Jupiter Project

simple labor—recycling, cleaning filters, hauling stuff, anything that’s so tedious that nobody wants to do it full time. Hydroponics work is mandatory for everybody, though, both because we have to maximize the food cultivated in the space allowed, and because it’s psychologically good for you.

I checked in, got a work suit and found Mom. She was titrating a new fertilizing solution, checking its chemical balance. I left her to that and worked for a while putting patches on the duro tubing. I had to crawl through the close-packed, leafy tangle. In low G the plants grow two, maybe three times Earth norm. Tomatoes look like watermelons, and watermelons—well, you’ve got to see one to believe it. I went by the huge vat that holds Turkey Lurkey and peeked in. The big sweaty pale mass was perking right along, growing so fast you could almost see it swelling up. All the Can’s meat comes from Turkey Lurkey. The chem wizards alter its taste with minute trace impurities, to make it seem like beef or fish or chicken. A lot of people Earthside thought Turkey Lurkey was here because eating live animals was wrong. Maybe that’s a superior philosophical position, but the plain fact is that Turkey Lurkey is the only efficient way we could have any meat at all. There wasn’t room for beef cattle or even chickens. Maybe the ethical issue was wrong anyway, because who was to say Turkey Lurkey wasn’t conscious? Sure, it had a nervous system that made a nineteenth century telegraph line look like an IBM 9000, but what did that mean? Some neurophilosophers Earthside now think that consciousness may be a continuum, right down to plants. Who’s to say? The plants aren’t talking.

On our break I talked to Mom. As soon as I could, I brushed aside the talk about finding the stuff in the satellite. I mean, for some reason, praise from your own mother seems kind of obligatory. She’d say good things no matter what. And anyway, I wasn’t interested in the past. I wanted in on the J-11 mission.

Mom didn’t have any advice about that one, other than to suggest that I go see Commander Aarons about it. I knew that wouldn’t work. So I talked about other things, and eventually we got around to the things Zak had said to me while I was out there, and about Earthside and my memories and all. I told Mom how I felt. It wasn’t easy.

“Yes, I remember Dr. Matonin mentioning that to me,” Mom said.

“Huh? When?”

“Oh, years ago.”

“How’d she know?”

“Why, they have a profile on everyone.”

“Why’d she never say anything to me about it?”

“I suppose she thought it wouldn’t do any good.”

“She told you.”

“Only to make me more aware of the problem. We weren’t gossiping behind your back, Matt.”

“What was the good Doctor’s therapy?” I asked dryly.

Mom smiled. “No therapy. There’s a limit to what anyone else can do about these things, Matt.”

“Right,” I muttered gruffly. “Damned right.”

Something in that conversation crystallized my thoughts. I felt a slow, sullen anger building up inside me. I went over to the storage shed and threw bags of fertilizer onto the slideways. Hefting them up and dumping them down gave my muscles a chance to do my thinking for me. Long ago I’d learned that when I felt this way, a workout was the best solution. Fertilizer bags can’t fight back.

And as I sweated and grunted it all started to make sense. Doctor Matonin and her mother-henning. Those dumb Socials. Yuri’s father, making his son look like a fool by acting out some antique dream of Earthside. They were all putting blinders on us, shaping us with their dimly remembered ideas about growing up.

I thought about Jenny. The only time we had really said anything worth a damn to each other was on Roadhog. Outside the Can. On our own. Away from all the eyes and ever-ready advice. Away from the rules and guidelines, and the whole goddam suffocating adult world.

I had learned something out there in the long, black hours on Roadhog. I would have seen it eventually, I knew, if I’d just kept on with the orbital missions. My crazy run to get the Faraday cup had just speeded up the process. Getting outside the Can gave you a perspective. It was a big help to look back on your whole life and see it stuffed into a tin box, literally see it for the tight little world it was. Because otherwise, you’d buy the official Can point of view. You’d go along. And you’d never really grow up. You’d turn into a Zak, wiseassing your way through life. Or a Yuri, crippled by a blockhead parent. That was the danger of compression, of packing people so close together they had to get along. In those circumstances, everybody had to back down, live life according to the consensus rules.

That might be okay if you were already an adult. You had your own internal gyroscope then. You knew where you were headed. But to grow up you had to take risks. That was the key. You had to do what seemed right to you, not right to the majority.

To stop being a kid you had to have the right to be wrong. And that was what the Can couldn’t tolerate. So the quiet, steady pressure was on. Don’t step out of line. Don’t let yourself go. Don’t let passion or anger sweep you away.

Well, screw that. I thought back over the last month and I could see how I’d been acting. One minute I was the cooperative, likable Matt, and the next I was filled with doubts, worries. Typical adolescent stuff. But my dopey ride out to get that Faraday cup had changed something inside me now. I had risked something—my life—and those long dark hours arcing back to the Can had changed me. Right, it had been a stupid gamble. So what? The point was, I took it. I did something for me, not for the Jupiter Project. It wasn’t like the hike I look on Ganymede to get the air bottles. I did that because Yuri challenged me. Going for the Faraday cup was for me, not for the Can.

So I made a promise to myself. Growing up was painful, sure. But I was going to do it. I was going to make Matt Bohles the way he wanted to be. I was going to face risks—risks of all kinds. When the time came, I was going to change. If you want to grow, you have to gamble.

I slaved away for two more hours harvesting bean sprouts. It’s wet work. The vaporizers pump out clouds of big, wobbly bubbles that take forever to fall in the low G. They blow into the sprout paddies, cloudy with nutrients. You get soaked. You can inhale one through your nostrils if you don’t watch it.

I was loading bags of sprouts onto the conveyor when I noticed the guy who was delivering the recycled bags. It was Yuri.

He looked at me for a long moment. I knew I could turn away and wade back into the paddies. He wouldn’t follow me, particularly since he didn’t have hip boots on. But that wasn’t the right way to handle it.

I walked over to him. keeping my hands relaxed at my sides. “Sorry about that.” I said.

He grimaced. “I think you will soon be more than sorry.”

“Doesn’t seem likely.”

“Your luck will not carry you forever.”

“You have a point.” He started to turn away. “Look, Yuri, there’s something I want to ask you. Why have you been riding me?”

He halted. A puzzled look crossed his face. “I… I had to, Bohles. You were ahead of me.”

“So?”

“I…my talents are not the same as yours, but…the Laboratory rewards your…sort…more than mine.”

“So what? Who says you have to win on their terms?”

Yuri looked at me blankly. “We are…not alike. I have different…ideas about…”

“It’s your father, isn’t it? He’s been pushing you.”

“It must be obvious even to you that our families are different. My father has strong ideas…”

“Look, he made you dress up in that—”

Yuri scowled and I saw that I had gone too far. He didn’t want to remember that.

“Garbage, Bohles, garbage. If you can’t take the competition, get out.”

“That’s not what I meant. You and me could—”

“Don’t give me any goddam breaks, Bohles,” Yuri snapped, and marched away.

I shrugged. Some games you can’t win. Some gambles you lose.

I worked off my aggressions on the bean sprouts. That tired me out, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about J-11.

I went out for a drink that evening, with Jenny. We talked about the Jovian life-form, and the flood of questions that needed answering. The bio types were doing flip-flops, changing theories faster than they changed