“Life is a gift,” Yuan says. “You gave me mine; I gave you yours. That means we are bound by a mutual debt, the kind you can’t cancel out. Come back with me when I return.”
* * * *
Several days later, much recovered, Yuan made his way back the way he had come. His companion had decided to stay in the village nearest the monastery. There, under a sky studded with stars, Yuan heard the man’s story. Yuan left with him an orange wristlet, even though the satellite connection was intermittent there. When they parted, it was with the expectation of meeting again.
“In the future that you dreamed of,” said his friend, “don’t be too long!”
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Yuan said.
After he had passed through the high mountain desert, Yuan descended into the broad alpine meadow. He lay down in the deep, rich grass and felt his weight, the gentle tug of gravity tethering him to the earth. Around him, the streams sang in their watery dialect. Sleep came to him then, and dreams, but they weren’t about death. His wristlet pinged, and he woke up. He must be back in satellite range. He heard, faintly, music, and the sound of a celebration. A woman’s voice spoke to him, a young voice, excited. Two words.
“. . . A Butterfly . . .”
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VANDANA SINGH is an Indian science fiction writer living in the Boston area. She has a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics and teaches physics full-time at a small and lively state university. Her recent short fiction includes “Sailing the Antarsa” in the anthology The Other Half of the Sky. Many of her stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, and she is a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. Recent work includes a novella, “Entanglement,” in the anthology Hieroglyph (November 2014). She has a new website at vandana-writes.com and a blog at vandanasingh.wordpress.com.
STAYING AFLOAT
ANGELA PENROSE
Just past eleven o’clock at night, the rain pressed hard against Paula Casillas’s back, forcing her to lean into the storm to keep her balance. It felt like she was being shot by a steady hail of tiny bullets—tiny, cold, splashing bullets that soaked her jeans and trickled down the neck of her heavy rain jacket.
The maize field she stood next to was well enough established that the rain wasn’t damaging the plants directly, but the soil was saturated, and what’d been a slight rise in the middle of the dirt road ninety minutes earlier was now a shallow stream creeping up around her ankles.
Lightning lit the sky, painting the experimental field with a blinding flash. Paula counted three seconds before thunder boomed.
To the west, the land rose into steep and unstable hills. Too many hills were unstable now, with the rain pouring down ten months of the year, harder than ever before. Who would have thought that the farmers of the altiplano would have ever had to worry about too much water? Paula remembered her Abuelo Jimenez muttering about drought in the many years when the rains were light and brief, but he’d never complained of too much water. But since the mid-twenty-first century, the old farmers spoke of drought years with what almost sounded like nostalgia.
“Here it comes.” José Orozco pointed upslope with his flashlight, picking out a sparkle that wasn’t just wet soil. Paula nodded and whispered a prayer. The water was coming down, rushing out of the mountains, and the field was in its way. And between the maize field and the coming flood was a fence of bright orange plastic that she and her grad student had assembled and installed just two days earlier.
“It will hold,” said José. He took a few steps closer to the slope, clearly visible even in the dark and the rain. Unlike most graduate students Paula knew (or had been, in her day), José had a social life, and had come out to meet her after the awaited rain interrupted him at some club. His white pants and shirt practically glowed in the dismal night; the smart grey jacket didn’t dim the effect much.
Youngsters. Paula was only forty-two, but sometimes José made her feel old. Luckily, he did it in a way that she didn’t mind too much.
Paula nodded to his back and repeated to herself, It will hold. Maybe if they asserted it often enough, it would be true.
It should hold. The plastic, an American product pushed by smiling blond spokesmen in expensive “casual” suits who promised miracles every time they opened their mouths, called it “Tufflon.” Twenty-eight times stronger than spider silk, it was light and cheap, and was one of the wonder products being sold all over the world as an essential part of the climate warrior’s toolkit.
Practical applications—practical from the point of view of the people being battered by the changing world, and who did not have the bank account or credit line of the average American—were harder to come by. Yes, it could help keep soil from washing away in a heavy rain on a perfectly flat field, but when the problem was flooding, that wasn’t so helpful. It was good for covering windows before one of the too-common hurricanes, and cheaper than plywood, but while useful, that was hardly a revolutionary development.
The leading edge of the floodwater hit the plastic barrier. Paula played her flashlight across it and could see the inverted-V shape channeling water into the drainage ditches on both sides of the field.
Paula and José had spent an entire day up on that slope, pounding wooden support stakes usually used for wire fences, stretching and securing the plastic, moving the stakes to get the angles correct and let a single long strip of the stuff—shaped with a dart held with duct tape—stand up straight with its lower edge hugging the ground. Once it was set, they secured the bottom, poking holes with nails and pushing sharp twigs into the ground to pin the edge down, because if the water just swept under the plastic, they might as well not have bothered. Then they’d had to pull up most of the twigs and re-secure the bottom edge using other twigs with bends or forks in them, so the plastic wouldn’t just lift off with the wind.
A little leakage was acceptable. Unavoidable. But if the orange plastic dam would hold, would it channel most of the water away? This was something any farmer could afford, could install on his own to protect a field at the base of a hill, or actually up on a slope, as so many Mexican farms were.
