The Ark

by Laura Liddell Nolen

He continued. “Look. If you really do have valid passes, I’ll take you to the gate myself.”

  “Thanks. I’m Magda.” I let my voice shake a little. I’d already gathered that helpless was a good look for me when dealing with this guy.

  He looked at me for a moment, jaw clenched. “Eren. Let’s see that starpass, please.”

  I slid my hand into the waistband of my skirt, shoving my arm into my hose all the way to the elbow. When Eren averted his glance, I remembered to look embarrassed. The kind of girl who wears skirt suits probably doesn’t get searched by men in uniform all that often.

  “It’s just—everyone wanted to steal it.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Here.”

  He leaned forward to take the pass, his face illuminated by the blaze behind me. Despite his apparent willingness to help me, there was a hardness in his eyes, as though he didn’t believe the pass would be valid. I thought about the dead man in the boat I’d jumped from and shivered.

  What would happen to the boy?

  The scanner on his belt glowed green almost instantly, and I let out a silent breath of relief. Until that moment, I hadn’t let myself wonder whether the pass was legit. A valid pass was more valuable than all the money in the world, which wasn’t saying much. How had my parents gotten their hands on an extra one?

  Eren stared at his screen for several minutes, long enough for me to notice a twitch in the side of his jaw. After what seemed like forever, he drew a deep breath and turned back to me, his expression unreadable. “Your pass is good. You can come with me. Look, I really am sorry about the boat. But you should have made your plans to be here a lot sooner.”

  “I—I couldn’t leave my family.”

  He nodded. “You’re here now. I’ll see you make it to the gate. Stay here.” He handed the pass back to me. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  The boat passed through the gap in the barrier as he turned from me. Rows of black transport vehicles, the kind with benches full of soldiers, awaited us at the dock. Eren guided me onto the nearest one, which was already half-full of Coast Guard personnel. To my enormous relief, another guard appeared behind us, escorting the boy from the boat.

  The guards exchanged a look with each other, but neither spoke. We settled onto the bench in the transport vehicle, squeezing all the way over to make as much room as possible for those still to come.

  I ignored the questioning stares of those around us out of habit, but Eren the Guard was visibly uncomfortable. “Valid starpass,” he explained. “Couldn’t leave her on the water.”

  The guard I was sitting next to gave me a quick nod as the vehicle lurched into motion. “Keep a good grip on the pass. You never know what this kind of riffraff will try to pull off. Stay close.”

  I decided not to point out that the “riffraff” were nothing but ordinary citizens driven to desperation because their government had left them to die. Didn’t seem like the kind of thing to start an argument over, at this point. All the same, my knuckles were white around the sharp metal of the pass.

  We were at the OPT gate within minutes. The line at the gate was guarded by a double row of soldiers. I took a deep breath, but instantly regretted it. The thin night air was laced with the scent of blood.

  No, not just blood. Death.

  In addition to the gauntlet of armed soldiers, the gate was guarded by two towers, one on either side. Sniper rifles protruded from secure locations high overhead.

  All around us, people were clamoring for admission, undeterred by the bodies of the fallen strewn around them. Decorated war veterans, rendered disabled in service to their country, were forcibly shoved back into the crowd. Mothers and fathers attempted to press babies into the arms of those in line. I glanced at one such child. He was covered in jewelry, presumably a bribe for whoever took him on board. My arms reached for the infant instinctively, but the nearest guard knocked the woman back into mass of people, and she fell with a shriek. The guard next to him pushed me forward into the line, and I turned to look at his face.

  Like most of the soldiers guarding the line, he wore a mask. It was the only thing about him I could understand. I wouldn’t want to show my face to those who were about to die, either.

  Numb, I shuffled after Eren, trying desperately to ignore the strange feeling of gratefulness mixed with guilt that weighed my every step. If the soldiers weren’t here, I would have no chance of getting to the front of the line. The thought made me sick.

  Eren kept his gun on display.

