leaks.
Martine comes out to the garden. 'Find anything?' she asks.
'No,' I say, 'the joints all look fine. I'll check the programming and run some diagnostics.'
'Do you think it might be the programming or do you think it's the system?'
I shrug, I don't know.
'Alexi,' she says sharply, 'we'll deal with it, whatever it is.'
Martine and her iron will. Sometimes, an iron will isn't enough.
I go back into the house and jack into the system and set up tests to run. When I jack out Martine is standing there. I'm sitting on the floor next to the panel so I have to look up at her. She's got Martine's intent look. If you don't know her you'd think she was frowning at you.
'The tests have to run,' I explain. 'It'll be awhile.'
'I just came to tell you come eat some lunch.' She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I cover it with mine. Uncharacteristic of Martine, that touch. I don't know whether to take it as comfort or an indication of the gravity of the situation.
So we eat lunch, and I go out and clean the filters in the garden. Martine comes out and opens the skylight. Light wind on the surface. Sand shushes softly, the sky is an unnatural cobalt and the sunlight is thin but hard, even with the ultraviolet filtered out. We work through the early afternoon. Martine's bees drone, working the garden with us. We're the only place with screen doors in the whole ridge, but I like the bees. I like the screen doors, too. They're normal, like home on Earth.
At 3:30 the one between the house and the garden slams and Theresa comes in with Linda.
'Hi Little Heart,' I say, and realize my mistake too late. She gives me a withering look. It is not appropriate to call an eight-year-old by what she refers to as her 'baby-name' in front of her friends.
'Hello, Comrade Alexi,' Linda says politely, 'Hello Comrade Martine.'
'Dad, can we have lemonade?'
I glance at Martine, who nods. 'Okay. Don't do anything with the system, I'm running tests.'
'Okay.'
Linda started coming over about a year ago and she and Theresa have become 'best friends'. At first I was afraid that the attraction was the fruit juice in the cooler, but I think that the truth is that there just aren't that many children. There are less than 1,500 people in Jerusalem Ridge.
At four I go inside. I can here the girls talking in Theresa's bedroom-although I can't hear what they're saying. I jack in. My diagnostics indicate something is off. Maybe it really just needs reprogramming. I don't care if I screwed up the programming, I can handle that.
Martine has a council meeting so I flash soup and biscuits for dinner. Linda's mother comes by at a little before five, Linda is watching for the scooter and she and Theresa run down to the pulloff.
It is all so normal, so family. What if the problem isn't something I can solve with re-programming? What if our system is shot?
Martine puts on her council meeting outfit, a blouse and slacks. We eat dinner and Theresa tells us about the report she has to write. She has to do a report on one of the leaders of the Second American Revolution. After dinner, she has to be reminded to feed the goats, she does it every evening, but she always has to be reminded. Martine keeps telling me that if I keep reminding her she'll never learn to think for herself. I keep reminding Martine that she's eight years old.
Martine takes our scooter, she has to talk with Aron Fahey about something first, so she leaves early. Theresa and I settle at the kitchen table to do our homework.
She doesn't know whether to do her report on Zhou Xiezhi or Christopher Brin. 'Can I use the system now?'
'Go ahead,' I say. She calls up an index and I help her pick out sources. Her reading scores are excellent, ahead of her age group. She's still behind in math but her teacher says not to worry, she's catching up. She reads the story of Zhou Xiezhi to me;
Zhou Xiezhi was the son of doctors. When he was a boy, he went to his grandmother's farm. His grandmother had many animals, including a big, pink pig. Zhou Xiezhi liked the pig. Each day, Zhou Xiezhi talked to the pink pig. He fed the pig apples and called the pig 'Old Man.' The pig would make happy noises, grunt, grunt, grunt, and Zhou Xiezhi would laugh and laugh. On New Years Day the family had a big dinner. They had chicken and beef. They had fish because in Chinese the word for 'fish' sounds like the word that means 'more food.' There were dumplings and pork ribs. Zhou Xiezhi ran to wish the pink pig a Happy New Year. But the pig was gone. Where was the pig? His grandmother told him, 'The pig was part of the New Year Dinner.'
Zhou Xiezhi cried and cried. After that day he never ate meat again.
I remember the story of Zhou Xiezhi's soft heart, of course we studied in primary school. When I got older I was disappointed to learn that the famous vegetarian from China who came to America to help the Soviet Revolution cold-bloodedly ordered that every third captive be put to death until the capitalist defenders of Gatlinburg surrendered.
Don't get me wrong, I realize that killing some sixty captives saved him from having to kill thousands of capitalists and lose thousands of his own soldiers, taking Gatlinburg, I just wonder at the mind that could calculate that way, balance human life against human life. No matter how anguished his diary entries.
Theresa writes her report about Zhou Xiezhi, the military genius from China who left his home forever to organize the People's Army of America, and died a martyr to the American revolution. I help her draw a timeline. At 7:30 she watches half-an-hour on the vid, then at 8:00 she gets her bath. In bed by 8:30, she's allowed to read until 8:60 and then lights out.
I read through my textbook, looking for clues that will help me with the system. Martine gets home and goes to bed and I continue to work, trying to solve problems. When I give in it is after 11:00. I sleep in the third bedroom, where I slept when we were first married, because I don't want to wake Martine up. It's good that I do, in the morning the bedclothes are twisted from tossing all night.
'I got your question and your list of sources,' my tutor says. 'If you didn't get the sources I sent you, let me know.' He glances at me, or at least at the screen. He has a funny look. 'Thank you for the compliment on my English, but I'm from Brooklyn.'
From Brooklyn? New York?
He clears his throat and begins answering my questions. Some he answers quickly. Some take him longer. I find the seven-and-a-half minute delay frustrating.
'Comrade Zhang,' I say about forty-five minutes into the hour, 'This doesn't have anything directly to do with the class, but the biggest problem I face as a tech is that we keep having to use our systems to do things they weren't constructed to do, and to expand them to maximum capacity. If you can think of any information on how to increase the system's efficiency, I would be very grateful to see it.'
He is looking through his textbook for a problem to use an example. He finds one, says, 'Turn to page 67.' He reads a moment, smiles briefly at the screen, a quick, kind of apologetic thing. 'Okay,' he says, 'for example.' He tends to over explain, since I can't tell him what I already know.
Fifteen minutes later I hear my voice asking my question. 'Ah,' he says, 'I can't think of anything off hand, but let me see what I can come up with.'
End of session. From Brooklyn. American, I assume, unless there's a Brooklyn Australia or England or something. But he sounds American.
He must be one smart son of a bitch.
We get our oxygen out of Mars' atmosphere and most of our energy is solar. New Arizona uses fission, but we don't really need it, having lots of unused surface space. Before I start reprogramming I decide to check the solar collectors and the CO2 tanks. Ultraviolet radiation breaks some of the CO2 down, but not enough. We use algae for the rest. Occasionally somebody cracks a tank and the algae gets loose, New Arizona screams about corrupting the Martian environment. There isn't really much Martian environment to corrupt, some indigenous pseudo-algae and lichens at the poles. Our algae gets irradiated out of existence anyway. But I try to get out and check the tank
