Glass and Gardens Page 4

  Del’s heart somersaulted in anticipation as she imagined the mischief an octopus might get up to in space. “Save me a ticket to the opening.”

  “Will do. So, are you here for work or pleasure this time?”

  “It’s always a bit of both. But I’m meeting an old friend here later.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. And say ‘hi’ to your folks for me.”

  “I will.”

  Del visited the various research pods, listening as each scientist enthused about their latest project. It was hard to imagine that, thirty years ago, all she had was a room full of bugs and a dream. As it turned out, others had shared that dream.

  In the end, the Solaria Grande Prize had gone to a non-profit organisation that coordinated teams of teachers, librarians, and androids, sending them out in nimble airships to help communities build, equip, and staff schools for girls in remote regions.

  But Del’s wobbly video of a weightless spider gripping a wad of aluminium had captured the imagination of a few people out there, some of whom had looked into Del’s projects and reached out to her, and to each other. And, like a colony of spiders, the web of connections had grown until it was strong enough to catch an elephant. Or launch a space station.

  Later that night, Del enjoyed dinner at one of the station’s restaurants—spicy eggplant stew and mango pancakes—before she made her way back to the Summer Arboretum. The dome had drifted into its nocturnal cycle, the lights dimmed so that only moonlight shone through the skylights. Del strolled the gentle slopes, and from a distant pod, disoriented crickets sang odes to memories of ‘up’ and ‘down.’

  “Hi, Del. I brought you something.”

  Del turned to see Ziad standing beside a sandstone water feature, holding a plate of something that resembled a swirl of light.

  Del laughed, wrapping her friend in a warm embrace. “How was your flight?”

  “Terrifying. I refer to the ticket price, not the journey.”

  Del winced. “Space tourism is still in its infancy—”

  “You mean poorly regulated monopolies are still gouging consumers.”

  “Speaking of monopolies, how’s Xiaren?”

  “She’s well. Still irritated every time the press calls her a ‘biofuels magnate’.”

  “Ah, she’ll always be a fromager at heart.”

  Ziad smiled, his gaze coming to rest on the tiny statue of a spider and her moon. “Well, we all managed to follow our hearts, didn’t we?”

  Del considered this. “I think, perhaps, we followed the science and the necessity. And our hearts just didn’t allow us to give up.”

  A breeze stirred in the microclimate of the arboretum, and Del could almost taste the smoky summers of long ago. She and Ziad stood side by side, watching the Earth swirl gently with the seasons.

  From up here, all of humanity was little more than a microcosm, every living speck indistinguishable from any other. And yet, if you looked closer, you’d see the breathtaking complexity of every single soul; you’d see new stories constantly unfolding, new journeys constantly beginning.

  Somewhere, down there, a pair of ambitious teenagers shared their hopes beneath a gibbous moon.

  Somewhere, down there, a campfire burned beneath a sky streaked with galaxies, and a moth fluttered, unscathed, through the flames.

  And somewhere, down there, an ogre-faced spider watched a strange star moving across the midnight sky, and dreamed.

  ***

  DK Mok is a fantasy and science fiction author whose novels include Squid’s Grief and Hunt for Valamon. DK has been shortlisted for four Aurealis Awards, two Ditmars and a WSFA Small Press Award. DK graduated from UNSW with a degree in Psychology, pursuing her interests in both social justice and scientist humour. DK lives in Sydney, Australia, and her favourite fossil deposit is the Burgess Shale. Connect on Twitter @dk_mok or www.dkmok.com.

  Riot of the Wind and Sun

  by Jennifer Lee Rossman

  “‘Riot of the Wind and Sun. Coming soon to a city near you’,” Zeph read aloud from her tablet while the nail polish dried.

  The girls laughed, the sound echoing off the carved cave walls along with the energetic song blaring from their music player. It was Kirra’s favorite, a protest song called “Always, Always.”

