The Highest Frontier (43 page)

Soledad watched her for a while without speaking. At last she shook her head. “We’ll talk again soon, when I come up with ToyDebate. By the way, that club that abused you; Ferrari, they’re called?”

“Sí.”

“Security will pay them extra attention.”

Jenny slept through lunch but managed to print out a quick amyloid sandwich that she finished on her way up the cloud ladder, crumbs floating down. Coach said nothing at first, but as the others spread out for drill, he took her aside. “You should sue the pants off them.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Coach.”

“It’s not just you. Every year they assault frogs. It’s their tradition. Someone has to put a stop to it.”

Yola agreed. “They can’t get away with this. Right, Ken?”

The bros would face the judge in Mount Gilead, Dean Kwon had said. A hearing; she’d have to relive the whole stupid thing.

Ken said, “It’s an insult to the whole team.” Still recovering from his Melbourne injuries, Ken limped out into the cage despite Doc Uddin’s disapproval.

Coach clapped his hands. “We’re all walking wounded this week,” he called. “Let’s get together. Focus.”

Fran and David zigzagged across, their timing a bit off. Everyone seemed distracted this week, a long night’s study here, a quick trip home there. Only Yola still hustled for every catch, and managed to steal a few. Jenny rotated in and slanned one for Ken, but still the Bears lost to Beijing by ten points.

*   *   *

After the game, Jenny dragged herself home. Her toybox lit up with student chatter, much of it Bulls crowing over their rivals’ punishment.

“The Ferraris—Did you hear?”

“Monroe in the head, every one!”

“Next year they’ll drive PINK cars! ROTFL!”

“And wear skirts to our Halloween House. That LaSalle is quite a
meringue
!”

Jenny pulled the diad off her forehead. Stillness; the breeze on her cheek, the oriole in the naked maple, the long axial cloud swelling to shower. Sometimes it felt good just to breathe.

At her cottage she found Anouk sitting in the porch swing, like Mary used to. Beside the porch waited Berthe, back in service. Anouk jumped up to meet her. “Jenny, I’m so sorry—you have to talk to me. Please!”

Jenny looked away. The porch, the maple; it all looked like yesterday. Except everything was changed.

“We’re sisters, remember? We’re lab partners.”

Jenny shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“Jenny! I didn’t do it; my trust was abused.”

“Then who did?”

Anouk hesitated. “What does it matter—they all got punished.”

“I still have to pass by all those
chusma,
not knowing which one pulled down my dress. I want nothing to do with them, especially Rafael.”

“Rafael is heartbroken. And now he has a Monroe in his head, twenty-four hours a day, just like you.”

Jenny rolled her eyes.
“¡Qué lata!”
As if that would bring back her lost memory.

Anouk took a deep breath. “
Écoute,
Jenny. You must
not
let the bad ones win. That’s what they try to do: Split us up, so we all depend on them.”

“I can’t depend on you.”

Anouk caught her arm. “Look, it was these two.” Two windows popped up: F. Scott Moreby, and Owen John Longford III. Ferrari seniors. “Their toyboxes will have the trace; I told the dean. They’ll get expelled.”

Jenny regarded the two suited
chicos,
like worms appearing within an apple. Two seniors she’d seen around but barely knew. Students like all the rest, yet predators.

Anouk’s voice dropped. “I should never have gone without Berthe. I should have known better.”

Jenny sighed. Overhead the trees rolled up into the fields dotted with mini-cows and combines, and little amyloid homes with lollipop driveways. “You shouldn’t need Berthe here. Frontera should be a—a community.” Their last refuge, before the “real world,” the DIRGs’ life.

“The only ‘community’ I trust is the laboratory. You can’t cheat science—it always comes out.” Anouk stood up from the swing. “How are the laughing plants?”

Upstairs in Jenny’s greenhouse, alongside her returned orchids, the plants with the RNA switches were growing fine. “I test them each day, but they all laugh the same.”

“
Enfin,
let’s try again today.”

Jenny shined the humorous light spectrum, then Anouk squirted the plants with jasmonate, the signal to turn on the RNA switch. After testing all sixty plants, Anouk summed the results.

“The RNA switch plants ‘laughed’ for twice as long as the controls.”