Lightning flashed again, casting a white glare over the sodden field. The crack-rumble of thunder was less than two seconds behind. The rain kept falling, and more water poured down the hill.
“Profesora!” José waved his flashlight off to one side, then went scramble-splashing up the slope. Paula squinted after him and, after a moment of straining to resolve the dark, rain-fuzzed shapes, saw one of the wooden stakes tipping.
By the time José reached the tilted stake, the two stakes on either side of it were beginning to tip as well.
Longer stakes, thought Paula. Pound them deeper next time.
Unless they were breaking? She hadn’t heard the wood cracking, but between the rain and the thunder, the sound wouldn’t carry far. If they were, then what? Steel stakes? They were expensive. She’d thought of rebar—cheap to buy new, and even cheaper if reclaimed—but José had pointed out that it was made to bend and would never stand up under the weight of the water. Wooden fence posts would eventually rot but were the best compromise between utility and economics.
But only if they’d hold . . .
Another stake on the opposite side of the V was leaning, succumbing to the pressure. It wasn’t going to work.
José was trying to straighten the first stake, pounding at it with . . . something, maybe a rock? Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to work.
She shouted, “José! This isn’t working; come down!” but before she could finish the sentence, the entire plastic line started moving. Not falling over but moving—the hillside was sliding underneath them.
“José!” There wasn’t time for more than that. He lost his footing and came sliding down the hill on his stomach with the stakes, the plastic, a field’s worth of mud, and a pond’s worth of water.
Paula waded in, her heart slamming and her brain stuck on
“frantic.” The wave of water and earth surged past her, sending her to hands and knees to keep from being knocked backward off the hill. She crawled up, fighting through the liquid mud, terrified that José had been buried.
Struggling to her feet, she pointed her flashlight beam over the ground, back and forth, while climbing. There! Those ridiculous white trousers—one leg from foot to knee was exposed, and the rain washed the mud clear.
It took a minute of hard, skin-tearing digging with her hands to expose José’s face. She turned him onto his stomach, straddled his hips, and did an awkward maneuver that Dr. Heimlich probably wouldn’t have recognized, but it got José coughing and that was what mattered.
He heaved and spat out mud and water, struggled for air, coughed again, sucked in more air. Paula pulled out her phone and called for help.
José recovered enough to control his panicked tears before the ambulance arrived, and they both calmed down enough for Paula to stare down at the tangle of orange plastic and wooden stakes and mud covering half the experimental field.
Catastrophic failure. Looking at how much of the hill had slumped, they’d never have been able to—no farmer working by hand would be able to—sink the stakes deep enough to prevent the slide. They needed something else. If only she had any idea what that could be.
* * * *
Two months later, nothing. Plenty of ideas, and arguments enough to take them all well into the next century, but nothing that made everyone, or even a significant subset, go “Aha!”
Profesor Rivera thought the answer was flood-resistant plant varieties, grains or other starch crops that could thrive even under half a meter of water, with roots deep enough not to wash off a hillside. Paula explained, again, exactly how deep that would have to be, but he still kept muttering about taproots.
Taproots? On annual grasses? Three-quarters of the plant’s energy would be wasted growing roots; there’d be nothing left to develop seed heads.
Profesora Sanchez-Gallegos thought Paula had the right idea, but the wrong materials. “Stronger,” she said. “Walls instead of flimsy fences. Earthworks or rock walls. It will take longer to install, but it will last.”
“No!” said Paula, waving her mostly empty grapefruit soda at Sanchez. “I should have recorded a vid because you’re not understanding; none of you are. The entire hillside slid. Unless you dig or pound foundations down to bedrock, nothing you build on the surface will stand up to the water, the mud.” She huffed out her frustration and finished her soda.
They all knew. In actuality, they all understood. No one had been able to think of anything that would work, anything practical, anything cheap enough for the farmers who would have to implement it. They were running in circles, digging a circular ditch deeper and deeper into the earth that had turned against them.
The university café was full of bustling, chatting students and faculty. Sun shone through the windows, making the shabby room more cheerful. Everyone knew there was a crisis—a complex of crises all over the world—but people could only be grim for so long before they either sank into depression or pushed the problems away. The students, laughing and calling and tossing the occasional tamale at each other, had pushed away anything that wasn’t an imminent exam, and most of them likely weren’t even thinking about those.
Profesora Zavala crumpled the paper wrappers from her lunch and stood. “I have a seminar,” she said. “We’ll try again next week, yes? I know someone in Israel who’s working on water control there—I’ll mail him and see if he wants to exchange problems and ideas. If we all did that, brought more people in? Maybe someone will have a new idea. We might be able to help them too. Fresh eyes on everyone’s problems, yes?”
Paula muttered assent along with the others. It was nothing they hadn’t done before. Everyone had their own problems, and suggestions from someone who didn’t have all the information was rarely as helpful as it was in feel-good movies.
Everyone at the table started shuffling and gathering to leave when Paula’s phone buzzed. She sat back down and pulled it out.