  “Not likely,” Kirra said, reaching into the nearest glass bowl. She scattered a handful of red beads in her lap, her dress forming a nice little hammock for them in the valley between her outstretched legs. “Even if we had better roads into town, they wouldn’t come.” She speared a tiny seed bead on her needle. “No one knows we exist.”

  “Will you stop moving!” Zeph chided, grabbing Kirra’s foot. She painted the final coat on her big toe with a steady hand. The bright yellow polish complemented Kirra’s dark skin, like the rising sun over the Outback.

  The lights flickered and dimmed. Not a total blackout this time, but the girls’ nails still glowed, along with their clothes and the beads. It would be brighter in the front of the shop, where Kirra’s aunt had installed phosphorescent backup lighting, but no one could criticize the volume of their music if they stayed in the storeroom.

  “Aw, potch,” Zeph swore. “You wanted your whole foot yellow, yeah?”

  Kirra looked at the glowing streak across her foot. “No!”

  Zeph tried to wipe it off, but succeeded only in smearing it. “Eh. Tell people you’re starting a trend.” She went back to reading from her tablet. “They’re doing pop-up concerts. Just showing up in random towns and asking to play.”

  “Entire town living in old opal mines? We’re nothing if not random.” Kirra squinted at the design she was beading. Just random patches of color right now, but they’d soon morph into the dingos and lizards she saw in her mind.

  “Just have to get us on the map,” Zeph announced, tossing her tablet aside. The last page of the weekly news blast glowed eerily in the semidarkness: a poster for Riot of the Wind and Sun’s summer concert tour, featuring a stylized wind turbine slashing the coat of arms of Adelaide.

  Known for being edgy and rebellious, the band was made up of people who had fought in the war for the rights of little outpost towns like Coober Pedy. They were the people who had made it possible for them to use some of the energy they generated on their massive wind and solar farms, instead of having all of it diverted to Adelaide and the other big cities.

  Kirra stared at the poster as the lights dimmed further around them, the screen illuminating her face and glinting on all the beads in her hair.

  Coober Pedy was exactly the kind of place Riot of the Wind and Sun would love to play an impromptu concert.

  If only they knew it existed.

  ***

  Kirra sat on the stone floor of her aunt’s shop, sewing beads onto dresses made of smart fabric that felt like cool water in her hands. A luxury in the underground city, but an absolute necessity for those that braved the outside, like the turbine mechanics and the people who swept the red Outback dust from the acres of solar panels.

  In addition to adding a little flair to otherwise plain tans and whites, the beads absorbed light, like her nail polish and the backup lighting that ran along the ceilings of most of the caves and tunnels, and emitted a bright glow in case of a power outage. Some people had their entire homes and furniture painted with glow, so they’d never be inconvenienced on days when the capital took all the power.

  Some of the dresses were just beaded on the edge. Simple geometric patterns. But the really fancy gowns, the ones they made special for weddings and birthdays, they were elaborate as the night sky, each design passed down from the first people of Australia who had lived there even before the Europeans came. Those dresses were her favorite, like family scrapbooks you could wear.

  Her aunt worked from a pattern, but Kirra could see it in her mind, work out what bead had to go where to create the Rainbow Serpent motif.

  While she worked, she hummed Riot songs and imagined the thrill of seeing them play live. It
’d have to be a night concert—the old opal mines the town was built in were expansive, but not even the chapel could hold the audience of a rock concert, and the heat of the day was too oppressive.

  They could set up the stage on that little hill overlooking town, with the turbines in the background, and everyone would be there in their best beaded clothes. The night would glow with music.

  A plain gown draped across the counter caught Kirra’s eye, and she started absent-mindedly imagining the design she’d bead onto it to wear for the concert that would never happen.

  Soft greens like the first shoots of spring, beiges and rusts like the Outback, all swirled together in a spiraling pattern that would glow like the great river of stars in the night sky.

  Curious, she had just stood up to see what shades of green they had in storage when Zeph came running into the shop, waving her tablet.

  “They’re coming!”

