12 HONEST-TO-GOD FOOD

12 HONEST-TO-GOD FOOD Lunar day 252 T minus 20 hours to evacuation "It's such a shame," Dr. Goldstein said. We were no longer in my residence, even though that was where she had been waiting for me. (Violet had let her in, but had then gone off to find my parents.) It had been impossible to have a conversation with Lars raging in Nina's residence next door. Lars had been shouting so loud, the walls had actually trembled. So we were now in the greenhouse. This gave us

some privacy to talk—and it also allowed me to help Dr. Goldstein get things prepared for the evacuation. All the plants she had worked so hard to grow now had to be composted in hopes that, should MBA come back online, there would be usable soil to restart the greenhouse once again. There was a plus side to this, however: All the fruits and vegetables that she had grown were going to be served up with dinner that night. "What's a shame?" I asked. Dr. Goldstein waved to the plants around her. "Eight months of work right down the tubes. I was finally getting the hang of this... and now it's all going to waste." She grasped a strawberry plant by the stalk, but hesitated before uprooting it. She looked like a woman who had been asked to put down her pet dog. It occurred to me that Dr. Goldstein probably loved her plants as much as most people love their animals. She had spent hours each day for the past few months nurturing them, tending to them, struggling to keep them alive. There were some insects at MBA that had been brought up to see how life on the moon would affect them—ants and bees and earthworms—but they were locked away in

terrariums and no one had really considered them pets. Even so, the ones that had survived would get to live: They were coming back to earth with us so their vitals could be studied. The plants all had to die. "Do you want me to do that?" I asked. Dr. Goldstein looked at me, startled, as if perhaps she had been so upset, she had forgotten that I was there. "Yes," she said thankfully. "If you wouldn't mind." So I went to work uprooting the plants while Dr. Goldstein harvested the vegetables. She started with the snap peas, twisting each pod off the vine and plunking it in a small bowl. On the other side of the glass walls, the base was humming with activity. I could still hear Lars Sjoberg raging. Everyone else was doing their best to ignore it, though now and then I noticed someone glancing toward Nina's residence, either feeling sorry for Nina or fed up with Lars. "I didn't poison him," Dr. Goldstein said. I turned to her, surprised. She had said it so quietly, I wasn't sure if she had even meant for it to be out loud. "Lars?" I asked, then winced at my own stupidity.

It wasn't like there were any other poisoning victims at MBA. "Yes." Dr. Goldstein didn't look at me. She stayed focused on her peas. "I know you found out about the apple seeds." "How?" "After the Sjobergs got in here last month and ate all the strawberries, I rigged up a sensor system. Now when someone enters the greenhouse, I get an alert. And then I can check the camera feeds." "Wouldn't it have been easier to just put a lock on the door?" "That isn't my decision to make. This greenhouse is communal property for everyone at MBA. I only grow the plants." Dr. Goldstein plunked a few more peas in the bowl. "I watched all the footage of you in here. I thought you might have been trying to eat something without permission at first—but you didn't. It took me a while to figure out what you'd been up to." I glanced up toward the top of the greenhouse door. Sure enough, there was a security camera there. It would have offered a decent view of us inside the room, although, like most of the cameras at MBA, it probably didn't record sound. Otherwise,

Dr. Goldstein would have known what we were doing right away. "I didn't even know the seeds were gone until after you noticed," Dr. Goldstein said. "You didn't?" "I have thousands of seeds in here. It never occurred to me that anyone would steal them." "Even after you heard that Lars had been poisoned?" "I didn't know that it had been done on purpose. Nina said it was an accident." Dr. Goldstein snapped off a few more peas. "It wasn't until you found the seeds were missing that I realized what must have really happened." I uprooted the last of the strawberry plants and laid it on the pile with the rest. There was something awful about the sight of it. It reminded me of the horrible moment in The Lorax where the very last of the truffula trees has been cut down. "So you knew cyanide could be made with apple seeds." "Of course. Plants are my specialty. That's why I collected the apple seeds in the first place." I looked to her, surprised. "Not for growing apples?" "Dashiell, apple trees are enormous. I couldn't

possibly grow one to full fruiting height in here." "I thought maybe you knew how to do a dwarf version. " "Cyanide, properly handled, is a very effective pesticide." "But we don't have any pests in the base. It's supposed to be sterile." "That doesn't mean it will stay that way. No matter how hard we try, there's always a chance something will get through. Especially when you're dealing with organic matter." Dr. Goldstein's gaze dropped to the packs of poop she had stored under the planting table, as though they might be a breeding ground for trouble. "I figured it paid to be prepared." She pointed to the plants I'd laid out. "Why don't you pluck the strawberries off those?" Then she lowered her voice conspiratorially. "If one or two went missing, I'd never notice." "Really?" I asked, unable to control my excitement. "I understand it's your birthday." I looked over the strawberries. It had been eight months since I'd had one, given that the Sjobergs had devoured the last crop. As much as I wanted one, I had conflicting emotions. It seemed wrong to