They headed into the town centre, unsure of what they were going to find. When they reached the brewery and turned into the main square, people were wheeling crates and furniture into the town hall, which the 3-D map showed as having deep cellars. It looked like people were saving whatever goods they couldn’t carry with them. Chris wasn’t sure if it was optimism or habit, but most of the stuff wouldn’t be going to Opis if anyone survived. Maybe that didn’t matter.
Joanne, Doug Brandt’s wife, was standing outside the town hall with an old-fashioned clipboard, ticking things off a list and chatting. Chris stood back and tapped his temple to acknowledge her. Trinder went up to her and had a word.
Putt. Another gunshot, a little distance away. Chris had now worked out what was going on. Trinder came back, shaking his head.
“He’s shooting them, isn’t he?” Chris said. “The cows. Liam’s shooting his cows.”
“No, apparently that’s not him. The guy doing the shooting is the one with the sheep.”
“Liam’s got a wife and kids, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Are they staying with him?”
“No, they’re already in the shelter.”
Chris didn’t understand how a man could wave goodbye to his family when they needed him most, then sit down to die with his animals. “He needs to see the outside world. This has to be one of the few towns left in the country where nobody’s lost family.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Ah, shit.” Chris had seen the photos in Trinder’s quarters. He didn’t need to remind the guy. “Sorry. Didn’t think.”
Trinder shook his head. “No problem.”
They found Liam feeding his pigs in a field. The bare earth looked like it had been churned up by armoured vehicles, and some of the pigs were stretched out in the shade of corrugated shelters, not ready to venture out into the heat of the day. Others were milling around Liam, ears flapping.
Trinder called out from the fence. “Mr Dale, I’ve got the schedule for your move.”
Liam turned. The pigs crowded around him, trying to put their snouts in his bucket. “I’ve told your people I’m not going if I can’t bring my animals.”
“What about your family?”
“You mind your own business.”
“Okay, you come and look at the shelter and tell us where we can put them all. Because I’m damned if I know.”
“I’m not stupid. I know the difficulties.”
“You probably won’t survive the fallout. Come on, Mr Dale, please. You can’t let your kids grow up without a dad.”
“I don’t need parenting lessons from you, thanks.”
“Okay.” Chris interrupted, trying to steer Trinder away from a pointless argument. “Let’s leave Liam to think about this. He’s got until noon tomorrow. Plenty of time.”
Trinder tried again. “Mr Dale, can you start over with breeding pairs? Two or three of each?” Chris thought it was asking for trouble to give in to him, but maybe Trinder was playing for time. The closer it got to a deadline, the more people tended to focus on stark priorities. “Because we can’t house hundreds of animals safely even for a few days. But a dozen... well, we might.”
Liam put the bucket down and walked a few paces towards them, jaws clenched. The pigs seized the opportunity and tipped the bucket over, shoving each other aside to snatch the best bits.
Chris hoped the guy wasn’t going to start anything. The one thing he couldn’t do was walk away from physical violence, and guys could generally read that about him, so maybe Liam could too. But there was a fence in the way to bolster the farmer’s courage, and he was scared about bigger things than Chris punching the crap out of him. That made him unpredictable. Chris was ready to swing.
Shit, I thought I’d grown out of this.
“Is it true that Ainatio could stop it all?” Liam asked. “Have they got something APS wants? Are we being sacrificed for their trade secrets?”
Chris had no idea how the rumour had reached Kill Line, but Liam wasn’t that far off the mark. He didn’t dare look at Trinder because that would have seemed like confirmation.
“I don’t think trade secrets are an issue here,” Trinder said. “But we’re doing everything we can to talk APS out of this.”
Liam pointed a finger at him. “If we live through this — tell Erskine we’ll be coming for her. We kept you alive and this is how you repay us. You’re destroying the town. You’re destroying us.”
Trinder didn’t take the bait. “I’ll call you later today,” he said. “Please, have a think about it.”
Chris walked back to the Caracal and climbed in. If they were going to go through this with every livestock farmer, it would turn into a free-for-all. Maybe Trinder was right, though. If they were letting people bring family pets, maybe a few farm animals were worth the trouble. They might even need to eat them later.
“I played that all wrong,” Trinder said, starting the vehicle. “But I think he’s got to be able to tell himself he didn’t give in without a fight. Emotional stuff, herds and bloodlines.”
Chris remembered a woman waiting on her shattered doorstep for her husband, refusing to leave with the convoy until the guy got home. It would be any minute now, she said, but it looked like she’d been waiting for days. Chris had had to move on. Maybe the guy never came home, and maybe he showed up minutes later. Chris tried never to think about things he couldn’t go back and change.
“There’s no right answer to any of this, Dan.”
“How the hell did they hear about Erskine and Kim’s deal?”
“Can’t keep things quiet forever. Not now we’re mixing with them so much.”
“Yeah, but that’s a pretty obscure argument that’s going on between a few senior people.”
