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which reflect light with the oily iridescence of insect eyes. At the terminus platform, they jostle off and quickly settle into the daily routine. Rigo links his IA to the database for his vats, scans the vital stats for temperature, humidity, starch and oxygen content, microbe and nutrient levels, pherion concentrations. Each dome is home to a different type of plant, gengineered for a specific function: water uptake, purification, and storage; mineral retrieval plus separation; ambient heat generation and insulation; photovoltaics; bioluminescence. The plants are modular symbiots, designed to work in concert as a habitable ecotecture.
    Once he’s finished his check, Rigo has Varda download instructions to his team. In addition to the regular vat maintenance—filter replacement, refrigeration coils, circulation pumps, and underground piping—there are occasional data failures to deal with.
    Today, a number of plant sensors are offline; he’s getting no info feed. So Rigo cycles into the first building through its air lock. Feet crunch on ice, the sound brittle in the frangible air. An enormous gourd-shaped plant, as large as a big top in a circus, crowds the building. Under the narrow beam of his helmet light, the outer membrane is the color of eggplant and freckled with an array of tiny round windows that remind him of hard white blisters. The windows double as lenses—focus the feeble sunlight admitted by the vat dome into the hollow interior of the plant which is a balmy thirty-one degrees centigrade. Pores on the inside surface of the membrane absorb carbon dioxide and humidity, while microminiature air locks and cold-traps minimize the loss of oxygen and water to the drier outside air.
    The defective sensor is inside. Rigo enters the plant through a wet, airtight cleft on one wall. It grudgingly admits him, prim as an evangelical’s pursed lips. The interior is suffused with bright, starchy light from bioluminescent spots radially distributed on the central support stalk. The floor is fibrous. Tough. At the same time, it possesses a springy resilience. Bouncy. Overhead, the windows form pustules that reflect a compound image of him. It’s quiet as a tomb, or a womb. All he can hear is his breath and the magnified pumping of blood, as if he’s connected through a placenta to something greater than himself.
    “Rigo?” Varda says.
    “What?”
    “You’re leaking.”
    Rigo catches a faint whiff of orange peels and lavender. Blinks. Hermetically sealed in his biosuit, he shouldn’t be smelling anything. The suit prevents him not only from contaminating the warm-blooded plants but from coming into contact with any of the proteins and pherions they secrete.
    Rigo exhales, presses his lips tight, and takes a deep breath through his nose. If anything, the scent is stronger. “How bad is it?” he asks.
    “You’ve lost positive pressure.”
    Great. His chest tightens and his pulse races, shifting into Bernoulli mode as his blood vessels constrict. He hasn’t been claded for direct exposure to the plants, there’s no telling what their defense mechanisms will do to him.
    Don’t think about that. Concentrate on something else. Like damage control and minimizing the exposure.
    “What are you doing?” Varda says. “Waiting for the other shoe to sing?”
    Holding his breath, skin formicating, he stumbles for the air lock. It takes forever to cycle through the sphincter, into the vat building, and through the door. Outside, Rigo pops the seal on his helmet, leans against the concrete wall of the control building, and gulps in fresh, sun-fogged air. Rivulets of sweat trickle down his brow and neck. He’s sodden, perspiring faster than his biosuit can wick away the moisture. He tilts his head back, stares up at the cerulean sky.
    “Well?” Rigo asks.
    “I wouldn’t say that, yet. It’s too early to tell.”
    What now? he thinks.
    “You should report to the corporate clinic,” Varda says. “Get checkmarked,