170: BLOOM

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The dandelions have started to bloom. Specks of yellow dot the patches of green spread across the largely dead sands on the slopes just out of sight of the colony, and it’s well past time to take samples to see how the seeded microbial communities in their roots are doing. Hwaseonge Hnmang dandelions will grow in dead, borderline toxic soil with little complaint, but the same isn’t true of the complex ecology we’ll want to seed after them. That is, indeed, their job – to make the soil habitable for other living things.

The ground crew are out with Hive, Celti and Elenna, taking such samples (it’s an easy job that different sets do in shifts, and the Hylarans are still a bit nervous about letting us go too far from the settlement without a couple of Hylarans tagging along, although I’m not sure what danger they’re supposed to protect us from or how) when we crest a slope and spot them. Hive gives a strangled little cry, and they and Celti dash for the plants; Elenna following at a more sedate pace. Hive’s fingers close around one of the blossoms and crushes it immediately; devastation clouds their features as they stare at the yellow stain on their fingertips. “I’m sorry! I didn’t – I thought it would be as tough as the leaves! I didn’t…”

“It’s just a dandelion, Hive,” I say, putting a reassuring hand on their shoulder. “Look, there’s already a dozen more out there. In a few years, these bastards will be thick over the hills and you’ll never want to see a yellow flower again.”

“When there’s more of them, we’ll show you guys how to make daisy chains,” Captain Klees says.

“They’re dandelions,” Elenna points out. “Not daisies.”

“Dandelions are the best flowers to make daisy chains out of.”

“But they’re not daisies!”

“We need to get the number of blossoms up to three thousand, nine hundred and seventy,” Tal says firmly.

Captain Klees raises an eyebrow. “We do?”

“Yes. We should start another round of seed spreading right away.”

“In a different location,” I say. “We should leave this place alone to verify that the seeds these flowers will produce can germinate in this sand without our interference. If they can’t, this whole process becomes a lot more complicate. All kinds of things can affect plant fertility so verification is vital.”

“Why do we need three thousand, nine hundred and seventy dandelion flowers?”

Tal looks at Captain Klees like he’s just asked the most obvious question in the world. “So that every person on the planet can have a flower crown.”

“What’s a flower crown?” Elenna asks.

“I’ll show you when we have three thousand, nine hundred and seventy dandelion blossoms.”

Taking our samples takes far, far longer than it should, because the Hylarans don’t want to leave the dandelions. Eventually, it’s Celti who suggests that we should be getting back, with a concerned look at the flower that Hive crushed by accident; there’s already a ‘no picking the flowers’ rule in place, but Celti (presumably mentally multiplying that damage by 392 Hylarans) says that he needs to get back quickly to call a setmeet and propose a ‘no touching the flowers’ policy, at least until there are a lot more of them. “We’re not the only group out taking samples,” he points out. “People elsewhere might be seeing these too, and might have beaten us back, meaning that the whole colony will be out poking and prodding them soon enough.”

So we get back, and hand off our samples to the scientists, a group of volunteers rapidly trained by Mama to do this sort of analysis. The original plan was to terraform Hylara if possible, or at least parts of it in domes if it couldn’t be done on the surface, so the ship files have information on how to do this using the plants expected to be brought from the Courageous decades ago. The Friend’s and my childhood training are some use for this, but not all that much; it doesn’t take long to teach someone how to take a sample, and once they know how to do that, the differences between soil and ocean ecology start to diverge pretty sharply.

And Captain Klees is doing some mad science of his own. Later that day, he slams a small plastic container down on the table in our living dome with a flourish. “Flour,” he announces.

“We’re not supposed to pick the flowers,” Tal says.

“No, no. Flour.” He opens the container to show us.

“Why is it green?” Tinera asks. “Even mouldy flour can’t get that green.”

“When did you eat mouldy flour?” Tal asks.

“Moon convict,” she says, like that explains everything.

“It’s green,” the captain says, “because it’s made from dried and ground up moss. There’s no gluten, but otherwise I think the chemistry is close enough. We might have to treat it like a cornflour, perhaps.”

“So it’s not mouldy flour, it’s floury mould,” Tinera says.