  The line moved quickly. If your starpass was valid, you were in. If it was forged, they dipped your hand in a barrel of dark ink and marched you out of the line at gunpoint. The area was well lit, and I saw more than a few black-stained hands in the crowd around the line.

  I had almost reached the front of the line when a voice cut through my consciousness.

  “Oi! That’s a real pass! You can’t—stop!—you can’t do this to me!”

  Kip. Kip was here.

  There was a gentle splash as his hand was pushed into the barrel of ink. “Stay back or you’ll be shot. Anyone with ink on their hands is liable for fraudulent misuse of Transport resources and may be shot on sight.”

  The soldier at the front of the line grabbed Kip by the shoulder of his sleeve and shoved him several feet back. “Get moving, kid.”

  As he turned, he saw me. His recognition rooted me to my spot, and a thousand possibilities flashed through my mind. Would he blow my cover? I didn’t think so. It wasn’t like Kip to snitch, and he would never get in the way of a job, even one he wasn’t part of. But he might still be angry that I rolled on him, or that I had left the group. And him.

  I lifted my eyebrows in a silent plea, and the corners of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly. I didn’t see what was so amusing.

  He began softly. In the harsh light, one hand glowed naked and pink, and the other was velvety black. “One thing I’ll say for myself. I never underestimated you.”

  He could have been speaking to the crowd, or the soldiers, except that his glance came back to me. Eren looked at me, and I forced myself to shrug.

  Worry makes you look suspicious.

  But Kip wasn’t planning to give me away. He made a sweeping gesture toward the entire line and began to shout. “Enjoy your life out there among the stars. All I ask is that you remember me. Remember that I knew you for what you were, and I never tried to change you.”

  All around me, people carefully ignored him, facing forward. The gatekeeper waved, and the soldier reappeared. “That’s enough, Shakespeare.” The guard shoved Kip again, and this time, he kept contact until they were both several feet away from the gate. I stared after them. Kip was smaller than I realized. “Now stay away.” The guard gave Kip’s shoulder a final shove.

  Kip had never been one for following orders, and he literally had nothing left to lose. So it wasn’t hard to predict what would happen next.

  He took three or four steps away from the door, then turned back sharply. In seconds, his shoulder made contact with the soldier’s ribcage. I had seen that move take out guards twice Kip’s size. It was all about where you aimed your collarbone.

  He got much farther than I expected. That was the strange part: the stretched-out silence while he sprinted toward the gate. He was ten steps away, then five. A lifetime played out in those moments, but the shots came soon enough. There was a pop of compressed air exploding, and Kip—my Kip—crumpled onto the pavement.

  I made a sound like a hiccup, then held my breath.

  Eren looked back at me. A confused look played across his face, but his voice remained authoritative. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  My chest spasmed, and I breathed again, but without the tears I expected. A moment passed, and I realized all at once that I didn’t have to fight to keep from crying. I had no tears for Kip. What was wrong with me?

  Eren put a tentative arm around my shoulder. “This will all be over soon. Try not to think about
it. Guns are forbidden on board the Arks,” he said, quoting directly from the Treaty of Phoenix. “Humanity will work together toward the common goal of survival.” As if to make his point, he surrendered his firearm to the gatekeeper’s assistant. He cleared his throat. “It really is all for the best, Magda.”

  I gritted my teeth and stepped forward to the front of the line.

  Nine

  The last war had been coming for years. Worldwide energy crises didn’t tend to resolve themselves. But this time, the scale of destruction was unprecedented.

  No one really knew who lit the first bomb. Everything happened so fast that the governments hardly had to explain themselves. America insisted it came from those still loyal to what used to be North Korea. Several Asian governments claimed that it came from the North American territories on their continent. Everyone suspected the Saudis, since they controlled everything in the Middle East. Only two things were immediately clear: most countries on Earth had nuclear capabilities, and no one in charge was afraid to use them.

  World War III was underway.

