by Gwynn White
Cubewano. Finally, it clicked, because the reports began to include references to the Ashitaka. QB1-o. The Kuiper belt object. The Comet.
The United Nations had previously agreed on a plan to accelerate the availability of civilian transport ships, either new or re-purposed military transports, and to initiate a program to construct subterranean silos for those unable to leave. Not much progress was made in the months after that announcement—at least, not much that the ordinary person could point to as progress.
Most people missed a tabloid report, at that time, that claimed the G20 Summit scheduled for the following year had been officially re-located from Berlin to Valles Marineris on Mars. The article went on to speculate that interplanetary transports were being readied for the Summit that could hold not just the G20 leaders, but the top echelons of government, as well as their immediate families.
Most people missed that the Board of Directors of some of the world’s largest conglomerates—Weyman Dynamics, Yudovich Communications, Otani Shudan Life Sciences—had re-scheduled upcoming General Meetings, Board meetings, and committee meetings off-world to Valles Marineris, to MetropolisX, to Medusae Fossae, to Origin City, or any number of the inner colonies.
Most people missed that commercial and civilian launches for industrial cargo destined for the inner colonies were being quietly re-scheduled to later dates in favor of personnel transport. New payload rates were being put in place, with exchange rates suddenly favorable in Nether, an off-world cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, or Marscoin, forked from BitLitecoin. The elite, of course, were the only ones who could afford the new human payload rates.
As the news vids streamed some of these launches, I thought of gazelles, scattering as the lioness leaps from the bush, fleeing from the watering hole they’d believed was a haven.
Most people were placated by government reassurances, and had taken a wait-and-see attitude, anticipating the mission status reports for the UES Ashitaka, a starship with the only mass accelerator in the system with enough power to move the Comet from its current collision course with Earth.
The official updates kept that hope—or was it folly?—alive for months. The Ashitaka had indeed re-deployed towards an interception of the Comet. It was now eight months away, six months away, weeks away. We watched, listened, prayed for the salvation that was to come.
So this was the news about the cubewano: Before the Ashitaka could do anything to carry out its mission, a flotilla of zook warships and interceptors, originating from either Ganymede or Callisto, had engaged the Earth ship and its escorts, the UES Chihiro and the UES Horikoshi.
The Horikoshi? That had been the first I’d heard that Paul’s ship was involved in the mission. Of course not, that would have been a mission he wouldn’t have alluded to at all in his messages to Mom or myself.
The battle between the zooks and the United Earth Force ships was a heated but uneven exchange, and in the aftermath of the ambush, all the zook ships had been destroyed.
Hidden inside that victory over the zook ships was a terrible loss. The Ashitaka’s mass accelerator had been irreparably damaged, and its own binary propulsion drive had been rendered inoperable, with weeks of repair in store.
Some said that the destruction of the orbital weapon and the ship’s drive had been the objective of the zook ships in the first place, that it had been a suicide mission to accomplish, and that knowing the risk, they had still gone ahead with the attack—a strategic chess move in the middle-game of the Colonial War. It didn’t matter why.
The Ashitaka had failed.
12
A Great Whale
The weeks lost in repairing their binary drive meant the Ashitaka would not catch up with the Comet in time to alter its trajectory. No other ship in the UES fleet had the capability to move the Comet. No bang, all whimper.
Over the weeks that I lay in bed recuperating from my wounds, I had watched as the hospital news channel relayed scenes from around the world—of resignation, of anger, of panic, of despair.
In London, in Beijing, in Moscow, in Tokyo, in Washington, in Seoul, in Berlin, in all the major capitals of the world people were taking to the streets, clamoring for the capital ships, for the civilian transports.
Sporadic rioting was taking place, and looting was being reported in city centers all across the globe. Police and militia were doing their best to quell the unrest, mainly directed by governments that were, essentially, no longer on the planet.
More than the discovery of the Comet eight years ago, more than the announcement three years ago that impact was not just possible but probable, the news of the Ashitaka failure—that was what finally made the threat real.
That was the day people began talking about the comet the way they talk about the Moon, linked inexorably to Earth. The cubewano, Gabriel’s Comet, became simply this: the Comet.
I told my mother they needed to operate. The doctors determined that I’d need exoskeleton implants on my legs to assist my walking, as well as to stimulate and re-grow the nerves so that I’d be able to walk on my own again. It was a standard procedure, so I told her she didn’t need to worry.
As I recuperated, my mother recorded poetry, sent them to me so that I could listen to them when I had time. Her voice, expressive and familiar, carried me through recovery.
Savannah
A current crosses the darkness,
stirring the last dry shreds of life.
Upwind, a Buick stalks the edge of the pavement,
her voice a gentle rumble in her throat.
Her eyes simmer like the smoke snarling up
from a hammered anvil.
The neon tattoos her skin so it is
striped orange, a strobed tiger, crouched, impatient.
Feather and ivory. A slow, livid burning
in the undergrowth.
Just under the awnings they flash phosphorescence
flamingo flamingo and then vanish into air.
