Doug looked away again and said nothing. Some things couldn’t be put right with comforting words or even hope. Liam’s wife was waiting out front with their son and daughter when Doug pulled up, though, and he was given no more time to brood.
“All safely gathered in, then,” said a voice behind Doug as he made his way to the elevator. It was Alex, the management guy who’d given the talk about Opis, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. “So, the animals?”
“He’s just left them in their field. They’ll either be okay or they won’t.”
“We haven’t heard back from APS yet. But Sol’s got the bots working on rebuilding the comms. We’re still using the sat phone.”
“Well, I’m going to try to keep people busy now. How many of your agricultural people are still here? We can start planning together.”
“We’ve got a few plant biologists and a couple of guys who can help out with animal embryos and that kind of stuff. We’ve already stored some eggs and semen for a couple of your livestock guys. But I don’t think Mr Dale’s herd provided any.”
“I don’t think he saw what he had as replaceable.”
They got into the elevator. The lighting showed a few marks on Alex’s face that hadn’t been there when Doug had seen him yesterday, as if he’d been in a brawl, but Doug minded his own business.
“Are you okay with Trinder and the military running all this?” Alex asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re the mayor.”
“Sure, but this isn’t just Kill Line. It’s the camp and it’s whatever Ainatio folk feel they are now. I’m just the spokesman for my neighbourhood.”
The doors opened on U3. Alex ushered Doug out in front of him. “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to identify as Ainatio now.”
Doug had suspected that as soon as he started seeing Dan Trinder’s troops walking around. They were still in their black uniforms, but all their insignia had disappeared. There was no company logo on their caps or sleeves, just marks of rank. And then he spotted Jared Talbot, impossible to miss in a sea of heads because he was so tall, and he was wearing the same black shirt, pants, and cap. Doug was used to seeing Chris’s guys in a varied mix of service uniforms, depending on where they’d originated and which garments had survived a hard few years, anything from police departments to State Defence and naval units, usually combined with camouflage or hunting jackets. Now it looked as if a realignment had taken place overnight.
“What happened with all the uniforms?” Doug asked.
Alex shrugged. “Trinder said Ainatio didn’t exist any more.”
“But what about the transit camp?”
“Lennie Fonseca thought it would be nice to offer them the run of the stores. They haven’t had any new gear for a long time. Apparently the boots were very welcome.”
“You sound like you needed to ask Trinder about it.”
“Well, I did wonder if we were witnessing a merger.”
“Makes sense,” Doug said. “Factions aren’t good for anyone. Look, have I understood the timescale right? If things go to plan and we launch Shackleton in a few months, that means we’ll land on Opis not long after Elcano gets there, doesn’t it?”
“Correct.”
“That doesn’t leave much time for healing.”
Alex chuckled without much humour. “There’s been a lot of discussion about that in the last few days. And there’s the unknown factor of how the next Nomad generation is going to see things after their parents were cut off by Erskine.”
“But they’re military.”
“Nobody’s immune to the mythology of time. I’ve lived through just a few days of this at close quarters, and right now I don’t know if Erskine was a ruthless bitch who saved her chosen elite, or a heroine who did the only thing she could.”
“But you chose to do the opposite.”
“Indeed I did,” Alex said, walking away. “So I guess I decided she was a bitch after all.”
Doug wondered how much time it would take to heal that. He wasn’t going to hold his breath.
It was time to go walkabout to see how people were doing in the Kill Line section, and he was relieved to see his grandchildren mesmerised by Solomon. The AI was now back in his quadrubot frame, keeping a crowd of youngsters occupied by showing them recordings of the black bird-like creatures that hung around the Nomad camp on Opis. Solomon wasn’t a natural entertainer when it came to children, but somehow that made him much more human. He was like an awkward uncle, stopping every so often to explain himself, even a little hesitant. But the older children were just lapping it up, and the little ones saw only a friendly, talking, robotic dog. Kids liked robots and they liked dogs. Solomon didn’t have to sell himself very hard.
