Hella

by David Gerrold

  Lilla-Jack said, “Let’s go over the list again. Maybe we missed something.”

  “We didn’t miss anything,” someone else said. “Without Cord Skyler, we don’t have a slate. We’re going to have to think outside the bunker. We have to talk to the new colonists. They’ll get three seats on the expanded Council. If we can win them over, we can tie it up—”

  Everybody was talking at once now. “We’ll have to be careful with that. Layton is already suspicious—”

  “So what? We have a right to talk to anyone we want—”

  “This isn’t about our rights—”

  “It certainly is—”

  “You’re all ignoring the immediate problem,” Lilla-Jack said. “The colonists will be bringing their own agendas to the table. A lot of it will be founded on ignorance. We’ve seen this before, all of us. Every migration brings all kinds of disruptions and upsets, especially assimilation issues. We have to deal with that—”

  Mom rang the bell in front of Commander Nazzir, her way of calling for attention. “If I may . . . ?”

  The people around the table fell silent.

  “If we act now, if we confront him now and we lose, then he’ll know who stands against him. He’ll have half a year to act against us. And he will. He’ll move fast to consolidate his strength. He’s already promoted two of his cronies to executive positions—over the heads of the people who were next in line. Bringing back Marley is another sign of just how little he respects established precedents or the authority of the Council’s decisions. And it’s only going to get worse. Every time we let him get away with one of these little transgressions, it’s only going to convince him he can get away with bigger ones. But if we try to stop him now, before we’re ready, before we have any strength, before we have a real plan, then we might as well just hand him a list—and label it conspiracy.”

  “So what? We are a conspiracy, aren’t we? I mean, with all these . . . dinner meetings.”

  “Dinner meetings are normal,” responded Lilla-Jack. “Especially after a migration. There are always issues to be resolved.”

  “We are not a conspiracy,” Mom said, taking back control of the meeting. “We’re the loyal opposition. It is our right and our responsibility to keep our government honest.” I’d never heard her talk this way before. She was patient and she was methodical, as always, but she spoke with a kind of authority that was new to me. “Councilor Layton has said some ugly and stupid things—not just things we disagree with, but things that are flat-out wrong. Government is not the enemy. And that kind of thinking is self-destructive.”

  “Can I say something?” They all looked at me.

  I said, “Government is the tool that people create to provide the necessary services of society. It is an instrument of service. It is the apparatus by which we manage our resources for the common good.”

  They all looked at each other. Had I said something wrong?

  “That’s from the Charter Conversations,” I said. “The writings of the First Hundred.” I got it from the noise, but I didn’t have to tell them that.

  Finally, Mom said. “Kyle is right. Sometimes we get so concerned with the business of government, we forget its purpose. Thank you for reminding us, Kyle.”

  She turned to the others and said, “What Kyle just said. That’s the point. The machinery of this colony works—but just barely. We’re still learning how to survive on this planet. Yes, we’re self-sufficient, but we’re still a long way from being resilient. We can’t afford to start tinkering ignorantly with our economy—we could tinker ourselves into a resource bankruptcy.” She sounded angry. “Some of our people have gotten comfortable enough to become impatient. And impatience breeds frustration. They’re going to get even more frustrated when the Cascade colonists start dropping out of the sky, because that’s going to stress all of our systems. And when people get frustrated—” She paused for a moment. I think she was trying to decide how to say what she was going to say next. “We have a lot of difficult days ahead of us. When people get frustrated, a political opportunist can tap into that frustration. He’ll tell people that they have to blame any existing authority. And if enough people believe him, the system will get thrown off balance. This is the danger in any representative system—that the narrative can be confused by a skillful liar.”

  “Why don’t you just say it?” said Lilla-Jack. “Councilor—Coordinator—Layton is the problem. He wants to cash out now. And he has convinced too many others that we can pick the fruit today and forget about watering the trees for tomorrow. Okay, yes—I admit it, I’m impatient too. I’d like to have sweet-melon and orange juice every day. I’d like bacon and roast beef more than once a month. There are only so many ways to fix rice and noodles. But I’m not starving to death, and I’m grateful for that. We tried starving once—it didn’t work.”

  Commander Nazzir spoke then, “Yes. Some of us are old enough to remember that.”

  The colony had come close to the point of resource bankruptcy three times in history. People died. It was bad. Bad enough that a lot of people still had emotional scars. That’s how Jamie explained it. That’s why so many people worried about resilience. They didn’t want to starve again. There were nods all around the table, and for a moment it looked like the discussion was going to be about everyone’s bad memories.

  But it was still Mom’s kitchen. And she was still running the conversation. She said to Lilla-Jack, “I’m not afraid to speak his name. Layton is a fraud and a liar. But he’s just cunning enough to sell a very attractive lie. There are a lot of people who want to get out of the dorms and barracks into apartments of their own. Layton is tapping into their frustration. He’s selling an end to sacrifice. But it’s so short-sighted and stupid. If we put all our resources into new apartments, we won’t be able to start the new farms we’ll need. So we’ll have to dip into our reserves. And if when they’re gone, then what? But people don’t think that far ahead. They see all those stores piled up right now and they think: Oh yeah, we have enough now, so let’s eat up.”

