by M M Buckner
His words brought me back to the present, Sheeba in that hellish pit, exposed far too long to Heaven’s terrible malady. I snapped my fingers. “Give me my sat phone. I can solve this problem in one minute.”
“Bloody hell.” He wiped his wet lips and stamped across to a workstation littered with metal parts. There in plain sight lay my satellite phone. Funny I hadn’t spotted it before. When he flung it at me, its trajectory veered off toward the W, and I had to lunge sideways to catch it. “Call,” he said.
I flipped open the cover and ran diagnostics. It was still in working order, and as far as I could tell, none of my files had been accessed. Maybe these idiots didn’t know how. With tremendous relief, I spoke a command to call Grunze.
“No service,” the message came back.
I tried calling Chad. “No service.”
Maybe the voice-command memory was fried. I activated the virtual key pad, and a grid of holographic numbers spread through the air like a small shimmering checkerboard. “Hoo, look at mat,” Juani said in the background. Rapidly, I tapped out Chad’s ID code by hand.
“No service.”
“We told ya they blocking our signal.” Geraldine jostled me with her elbow. “You think everybody lies the way you do.”
“But this is hyperwave.” I ran diagnostics again. Provendia had to keep A13 under wraps to prevent a financial panic, but I didn’t know our gunship could scramble a hyperwave signal. I stared at the tiny screen. My sat phone was fully functional—and perfectly useless. “This is a disaster.”
Geraldine exploded with high-pitched giggles, and Liam nodded, vindicated. I would have said he was gloating, but his expression was too morose. Juani peeked over my shoulder at the sat phone. “Can I see it?” he asked.
Geraldine batted her eyelashes, mocking me. “You stuck here like the rest of us, and you lucky we let you breathe. It’s not like the air’s free.”
“Return our EVA suits, and we’ll go,” I said.
She ripped the sat phone from my hand and gave it to Juani, who cheerfully started punching buttons at random. “We need your fancy space suits to fix our life support. Ours too leaky. So get your skinny ‘xec ass back down to One, and be grateful.”
“Juani, take him to sick-ward,” said the chieftain. “Help him find his lady.”
“Liam, no.” Geraldine flared her shapely nostrils.
But the chieftain didn’t react I glared at his knife-edged profile. He was working at his machine again and wouldn’t look at me. How incredibly reckless. He was giving me free run of the factory? On second thought, his casual treatment felt like an insult. It seemed the mighty Liam had no fear of me.
Fuming, I gripped Juani’s shoulder. “Let’s go.” Juani stuck my useless sat phone in his waistband and beamed. “Sick-ward up on Four. We go look at the veggies on our way.”
As we left the solar plant, I glanced back and caught Liam watching me. He turned away and pretended to be absorbed by his repair project. Then he slowly raised his cold blue eyes again. No mistaking the challenge in his look. I hadn’t answered his question—hadn’t claimed Sheeba as my wife.
11
VEGGIES
“Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and Insolence of the rising generation.”
-DR. JOHNSON
Two’s corridors were just as narrow and scummy as One’s had been. The ceilings were just as claustrophobically low, the surveillance cameras dangled just as inertly, and there were no windows anywhere. It amazed me that the engineers hadn’t provided a way to see out. More squealing toads milled around, playing their silly games and blocking our way. My left thumb had been vibrating constantly since the episode with the sonic lathe, so as Juani marched ahead, I covertly tapped my thumbscreen with my pinky stylus. A menu popped up with a ton of messages.
“Net not responding” topped the list, and I finally realized why. Provendia’s Net blockade was scrambling my IBiS signal as well as my sat phone. Sure enough, the processor in my thumb had logged a dozen missed appointments—scheduled maintenance on my thymus, for one. That device controlled my T-cells. I’d also missed another telomerase infusion. If I skipped too many of those, the telomeres in my cells would shrivel, and my skin would sag. Not good.
Ahead in the corridor, Juani was singing mindless sentimental lyrics of love and heartbreak, as if a boy his age would know anything about that.
“Where did you learn that stupid song?’ I asked.
Juani grinned and came back to offer me his elbow. “Sing me some Earth songs, blade.”
