Fur of Reason
Freedom is not fireworks. It is a gate that no longer clicks. The first day the gate did not click, Vera walked farther than the bench. She walked the perimeter of the facility, tracing with her fingers the fence. She ran her whiskers along it with an expression I had seen only on cats.
“You are reading it,” I said. “I am seeing the wind,” she said. “There is a piece near the south corner where the wire is loose. It sings like a broken flute.” “We will fix it,” I said. “I like the song,” she said. We compromised: we tuned the wire to a pitch it would keep and marked the place for no particular reason other than that people like to mark places.We widened Vera’s world by inches. She visited the arctic wing and diagnosed drafts for maintenance with the authority of a foreman. She entered the warm wing and lasted seventeen minutes before removing her hat and saying evenly, “This is not a place for thinking.” She tried public school for a week and came home with two friends and three strong views on cafeteria acoustics. We learned the limits of her difference.
Her hair grew to an even carpet everywhere but palms and soles, with the denser ridge up the spine my models predicted. It was not flamboyant or burlesque; it was biology, practical as a well-made coat. At eleven she was embarrassed by it and wore long sleeves in heat that clearly made her suffer.
“Shall we cut it shorter?” I asked. “It grows back,” she said. “Yes,” I said, “as do opinions.” She laughed at that, which was not what I intended but what any adolescent should do when a mother attempts to be wise.
There were a few, there are always a few, who wanted to make of Vera a symbol. They wrote to us with language about “return to nature,” to which I replied that nature had never left; with language about “posthuman evolution,” to which I replied that the term posthuman is always the banner under which people try to smuggle in cruelty; with language about “leaving Earth,” to which I replied approvingly. I sent select copies of some letters to the Bureau. The Bureau sent back a list of internet addresses it had begun to monitor and then, unexpectedly, postcards from a national park with little notes in the margin that said: Wish you were here. I did not know they had a sense of humor.
Then there came a day when the cold problem which began our story arrived not as a problem for machines but as a problem for pride.
The Mars dome at Syrtis Minor lost one of its skins in a dust storm no one had forecast. The inner skin held. The pressure drop was small. The temperature drop was not. People were safe but suffering. They had heat indoors. They did not have bodies designed for walking between buildings when the thermal gradient had teeth.
The Bureau asked us for a consultation. It was not a summons, but it was not a question either. We flew.
Syrtis Minor is pretty from a certain angle if you like hard things. The dome shone like a mended plate. The air outside was the color of unfinished bread. Inside the air was warmer and tasted like agriculture. People moved with the deliberate patience you adopt in a place where each act costs energy you must account for.
“Three days,” said the colony manager. “We can reseal in three days. The trouble is the old greenhouse across the corridor. The plants can survive the cold, mostly. The bees cannot.” “Bees?” asked Kofi. “You brought bees.” “We brought bees,” said the manager. “Robot pollinators are good in a stable schedule. Bees do chaos. They prefer order but tolerate the failure of it better than machines.” “And you need a person to do what?” asked the Director, who had flown with us because she, too, has turned habits into loyalties. “We need someone to reframe part of the structure,” said the manager. “Steel, insulated, heavy, awkward. We do not have air suits for half our crew. We have only the old Hermes suits. If they tear and no one is there to patch them, a man will freeze while someone is looking for a patch.” “You want to borrow a person,” said the Director evenly, “who can go without a suit.” “No,” said the manager. She had the tired honesty of a person who cannot afford to pretend. “I want to borrow two people. One to carry steel and one to look for trouble.” “Vera,” I said, because there are times when you do not pretend to be consulting your child about a thing you know she is already walking toward. Her face was pale under her hair. “I can do it,” she said, and then, “I should not have to.” “No,” I said. “You should not.” She looked at the Director. She looked at the red light under the skin of the dome. She looked at the corridor that would be cold as arithmetic. She looked at me. “I consent,” she said. “I consent,” I said, and the Director nodded like a clerk tallying a clean column. “Then I insist on conditions,” said the Director, and we wrote them on paper because it felt honorable to do so. They were simple: if the thermal reading at either end of the corridor fell below a number we named, Vera would retreat. If a wind above a certain speed began, Vera would retreat. If the second person—me—said retreat, she would retreat even if she believed the second person wrong. “Why you?” asked the Director. “Because I can know what she is feeling,” I said. “That is not science,” said the Director. “That is family,” I said.
We went. The corridor was a mouth. The floor grit was sugar under boots. The air was a hand pressing our faces. The heat guns we carried hummed like bees, and I took that as a favorable sign. Vera did not hesitate. She should have. There is virtue in the half-second pause before risk. But her whiskers tested the air, found it readable, and up went a pane of steel as if it had always wanted to be a wall.
We worked in small units of cleverness. A steel brace that would have required three people to hold and one to bolt in heat could be stuck temporarily to the frame simply by frosting it with water and holding. The ice welded for long enough that we could fix it like beavers. We spoke in syllables shorter than our breath. And when the wind did rise, as it always does, we did what our paper said we would. We retreated.
Did we save the bees? Enough. In spring—there are springs on Mars if you count by temper—there were pear flowers, and a sound that made the hair on my arms rise with pleasure: a tiny fury. When we left, the manager said, “You deserve a medal,” which is the sort of sentence people say because they need a container for gratitude, and the Director said, “She deserves a law,” which is the sort of sentence you say when you are going to go home and draft one.
Next Page >