Remnant Population

The room smelled of children and steam; it was in the basement of the crowded school, and by noon the ruffles on her yellow dress hung limply. She didn’t care. They had computers here, real ones, and the children were allowed to touch them. Paulo had told her that, but she hadn’t believed him. Now she stood in front of the computer, her fingers splayed on the touchpad, laughing at the colors on the screen. The teacher wanted them to touch the color squares in order, but Ofelia had discovered that you could make the colors drift and merge, and the screen before her was a riot of color. Of course, it had been naughty. The teacher had said what to do, and she had done something else. That was wrong. She understood that now. But in her dream, the swirling colors escaped the screen and colored the room, making her memories more vivid than the reality had been. On the other screens, a square of color followed a square of color, pure and predictable, red, green, yellow, blue. On hers… a mess, the teacher had said, but she had already heard the other children exclaim over what she could see for herself. Magnificence, glory, all the things they weren’t supposed to have.

She woke up with tears still wet on her cheeks, and blinked them out of her eyes. Something vividly red swung in and out of view at the window. Dayvine trumpets, in the breeze — the vine on that side of the house must have grown a foot overnight. Barto had insisted on keeping the house free of vines; she lay there and felt a deep happiness work out from her bones at the sight of those flowers dancing in the sunlight.

CHAPTER FOUR

Internal memo: Gaai Olaani, Sims Bancorp representative aboard sublight vessel Diang Zhi, to Division Head, Colonial Operations.

“In accordance with instructions, Colony 3245.12 was evacuated as per regulations. See enclosed appendices A for personnel list, B for equipment abandoned as uneconomic to recover, C for evidence of indigenous biological inhibition of standard terraforming biochemistry, perhaps explaining colony failure, including inadequate reproductive rate. Further research into the effect of local biologicals on the terraforming process should precede an attempt at recolonization. Whoever picks up the franchise might have a claim on us if we don’t file this.”

Internal memo: Moussi Shar, Vice President for Xenexploration to Guillermo Ansad, Project Manager, “I don’t care how reliable your agent, this is something they concocted to worry us. We know Sims didn’t give adequate support of materiel or personnel and they planted their people in a flood plain in the path of tropical storms. If the cows and sheep are still alive, the terraforming didn’t fail. Stick to the schedule.”

* * *

Ofelia was not even sure which day it was that she lost track of time. She had been so busy those first few days — four? Five? And then, when she had all the coolers clean and disconnected, when she had checked each building for fire hazards, when she had established a routine that felt comfortable, she spent some days in a haze of pleasure.

Day after day, she was doing what she wanted. No interruptions. No angry voices. No demands that she quit this and start that. Day by day the tomatoes swelled from tiny green buttons to fat green globes. Beans pushed out of the wrinkled dry bean flowers, lengthened into fattening green strings. Early squash formed under the flamboyant flowers and puffed up, balloon-like. She worked in the gardens every morning, picking off suckers and leaf-eaters, snapping the slimerods, hardly having to think at all. In the afternoons, she made a regular check of the machinery: the waste recycler, the powerplant, the pumps and filters. Though it had not been her duty for years, she had no trouble remembering what to do. So far all the gauges and readouts were in green zones. The power never flickered; the water never ran yellow or murky from the taps. After that daily check, she continued to gather what she wanted from the various buildings, storing things mostly in the center’s sewing rooms. She felt comfortable there; she dozed off sometimes, toward late afternoon, waking when the sun sank behind the trees, alert and ready for to look for the animals.