“¡Oye!”
This was so exciting, for a moment Jenny forgot all her mishaps; the assault, the lost game, and her ever mounting pile of homework.

“But the third set didn’t laugh at all.” Anouk was puzzled.

“Mary’s ‘reverse control.’ You were out, remember?”

“I see. What exactly is this ‘reverse control’?”

Jenny frowned, not wishing to admit she didn’t know. She muttered, “There are all sorts of controls.”

“We have to ask the professor.…”

In Jenny’s toybox, Levi-Montalcini’s tumor mouse crawled up onto a window, then sniffed over the edge. Levi-Montalcini’s sim had said she could visit the toyworld again. Curious, Jenny blinked at the mouse.

A window opened to reveal Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, the neurobiologist who’d looked at everything from dead babies to chicken tumors and finally reached the Italian Senate. Levi-Montalcini’s enormous expressive eyes smiled at her. A Toynet construct, but a very good one; she looked more alive than many a real person. “Have you brought me another hen’s egg? From a hen that ran with the rooster?”

Jenny smiled, remembering the toyworld. “Sorry, but I do have a question. I’m sure you know all this stuff.”

“You may try. My century of life was long, but did not quite reach into yours.”

Suddenly Jenny wanted to ask something else: Why had the famous neuro research doctor become a senator at age ninety-two? But she caught herself. “What is a ‘reverse control’?”

The Roman eyes gleamed. “Controls. You know I love controls.”

Jenny glanced uncertainly at Anouk, then back to the window in her toybox.

“There are many kinds of controls,” Levi-Montalcini continued. “Positive controls confirm that you can detect a positive result. And negative controls confirm that without your key ingredient, there is no result.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, “we have both of those for our plants. But what would be a reverse control?”

“A reverse control can be a DNA sequence that reads backwards. The backwards sequence should show no effect.”

“No laughter,” said Anouk. “That sounds like a negative control. A reverse control is different.”

Levi-Montalcini nodded slowly. “I recommend you inspect your plants with care. Remember this.”

Before Jenny’s eyes appeared a virtual beaker covered with gauze.

“Hold it tight.”

Jenny held the beaker.

Levi-Montalcini raised a gloved hand. She held out a snake. The snake bared its fangs and hissed. With a fluid motion, the doctor thrust the snake at the beaker. The fangs tore into the gauze and shot streams of venom into the beaker, where the liquid collected, clear and deadly.

“Venom was my control, remember? It turned out to be full of nerve growth factor—ten times as much as the mouse tumor. So you see, the control may be more important than the experiment.” She tossed the snake into a tank. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an important vote coming up. A vote on the future of Italian science.”

After Levi-Montalcini vanished, Jenny shared a doubtful glance with Anouk. “Could this ‘reverse control’ be dangerous?”

Anouk shrugged. “Italians love drama. Our plants did nothing.”

“I don’t know. I’ll bring one back to Abaynesh tomorrow, and see if she knows what Mary did to it.”

*   *   *

At suppertime, as Jenny reached the dining hall, a Ferrari senior blocked the doorway. Owen John Longford III, one of the two Anouk had fingered.

Jenny stopped, uncertain.

The suit leaned into the door frame, arms crossed. He wasn’t quite her height, but his face looked ugly. “Nothing happened to you. You don’t have to rat to the judge.”

Out of habit Jenny glanced over her shoulder. Back home, there would always be a family DIRG to expel intruders. But not here, where she was “safe.” Disgusted, she started to turn away. She could print the same food at her cottage.

“Jenny.” Marilyn popped up in her toybox, batting her long eyelashes. “Remember, Jenny, what we said.”

Jenny took a deep breath, and made herself stand up straighter. Looking slightly aside, she told the suit, “Get lost.”

For a long moment the Ferrari stood there, then at last he moved aside, just enough. He spat on the ground as she passed.

34

Monday morning, Jenny had waffles with strawberries at the café. Tom in his chef’s white jacket sat at the table, arms crossed. “Who did it?”

“Two seniors.” She was getting tired of the whole thing; if only it would just go away. But she’d testify all right at the amyloid courthouse, whenever the judge put it on the docket. The court was on recess while they all harvested their corn and soy.

“I need to know,” said Tom. “So I can deck them.”

Jenny blinked in surprise. “You would?” That sure felt good.

