Mary Rosenblum - Horizons

A curtain of blossoms shimmered along the walls of a small open space, bright as living jewels. The light was muted here, filtered by the wall of leaves and she realized that the tubes had been bent and spliced to form a spherical space. Anchored nets held personal items, clothes, and bedding. Clearly the man Dane lived here, among the blossoms. He pulled off his goggles, lodged them in a net full of junk and rummaged in another for a squeeze of water. His eyes gleamed like pewter, contrasting sharply with his dark skin. He sent the squeeze of water sailing suddenly toward her, and as she automatically caught it, only then became aware of her fierce thirst. “Thanks,” she said, equal to equal. An honor he didn’t acknowledge. She awkwardly settled herself in an empty net among sprays of purple and white flowers that looked like oversized orchids and probably were.

Dane sent a fat orange and yellow fruit zipping toward the kid-thing who snagged it with casual skill, damping his reaction With one foot, his long toes curling around the tube without bruising a single leaf.

The kid cut into the fruit with a small blade and handed her a thick slice. Ahni touched it tentatively with her tongue. Blinked “How do you get mango up here?”

“Dane engineered the plants to grow small like eggplants.” The kid-thing grinned at her, the tips of his teeth showing, laughing at her again. “But they have big fruit. Dane’s really good with genes.” He sliced more mango. “It’s got a full compliment of amino acids, too. He says that makes it a complete protein. So you don’t really need to eat anything else. A lot of stuff’s like that now.” He bit into his slice, expertly catching tiny globules of juice with his tongue.

Koi. She remembered his name, studied him. He was happy, excited, with a child’s uncomplicated enjoyment of company, something new and interesting. They’d euthanize him instantly. You could do a lot with engineered human DNA–cure disease, extend life, regrow a damaged spine or a failed kidney.

But bring in traits from another species… turn a human being into a gilled water creature with amphibian genes, or a furred little seal-girl, and you died. No appeal. No second chance. The Chaos Years had frightened all of humanity. So why hadn’t this Dane person killed her?

Because he thought she was chipped, of course. He didn’t know who she was–a Family daughter who didn’t wear the birth-implanted ID tag, someone who had the single luxury that only power and birth could buy. Privacy. He assumed that if she died, the where would be on record, and so would the how.

So she was safe. For the moment. Long enough to give her options. Ahni swallowed the sweetness of the mango. Tiny orange spheres of juice floated away from her lips. She wasn’t at all good at catching them and Koi rolled his eyes at her. The tiny constellation of mango juice pearls drifted close to one of the tubes, this one planted with ruffled bells of pink and white. Ahni caught a flicker of motion, and suddenly, one of the tiny droplets was gone. Fascinated, she watched as one by one, the wayward juice drops vanished. With a jolt of recognition, she finally spotted the author of the movement. “A frog.”

“Partly.” Dane had finished his mango, was sending bits of the peel sailing into the greenery. “When the platforms were first built, the garden was pretty primitive. Blue-green algae, mostly, then a few plant species in the tubes. Hydroponics at its most basic, producing nutrition, but not much fun. And the plants took a lot of work. You had to pollinate, deal with fungus, and keeping the parride count down was a bear. Over the years we created a system that tends to itself.”

”The gardens clean the water for the entire can,” Dane went on. It all comes here. The digester uses a sequence of aerated tanks full or tailored bacteria strains and fish to recover the heavy metals and liquify any solid organics. Then it flows slowly through the tubes. They’re full of granular polymer–an artificial soil we manufacture here and populate with a thriving microbial ecosystem. The plants root in them and use the organic compounds. If you balance the variety just right, the water that comes out is clean enough to drink.” He touched an orchid blossom reflectively. “I’d like to visit Dragon Home one day.

They do rice. I’d like to see how.”

She glanced again at Koi as his sudden alert pricked her attention. She followed his gaze and had to use an instant of Pause to quell her reaction.

Two more of the strange faces peered from the flower-wall at her. She caught only a glimpse before they vanished. They had the same features as Koi, and she retained an image of long toes grasping delicately between the blossoms and leaves.

“Yes, there’s a breeding population.” Dane’s pewter eyes fixed on her. “I didn’t create them. No one did.

This isn’t Earth.” He leaned toward her, anchored in his hammock. “You think it is, you think that it’s nothing more than another New York or Moscow, only stuck up in the sky with variable gravity as a nice tourist attraction. But you’re wrong. This isn’t Earth and your Earthly boogeymen under the bed don’t scare us up here.” He laughed softly, mirthlessly.”We have our own.”

“Dane… I’m sorry.” Koi broke in, voice low and intense. “I know not to show… but he was ugly, and not supposed to be here, and she was like my baby sister when she was born, she couldn’t even drift right. And… she was pretty.”

Pretty, again. A child’s crush-bright word. She had not been called “pretty” very often.

“It’s all right.” Dane’s assurance had the feel of summer’s warmth. “It’s not a wrong thing to save a life.”

He touched Koi’s shoulder lightly, barely stirring him from where he floated. “She doesn’t wear a chip, Koi. That’s how come she surprised you like that. The locks won’t keep her kind out. But they don’t care about us.” A flicker of his eyes challenged her. “They run the planet down below. We don’t matter.”

He knew she wasn’t chipped. Ahni froze inside. She held his life in her hand, and he knew that he could kill her with impunity. If the gardens processed the waste from the entire orbital, a few more pounds of organic solids wouldn’t be noticeable. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m a member of the Taiwan Family. My father sits on the World Council.” She gave him truth, because that was all she had to offer and he would read a lie anyway. “Krator family killed my half-twin.” She couldn’t quite block the stab of those words, even now. “I don’t know why they chose to unbalance relations like that. But they did. Our father… sent me to restore balance.” She drew a low breath that barely stirred her. “You’re right. I don’t care what you do here.”

“Balance.” Dane’s voice was low and charged with a still anger. “Killing does not restore balance.”

“I agree.” She met his eyes, not trying to hide her bitterness. “But I am Xai’s sister and my father’s daughter and I cannot say no.”

”Why not?” His eyes were cold.

The reasons could not be shrunk to a handful of words. “You’re perfect up here?” she said instead.

“Nobody ever kills?”

”Not often.” Dane looked away.

That truth troubled him. Ahni untangled herself from the mesh and pulled herself carefully between the flower tubes, waiting for him to stop her. He didn’t. The leaves and blossoms closed in behind her as she pulled herself out of his private bower. She pushed off, her trajectory erratic, steering by fending herself off the planted columns.

AHNI CURBED HER URGE TO SPRINT. THEY COULD CATCH her in a second. She pushed off from the planted columns gently, figuring out how to twist her body and change her trajectory. She wasn’t sure why she still lived and had no idea where the nearest elevator down to the Level One might be. The kid-thing, Koi, was following her, of course. His bright, puppy-enthusiasm burned like an old fashioned incandescent bulb in her wake. The man wouldn’t be far behind.