Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

of course, if you look deeper in their family
trees.”
“And all of them . . . ah . . . they’ve all . . . ?”
His mother’s voice—tired, disoriented. Farmer
remembered that there was a great deal of
steel-gray about the walls, the ceilings. No effort
even on the observation deck to make
more of the facility than it was.
“Oh yes,” said the director, holding a useless
clipboard in useless hands Farmer envisioned
breaking all through the interview. Distantly he
remembered someone sponging saliva from
the corner of his mouth when he tried to snarl.
“All of our residents have been involved in truly
brutal altercations, with many casualties—
not, of course, that even one casualty at such
hands is permissible, but . . .” The director
glanced at the sliding series of glossy spheres
behind them. “Make no mistake, in this whole
system you’ll find no greater density of violent
persons than we keep here.”
“And the recidivity rate?” Farmer recognized
his father’s attempt at composure
through the acquisition of statistics, and was
surprised to find he resented the old, doddering
man for none of it. His little sister was now
stroking the whole of his hand, his wrist, his
lower arm. It would be the last human contact
he remembered.
The director pushed up his glasses and
smiled a most meaningless smile at Farmer’s
father. “Zero, of course. You must understand:
this is by all practical accounts a terminal
move for our residents.”
“But isn’t there any hope? Isn’t that the entire
point of—” His mother again, overexerting
herself with concern. Farmer tried to comprehend
the essence of her existence with
one long, fixed stare, but the sedative would
not allow it; his eyes rolled of their own, lazy
accord inside his head. He thought he could
make out patterns after all along the walls.
Nasty ones, at that.
“Please don’t get me wrong,” the director
said. “MudderTree technology is remarkable—
truly the wonder of our age. Used on terraforming
runs, in medical rehab, for persons without
full use of their limbs, the autistic—and all with
considerable success rates, too. In theory,
therefore, we absolutely allow that some of our
residents might eventually graduate from the
program we have in place here . . . but in practice,
you must understand, we simply haven’t
HYDROPONICS 101
JUNE 2013
seen any resident succeed just yet.”
“But how could they?” Farmer heard his little
sister’s voice ring out—tiny, but already
hardened by circumstance. Had he really
come back and hugged her first, his jumpsuit
still drenched in colonist blood? “Locked up in
glass like that for years at a time, with no one
to talk to, not ever?”
The director’s bland smile came too close to
her for Farmer’s liking; Farmer’s arms tensed
against his restraints but his head was still
swimming, his muscles weak.
“I promise you,” the director said, touching
her shoulder ever so lightly. Farmer’s vision
went a blanket red, but he gnawed at his gag
to no avail. “Your brother will never be alone.
Not here. Not with a MudderTree to call his
own.”
After his family had left, Farmer remained
on the observation deck, a violent heat still
coursing through his arms, while the director
pulled footage less than appropriate for a tenyear-old’s
purview—a triptych of Don’t Do
What Johnny Don’t Does selected from the
worst of the enclosures in the facility. As the
director explained, step by step, the procedure
by which Farmer would soon be entombed
in his own glass sphere, and how to
interact with the latent MudderTree he found
within, Farmer’s eyes flicked from panel to
disastrous panel with no shortage of amusement
for the human suffering he found there.
In the first panel, a man stood neck-deep in
blackened water, sticks of MudderTree strewn
hopelessly about him—each dissolving every
time he reached for one. In the second, the
MudderTree bore the crude, misshapen figure
of a woman, which its owner seemed recklessly
intent upon even as the long black nettles
along its limbs scored deep into pre-existing
wounds across his back. In the third there
was no sign of life within the water; just a
man’s body in a state of extreme decomposition—the
MudderTree in turn wholly dissolved,
presumably at work preparing the
compartment for the next fool resident to land
a berth. The director tapped the last panel
with his middle finger. Though he seemed to
be trying for sorrow, his lips were too much
upturned at the corners for Farmer to believe
a word he said.
“A very sad case, that—but you must under-
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