Making Music on Ganymede

By Chad Gayle

The news came in over my Com link while I was power scrubbing ghost lichens off the dome, a little item tacked onto the bulletin we got at seventeen hundred hours each day.

“Jantz Ecstatic and the Angels of the Cybernetic Afterlife’s recently announced interplanetary tour may include a stop at Ganymede. No word yet on which dome might provide the venue, but talks are apparently underway between Jantz’s representatives and the Planetary Authority.”

I decided that the ghost lichens, so named because they’re hard to spot on the dome’s frosted polycarbonate panels, deserved a reprieve. Coiling the high-pressure hose on the scaffolding beneath my feet, I jumped down to the topmost terrace’s rubberized access ramp and mounted my air scooter, which was decorated with Jantz Ecstatic day-glo stickers and lyrics from Jantz’s anthem, “Eyes of Tomorrow.” Because I was pretty tall for my age, well over two meters, I knew the survey drone would see me leaving, so I didn’t bother trying to sneak through the apple orchard. Anyway, I was in a hurry because I had to ask a favor of Ma, and I needed to catch her while she was still in a good mood.

Please let the beetles be gone from Terrace Twelve, I prayed while I bounced along on a cushion of air, jetting across the graveled switchback on my way down the stepped slope of our comfy crater towards home.

I nearly ran over Dirk Siegel on Terrace Three. He was dragging an eight-legged harvester across the road, and he got all kinds of mad when I tipped my scooter over and spat a cloud of dust and gravel at his face. I apologized, but it didn’t do much good.

“Damn it Liz, when’re you going to grow up?” he demanded.

Dirk was four years older than me, and he’d always been big on acting “mature.” Certainly hadn’t helped his disposition when he’d been put in charge of the harvesters after he graduated.

“You must’ve heard the news about that queer rock and roller you like so much— that why you’re in such a hurry?” he asked.

Blanching at how easily he’d deployed that ancient slur, I nodded hard enough to jangle my nose rings and replied with a tart “Maybe.”

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coveralls and snickered. “Ain’t no way that Jantz Ecstatic is coming to Spudsville, Liz.”

Outsiders referred to our dome as Agricultural Colony Beta Prime but we’d always called it Spudsville, even though potatoes weren’t our primary crop. Although I knew that Dirk’s cynicism was well meant, I wasn’t going to let him dash my hopes and dreams with such a simply made remark, so I picked at one of the frayed day-glo stickers on my scooter and gave him a good old-fashioned sneer.

“I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?” I replied a little lamely.

He scoffed at this the same way he’d dissed my mesh shirts and retro clogs when I was ten years old. “If you did a little less dreaming and a little more work, Liz, we’d all be better off,” he said. “No go on and get, and say hi to your Ma for me.”

He didn’t bother to hide the twinkle that glittered in his eyes as I puffed off down the road.

Like most of the agspace colonies, Spudsville sat in a crater coated with concrete and about a million metric tons of dirt that had been hauled all the way from Earth out to Ganymede, which we called Ganny. Farming was done on the terraces sculpted across the crater’s slopes, and the buildings allotted to us were confined to the crater’s flattened floor. Because of a quake that shook the crater before I was born, part of the colony’s concrete foundation had cracked, and the buildings occupying that corner had been demolished and carted off. Planetary Authority said for years after that we would get new prefabs to replace the buildings that we’d lost, but all we ever got was a new slab of concrete, which was as bald the day I hurried home as it had been the day it was laid.

I had that bald spot in my mind while I climbed the stairs to our flat on the ninth floor of dormitory five, affectionately known as the “leaning tower of Lisa” because of its unfortunate tilt and its frustratingly celibate occupant, my Ma, Dr. Lisa Tulles.

She still had her pink hair up in a bun when I let myself in. Because she was born on Earth, Ma was a lot shorter than me, but she was also a lot stronger, too. She could jump from one terrace to another, and I once saw her hit Dirk Siegel’s daddy so hard for making a pass at her that he flew across the room and out an open door. He didn’t dare press charges, of course, because she’s an entomologist, a valuable commodity at an agspace colony like Spudsville.

For two weeks she’d been dealing with an infestation of beetles on Terrace Twelve. The beetles were brought in the year before to eat some harmful moth larvae, but when the moths were all gone, the beetles started in on our cabbages, and they’d nearly destroyed the entire crop. So that was the first thing I asked her, if she’d had any luck in getting rid of those beetles. She wrenched her mouth to one side, a habit she’d always had, before she stuck her head in the fridge.

“You quit work early, didn’t you?”

“I did, but it’s summer vacation, Ma, and—”

“And there’s a note for you on the community board. Says you didn’t show up for compost duty this morning.”

