The Highest Frontier (40 page)

“Certainly. A right, then a left, then bear right to the end of the hall.”

The other students had already started. The lab was about an “RNA switch,” a bit of roller-coaster twisted RNA that could open a DNA helix and change how its gene was read. It could turn on genes to make neurons grow in a certain direction, to activate the laugh module. The RNAs were printed out by a device a thousand times more precise than the printer in Jenny’s sitting room. Solutions of RNA were suspended in bulbs with long tubes that hung down. The tubes attached to a delivery device, like a miniature scanscope for the
Arabidopsis
plant. The device delivered the RNA into the plant neurons.

“Now the RNA switch responds to a ‘semiochemical.’ A chemical signal.” Abaynesh squirted an atomizer near the plant. The plant shook with laughter.

Anouk asked, “Does the semiochemical make the plant laugh even though nothing is funny?”

The professor shook her head. “The RNA switch acts as an amplifier. It amplifies something the plant already detects as funny.” No sign of what that could be, unless it had to do with Mary, who kept near the professor. Mary’s one makeshift window appeared in Jenny’s box
. “PARTNERS.”

Jenny sighed resignedly.
“Yes, we are lab partners.”

“What use is this semiochemical?” asked another student, a diehard premed. “What else can plants do besides laugh?”

A light blinked in Jenny’s box. It was her mother’s window. Jenny blinked to wait. She would have to answer after class.

Another student was asking how the cells were selected, and how the neurons fit together. This was explained in the paper by Ng and Howell, who Jenny had visited in San Francisco in the toyroom. She never understood more than a fraction of what went on in this introductory lab.

Her mother’s light blinked faster, urgent. Jenny frowned. It must be urgent indeed to interrupt her class. She stepped out into the hall.

As soon as Soledad appeared in her window, she let out a breath. “Jenny, what have you done? Are you
totalmente loca
?”

“What is it, Mama? I’m in the middle of class.”

“You went to the Centrist convention and endorsed the Gold ticket!”

“I did not. I just congratulated your cousin.”

Soledad rolled her eyes. “What were you thinking? Look.”

Clive popped up, his hairstyle modified for post-event commentary. “To recap, the big news of the convention is that Jenny Ramos Kennedy showed up for the Gold ticket, to vote for her aunt the California governor—”

“But I said no such thing. I talked about the universe, and about ultraphytes.”

“I explained to you,
hija mia,
that what you say makes no difference. A convention is all about symbolism. You showed up—it was the only unscripted event all week.”

“But what I said is all there in text.”

“Text? Who reads that?”

“How could he report the exact opposite of—”

“Because now you’re
adulta,
understand?” Soledad glared, her voice falling to a whisper. “There are unwritten rules for children. But for adults, anything goes. All you can do is hold it over their head, to refuse to talk next time. But then, besides Clive who else is there?”

Clive was Toynet, and Toynet was everywhere. Toynet reported first; and they made sure all independents got the news a few seconds later. It was Clive here, Clive there, and virtual Clive for the local news.

“Who put you up to this?” her mother demanded. “It was Dylan, wasn’t it; his Teddy class.”

“No, Mama, absolutely not.”

“He will hear about this. Well, keep your head down and let the news cycle out. Just remember: Keep out of trouble, from now till Election Day.”

*   *   *

Dylan was in his toyroom with Senior Staff, facing no end of grim news. Orin Crawford shifted his weight around the oak desk in his spliced slice of office. “Rapture’s put in a bid for the Mound,” he growled. “They want to buy us out—a branch campus.”

Rapture’s Holyland was five times the size of the Mound, hugely popular, second only to Towers. They’d had their eye on heathen Frontera for the past year. “We’re a private college,” Dylan assured Orin. “And the Shawnee will never sell.”

“Private,” said Orin, “but are we solvent? Our insurance rate’s quadrupled,” he added. “Thanks to Homeworld Security’s cutback.”

That rate would eat up half Frontera’s student fees. “I’ll fix it with Homeworld,” Dylan promised. Since Gil wouldn’t, he was working down the list of Board members.

Nora Kwon had two students on the ropes. “Nick Petherbridge,” she told him. “Third violation.” Dylan’s favorite assistant, a model taxplayer, pillar of Doc Uddin’s squad. And, like so many medics, a chronic abuser of the scanscope.

