The Highest Frontier (8 page)

“Who brought the DIRG?”
texted someone.

In the corner stood a Monroe-faced DIRG. Jenny’s scalp crawled. Had her own mental printed itself out? It could do that if needed, if she ever tried to harm herself. But not this one, she realized; it was not her own mental, but someone else’s Monroe-style family DIRG. Some other
chica
who’d lost the fight with her parents.

“The Brazilian solar heiress; it’s her bodyguard.”
Solarplate covered most of the Amazon Death Belt.

“No, it’s the Chinese banker’s son.”

“
Tonto
, no
chico
would have a Monroe.”

“Did you see the new toyflick,
Meet Me in Shanghai
? Newman and Monroe were
estupendo.
”

A quarter to seven already; nearly debate time. The menu appeared in her box. Jenny blinked chicken and green beans. They printed up from the table, including gravy for the chicken and butter on the beans. For dessert, Jenny found green jello.

The bench thudded as Yola sat next to her, with Kendall beside. “Ready for practice?” Yola’s braids bounced, and she caught Jenny’s arm to wrestle.

“Focus,” warned Ken. “Got your courses? Pick a tough load, or Coach will send you packing.”

Yola frowned. “She’s taking Life, Kennie-boy. With Abaynesh. You want to kill her?”

Jenny smiled. “So what do you recommend?”

“Chaplain Flynn’s Renaissance Art,” said Ken. “Amazing. That Sistine chapel—it should be a slanball cage, so you’d float at the ceiling.”

Viv leaned forward knowingly. “Tejedor,” she recommended. “The
estilo cubano
—you’ll see the world with new eyes.”

“Hamilton,” added Reesie, nodding her own Newman chin. “My owl says he’s the top.”

The food was chicken-flavored amyloid, and the beans were faintly bean-flavored. All came from sewage processed by the shell microbes and pumped back up. Jenny looked over at Anouk, who pursed her lips.
“
Next
time, let’s try a café.”

Yola flashed her an EMS logo, the snake climbing a pole. “Nice job, out on the powwow ground. You got there before the heli.”

“Are there many student volunteers?”

“We’ll get in touch with you, once we see how you handle classes and slanball.”

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” Clive’s voice boomed as the toywall lit up. Within the toywall stood the ToyNews anchor and two armchairs seating the First Lady candidates.

Cheers and whistles came from the students, especially the two motor club tables up front. The Red Bulls all wore red racing jackets and purple headbands. At the other table, the Ferraris wore black suit and tie, with just a gold ribbon at the lapel. Rafael was there, applauding politely.

“Live from sunny Orlando.” A spliced tour of the refurbished seawall encircling the city, and Disney’s new cactus park. “Thanks to all our ToyDebate contributors.…” Soledad appeared with the Centrist cochair, Jeremiah Stone. “And now the ground rules…”

The two First Lady candidates sat in their chairs with their legs crossed. In the dining hall the students quieted, but their windows filled.

“Glynnis looks out of date—that was last year’s color.”

“No, that’s on purpose, to show she wears stuff more than one year.”

“What kind of cookies?”

“The cookies,”
texted Fritz Hoffman from the Red Bulls table.
“No nuts, please.”
Analysts said the nuts in the cookies had doomed Unity’s bid four years before.

Clive leaned forward ingratiatingly to Anna Carrillo’s would-be first lady. “Glynnis,” he began, “I know you have something special to share with our studio audience.”

Glynnis smiled with all her sparkling amyloid-plated teeth. Jenny crossed her fingers; Glynnis was known for sounding too sharp now and then. “Why, Clive, as a matter of fact I do.” She held up a plate of nicely browned cookies. “Oatmeal chocolate chip.”

The studio audience clapped appreciatively. The Red Bulls cheered and tossed napkins in the air, as the cookies were handed around through the studio audience in the toywall.
“Healthy but sweet,”
texted Fritz.
“Great opening.”

Clive had turned to her opponent. “Betsy,” he began. “I know you have something good to share too.”

Betsy smiled, a bit more carefully, managing to look homey and seductive all at once. “Clive, I want to make sure everyone in the studio gets one of my paradise butter cookies.”

“Righteous and rich.”
The Red Bulls jeered, and Fritz tossed a fork at the toywall. The Ferraris applauded with ostentatious politeness.