“I don’t sing.” I rubbed my jaw and brooded over my shriveling telomeres. But my skin still felt smooth and tight. As we passed bulkhead doors, more and more useless little employee dependents wandered underfoot. Sometimes I had to knee them out of my way. No wonder A13’s overhead costs had gotten so seriously out of line.
Juani guided me around Deck Two, narrating like a tour guide. “Over there, ops bay. Here, circulator pumps push the air and water.”
He stopped in front of an oval door, grabbed its wheel with both hands and mysteriously wiggled his eyebrow up and down. “Veggies.”
“Listen, kid, I just want to find Sheeba.”
Juani ignored me. When the door swung open, light blazed through, and a wet gurgling sound echoed. More powerful than light, or sound was the mesmerizing fragrance. How can I describe the amazing perfume that wafted through this door?
Fresh, that was the main impression. Sweet, but also sour, sharp, tangy. The smell appealed to me on a primitive level. My mouth actually watered. I stepped farther in and felt a breeze, the first positive airflow I’d experienced in Heaven. A low rhythmic purr hinted some kind of mechanical rotor fans. And there was dripping, like the tinkle of small bells. The humidity settled on my skin.
Set into the outer curving wall were a score of blinding light-globes like the one in the solar plant. Their beams sparkled through the mist. The inner wall curved, too, giving the room a half-torus shape, like the inside of one half of a hollow donut. The dazzling white beams ricocheted across ranks and ranks of tables. I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered. The tables were covered with leaves.
Hundreds—no, thousands of green leaves fluttered in the breeze of the fans. The room held actual living plants. Scores of them. A veritable treasure trove of greenware. I bent over a table and gawked. The plants were growing in long thick bars of solid plastic.
Juani stepped aside and grinned as he watched my reaction. “Watch this.” He jammed his stubby finger under one of the plastic bars, and its top flipped up like a lid. So the bar was not solid plastic. It was a long, slender lidded tray with holes in the top for the plants to grow through. Juani opened the lid only a few centimeters, careful not to disturb the plants. I stooped to peek inside, where plant roots coiled like white threads, soaking up a cloudy yellowish liquid. Yes, I recognized this technology. Hydroponics. I’d browsed video about it.
“The cover keeps the juice from sloshing out during Justment,” Juani said, “but we still get a little splatter sometimes.”
Justment? Peculiar word. On the floor, furry tufts of black space fungus outlined the strokes where someone had mopped up repeated spills. I wondered what caused the liquid nutrient to splash so much. As I studied the open tray, a new stream of liquid surged through, washing the roots gently back and forth. Then ceiling-mounted misters erupted and shot a fine spray over the leaves for about five seconds. When the misters subsided, the damp leaves trembled and shed heavy, glittering droplets. A sheen of moisture covered every verdant surface. Juani snapped the tray’s lid back into place.
I’d seen so few real plants in my life. Hothouse orchids brought in for parties. Astronomically expensive endive salad to celebrate a birthday. Even wealthy execs relied on synthesized foods, textiles and medicines most of the time. When greenhouse gases thickened our skies and poisoned our rain, plants had to be moved indoors. On a mass scale, that absorbed way too many re
sources, and the results were too chancy, too subject to terrorist attack and genetic mutation. Farming had never been a good investment. Synthetics, on the other hand, paid back in spades. Synthetics could be standardized, patented and kept secure. After years of Provendia board meetings, I knew more about food processing than I cared to admit.
“What are these plants, Juani?”
“This ruffled one, this kale.” He ran his open palm along the tops of the leaves, smiling with gap-toothed affection. “Those over there, they look like heads. They cabbages.”
Nearby stood a tray of deep green foliage. I parted the dark leaves and discovered, to my delight, a small pulpy floret the color of emeralds. It sparkled with droplets of mist.
Juani said, “That broccoli, man. Pinch off a piece. It’s okay.”
I snapped off a floret, sniffed it, then tested it with the tip of my tongue.
“It’s good.” Juani broke off a larger stalk and chomped, smiling as he chewed.