  At the height of the conflict, “mutually assured destruction” was the main phrase on everyone’s lips. It was abruptly displaced when we found a new threat to argue about: Afro-Australian scientists claimed to have discovered a new meteor in our galaxy. Earth’s path of orbit, combined with its gravitational pull, placed our odds of impact around eighty-five percent.

  Afro-Australia’s claims were verified by South America’s government-owned scientists, and soon enough, Asia had recruited Afro-Australia into peace talks. North and South America allied, followed by Europe.

  As months passed, it became clear that the meteor had the capacity to end life on Earth. When the date of destruction was definitively calculated to be ten years in the future, the world’s governments pursued peace in earnest, allying into five powerful groups. The Treaty of Phoenix took another year to hammer out, and then bam—we were all agreed.

  No more nuclear war. No more fighting at all, actually. From now on, we’d build spaceships together.

  We built five massive bioships, one for each alliance, called Arks, to be accessed by ten OPTs each. The Arks were built in space, since there wasn’t enough fuel on Earth to launch them off the planet.

  Each Ark would hold a hundred thousand people. Half an Ark’s population was chosen by its government. The other half was by worldwide lottery, so that on any given Ark, half its passengers were foreign. Those who drafted the rules were trying to avoid ethnicity-based conflict among the five Arks, which, at the moment, were floating in the darkness of space, awaiting the arrival of the final OPTs from our doomed planet.

  Weapons were outlawed, as everyone agreed that in space, our resources would be better spent colonizing Eirenea, a planetoid in the Kuiper Belt. The terms of the Treaty were carried out in all haste. Bureaucracy was a relic of the past, when we had time to quibble about things like fairness and democracy.

  And now, Earth’s final day had arrived.

  The boy and the other guard reached the front of the line next to me while Eren’s starpass was being scanned. This was the moment. The boy would either make it through the gate, or be sent away to his death. His gaze locked on mine for an instant, but it was long enough. His expression told me that he didn’t have a pass.

  “Passes,” the gatekeeper barked from behind her mask. Like the boy, I stopped breathing. But then the guard spoke.

  “I’m executing an elective transfer under Clause Sixteen of the Treaty. The transferee is younger than the pass holder and of sound mind and body,” he said.

  On my side of the line, the scanner glowed green as the gatekeeper waved it over the pass. I barely registered this, since my attention was glued to the other side. The other gatekeeper took a moment to stare at the guard and the boy. “You understand this is irrevocable?”

  The guard squared his shoulders. “I do.”

  “Once he goes through the gate, you will leave and not return.”

  Around them, the crowd was still, and the voice of the guard carried. “Ma’am, I just torpedoed a civilian watercraft. I’ve made enough decisions I can’t live with. This is the one decision I can.”

  Speechless, the boy looked up at the guard while the pass was scanned. As soon as the light turned green, the guard disappeared into the crowd, and the boy was shoved forward through the gate. It wasn’t until he’d taken several steps that he found his tongue. He turned, too late, to scream into the crowd.

  “Wait! Thank you! Tell him thank you!”

  I distanced myself from Eren as soon as I was through the gate. I didn’t know whether my starpass had been assigned to a specific person, and whether I would need to start calling myself by that person’s name, and I didn’t want him around to ask questions. I prayed that no one would ask to see my ID, since Magda Notting’s had been expired for several years.

  The hallway for non-military passengers was crisp and white, with several doors on one side. I concentrated on the sound of my footsteps in an effort to block out the distant screaming from the mob.

  After several yards, I was ushered into one of the side rooms by a woman in an unmarked uniform the color of my pass. “This way, please.”

  I felt a thrill in spite of myself. I was bound for a new world, with new loyalties. No one had a criminal record, so everyone would be on equal footing. Where I was going, they might not even have prisons, much less a military.

  The room was small, bright, and empty except for a black plastic bin.