Abuelo Jimenez had sent her a text. Why her abuelo couldn’t just leave a voice message or an avatar vid like everyone else, or even a proper letter if he wanted to write, she didn’t know. But he was old, and seemed proud of his turn-of-the-century habits.
RM RDY 4 U C U SOON
Paula squinted at the string of characters and slowly deciphered it. Room ready for you, see you soon.
She smirked at the message, then put her phone away. She hadn’t been looking forward to the visit and had actually been planning to find some excuse to put it off. She knew her abuelo would be disappointed, but she’d expected—hoped—to be busy that weekend.
What she actually was, was tired. Exhausted in her heart. A weekend, maybe even a long weekend, at Abuelo Jimenez’s place by the lake sounded wonderfully relaxing. Even if he was still puttering around in his vegetable garden, the last remnant of the farm he’d labored on for seventy-some years, a plot of beans or squash or whatever he was growing that year might help her remember why she’d devoted her life to agricultural technology—to gardening, at the heart of it—in the first place.
She tapped the VID button and said, “Looking forward to seeing you too, ’Buelo. Be ready to feed me!” Her current avatar, a little cartoon woman in a campesina’s rough trousers and blousy work shirt, with an old-fashioned hard hat on her head, spoke the words back to her, shifting her weight and moving her hands. Paula had chosen the mannerisms mode that fit her personality, then tweaked it a little, back when she’d changed to this avatar. It looked fine, and she sent it off.
Abuelo always wanted to feed people from his garden, so the last bit would make him happy.
She stuffed her trash into the recycling bins and headed across the sun-dusted campus back to her office. She had a meeting with José about his own research into alleviating soil compaction with amendments, then a seminar of her own to lead before she could head up to Abuelo’s place.
* * * *
It was raining again by the time she left town. The car’s fat, nubbed tires handled the wet and mud better than the old flat-surface tires ever had, but Paula still drove carefully up the winding road. Once she left the highway, with eight kilometers still to go, the road was packed dirt and gravel, and the wet weather had turned it into a stewed mess.
Abuelo Jimenez’s house was a bright island of beckoning comfort in the rainy night by the time she pulled her car up next to his ancient truck. She grabbed her bag and splashed up the squishy path to the front door, slipping inside quickly to keep the heat in.
“There you are! I thought you’d fallen into the lake!” He gave her a quick hug, ignoring her soaked coat, then pointed her to the door she knew perfectly well. “Go put on something dry. I’ll get supper on the table.”
“Yes, ’Buelo.” Paula smiled at his retreating back and headed into his workroom, where she would sleep on the studio couch amid his tools and clutter. She didn’t mind at all. She’d slept in a similar room whenever she visited his farm as a child. The tools had been fascinating—they’d made her plastic toys look like cheap baby things. Abuelo’s projects, wood and metal and wires, had drawn her in, teased her with their promise of revealing how the world worked. How to make things, real things that people could use.
She was an engineer because of Abuelo Jimenez’s workroom.
While getting changed, she looked over the semi-ordered clutter on the big wooden bench. Her abuelo was the opposite of a specialist; he always seemed to be doing something different. Among the more common broken lamp to be fixed and cracked hoe handle to be replaced, there was always something new he was trying out or fiddling with.
The central project on the bench that evening was some kind of partially complete woven basket.
Paula pulled a warm sweater on over her head, slipped on a dry pair of shoes, and went to the bench for a closer look while toweling her hair.
The basket he was working on was odd,
to say the least. The base seemed to be a half-crushed pad of thick, twiggy brush. Willow strips were woven through it, loosely—it wouldn’t hold anything much smaller than an egg—and built up around the sides to form a long, narrow, rectangular basket. A handspan of willow ends stuck up, so it probably wasn’t finished, but Paula had no idea what such a basket would be used for even when finished.
Warm, savory smells drew her out to the main room, where Abuelo was setting a cast-iron pot on the table. Paula sat down and he spooned a hearty stew onto her plate—haunch of goat cooked tender (well, almost) with peppers and onions and chunks of orange squash, and some cilantro on top. It was one of her favorites, and she knew he had made it just for her.
They caught up a bit during dinner, exchanging news, but mostly eating in comfortable silence. It wasn’t until after, when Paula was finishing up the dishes, that she thought to ask about the weird basket.
“Hah, that,” said Abuelo. He was sitting in his chair with a bottle of after-dinner beer, which he said helped him sleep. “I had a thought last month, while it was raining. The flat fields flood, and the sloped fields slide into the lake. You spoke of this problem.”
Paula nodded and turned to face him, leaning back against the counter while drying the cast-iron pot.
“Our ancestors built fields that floated. On the lakes around Tenochtitlan? We all learned this in school. If we could duplicate the old floating fields, it wouldn’t matter how much it rains or whether it floods.”
“But the chinampas didn’t actually float,” Paula protested.
“Says who?” he demanded. “Abbe Francésco said they did. I read his account online. He would have had to be a ridiculously stupid man not to know the difference between a field built up from the bottom of a lake and a field that could float about on the surface of a lake.”
Paula didn’t voice the obvious conclusion. Instead, she said, “It’d be interesting if it were true. Have you made any progress?”
Loosed Upon the World Page 35
