Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

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I WANT BEANS. Luna took the sentence strip Ben offered her. She thought he was asking for sungka, but didn’t have the right icon— he only had his small travel communication book. “Oh, okay,” she said, pulling her sungka board from its place under the coffee table. She held it up. “Sungka?” Ben reached for the wooden board, so she knew she had guessed correctly. He placed the board on the couch between them. Luna stuck her hand underneath the table, grabbed a clear plastic box full of pinto beans, and began counting beans into each of the seven bowl-like holes in her side of the oblong board. She had three done when Ben finished filling his side. He was good with numbers. “Man, you’re fast, Bennie-boy.” Ben cleared his sentence strip and had a comment ready by the time Luna had finished counting her beans. I LIKE BEANS. Luna took the sentence he offered, reading it quickly before placing it back on the Velcro strip at the bottom of Ben’s book. “You like sungka. I know. I do too.” She made a mental 26 In the Green K. S. Patterson note to make a “sungka” PCS for Ben’s travel book. She paused for a moment, looking at Ben. His eyes slid away from hers, but she knew he was listening. She tapped her palm against her chest, “It’s my turn to go first.” She didn’t feel the faint spike of anxiety that usually meant Ben would protest. Smiling, she leaned forward to lightly squeeze his forearm in a couple of places. “Thanks Ben.” She withdrew her hand and removed all of the beans from one of the bowls on the board. Moving counterclockwise, she dropped one bean in each bowl until she ran out, then gathered all the beans from the bowl her last bean had landed in and continued until her last bean landed in an empty bowl. “Your turn.” Ben made his selection, rolling the beans in his hand for a good minute before beginning to drop them in the bowls. Luna leaned back in her seat, knowing she was going to be waiting a while. Ben always seemed to be able to think three or four moves ahead in sungka, so his turns usually lasted a lot longer than hers did. She watched Ben’s hand as he played. He
used his thumb to slide a bean up to his fingers and rubbed it before dropping it into the board. It was the same motion he had used when he was a kid and still playing with giant plastic containers of beans and uncooked rice. He still needed lots of tactile sensory, but Luna had noticed the weird looks and faint feelings of discomfort coming from Nanay’s friends when they saw a teenage boy sitting at the table squeezing and dropping handfuls of uncooked beans. So she had replaced all the shells and tamarind seeds her family used as game pieces with beans, and taught Ben to play sungka. When Ben finished his turn, he had a huge mound of beans in his ‘mother house.’ Luna glanced down at hers. Three. She managed to get two more beans before her turn ended. “I think you’re gonna win again, Bennie.” When they finished (Ben won, of course), Luna made a quick phone call to her mother while Ben cleaned up. “Na’ay, Ben and I are heading over to Lola’s now. I think I’m going to keep him with me for another night, if that’s okay with you.” She cradled the phone to her ear, absently listening to her mother’s rote response and absorbing the bubbles of calm contentment coming from Ben. He scooped up a small handful of beans, and allowed them to flow off of his palm into their plastic case. Clink. Clink. Clink. Cling- ClinkClink. Each muted sound elicited another bubble. Luna noticed that her lips had curved into a small, relaxed smile. Ben put the lid on the beans and signed “All done.” “Okay Ma, see you tomorrow.” She paused to give her mother a chance to ask to speak to Ben, but only silence came through the line. She sighed, unsurprised. “Bye, Na’ay.” She hung up and looked out through the milky opaque glass of her reinforced window. The sky was still a soft green, so it was safe enough to walk. “Let’s go see Lola,” she said to Ben. He hung the lanyard attached to his book in the crook of his elbow and took her hand. They walked down the street together. Luna struggled to keep Ben in the Green Zone. It was the safest part of the walkway, but he hated it. He walked as close to the edge as he could, often attempting to slip into the Yel- IN THE GREEN JUNE 2013 low. Her arm began to ache from the effort of keeping him by her side. When Petra II was colonized, it was designed to be as Earth-like as possible. Only Earth-imported building materials had been used when creating structures, and imported plants and wildlife had been integrated into the local ecosystem. The native flora and fauna tended to be larger than that of Earth, and, in less than a century, the imported wildlife that survived had evolved into larger, more aggressive versions of their original Earth counterparts. The Green Zone was constantly flooded with sonic pulses and various inaudible frequencies designed to keep the wildlife away. Luna wouldn’t have noticed the dissonance if it weren’t for her brother. A vague, but steadily rising stream of unease trickled out of him whenever he was within the Green. He tolerated the Yellow Zone—where the protections were muted—much better. The emotions she picked up from Ben reminded her of the way she had felt in dark spaces during childhood— before the tolerance training and desensitization. She wished the therapy had worked for Ben. They were on the receiving end of several odd looks from people walking in the center of the Green. Walking on the edge, as Luna and Ben always did, was considered unwise— a slightly irresponsible action most often done by groups of young teenage boys. People obviously in their twenties should have better sense. Luna let out a deep breath when they arrived at Lola’s house. It was a simple square building the same size and shape as every other home on America Street. But the bold sapphire blue color made it seem larger and more imposing than its white and tan neighbors. Ben had verbally expressed a preference for the color when Lola was having her home retinted. He placed his hand on the palmplate. The door recognized him as a familiar entity, and opened easily. Luna and Lola tried to keep Ben with them as much as possible, so he was a frequent visitor at Lola’s house. Nanay didn’t seem to mind. “Lola! Are you home?” Luna called once they were inside. “Grandson! Granddaughter!” They walked 27
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Page 7 and 8: ecord, I have yet to find one in 19
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Page 37 and 38: een broken by an ill-timed surprise
Page 39 and 40: skull. My pulse catches in my throa
Page 41 and 42: Jeff Sanford and several colleagues
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Page 45 and 46: loved it when I read it the first t
Page 47 and 48: Hydroponics 101 Farmer slept in the
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Page 51 and 52: much clearer entreaty, he rubbed he
Page 53 and 54: precarious one—each shining bead
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Page 65 and 66: the local database had been synced
Page 67 and 68: Asking no questions, she stepped as
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Page 71 and 72: isn’t subtle.There are six crew a
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meet rugged cliffs. The river, gray
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forecasting. That will help our cro
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architectural rendering. “You see
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