“Now, Betsy,” Clive went on, “you’ve won the coin toss for the first question. Tell us why your husband will make the best president.”

Betsy Guzmán leaned forward confidentially. “Clive, I’d like the audience to know,” she began as if imparting a great secret, “that my husband, Gar Guzmán … is a real man.” She lengthened the word, nodding. “A man who will go out and get the job done, do what a man’s got to do. Especially—most especially—in today’s most urgent issue, the War on Ultra.”

The studio audience applauded steadily, and the pollmeter rose. A strong opening; it would be hard to counter.

But the anchor had already swiveled to his left. “Glynnis, can you tell our audience why your wife will make the best president?”

For a moment Glynnis tensed, then she recovered. She had to get over that, Jenny thought; this was the big league, now, not just a governor’s wife in a western state full of Mormons and Death Belt refugees. “Well, Clive,” Glynnis began, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her voice grew quiet. “I’d like the American people to know … that my wife Anna Carrillo is a real American.”

The Red Bulls jumped up and applauded, so that Jenny lost the rest of what Glynnis said. Whatever it was, the pollmeter rose; her answer had hit the mark.

Clive nodded sagely. “A truly heartfelt response. Now, Glynnis, it’s your turn for the next question. Can you share with our audience an incident in your everyday life that shows us what your life will be like in the White House?”

At that Glynnis smiled, with just a hint of mischief. “Well, Clive.” Not your doctorate in solarray engineering, Jenny urged silently, don’t mention that. Not how you launched the first solarray beyond the Kessler cloud. “One day last summer, I was preparing a bowl of nice cold punch for our family. A special recipe I call Antarctic punch.”

The studio audience hushed, and so did the cafeteria. The pollmeter bounced uncertainly. “Antarctic” was not a word people wanted to think about just now, with half a dozen armies vying to control the emerging farmland.

“Now, my little daughter was in the kitchen, and by mistake she happened to put the punch bowl on the stove.”

Beside the armchair, a punch bowl appeared on a hotplate. The punch bowl was half full of ice. The ice was melting.

“Luckily, I saw the punch bowl when only half the ice had melted.” Like the Antarctic ice sheet, only half gone. And the warming wouldn’t stop. “As soon as I saw it—” Glynnis caught the punch bowl and held it up. “I took it right off the stove.” She faced the audience. “And that’s why we need Anna for president. Someone’s got to get that punch bowl off the stove.” Before punch bowl Earth came to a boil.

*   *   *

As the debate wore on, Jenny tried to stay awake, exhausted by the long day’s journey up from Somers. When Clive announced a break, she sat up straight.

“Now,” said Clive, “we bring you an exclusive live interview: Jenny Ramos Kennedy, descendent of three presidents including her culture source Rosa Schwartz, at her first day at college. Jenny never expected to attend college in the Firmament, but after the tragic death of her—”

All eyes were on Jenny as she struggled to extricate her legs, her bare skin in the moonholes peeling off the bench. One shoelace had caught beneath, and she yanked it out. Just in time, she remembered the green jello.

In the toywall Jenny’s image appeared, carrying the plate of green jello. The moonholes in her black pants were filled in, and her laces were neatly tied.

“Jenny.” Within her toybox Clive addressed her, while in the toywall his image spliced with hers, heights even. “Tell our audience what it’s like for a presidential scion on her first day at college. You’ve already managed to save a life, haven’t you?”

Jenny smiled, keeping her eyes wide. “Well, Clive, I’ve made so many wonderful friends already.” She blinked at her namelist. “There’s my ‘owl,’ Rafael, and my best friend Anouk from Paris. My fantastic team captains, Yola and Kendall; my fellow ‘frogs,’ Ricky and Reesie, and my welcoming upperclass friends Viv and Fritz. And my
compañera
Mary, and brave Charlie, and there’s—” That tall
chico
who’d given his shirt for the pillow, what was his name?

“A wonderful first day,” concluded Clive. “I’m sure, Jenny, you’ll be leading the local campaign for Carrillo.”

“As a first-year student, Clive, I’ll be too busy with my studies to lead anything. But—”

“And the food.” Clive nodded confidentially. “Tell us—how’s the cafeteria, compared to home?”

Jenny held out her plate. “They make the best green jello I’ve had outside Utah.”

