Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Chapter 1

The sun dimmed, blinked twice, and went out.

Pandora Ash looked up in time to see a sullen blue-green line lingering in the shadows overhead, but the dusk was as short-lived as it was faint.  In the space of a few seconds, the last glow faded.  The dusty farmyard, the tall white house, and the surrounding screen of poplar trees were all plunged into blackness.

Pandora sat down her empty pail and stretched her arms above her head.  In the cool, dark air, every vertebra in her back gave an individual report of the hours that had passed since she started her chores.  The sun had been off at the start of her day and it was off at the end.  The calendar might say it was getting on toward spring, and Pandora knew the engineers were leaving the sun to glow a little longer each day, but no matter how quickly the day expanded, Pandora's list of chores outpaced the light.

Her eyes started to adjust and gray shadows appeared in the darkness.  Pandora made out the edge of the house on her left, the barn on her right and most importantly, the water pump straight ahead.   She drew in a deep breath of the pine-touched air, picked up her pail, and walked carefully to the pump.  She reached out and fumbled until her fingers closed on the hammered iron handle.  Pandora gave the handle a sharp press and was rewarded by a whistle of escaping air so low it was like the rumble of a distant giant.  Each pump of the handle brought the note up an octave or more.  Bass.  Tenor.  Alto.  One more push and the air whistling from the pump changed to icy water that streamed, invisible in the darkness, to clatter into the pail at Pandora's feet.

Enough water overshot the lip of the pail to soak her heavy leather shoes and damp the hem of her long cotton dress.  Pandora didn't mind.  A little water wouldn't hurt her, especially on such a nice evening.  She cupped a handful of the spouting water and brought it to her lips.  It was cold, sweet, and vaguely tinged by iron.

Pandora glanced up again in time to see a spark appear in the blackness overhead.  On the far side of the curve, another of the Old Order families was lighting its lamps and sitting down to the evening meal.  The first star of the evening was soon joined by a second, then a third.  As the water slowly filled Pandora's pail, the lights overhead multiplied to flood the night with familiar patterns.  Clusters of friends.  Swirls of acquaintances.  Whole constellations of community.

Pandora lifted the full pail just as another light came on much closer to hand.  She turned and looked through the curtainless windows of the house to see her father fumbling with the chimney of a white gas lantern.  By the time he had the chimney well-seated, Martin Ash was nursing a burnt thumb and scowling at the little lamp.  Her father had been lighting the lantern every evening for over a dozen years, but he still couldn't get the knack.

In the darkness of the side yard, Pandora fought back a smile.  With his pale skin and blue eyes, her father certainly looked much more like the other Old Order families than did Pandora -- until he moved, or spoke, or tried to do anything around the farm.  Despite all his attempts to fit into the community, her father still had difficulty with the simplest of tasks.  But that didn't stop him from trying.  All her life, Pandora had watched as her father worked to make a place for himself, and for Pandora, among the Old Order families on the Drive Expanse.  She knew it was hard on him -- that much was written in every strained line on her father's long, thin face -- and there had been times when it was hard on them both, but her father never complained.

More water spilled onto Pandora's feet as the pail overflowed.  She turned her attention back to the pump long enough to hold down the handle and cut off the flow.  Pandora picked up the heavy pail, winced only a little as the wire handle bit into her palm, and started for the kitchen.

Lantern light escaped the house to paint glistening squares on the damp green lawn. Through the rippled waterglass window, Pandora watched as her father carried the lantern out of the bare meeting room, past the foot of the stairs, and along the whitewashed hall.  She expected him to head for the kitchen, but instead he turned into the storeroom off the hall.

Pandora paused and watched as her father went deeper into the room.  The storeroom had once held hams cured for sale at the farm.  Now it held extra copies of the books made on their press.  Pandora stood on tiptoe and squinted as her father reached up to take a dark volume down from the shelves.  The sleeves of his pale blue shirt seemed to float in the shadows, separated by the gap of his black vest.  His short gray beard and narrow pale face blazed in the lantern light.  He ran a callused thumb along the raised leather spine of the book before opening the book to a space near its center.  Carefully, he reached between the pages and drew out a small rectangle of paper.

