The Homestead

by G R Higginbotham

  Moses wasted no time getting fed and dressed. Farmers were supposed to be early risers, and he wanted to make a good impression on Harold Petersen. As he hurried out into the corridor he took a moment to look out at the interior of the facility from the railing opposite his quarters. He was close to the middle of the pyramid. The widening space below him was filled with terraces and overlooks, and every single one of them was covered in greens. It was as if the residents were willing to leave home as long as they could attempt to recreate a portion of it here. Where space permitted, there were trees growing and spreading. There were flowers and vegetables growing up and over various railings. Anywhere the sunlight from above reached a flat surface below, people had cultivated a space. The result was a truly international botanical garden. Since the Homestead was populated by the best applicants from around the world, then the plants they brought were an equally representative sample.

  Harold Petersen’s apiary was a vital part of all of it. Without his bees, the habitat would be almost impossible to support the plant life currently thriving here. Since no insects were transported from Earth to Mars, and only very controlled bird populations were brought, then the mechanical bees were by far the dominant pollinator for all of the flowering species. This place was a paradise for people that hated creepy crawlies. Through irradiation and biospectral scanning, every incoming shipment was microscopically controlled. Not even bed bugs could make it through their scrutiny. Moses knew that there were earthworms somewhere in the habitat but had not run across them yet. He enjoyed the freedom from flies and mosquitoes. His childhood in Uganda had taught him of the dangers that tiny creatures could carry with them. Decomposition was handled by the cyanobacteria, making all insects ultimately unnecessary. Here, every dying thing supported the main purpose of Homestead IV: terraforming through controlled algae growth.

  This was all running through his head when Moses stepped out of the elevator onto the farm that Harold Petersen had built. He had designed and even helped construct much of the level that only he occupied. And it was expansive. Right at the railing sat his bee houses, as close to the center of the structure as they could get. This gave them quick access to all of the levels above, allowing them to fly straight up the open center column to the plants above and below them. The farm also held a healthy herd of cattle as well as growing modified feed for those cattle.

  Moses was going to have to try to hold back his questions about the farm. They were many. He had to strike a balance between friendly curiosity to get the conversation started and sticking to the task at hand. It would be easy to get sidetracked and get stuck down here all day. There were no patients scheduled at the clinic on this day by design, but he did have some visits to complete out in the habitat at large.

  After looking for a little while, he located the door tucked away behind a small grove of apple trees that were just starting to produce some fuzzy, rust-colored fruit. As he approached the door, a deep voice called to him from the cattle field. He turned that direction and headed out to where the voice had come from. On a stool beside a cow sat a squat little man with denim overalls. He actually had denim overalls! This was just too perfect for Moses to take seriously. He resisted the urge to poke fun at the farmer for being so stereotypical in every way. He resisted mostly because this man had advanced degrees in about fifteen different areas of study culminating in several prestigious awards, most notably the Nobel Prize. Petersen’s work on advancing farming sciences had made it possible to feed the ever-growing population of Earth with less strain. The same research that made it possible for colonies of scientists and workers to inhabit and terraform their neighboring planet.

  “Dr. Petersen, sir. How exciting to meet you.” Since the population of the Martian habitats were overrun with people who had doctorates, it was traditional to call anybody who didn’t hold a medical degree by mister or misses, but Moses couldn’t bring himself to call this man anything other than doctor. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to come meet you and see your farm here. I finally just decided to come see it without a good reason.” Moses extended his hand.

  Harold Petersen looked up from his stool with sharp eyes that looked like they never missed a thing. “Please, call me Harold, doctor. Welcome to Homestead IV.” His deep, clear voice did not fit with his weathered features. Neither did the firm, almost painful grip the old man plied onto Moses. He held on as he continued. “It is really nice to have you here. The doctor from ICE never really fit in amongst the general population here. He was all business. I have already heard that you have an excellent bedside manner. And I’m happy to hear you aren’t attempting to get me down to your damned office for a physical. I’ve had enough of those for my taste.” He released Moses’ hand but held his gaze steady with pale green eyes.

  He had hot milk on his hand. He was meeting one of the most brilliant minds alive and all Moses could think about was that now he had hot milk on his hand. He successfully stopped himself from wiping the milk off onto the back of his pants.

  “Thank you, sir. It is an honor to be here. Is it OK to ask a few questions about the farm? I mean, do you have time?” Moses hated to hear himself stammering through his planned questions, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was officially starstruck.

  “Let me finish milking this one, and I’ll meet you over by the house. If you help me get some of this work done, I can talk as long as you like.” Moses smiled. It was a good thing he planned on wearing work clothes today just in case. He had grown up around farm animals and had anticipated getting a little dirty.