“Maybe not. You’ve got hundreds of disgruntled Ainatio people smart enough to know some stuff and piece together the rest. And it doesn’t matter. It’s probably true and everyone’s going to find out sooner or later anyway.”
Trinder headed back to the facility. “Well, that bodes well for the future. Assuming any of this works, and we end up on Opis, then it’s going to be kind of hard to live together as a community. We’ll start our new world with a ready-made feud.”
“But at least we’ll have that new world,” Chris said. “And we’ve still got time. Who knows what Sol’s going to pull out of the fire?”
As they passed the town, they heard more gunshots. Trinder shook his head and said nothing. Chris tried to imagine how something could be salvaged, but it was already too late for the guy slaughtering his sheep.
“Damn shame,” Trinder said at last.
Chris thought of the woman waiting on the doorstep for her no-show husband, and all the people he’d come across on the convoy’s journey but left behind.
I abandoned them, one way or another. But I never asked them to trust me and then let them down. Can’t save everyone. Do what you can and move on.
“Yeah,” Chris said. “It’s a shame.”
* * *
Director’s Suite, Ainatio Park Research Centre:
1415 Hours
A small, scruffy flatbed truck pulled up outside the main entrance, looking like a prop from a war movie.
Erskine watched it on the security monitor. It was an olive drab State Defence vehicle with pockmarked side panels, carrying what appeared to be two or three families with children ranging from toddlers to teenagers. Erskine had expected people showing signs of privation, but apart from their anxious expressions, they looked more like long-haul passengers whose airport transfer hadn’t shown up than desperate refugees. One of Trinder’s men helped them down from the back of the truck and put their meagre luggage, all rucksacks, on a trolley bot.
Every hour, something new reminded Erskine that the launch countdown was in progress right now
, not at some timetabled point in the future. She’d grown so used to thinking at least forty-five years ahead that the steady march of a humble office clock ticking down to tomorrow kept catching her unawares.
Berman stuck his head around the open door. “Director, it’s your call from APS via their orbital. Colonel Su-Jin.”
She took a few deep breaths to steady her voice. This probably confirmed her suspicion that Solomon hadn’t had the balls to risk calling APS himself, but she’d play this carefully. He’d be listening. He was also capable of interrupting and hijacking the call, but there was nothing she could do about that without cutting it off. This was probably her last chance to change the way that the next day would play out.
“Put her through.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Erskine.”
The deference to her time zone made it feel incongruously polite. “Good morning, Colonel. The situation hasn’t changed here since we last spoke, I’m afraid. We don’t have the ability to move this many people, and even if we did, there’s nowhere we could relocate them, even temporarily. I have to ask you for more time to prepare our ships.”
“And where would you go in them once repaired?”
“Initially, to the orbitals. Three of the four are only disused docks, but we don’t have other options.” If Su-Jin already knew that they’d be heading out of the solar system, then whatever Erskine said now was only going to make matters worse. Nobody liked a liar. “Perhaps we’d ask for refuge in South America or Britain. Wherever we go, it has to be better than staying here.”
“And how long would you require?”
“Another two or three months.”
“By that time, the contamination will have advanced much further. I’m afraid that’s too long. I regret this very much, but I must weigh the futures of five billion APS citizens against this. I have no choice. Can you save nobody?”
“We have space for eleven hundred in one ship that’s flightworthy, but not for the remaining sixteen hundred.” Erskine thought briefly about telling Su-Jin about Kim and seeing what happened, but the idea evaporated in a second. If Kim really was their agent, they’d want to talk to her and the lid would be off. But Erskine decided to risk a diluted version to test the water. “We have people here with families in Fiji and Australia. APS states. We’re not strangers, Colonel. We have a great deal in common.”
There was a brief pause. “So what measures are you taking?”
“We’ve set up shelters in the underground storage floors. They’re not dedicated bunkers, but it’s all we can do now.”
“This might be little comfort, Miss Erskine, but the ordnance we plan to use this time contains magnesium and is for a smaller area than those we’ve used on other occasions. So returning is possible relatively quickly. Perhaps two weeks.” It all sounded so tidy, like they were discussing how long it would take the smell of paint to dissipate after the decorator had left. “We do not set out to kill civilians. That might mean that many of your people will survive if the shelters are deep and well sealed.”
Erskine needed to hear that, but she had the feeling that Su-Jin needed to say it, true or not. Neither of them seemed to be about to discuss what would happen afterwards if anyone made it through the initial strikes. Erskine told herself what she’d tried hard to believe during a sleepless night: that there was enough food to keep people alive until another shuttle could be launched, and somehow Solomon would re-establish the link with Shackleton after the blast and finish the job.
It had been a comforting best scenario. Now her own life depended on it.
I don’t believe it, though, do I? Or else I wouldn’t sacrifice everything to launch Elcano. I wouldn’t be putting Solomon out of action to make sure it happens. Because he’s the only way we’re getting out if we survive.
“I hope we’ve made the right call,” Erskine said. “Because I plan to stay. This might be our last conversation. If the situation here changes, I’ll contact you.”
