Like Pavlov's Dogs
BY STEVEN R. BOYETT
[1]
" Goodmorning, happy campers!" blares the loudspeaker on the wall above the head of Marly Tsung's narrow bed. "It's another beautiful day in paradise!" A bell rings. "Rise and shine!"
Marly the sleepy camper slides out from her pocket of warmth. "Rise your own fucking shine," she mutters as she rises from her pallet and staggers to the computer screen that glows a dull gray above her desk. The word UPDATE pulses in the middle of the monitor; she flicks it with a finger and turns away to find the clothes she shed the night before.
"Today is Wednesday, the twenty-ninth," says her recorded voice. "Today marks the three hundred seventy-second day of the station's operation." Marly sniffs and makes a sour face at how pleasant her earlier self sounds. How enthused. "Gung ho," she says.
"The structural integrity of the Ecosphere is ninety-nine point five percent," the recording continues brightly, "with indications of water-vapor leakage in panels above the northern quadrant of the Rain Forest environment."
"Christ," says Marly, hating the daily cheerfulness of her own voice. She slides into faded, baggy jeans, then scoops on peasant sandals.
"Unseasonal warm weather in this region of Arizona has increased the convection winds from the Desert environment, and as a result the humidity has increased in the Rain Forest environment. Rainfall may be expected in the late afternoon. Soil nitrogenating systems are - "
Marly puts on a T-shirt, sees the neck tag pass in front of her, pulls the shirt partway off, and turns it around.
Leaving, she pauses at the door and looks back. Computer console on oak desk, dirty laundry, precariously stacked pop-music cassettes, rumpled bed. If someone were to come in here, someone who knew Marly but wasn't on Staff, would they be able to figure out who lived here?
She looks away. The question is moot. The only people in the entire world who know Marly are the Ecostation personnel.
She slides shut the door on her own voice and heads down the narrow hall to one of the station's two bathrooms.
FLUSH TWICE - IT'S A LONG WAY TO THE KITCHEN is scrawled in black felt-tip on the wall facing her. It's been there a year now. More recently - say, ten months ago - someone wrote, below that, EAT SHIT. And below that - with a kind of prophetic irony - WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
Marly never did think these were very funny.
She flushes - once - and heads for the rec room and the inevitable. Her waste heads for reclamation and the (nearly) inedible.
Four of the other seven station personnel are in the rec room ahead of her. Billtheasshole stands on the blue wrestling mat. He's wearing his gray UCLA sweat suit again. If clothes could get leprosy, they'd look like that sweat suit. On a leather thong around his neck is a silver whistle. Marly thinks her usual idle morning thought about what it would feel like to choke Billtheasshole by that lanyard. She imagines his stern face purpling, his reptilian eyes dimming. Watching his tinfoil-colored eyes staring at the door, Marly invents Tsung's law: The biggest shithead and the person in command can usually be shot with the same bullet.
Pale Grace sits glumly at an unplugged gaming table, drumming her nails against the dark glass tabletop. Marly shakes her head. A year now, and Grace still looks like someone desperate for a cigarette. She catches Marly watching her and ducks her head and twitches a smile.
Marly thinks of just staring at her to drive her even more crazy, but what's the point?
Slumped against the heavy bag in the corner like a determined marathon dancer is Dieter. He smiles sleepily at her and scratches his full, brown beard. "Grow me coffee," he says in his pleasant Rotweiler growl, "and I will unblock your pipes for the next year."
She smiles and shakes her head. "No beans," she replies. This has become their daily morning ritual. Dieter knows what that headshake is really for: He's unblocked her pipes enough already, thank you.
Sitting barefoot in lotus on the folding card table is little carrot-topped Bonnie. She smiles warmly at Marly, attempting to get her to acknowledge the spiritual kinship that supposedly exists between them because Bonnie is into metaphysics and Marly is Chinese.
Marly makes herself look inscrutable.
In walk Deke and Haiffa, a mismatched set: him burly, her slight; him hairy, her smooth; him Texas beefeating good-ole-boy-don't-shoot-till-you-see-the-black-of-their-skin, her Israeli vegetarian educated at Oxford. Naturally they are in love. Marly pays them little mind beyond a glance as they walk in holding hands like children and sit on the unraveling couch; Deke and Haiffa return the favor. They have become Yin and Yang, a unit unto themselves, outside of which exists the entire rest of the world. Proof again that there is such a thing as circumstantial love, love in a context, love-in-a-box.
Last in is Leonard Willard. Marly still spells his name LYNYRD WYLLYRD on the duty roster, long after the last drop of humor has been squeezed from the joke, which Leonard never got anyway. Leonard is the youngest staff member, always compensating for his inexperience with puppyish eagerness to please. But despite the fact that Leonard could have been one of the original Mouseketeers, Marly takes his constant good cheer as an indication of his bottomless well of self deception. The Ecosphere station is his world; everything outside it is... some movie he saw once. In black and white. Late at night. When he was a kid. He really doesn't remember it very well.
Predictably, Billtheasshole blows his whistle the moment the last person walks in. "Okay, troops," he says. "Fall in." He likes to call the staff members "troops." He would still be wearing his mirrored aviator sunglasses if Marly hadn't thrown them into the Ocean.
She falls in behind the others as they line up on the wrestling mat to begin their calisthenics. Or, as Billtheasshole calls them, their "cardiovascular aerobic regimen."
[2]
Sweetpea spits gum onto low-pile, gray carpet. "Flavor's gone," she explains.
Doughboy laughs. Shirtless, his hairy belly quivers. "Where you gonna get some more, girl?"
("Sailor?" someone calls from the stacks upstairs. "Goddamn motherfucker - Sailor!")
Sweetpea just shrugs and turns her back on Doughboy. She goes to join a group gathered behind one of the tall bookshelves. 0900: American History. One of the group pulls a book from a shelf and heaves it, then gives the finger to someone Doughboy can't see. The hand is snatched back as a return salvo is launched from Engineering. The book tumbles across the floor and stops facedown like a tired bat near Doughboy's left boot. Alloy Tensile Strength Comparisons. He doesn't attempt to interpret the title, but bends down, picks up the book, and pulls Sweetpea's gum from where it has stuck against a page that shows a graph. He brings fingers to chapped lips and blows. Fingers in mouth, then out, and wiped against blue jeans that have all the beltloops ripped loose. "Dumb bitch," he says, and chews.
A loud slap from above. Doughboy looks up to see gangly Tex being thrown against a tall shelf. The shelf tips, but does not fall. Books do.
