Phytosphere

everybody’s always mistaking for a brick wall.”

“I just want to get a better idea of what we’re looking at in terms of temperature fluctuations in the phytosphere. I could be on to something here, Mitch.” Or he could be grasping at straws.

“Yes, but we don’t have any infrared units out of mothballs right now. Years ago we used infrared for tracking, but since we upgraded to singularity drives, we haven’t used the infrared stuff in… in decades.

And I’m sure most of it’s been sold off.”

“Most?”

Mitch paused. “Ira and I have never gotten along.”

“Yes, but is there any left?”

“Hang on, let me check my waferscreen… it’s been acting funny lately. I’ll see if I can…” Mitch disappeared from the vidscreen and all Gerry got for a few seconds was a view of rumpled sheets. Then Mitch came back, sat on the bed, adjusted the vidcam upward, and Gerry saw his sleep-swollen face.

“I’m just looking at the record right now…. That stuff’s expensive.” Mitchseemed to be going through a long list. “Ira’s not going to want us dicking with it. If there’s any left, I’m sure he’s planning to sell it.

And anything earmarked for liquidation…He’s obsessed with the bottom line, Gerry. We’re in a competitive, high-stakes, frontier industry.”

“Yes, but can you—”

“Hold on, hold on… I’ve got it, and it’s…” He watched Mitch’s brow fold with misgiving. “Ah, shit.”

As the diminutive AviOrbit representative hardly ever swore, the expletive indicated something truly awry.

“What?”

“We’ve got a unit crated in one of the orbiting warehouses. The retrieval expense…he’s not going to like it.”

“Can we take the sky elevator up and check it out?”

Mitch paused. “Gerry… let me be blunt.” A look of intense skepticism came to Mitch’s eyes. “Ira isn’t so convinced by you.”

Alarm pinched Gerry’s chest. “Why? He doesn’t even know me.”

“It’s just that there’s this impression… and it’s been going around… and he’s gotten wind of it. Ira’s a technocrat, an engineer. What do you expect? He thinks pure science is a waste of time.”

“If it’s just old junk, I don’t see why we can’t take a look at it.”

“Yes, but this particular unit in the catalog here is a light-gathering optical refractor. We’d have to hook it up to an IR array and conduit, and that’s going to take an engineering staff, which in turn means a proposal, which in turn means Ira. Remember Ira? He’s the guy people mistake for a brick wall.”

“Mitch, this is important. I’m not sure where it’s going, but I know it’s going somewhere.”

“Now, there’s a proposal Ira’s going to like.”

“Let me talk to him.”

Mitch’s face reddened. “No… no. I better do the talking. We might not get along, but I know how to handle him.” He looked away with sudden despondency, as if he had abandoned all hope. “I’ll get into my shark cage, and I’ll make sure I have my stun gun, and that my will’s in order, and I’ll tell Ira that I’m not sure where we’re going, but that I think we’re going somewhere. And then I’ll pray.”

13

Glenda reached for Gerry’s side of the bed. She peered toward the alarm clock, hoping to see its dim blue digits, praying that the utility company might have restored power by this time, because wasn’t this going on a bit too long? Didn’t they understand that the dark freaked people out, and that to make people live in the dark all the time was simply too much?

All she saw, as she stared in the general direction of the alarm clock, was more darkness.

She pulled her hands close to her collarbones, curling into a fetal position.

She lay there for close to an hour, and that’s when the power came back on. She heard the electric baseboards crackling, heard her own voice on the answering machine, “Hi, this is the home of Glenda, Gerry, Jake, and Hanna Thorndike,” et cetera, et cetera, and at last heard the television go on, the president’s voice coming over the Emergency Broadcast System—yes, Bayard’s measured game-show cadences.

She sprang out of bed and hurried to the living room. She blinked in the light. She wasn’t used to seeing light. The lamp beside Gerry’s chair was on. So was the porch light. The fluorescent light above the kitchen sink was on and spilled its bluish glow over the dining room floor.

“Units of the First, Second, and Eighth Infantry Units have been moved into place, and there have been fierce clashes along the state borders, but so far the Army has yet to break the stranglehold. These three states house some of our largest emergency food supply depots. You can rest assured that I’m doing everything in my power to keep the supply lines open, and I consider the unilateral actions of Governors Fitton, Peters, and Marles, as well as their Western Secessionist supporters, to be criminal. I can pledge to the American people that all three governors will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, once the situation is brought under control. Until such time, our relief efforts will be severely hampered, and at this point we can’t guarantee any of our previously scheduled relief drops, and ask you to bear with us while our military units attempt to regain control of these critical food stockpiles. Until such time, the First Lady and I offer our sincerest prayers, and urge you—”

And that was it, because with a percussive click and the trace flash of a sudden power surge, the electricity failed once again and the house was plunged into darkness.

“Mom?” Jake’s voice.

“It’s okay, sweetie.”

“Was the power back on?”

“For a bit. Go back to sleep.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’m going to ask Leigh if he can give us some more food tomorrow.”

Because from the look of things, the government wasn’t going to come through anymore. From the look of things, the Western Secessionists were at last ruining the country. Which meant the food situation had just gone from bad to impossible. And come to think of it, why hadn’t the television woken Hanna up?

Hanna was sleeping way too much.

Glenda waited for her eyes to get used to the dark, then felt her way through the living room and went down the hall into Hanna’s room. Couldn’t see a thing—it was truly an absence of all light, especially when the power was off, that made things so difficult.

She stumbled into Hanna’s bed, her shin hitting its steel frame—a lot of bumps and bruises for everyone, wandering around in the dark all the time—and she heard Hanna’s deep and heavy breathing, her lungs crackling, always half inflamed. She sat on the edge of Hanna’s bed and put her hand on Hanna’s leg.

That’s when Glenda heard a truck coming down the highway. She thought it might be an Army truck bringing food relief. But then she recognized the steady putt-putt of a civilian truck, and wondered who would be driving down the highway in the middle of the night. The middle of the day? Which was it?

Headlight beams made squares of light on the wall, and as the truck drew closer, the squares moved, passed over Hanna’s shelf of stuffed animals, rested momentarily on her grade-five district-wide spelling bee plaque, and finally shifted obliquely as the truck pulled up Leigh Phelps’s driveway.

She got off the end of Hanna’s bed and walked to the windows. A pickup truck crunched up the gravel, two men riding in the back and one driving. They pulled up to Leigh’s house and got out. They had rifles—hunting weapons that she could see in the glow of the headlights—and she knew that Leigh’s fears had been justified after all, that the look he had seen in Jamie’s eyes had been enough.

It was a crossroads for her, because she had the extra rifle now, and knew how to shoot—all those summers partridge hunting with her father in Kansas—and it was the moral thing to do, get her rifle and stand shoulder to shoulder with her neighbor against these men, especially because she was planning to ask Leigh for food again