Morning seemed like such a long time ago, but I did remember realizing after I woke up that there was something I’d forgotten to do (I’d stayed up late talking to friends off world). Biting my lip, I tried to think of a decent excuse to make but couldn’t.

“I don’t know what to do with you, Liz,” Ma snapped as she slammed the fridge door shut with her foot.

I watched her carry a block of tofu and an armful of green veggies over to the cutting board on the kitchen counter. Resisting the urge to pick at a pimple on my chin, I told Ma I was sorry for missing my turn on the compost loader and promised to empty the recyclers all of next week to make up the difference.

“If you’re about to ask me for another advance on your allowance—”

I adamantly shook my head, jangling my nose rings once more. “No, it’s not money, you see; it’s like...a favor.”

She raised her eyebrows, and I got all fluttery inside like I used to get when I would sit next to Stephanie Udell in the sixth grade. Ma knew how much I loved Jantz and their music, and she knew that I could play most of their songs on the electric guitar I’d inherited from my father, a long hauler named Dan Tulles who crashed into an asteroid when I was four.

“Jantz Ecstatic and the Angels of the Cybernetic Afterlife are going on tour,” I told her, “And it looks as if they may add some dates for Ganny.”

“Let me guess,” she said, nodding knowingly. “You want a shuttle pass to Petal City— is that where the concert is going to be?”

Petal City was the largest settlement on Ganymede. Off-worlders called it Schuyten Station; we called it Petal City because of the shape of its interlocking domes, which looked, from above, like a beautiful blue flower with polka dotted petals.

“Actually, they haven’t decided where it’ll be.”

“Well?” my Ma asked expectantly. “What is it you want?”

“Um, well, did you know that the arena at Petal City only seats eight thousand?”

“No, I guess I didn’t. Why is that important?”

“Because there’s a place on Ganny where we could pack in a lot more of Jantz’s fans, more than eight thousand.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“The bald spot on the north side of town, Ma, where the quake cracked the concrete. I took some measurements—”

“You climbed over that fence?”

“Only to step it off, Ma. Anyway, I did some calculations, and it would be so much better than what they have at Petal City. We would have to build a stage and put in sound, of course, but it’s doable.”

“If you had permission.”

“Yeah. That’s why I was wondering if you could put it in the weekly minutes. To put it up for a vote.”

She looked at me the way she used to when I would ask her if I would ever get to go to Earth, with eyes that were sad but also mighty proud. “Liz, honey,” she started.

“There’ve been rumors on the Earth fan forums for weeks,” I told her. “And Jantz already said they want to extend the reach of the tour to include all of the outer worlds, so it’s a cinch that they’re coming to Ganny, see? But they need the right venue— which we can give them.”

“Liz, even if you could get permission, it would be a lot to ask of everyone else who lives here.”

“Not if it puts a spotlight on Spudsville. It would mean money coming in, lots of money, and that money could go to upgrades for the harvesters and the school. All I’m asking is that you put it in the minutes; I’ll write it up.”

“And if it passes? Then what?”

“I’ll get volunteers, and we’ll do fundraisers. We’ll get donations for everything we need.”

“And the work you’re already supposed to be doing? What about that?”

“I’ll do that too, Ma. I promise.”

She wrenched her mouth to one side and got her biggest knife out of the kitchen drawer. “Well, I think it’s a long shot, but it never does hurt to try. Course there are plenty of people who will vote against this— you realize that, don’t you?”

I did, but it didn’t matter. I’d decided that I was going to bring Jantz Ecstatic and the Angels of the Cybernetic Afterlife to my little corner of Ganymede, and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me.

I had no idea how many people would try.

I didn’t play guitar for three days. When I wasn’t power scrubbing the ghost lichens off the dome, emptying the recyclers (yuck), or doing my chores, I was working on my proposal, and as soon as I finished, I sent it to my fellow Jantz fans to get suggestions on how to make it better. Then I polished it up some more and shared it with Ma.

She was duly impressed. “Imagine how much higher your marks would be if you worked this hard in school,” she said.

Yeah, well. Seeing Jantz Ecstatic live in concert was one thing; school was another. I asked her what she thought our chances might be.

“You make a solid argument for the benefits, but I don’t think you realize how many people like Spudsville just the way it is.”

She was right, of course. After she put the proposal in the weekly minutes, it came up for a vote and I was shocked by the number of unsigned arguments that got posted on the community board, screeds attacking me and my Ma. There were some sensible objections buried in these venomous attacks (where would the concert goers go to the bathroom? who would pick up the trash they left behind?), but mostly there was a lot of groaning about how the usual routines of our dear neighbors would be disrupted by a bunch of “queers” who liked disturbingly loud music. It made me sick to my stomach, reading over these anonymously posted responses, but I couldn’t help myself; I read every last one.

