She decided to cue a fake call. When her fingernail flashed, she studied it briefly then brought it to her ear. “It’s Al,” she said. “Sorry, Jak, I’ve got to go.”
The swimming pool in Muoi Zone was one of the biggest in the Moon’s reservoir system, but Mariska liked it because it didn’t have a sky projected on its ceiling. Somehow images of stars and clouds made the water seem colder, even though all the Moon’s pools were kept at a uniform 27° Celsius. And she felt less exposed looking up at raw rock. The diving platforms at the deep end were always crowded with acrobats; in the shallows little kids stood on their hands and wiggled their toes and heaved huge, quivering balls of water high into the air. Their shouts of glee echoed off the low ceiling and drowned in the blue expanse of the pool.
The twenty-five lanes were busy as usual with lap swimmers meeting their daily exercise expectation. Mariska owed the Med supers an hour in the pool four times a week. She sat at the edge in lane twelve and waited for an opening. She was wearing the aquablade bodysuit that Al had bought for her birthday. Jak had wanted her to get a tank suit or a two-piece, but she had chosen the neck-to-knee style because her chest was still flat as the lunar plains. That was why she didn’t like to swim with Jak — when they stood next to each other in swimsuits, she looked like his baby sister.
She eased into the cool water just behind an old guy in a blue Speedo and cued up the datafeed she was supposed to review on ground squirrels.
=The hibernating Spermophilus tridecemlineatus can spend six months without food. During this period its temperature drops to as low as 0° Celsius. With a heart rate at one percent of its active state and oxygen consumption at two percent, the squirrel can survive solely on the combustion of its lipid reserves, especially unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.=
As Mariska’s heart rate climbed to its target of 179 beats per minute, her deep and regular breathing and the quiet slap of water against her body brought on her usual swimming trance. For a brief, blue moment doing the right thing was easy: just bounce off the two walls connected by the black lane line.
Then her thoughts began to tumble over one another. Everything was stuck together, just like in the Love Gravy song. Al and Jak and Volochkova and her life on the moon and her future in space and sex and going deep and the way her room wouldn’t let her grow up and Feodor Bear and pancakes and tomatoes and what did Random want with her anyway?
=The gene regulating the enzyme PDK4 (pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase isoenzyme 4) switches the squirrel’s metabolism from the active to the hibernating state by inhibiting carbohydrate oxidation.=
She tried to remember exactly when she had decided to block out everything about Natalya Volochkova, but she couldn’t. She had a vague memory that it had been her room’s idea. She had asked it why her mother had abandoned her and her room had said that maybe grownups didn’t always have choices but that had only made her upset. So her room had told Mariska that she was a special girl who didn’t need a mother and that she should never ask about her again. Ever. Never. Or had that been in a dreamfeed?
=…mitochondrial functions are drastically reduced… =
Mariska felt as if she were swimming through the data in the feed. She was certain that she would never remember any of it. And Mr. Holmgren was going to have a meltdown when he saw how she had left her bench in the lab and she’d probably flunk tomatoes just like Jak had.
=In 2014 the first recombinant ground squirrel and human genes resulted in activity of PTL — pancreatic triacylglycerol lipase — in both heart and white adipose tissue under supercooling conditions.=
What had happened in 2018? She had never much cared for history. The Oil Crash must have started around that time. And Google 3.0. The founding of Moonbase Zhong? A bunch of extinctions. Datafeeds, sure, but mindfeeds didn’t come until the eighties. When did the fossil spacers launch the first starship?
As she touched the wall a foot tapped her on the shoulder. She twisted out of her flip turn and broke the surface of the water, sputtering. Random was standing at the edge of the pool, staring at her. His bathing suit had slid down his bony hips. “My penny,” he said. “Can I have it back now?” His pale skin had just a tinge of blue and he was shivering.
Random spilled his bundle of clothes onto the floor in front of her locker; he had the handle of a lunch box clamped between his teeth. Mariska slithered into her tube top as he set the lunch box on the bench between them. It had a picture of an apple on it; the apple was wearing a space helmet.
“This isn’t funny, Random.” Mariska slipped an arm into the sleeve of her tugshirt. “Are you stalking me?”
“No.” He punched the print button on the processor and an oversized pool towel rolled from the output slot above the lockers. “Not funny at all.”
She sealed the front placket of the tug and plunged both hands into its pouch. There it was. She must have taken the penny without realizing it. She extended the coin to him on her palm.
“First we talk, then you get the penny.” She closed her fist around it. “What’s this about?”
“I said already.” Random stripped off his wet bathing suit. “Your mother.” He crammed it into the input slot and began to dry himself with the towel.
Mariska set her jaw but didn’t correct him. “What about her?”
“She’s a fossil. The penny could have been hers.”
“Okay.” She wasn’t sure she believed this, but she didn’t want him to think that she didn’t know if it were true. The heroic fossils had been the first humans to go to the stars. They had volunteered to be genetically altered so that they could hibernate through the three-year voyage to the wormhole at the far edge of Oort Cloud and then hibernate again as their ships cruised at sublight speeds through distant solar systems. Most of the fossils were dead, many from side effects of the crude genetic surgery of the twenty-first century. “So?”
“She probably has stuff. Or maybe you have her stuff?”
“Stuff?”
“To trade.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and opened his lunch box. It was crammed with what looked to Mariska like junk wrapped in clear guardgoo. “Like my goods.” Random pulled each item out as if it were a treasure.
“Vanilla Girl.” He showed her the head of a doll with a patch over one eye. “Pencil,” he said. “Never sharpened.” He arranged an empty Coke bubble, a paper book with the cover ripped off, a key, a purple eyelight, a pepper shaker in the shape of a robot, and a thumb teaser on the bench. At the bottom of the lunch box was a tiny red plastic purse. He snapped it open and shook it so that she could hear coins clinking. “Please?”
Mariska dropped the penny into the purse. “How did you find out she’s a fossil?”
“It’s complicated.” He tapped his forehead and she felt a tingle as he offered her a feed. “Want to open up?”
“No.” Mariska folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t think I do.” She was chilled at the thought of losing herself in the chaos of feeds everyone claimed were churning inside Random’s head. “You’ll just have to say it.”
Random dropped the towel on the floor and pulled on his janitor’s greens. She was disgusted to see that he didn’t bother with underwear. “When the Corshkov came back,” he said, “everyone was happy.” He furrowed his brow, trying to remember how to string consecutive sentences together. “Happy people talk and make feeds and party all over. That’s how I know.” He nodded as if that explained everything.