  Kirra’s heart stopped, and forgot to start again for a few seconds.

  “No, no,” Zeph said quickly, “not them.” She thrust the tablet in her friend’s face.

  This week’s news blast featured an announcement that a census survey would take place in five days.

  Kirra looked up at the most recent census map from a decade before, displayed on the shop’s smooth rock wall. Australia was a dark patch in the ocean, the lights of big cities a bright fringe on either coast. A black swath in the middle was the Outback, its expanse dotted with the occasional tiny point of light at the location of a bigger solar or wind farm, the kind that could afford cooling biodomes over their aboveground settlements.

  Coober Pedy had exactly one light on the surface, a little red one that blinked a warning so hovercraft wouldn’t get too close to the open mine shafts, and no one but turbine inspectors and the odd parcel delivery ever came to town.

  On the map, Kirra’s aunt had circled a dark patch at the southern end of the old Stuart Highway and scrawled “Coober Pedy” in bright letters.

  “They’d see something that big,” Zeph said with a laugh. “‘Coober Pedy’ written across the desert? But anyway, I thought we could go up topways that night, see if we can spot the plane?”

  Kirra didn’t answer, her attention fixated on the map.

  Five days.

  Yeah, they could do it in five days.

  She nodded to herself. “Let’s put Coober Pedy on the map.”

  ***

  Long shadows swept across the desert as the turbine giants swung their arms in the last orange rays of sunlight. The ground radiated heat, but the air was starting to cool enough that it no longer felt like inhaling an oven.

  Kirra sat on the hill where she hoped the band would play, idly pushing beads around in the soil.

  “What are we waiting for?” Zeph asked again.

  “You’ll see.”

  Or so Kirra hoped.

  She pushed the beads into the shape of letters, variations on the pattern springing into her mind fully formed. In the simplest font, each letter was three beads by five. That meant thirty-eight across, with spaces, fewer if she put the words on top of each other. She imagined a swooping arrow curving off the end of the Y, pointing directly at the city.

  She stared down at the beads and chewed her lip in thought. How did tiny beads translate to meters and acres? Would they have enough glow to embellish the desert?

  Kirra’s nails began to emit a faint yellow light as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

  Zeph stood, craning her neck. “What’s that?”

  Grinning, Kirra scrambled to her feet. Way out beyond the first row of solar panels, a multicolored glow pierced the endless black of night.

  “That,” she said, grabbing Zeph’s arm in excitement, “is a big pile of every luminescent thing I own.”

  Zeph tilted her head to the side. “What did you go and do that for?”

  In response, Kirra gestured grandly to the beads.

  “‘Coober Pedy’,” Zeph read.

  “Now pretend each letter’s an acre tall. The plane can’t miss us if they try.”

  ***

  The sun gave life to the Earth. Nurtured her with light and warmth and made her vibrant and beautiful. When it struck the blue-black photovoltaic cells that carpeted the Outback, its light was transformed into energy that brought warmth and life to the most inhospitable caverns.

  It also turned the air to liquid fire, or so it felt as Kirra and Zeph sped along the solar fields with Zeph’s father. Their scarves fluttered over their faces in the wind, the built-in filters keeping the blowing sand from entering their mouths, but Kirra felt her lungs burning with every breath.

  When they stopped to sweep the dust from the shimmering panels, which required getting out of the shaded hovercraft, she thought her skin would burst into flames, even though not a centimeter of it was exposed to the harsh rays.

  Zeph’s father welcomed the help. Zeph, having been volunteered without her knowledge, glared from beneath her floppy hat, but dutifully took measurements on her tablet and scattered the glowing beads like breadcrumbs.

  “It’s too big,” she reported. “Everything you own made a spot the size of the space inside one of the Os.” She showed Kirra the diagram, all math and squiggles that didn’t mean anything.

  In her mind, Kirra saw the fields from above, saw the path of their hover as it scrawled the words across the Outback. Big, yes. Massive. But too big? No, she thought. Just big enough to put them on the map.

