In the anteroom, Miss Carrie was standing with two other grown-ups, neither of them Mommy. One was a woman Mei didn’t know, space monster painting held gently in her hand and a polite smile on her face. The other was Doctor Strickland.
“No, she’s been very good about getting to the toilet,” Miss Carrie was saying. “There are accidents now and then, of course.”
“Of course,” the woman said.
“Mei!” Doctor Strickland said, bending down so that he was hardly taller than she was. “How is my favorite girl?”
“Where’s-” she began, but before she could say Mommy, Doctor Strickland scooped her up into his arms. He was bigger than Daddy, and he smelled like salt. He tipped her backward, tickling her sides, and she laughed hard enough that she couldn’t talk anymore.
“Thank you so much,” the woman said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Miss Carrie said, shaking the woman’s hand. “We really love having Mei in the classroom.”
Doctor Strickland kept tickling Mei until the door to the Montessori cycled closed behind them. Then Mei caught her breath.
“Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s waiting for us,” Doctor Strickland said. “We’re taking you to her right now.”
The newer hallways of Ganymede were wide and lush and the air recyclers barely ran. The knife-thin blades of areca palm fronds spilled up and out from dozens of hydroponic planters. The broad yellow-green striated leaves of devil’s ivy spilled down the walls. The dark green primitive leaves of Mother-in-Law’s Tongue thrust up beneath them both. Full-spectrum LEDs glowed white-gold. Daddy said it was just what sunlight looked like on Earth, and Mei pictured that planet as a huge complicated network of plants and hallways with the sun running in lines above them in a bright blue ceiling-sky, and you could climb over the walls and end up anywhere.