  He attempted to hide the excitement from his voice but failed, and then retreated to the door leading to Petersen’s rooms. He was the only person Moses had ever heard refer to their living quarters on Mars as a house. Moses had never noticed the absence of that word until now. Interesting.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Once inside, Petersen removed a stiff leather apron from a wooden hook on the wall beside the entrance and handed it to Moses to put over his clothes. Moses had no doubt that it was made from one of Petersen’s own cattle.

  “Shoot.” Petersen tied his apron and looked expectantly at Moses.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ask me your questions. Meanwhile, I need you to help me assemble these bees.” He gave Moses some simple instructions for assembling the mechanical bees that would hunt for pollen, and then got to work right beside him. It was delicate work.

  “Why do we need aprons for working on the bees?” Moses asked. “It doesn’t seem messy.”

  “These aprons are grounded and RF shielded. It keeps you or your handheld from frying my insects.” Petersen never looked up from the bees he was assembling.

  Moses started assembling the flying computers and proceeded with his questions.

  “I’ve read about how your work on these mechanical bees made it possible to facilitate pollination in the habitats. What made it so hard before? What problem were the bees solving?” Moses looked to Petersen for an answer, but the old man just looked over his glasses at his work, never lifting his eyes.

  “The problem was specificity,” he answered. “On Earth, bees communicate through elaborate dances. People have known how to interpret the dance for a long time. They tell the rest of the hive how far to fly, and in what direction, through a series of shimmies and shakes. But bees on Earth can instinctively figure out when flowers are ripe for a meal, cover themselves in pollen while they binge out, and then carry that pollen to other flowers that are ready to receive that lusty dust onto their stamen.

  “We tried bees from Earth many times and in many different iterations. The combination of space travel and a longer day, paired with decreased gravity and a partially artificial environment really through the real bees for a loop. They couldn’t cope, would stop eating, and the colonies would collapse. We initially thought waiting for a new colony to split off and raising them from larvae here would solve some of the issues. We were never able to get a new
queen that was hatched on Mars. The old queens just weren’t willing to make the royal jelly.

  “And so we were screwed. We needed the bees to make this place work the way we knew it could. But the technology that would allow a machine to do the same things just wasn’t there. There was no program written, and the cameras of the time couldn’t see or smell in the same spectrum as the real bees could.”

  “So what did you do to overcome that?”

  “Don’t interrupt, son. You want me to tell you, I’m telling you. Let me tell it.” Petersen finally looked up. Moses wished he hadn’t. He needed to stay on his good side if he was going to bring up Adrie’s ordeal and make it through that whole conversation.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Please, continue.”

  “Anyhow, it was Adrie that had the idea. She was always the one to have the good ideas. I just implemented them. She figured out that I should make a handful of robotic drones that I could control manually, finding the plants that were ready. Then the drones could fly back through the apiary into the bee factory and upload the data to the system automatically. Then the system would send out an appropriate number of copycats that would be able to seek out similarly ripe flowers.

  “Robot drone bees link to the network through whatever level they are flying through and send that information through the same network back to the apiaries here on the farm. That is the only part of the system that requires artificial intelligence. Then the robotic bees do the rest of the work. It’s like autopilot once you program in a destination and teach the drones’ sensors what they are looking for.”

  After a long pause, Moses decided that this was the end of the explanation, and that it would be safe to talk again. “And that was all it took to get us to Mars?” Obviously, his question was oversimplifying things. He wanted to keep Harold talking.

  “Well, that research, years of devising a way to keep the bees autonomous enough that they don’t need constant oversight, and lots of rocket fuel. Pretty much. We needed the bees to allow us to grow food and have plants to produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. It cut way back on the things we would have to bring, and eases the strain on the environmental systems. The carbon dioxide scrubbers have less work to do, the oxygen pumps have less to pump, and we didn’t have to bring more than a few months worth of rations. Now food production is up enough that the combined habitats can collectively produce enough to float future habitats until they start their own production. They only have to bring enough food to get here.

  “It effectively allowed ten times the workers to move to Mars at one-tenth of the cost. The only thing it doesn’t do is produce honey.”

  Moses knew all of this information. Everyone who came to Mars learned all of this in training. But to hear it from the man who was instrumental in creating the technology was truly exciting. The terraforming of Mars likely would have failed a quarter of a century ago if not for this man and his wife.

  He decided to keep going.

  “And what about the cows and trees? Are they necessary?”

  Petersen chuckled to himself. “They’re necessary if you want apple pie and a good steak. My milk cows aren’t much to brag about, but the beef cattle are high quality. The apples were Adrie’s. She could make a mean apple pie. I haven’t had a decent one since she passed.”

  They finished up work on the bees, hung up their aprons, and moved on to another project. Apparently, even though the habitats were capable of producing butter through technologically advanced methods, Harold Petersen preferred hand-churned butter. He asked the next few questions while Harold watched from a rocking chair as Moses churned away on the front porch.