From the antlered shadows a drunkard lurches.
His legs spindle under him like a newborn gazelle.
The window blinds drift and flutter,
hovering wings.
Somewhere on the savannah something watches
with incandescent eyes.
I listened to yet another analysis of the Ashitaka mission failure as I navigated a course around the passenger waiting area at O.R. Tambo International Airport. I could walk now, an exoskeleton implant assisting my damaged legs.
On the screens in the waiting area, a CNN newscaster reported that, while nearly all G20 governments had transported a core of people to the inner colonies, many leaders did stay Earthside. I took some solace in video of my own Prime Minister Trudeau walking among Canadians on Parliament Hill.
I’d hit the head of the line snaking toward the boarding gate, when my phone lights up. Paul again, I think, but I have just enough time to see the terse summary—She’s not doing well—before the plane’s jammers shut down my signal and I lose the rest of the message.
The commercial flight to Toronto would last over twenty hours. I’d missed the freedom of the air. I remember wondering how soon I could pass the medicals again—with my injuries—and resume my own flights.
Outside the window, the clouds drifted like froth at the top of waves, white like icebergs in a dark sea. I couldn’t help thinking of the hidden world beneath it, the desperation of humanity, and the serenity and innocence of the natural world, not knowing what was coming next.
There was an artist from Canada’s eastern coast, David Blackwood, who crafted one of the most evocative lithographs I’ve ever seen. In Fire Down on the Labrador, a color etching and aquatint, fishermen in a lifeboat flee a ship engulfed in flames of red. The scene of desperation is framed by towers of icebergs in the background, while beneath the waters, and taking up most of the composition, a great whale floats, serene, unmoving, unmoved.
When the plane landed and I passed the arrival gates, I upda
ted the message. I’d thought it was about Mom, but it isn’t. Instead, it’s Chloe Cotter, one of the staff at CIRCE, giving me an update on Leia, the Grevy's zebra I’d found and brought to Glen Eden almost twelve years ago.
13
The Call of Ibis
The Grevy’s zebra is the largest wild equine species. Its lineage is the most ancient, the modern form arising in the Pleistocene; it still retains its original appearance. It’s taller than either the pains or mountain zebra, with a large, long head, elongated ears, a brown muzzle, an erect mane that extends the length of its back, and narrow stripes.
It’s also the most threatened of the zebra species.
Hunting was the major factor in the early decline of the Grevy’s zebra, followed by habitat loss, the displacement of the grass species that it depends on for grazing by invasive species, and competition with livestock for scarce watering holes.
Grevy's zebra can go without water for up to five days—but lactating females must drink every other day in order to maintain milk production. So habitat loss has resulted in high foal mortality among the wild herds.
While there are estimated to be less than a thousand individuals in the wild, mostly in Kenya and sparsely in Ethiopia, there’s been some success with captive herds, in places such as at Glen Eden, where several naturally-born foals have been birthed.
Still, high foal mortality due to the primary environmental factors remains one of the major threats to the species’ survival. To counter this, conservation biologists do research on semen collection, freezing, and artificial insemination.
Leia, as with several of the animals at Glen Eden, was a result of the conservation research at CIRCE.
It was eleven in the morning when I swung through the arrival gates at Pearson International’s Terminal 1. I scanned the faces of the crowd for my mother. Instead, there in the front row was Chloe, my colleague at CIRCE, cleaning her glasses.
I shouted her name, and she waved.
“Your mother called,” she said when I joined her. “Asked me to make sure you got back all right. I’m sorry about Amahle.”
We hugged. “My mother, how’s she doing?”
Chloe’s lips thinned. “The same I guess. She’s a strong one.” She put her arm around me as we walked to the taxi area outside.
“Where to?” asked the taxi.
“Glen Eden Zoo,” I said. I rang Mom’s office and it went straight to voice mail. As a legal assistant at Gatewood Campbell Watanabe, Mom didn’t answer her phone she was at a meeting with one of the lawyers or a client. I left a message, told her I was fine and that I’d pick her up as usual after work unless she called me first.
As soon as I got off the machine, my phone buzzed. Paul, as usual:
See you later, Zara-gator.
I deleted the message, put the phone away.
Chloe was telling me about Leia. I’d found her when she was only several months old, so she was approaching thirteen years now. On the surface this was good, but she was beginning to show symptoms of age.
What was concerning was that, while in the wild, Grevy's zebra life spans were about twenty years or slightly shorter, but in captivity lifespans for naturally-born zebra were as long as forty years. Leia was not naturally-born. She was a cloned Grevy’s, grown from embryo implanted in a mountain zebra, and somewhere in the process CIRCE hadn’t quite gotten it right yet.
I instructed the taxi to transfer my baggage to the truck in staff parking, and continued into the Zoo with Chloe.
We had a shared background, Chloe and me. We both started our careers with a love for the Zoo, and then joined it as volunteers and assistant keepers. During that time, we’d also helped out with research at CIRCE and gotten to know Judith quite well, even before we became regular staff members at CIRCE.