"What the fuck you yellingfor, man?" Sailor stands above Tex, who has set a hand to his reddening cheek. Sailor remains there a moment, looking down at Tex with hands on hips, then bends and pulls Tex to his feet. He dusts him off and pats his shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry I hit you, man," he says. "Only, don't run around yellingall the time, okay?"
"Sure," says Tex. His hand leaves his inflamed cheek, and he glances at his palm (for blood? wonders Doughboy). "Sure. But, I mean, I was just wonderin', y'know? I mean - " He looks around the library. "What're we gonna find here?"
Sailor frowns. He looks around. One hand tugs at the face of Mickey Mouse hanging from his right ear. When he looks back at Tex, he's smiling wryly.
"Books," he says.
Doughboy nearly chokes on his gum, he thinks this is so goddamn funny.
"What are youlaughing at?" from above.
Doughboy only shakes his head.
Sailor shakes his head, too, but for completely different reasons. "Fuck," he says. "I used to goto this school." He comes down the stairs with two hardcover books tucked under one arm. "Yoo of A."
Doughboy angles his head to see the titles; Sailor hands him the books. Doughboy holds one in each hand before him. His lips move. Furrows appear in his forehead.
Sailor taps the book in Doughboy's left hand. " Principles of Behavior Modification," he supplies. He taps the thicker in Doughboy's right. " Radiation and Tissue Damage." He clasps his hands behind him and rocks back and forth, beaming.
"You taking a test?"
Sailor shakes his head. "Nope. Deadheads are. I think I can teach them to find food for us. Realfood."
Doughboy makes a farting noise. "Shit. Wecan't find real food; how you expect them to?"
"The name 'Pavlov' ring a bell?"
"No."
Sailor sighs. "Why I stay with you limpdicks I will never know," he says.
Doughboy stacks the books. "But how you gonna get - "
" God damn you, nigger!"
They turn at the shout from Engineering.
"That hurt, motherfucker!"
"Why you didn't move, then, home?" replies American History. "What you been throwing at methe last - "
Shouts, something heavy thrown against a wall, a bookshelf falling against a bookshelf, scuffling, and cheers as American History and Engineering begin beating the living shit out of each other.
Sailor walks over to break it up. He takes his time, wondering why the hell he's bothering in the first place. He oughta just let evolution sort 'em out. Well, he's there now; he might as well do something to split 'em up.
It's Cheesecake and Jimmy. Figures. Cheesecake's got the upper hand, which is no surprise, and with no more than two or three blows he's already made a mess of Jimmy's face. White boys never could fight.
He leans forward to grab Cheesecake's teak arm as the knotted fist at the end of it rises, but something stops him. Around them
(" You gonna let that nigger put a hurt on you, boy?") are scattered newspapers. One lies spilled like a dropped deck of cards
(" Fuck 'im up! Yeah! Yeah!"),
fanned out to expose the Local section.
Dull slap of bone-backed meat on softer meat.
Sailor bends to pick up the paper.
(" Cheese, man, ease up. C'mon, man.")
'Space
Breaks
(" Motherfucker hit me on my head with a book. A big book, motherfucker!")
Sailor turns the paper over.
Station'
New Ground
He unfolds the paper.
(" Ah! Fucking nigger! I'll kill you, fuckin - ")
'Space Station'
Breaks New Ground
Sailor frowns. An artist's conception accompanies the article.
"Let him up," Sailor says mildly, and they stop.
(Tucson) - Official groundbreaking ceremonies were held Monday morning in a tent 60 miles northwest of Tucson, to mark the beginning of construction on Ecosphere - a self-contained "mini-Earth" environment that may prove a vital step in mankind's eventual colonization of other planets.
Budgeted at a "modest" $30 million, according to project director Dr. William Newhall of the University of Arizona Ecological Sciences division, Ecosphere will be a completely self-sufficient, 5-million-cubic-feet ecological station. The station will contain five separate environments, including a tropical rain forest, a savanna, a marshland, a desert, and a 50,000-gallon salt-water "ocean," complete with fish. There will also be living quarters for the Ecosphere staff, scientific laboratories, livestock, and an agriculture wing - all on two acres covered by computer-controlled "windowpanes" that regulate the amount of sunlight received. Even Ecosphere's electrical energy will come from the sun, in the form of arrays of solar-power cells.
"Ecosphere will be a sort of model of our planet," says chief botanist Marly Tsung. "We'll have a little of everything" - including several thousand types of trees, plants, animals, fish, birds, insects, and even different kinds of soil.
If all goes well after Ecosphere is constructed and stocked, eight "Ecosphereans" will bid goodbye to the outside world and enter the station's airlock, and they will remain as working residents of this model Earth for two years.
Designed to reproduce and maintain the delicate balance of the Earth's ecosystem in the midst of a hostile environment - presently the Arizona desert, but conceivably Mars by the end of the century - Ecosphere will also serve as an experiment in how future interplanetary colonists might get along working in close quarters for long periods. However, Grace Havland, team psychologist, does not foresee any problems. "We're all self-motivated, resourceful, problem-solving people," she says. "But we're also very different from one another, with widely varied interests. I think that will help. That, and the fact that the station itself provides a lot of stimuli." What could go wrong? In the first place, Eco-sphere's delicate environment could suffer a
(turn to page 16D)
"I remember this," says Sailor as the others gather around to see what's got him so interested. Jimmy mops his face with his torn, white T-shirt. "They started building it when I was in school." He turns to 16D. "They interviewed a bunch of these assholes before they went to live in it. There was this Chinese girl with blue eyes." He whistles appreciative recollection and lowers the paper. Suddenly he frowns and hands the paper to Florida, who scans the article and studies the cutaway drawing of the Ecosphere (which is not a sphere at all). Florida's dark eyebrows flex toward his hairline. One big-fingered, skull-ringed hand strays to his scarred leather hunting vest. He passes the paper around for the others to read and scratches the back of his neck under the red elastic band that holds his long pony tail.
Ed the Head squints at the article as if it is out of focus. His lips move as he reads, then he turns bleary eyes to Sailor. "So they, like, built some kinda space station in the middle of the goddamn desert. So fuckin' what?"
"So now you know why no one lets you do the grocery shopping," says Sailor. "You wouldn't recognize an opportunity if it gave you a whip-cream enema."
Ed fingers his matted beard. "Chill out, dude. Ain't nobody fuckin' with you."
Sailor shakes his head. "It's all just one big mystery to you, isn't it?" He looks around at the group. "Jesus," he says, and takes back the paper before leaving them.
"What he mad about?" Cheesecake rubs cut knuckles with two ragged-nailed fingers.