Doug hung around at the back of the hall, increasingly absorbed. Much of Opis had been mapped and superficially surveyed from orbit, but very little had been explored. The last few months had been such a flood of shocks and surprises that he kept overlooking one important issue. The survival of Cabot and the existence of a base on another planet was a surprise to more than just the people here. The rest of the world didn’t know either, and that wasn’t a small technical detail. The only alien worlds that Earth had seen at close quarters were within the solar system and a couple orbiting relatively close stars, and the only life found was far, far less complex than anything Solomon was showing the children now. Opis was a real prize. Doug understood Georgina Erskine’s fears. And if he was completely honest with himself, they were his fears as well.
He went back to the cubicle he shared with Joanne and sat down to plan out things for the next few days. He’d hold sessions in one of the halls and get the farmers talking in detail with the scientists about crop planning. There was no way of knowing what would happen on Opis in the years they’d be in cryo, and their plans might turn out to be a waste of time, but it was what they needed to do right now. Damn it, he’d hold a session tonight. Staying busy beat sitting around and watching the clock count down to midnight.
“Oh, you’re back.” Joanne stood in the cubicle entrance, holding a pile of clothes. “I saw Liam, so I assumed everything went okay.”
“Apart from it breaking him.”
“Martin’s set up the chapel.”
“I’m not sure Liam’s going to find solace there yet.”
“You never know. Anyway, I met the young woman who’s negotiating with APS. She seems very competent. Annis Kim.”
“Has she had an answer yet?”
“I think they’d tell us if she had.”
Doug checked the time. “I didn’t realise it was that late.” It was nearly four in the afternoon. He needed to grab something to eat. “I’m going to start holding agricultural planning meetings tonight. Get together with the scientists and work out some detail.”
“You’ll be competing with the movies and the pool hall, then. Dan Trinder and that ginger-bearded guy have made sure everyone’s going to be fully occupied for the next few days. No sitting around waiting for the bombs to drop. Personally, I think I’m going to sleep through it. I’m totally wiped out.”
“You’re being very calm.”
“I’m not going to pretend I’m relaxed about it, but we do have experienced people here who know what they’re doing. Go on, get on with your meeting. I’m going to take a quick nap.”
Joanne was fine, then. That was all that mattered.
Doug went on his rounds again. The more ground he covered in this subterranean complex, the more he understood what she meant about the comforting effect of being surrounded by competence. In under forty-eight hours, the combined effort of the site staff, the transit camp, and his own neighbours had set up an underground village, complete with a hospital, a dog pound, kitchens, entertainment, sanitation, schoolrooms, and relatively private accommodation for more than sixteen hundred people. If anything
proved that this random selection of human beings could build a new society, that did. They could face the worst. He was proud of them all.
He stopped for a sandwich at one of the food stations and watched the endless trail of assorted bots moving up and down the passages. So this was what the town had supported for all these years without knowing. He was still annoyed about Ainatio stockpiling food, and wished they could have rewarded the town’s loyalty with a little trust, but now those reserves would save them in the end. Fate was meticulously tidy.
When he finished his sandwich, he went to check out the chapel, locating it via the floor plans that had been posted at every fire control point. It turned out to be a large room off a storage area full of bots. Martin Berry had set up rows of seats, a lectern, and a makeshift altar that appeared to be a quadrubot like Solomon’s unit. The four legs were at full height, turning it into a useful table. Incongruous as it was, it didn’t look out of place bearing the big brass cross from St Thomas’s.
“Don’t worry, Doug, I’ve rescued the parish records.” Martin appeared with the box of frayed hymn books that Doug’s father said had been ancient when the church was built. He started putting them on the seats. “Solomon thought this would be a quieter spot for contemplation. I had an extraordinary chat with him.”
“He’s the only one of his kind, he says.”
“I can believe it. I’ve never discussed self-sacrifice in the context of Kant and Aquinas’s cardinal virtues with a sentient machine before.”
Doug had only spent minutes with the AI, and he wasn’t exactly sure who Kant or Aquinas were, but he realised Solomon was different.
“He’s full of surprises.”
“He wanted to discuss the morality of killing. Apparently he opened fire on one of the men who ambushed Chris’s patrol, and he still seems to be trying to square that with his moral programming.”
“Yes. They told me he’s classed as a sentient autonomous weapon or something, and they were banned years ago, so APS might want him destroyed.”
