Free Terrarium by Scott Russell Sanders

touch,” Zuni translated.
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œWith the center, the origin of things.”
    â€œIsn’t that where we’re all headed?” Marga said. “Out of this stink of matter, back towards the state of pure energy?”
    Zuni only smiled, knowing it was foolish to speak of spiritual things. “Sventov will teach you well.”
    â€œSo you say.”
    When Zuni busied herself with the stack of blueprints again, Marga asked shyly, “Do you suppose I could have a little something of yours to keep?”
    Zuni withdrew from her modest heap of mementos one of the drafting pens, and this she pressed into Marga’s hand. The touch was obviously a shock to the young woman, but not so great a shock as the kiss Zuni brushed on her cheek. “Now go on, leave me alone,” Zuni said, “and be sure you draw kindly cities with that pen.”
    After Marga left, Zuni sat for a long time at her desk, staring out over Oregon City, wondering how kindly a place it was. Nothing lived in it except people and experimental animals and the essential bacteria. Older citizens reminisced about the abundance of life in the wilds, about hickory trees and rutabagas and kangaroos, but they did not reminisce about typhoid or starvation, about mercury poisoning or radioactive dumps. At least within the Enclosure people were shielded from toxins and drug-resistant germs. The apartments were stacked a thousand meters high, nearly reaching the dome, but at least no one lacked a roof or bed. The algae-based food tasted like pap to anyone who could recollect dirt-grown vegetables, but it was abundant andpure. The young people, those born inside the Enclosure, had never seen dolphins or potatoes, had never seen anything except what human beings had made. The young did not reminisce. Their parents and grandparents had quit the wilds, as irrevocably as their remote ancestors had left the seas.
    At least Zuni hoped the move inside was irrevocable. Have I betrayed them? she wondered fleetingly. But no, she had settled that doubt long ago. She had only to recall the decades before the Enclosure, when environmental burdens crushed down more heavily each year like snow swelling a glacier, to reassure herself that the move inside had been the sole path to survival. And how could it be a betrayal if it was what people had always longed for? Wasn’t the Enclosure just a cave, a hut, a walled village, a shopping mall carried to its logical extreme, stretched out over the globe, hermetically sealed, perfected?
    The few items she chose to keep from her years of professional work all fitted into a satchel. They were light, easily smuggled. Before closing her office for the last time she looked carefully about to make sure no trace of her was left behind. Satisfied, she gave the hanging model of the Enclosure one last swing and shut the door.
    5 November 2029 — Seattle
    Gregory’s bulbous head gleams like an ornament on the vidscreen. Teeg should be in school, he protests. Teeg must learn to socialize—that’s the actual word he uses, socialize— with other children. Teeg must be sheltered from filth and disease. I only glower at him, knowing he can’t force me to deliver the child until she reaches breeding age.
    Suddenly a woman’s face appears on the screen, and Gregory announces, “Zuni Franklin. She’ll explain why the girl should be sent inside.”
    I have seen the face hundreds of times on video andnewsfax, but always filtered to disguise its nakedness. Now I see clearly the delicate features, nose and cheeks finely molded, creases streaming out in rays from each eye, mouth softened as if from patient smiling at the world. I am prepared to find the woman ugly, but find her beautiful. How old? Perhaps about sixty. And this is the one he intends for Teeg’s Enclosure mother?
    I expect to hate her, yet when she begins speaking—about the child, about the Pacific