Florida folds his Popeye arms, making himself look twice as big as he already is. "That space station's set up to go for years without any help from outside," he says in his surprising melodic baritone. He pulls off his silver ear cuff and massages the outside curve of his ear. "They control their environment. They grow their own food. They raise their own livestock. Get it now?" His arms unfold. "Apples. Oranges. Chicken. Eggs. Bacon."
"Oh, man..." from someone behind Jimmy.
"Aw, those dudes're wasted by now," says Ed the Head.
"Reefer," adds Florida.
Ed the Head straightens. "No shit? Hey, Florida, man, you wouldn't fuck with me, now..."
"How we know they still there?" demands Cheesecake. "They be walkin' around dead and shit, by now."
Florida smiles and replaces his earcuff. "We don't know," he says. He glances at Sailor and raises an eyebrow. "Yet."
"Doughboy. Hey, Doughboy!"
Doughboy turns with a finger still up his nose. "Yo, Sailor," he says mildly. He twists, pulls out -
"We still got that baby?"
- and puts the finger in his mouth. He withdraws it with a wet smack and shrugs. "I dunno. Maybe. You wanna go to the zoo an' see?"
Outside the hurricane fence at the juncture of Optical Sciences and Physics: Sailor and Doughboy peer about the corral.
"I don't see it," says Sailor. "Maybe they ate it?"
"Nah. They don't do that, much. Somehow they know the difference." He bangs the fence with both palms.
Shambling figures turn.
"Hey," shouts Doughboy. " Hey, you deadhead fuckheads!" He bangs harder. " 'Course," he says, more conversationally, watching their stiff approach, "they coulda tore it up. They're kinda dumb that way."
Watching them shuffle toward him and Doughboy, Sailor suddenly begins to giggle. He bends forward and his mouth opens, as if he has been kicked in the stomach. The giggle expands and becomes full-throated. He can't control it. Eventually he drags a bare, anchor-tattooed forearm across one eye, saying "Oh, shit..." in a pained way, and wipes the other eye with the other arm. "Oh, Jesus. Whose idea was this?"
Doughboy grins and rubs a palm across sparse blond billy-goat beard. "You like it?" The hand lowers to hook a thumb in a front pocket of his Levi's. "Florida ran across a T-shirt shop in the Westside Mall. He brought back a shitload of 'em. And a bunch of us got the deadheads outta of the zoo one at a time and put 'em on 'em."
Sailor shakes his head in amazement.
A little old lady deadhead reaches the fence ahead of the others. Part of her nose is missing, and the rest flaps against one wrinkled, bluegray cheek in time with her sleepwalker's gait. She runs face-first into the fence, then steps back with a vaguely surprised look that quickly fades. Hanging shapelessly about her upper body is a ridiculously large, blue T-shirt. I'M WITH STUPID, it reads, with an arrow pointing to her left.
Sailor begins to laugh again.
Doughboy is laughing now, too.
The dead old lady is joined by an enormous Hispanic deadhead with the figure of a bodybuilder. His skin is the color of moss. A strip of bone shows above his ear where a furrow of scalp has been ripped away. His arms and chest look over-inflated. He wears a tight, red maternity blouse. Centered over his bulging pectorals is:
BABY
?
The deadheads make plaintive little noises as they reach like sad puppies for Sailor and Doughboy, only to regard the fence that blocks their hands as some kind of miraculous object that has inexplicably appeared in front of them.
There are twenty of them clustered around the fence now, purpled fingers poking nervelessly through the wide mesh.
"No baby," says Doughboy. "But it wouldn't be here anyway. Can't walk yet."
"Walk?" Sailor frowns. "It probably never will." He regards the hungry drowned faces as he speaks. "I wonder if they age?"
Doughboy's eyes narrow. "Baby doesn't have to have been like that from the start. Coulda been born after everything turned to shit, then died an' gone deadhead."
"Yeah, but still - how would we know? Do they get older as time goes by?" He nods toward the fence. "Can a deadhead die of old age?"
Doughboy shrugs. "We'll find out someday," he says.
Sailor looks away from the fence. "Are you an optimist or what?"
Doughboy only snorts.
"Who's the one by himself back there?" Sailor points. "He doesn't move like a deadhead."
"Whozzat? Oh, Jo-Jo? Yeah, he's pretty fuckin' amazing, ain't he? He's a regular Albert fuckin' Einstein - for a deadhead, I mean. Quick, huh?"
The figure standing alone turns to face them. He wears a brown T-shirt with white letters that spell out HE'S DEAD, JIM.
Sailor's frown deepens. "He's watchingus."
"They all do that, man. We look like those big ol' steaks in the cartoons."
"No, I mean..." He squints. "There's something going on in that face. His tabulaain't quite rasa."
"Yeah, what you said. Here - " Doughboy leaves the fence and goes to a plastic milk crate. He pulls out a disk that glints rainbow colors. "Cee Dee," he says, grinning, and holds it up. "Michael Jackson. Thriller."
In his other hand is a rock.
He steps to the left of the knot of deadheads who still claw vaguely toward them. He glances at Sailor and angles the compact disk to catch the sunlight.
"Jo-Jo," he calls. "Hey - Jo-Jo!" He jumps ( light on his feet, for a jelly-belly, thinks Sailor) and lobs the rock.
"Jo-Jo!"
hunger me jojo they call jojo and throw at me without hurt only eat and i with move them to jojo from their meat mouths i reach to hunger with light of hot above with bright the fence the hunger-others grab and pull but shining outside they hold the shining thing and forward i into the fence grab against press into my face and raise my hands in hunger not to the shining thing but to the hand that holds it in hunger jojo they say and i will eat
"He," declares Sailor, watching the deadhead toss the rock it has caught from hand to hand, "is smarter than the average deadhead."
Doughboy nods. "Fuckin' A, Boo-Boo."
[3]
Bill hangs around after the others leave, sweating from their cardiovascular aerobic regimen. They will disperse to attend to the many jobs that await them each day; maintaining the Ecosphere is a full-time job for eight people. And keeping those eight people in shape and responsive to the needs of the ecological station, maintaining their esprit de corps, making them understand their responsibilities to the station's investors, to science - indeed, to the human race - is quite a burden. That's why Bill is glad that he is the one in charge - because, of the eight, only he has the discipline and organizational abilities, the qualities of command, to keep them functioning as a unit. And - as a unit - they will persevere. He imagines he is a lifeboat captain, forcing the others to share their labor and rations, sometimes extreme in his severity and discipline. But when rescue comes, they will all thank Bill for running his tight little ship. Yes they will.
He goes to a locker and removes a French fencing foil. He tests the grip, slides into stance, and holds his left hand loosely above and behind his head. En garde. Blade to quarte. Block, parry, riposte. Lunge, hah!He is D'Artagnan; the wine of his opponent's life spills upon the wrestling mat. Touche.