  “Yes, I know the work-schedules are exhausting. There’s too much work and not enough people. But isn’t that what we were promised? Hard work and frustration? But we came here anyway? Because we wanted the satisfaction of building a new civilization, a better one than the one we left? I know that’s why I left Earth. I think the rest of us too. So yes, Kyle is right to remind us. The First Hundred gave us a marvelous gift—our charter. Our Constitution. It’s not just a set of rules outlining how to make more rules—it’s an instrument of social justice. It affirms our rights and principles and common goals. It’s a mission statement setting forth our aspirations for the society we’re creating—a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out.

  “We all know these words, we repeat them like a mantra—but we have to say them as a promise to ourselves, as a commitment.” Mom turned to me. “Kyle, what’s the most important paragraph in the Charter?”

  Everyone looked to me. I felt like I was in school again, called to recite. But I knew this answer. I didn’t even have to look in the noise. “‘Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people—and always accountable to the people.’”

  “Thank you, Kyle,” Mom said. She looked around the table. “It’s obvious what we have to do. We have to hold the Coordinator accountable for everything he does or the consequences will be our fault even more than his.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” someone asked.

  Mom said, “I don’t have all the answers. I’m not even sure I have all the questions. But I do have one thing that Councilor—Coordinator—Layton doesn’t have.” She took a deep breath. “I have faith in my friends and my neighbors. I have faith in the wisdom of the people. I grew up in—well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. It was long ago and very far away. But the lesson I learned is that a representative gover
nment only works when a well-educated population is accurately and honestly informed. When the people have all the options laid out before them fairly, when they’re clear about the goals and understand the choices and the consequences, they usually choose well. I have faith in that.”

  She stopped abruptly. Either she was done or she ran out of things to say.

  Commander Nazzir spoke up then, “Well, I think we just found one of our candidates.”

  A couple people laughed appreciatively, others applauded. Mom looked uncomfortable and shook her head. “I—uh, no—I don’t think so. There are better people than me.”

  “Yes, but they’re not here. You are.”

  Mom didn’t answer. She got up to get more tea.

  Lilla-Jack said, “I have an idea on what our next steps could be. It’s not just about the election. It’s about that other thing—about a well-informed population. We need to educate the new colonists.”

  And the conversation went on from there. “Well, that’s going to be a little trickier, because the Council controls all official communications. We’d have to go either ad hoc or social. Ad hoc is out for the same reasons as open opposition . . .”

  I started to head back to my room. Then I had a better idea. I went over to Mom and whispered a question into her ear. She nodded yes and I left the apartment and went downstairs to the gardens. Jeremy had a whole suite to himself. He had extra beds. Behind the partition there were even more rooms, unused and empty. If Mom was going to keep on having meetings, maybe I could sleep over at Jeremy’s. If that was okay with Jeremy.

  Jeremy said he was surprised to see me. He smiled happily. “I thought you were busy with your friends.”

  “They have meetings. Everybody has meetings. The Council. All the managers, the teams. Everybody. I’m the only one who doesn’t. Everybody has stuff to manage and decide and adjust for when the rest of the colonists come down. They’ll be coming down as many as thirty in a pod, maybe five pods a week. So there’s a lot of planning.”

  “I know,” said Jeremy. “The Farm Council wants to bring the new farm online three months early, so we can harvest our first crops before we have to dip into our stores.”

  “Can you?”

  “Um, probably.” He shrugged and sat down in a chair. “We can push the fertilization schedule. Usually we grow a trash crop first, then plow it under, but we can skip it if we have to. We’ll probably grow beans and corn to start. We usually start with that anyway. That decision will be made in a couple of days. I’d like to get some winged beans down if we can, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Maybe next year.”

  I sat down in the chair opposite and shoved my fists between my knees. I was upset.

  “What’s the matter, Kyle?”

  “I’m the only one without a job.”

  “Yeah. That’s gotta be frustrating. You can help me if you want.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I’ve never really worked on a farm. I mean, I’ve had the basic training, but—”

  He shook his head. “Basic training is just so you’ll know where your food comes from. That’s all. Come on, I’ll show you what real farming is about.” We headed for the new cavern.

  A team of ten scuttle-bots was already working the field when we arrived, patiently crisscrossing the entire cavern and churning the dirt into mathematically precise furrows. One scuttle-bot would scoop the earth, the following scuttle-bot would spray it with water and fertilizer. Other scuttle-bots moved along, carefully seeding the soil with worms.

  “I see you’ve already started.”

  “Actually, I started pushing this field the day after the Cascade arrived. One of the things about farming—it helps to keep records. What’s the crop yield if you do this? What’s the crop yield if you do that? What happened last time a pilgrimage arrived? Did it work or not?”

