"That's a real problem," Jerry said, savoring it. "A nexus of problems. Nontrivial."
"The best kind of nexus of problems, I'm sure."
Jerry laughed. Briefly. "It's good to see you in such good spirits, Alex. You and your friend should stay for lunch."
"Tacos," Jane said.
"Good! My favorite." Jerry's eyes glazed. "Just a moment I've got to look after some things first." He vanished into his office.
Music burst out through Jerry's closed office door, the insistent squeaking and rattling of a Thai pop tune. It was loud.
"Does he really like that Thai stuff?" Alex asked Juanita.
Juanita shrugged. "Not really," she said loudly.
"That's just some of my old college music, but Jerry punches up anything on the box when he works... . He plays it to drown out the city noise. To drown out the hum, y'know. So he can think."
The music segued into an elaborate Asian cha-cha. Sylvia made a face.
"Let's go in the backyard and I'll show you my garden. The tacos will keep."
It was quiet in the backyard. It was a lovely spring day. It was sunny and there were honeysuckles and a birdbath.
"Jerry's always like this when they make him do polynomials," Jane apologized.
"Always like what? Jerry has always acted just like that."
"No, not quite like he does now, but... well, you don't know him like I do." She sighed. "The labcoat people have really got him where they want him now. The seminars, the lecture tours, the peer review committees... If he gets tenure and they offer him the chairmanship, we're gonna have some real problems."
"What kind of problems?"
"You don't wanna know. Lemme put it this way- when Mommy gets her claws on some real money again, Mommy's gonna buy Daddy a nice endowed chair where he can sit and think quietly, all by himself." Jane shrugged. "We've been up to Oklahoma City a couple of times to lecture and do media-Jerry's real popular there... . It's really weird up there now, that city was just leveled, and they were all completely broke and tragic and desperate, and so they just... well, they just threw away all the rule books. And now they're doing the weirdest architecture you can imagine! They're rebuilding everything aboveground, out of dirt-cheap nothing, out of paper and software and foam. The new Oklahoma City is just like a giant, smart, wasp's nest. Have you been up there?"
"No! But it sounds really worthwhile," Alex said.
"Yeah. I think so. I think it's the future, frankly. You can tell it's the future, too, 'cause the plumbing hardly works, and it's crowded, and it smells bad. They got the storm problem whipped, though. God help them if they get a fire." She looked at her garden: beans, tomatoes. "I got some special stuff from some Oklahoma agro-engineers during Jerry's last speaking tour. It was kind of a celebrity perk."
Jane was growing two rows of corn in her backyard. Corn, Zea mays, but with the chlorophyll hack. It had taken the human race quite some time to understand chlorophyll, the chemical method by which plants turned light into food, and when the ancient secret finally came out, the secret had turned out to be a really dumb botch. Even after two billion years of practice, plants had an utterly lousy notion of how to turn light into food. Plants were damn near as dumb as rocks, basically, and their lame idea of capturing sunlight was the silliest, most harebrained scheme imaginable.
Serious-minded human beings were working on the chlorophyll problem now, and they hadn't done a lot better yet, but they were doing about fifteen percent better, which was not at all bad, considering. And people might do better yet, if they could get living crops to endure the terrible impact of that much-concentrated human ingenuity. And, in tandem, get the ecosystem to survive the terrible consequences should such a technique ever go feral. Alex was really interested in the chlorophyll hack. He'd read a lot about it, and was following the bigger net-discussions. It was just about the neatest hack he'd ever heard of.
Jane's corn plants were squat and fibrous and ugly, and the ears of corn were about the size and shape of bowling pins. They were splotchy and reptilian green.
"Wow, those are really nice," said Sylvia..
"Would you like some for yourself? Just a second." Jane wandered into her backyard garden shed and came out with a drawstring bag. "You can have some spare seeds if you want." She shook half a dozen kernels of corn into Sylvia's outstretched palm. The misshapen kernels were the size of rifle cartridges.
"Thank you, Jane," Sylvia said gratefully. "These are mega-nice, I really like these."
"Help yourself," Jane told her. "Can't copyright a living organism! Ha-ha-ha."
Sylvia wrapped the seeds carefully in her silk kerchief and stuffed them, unselfconsciously, into the thigh-high top of her striped stocking.
"JANE, COME OU~ in the street for a second," Alex said, opening the side gate to the front yard.
She followed him. "What are we doing out here?"
"I want to show you my new car."
"Okay. Great."
"I parked it up the street around the corner because I didn't want it associated with your house."
The car was sitting where he had left it. He'd had to pay a stiff fee to the university police to bring it inside the district.
"Holy mackerel," Jane said, "looks like they didn't even detach the gun mounts."
"Those are urban antitheft devices. It's licensed for them too, isn't that great? Technically sublethal."
Jane's eyes were alight. "You've put it through its paces already, huh?"
"Yeah. You could say that."
"What kind of interface is it running?"
"A mega-dog-meat military interface. That's why I want you to have it for a while."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I want you to have this car as long as you like. It's yours, you run it. I'd even sign over the papers, but I don't think that's a really good idea, legally speaking."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, and I, uh, wouldn't take it to Hidalgo, Starr, or Zapata counties, or over the border into Reynosa, because it~-inight be slightly hot there."
Sylvia tugged his sleeve and whispered, "Hey. We need that car! Don't give her the car!"
"It's all right, trust me," Alex assured her, "Jane's very good with cars, I've never known her to so much as bump a fender." He smiled.
"You can't just give me a pursuit car, Alex."
"Sure I can. I just did. Who's gonna stop me? And what's more, I want to see you take it for a spin. Right now. Sylvia and I will do lunch and look after nephew, and I want to see you run this sucker out to Enchanted Rock and tear the hide off of it."
"I don't think I can do that. Baby needs looking after."
"Look, Jane, you can't have it both ways. You just made me swear up and down I would guard that child's destiny; you're just gonna have to trust me with him for a couple of hours."
"Well... I'm tempted. I'm really tempted, Alex."
He leaned toward her, smiling. "Give in."
"All right!" Suddenly she embraced him.
It was a solid embrace. It felt surprisingly good to be hugged by one's sister. It was a real gift to have a sister. Not a wife, not a lover, but a woman that you deeply cared about. A friend, a good friend, a powerful ally. An ally against what? Against Nothing, that's what. Against death, against the big empty dark.
He touched his lips to his sister's ear. "Go and run, sister," he whispered. "Go run!"