I liked to die when the voting finally started. Ma told me I ought to be proud of myself regardless of how it turned out, but I think she was pretty shocked when the votes were tallied and we won— by just two votes! She said she was going to bake me a gluten free chocolate cake to celebrate. I went from heaving a sigh of relief to realizing that the easy part of what I’d taken on was over.

Our next step was fundraising. No one in Spudsville was dirt poor, but no one really had credits to spare, either, so I set up an Earth affiliated FundMe campaign the same day. I figured there were plenty of people in the more populated parts of the solar system who would be willing to pony up a few credits for a cause like mine, and I had friends in the fan groups who would help me promote the campaign, so I was pretty confident we could raise at least half of the half million credits we needed online. I hoped to make up the difference by appealing to the other colonies on Ganny, who would also reap some of the benefits if Jantz Ecstatic sailed our way.

Incredibly, there was no need for that. Five hours after I started our FundMe campaign, we were fully funded. By the next day, we’d exceeded our goal of half a million credits. I couldn’t believe it.

After I told my Ma and gorged myself on gluten free cake, I unrolled the budget I’d put together and put in giddy calls to construction companies and sound designers in Petal City, riding a wave of euphoria that was like nothing I’d ever felt before (except for sex with Stephanie Udell, which only happened once at a party I wasn’t even invited to, the year she moved away). As soon as Ma signed off on the services and materials I’d ordered —an adult signature was required, of course— the vendors we’d hired put in for docking permits with Beta Prime Dome Control, and that’s when the trouble started.

The neighbors who’d voted against me weren’t going to give up without a fight.

Jim Gordon was in charge of Dome Control, and he was giving our vendors a hard time about scheduling their ins and outs through the docking ports. I sent him several politely worded messages that explained why what he was doing was a problem, but he ignored me, which was easy to do since I was still just a kid. I had to ask Ma for help.

She took the tram down from Terrace Twelve to meet me on the crater floor during her lunch hour. I was the nervous one; Ma strolled down the street like it was just another day in Spudsville, although she couldn’t really stroll because of those Earth-grown muscles of hers— her walk was more like a bunny hop. That’s how she described it, anyway.

Mr. Gordon was expecting us. He’d cleaned off his desk and had all of the reasons he couldn’t offer our vendors firm dates for docking on a tablet he wanted us to peruse, but Ma told him right off that she wasn’t interested in his excuses.

“Jim Gordon, we all voted on this arena proposal and it passed, so you’ve got no right to go against it. You’re going to give every one of those vendors that I signed off on a permit or you’re going to regret it.”

“Is that a threat, Dr. Tulles?”

“It sure is. I’ve got about a thousand starving beetles stored in jars in my office, and if those permits don’t go through by the end of the day, you’re going to have a whole heap of hungry creepy crawlies living here by Monday morning.”

He scowled at her. “I ought to report you to the colony council right now.”

“You go right ahead, as soon as you’ve approved those permits. Otherwise— do you like bugs, Jim? I’m guessing you were born on Ganny, so you’re probably a bit bug-phobic?”

He aimed a hateful stare at us both before he glanced at his tablet. “All right,” he grumbled. “I’ll see what I can do, but you need to know that a lot of us are dead set against this thing. Nothing personal against your daughter, Dr. Tulles. We just don’t want a lot of mayhem in here and the trouble that goes with it.”

He looked at me again and I blushed, angry and ashamed at the same time.

“You understand what I’m saying, Liz?”

I did, and I knew he was lying. It was personal, one hundred percent, just like it always had been. The difference was that I couldn’t afford to ignore how some of my neighbors really felt about me, as I had before.

Growing up in a place where you have to blend in, where you’re not supposed to make anyone you know uncomfortable because of how you look or talk or dress, you learn real fast how different you’re allowed to be. I figured out the rules of that game at an early age, that game of fitting in just enough not to get into trouble, but acknowledging that there were certain lines I wasn’t supposed to cross didn’t satisfy everyone. There were still folks I had to mix with who sneered at me behind my back and gave me the side eye, and although I wasn’t bullied much, I knew I couldn’t show my true colors, because the people I’d grown up with had let me know, in various ways, what would happen if I decided to really and truly go my own way.

After our docking permits were approved, I brought in volunteers from other domes, teens my age and twenty somethings who loved Jantz Ecstatic almost as much as I did, and we got to work cleaning up Spudsville’s bald spot. The area had been roped off for at least a decade, but Ganny’s low gravity made it easy to lob garbage over the fence, so we had plenty of work to do.

It was work we enjoyed, but while we sorted organic waste from inorganic and loaded refuse into robotic carts, the farmers tending their crops on the northern rim shook their heads at us and glowered, determined to let us know how much they disapproved of our activities. Then, after the area was all cleaned up, they got nasty.

