“You knew him?”
“I’ve met him, sure.”
“You weren’t there, were you?” He actually squirmed, like he had ants crawling up his leg. “When it happened?”
“Oh sure. And when he keeled over, I was the one who gave him CPR.” Mariska pinched her nose closed and puffed air at him. “Saved his life — the board of supers is giving me a medal next Thursday.”
“This is serious, Mariska. Taking feeds from people you don’t know is dangerous.”
“Unless they’re schoolfeeds. Or newsfeeds. Or dreamfeeds.”
“Those are datafeeds. And they’re screened.”
“God feeds, then.”
He sank back against his chair. “You’re not joining a church, are you?”
“No.” She laughed and patted his hand. “I’m okay, Al. Trust me. I love you and everything is okay.”
“I know that.” He was so flustered he slipped his fork in his pants pocket. “I know,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself.
“Poor Del is pretty stupid, even for a singer in a shoutcast band,” she said. “What I heard was he accepted maybe a dozen feeds, but I guess there wasn’t room in his head for more than him and a couple of really shallow friends. But he just crashed is all; they’ll reboot him. Might even be an improvement.” She reached across the table, picked up Al’s empty plate, and slid it onto hers. “You never did anything like that, did you?” She carried them to the kitchen counter and pushed them through the processor door. “Accept mindfeeds from perfect strangers?”
“Not strangers, no.”
“But you were young once, right? I mean, you weren’t born a parent?”
“I’m a father, Mariska.” He swiped his napkin across his lips and then folded it up absently. “You’re a minor and still my responsibility. This is just me, trying to stay in touch.”
“Extra credit to you, then.” She check-marked the air. “But being a father is complicated. Maybe we should work on your technique?”
The door announced, “Jak is here.”
“Got to go.” Mariska grabbed her kit, kissed Al, and spun toward the door in relief. She felt bad for him sometimes. It wasn’t his fault he took all the slag in the Talking to Your Teen feed so seriously.
Of course, the other reason why Al was acting up was because Mariska’s genetic mother was about to swoop down on them. The Gorshkov had finally returned after a fifteen-year mission and was now docked at Sweetspot Station. Rumor was that humankind had a terrestrial world to colonize that was only three years away from the new Delta Pavonis wormhole. Natalya Volochkova was on the starship’s roster as chief medical officer.
Mariska didn’t hate her mother, exactly. How could she? They had never met. She knew very little about Volochkova and had no interest in finding out more. Ever, never. All she had from her were a couple of fossil toys: Feodor Bear and that stupid Little Mermaid aquarium. Collector’s items from the twenty-first century, which was why Mariska had never been allowed to play with them.
What she did hate was the idea that decisions this stranger had made a decade and a half ago now ruled her life. She was Volochkova’s clone and had been carried to term in a plastic womb, then placed in the care of one Alfred DeFord, a licensed father, under a term adoption contract. Her genetic mother had hired Al the way that some people hired secretaries; three fifths of Volochkova’s salary paid for their comfortable, if unspectacular, lifestyle. Mariska knew that Al had come to love her over the years, but growing up with an intelligent room and a hired father for parents wouldn’t have been her choice, had she been given one.
As if parking her with a hired father wasn’t bad enough, Volochkova had cursed Mariska with spacer genes. Which was why she had to suffer though all those boring pre-space feeds from the Ed supers and why everyone was so worried that she might go deep into hibernation before her time and why she’d been matched with her one true love when she had been in diapers.
Actually, having Jak as a boyfriend wasn’t all that much of a problem. She just wished that it didn’t have to be so damn inevitable. She wanted to be the one to decide that a curly black mop was sexier than a blonde crewcut or that thin lips were more kissable than thick or that loyal was more attractive than smart. He was fifteen, already an adult, but still lived with his parents. Even though he was two years older than she was, they were in the same semester in the spacer program.
Jak listened as Mariska whined, first about Volochkova and then about Al’s breakfast interrogation, as they skated to the hydroponics lab. He knew when to squeeze her hand, when to emit understanding moans and concerned grunts. This was what he called taking the weight, and she was gratified by his capacity to bear her up when she needed it. They were good together, in the 57th percentile on the Hammergeld Scale, according to their Soc super. Although she wondered if there might be some other boy for her somewhere, Mariska was resigned to the idea that, unless she was struck by a meteor or kidnapped by aliens, she would drag him into bed one of these days and marry him when she turned fourteen and then they would hibernate happily ever after on their way to Lalande 21185 or Barnard’s Star or wherever.
“But we were there, ’Ska,” Jak said, as the safety hatch to the lab slid aside. “Del asked you to open your head.” He bent over to crank the rollers into the soles of his shoes.
“Which is why we left.” She pulled a disposable green clingy from the dispenser next to the safety door and shrugged into it. “Which is why we were already in Chim Zone when the EMTs went by, which means we weren’t really there. How many times do I have to go over this?” She gave him a friendly push toward his bench and headed toward her own, which was on the opposite side of the lab.
Mariska checked the chemistry of her nutrient solution. Phosphorus was down 50ppm so she added a pinch of ammonium dihydrogen phosphate. She was raising tomatoes in rockwool spun from lunar regolith. Sixteen new blossoms had opened since Tuesday and needed to be pollinated; she used one of the battery operated toothbrushes that Mr. Holmgren, the Ag super, favored. Mariska needed an average yield of 4.2 kilograms per plant in order to complete this unit; her tomatoes wouldn’t be ripe for another eight weeks. Jak was on tomatoes, too; his spring crop had had an outbreak of mosaic virus and so he was repeating the unit.
Other kids straggled into the lab as she worked. Grieg, who had the bench next to hers, offered one of his lima beans, which she turned down, and a hit from his sniffer, which she took. Megawatt waved hello and Fung stopped by to tell her that their Corshkov tour had been rescheduled for Tuesday, which she already knew.
After a while, Random ambled in, using a vacpac to clean up the nutrient spills and leaf litter. He had just washed out of the spacer program but his mother was a Med super so he was hanging around as a janitor until she decided what to do with him. Everyone knew why he had failed. He was a feed demon; his head was like a digital traffic jam. However, unlike Del Cleen, Random had never once crashed. They said that if you ever opened yourself wide to him, even just for an instant, you would be so filled with other people’s thoughts that you would never think your own again.
He noticed her staring and saluted her with the wand of his vacuum cleaner. It was funny, he didn’t look all that destroyed to Mariska. Sleepy maybe, or bored, or a little high, but not as if he had had his individuality crushed. Besides, even though he was too skinny, she thought he was kind of cute. Not for the first time, she wondered what their Hammergeld compatibility score might be.