“Do his parents know?”

“We informed them under FERPA.”

Dylan sighed. “Third time you’re out.” He ached for Nick, a great kid ruined by a habit.

“And then,” Nora added, “there’s Mary Dyer.” The salt-drinking Long Beach refugee with ultra syndrome. “She has no parents to contact. She’s just not going to make it, not in the regular way. She’s barely hanging on in two courses, Life and Politics.”

“Interesting.” Helen drummed her fingers. “Those aren’t easy courses.”

Dylan asked Nora, “Is there a … nonregular way?”

“Sharon wants to keep Mary half-time in class, and half-time on her research.”

It was unlike Sharon to support a failing student. Dylan exchanged a look with Helen. He knew what she was thinking. If the arrangement kept them both out of trouble, why not.

Only Luis Herrera Smith brought good news. “Applications are up twenty percent,” the admissions director reported from his recruiting trip in Kathmandu. Behind him rose the Trans Himalayas, brown-gray mountain slopes topped with some of the world’s few remaining snowcaps.

“Congratulations on your op-ed,” called Zari at her desk, handing one of her teddies a Phaistos disk. Luis had outdone himself in
The New York Times,
arguing for acceptance of DIRGs and mentals as applicants on the same basis as human beings. Innate “humanness” is immeasurable, Luis argued; thus, all that counts is ability, whether human or not. The piece, cleverly designed to be half serious and highly provocative, had scored a full-length interview with Clive, plus the attention of parents and students everywhere.

In Dylan’s toybox Soledad’s window lit up. He’d have to take it later.

“Quade, what’s the state of the hab?”

Quade appeared in overalls and power bands, out at some building project. “We put out salt traps for stray ultra,” he said. “In various locations of all the major ecotypes: stream, forest, underground, solar end—”

“And did you catch anything?”

“Only the salt-loving student.” One guess who that would be. “Meanwhile, the Flood preparedness program is getting under way.”

“¿Perdón?”
Dylan took a closer look at whatever it was Quade was building. A crude platform with crossed planks of carboxyplast.

“In the event of substratum overflow,” the ecoengineer explained, “the human population can escape on lifeboats built by the Homefair volunteers. But where will all the animals go?”

“Outstanding,” muttered Dylan beneath his breath.

“The elephants, the deer, the cattle.” Quade ticked off the minis. “With only a few feet of water, we just need a raft and a ramp for the beasts to climb up. Then we can ferry them to higher ground at the north solar.”

“Quade, wherever would we store such a contraption? The chance of a so-called flood is negligible. It’s just not our brand.”

Nora was nodding in sympathy. “Just another structure to avoid getting vandalized.”

“An ‘attractive nuisance,’” agreed Orin. “Another thing to raise our insurance rate.”

“Actually…” Luis put one hiking boot in front of the other, as he peered into Quade’s spliced section for a better look. “The ark—that
is
our brand. Isn’t Frontera the ark for an endangered Earth?”

Dylan’s pulse shot up, and he saw others tense.

“The ark of education,” Luis intoned. “We could theme a whole brochure.”

*   *   *

As soon as he got out, Dylan blinked Soledad’s window. “
¿Qué pasa?
Quite a convention.”

“Don’t tell me about the convention.” Soledad glowered, as enraged as he could remember seeing her. “What have you done to my daughter?”

He lifted his hands. “
¡Oye!
What’s wrong?”

“That
loco
appearance with the opposition. You put her up to this, I know you. You and your Teddy.”

“What’s Teddy got to do with it? Teddy would have joined Unity, you know that—”

“All your liberal arts
tontería.
” Soledad’s Wall Street side came out at times. “Values relativism. Consider all sides, no matter how stupid.”

“Soli, students get their own ideas. They need to think things through for themselves.”

Her eyes narrowed and she jabbed a finger at him. “I know my daughter. I know someone put her up to this.”

Dylan bit his tongue. Hamilton was known for “turning” liberal students; a sociology major switched to Aristotle, or a Peace Corps volunteer suddenly joined the CIA. But no one could put a finger on him. All’s fair in the war of ideas. And no matter how controversial, Dylan had to protect his faculty. “Soli, maybe you’re right. Maybe Teddy led her astray. Look, I’ll have a talk with her.”