He was too far away, and too much in the shadows, for Pandora to see clearly, but she knew well enough what he had taken from the book.  He was looking at the photograph again.

Amish were not supposed to keep such things -- pictures were, after all, just another form of graven image -- but Pandora's father had never been able to part with this last token.  And besides, Pandora's mother had not even been Amish.

As she watched, Pandora noticed that her father's movements were slower than normal, and there was a tremor in his hand.  She frowned in concern.  Martin Ash was never the most cheerful of men, but of late he had been particularly dour.  The sunken, hollow look to his cheeks marked the meals her father had missed, and the dark circles under his eyes showed that more than food had been wanting.  Pandora knew that something was wrong - had been wrong for weeks.  And it had gotten sharply worse in the last few days.  She took a step toward the window, hopeful that she might catch some clue to her father's misery.

"It's a sin to spy on people."

Water sloshed from her pail as Pandora turned to the voice.  "And isn't that just what you're doing?"

"I'm not spying.  I'm only admiring you from a distance. "  A tall boy with flaxen-hair trapped beneath a plain straw hat stepped from the shadows.  "It's completely different."

"I'm sure it is."  Pandora gave him her sternest frown and raised one raven eyebrow.  "What are you doing out here, Joshua Hofstadter?  Don't you have work to do?"

Joshua moved closer.  His face was nearly hidden in the shadows and in the dim light his blue eyes seemed as dark as Pandora's own.  "The horses are fed and brushed," he said.  "The rest will wait."

"And your father," said Pandora.  "Will he not worry?"

"He trusts me."

"Will your step mother not be angry?"

"Yah, she will," agreed Joshua, "but not until she knows know I'm gone."

"So you sneaked away without telling anyone."  Pandora wagged a finger at him.  "Deceiving your parents is certainly against the Ordnung."

"I know."

"You accuse me of sin, but your sin is greater than mine."

He nodded. "But I am a sinner," he said.  "I expect better of thee."

"Do you?"  Pandora stared at him across the dim farmyard.  "And what exactly do you expect of me?"

Joshua's square features were suddenly split by a broad smile.  "I expect this."  He stepped forward, put a hand against the base of Pandora's neck, drew her face toward his, and kissed her.

Pandora looked nervously over Joshua's broad shoulders as they kissed.  It was not the kiss that bothered her.  She was fine with the kiss--more than fine.  It was their location that she didn't like.  

She pushed her free hand against Joshua's broad chest.  "My father's just inside," she whispered against his face.  "We must be careful."

"It's dark," said Joshua.  "No one can see us.  It's safe."

"You always think it's safe."

"That's because it is."

Pandora stepped back.  "I'm sure that Luke and Rebecca thought so, too.  Now they are not even allowed to attend the singings together."

Joshua put an arm around her waist and drew her back against him.  "They took too many chances, even after they were warned.  They were foolish."

"So are you, if you're not afraid," said Pandora.  She twisted out of his arms and stepped back.  "Rebecca was only banned from the singing.  What do you think they will do to me?"

Joshua waved a callused hand.  "Nothing more than they would do to anyone else."

"Do you really believe this?"  Pandora stared at his face in the dim light.  "What would your parents say if they knew you were here?  Knew you were courting the outsider?"

"You are not an outsider."

Pandora glanced up at the points of light overhead.  "You may believe that," she said.  "But they don't."

Joshua reached out and brushed a finger against the stray hair that peeked from under Pandora's cap.  "No one thinks of you that way.  You've been here all your life."

"Not all," replied Pandora.  "I was four when we came.  But even if I was born on the Expanse, I still wouldn't fit."  Pandora looked up at the clusters of light overhead.  "I don't look like the other Old Order families.  I don't have the right hair, or eyes, or skin.  Even my name isn't right."

"I love your name," said Joshua.

Pandora smiled.  "I'm glad you do, but there have been many times I've wished for a nice, normal Rachael or Rebecca or Elizabeth."