From the airport to the Zoo, everything looked normal. Chloe said that things had calmed down in the last couple of weeks, but that the days after the Ashitaka news had been pretty bad. The Prime Minister came out personally to address the nation, and was now flying coast to coast to talk to people. Things were, on the surface, back to normal.
But things were not normal. Even here at the Zoo, something here was amiss.
At this time of day there would usually be crowds, milling on the grass, wrapped around the enclosures, walking three or four across on the pathways. Now, although there were, here and there, scattered individuals, the Zoo was empty.
It was how things were after closing time, when the gates were closed and the last few stragglers left in their spinners. A quiet bereft of human sound descended on the Zoo, broken only by the volunteers and keepers on their evening rounds. Otherwise, the only sounds were the call of ibis, the trumpeting of elephants, the bray of zebras—the sounds of nature, untouched.
I must have gasped or said something, because Chloe blinked and started cleaning her glasses again.
“It’s been like this,” she said. “The only ones coming through now are things like school tours that have been booked in advance. Even those groups are smaller than usual.”
“We should be okay for now,” I said. “The Foundation should see us through. What’s happening at the other zoos? What’s happening at Brantford, Jungle Cat, Toronto?”
We sped by a habitat where our female black panther Parisa roamed. Panthers live in a variety of habitats—rainforest, woodlands, swamps, marshland, savannahs, mountains, and deserts, and even human settlements—more effectively than any other big cats. This habitat was a rainforest.
“Some of the keepers at Toronto and the other zoos have already left, and the others are talking about leaving,” Chloe said. “It’s like everywhere else. People who can afford it have gone off-world, or they’re making plans to live their lives.”
“Judith hasn’t gone off-world. What’s she saying?”
“We have a mission,” Chloe said. “That’s what she’s saying.”
“We do.”
“Not everyone is listening now, Zara,” she answered. “A third of the volunteer staff haven’t come back. And one of the keepers, Erin, she’s gone.”
Our spinner stopped at CIRCE.
The Canadian Institute for Research in Conservation Ecology, CIRCE, was situated in a three-story building with exterior walls of floor-to-ceiling glass, which housed laboratories and core facilities, staff offices, conference rooms, and an imaging facility with both computer tomographic and magnetic resonance imaging capability.
Founded by an initial grant of $500M from the Weston Foundation, and with ties to universities in and around the Greater Toronto Area and elsewhere, CIRCE boasted cross-disciplinary research at the cutting edge of biotechnology.
Teams in several research areas explored the conservation and perpetuation of species using some of the most advanced tools of biotechnology. Those tools were what led to some of the previously extinct species now roaming the grounds of the Zoo.
But the core of CIRCE, the primary reason it was built, was its Cryopreservation Unit, and Project Noah. The project was casually referred to in some circles as Judith’s Ark.
Chloe and I scanned our security cards, put on our gear, and stepped into the Cryo Unit.
In many ways, Judith’s Ark reflected similar aims to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an Arctic stronghold of the world’s seeds on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen about 1,300 kilometers from the North Pole.
The vault was started to preserve duplicate plant seeds held in other gene banks worldwide, an attempt to make sure these seeds aren’t lost in the middle of regional crises.
While there was some historical question of the Seed Vault’s integrity when it experienced flooding from heavy rain and melted snow, over the decades it had been upgraded so that the vault could now survive global crises without the human intervention.
I’d worked on some of the latest modifications during my stint at the Gosling Research Institute, and had traveled to Svalbard to help install these.
The Cryo Unit does work on cell
extraction and culture technologies, alternate cryopreservation processes and fluids, innovative cooling mechanisms, compact and long-life power sources for cryo-conservation, and many other areas. Much of it is unglamorous research work.
The Ark room is a chamber filled with a set of enormous steel reservoirs, with liquid nitrogen flowing into them through vacuum-insulated pipes. Behind it, a maze of pumps and machinery hum. The steel reservoirs, in turn, fed three medium-sized freezers, marked A, B, and C. These three freezers were the Ark itself.
Chloe went to Freezer C. As she opened it with a gloved hand, our breaths and water vapor in the air condensed into wisps of white. She extracted a container which held several small vials.
“Here’s your unicorn,” she said, tapping the container.
“Amahle,” I said, exhaling.
Her cells, cultured and divided into several vials. The cells that represented the blueprint of everything the rhino ever was.
Over the last while, Chloe and others at the Cryo Unit worked to preserve what could be saved from the cells, two samples of each type, with the duplicates sent to the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. In turn, San Diego regularly sent duplicates of its own collection, to help ensure any losses were minimized.
We went over the documentation for Amahle, as well as several other specimens that had come in during the time I was away—hawksbill turtle, red panda, sea lions, Malayan tiger, giant otter, South Andean deer, gaur, and Humboldt penguin.
Inside the three freezers were all the individual animals of the Ark, nearly 40,000 individuals. They represented thousands of species and subspecies, and the decades-long work of hundreds of dedicated humans to preserve the diversity of life on Earth.
