From the upper deck of the bus she saw the sun escape a cloud, setting the surrounding glazed monoliths ablaze. Most of the other passengers instantly and unconsciously turned away, adjusting broad-brimmed hats and polarized glasses to hide from the harsh rays. The only exceptions were a trio of Ra Boys in sleeveless mesh shirts and gaudy earrings, who faced the bright heat with relish, soaking in it worshipfully.
Teresa took a middle path when the sun emerged. She didn’t react at all. It was, after all,, only a stable class G star, well-behaved and a safe distance removed. Certainly, it was less dangerous down here than up in orbit.
Oh, she took all the proper precautions — she wore a hat and mild yellow glasses. But thereafter she simply dismissed the threat from her mind. The danger of skin cancer was small if you stayed alert and caught it early. Certainly the odds compared favorably with those of dying in a helizep accident.
That wasn’t why she’d avoided taking a heli today, skipping that direct route from Clear Lake, where the NASA dikes had withstood Hurricane Abdul’s fury. Teresa had used a roundabout route today mostly to make sure she wasn’t being followed. It also provided an opportunity to collect her thoughts before stepping from frying pan to fire.
Anyway, how many more chances would she have to experience this wonder of American conceit, this spectacle that was Houston Defiant? Either the city moguls would eventually succeed in their grand, expensive plan — to secure the dikes, divert the water table, and stabilize everything on massive pylons — or the entire metropolis would soon join Galveston under the Gulf of Mexico, along with large patches of Louisiana and poor Florida. Either way, this scene would be one to tell her grandchildren about — assuming grandchildren, of course.
Teresa cut off a regretful twinge as thoughts of Jason almost surfaced. She concentrated on the sights instead as they passed a perseverant shopkeeper peddling his soaked fashions from pontoons under a sign that read, “preshrunk, guaranteed salt resistant.” Nearby, a cafe owner had set up tables, chairs, and umbrellas atop the roof of one of their bus’s stranded, wheeled cousins and was doing a brisk business. Their driver delicately maneuvered past this enterprise and the cluster of parked kayaks and dinghies surrounding it, then negotiated one of the shallow reefs of abandoned bicycles before regaining momentum on Lyndon Johnson Avenue.
“They ought to keep it this way,” Teresa commented softly, to no one in particular. “It’s charming.”
“Amen to that, sister.”
With a momentary jerk of surprise, Teresa glanced toward the Ra Boys and saw what she had not noticed before, that one of them wore a quasi-legal big ear amplifier. He returned her evaluation speculatively, touching the rims of his sunglasses, making them briefly go transparent so she could catch his leer.
“Water makes the old town sexy,” he said, sauntering closer. “Don’tcha think? I love the way the sunlight bounces off of everything.”
Teresa decided not to point out the minor irregularity, that he wore no sign advertising his eavesdropping device. Only in her innermost thoughts… and her lumpy left pocket… did she have anything to hide.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she answered, giving him a measured look he could take as neither insult nor invitation. It didn’t work. He sauntered forward, planted one foot on the seat next to her, leaned forward, and rubbed the close-cropped fuzz covering his cranium.
“Water serves the sun, don’t ya know? We’re supposed to let it come on come on come. It’s just one of His ways o’ lovin’, see? Coverin’ Earth like a strong man covers a woman, gently, irresistibly… wetly.”
Fresh patches of pink skin showed where over-the-counter creams had recently cleared away precancerous areas. In fact, Ra Boys weren’t many more times as likely to develop the really deep, untreatable melanoma tumors than other people. But their blotchy complexions heightened the image they desired — of dangerous fellows without respect for life. Young studs with nothing to lose.
Teresa felt the other passengers tense. Several made a point of turning toward the young toughs, aiming their True-Vus at them like vigilant, crime-fighting heroes of an earlier era. To these the boys offered desultory, almost obligatory gestures of self-expression. Most of the riders just turned away, withdrawing behind shadow and opaque lenses.
Teresa thought both reactions a bit sad. I hear it’s even worse in some cities up north. They’re nothing but teenagers, for heaven’s sake. Why can’t people just relax?
She herself found the Ra Boys less frightening than pathetic. She’d heard of the fad, of course, and seen young men dressed this way at a few parties Jason had taken her to before his last mission. But this was her first encounter with sun worshippers in daylight, which separated nighttime poseurs from the real thing.
“Nice metaphors,” she commented. “Are you sure you didn’t go to school?”
Already flushed from the heat, the bare-shouldered youth actually darkened several shades as his two friends laughed aloud. Teresa had no wish to make him angry. Dismembering a citizen — even in self defense — wouldn’t help her now-precarious position with the agency. Placatingly, she held up one hand.
“Let’s go over them, shall we? Now you seem to be implying the rise in sea level was caused by your sun deity. But everyone knows the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting because of the Greenhouse Effect—”
“Yeah, yeah,” the Ra Boy interrupted. “But the greenhouse gases keep in heat that originates with the sun.”
“Those gases were man-made, were they not?”
He smiled smugly. “Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides from cars and TwenCen factories, sure. But where’d it all come from originally? Oil! Gas! Coal! All buried and hoarded by Her Nibs long ago, cached away under her skin like blubber. But all the energy in the oil an’ coal — the reason our grempers dug and drilled into Old Gaia in the first place — that came from the sun!”
He bent closer. “Now, though, we’re no longer enslaved to Her precious hoard of stolen fossil fat-fuel. It’s all gone up in smoke, wonderful smoke. Bye-bye.” He aimed a kiss at the clouds. “And there’s nowhere else to turn anymore but to the source itself!”
Ra worshippers were backers of solar energy, of course, while the more numerous Caians pushed wind power and conservation instead. As a spacer, Teresa ironically found her sympathies coinciding with the group whose appearance and style were the more repulsive. Probably all she had to do was let these fellows know she was an astronaut and all threat and bluster would evaporate. Honestly, though, she liked them better this way — loud, boisterous, reeking of testosterone and overcompensation — than she would as fawning admirers.
“This city ain’t gonna, last long anyway,” the Ra Boy continued, waving at the great towers, up to their steel ankles in Gulf waters. “They can build their levees, drive piles, try to patch the holes. But sooner or later, it’s all goin’ the way of Miami.”