Aurora - Страница 58

Sometimes Freya would come by in the dusk and walk him home. Sometimes he could show her a little perch or tilapia or trout. “Let’s make a fish stew.”

“Sounds good, Beebee.”

“Did we ever use to do this in the old days?”

“No, I don’t think so. You and Devi were too busy then.”

“Too bad.”

“Remember the time we went sailing?”

“Oh yes! I crashed us into the dock.”

“Only that one time.”

“Ah good. Good for us. I couldn’t be sure if we did it a lot, or if I just keep remembering that one time.”

“I know what you mean, but I think it happened just the once. Then we figured out how to do it.”

“That’s nice. Like cooking our stew.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll help me eat it?”

“Oh yes. Won’t say no to that.”

They turned on the lights in their apartment’s kitchen, and he got out the frying pan while she took out a cutting board and filleting knife, and gutted the fish. Its steaks when they were ready were about fifteen centimeters long. When she was sure she had gotten all the bones out of the meat, she chopped the steaks into chunks while Badim chopped potatoes. He left the skins on. Chicken stock, a little water, a little milk, salt and pepper, some chopped carrots. They worked together in silence.

As they ate, Badim said, “How is it going at work?”

“Ah, well… Better if Devi were there.”

He nodded. “I often think that.”

“Me too.”

“Funny, you two didn’t get along when you were young.”

“That was my fault.”

Badim laughed. “I don’t think so!”

“I didn’t understand what she was going through.”

“That always comes later.”

“When it’s too late.”

“Well, but it’s never too late. My father, now, he was a real demon for the rules. Sometimes he would make me walk around the whole ring if he thought I wasn’t being respectful of the rules. It was only later I understood that he was old when I was born. That he wasn’t going to have any kids, until he met my mom. Because he had been born right after the troubles, and growing up, he had it hard. I didn’t figure it out until after he was gone, but then when I did, I started to understand your mother better. She and my dad had a lot in common, somehow.” He sighed. “It’s hard to believe they’re both gone.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad I still have you, dear.”

“Me you too.”

Then when they had cleaned up and she was leaving, he said, “Tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow or the next day. Tomorrow morning I’m going to go to the Piedmont and see how they’re doing.”

“Have they got a problem too?”

“Oh yes. Problems everywhere, you know.”

He laughed. “You sound like your mom.”

Freya did not laugh.

All kin relationships are roughly similar. There is attention, regard, solicitousness, affection. Sharing of news, of burdens physical and psychic.

On 208.285, it registered that the pH of Long Pond had shifted markedly lower in just a two-week span, and a robotic visual inspection of the lake bottom at first found nothing, then a localized pH reading, gridded to fifty meter squares, indicated the lake water was most acidic near the shore opposite the Fetch, where the prevailing winds typically first hit the water. A new robotic inspection found a long depression in the mud, and under that, it was determined that the pond lining had broken, or been cut by something, so that the water was in direct contact with the biome’s flooring. The resulting corrosion of the container was causing the acidification.

Then a further visual inspection by lake divers revealed depressions running lengthwise down the entire middle of the lake.

It was decided to drain the lake and store its water, move the fish and other lake life either to a temporary home, or kill and freeze it for food. The mud would have to be bulldozed around to allow direct access to the breaks in the liner.

This was a blow, as one day Long Pond simply wasn’t there anymore, but was instead a long bowl of black mud, drying out and stinking in the daylight. Looking down from the Fetch’s corniche railing, it was as if they were looking down into a mud pit on the side of some dreadful volcano. Many residents of the Fetch left town and stayed with friends in other biomes, but at least as many stayed in town and suffered along with their lake. Of course there were no fish to catch and take home, though it was said often that they would soon be back, and everything as before. Meanwhile, many of them were that much hungrier. Long Pond was the biggest lake in the ship.

Average weight loss among adults was now ten kilos. Then a fire in a transformer in the Prairie spewed a thick toxic smoke through that biome and forced a complete evacuation, so that the biome could be locked up without trapping anyone inside. The fire was fought with robots, which made it a slower process; indeed they could not contain the blaze, and it became necessary to remove the air from the biome to end it. This briefly reduced temperatures in the biome to well below zero, so all the crops in there froze. Quickly the biome was re-aerated, and people went back in wearing safety suits much like spacesuits, intent to save what they could, but the damage had been done. That season’s crop was dead, and coated with a film of PCBs that would have been dangerous to ingest. Indeed the surface of the soil itself needed to be cleaned, along with the walls of the biome and all its building surfaces.

They killed and ate 90 percent of the ship’s dwarf cattle, leaving a dangerously small number for purposes of genetic diversity. They killed and ate 90 percent of the musk oxen and the deer. Then the same percentage of the rabbits and the chickens. The 10 percent of each species that was allowed to live, to replenish the stocks, would represent severe genetic bottlenecks for each species, but this was not important now. Average body fat in adults was down to 6 percent. Seventy percent of the women of childbearing age had stopped menstruating, but this too was no longer an issue they could worry about. Despite all their efforts, they were in a famine.

Their margin for error was completely gone. One more crop failure, and assuming they shared the food equally, after feeding the children properly, there would be something like 800 calories per person per day, which would lead to muscle loss, skeletal abnormalities, dry hair and eyes and skin, lethargy, and so on.

Aram sat in Badim and Freya’s kitchen one night, head back against the wall. Badim was cooking pasta with a tomato sauce, and he took out some frozen chicken breasts from their freezer to defrost, chop up, and throw into the sauce. Freya was much bigger than the two old men, but gaunt. She was eating even less than most people. The dark rings under her eyes made her look more than ever like her mother.

Badim put the food on the table for them, and for a second they held hands.

Mouth pursed to a tight line, Aram said, “We’re eating our seed corn.”

Again people began killing themselves. This time it was mostly small groups of elderly people, who called themselves hemlock clubs, and usually did the deed by evacuating the air from exterior locks. It was said death was nearly instantaneous, something like a knockout blow. They did it holding hands and leaving behind the usual note: I may be some time! Often this was clipped to a group photo in which almost everyone was smiling. We could not tell whether the smiles meant they were happy or not.

The people they left behind, especially their relatives and friends, definitely were not. But the hemlock clubs were secret societies. Even we did not overhear their planning conversations, which meant they had made intense efforts to conceal them. Room recorders must certainly have been covered or otherwise rendered inoperative in ways that did not trip our alarms.

Freya began walking the biomes at night, going to the little towns and talking to people. Now dinners were often communal, neighborhoods gathering, each family bringing one dish they had cooked. Sometimes rabbits or chickens had been killed for a stew. The cooks often urged Freya to eat with them, and she always took a bite. The food went quickly, everything was consumed; compost now was almost entirely human waste, processed heavily to recover certain salts and minerals (including bromine) and to kill certain pathogens before it was returned to the farm soil.

After the meals, Freya would talk to the elders there.