"There are too many Rachael's already."  Joshua leaned in and gave her another kiss.  Light, this time, his lips barely touching against hers.  "I love Pandora," he said, his lips still no more than a whisper on her olive skin.  He smelled of horses and dry hay.

Pandora turned her head just enough to see through the window.  There was no sign of her father.  She brought her lips quickly back to return Joshua's kiss.  "Sometimes," she said, "I think you love me just because I'm an outsider.  You want me because I'm different."

"That's not true."

She looked hard at his eyes.  In the daylight, they were blue as the Ring Sea.  "I think maybe it is true," she said.  "I think you are looking for something exotic.  I think maybe you really want to move away to the city."

Pandora was joking, but something in her words made Joshua draw back.  "You shouldn't say that," he said with unexpected heat.  

"I only..."

"This is my place," said Joshua.  "And yours.  No one thinks of you the way they do..."  He voice trailed off and he glanced over her shoulder.

It took Pandora a moment to realize what he meant.  "The way they think of my father?" she finished for him. She pushed Joshua's lingering hand away from her hair.

Even in the near darkness, she could see the color spread over Joshua's cheeks.  "He is a good man, your father.  Everyone says so."

"Do they?" Pandora narrowed her eyes.  "Everyone?"

Joshua looked away.  "Most everyone."

Pandora tightened her grip on the bucket's metal handle and stepped back from him.  "But not the elders.  Not the bishop.  Not your father or your step mother.  They don't think my father is a good man at all."

"They do," Joshua said quickly. "It's only that they don't think he's really managing this farm like..."  Again he paused.

"Like what?"

Joshua winced.  "I beg pardon.  I shouldn't have said anything."  He gave a weak smile.  "I only came here to see you.  Not to talk about your father."

"Oh, no."  Pandora studied the shadowed planes of his face.  "I'm glad you shared how you feel."

"It's not how I feel," he replied.  "But there are some."

"Some who don't think my father runs his farm like a real Amish."

Joshua nodded.  "Bees and books."  He shrugged.  "These are not our crops or our crafts."

"Your crops would suffer if we did not raise the bees," said Pandora.  She wagged a finger at him.  "There were Amish bee keepers back on Earth.  And we sell more books in the community than anywhere else."

"But you sell to others, too, and not all of the books..."  Joshua shook his head.  "They're not one of the crafts.  Not part of the traditions."

"And this is not Pennsylvania," said Pandora.

Joshua opened his mouth, shut it again, and after an awkward silence repeated her words.  "Yes," he said.  "This is not Pennsylvania."

It was an aphorism Pandora had heard repeated a thousand times -- the response members of the Old Orders gave when discussing the adjustments needed to keep the Ordnung in this place.  They said it when they justified the wells that tapped buried pipes and not aquifers.  They said it when they discussed the transport tubes that wove through the community and the little driverless carts that carried supplies.

Most of those in the Old Order community had never seen Pennsylvania.  The younger ones, like Pandora, had been born far from Earth.  But the phrase was a touchstone to a life they believed in but had never actually lived.

"Pandora," Joshua said softly.  "It pains me that I brought you such trouble."  He stepped toward her and rested his big hands lightly on the shoulders of her cotton dress.  "What my step mother thinks of your father has little to do with how I think of you."  His fingers squeezed against her weary muscles.  "You know that I love you."

Pandora started to say something more about her father, but before she could speak, the back door of the house squeaked open and lantern light flooded the side yard.

"Pandora?"

Pandora's heart raced, and she spun around so quickly that a curtain of water sprayed from her pail.  "I'm here," she said.

Her father raised the lantern and craned his neck in her direction.  With his beard jutting out and the planes of his face made sharp by the lantern, he looked as Amish, and as severe, as anyone in the community.  "Are you coming in to dinner?"

"I..."  She looked around nervously for Joshua, but there was nothing but darkness.  "I'm just getting the water."  She leaned against the weight of the pail and shuffled toward the door.

Pandora stopped and took one last look to see if she could spot Joshua in the darkness, but there was only the distant light of farms and homes spinning off into the distance, growing smaller around the curve, and reduced to sparks overhead.