*   *   *

Above Buckeye Trail, as new students followed their owls south for the Frogs Chorus, the lights of Mount Gilead made a cluster of stars. The north solar had deepened to twilight purple, like the purple of the light-drinking microbes in the saltwater that filled the spacehab’s outer shell. As the hab rotated, all sides of its marine shell received light. Solar microbes now provided a quarter of the spacehab’s electricity and hydrogen, while recycling its waste into amyloid. Another fifty percent came from solarray, an array of solar collectors in space; impressive, though not yet enough to survive without Earth. Farther “south,” the farmlands gave way to forest, naked trees discreetly screening the homes of those who could afford their own plot, reserved for the day when Frontera was independent and Earth too hot to handle. Even her parents now had their “safe home” here, Jenny realized with a twinge.
Todos se van.
But everyone from Earth couldn’t fit here.

“Slanball starts tomorrow,” Yola reminded Jenny, “as soon as you hear from Toy Land.” Toy Land was the school’s Toynet hub, which distributed all the course lists after sorting requests approved by the faculty. Jenny had to meet her advisor Abaynesh first thing in the morning.

The woods now filled with a chorus of crickets and peeper frogs. The frogs were deafening; there must be thousands. “Are they always this loud?”

Yola grinned. “Just wait till you join them. My year, our owl made us peep till we tossed him in the river.”

Anouk sniffed. “Frogs call in the spring.” Her Hermès headscarf displayed seashells on the beach.

Yola shrugged. “Animals can’t tell the seasons out here. They just breed all the time.”

“Don’t you entrain them by timing the daylight?” Anouk must have had an advanced Life class. Jenny wondered if her own public school had been a mistake.

“Their circadian clock genes were adjusted. Ask Elephant Man,” said Yola. “That’s Quade Vincenzo, the ecoengineer. He stocks all the wildlife in the hab.”

Rafael appeared, nodding courteously to Jenny and Anouk. “The Frogs Chorus is a harmless tradition,” he assured them.

“‘Tradition’?” Anouk raised an eyebrow. “What ‘tradition’ can such a young school have?” Frontera had just passed its tenth anniversary.

“You shall be amused,” Rafael promised in a tone that managed to take charge while disowning responsibility.

The Monroe DIRG had followed, at a discreet distance. Jenny eyed it, still wondering.

“It’s mine,” said Anouk. “Berthe, my family retainer. To preserve my honor.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She hastily looked away.

Anouk shrugged. “Not so bad as one inside your head.”

Jenny wheeled and stared. How could Anouk know about her mental? Of course she’d know, it was out there; ToyNews hid the scars on Jenny’s arm, but the story had leaked.

“This way, if you please.” Rafael nodded. Herded by their owls, the new students collected in the darkness at the Ohio River. The “river” actually flowed in a ring encircling the southern cap and drained out centrifugally to the spacehab’s outer shell, bringing minerals out to the solar microbes. Fireflies danced all around like stars let loose from the sky. Above the “peep, peep” of the frogs, some other creature called, “Oo-oo-oo
oo-aw
.” Some hidden denizen of the trees.

“
Vamos,
little frogs,” called Fritz Hoffman, the Bulls pledge educator. His call was echoed by the other owls. The new students clustered at the riverbank, craning their necks for a look. From her height, Jenny looked above the crowd toward the river.

Out of the river emerged a man in hip waders, the ecoengineer Quade Vincenzo. Vincenzo had an interesting face, a bulbous nose and cheeks that Jenny had to admit were indeed reminiscent of an elephant. Like the Mount Gilead colonists, he wore power bands on his arms and legs, devices that reclaimed energy lost from motion. In one hand the ecoengineer carried a large muddy bullfrog; in the other, a small bright orange frog. “Good to see all you new frogs join our chorus.” Vincenzo’s words filled her toybox. “Frontera is proud of all our fauna, but especially proud of our frog collection.…” He held up the bullfrog. “From good old
Rana,
Mark Twain’s favorite, to the
Dendrobates
poison dart frog.” The bright orange one. “A dart frog lays her eggs one by one in separate treeholes, then climbs up each tree every day to feed her tads. Don’t you ever touch one, though.” Vincenzo nodded as if to himself. He put down the two frogs, which soon hopped off.

Jenny took a wary step back.

“Now, our most popular, that is to say most prolific frog, is the spring peeper. As you’ve noticed.” Wiping his hands on his waders, Vincenzo put his fingers to his lips and called, “Peep, peep,” exactly like a peeper frog.