  “Was it a family recipe?” he asked, as he switched arms.

  “Sorry?” Harold smiled.

  “The apple pie recipe. Was it a family recipe?” Moses was beginning to sweat.

  “No. Adrie was a scientist. She tested out recipes like she tested any scientific project. She tweaked and adjusted things until her variables were perfect. I gained a lot of weight while she was figuring out that recipe.”

  “Is it a secret, or could I get a copy?” Now he was using both arms just to keep going. The milk was getting thicker.

  “I’ll send it to you. I have your contact info on the fridge.” When Moses showed surprise at this, Petersen was quick to respond, “When you get to my age, you always have the doctor’s information around. You never know.” He stopped smiling. “I always wonder . . . if we had called Epps sooner if he would have been able to help her before it was too late.”

  Moses stopped churning. “Can you tell me what happened? I mean, I’ve read her files and the official reports, but if you could tell me the whole story it might make more sense.” The older man was failing in his attempt to hide how much he was still in pain about what had happened.

  “Those reports are bullshit.” With his deep baritone, the words sounded like an explosion going off. He calmed himself and kept going. “They just wanted to act like she was an old woman who got older and died. Nothing about what happened to her had anything to do with her age or health. Something else happened. And that damned Epps is the one that let her die. He was the one who consented to send her back to Earth when Jacobs pushed for it. Against both our wishes!” Petersen was on the verge of tears at this point. “I didn’t even get to hold her hand when she was going.” Now the tears started coming slowly. “Forty-three years by her side, and I didn’t get to help her be at peace at the end. I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  Moses put his hand awkwardly on Harold’s shoulder and just waited, physical touch the only consolation he knew to give. Words wouldn’t help at this point. He had learned this over the years as a physician. Sadly, sometimes being a doctor involved moments like this.

  “Your butter is ready, sir. Let me separate it from the buttermilk and get it ready for you to refrigerate while you talk.” Changing the subject might help to keep the older man focused. He didn’t want to steer the conversation to Adrie just yet.

  “You know how to do that?” Harold Petersen was impressed enough to be distracted from his grief. Moses felt a little twinge of pride at impressing one of the greatest minds alive. Even if it was through his butter churn expertise.

  “I do,” he said smiling. “One of the benefits of growing up in a small village with very little technology was mastering the art of self-producing as much as we could. But we could never afford a cow. We just had goats. I prefer cow butter to goat butter.”

  They walked to the outbuilding where the supplies were waiting, allowing the silence to permeate the moment. Moses got to work on the butter while gently maneuvering the conversation so Harold would shed some light on Adrie Petersen’s sickness and eventual death.

  Chapter 5

  I first noticed something was wrong two full months before we figured out that she was ill. She wasn’t sleeping anymore, at least not in our bedroom. I would hear her moving around the house at all hours. Now, Adrie always had some damn project going, but it wasn’t normal for her leave me in bed alone. That’s the secret to a good marriage, you know. Always go to bed together.

  In the beginning she only fiddled around with whatever she was doing at night. But after a few weeks she started to become obsessed. Every spare moment was spent either in her workroom, or doing something out in the habitat. She was usually working on something related to the farm in that room, and it was hard to get her out of there. But once this took her over she was wandering all over the whole facility half the time. I don’t think most people had ever seen her before it all happened.

  After a week or two of her wandering around, I got fed up with it. We had a big fight about where she was going and just what exactly she was up to. But she never would tell me. Whatever it was, it caused her to get that respiratory infection that killed her. I know what all the doctors’ reports say, and what the damn officials of ICE say too, but that just isn’t right. How could she go from perfectly healthy and normal, to wandering around and sick,
and the two not be related? She couldn’t!

  That lady from the labs, she’s a crazy one, and she came and complained that Adrie was interfering in her work and asked me to help get her out of their way. I did what I could, but I couldn’t control her.

  Anyway, she turned up with sniffles. I remember that was the first symptom because even just around the house, the sniffling drove me nuts. We were already sore with each other over her not telling me where and what she was working on, and then that sniffle . . . every ten minutes and here came another one. Just enough time for me to get on the edge of sleep and it would wake me up again.

  If we thought the first fight was big, the one over her runny nose was a real blowout. And I knew even then that she couldn’t help it. But I took it out on her anyway. That was when we should have gone to see Epps, the bastard. But we didn’t. I was too mad over losing sleep and missing my wife to think about that. And she was just zoned in on her project.

  The cough was next, and that was when I started to worry. She sounded like her lungs were going to come up out of her throat. I don’t think she ever coughed up any blood, but it sounded real bad. But she still wouldn’t stop going out all over the habitat. It must have drove people crazy, her coughing all over the place. All over everybody.

  I followed her one day, for whatever time I could spare, but she figured out what I was doing and made me come back home. “We can’t both afford to get caught up in this, Harold. You go home and keep working.”