Phillip Jennings - The Runaways

The herd thundered off, crashing and bellowing. The rain ended suddenly. The darkness lasted longer, and then the sun rose to the north in a deep red sky. The lake reflected the buckylayer like a mirror, bending over the horizon. Its south shores were lost beneath a distant ridge.

The group left Lago and its trampled perimeters. Carmen identified a buggy trail of two parallel ruts, now overgrown. They took another four days to reach the institute’s southern campus. The buildings lay on a windy plateau that shelved from the side of a mountain.

Carmen told them that the mountain was so high it pushed through the buckylayer and into vacuum. “Spaceships can land at the South Pole without entering Hidalgo’s atmosphere.”

Carmen went to the utility building to power up the campus and open the water valves. When they entered the commissary, Peder let her make a radio call. One of her sisters spoke from the other end. Rachel talked of altered schedules and Doctor Moeller’s medical condition. “Guess where we’ve left food for you.”

“Where we dropped our clothes?” Olga called over Carmen’s shoulder.

“You got it,” the voice answered. “We’ll fuel up the buggy and bring that stuff over. We’ll use the road, but it’ll take ten or twenty days. Meanwhile, maybe somebody left emergency supplies in the cupboards. Stuff that keeps.”

Carmen signed off. The group wandered behind the buffet tables and into the kitchen. Sugar. Popping corn. Spices. Chocolate syrup. A bottle of Krinos brand grape leaves. Catnip.

“The cats went feral last year,” Carmen said. She yawned uncontrollably. “We haven’t seen them since. Let’s make some popcorn before I fall over.

After popcorn Carmen tottered off to sleep in the bed in the nurse’s office. Peder and the others went separate ways, to check if all the buildings were open, and if the classrooms had teaching supplies.

A few days later they assembled back in the commissary. “I’m not sleepy at all,” Michiko announced.

“I laid down and tried to sleep, but it didn’t work,” Olga added.

Peder rubbed his chin in thought. He felt the beginnings of a beard. “I think it’s the medicine. It’s something the medicine did to us, but they didn’t expect it. They didn’t expect us to run loose. They think it’s bad for us to have sex, but they didn’t do the right things to stop us. They didn’t expect us to want sex as much as we do.”

“If they invented Cra 103, they know all about it,” Olga said.

“I don’t think so.” Peder held up his hands against her protest. “Not if we’re the first people to take it. Somebody has to be the very first. That’s us.”

“What if this medicine does other things we don’t expect?” Sanjay asked.

Olga went over to rub Hakim’s shoulders. “We can watch ourselves, and be careful.”

Michiko shook her head. “What if the medicine wears off, and we go back to like we were before?” She answered herself, stress rising in her voice. “We have to let them boss us, if that’s what they want. Anything, just to get more medicine.”

“When the buggy comes, or when Carmen wakes up. We’ll tell them then,” Peder said. “We’ll tell them we’re sorry. We don’t want to be free anymore.”

“We could use the radio like Carmen did,” Hakim suggested. “We could talk to them right now. I saw how she did it.”

They trooped to the radio room, and Hakim got the radio working. “South station calling north. South station calling north.”

Nothing happened. They fiddled with the dial and found static. At other setplaces, the radio throbbed out noise. It sounded like pulsing engines.

Olga reached a tentative finger, and pushed AUTOSEEK. The radio reverted to static, but the static didn’t obscure a voice. Someone with an odd accent talked about economic outlooks, evidence in a murder case, and the anniversary of an important NASPAC education loan bill. There was something about a Lunar lesbian spokeswoman seeking entry to UNETAO, and something about the Hidalgo question. More mudslides were expected following torrential rains in Nepal.

The voice spoke on.

“What’s the Hidalgo question?” Michiko wondered.

“What’s all this noise?” Carmen stumbled into the room.

“We’re sorry,” Peder said. “We were trying—”

“To listen to the news?” Carmen seemed surprised. “How would you know there’s such a thing as news?”

“There’s a Hidalgo question,” Michiko persisted. “They were talking about it, but they didn’t say much.”

“No.” Carmen sank into a chair. “No, they wouldn’t. One arrested soccer hero gets ten times the airplay. I’m surprised they mentioned us at all.”

“We were trying to reach the institute,” Hakim said. “We wanted to apologize for running off and throwing stones and hurting Doctor Moeller.”

“We’re going to be good now,” Michiko said.

Carmen looked at her. “Something’s happened.”

“We don’t want to become stupid again,” Peder explained. “Maybe we need more medicine, or else that will happen.”

“And in your simple honesty you want to make a deal.” Carmen smiled. “I feel lots better. Even a short nap makes a difference. I hope I wasn’t too grumpy toward the end of our trek.”

“None of us can sleep,” Olga said. “I tried. We just can’t.”

“It’s the Cra 103,” Carmen agreed. “It’s a side effect. Your brain cells are fuzzing out with new connections, and it’s too stimulating. Maybe after they stop growing—do you understand? The growth is permanent. You’ll plateau and stay intelligent.”

The group sighed in simultaneous relief.

“It might be best for you to stay here, though. To keep you separate from the others.”

“Can’t those other kids take Cra 103 and get smart?” Peder asked.

Carmen reached and tousled his hair. “You’re generous! You even want smart cows! Are you happy then? Is it good to be smart?”

“Yes!” “Yes!” “It’s very good!”

“What if I took this medicine?” Carmen asked. “Or maybe Doctor Moeller?”

“You said it might not work on people like you,” Peder answered.

“We don’t know. We think it’ll work. It might be me who gets chosen. I’m one of triplets. It’s like having two spares. And Doctor Moeller is recovering from her injury. You heard the radio. She’s had stitches, and she’ll need dental repair.”

“I’m sorry about the rock,” Michiko said. Her eyes grew wet. “It’s my fault.”

Carmen patted her arm. “If I take the medicine, maybe I’ll get wild like you were at first. That makes me nervous. You guys used your new brains to get into a trap. Stampeding cattle could have killed you. That makes me nervous twice over.”

“Why take medicine?” Peder asked. “You’re smart already.”

Carmen sighed. “Hidalgo has problems. Half the settled asteroids use Higgs generators to gather dark matter. Having more gravity helps them collect air under their buckylayers, but they don’t like too much gravity. The colonists have adapted to light conditions. By Earth standards, the people on Ceres and Vesta and Iris are very weak. One gee would kill them.”

She leaned back in her chair. “We’re different. Until our troubles began, Earth leaders felt okay about sending kids here, because we have Earth normal gravity. To achieve that gravity, we became dark matter hogs. We started something that’s hard to stop. Dark matter keeps falling in of its own accord. It can’t all concentrate inside Hidalgo. It’s layering outward in an invisihle sphere that keeps growing and growing. It’s already ten thousand kilometers across. We’re starting to create anomalies in the orbits of everyone else in the inner system.”