The vendors bringing in the trusses and the flooring that would become our stage were subject to more than just a few frowns. They were jeered at and threatened and occasionally pelted with rotten vegetables, and after one of them told me that she would have to cancel our contract if the conditions at the work site didn’t improve, I knew I had to get some help. So, I went to see Dirk Siegel.

He was working on that same harvester he’d been fussing with the last time we crossed paths, but now he had its guts spread out over his work bench, circuit boards and servos and pretty pieces of wire. He seemed to know why I was there before I even said hello.

“You’ve got an awful lot of folks riled up with this concert business,” he told me.

“Not on purpose. I figured that if it passed, they would try to see how it might help them. How it could help everyone in Spudsville.”

“Those minds don’t work that way, Liz. You should know that by now.”

I touched one of the servos with my pinky finger and looked him in the eye. “Well, how did you vote? For or against?” I asked.

He wiped his hands with a limp rag. “For,” he answered, in a voice that was stern for no good reason. “I’m not fond of Jantz Ecstatic, but this concert thing might do us all a lot of good, like you said— even if it is inconvenient.”

“I had a feeling you might see it that way,” I replied, relieved that I’d been right about him. “Is there any chance you could talk to some of the people who voted against us, the ones who are causing trouble? Some of the vendors are getting harassed.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference if I did, Liz. They’re too stubborn to listen to anything I might say.”

“Well, what about the people who voted for the concert, like you? What about talking to them?”

“I already have.”

“Do you think you could get some of them to stand up to the troublemakers?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “That’s a lot to ask, having them go head-to-head with their friends and neighbors.”

“I know, Dirk, but can you just try? Just see if they’re willing to stand up for what’s right? Because that’s what they’d be doing.”

He tossed the rag on the bench and sighed. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll give it a shot.”

I thanked him as sincerely as I could. I bet that was the first time I’d ever said thank you to Dirk Siegel in my life.

For more than a week, I’d been too busy to play my guitar or to talk to my off world friends as much as I wanted to, but I’d managed to keep up with my chores and I’d finished my work detail, and Ma gave me no end of praise for that. She practically glowed each night when I came home for dinner, and although she hadn’t made much progress with the beetles on Terrace Twelve, there was a warm light in her eyes that made me think of afternoons we spent in the apple orchards when I was little and how she’d described the wonders of Earth to me, things like snowstorms and waterfalls and rainbows. She seemed the happiest I’d seen her in quite some time.

Dirk must have done what I asked because the farmers left our contractors alone after I spoke to him, and the stage started to come together quickly. I took pictures of it that I shared on our campaign’s FundMe pages, where we got so many positive comments that I wanted to cry every time I refreshed the page (which took forty-five minutes because of the light time delay). I also pushed updates at the broadcast news services, hoping they might do a story on Spudsville that would get Jantz’s attention.

Days later, the news broke of another viral outbreak on Mars. The broadcast services started spouting bleak, terrifying stories, and although by that time the stage was practically finished and we were getting a sound system that would rival the setup in Petal City’s biggest arena, I began to have serious doubts about what we were doing. Maybe I should have listened to the naysayers, I thought; maybe they’d been right all along.

And then, like the unexpected arrival of a long overdue cargo tug, a miracle: the Earthbound fan forums had been agog for a while about what we were trying to do on Ganymede, and somehow one of the most upvoted posts on one of the most trafficked forums, a post that featured a picture I’d taken of our new stage, garnered a comment from a close friend of Sly Seven, one of Jantz’s Cybernetic Angels. Within twenty-four hours, Sly himself was putting up posts about how cool it would be to jam at an agspace colony, and pretty soon after that, record execs representing Jantz were sending me private messages that I was afraid to open because I figured I was getting pranked.

Of course I nearly had a panic attack when I discovered that the messages from the record company were real, and I literally screamed when I learned that Jantz’s concert coordinator had mentioned Beta Prime —our very own Spudsville!— in an interview with an Earth influencer. Then one of my off world friends forwarded a story to me which claimed that Jantz had said, privately, that adding Ganymede dates to their upcoming tour had become a priority so that they could meet Liz Tulles in person .

Pretty astounding I didn’t have a heart attack then and there and roll right out of the ninth story window of dormitory five, but I had Ma to keep me grounded, and by then, there was stage rigging to be checked and a sound system we still hadn’t fully tested. So, I grabbed my guitar after I read the news, hoping to play a few licks through those massive, magnificent speakers adorning the stage, and got on my jet scooter. I was so buoyant when I left, I wasn’t entirely sure that the dome over my head was real, but then I reached the fence around Spudsville’s bald spot and saw the trusses rising up in the distance, and I hoped beyond hope that I wasn’t dreaming.

The rotten tomato that smashed into my chest at the gate told me that I was wide awake.