Soledad breathed, still glowering at him.

“Did you know she’s campaigning for Clare, for mayor?” he recalled. “With the student Unity Club, canvassing Mount Gilead.”

“Indeed. Well, get your house in order. The presidential debate will be here before you know it. I’ll be up next week with ToyDebate.”

“With DIRGs again?” ToyDebate’s DIRGS had combed the hab all last summer, evaluating the proposed presidential debate site. But now, after mosquitoes, and ultra, DIRGs were just not the Frontera brand.

“What do you think, with both candidates and their entourage coming up next month?”

Then it clicked. “What about our space protection? Did you know Homeworld cut us down to ninety-six?”

Soledad was highly math literate. “That’s a death sentence.”

“Exactly. What will your candidates think of that?”

“We’ll fix it. The triple-A standard, ninety-nine point nine nine percent. Through Election Day. After that—” She shook her head. “It’s a death sentence for us all, if we lose this election. Don’t let my daughter forget it.”

*   *   *

That evening, Dylan sank into the black suede couch and picked an apple from the bowl. “If I were a betting man, which I am, I’d give a whole lot better odds for our hab.” He took another apple and offered it to Clare.

Clare took the apple. “So? To whom do we owe our good fortune?”

“Soledad will get our security raised.” He took a bite and munched. Nothing cleared the head of a day’s troubles like the juice of a fresh apple. “For the candidates, of course.”

“Of course.”

Dylan chewed thoughtfully. “You know, you could put this out for your own campaign. Your accomplishment for the hab.”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had nothing to do with it.”

Dylan nodded with satisfaction. “You’re so hot when you’re pure.”

Clare punched him in the arm.

“So how’s it going?” Elephants hadn’t come up in the last Senior Staff; a good sign, the students were buckling down to work.

Clare chewed thoughtfully. “Two more lifeboats.”

Dylan groaned. “Okay, so you won that one. Save the animals. Bring on the ark.” Overhead, the Sistine ceiling cycled into the Flood. The Flood was one of Michelangelo’s most complex scenes, with the most intense emotions, yet also the most problematic artistically. The doomed victims climbing ashore looked more like they were riding an escalator than clambering up a bank. And the “ark” was a nondescript square box, with a dove in the window while human victims tried to raise a ladder. “At least make sure it looks like one. Michelangelo drew only one thing really well, and it wasn’t shipping.”

Suddenly a window blew open half his toybox. A burst of light, a bleached-out view of a gigantic figure, like God in some Biblical toyworld. The apple fell from Dylan’s hand. Actually, there was just an outsized man in dark glasses, hands clasped upon a gigantic desk. Behind him, nothing; a plain, unmarked room, its very emptiness signaling menace.

“Dylan?” Clare tapped his arm, but he barely noticed.

“President Chase.” The anonymous man spoke in a flat monotone. “It has come to our attention that someone from your college has attempted unauthorized entry to the vice presidential toyspace.”

“Yes,” said Dylan, clearing his throat. “That is, yes, if that is the case, we must certainly—”

“This will be your first and final warning.”

“Of course. We will put a stop to any further unauthorized access attempts.”

Clare’s jaw tightened. “She must have slipped,” he guessed. “We thought she was doing so well.”

32

Jenny tried to reach Clive, but all she got was an android assistant, a Toynet construct.

“What is your news event, Ms. Ramos Kennedy?”

“I did
not
come out for the Centrist ticket. You must place a correction.”

“Your convention speeches are no longer news,” the assistant told her. “They are history.”

“But you got it wrong. Correct the record.”

“You could make a new speech, and we’d cover it, but your support for Unity would hardly be worth covering.”

Frustrated, she browsed through the independent reporters who got perhaps a hundredth the audience of ToyNews. HuriaNews, out of Minneapolis; a one-person show, a reporter-announcer who did her own hair. A woman Jenny didn’t know; had never met.

For a moment she froze. Looking aside, she counted to ten, and tried to remember the brain exercises she’d done with Hamilton. “I want to give you a story,” Jenny said carefully. “To set the record straight.”

The HuriaNews reporter, Lane Mfumo, listened sympathetically. “Look, I’d love to do a story on Jenny Kennedy any day.” Her lip curved. “Of course, HuriaNews won’t get the coverage worth your time.”