The pigs in their small pen near the corner formed by the human habitat and the agricultural wing are slopped by Grace. Of all the dirty work in the station she must perform (even though it is not her job to), the team psychologist finds working with the pigs almost pleasurable, and certainly less troublesome than working with Staff. Grace is a behaviorist, and a behaviorist will always work better with pigs than with people. The pigs in their uncomplicated Skinner box of a muddy pen are easier to direct and adjust than those upright pigs in their bigger, labyrinthian pen.
The ground darkens around her and she looks up at a cloud passing in front of the sun, distorted by the triangular glass panes above. She idly wonders how long it's been since she went outside the station. She shrugs. What difference does it make?
She bends to pat Bacon's globular head. She has named the pigs so that she will remember their prime function, to prevent her from becoming too sentimentally attached to them: Bacon, Fatback, Pork Chop, Hot Dog, Sausage, and Hambone. The pigs are wonderful: not only do they clear the quarter acre of land devoted to raising vegetable crops, and fertilize it as well, but they are astonishingly gregarious, affectionate, and intelligent animals. Which any farm girl knows - but Grace has devoted her life to the exacting science of manipulating human beings, and has only recently become devoted to the emotionally admirable pig.
If only the staff were as easy to manage. Humbly she tries to tell herself that she's only doing her job, but, truth to tell, if they hadn't had someone to keep them psychologically stable all this time, she doubts they'd have lasted even this long. She thinks of the other staff members one at a time as Pork Chop and Sausage nuzzle her calves. She maintains a file on each one of them and updates it every day with her observations and impressions of their sessions together. Luckily the sessions have diminished in importance, which is as it should be, since everybody is so mentally healthy. So goddamned healthy. So enormouslyadjusted.
Pork Chop squeals, and Grace realizes she has been squeezing his poor ear as hard as she can. She lets go and pats his thick head. "There, there," she says. "There, there."
She thinks again of the book she will write when all this is over. It will sell well. She will be on Phil Donahue. Holding an imaginary pen, she practices signing her name.
* * *
Bonnie is not far from Grace; she works, shirtless in the early-morning sun, on her knees in the three tall rows of cornstalks. The agricultural wing is like the playing board of a child's game, with squares devoted to corn, potatoes, beans, peas, squash, carrots, and tomatoes. She wishes they had watermelon, but it would require far too much water to be ecologically justifiable. But at least there's the fruit grove by the wall, there - right beside the vegetables - with apples, oranges, and lemons. The soils are as rich as possible, having originally been procured from all parts of the United States.
Is it stillthe United States? Bonnie wonders. Surely somewhere it mustbe.
She returns to her work, examining stalks and peeling back husks to check for insects. There are screen doors in the narrow access corridors between the agriculture wings and the Environments, but still, insects manage to get through. Despite their productive yield the Ecosphere is actually never very far away from starvation, and the loss of a single crop to insects could be - well, it just didn't bear thinking about.
Bonnie likes to work with plants. Not in the same way that Marly does - that appraising, sterile, scientificway - but in a sort of... holisticway. An organicway. Yes, that's right: organic. She smiles at the word. Bonnie feels a kinship to the plants, with the interrelatedness of all living things. She likes to feel the sunlight on her bare, freckled skin because it reminds her of the ironic combination of her specialness and insignificance. The sun is an indifferent ball of burning gases ninety-three million miles away, yet without it there could be no life. "We are all made of the same star-stuff," Carl Sagan used to say. Well, Bonnie feels that stuff in her very cells. It sings along the twined strands of her DNA.
She certainly doesn't miss sex. She doesn't need sex. She hardly ever even thinksabout sex.
She sits up and shuts her eyes. She breathes deeply. Om mani padme om. Who needs sex when there is such passion in as simple an act of life as breathing?
She finds a bug in a cornhusk and crushes it between thumb and forefinger.
Leonard Willard takes everybody's shit every day. He puts it in phials and labels it and catalogs it; he analyzes it and files the results. He operates and maintains the waste-reclamation systems and biological and mechanical filtering systems. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. If no one did it, the Ecosphere wouldn't work. Leonard likes to think of himself as the vital link in the Ecosphere's food chain. Filtration is his life. Ecosphere gives him an abundance of opportunity to feel fulfilled: there are filtration systems in the sewage facilities, in the garbage-disposal units, in the water-reclamation systems; there are desalinization units between the Ocean and the freshwater marsh; there are air filtration units, and air is also cleaned by pumping it beneath the Ecosphere and allowing it to percolate through the soil from several areas.
Leonard loves to purify things. To take a thing that is unusable in its present form, and by passing it through buffers and barriers and filters, distill a usable, needed thing - that makes him feel useful. Needed. Staff couldn't breathe without him. Staff couldn't drink without him. Without Leonard, staff couldn't take so much as a healthy shit. Without Leonard, the shit would never hit the fans.
Leonard has Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph system. Years ago radiation therapy made all his hair fall out and stabilized his condition enough that he could be put on chemotherapy, which only made him stupid and violently ill for two days out of every month. He began putting on weight again, and his hair grew back in, even thicker than before, and the doctors felt encouraged that his condition had stabilized. Somehow his body learned to live with the disease.
Or, from a different perspective, he thinks (reaching a gloved hand into a water conduit to withdraw what looks like a dirty wet air-conditioning filter), the disease has allowed his body to live. So that it can continue to feed. This is why Leonard rarely worries about the things that roam the Outside, the things Bill has dubbed carnitropes. He doesn't worry about them because his body is being eaten from the inside. Or, to distill it in a very Leonard-like way, there is shit in his blood, and he can't filter it out.
He shakes the wet filter over a plastic sheet. Ropy black strands drip down. Leonard cleans the filter with a compressed-air hose, returns it to the conduit, then bundles and twist-ties the plastic sheet.
Walking with it dripping to the lab, Leonard realizes that there is nowhere else on Earth, anymore, where he could perform his job. Leonard feels he is the most realistic of all the Staff - and he knows what it's like outside their brittle little environment. Though he helps maintain the station, and therefore the illusion the station represents, he understands intuitively that his reasons for doing so are quite different from theirs. They maintain Ecosphere as a denial of what has changed Outside. He maintains it as a triumphant affirmation of the same. As above, so below. None of the others, being physically fit, can appreciate this. Therefore none of the others can adequately appreciate Leonard.
But he keeps up a cheery fa?ade. It's important to him that he do this.
