After a few hours on rough dirt tracks—which Cleve says are way easier to drive on than the untamed jungle—the Garden of Chiron starts to be visible, spread out along the coastline below. We’ve passed a few turn-offs to other farms and crossed a river by bridge, and now we can see the population center of the Stepdaughters of Chiron. The buildings appear to be made of local materials, with light-colored adobe-style bricks and shelftop shingles, many of which are covered with solar panels. While most of the buildings are one or two stories, some have as many as five, and I’m shocked to see that.
“We’ve got cranes to build with,” Marina tells me.
“But surely they’d just be old-timey cranes,” I reply, picturing the large wheels used to hoist stones onto castle walls.
“Some construction equipment survived the crash.”
“I’m just surprised. And impressed. I think I was imagining thatched huts everywhere. Or log cabins made of shroom tree trunks.” Like what homesteaders built on the American plains.
Marina frowns at me. “We’re not medieval serfs!” I just shrug. She’s the one who told us to wait and see, rather than describing what we should expect.
“It’s pretty much what I was expecting,” Cleve says, “a big white city of cement.” As we get closer, we can make out that most of the brick work is actually light brown and green.
Also of note are the tall wind turbines that are currently generating electricity but can also be used to disrupt miasma. Like the box fan I had in my apartment, these can reverse spinning direction as needed. “The first line of defense against miasma is to be smart,” Marina tells us. “The second line of defense is to mind the alarms and get inside. The third line of defense is using the fans to try to divert it. But each step is imperfect. The miasma will come. It is part of life.” It sounds like she’s repeating ingrained phrases from years of lessons. “A filter mask is the very last line of defense. You just shouldn’t stay out too long.”
The Stepdaughters of Chiron accept that they can’t completely protect everyone from the miasma like the domes do. But they have protections and mitigations in place. The miasma-blocker shots, for example. “There are also some genetic treatments that they’re working on,” Marina tells us. “But that only works for the newly born. We don’t have a way to make that into a retrovirus yet.”
“Is it an inoculation for infants? Or a treatment done while a fetus is being carried?” I ask.
“I’m not sure about the exact details. It’s not perfect, but it helps give some resistance. It causes changes at the genetic level, altering the lungs or the kidneys, something like that, to help process the miasma better.”
“That sounds reasonable to me,” I say. I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through similar alterations.
The Garden of Chiron isn’t built for vehicles to travel through its streets, so Marina has us park on the outskirts of town. There’s no official parking lot, but she directs us to a field that does not contain crops. There are a few vehicles there, repurposed Unity rovers like ours and farm equipment from Earth. On a nearby building, constructed more of scrap steel than local bricks, a shimmerfly rests, slowly flapping its wings. “Still don’t know what she eats,” Cleve mutters, and I realize this must be Bella, still following us.
“I need to check in with Deirdre,” Marina announces as Cleve locks up the rover. “If we can’t meet with her today, we should be able to tomorrow. We have news she’ll want to hear.”
“So… you can just, like, walk into her office, or something?” I ask. I’m looking forward to seeing her, I really am. But I’m also getting more and more nervous about how this reunion is going to play out.
“I can walk into the council building. They sent me on the mission to Data Haven. With me back so soon, they’ll want to hear me out. But there are a lot of meetings every day. Still, I’m sure we can get on the docket for tomorrow, if not sooner.”
“Are we allowed to come with you?”
“Of course!” Marina tells me, but then she pauses in thought for a moment. “Wait, right? Yeah, that should be fine.” She doesn’t sound certain, having less attention for social protocol than I do.
“The Stepdaughters of Chiron is a free society, right?” Cleve asks from back by the trunk where he’s evaluating what gear to drag along.
“Yeah,” Marina says. But then, “What do you mean?”
“Then we can just go,” he says. “If it’s a no, they’ll tell us there.”
“But maybe, like, you wanna leave your rifle in the car?” Marina suggests.
“I’m assuming it’s safe?” Cleve asks.
“Well, lock it.”
“I meant in the city. Without a rifle.”
“Ah, yes. I meant that other people might be uncomfortable.”
“Okay, so it’s not common then? To carry weapons?” Cleve presses for clarification.
“No, not in the city. And you’re a stranger here in a small town. Even if people don’t know everyone, they recognize most. If you walk into our council building with a gun…” And we’re distinctively dressed, me even more so than Cleve, so we will stand out as visitors. “I think it would be better if you left it in the car.”
“That’s fine, if there’s no personal protection needed. I just don’t know how safe the internals are here. For all I know, everybody could be screaming and running from briar beasts—”
“What? No!” Marina protests. “That wouldn’t happen. Besides, we have Mariah, who could summon a fog—”
“Okay, no,” I stop her right there. “I am not going to fight everybody’s battles for them. Particularly not battles that I don’t think we should be fighting.”
“Okay, okay,” Marina says, holding up her hands defensively. “We’ve all gotten a few steps ahead. No one’s fighting any battles.”
“Well, then don’t say I’m going to start waving my arms around, doing things!” I do not have crazy powers at my beck and call that are trivial for me to wield. That scale of the terraforming incident—which I did not have full control over—has created some false impressions. If Marina had been there when the angry siege worm tracked me, she would not be so hasty to suggest what I should try.
“Sorry,” she apologizes.
“Wait a minute, why would we need fog?” Cleve asks.
“Nevermind. Let’s just go into town. The city is safe,” Marina insists.
Satisfied that he needn’t be prepared to defend us from briar beasts rampaging down the main thoroughfare, Cleve secures his gun in the trunk. The laptop and the data drives, however, he loads into his backpack. Even though Marina says crime is low in the Garden of Chiron, those are too valuable to risk losing.