  “Your clothes and possessions in the bin. Anything that does not fit into the bin must be discarded, just here.” She indicated a flap on the wall. “The sanitizing will begin when you insert your pass into this slot and will proceed as described in your pre-boarding materials.” She waved at a place on the wall, and I noticed a bronze showerhead above it. “The screening will take place directly after. You will remain standing on the mat throughout both processes. When the bell rings, you may dress. When the door opens on the far side, please proceed forward for further instructions.”

  I released a slow breath. That sounded easy enough.

  But she wasn’t finished. “If the door opens in this direction, you will proceed out the way you came.”

  Wait, what? I stared at her. “You mean—”

  “Citizens with communicable diseases will not be allowed on board the Transport, except those given passage as test subjects for the science and medical divisions. There will be no further access if you fail to pass the screening. Good luck.”

  She stepped backward, and the door clanged shut between us.

  I stared after her for a moment, then stripped off my clothes. I put everything I was wearing and everything I carried, except for the starpass, into the bin and popped the lid closed. Then I took a deep breath and slid the dark blue metal card into the slot.

  The now-familiar robotic female voice thrummed through an unseen speaker. “Shower initializing. Remember to close your eyes and mouth. Primary wash in three… two… one.”

  A sharp jet of warm liquid shot out from the showerhead, which began to circle the walls over my head. It looked and felt like water, but the smell was odd, like a mix of ginger and formaldehyde. I hated it. After it made one complete round, it whirred down the wall and sprayed up and down in a second circle at the height of my waist.

  “Secondary wash in three… two… one.”

  This round may have been water, but it smelled like grapefruits. It was hot, and I felt it drive the first liquid off my skin and hair and down my back. I touched my hand to my hair and was surprised to find it completely dry.

  “Tertiary wash in three… two… one.”

  This round was not liquid at all. It was some kind of ultraviolet light. I closed my eyes a little harder, and the hot light swept my body in the same pattern as the first two sprays. Just as the light began to burn, the voice sounded again.

  “Sanitation complete. Beginning passenger scan.”

  Ther
e was a beep, then a bell.

  “Passenger scan complete. No diseases detected. Welcome to the Off-Planet Transport, North American Ark division.”

  I blinked. Was that it? And was it just me, or had the disembodied voice become much friendlier since declaring me clean?

  I yanked my card from the slot, then tore open the bin and rifled through my satchel for the other outfit I had packed: black shirt, black pants, black boots. I glanced at my hands as I pulled on the pants, and stopped short. My skin was glowing. Literally. A soft, pale blue light emanated from every inch of my body and reflected against the white of the walls around me.

  That was new. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  Into the satchel went the blue skirt suit. After a moment’s hesitation, I flung the used nylons through the trash flap. If I really were going to a better place, I didn’t want to reintroduce humanity to the concept of pantyhose.

  A few minutes after I dressed, the wall in front of me slid into itself, and I stepped forward onto the loading dock. All around me, people shared the same expression: total awe. And it wasn’t hard to see why. The OPT was before us.

  It was huge. At least as big as a stadium. I supposed that made sense. If every Ark had ten transports, then each transport had to hold ten thousand passengers, plus crew. From what I could see, it consisted of a massive central unit surrounded by hallways suspended several stories in the air. The hallways resembled wings and radiated directly outward from the core. Four such wings were visible from where I stood, gazing up. Ten or twelve feet above me was a thin platform serviced by a series of lifts. Passengers on the platform were loading onto the lifts, which carried them to the wings.

  A man wearing the same unmarked blue uniform was weaving through the crowd of gently glowing passengers. “Please ascend to the platforms in an orderly fashion,” he called out.

  “How?” someone asked.

  “The ladders,” came the reply. He gestured toward a row of thin metal rungs that led to the platform.

  I shuffled into the line forming at the bottom of the nearest ladder. I was halfway through it before I realized that if you didn’t have both arms and legs in good working order, you weren’t getting on the platform. And if you couldn’t reach the platform, you weren’t going to make it to the Transport.