’s only the second week of class.” The coach shook his head. “With your sense of duty, you’ll be running the squad by fall break. With no pay,” he added pointedly. “Students should not be put in such a position. The Mound should hire staff.”

“I’m not paid to play either.” Her heart pounded; she hadn’t meant to say that.

“You’re not—and don’t get ideas. They always do,” he muttered as if to himself. “The ones with brainstream like yours. Don’t go pro,” he warned. “I’ve seen them after five seasons, their brains turned to soup. The rest of their lives in the blue room.”

“If we’re not pro, then why act like we are?”

“You want a good team?”

“Of course.”

“A winning season?”

“In our league.”

He nodded slightly. “See you next morning.”

*   *   *

In Political Ideas, Jenny tried to stay awake. Hamilton paced by the podium. “So, Aristotle compares rule by the many, the one, and the few.”

To her surprise, Mary had made it to class. The enigmatic
compañera
sat there as usual, without pretzels, but her water bottle had a white crust of salt around the rim. Mary’s hands moved continually, as if independent from her body though connected, like the two heads of the snake. Like another omniprosthete Jenny knew …

The Creep. The perennial Centrist vice president had hands like Mary’s that crept along the table with a life of their own. ToyNews always brushed it over, but Jenny had seen the
hombre
in person, at Great-Grandma Rosa’s funeral at Arlington. The hands looked creepy, hence his nickname. The Creep, too, was obsessed with ultra.

“Which form of rule does Aristotle favor?”

Enrico raised his hand. “Democracy is better than kingship, because the crowd of people is less corruptible than the one.”

Hamilton raised a finger. “An intriguing point, Enrico. As you’ve discovered, Aristotle argues that the greater number of people share greater wisdom than the one. And in a true city, the greater number of people ‘become like a single human being with many hands and feet.’” Hamilton looked around. “Any other arguments?”

Priscilla waved her hand. Hamilton ignored it, but she spoke up anyway. “How could a democracy work if the slaves are never counted among the number of people? Aristotle never saw a real democracy.”

Without looking at her, Hamilton nodded indulgently. “Of course, today we think our own democracy is the only ‘real’ democracy that excludes no one, no ‘hidden persons’ in our midst. Other arguments?”

Ricky raised his hand. Ricky was now a “suit,” one of the
chicos
that followed the professor in a clique strolling down Buckeye Trail. “Isn’t the point of democracy majority rule?”

“Ricky, I believe you’ve got to the heart of the matter. In a democracy, the larger number overrules the smaller. And why must this be so?”

Jenny was starting to nod off, when Mary’s voice jarred her awake. “The large number out-votes the smaller. If the two groups are equal, the body is paralyzed.”

“What an interesting point, Mary. The body politic is paralyzed. Is that a major problem for democracy?”

“Until one person divides in half.”

Jenny froze. Enrico blinked, and other students shared startled looks. But Hamilton merely shrugged. “That would work for a sponge-person, I suppose.” Hamilton was never bothered by the craziest remark, Jenny realized, since no one else would take it seriously. “But doesn’t this solution raise another problem? A majority of one?”

Enrico said, “Doesn’t a majority of one mean that now one person has all the power?”

“Precisely, Enrico. A majority of one is a kind of tyranny. That’s one reason Aristotle considered democracy as potentially bad as tyranny.”

*   *   *

After class, Jenny stopped by Hamilton’s office to continue their speech sessions. The Whitcomb School of Baraminology diploma hung behind him. On his desk the Z token was gone, but there stood a recent autographed photo of Aunt Meg and El. What did that mean, Jenny wondered, reflecting on her Machiavellian aunts. Was Hamilton reporting to them?

Jenny had brought a speech for practice, an old one she’d once written for Jordi on economically-challenged housing in Westchester. The housing event had been postponed and somehow the speech never got delivered. She spoke more readily now, having mentally shifted the professor into her “well known” category. As she spoke, her different brain regions lit up in Hamilton’s instrument, in much greater detail than she had seen before. The instrument sent subtle feedback to her brainstream, encouraging new behavior patterns. She realized it had been five years or more since her therapists had tried something new. They had sought to avoid discouragement. Or perhaps they just found it more rewarding to keep pushing Jordi as far as he could go.

“Outstanding argument, Jenny,” Hamilton assured her. “We all wish to see our citizens in housing they can afford. I’m sure your aunts would agree.”