In the lab he unbundles the plastic and breathes deeply. Thatis the stuff of life, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Deke and Haiffa are fucking on the thirty-foot beach. Deke and Haiffa are always fucking somewhere. "Oh, look," Haiffa says. She points, and their rhythm halts. Deke rolls his head to look out on the water, not minding the sand that grinds into his brush-cut hair.
"Don't see nothin'," he says.
"A fish," she says. She sets her hands on his chest and resumes.
"Fish on Friday," he says. "Maybe I'll hook 'im. What's today?"
"I don't know." Her accent, which used to charm him, is invisible to him now. "Wednesday."
"Anything-Can-Happen Day," he says, and arches his back as he begins to come.
* * *
Above them on the roof, Dieter the marine biologist watches through the glass. Sometimes the Ecosphere to him is a big aquarium. He watches Deke and Haiffa not from a need to accommodate voyeurism so much as from a desire to alleviate boredom. The first couple of months, everybody went at everybody else in various combinations, then settled into a few pairings that dissolved, either from attrition or from entropy, and now everybody is more or less an environment unto his or her self. In this they are like the scientific wonder in which they all live, but which none calls home.
Dieter is supposed to be cleaning solar panels. Dust from the Arizona desert accumulates on the Ecosphere's glass-and-aluminum roof, and when it is thick upon the solar cells, the station's power supply is diminished. But there are a lot of solar-power cells, and it is a hot July day in the Arizona desert. Dieter takes frequent water breaks.
Below him Haiffa and Deke seem to be finished, and he looks away. He stands and puts his hands on his hips, turning to take in the gleaming, sloping geometry of glass and aluminum that is the station. Ecosphere is built into the side of a gently sloping hill; the rain forest uphill is forty feet higher than the desert downhill, which is also nearly six hundred feet distant. Hot air rises from the desert and flows uphill; condensers in the rain forest cool the air and separate the moisture. It actually rains in the indoor rain forest.
Dieter looks at the terraced Aztec pyramid of glass and aluminum that caps the rain forest. What would it feel like, he wonders, to jump from the top? A sense of freedom, the exhilaration of weightlessness, and then the ground, stopping all thought. All worry. All pain. All fear.
But an eighty-foot fall might not kill him. And even if it did, he'd just get back up and start walking around again. No, a bullet in the brain is about the only way to go, he thinks laconically, bending to pick up his rags and economy-size bottle of Windex. Shame Bill had to have the foresight to lock up the guns they obtained on that one expedition to Tucson, a year ago.
He looks left, over the edge and down at the parking lot behind the human habitat. The Jeep Cherokee and the Land Rover are still there. It would be so goddamned easy. Just get in, crank up one of those babies - might need to juice up the battery, but there was plenty of that to go around - put her in gear, and fucking go.
He'd do it in a minute, too, if there was someplace to fucking go to.
And Marly. She climbs down from a tree, drops her pruning shears, unties her harness, and lets it fall at her feet. She mops her brow. It is amazingly humid in here. "Tropical" is such a misleading word, she thinks, conjuring mai tais and virgin beaches. In the higher branches of the tree she has been pruning it is not so bad; the eternal trade wind from the downhill desert is cooling. On the surface, though, the breeze is broken up by the thick foliage, and the climate is dank and wet.
She watches a squirrel dart along branches. They've been having trouble with the squirrels. They're dying out, and no one is sure why. Marly was against their presence from the start; they're filthy little rodents that carry disease and live by stealing whatever they can get their grubby little paws on. Everybody likes them because they have neotenic characteristics: big heads in relation to the body, big eyes in relation to the head. They look, in other words, like babies, and everybodylikes babies. Well, small-scale evolution is taking care of the little shits, so Marly guesses she showed them. Nobody would listen to her because she's a botanist, which everybody knows is just a fancy word for gardener. Have you met Miss Tsung, our Chinese gardener - oh, I dobeg your pardon: Ms. Tsung, our Asian botanist.
She wipes palms on denim and walks from the rain forest to the sparse growth near the beach. She pulls open a screen door and walks down an access corridor, then out the screen door at the far end. Bare-breasted Bonnie waves to her as she cuts across a corner of the Agricultural wing. Marly ignores her and enters the Supply section of the human habitat.
"Supplies, supplies!" she says.
From a closet whose door is marked EXT STORES she takes the two-man tent and a sleeping bag.
Walking toward the front door she meets Billtheasshole walking in. He stops in front of her, eyebrows rising, and does not get out of her way. "Again?" he says, looking at the blue nylon tent bag and rolled sleeping bag. "I don't know that I altogether approve of this antisocial behavior, Marly. Everybody needs his privacy - or herprivacy - but you are actively segregatingyourself from us."
She holds the camping supplies before her like a shield. Her mouth forms an O as she mimics sudden recollection. "Oh, I amsorry," she says. "We were having the Tupperware party tonight, weren't we? Or were Haiffa and Deke going to sell us Amway? I forget."
"Grace tells me you didn't show up for your last two scheduled sessions." He rubs his jaw (tending toward jowls) with the span of thumb and forefinger. Of the four men on Staff, only Bill continues to shave - his badge of civilization endeavoring to persevere. Striking a blow for homo gillette.
She laughs. "Who has? I don't have time for her bullshit. She's more fucked-up than the rest of us. Just tell her it was my bad toilet training, okay?"
"I am merely attempting to express my concern over your lack of cooperation," he says with the mildness of psychotic conviction. "Everyone has to contribute if we're going to pull through - "
"Pull through? Pull through, Bill? What is this, some phasethe world's going through? Going to grow out of it, is that it?"
"I think I understand your resentment toward authority, Marly, but you must see that some sort of hierarchy is necessary in light of - "
"Authority?" She looks around, as if expecting a director to yell "Cut!" "Why don't you do me a favor, Bill, and fuck off?" She shoulders past him.
"This will have to go into my report," he warns.
She opens the door. "More demerits!" she wails to the vegetable crops. "Golly. I'm - I'm so ashamed." She turns back to smile meanly, then tries to slam the door behind her. The hydraulic lever at the top hisses that she'd better not.
A last swipe with a dirty rag, and Dieter grins at his reflection. "I can seemyself!" he says.
He collects the dirty rags scattered around him on the glass. Waste not, want not: the Golden Rule of the Ecosphere. He stands and surveys the surrounding Arizona desert. As an experiment in maintaining an artificial environment in the midst of an alien one, Ecosphere is immensely successful: They are an island of glass on the rusted surface of Mars.
He stretches cramped muscles and breathes in the dry Martian air. Dieter Schmoelling, naked to the alien plain, the only human being able to withstand -
He frowns. Wipes sweat from his brow. Shades his eyes, squints, bends forward.