I took a tiny bite, then another. Bittersweet, crunchy. The texture alone was a marvel. And the flavor, transcendental. I snapped another floret and devoured it Nothing in my experience had prepared me for this exotic taste.
“This Primo,” said Juani, gesturing at the crescent-shaped room. Half a dozen prepubescent kids were moving among the tables, doing things to the plants. Juani kept talking. “Dr. Bashevitz, he built this. This our first hydro-pod. This where we start our seedlings.”
Without thinking, I rested my weight on my injured leg, but in Two’s reduced gravity, the pain jarred me with less force. When I moved toward the cabbages, a brilliant beam spotlighted me, and that’s when I noticed the light beams were moving—slowly roving over the leaves like searchlights.
“Just babies here. Little shoots. Our main garden up on Five,” Juani said.
“Deck Five is the factory floor,” I mused absently, studying the light beams.
“Up there, man, we got fruit. Melons.” Juani followed at my heels, speaking rapidly. “Dr. Bashevitz, he brought the seeds here. He a botanist. He built this Primo, and we copied his plans up on Five.”
I squinted to see what made the light beams move. On the ceiling, rows of small round mirrors hung on mounts that swiveled like searching eyes.
Juani kept chattering away. His thick eyebrow fringe rose and fell as he talked, and a happy grin wrinkled his pug nose. “Primo supposed to breed psuedoplankton to make oxygen. Green stinky mess. I used to go rake it But Dr. Bashevitz, he snuck in veggie seeds. They say he plant seeds in a thousand factories before he got busted. For a while, his veggies growin’ all over the G Ring. Then the ‘xecutives go burn ‘em out.”
The ceiling mirrors were reflecting the light beams from the globes and sweeping them evenly across the growing plants. Clever design, I thought.
“‘Xecutives say the gardens not clean enough. Harbor germs. Say we gotta sterilize.”
Juani bent over another tray, pulled off a dead leaf and rolled it between his palms. He raised the lid and crumbled the leaf into the pale liquid sluicing through the channels, feeding the threadlike roots.
I watched the fluid waves in fascination. “What’s in that liquid?”
“Everything good goes into the garden.” Juani’s large brown eyes gleamed with mystery and mischief. “We recycle.”
“Oh.” I plucked another bit of—what did he call it, broccoli? The taste aroused deep feelings of satisfaction, as if I remembered its essence from a former life. What would Sheeba say about that? She loved the concept of reincarnation.
“Sooner later, I show you the garden on Five. That one beautiful sight.”
“Has Sheeba seen this?” I asked. This was definitely her kind of place. She would imagine all sorts of mystical forces among the seedlings. I could almost hear her joyful gibberish. “Let’s go find Sheeba.”
“Yeah, man.” Juani escorted me through the curving torus room, proudly explaining as we went how the mirrors bent the sunlight around to reach all the tables. He recited plant names. Clearly, he loved having an audience. I knew he was taking unnecessary detours to show off his seedlings, and I had to keep urging him forward. Still, he amused me. He revered those plants.
“Juani, I’ve lost all sense of direction. Which way is Sheeba from here?”
He leaned against the curved outer wall and scoured away the film of black fungus with his thumb to reveal a stenciled X. More wall alphabet. I’d noticed a few X’s earlier, intermingled with the A’s, E’s, W’s, U’s and D’s.
“X mean exterior,” he said. “This the hull. Nothing beyond this wall but vacuum, and it sucks.” His eyes closed to merry slits, enjoying the stale joke. “If you get lost, follow a X wall till you come to something familiar.”
My leg was aching, and I tried to shove a hydroponic tray aside so I could sit on the table to rest. But since the trays were welded in place, I could only lean my butt against the table edge. “Juani, try to grasp this. Nothing here is familiar to me.”
The comical way his nose wrinkled almost made me laugh. He didn’t have an inkling what I meant. Every centimeter of this hellish satellite must have been engraved in his brain like tribal memory.
“Enough X-wall lessons. Let’s just find Sheeba.”
He rubbed the stenciled X, and Ms caramel face gleamed with the damp. Fungus blackened his stubby, boyish hands. The fungus was everywhere. Here in the hydroponic section, rings of it bloomed along the walls in a morbid floral pattern, following the arcs of a scrub brush where someone had tried to clean. With disgust, I noted my own blackened hands and sock feet.