“Where I come from, that’s how it’s done.”

“I thought Amish were peaceful.”

“Boys aren’t Amish till they get confirmed.”

Those Ferraris deserved it. And so did all those Firmament people, who lied even to their own children. An hour of memory lost is one thing—a lifetime of banned knowledge, think of it.

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” Clive was back, hovering above the Pacific coast, blue-brown waters washing up white beaches. Governor Akeda had the National Guard dumping acaricide all along the coast, to wipe out pile worms. All because the worms had a few ultra genes. Jenny shook her head. Now that Aunt Meg was the running mate, being California’s first sensible governor wasn’t enough. She had to act tough on ultra.

“It’s too bad about the pile worms,” Tom said. “Professor Semerena is pretty upset.”

“I wonder what other animals have got infected with ultra genes. And what plants.”

*   *   *

Since Politics wasn’t till ten, Jenny had time to stop by the chaplain as promised. Instead of her orchid, she took with her one of Mary’s reverse-control plants, to show Abaynesh after class. The topmost leaves of the scrawny plant tickled her chin as she walked down Buckeye Trail.

In her toybox, Clive recapped the latest on the pile worm eradication. Her normally sensible Aunt Meg had made a great show of force, even driving a tank offshore. The sight of the tank forced a giggle to the back of her throat. Poisoning pile worms off the Pacific coast, while all forms of ultra crawled the countryside out of control—the absurdity was overwhelming. Jenny started to laugh. She tried to stop, but as soon as she caught her breath, the absurdity struck her again. It felt so good to laugh, like a spring cleaning for the soul.

At the chaplain’s door she paused to catch her breath. She went in, set down the plant, and immediately went to the puzzle to place a piece, a red shard contributing to what looked like a giant tomato.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Father Clare sat at his desk with the dog-eared book, the Virgin Mary cradling her Son behind him. “How are things with my campaign? Should I give another speech?” Hamilton had just done a speech before First Firmament Church, surrounded by farmers and Ferrari brothers. He’d announced the new increase in space protection, as if the deed were his own.

“A speech would be good,” Jenny said. “We can feed all the brainstream from local toyboxes into a pollmeter. Then as you speak, you watch the pollmeter, and use that to pick your next talking point.”

The chaplain nodded politely. Pollmeters were out of his league, Jenny guessed.

“I ran your voter analysis,” she added. “Based on surveys and registration patterns, you’ll win the campus vote two to one.” Hamilton was a popular professor, but so was the chaplain; and the faculty and staff favored him. “But in Mount Gilead, you’ll lose by the same margin.”

“I see. It’s really a science, isn’t it.”

“Not enough of one.” The big campaigns ran pollmeters, toyworld town meetings, and hundreds of electoral simulations; and still, one off-remark from a First Lady could lose it all.

“So we really need to turn out the students.”

“But it’s the students’ long weekend, and we have to vote here.”

Father Clare nodded. “It’s hard to believe that’s constitutional. Maybe we should look into the law.”

“Good idea, I’ll check into that.” Pre-election legal challenges were part of the game, especially in Ohio.

He leaned forward on the desk, hands clasped. “Jenny, how are you? Can I help?”

“I’m fine.” She was sick of talking about it.

“It’s tough, isn’t it; being up here at Frontera, alone.”

She lifted her chin. “I’ve done well. Keeping my grades up.”

“You always did.”

“I’m not cutting myself.”

“That’s good.”

“I haven’t ‘visited’ Jordi in a long while.”

He nodded. “Jordi can manage without you now.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. No more boosting his slan, no more help with math. No, Jordi no longer needed her. Now others did. But once you began down that road—all the others in the universe who might need you, the whole planet expecting Ramos Kennedys to save them—
Dios mío,
it was all too much. And this chaplain expecting her to run his campaign for mayor. She looked him in the eye. “How about you, Father? Are you okay?”

He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Guess I deserved that.” He thought it over. “I’m doing well, all things considered. My Renaissance students have started some lovely frescos.”

“Claro.”
She had to get Tom to show her his. “What I really wonder is—” She took a deep breath. “How can you stand to be Christian?” Her pulse raced. Like a bubbling pot, it had just boiled over. She half expected Mary’s statue to look up.