A tunnel of dust, a furrow in the desert. A giant Martian mole burrowing toward the invading glass island. A Martian antibody come to attack the invading foreign cell.
A car.
[4]
Marly is pitching her tent in the downhill desert when the P.A. sounds an electronic bell: Bong!"All personnel to the fruit grove," commands Billtheasshole. Bong!"All personnel report to the fruit grove immediately." And clicks off.
What confidence, what assurance! The son of a bitch just knowsthat everybody will show up there, bong!Marly thinks of not showing up, just to remind him that his authority lies entirely in their acquiescence, but curiosity gets the better of her. Despite her dislike of him, she knows that Bill wouldn't call them together in the middle of their working day for no good reason. But what Bill thinks of as a good reason is not necessarily dreamt of in her philosophy.
Marly sighs, pulls up stakes, and walks around the bluff, past scrub, into savanna, beside the ocean, into the southern access corridor, across croplands, and into the fruit grove.
The others are already there, except for Bill. Their backs are to her as they look out the windows. "I suppose we're all wondering why he called us here," says Marly.
Dieter turns and beckons her over. She pulls an apple from a tree and heads toward them. She bites into the apple and Dieter frowns. She grins and offers it to him, Chinese Eve. His frown deepens, and she laughs at his seriousness.
He makes room for her and points to the ruler-straight desert road, but he really doesn't need to. Marly can see the car heading for them. It's only three or four miles away.
"Should've baked a cake," she says, but inside she feels a pang, something tightening.
Bill joins them, holding a double-barreled shotgun. Her heart slams, and for a moment she is certain Bill is going to kill them all. This is it; she knew it would happen someday -
Deke steps forward and takes the shotgun from Bill's hands. Bill is so surprised by this... this usurpation, that he allows him to.
Deke breaks the shotgun and removes the corrugated red plastic shells. He returns shells and broken shotgun to Bill, shakes his head in contempt, and steps back.
"They'll probably pull into the parking lot," says Bill. "I'm going out on the roof, in case they try anything." From a back pocket he pulls out a slim walkie-talkie. He hands it to Dieter. "I'll call you if I need you," he says. He turns to Leonard. "Talk to them over the P.A. in the monitor room," he orders. "Find out what they want and get them out of here. Ladies - "
"We'll make coffee," suggests Marly.
"I want you to keep out of sight."
"I want a gun."
Bill shakes his head. He turns away and heads for the human habitat, where the airlock is. They follow him, since the monitor room is at the north end of the human habitat anyway. Marly catches up to Bill. "Then give me the key to the armory," she persists. "You're not taking it out of here so you can get your ass shot off on the roof."
He frowns, but cannot fault her logic. He draws a many-keyed holder from a retractable line attached to his belt and selects a key. He gives it not to Marly but to Deke, then turns and trots ahead of them.
Marly glances back toward the apple trees. The car is perhaps two miles away.
Inside the habitat Bill veers right at a T intersection; the others veer left and climb a flight of stairs. They enter the monitor room - all but Deke, who grins at Haiffa, tosses the armory key, catches it, and hurries down the hall.
Camera One already stares unblinkingly at the asphalt parking lot. Leonard activates Camera Two and sends it panning. The others cluster at his chair.
"Check, check," says the walkie-talkie in Dieter's hand. "Do you read me? Over."
"Loud 'n' clear, man," replies Dieter. He rolls his eyes.
"I'm on the roof, making my way toward the agricultural wing where the cover's better. Over."
"Right. I mean, yeah... over?"
Leonard turns from the control panel. "I'm guh-guh- goingto test the puh-puh-P.A. Ask him if he c-c-can hearit."
Dieter relays the message, and Leonard says "T-testing wuh-wuh-one t-two three," into the microphone.
"Loud and clear," says Bill. "Listen, if there's any - here they are. Over and out."
The car is a dusty black El Camino. They watch on Monitor One as it pulls into the asphalt lot, slows, and parks beside the Land Rover. The driver waits for the dust to clear. Over the speakers they can hear the engine idle, can hear it knocking after it is switched off.
The driver opens the door and steps out holding a pump shotgun. He turns, says something to a passenger (there isn't room for more than two in the El Camino), and straightens. He shuts the door and approaches the Ecosphere.
He is the first live human being they have seen in over a year.
"Hello?" he calls. Squeak of feedback, and Marly winces. Leonard adjusts the gain. "Hello, is anybody there?"
Leonard pushes a button and Camera Two zooms in.
He is young - early twenties. His hair is dark, straight, shiny, tied in a pony tail, to his waist. Faded gray jeans with white-threaded holes in the knees below a long, unbuttoned, black-and-white-checked shirt with rolled sleeves. Earring dangling from right earlobe.
"Hello?" he calls again.
Leonard thumbs the mike switch. He clears his throat self-consciously and the man steps back. The shotgun comes up.
"Wuh-wuh-we hearyou," Leonard says.
The man looks around for the source of the voice.
Leonard glances at the others. "Wuh-wuh- whatdo you want?" he says into the mike.
The shotgun dips, lowers. "Food. Just - food. Me and my wife are... we haven't eaten in a while - "
Deke arrives carrying an armload of rifles and ammunition. Silently he gives one to each of the other six, continually glancing at the monitor.
" - and our baby is pretty sick. We just want some food; we'll leave you alone, after."
Bonnie refuses a rifle. Deke shrugs. "Your funeral," he says.
"If we give them food now they'll only come back for more later," says Grace.
"Prob'ly with friends," adds Deke, handing Marly a rifle.
Leonard fiddles with the monitor controls. Camera Two pans left, centers on the El Camino, and zooms. Leonard adjusts the focus. There is a young woman in the car, holding a bundle that might be a baby.
Leonard looks at Dieter, who shrugs.
On Camera One the man waits.
Leonard frowns and thumbs the mike again. "How did you nuh-nuh- knowwe w-were here?"
A breeze billows the tail of the young man's shirt. "There was an article in the paper," he says. "In the Tucson library. I thought maybe you were still here." He looks around and wipes his brow. "Hot out here," he says.
"Suffer, bud," says Deke. Marly glares at him.
Dieter goes to stand beside Leonard. "Maybe we should, like, tell him to get his wife out of the car," he says.
Leonard glances up. "W-w-what if he won't?"
"What if shewon't?" adds Bonnie.
"Hey, beggars can't be choosers," Dieter replies. "They'll do it."
Leonard turns back to the mike. "Tell your w-w- wifeto step out of the cuh, car," he says.
"You didn't say please," murmurs Marly.
"She - our baby's pretty sick," says the man. "I don't..." He seems indecisive, then turns toward the car and walks from Monitor One to Monitor Two. He opens the passenger door and leans in. He glances back once or twice as he speaks.