“You don’t have X walls on Earth?” Juani said. “You gotta have something to hold in the air.”
I sighed, because he was right. Even on Earth, bream-able air had to be contained within sealed habitats. Beyond our terrestrial walls lay not the airless void but something just as lethal—toxic pollution. “We don’t stencil X’s everywhere,” I said. “On Earth, we use street signs.”
Juani gave me that googly expression kids get when they’re curious. His liquid brown eyes widened. How do you deal with a look like that?
Some of the urchins drew closer, and Juani lifted a toddler in his arms. I scooted farther back against the welded tray and rested my sore leg across my knee. It crossed my mind to abandon Juani and go looking for Sheeba on my own, but more toads gathered at my feet, hemming me in. They gripped their knobby knees and looked up at me with big, popping eyes. Among them sat the little girl with the red birthmark. She scratched my foot to get my attention. “What color is Earth?”
That started a deluge. The little beasties had more questions than a Com has vice presidents. They wanted to know what held the oceans down, and why mountains changed into sand. These infants knew so little, only myths and half-truths gleaned from storytelling.
“Don’t you ever browse the Net?” I asked.
The toads looked at Juani, who merely shrugged and jostled the toddler he was holding in his arms. Then I remembered that employees weren’t given Net access unless their jobs required it. I glanced at the dingy surface of the X wall, decorated with graffiti. “How do you stand this place without windows? You can’t see anything.”
Juani puffed out his chest like a strutting young bird. “Some day I go spacewalking again.”
The birthmark girl scratched my foot again. “What’s a window?”
Juani tousled her hair. “Keesha, you a smart aleck.”
Then he got up, lowered the child he was holding into Keesha’s lap, and started picking veggies to feed the kids. As the wee ones crunched and nibbled, Juani kept interrogating me, and each time I answered, he would lean toward me and wiggle his fingers as if he could pluck learning from the air. He made me feel like a sage.
“The oceans stay put because the land is above sea level…. No no no, you don’t get lighter when you climb a mountain. Gravity’s the same everywhere.” I answered whether I knew the facts or not. No one had ever hung on my words the way Juani and these toads did.
I sat munching handfuls of what they called “cherry tomatoes,” and while I gushed erudition, the juice ran down my chin. Ye gilders, I hadn’t met so many inquisitive minds in decades. The younger kids must have lived all their short lives in this rusty spinning bucket, and these wedge-shaped steel rooms comprised their entire universe. As I watched Juani dawdle over his greenery, I tried to imagine what that would be like.
Ditch the sentiment. You’re going sappy, Deepra.
The edge of the table was eating into my butt, and the little red fruits began to upset my stomach. They looked too much like lychee nuts. Nearby, another broccoli flower glistened, so I broke off the entire stalk and took big bites to wash the bitter taste away. “Juani, let’s get going. We’ve wasted enough time.”
He was examining another withered leaf, smoothing it with his blunt boyish fingertips. “Strange. Live all your life on Earth, and never see broccoli.”
The younger kids laughed at mat.
“There’s some kind of disease in this place,” I said abruptly. “Tell me about it.”
Juani flinched. My change of subject must have shocked him. His face closed up, and he turned away to adjust a mister nozzle, while the kids glanced back and forth between the two of us with worried frowns.
“What about you, Juani? Do you have any symptoms?”
He found a tool under the table and began to scrape a whitish crust off the nozzle jet. “Dr. Bashevitz say the plants on Earth all gone. Why you go let them die, blade?”
“What?”
“Why you make such a wreckage?” he asked.
“I didn’t do it!”
I bit down hard on the broccoli stalk but found it difficult to chew. Wreckage, he called it. Earth’s Big D—Defloration—began in the twentieth century, long before I was born. And this illiterate child was accusing me? What did he know, stupid kid. I crunched another bite. He talked as if I were personally responsible for the climate change.
Juani gave me a stem look and put his tool away. Keesha whispered something, and the other kids drifted back to their chores, while I sat chomping and scowling and ruminating.