“Of course,” Su-Jin said. “Good day, Miss Erskine. I hope your safety measures are successful.”
Erskine sat back in her chair and shut her eyes. She wondered if Solomon was going to pop up, but he remained silent.
Have I missed anything?
Don’t weaken. Not now.
It was hard to imagine that China or Korea would listen politely to the revelations about Nomad and then agree to let Ainatio get on with it while APS concentrated on colonising the solar system. It wasn’t going to happen. What Ainatio had found, done, and kept to itself would change human history, and it wouldn’t be forgiven. Erskine had argued this out in her own mind so many times before that she wondered why she was still raking it over. There was nothing more she could do. Like Colonel Su-Jin, she’d weighed some people against others, and recognised that some couldn’t be saved.
Possibly. Probably. Either way, that now includes me.
She had two tasks left: to neutralise Solomon, and to deal with Kim. Erskine still had misgivings about exporting a loose cannon to Opis, but she couldn’t have her shot now even if she wanted to. Trinder had all the firearms. Someone had even disabled the 3-D printers and erased all the weapons templates. For a man she’d seen as unimaginative and compliant, Trinder had certainly worked out how to stage a military coup, even if it was a politely restrained one.
Now, where was Kim?
Erskine went back to watching the security camera feeds on her monitor, looking for her in the increasingly crowded public areas that were filling up with complete strangers. The woman had to eat and use the bathroom like anyone else, so there was always the chance that she’d try to slip back in now under the cover of crowded confusion. But the only familiar faces Erskine noticed were ones who weren’t on the Elcano list. Those picked to leave were absent. It was as if they couldn’t stand to look their unlucky co-workers in the eye. Perhaps they were just busy packing, though, because the trackers showed large clusters in the accommodation blocks. Erskine tried to be charitable. What could you say to friends and colleagues you thought were going to die?
There were faces she hardly knew and probably couldn’t put a first name to, even after all these years. Fifteen hundred people, the remnant of a massive global company, the remnant of an entire state — she should have made a point of knowing them all by now.
She took another look at the feed from the staff restaurant. It was fairly full, and at one table a group of lab technicians and medical staff were deep in grim conversation. A woman was in tears, hands clasped on the table, and one of the men reached out and put his hand on top of hers. It was hard to interpret it as anything other than friends — or lovers — who were hours from being separated forever.
Erskine could have been wrong. She’d have to check the list again. But she couldn’t shake off an unkind thought: if this really was a case of lovers facing separation, why hadn’t the one leaving decided to stay behind? Mendoza was staying for his patients, and that was only a temporary professional relationship. The emergency had become an uncomfortable lens on people’s personalities. It was getting too painful.
She pushed back her chair. “Phil, I’m going to see Alex. I might be a while.”
She only had to take the elevator and walk the long corridor of the management and admin floor to get to Alex’s office without running into anyone. It was busier today, though, with people rushing around to deal with the coming influx of evacuees. Liz Kent, Greg’s wife, caught her in the corridor.
“I hear you’re not going now,” she said.
“I’m too old and I don’t have the skills a new colony needs.”
“Well, everyone thought you’d save yourself, and knowing that you haven’t has made them think. But then you could have found a way to escape to Asia years ago, couldn’t you? You had the money, you had the contacts in Hong Kong and Singapore... but you didn’t go.”
Erskine wasn’t sure
how to take that. She didn’t want to be seen as a saint. She’d simply taken the least painful path for herself. “It’s not some noble sacrifice. My only goal was to see the colony established, not to live there.”
“What about the kids in the town?” Liz asked.
“We’ve been through this. There’s nothing we can do.”
Liz looked down at the floor, blinking. “Let’s hope Solomon can get everyone out of here afterwards. Or will he transfer himself to Elcano? I haven’t really thought what life might be like without him. It’s bad enough not being able to talk to him.”
“I don’t know what Solomon’s plans are,” Erskine said. “But we have enough AI capability on board to get Elcano to Opis. And that’s all we need.”
Liz looked baffled, but Erskine didn’t give her a chance to continue the conversation. She carried on, wondering what it might be like to be cooped up with an angry Solomon down here.
If we survive.
When she reached the office, Alex had the passenger list displayed on the screen wall. He stood in front of it, moving numbered names around with his fingertip, then stepped back to rearrange a separate list on one side of the screen. Erskine looked at the last number in the sequence and realised they were some way short of eleven hundred names. The sidebar list had to be those who weren’t going. Her name was on it, and so was Alex’s.
“So where are we now?” she asked.
Alex didn’t turn around. “Mendoza’s had to make seven of his people go. They need twenty medically-trained staff to handle the cryo process.”
“Damn, is everyone determined to have their Alamo moment?”
He tapped the sidebar list. “You too, then.”
“It’s better for everyone that way.”
“So what do we do with all the extra places?”
Erskine was too tired to count them herself. “How many?”
“At the moment, seventy-two.” Alex still didn’t turn around to face her. “That might change as we get nearer to the launch, obviously.”
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