Leonard fiddles with the gain knobs.
" - ust do it. No one's going to hurt you... I don't care what the little fucker feels like, just do it. And keep your cakehole shut."
The passenger door opens and a girl gets out. She wears khaki pants, sandals, and a dirty white T-shirt. She is perhaps seventeen years old. She wears a lot of make-up and bright red lipstick. The breeze tugs her tangled hair.
She holds a bundle before her. A little hand protrudes from it, grabs air, finds her breast, clasps.
"All right," says the man. "Now, please - can you spare us some food?" Leonard pulls back Camera One until he's in view again. They watch him gesture expansively. "You have a lot; we just want enough for a few days. Just enough for us to drive across the desert. We're trying to get to California."
Again Leonard glances at the others. "Cuh, Cuh, California? What's there?"
"My brother."
"I'll just bet he is," mutters Grace.
"Hold on a m-m-minute," says Leonard, and kills the mike. He swivels in his chair with a questioning look.
"I don't like it, man," says Dieter.
"Not one bit," says Deke.
"Maybe just some apples, or something..." says Bonnie.
Marly pulls back the bolt of her carbine and begins feeding little missile shapes to the breech.
"Sure," says Deke. "You wanna take it out to 'em?"
"Belling the cat," muses Grace.
"Dieter? Dieter, do you read me?" Bill's voice, a loud whisper.
Dieter lifts the walkie-talkie. "Roger... Bill."
At the console, Leonard suppresses a giggle. Behind him on the monitors, the man, the girl, and the baby await their reply.
"Keep it down; I don't want them to hear me up here. Don't tell them we'll give them any food. Over."
"We were just voting on it," says Dieter.
"It's not a voting issue. They don't get any."
Marly finishes loading her rifle and slaps the bolt in place.
"Just a couple of apples?" asks Bonnie.
Marly glares at her, hating her every milquetoast fiber.
"We have to remember the Ecosphere," continues Bill's tinny voice. "We can't upset the balance. We can't introduce anything new or take anything away. We can't breach the integrity of the station."
Marly shoulders her rifle and leaves the room.
"Hey, listen, Bill - " begins Dieter, but Bill is still transmitting.
" - ink of what this station represents: we're a self-containedunit. We grew that food ourselves. We live on a day-to-day basis."
"They're not asking for very much," mutters Bonnie. She sits in a chair and stares sullenly at the television monitor.
Dieter thumbs the "send" button. "We think it's a bad idea for other reasons," he says. "Grace feels that if we feed them, they'll just, like, come back for more. Probably they'll tell others, y'know? Uh... over."
"Exactly! And they'lltell others, and we'll be barraged. We'll be like a... a free McDonald's out here."
"Golden arches," says Haiffa solemnly, and steeples her hands. Deke pinches her butt.
"We've got a consensus, then?" asks Dieter.
"Tell them no," says the walkie-talkie.
"They don't look too hungry to me," says Deke. "Get 'em outta here."
"Still," mutters Bonnie, "it seems such a shame..." She watches the monitor and does nothing.
"Hello? Hey, hello?"
Leonard activates the mike. "Wuh-wuh-we're still here," he says. He seems much more confident now that a decision has been made for him. "Listen, we... we've taken stock of our, um, situationhere, and we've talked it over, and examined the, uh, parametersof our food-intake quotients. You have to understand: we're rationed out ourselves. A meal for you means a meal less for someone here." His tone has become warm, congenial. "I'm sure you understand."
"You're saying no?" The beggar seems incredulous.
"I'm saying I'm sorry, but we've analyzed your situation with regard to ours, and we simply can't... accommodateyou at this time."
"I don't fucking believe - you won't give us three days' food?" He keeps glancing around, as if persuasive arguments lie around the asphalt parking lot. "What about my wife?" he asks. "What about our baby?"
"I'm very sorry," says Leonard. He does not sound very sorry. He sounds, in fact, glad to be in a position to refuse something to someone, for a change. Like a hotel manager effusively sympathetic because there's no room at his inn. "But you come here asking a favor," he continues stutterlessly, "and you don't have any right to blame us for declining to grant it."
"Favor?" The man raises the gun. "You want a favor, you god - "
"Hold it right there, son." Bill's voice, over the speakers.
The young man hesitates.
"Don't do it. I don't want to shoot, but I will." Bill doesn't sound reluctant to shoot. He sounds very excited. "Now, you've asked for help and we can't give it. We would if we could. My advice to you is for you and your wife to get back in your car and head out of here. Don't head for California; head for Phoenix. There's bound to be food there, and it's only a few hours' drive."
"But we just camefrom - "
"Then head south. But you can't stay here. You got that? We don't have anything for you."
"We'll workfor it!"
"There's no work for you here. This is a highly sophisticated station, and it takes a highly trained staff to operate it. There are a lot of us, and we're all armed. We need everything we have, and there isn't enough to go around. I'm sorry, son, but that's life in the big city. I - "
Bill breaks off. The young man and his wife look at something off camera.
"Get back inside!" yells Bill. "Back inside, now! That's an order!"
Leonard pans Camera One as close as it can come to the airlock entrance, which is below it and to the right. He shakes his head and gives a low whistle.
"Well," says Dieter. "Fuck me."
[5]
The rifle is braced on its strap on her shoulder. Her finger is on the trigger. In the other hand she holds a wicker basket. She's not nervous as she heads toward them - in fact, she's surprised how calm she is. Behind and above her, Billtheasshole yells for her to get back inside. She ignores him, but she feels a curious itching between her shoulder blades - probably because Bill is more likely to shoot her than they are.
They don't look as good off camera. A scar splits his eyebrow; another runs the length of his upper arm, bisecting a blue-gray anchor tattooed on his muscular biceps. He's not thin, but he looks undernourished. Vitamin deficiencies.
And the girl looks... well, wornis the only word Marly can think of. Used up. Her eyes are dull and unresponsive.
The hand gropes again from the bundle the girl carries. She presses it protectively to her, and Marly glimpses mottled flesh when the baby tries to suck the girl's nipple through the cotton of her T-shirt.
Marly stops ten feet from the man and sets down the basket. The girl glances down and holds the baby farther from her body.
The man and Marly stare at each other for a moment.
"What's it like?" asks Marly. She inclines her head to indicate the Arizona desert. "Out there."
"Pretty rough," he says.
