“Gengineering? Oh, you mean modders.”
“Modders.” I accepted the correction as gracefully as I could. “And of course there’s so much to catch up on, I expect I’ll spend the first few months just taking in restaurants and shows.”
Claire-Nathalie brightened and began to chatter away about what she’d seen and done and had done to her for entertainment, and I dutifully agreed to wander around having her favorite restaurants, theaters, and what she called “venues” pointed out to me. By the time we were taking the Metro back, I was barely answering her monolog, merely interjecting monosyllables when she seemed to want them. I could not stop noticing how much squashier the floors were in the Metro, both on the trains and on the platforms.
They had also changed the decoration to include a great deal more wood, of which I approved, and gotten rid of the glazed tile installations, of which I did not. When Claire-Nathalie paused for breath, I said something about the tiles, which she ignored, and then something about the floors.
“Oh you poor darling!” she said. “I had just no idea that you lived in the times when your footing was so unnatural. It must have been terribly bad for the feet. Did you have to have a special, what do you call them, podiatrist? I expect everybody in the past did.”
It was a moment before I could bring myself to answer. “No, in fact I didn’t know anyone who did.”
“Really? Well, that’s extraordinarily lucky, isn’t it?”
I said I supposed it was and then turned my energies to convincing Claire-Nathalie to get off at her own Metro stop and let me find my way home. They had added three lines and who knew how many stops since I’d last lived in Montreal, but it didn’t matter—any fool could listen for the stop name or poke their handheld to alert them.
Once I’d told Claire-Nathalie that, I was afraid I would be the fool who couldn’t. But I made it off the train and onto the squashy platform stairs myself. I resolved to never, ever contact her again, and possibly to ignore any attempts at contact she attempted to make. Possibly everyone on Earth would feel the same about my feet and the advisability of finding my own kind. Still, it was worth finding out.
After a few days of handheld exploration in my apartment, I ventured out in hopes of finding something, anything that looked familiar. Not far from home, I did: the Hungarian restaurant was in the same place, the striped awnings the same. Of course they had probably been replaced a dozen times since I had last seen them, and I wasn’t sure whether the name was the same or not.
I went in, and I would have sworn it was the same woman seating me, and the same cakes in the display case, although of course they had probably both been replaced with the awnings. The cucumber salad was the same, but most of the things that had had beef in them before were made with fowl or lamb. I asked the waiter.
“You are not from here, I can hear it, though your French is of course lovely,” he said in outrageously Hungarian-accented French. “Beef is almost entirely African and South Asian now. You are perhaps from Africa?”
“I have most recently come from a Brazilian island,” I said truthfully.
“Ah, Brazil!” he said. “Well, they can afford whatever they like, can’t they? And on islands one supposes it’s easier to keep the cattle isolated. But here it is all birds and sheep. They stay healthier for cheaper. It is very traditional. We have always eaten this way.”
“I see,” I said. “Thank you.”
“And would you perhaps like some cake? We have very fine cake here.”
“I see that you have,” I said, but I ordered palacsinta anyway, wondering if the farmers’ cheese inside was made from sheep milk. It was divine anyway. If I closed my eyes it was just the same. If I opened them, it was not that much different. Just little bits.
This began to bother me more and more.
I spoke at the garden enthusiasts’ club meeting, and I called them “modders” just as Claire-Nathalie had. They received me with mild hobbyist enthusiasm. They served me sweets that all seemed to have bits of pear in them. I was not changing their lives. It certainly did not change mine.
I looked on the net for former terraformer classmates who had gone off to the colonies. Only one of them had come back to Montreaclass="underline" Stephane D’Abbadie, three years older than me to begin with. I had no idea how many years older he would be now. He had left while I was still in classes and come back while I was still in transit back from New Landing. I didn’t know much about his colony, Outpost. It was older than New Landing, but not by much. I had thought to catch up on Earth, but not on the handful of other colonies, and my news feeds were set to Earth, New Landing, and “general interest,” whatever that meant these days.
I thought briefly about reading up on Outpost before going to see Stephane, but I decided not to. I don’t know why I didn’t think of messaging him like a polite person, to let him know I was on my way or find out if he wanted to see me. We had been friends, but not good friends. And that was two decades and three planets ago.
When he answered the door, he looked just the same, but his dark skin was an ashier brown than I remembered, and he had started tinting his hair red over the black, so it looked like a mass of curled cherry wood shavings. I didn’t even remember what my own hair was like when he left for Outpost. I opened my mouth and found it dry and stuck.
“Hello,” he said. He didn’t move to invite me in, or even to indicate that he knew who I was.
“It’s me, Mireille, I’m back,” I said.
“I see that,” said Stephane.
“I can deal with them putting pears in everything now,” I said, “but I can’t get my head around the squashy floors in the Metro.”
He peered at me, and then a smile broke over his face. “All right, Mireille, come in.” As he made us tea and set out some grapes, he said, “You should feel grateful you’ve come home to a place where there’s snow. In all the cities where they don’t have to clear snow, the squashy floors are everywhere. They’ve decided they’re more natural.”
I tried to smile. “Natural. Everyone wants to call their pet theories natural but us, Stephane.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I don’t, after twenty-eight years?”
“Twenty-three for me,” I said. “No, but I know. Because terraformers don’t do that. We know how easily it could go one way or another. We know that we’re not in the business of natural.”
He said, “I haven’t been in the business of much of anything since I came home.”
“I haven’t figured out what I’d like to do, either,” I said. “I have my savings.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t fill the days.”
“No.”
I huffed a sigh of frustration. “Well, then, what are you doing?”
“Drugs and meaningless sex, mostly,” he said.
I blinked. He didn’t.
“You’re joking,” I said tentatively.
“I am, actually,” he said, and the grin returned. “No, I’ll show you what I’ve been doing, if you like. It’s not the least bit scandalous. Or at least it shouldn’t be. I’m afraid I don’t have the hang of what’s a scandal and what isn’t yet.”
“On New Landing, the amount of loafing I’ve been doing would be a scandal.”
“Outpost, too,” he said. “Come on.”
He had the keys to a shed in the back garden of his apartment building, and it was fully powered, not the tool shed I would have assumed. When he took me outside, I thought gardening, but the shed smelled of wood shavings and varnish, and sawdust scuffed under our feet.
“No squashy floors here, either,” he said, smiling. He opened a cabinet and handed me a small wooden toy, dark and light together. It had wheels and hooks.