One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries Read Free Page A

normal blades; only slight symmetrical swellings gave them away.
    I had never really thought that the grass might flower. It certainly hadn’t in the sixteen years since colonists had been here. I’d seen flowers before. There were beds of them, carefully tended, around the Council chambers, seeds brought the vast distance from Earth. There were seeds in the Archives too, waiting for a time when ornamental vegetation was no longer a luxury only civic authorities could afford. Some people didn’t think that time would come. Some thought that we would never win, that the Grass would consume us. Swallow us whole, the way it had swallowed almost every other thing on this world.
    Unnatural, my father had called it. On land, he said, we had discovered only fifteen species of vegetation, four species of animal, thirty-two species of insect and twelve invertebrates. The seas, as though in compensation, teemed with life. Certainly most of the meat we ate was fish, brought overland along narrow, laboriously paved roads. It cost a lot; we hadn’t eaten any since Dad died.
    “ Should have chosen the coast,” my father had muttered whenever we’d painstakingly extended our yard, slashing the Grass at ground level, digging out the metre deep root systems, shredding and composting it all. It wouldn’t even burn.
    But the coast had problems of its own. Near Landfall something had come out of the sea one night. At least that’s what they thought; the next day the whole town was empty with not a clue to where everyone had gone. There wasn’t any blood, or signs of panic. There weren’t any people either, but a few days later some bits washed up on the beach.
    That town was deserted now, everything usable taken away to safer ground, leaving a pillaged skeleton, as though the things in the ocean had done more than just make a meal of the populace.
    I looked down at the flower in my hand, feeling oddly as though this hostile world that was my home had given me a gift, a peace offering of some sort. Behind me the light in the house had come on.
    I hurried to finish the rest of the yard, then tucked the flower inside my coveralls before going inside.
    My mother was in the kitchen, doing something with vegetables. The food tasted different since Dad had died, as though the oppressive air of the house seeped into everything that was created there.
    “ Wash your hands, Jennifer.” My mother’s voice followed me as I ducked into my room. “Nina Sung just lost three fingers to that fungal infection that’s going around.”
    I pulled the flower from inside my coveralls and put it into the glass of water that stood beside my bed. Even in the dimness of my room it seemed to glow. I stroked the petals and again felt the oddly pleasant tingling in my fingertips.
    My mother’s voice came again from the kitchen. “Dinner’s on the table.”
    I left the flower in the darkness of my room.
    I hated dinner; of all the times of day it was the worst. My mother and I sat across from one another at the table, under the single globe that we could only run at half intensity since two thirds of our solar array had gone offline. Neither of us spoke. The vegetable soup tasted bland and almost metallic, as though my mother had forgotten to put salt in it. Perhaps we’d run out of salt. I didn’t dare ask.
    It took me until the bottom of my soup bowl to muscle up the nerve to say what I’d been wanting to say for days.
    “ Mark says we should apply for a Council subsidy.” The words came out in a rush, as though my normally unresponsive mother might jump in and cut me off. “He says we’re entitled to one on account of Dad being killed in the fighting. He says we should be getting it already, but maybe there’s been a mistake in the records or something.”
    My mother just sat there, her grey eyes focused a little to the left of my face, as though I wasn’t really there at all.
    “ It’d help.” I said. “Maybe we wouldn’t have to sell any