She nods a few times. "Well..." She indicates the basket and steps back from it. "I'm sorry I can't do more. There's fruit, some vegetables, a little meat. A can of milk for the baby - what's wrong with it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, none of us is a medical doctor," she says. "But you might want to try a pharmacy whatever town you go through next. Or a doctor's office. If it's an infection, try ampicillin. If it's some kind of disease... well, antibiotics shouldn't hurt anyway. But keep her - him?" They don't say; Marly raises an eyebrow and continues. "...on liquids, and get her out of this heat."
Since setting down the basket she's been backing toward the airlock. The man comes forward. Instead of picking up the basket, he glances at the roof of the habitat.
"No one's going to shoot you," says Marly. "Just take it and go. And don't come back."
He lifts the basket and backs toward the El Camino. The girl is already behind the open passenger door, and now she eases into the cab. He sets the basket next to her, gets in, and shuts the door.
The man studies Marly. He nods, slowly. He starts the car and backs out. He backs up until he is out of the parking lot, then turns around and drives away.
For several minutes Marly watches the settling of the receding rooster tail raised by the car, and then she goes inside.
"Just who the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm one-eighth of this station, same as you, and I grew that food as much as anybody else did."
"You defied a direct order - "
"From someone with no authority over me. You know as well as I do that the hierarchy depends on the nature of the crisis."
"We put it to a vote, damn you - "
"Nobody asked for mine. How about you, Grace? Haiffa? Leonard? Bonnie?"
"Did you give any thought whatsoever to the repercussions this might have on us? You've just sent ripples through a very small pond."
"For Christ's sake, Bill, I gave them enough food to last them three days - if they're careful."
"We're not much more than three days from food depletion ourselves. Everychange affects allof us. You of all people should know that, Marly. The experiment can't continue if outside - "
"The experiment ended over a yearago, Bill! Along with the rest of civilization! Why don't you fucking wake up!"
"All the more reason for us to hold out. Maintaining this station ismaintaining civilization."
"But not humanity."
"Hey, Marly - the guy's just tryin' to say that, y'know - sometimes hard decisions have to be made. I'm sure he didn't like turning them down. Did you, man?"
"Of course not."
"Oh, Christ! Look, I'll skipa meal a day for three days, to make everything nice and even, all right? Will that make you happy?"
" Ithought we should give them some food."
"Yeah, Bonnie. But you didn't do shit."
[6]
" Motherfuckers." Sailor has the pedal to the metal. "Those mother fuckers, man. I thought we'd just grab some food from them, you know? As an excuse to case the place. See how many of them are left, see how good their security is, all that shit. But, goddamn, I never thought they wouldn't give us any food. Fuck, we'dhave given us food, I know we would've. We've doneit before! Sons of fucking bitches." He bangs the steering wheel. "They wouldn't feed a goddamn baby, man!" He glances at Sweetpea. "You believethat?"
Sweetpea is holding the baby at arm's length, staring at it with loathing. "It was chewing," she says dully.
"Of course it was chewing; it's a goddamn - "
She drops the baby and begins batting her hands about her as if fighting off wasps. "It was chewing, it was chewing, it was trying to eat me through my shirt, its mouthwas on me, oh, God, and it was moving, and I thought, that poor baby, and then I realized - "
Sailor grabs her arm and yanks. The El Camino swerves. "Calm down. Calm fucking down."
She stares at him wide-eyed. On the floorboard the baby paddles air like a roach on its back. Half out of its swaddling, the skin around its neck blues where the make-up leaves off, its left arm missing, ripped from the socket some unknown time ago. Its right arm reaches; its toothless mouth opens and closes. Its eyes are like flat plastic.
Sweetpea pulls her legs up to the seat.
"We have to drive straight out of here," says Sailor. "We can't give them any reason to think something's not right. Just stay calm until we get over the rise, there, all right? All right?"
"I want it out of here."
"In a minute." He seems amused at her revulsion. He snorts. "Just close your eyes and think of England."
Huddled on the seat, she turns to look at him. A mile later she says, "You wanna know why I fuck all the others and not you?"
Sailor gives her a you-can't-be-serious look. "Because I don't wantto fuck all the others?" he asks innocently.
She ignores him. "Sometimes the others are nice to me, you know? They give me things, they show me things. They take me where good things are. You give me the fucking creeps. You're like a fucking deadhead; you live inside your brain all the time and hardly ever come out, and when you do, it's fucking creepy. You got maggots in your brain, or something. I wouldn't fuck you if you were the last man on earth."
"Well, gosh," Sailor says meanly. "There can't be many more to go." He sighs. "Maybe someday..."
She slits her eyes and he laughs.
They top the rise. On the other side Sailor pulls off the road and fishes out his .45 semiautomatic from under the seat. He works the action and turns off the engine. He takes the keys, not about to leave them with her. He goes to her side and opens the door. He picks up the baby and turns to face the desert.
Its head lolls. Its mouth works. Its single hand grabs gently at the hair on his forearm. Its mouth opens and closes, opens and closes.
He holds the baby at arm's length, puts the barrel of the pistol against one unblinking flat-plastic eye, and fires.
[7]
hands: remember other hands of other food that touch and make the hunger go without the need of food from her a her i remember but the hunger and without her now the hunger still but her hands
[8]
Marly takes soil samples from the savanna. She must determine whether the recirculated air is percolating properly throughout all the environments; she suspects blockage in places.
Dieter leans against a mangrove tree, arms folded, left leg crossed over right.
"Hey, I'm not saying that you did the wrong thing," he is saying. "I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I mean, from Bill's standpoint, you've violated the integrity of the Ecosphere. You risked possible contagion; you depleted a carefully regulated - "
She stands with a metal scoop and a dripping, mud-filled plastic baggie in hand. She turns away from him and squishes toward another section of mangrove. She squats and gropes in the stagnant water.
Other than their brief sexual liaison in the first months of the station's operation, Dieter and Marly have something in common: They both helped design environments for the EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World in Florida. Under contract from Kraft, Marly worked on a pavilion called The Land, which raised its own crops in various experimental ways, including hydroponics and alternate-gravity centrifuge environments. Dieter helped stock a million-gallon, walk-through ocean called The Living Seas, complete with sharks and dolphins.
Marly wonders how ol' Walt Disney World is faring these days. The personnel and guests probably look and act pretty much the same. Down & Out in Tomorrowland, same as her.
Now, a week after reality so rudely impinged upon their own little world, Marly is trying to sever all connections with Staff as best she can, under the confined circumstances. She has slept in a tent in the desert every night. She has eaten only food she picks and prepares herself from the Agriculture wing. She does not report for morning exercises with Bill, psychiatric consultation with Grace, the weekly Staff gripe sessions, or the twice-weekly operations reports. She receives all environmental updates from the computer. She stands night watch on the monitor screens when scheduled to - a duty increased since what she has come
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