“Mould and moss aren’t the same thing,” I feel compelled to add. “Moss is – ”

“The point is,” Captain Klees cuts in impatiently, “that if this behaves how it should, we now have all the ingredients to make pancakes. Moss and algae pancakes. The ship is conserving all its food stores for the next journey, and I’m not waiting until we can grow grains down here. I am going to cook. Tonight. I’m going to cook pancakes. They will be fucking terrible, probably. But I’m going to find out. As your captain, I order you to enjoy pancake dinner with me.” His eye twitches. We all lean back a little bit.

“Of course, Captain,” I say quickly.

“I love pancakes,” Tinera nods.

“Green food counts as vegetables, right?” Tal asks. “So they’ll be healthy pancakes. Ironclad logic.”

And we all break off to do other things before he can order us to help gather ingredients or cook the pancakes. I don’t know if Hylara even has any frying pans. What would they use them for?

I’m halfway through my afternoon eye exercises when I notice that I haven’t seen the Friend around for awhile. It’s not unheard of for someone to run off on their own, but the Friend’s behaviour can be erratic sometimes these days. I should probably check up on it.

A quick ask around reveals that none of the crew know where it is, so I grab an oxygen tank and check the settlement myself. Not in the meeting area, not in the radio tower, not with any of our usual associates. Hmm. I’m almost about to brave the underground tunnels once more (there’s no danger there, nobody’s going to grab one of us now, not when we’ve got this widely agreed-upon project to work together on), but there’s a more likely place to check first – a place that any Earthborn person would go if they were upset, and wanted peace and familiarity. I head out to where the only plants on the planet are blooming.

Some Hylarans are out and about still, marvelling at the flowers, but I find the Friend situated on the edge of a slope just out of their sight. It’s crying.

I hover for a second, no sure how to help. Does it want company? It must have come out here to be alone, right?

“Do you need something?” it asks. Ah, it noticed me. It stands, and makes a visible effort to calm down.

“I came to see if you were okay, actually.”

“Everything is fine.”

An obvious lie, but okay. The Friend frantically brushes tears from its face as it walks toward me. “Listen,” I say. “I don’t completely understand the side effects of what you’ve been through, but – ”

“Insignificant, mostly. Adaptation was pretty easy, with so many years of experience before becoming a – ” its breath hitches, and it takes a second to calm its breathing.

“Adaptation? You’re constantly crying. I know you have nightmares. Have you been picking at your arms again?”

“That’s not because of…” It avoids my gaze. It’s within arm’s reach now, so the avoidance is obvious. “It’s hard to be around you. You and the captain and Tiny and Tal. It’s… have you ever had your entire self stolen, Aspen?”

“Normally I’m the one abandoning it,” I admit. “Friend, nobody expects you to – ”

“Don’t call me that!” it snaps, and I step back. In a more moderated tone it says, “It’s not –I’m not – what I was. After everything, after the work and the commitments and years and years of life, in the space of an hour or two they just – ” It dissolves into tears again, and I step forward to put my arms around it. It presses its face into my shoulder.

“You did the work,” I remind it. “You took the vows. Surely there’s more to being a Friend than just the Lyson alteration.”

“There is. There’s so, so much more. But the Lyson alteration is one of the critical parts of it. And no matter how much this Fr – no matter how much I keep thinking or hoping they made some mistake, everything that’s happening lines up, well, not exactly with my memories of before, but pretty fucking close. I can’t be a Friend like this.”

I tighten my arms around it. “What’s your name, then? From before?”

“No.” It pulls away like it’s disgusted by the suggestion. I let it go, and it steps back. “No. She made the commitment. She chose to become something else, and she gave herself to be something that did good and valuable work. And they can reverse whatever procedures they want, but they can’t change the past. She gave that up. That still happened.”

“Okay,” I sigh. I turn to look over the hills. Here and there, Hylarans stare at dandelions, not touching them, with fascination, and I fight the urge to uproot the sunbleached things. I spent years patiently pulling these dandelions out of the greenhouse rings, and someday, these people will feel just the same. A mismatched lingerer that will be a detriment to the ecology it’s building, something that they’ll want more than anything to replace with something else.

But for now, they’re still building that ecology, their roots doing critical work down in the sand, and the Hylarans are looking at them like they’re the most beautiful thing in the world. I take a moment to watch them and try to commit their expressions to memory. To remember just how critical these plants are, how the immense value of the work they’re doing is something that, if we do our job right, our great great grandchildren won’t value or understand. Because they won’t have to.

I put an arm around my friend’s shoulders. “Come on then, Dandelion. We need to get back so that Captain Klees can make us the worst pancakes we’ll ever eat in our entire lives.”

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