  “That’s very smart,” I said.

  “Thank you. Most people think it’s just about pushing seeds into the ground, watering, and waiting. It isn’t. The real job is measuring, monitoring, testing, and paying attention to the results to see what you get—then doing it all over again to see if the results are repeatable.” He pointed up. “I’ll show you later. We’ve got a small test farm upstairs. We’re rerunning the daylight experiment.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it has to do with finding out the optimum day-night cycle. Plants need to rest too. It’s all about starch-degradation and the day-night cycle. I’m rerunning the Luna tests to see if it’ll be different in Hella gravity. We’re also varying temperature and humidity, air pressure and atmospheric composition as well. How much nitrogen and carbon dioxide, trace elements, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told you it was complicated. Farming is applied chemistry. So is cooking.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “When will all these tests be completed?”

  Jeremy laughed. “Probably not for a hundred years. It’s a whole series of tests with nearly a hundred different variables. Some of them seem to be irrelevant, some of them only have an effect under certain conditions, some of them interact in different ways, depending on other factors. We’ve got a good idea of what’s going on, but we’re still a long way from understanding all the interactions. The devil is in the details.”

  “I don’t believe in the devil.”

  “Nobody does. It’s a saying. It means that the details can be hellacious—in the old-fashioned meaning of hellacious.”

  “Oh.” I looked across the field. The scuttle-bots moved methodically across the dark soil, churning, spraying, spreading. “That’s a lot more than I realized. I guess I’m going to have to do a lot more reading.”

  “I guess so.” Jeremy reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. He saw me flinch. “Is this all right?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m still getting used to the idea.”

  “Me too.”

  He took his hand down.

  “Can I stay the night?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I can sleep in the other room, if you want. There’s an empty bed.”

  He nodded. “You can sleep wherever you want, Kyle.”

  “Do you want me to sleep with you?”

  “I’d like that. If that’s what you’d like.”

  I said, “I think so.”

  “Okay.” Then he grinned. “But none of that icky sex stuff, okay?”

  I didn’t know if I felt good about that or disappointed. Then I realized. “That was a joke, right?”

  He patted me on the back of my shoulder. “Only if you want it to be.” Then he stopped smiling and got serious. “Kyle, I never had a boy friend before either.” He ran his hand through his red hair, rumpling it even more than it already was. “I think we have to figure this out together.”

  “Um, yeah. Okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m making you uncomfortable. I just want you to know that you make me happy and I want to make you happy. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then we’re okay?”

  “Okay.”

  And for some reason, we both laughed. Because everything was now okay, and okay was now silly.

  The thing about farming—the thing that Jeremy talked about the most—was the chemistry of the process. You start with raw CHON—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—how do you turn it into food? Plants are the most efficient machines for the job, but how do you tune the machine to produce the best taste and the most nutrition? Anybody can grow a tomato the size of a basketball, but how do you grow one that isn’t too woody or too flabby, has just the right amount of juice and the perfect mix of sweetness and tart? And how do you do it efficiently?

  I guess I’ve watched too many old movies, where farmers wore bib overalls and carried pitchforks or pushed plows or were just digging their hands
into soft dark dirt and holding it up to their faces to sniff it deeply and pronounce it ready for planting. Because farming is nothing like that.

  Down here in the farm caverns, scuttle-bots trundled up and down between the rows, sticking sensors into the soil, testing the acidity level. Too much? Too little? Other scuttle-bots shone their lights through the leaves of individual plants, measuring them for chlorophyll and starch and sugars. Others came by afterward, spraying water or nutrients, sometimes pushing mineral pellets into the soil. Everything was monitored. Every plant had its own pedigree. Sick ones were culled. Healthy ones were nurtured and sometimes even crossbred.

  Jeremy showed me his office—a huge wall displayed the health of every farm, every field, every plant. “I can tell you about the corn you had for lunch. Where it was grown, when it was planted, the health of the soil it grew in, how it was tended, when it was watered, what it was fertilized with, and even its parentage—especially its parentage. See that display? That’s the DNA of your lunch. We know what we’ve been breeding and crossbreeding for at least fifty indoor seasons. And we can trace most of our plants back through the databases we brought from Earth. It’s probably more information than we’ll ever really need, but we’ll never know just which pieces of information will turn out to be the important ones.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s the Encyclopedia Problem.”

  “The Encyclopedia Problem? I don’t know that one.”

  “Oh, it goes back to the age of books. There were these big books called encyclopedias. Actually, whole shelves of books. Really big books. Huge. And they were full of information—essays about everything. Everything that was known about everything. All nice and neatly alphabetized, so you could look anything up, from A to Z. Of course, in those days, there wasn’t as much of everything to know, but even then, an encyclopedia could have twenty or thirty volumes, thousands and thousands of pages, and tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of articles.”