  ***

  For the next two nights, they worked. Every kid in Coober Pedy, and a good number of the adults, trudging back and forth from town to the fields with backup lights and spare clothes and household items.

  The beads Kirra and Zeph had left in the desert shone with the absorbed light of day, a million points of light in the black sand. Like a reflection of the sky and all its stars.

  Kirra flitted from letter to letter, helping her townspeople fill in the outlines that would label them, would bring their little town back to the world for the first time in a hundred years.

  It used to be no one came to the outposts. Left them to fend for themselves and live only to supply the capital with power. Then the outposts rebelled, cut off the power entirely. Then people came, people with guns and explosives. They came every time the towns dared to fight back.

  The war fixed that. People from all across Australia, risking their lives to travel thousands of kilometers to round up the other towns and fight. People as young as Kirra had led armies into the capital itself.

  Now that they had power, they got news from outside and seasonal visits from the mail truck. But no one else came. No one cared.

  They would come once Coober Pedy was on the map. Tourists to buy some beaded dresses and the opals the town had been built upon, geologists to study the old mines.

  Bands like Riot of the Wind and Sun.

  Kirra’s heart sang out in joy as the letters came into being, each a shining beacon shouting news of their existence into the void.

  A breeze picked up, billowing her skirt and throwing sharp projectiles of sand at her face. It showed no signs of stopping and by the end of the night, a sloped pile had accumulated at the base of each turbine.

  ***

  The winds continued all through the day. The sweepers had to fight to keep the sand from accumulating on the panels, leaving no time to uncover the now-buried letters.

  Kirra stood in the shade of what had once been the entrance to one of the larger mines, watching the sun in its freefall. Soon it would hit the ground, splash stars up into the sky. All over Australia, lights would come on and the planes would fly over to map them all.

  And Coober Pedy would be forgotten once again.

  It took every bit of strength for Kirra not to crumble to the floor and cry. Her beautiful words would never be seen now, and Riot of the Wind and Sun would never come. The summer would end without a concert, their town little more than a blank spot on the map.

  Echoing footsteps prece
ded Zeph’s arrival at her side. She took her friend’s hand wordlessly, their nails glowing yellow and pink in the twilight.

  “There’s no time to dig them out,” Kirra whispered. “Not before the plane comes by. All I’ve done is get sand on all our spare clothes.”

  “Just the spares,” Zeph pointed out.

  Kirra looked at her curiously, the seed of an idea taking root. Zeph had donated most of her luminescent wardrobe to the cause, but like the rest of the three thousand citizens, she’d kept a few items for safety’s sake. Wasn’t good to be caught in the dark when the lights went out.

  Zeph’s loose blouse glowed a soft blue, her pants a rainbow of beaded trim. Kirra wore something similar, her shirt accented with cutouts around the shoulder, and lighted threads wound through her braids completed her pink aura.

  Most everyone in town would glow, if the lights went out. Or if they went out in the night.

  “Go get everyone,” Kirra said suddenly.

  “Everyone?” Zeph asked. “Everyone who?”

  “Everyone. The whole town. Get them and meet me in the fields.”

  Kirra took off at a run, her feet striking the sunbaked earth, and didn’t stop until she reached the mounds of sand where her letters should have been. She couldn’t make out the shapes, but she saw the image in her mind, and that was all that mattered.

  The townsfolk appeared on the horizon, their brightest clothes turning the procession into a winding ribbon of light. Kirra wasted no time in directing them as the low hum of a distant plane cut through the night.

  When everyone else was in position, Kirra laid herself on the warm ground, her body making the very point of the arrow.

  One of the stars blinked overhead, slowly tracking across the sky. Kirra waved at the pilots. They couldn’t see her; she was far too small. But maybe they could see the town.

  She imagined their surprise as they passed over an empty stretch of Outback, only to see a great swath of color. A neon sign shouting “Coober Pedy” with the voice of every one of its citizens.