“Then we’d better make sure he stays our little secret. Whatever his purpose, I really think he has a soul.”
Martin wasn’t a fanciful man. Doug sometimes wondered how he managed to believe in anything he couldn’t see, so when he made pronouncements like that, they were unsettling. Martin had arrived thirty years ago at the height of the epidemic that hit New England, very well qualified but seeking somewhere remote, willing to fit in but still always a little separate. Nobody wanted to turn away a minister even if he’d come from an infected area.
“I’ll let folks know you’re opening the doors,” Doug said.
As the afternoon wore on, Doug tried to keep walking the floor and reassuring everyone in the way a mayor was supposed to, but he wasn’t a kid any more, and the effort exhausted him. He took a seat and people-watched for a while. Whenever he checked his screen, though, he found another message from someone he’d invited to the planning meeting saying they couldn’t make it tonight, and asking if tomorrow was okay.
He said yes to all of them, realising that they wanted to be with their families. Even though they were talking casually about events tomorrow, there was still doubt in their minds that the day would actually come. Doug understood, and knew where he needed to be at midnight as well.
It was now nearly seven, and the public address system announced that the chapel was open. Doug suspected it would get busier the closer it got to midnight, and decided to drop in again to see how Martin was doing. He couldn’t forget the minister’s comment about Solomon. They were living in strange times. But when he got to the chapel, Martin wasn’t there. Someone else was, though, and not who Doug expected.
Marc Gallagher was sitting in the back row, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees as if he was reading something. He was one of a number of people Doug had been introduced to with barely a couple of minutes to form an opinion, but he didn’t seem to be the spiritual kind. Perhaps he wanted a few moments’ peace and quiet. Then it dawned on Doug that he was looking at the contents of his wallet, holding it open like a book. He suddenly looked around as if he hadn’t heard Doug walk in.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Doug said.
Marc stood up. “It’s okay. Did you need me, sir?”
“No, I came down to see the minister, but it doesn’t matter.”
It felt like an awkward moment for both of them. It was also the second time today that Doug had seen a strong man with tear tracks down his face. He couldn’t walk away now. Like Liam, Marc had been looking at something or someone he cherished and thought it would be for the last time. Doug could work that out for himself.
“It’s okay, Marc,” he said. “We’ll come through this.”
Marc still had his wallet in his hand. “That’s the problem,” he said. “I always do, and they didn’t.”
He opened his wallet, and for a moment Doug didn’t connect the words with the action. Marc was a dad showing someone his family photos in the way all fathers did, images of two young men in uniform posing for the camera with big grins. When the reality dawned, though, Doug was crushed.
“They were killed a few days apart,” Marc said. “When I see people in here looking scared, I hope neither of my lads saw it coming. I couldn’t bear knowing that they spent their last moments terrified.”
Doug had never worked out whether courageous men were just better at hiding fear, or whether they’d had to confront it so often that it had lost its capacity to paralyse them. He had questions, none of which could be asked. He didn’t know if one son had known about his brother’s death, and he didn’t know how Marc had been given the news, both at the same time or separately. It was too terrible to think about and far too much to ask.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Doug said.
“All I want right now is for the last thing I see to be them.”
“It might be the first.”
Doug realised he might have said entirely the wrong thing or even sounded glib. Marc’s expression told him nothing.
“Give me a shout if you need anything, sir,” Marc said, weaving his way between the seats to the exit. “I’ll be up top.”
Doug could only sit down and contemplate how easy things had been for Kill Line until now. Even this evacuation was comfortable and well-fed. It was hard to imagine the things that the rest of the world had been forced to do to survive, but he might find out all too soon.
Martin appeared a few minutes later carrying two mugs of coffee. “Hi Doug. Where’d Marc go?”
Doug added a few more pieces to the puzzle and realised that he’d made Marc feel uncomfortable enough to leave. “He went back up top. That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I think I said too much.”
Martin handed him the coffee instead. “Did he show you the pictures?”
“Yeah. Damn shame.”
“I think he just wanted somewhere private for a few minutes without someone asking him for help.”
“I can’t imagine living with that sort of pain.”
“He’s still looking for something.” Martin stroked imaginary dust off one of the hymn books. “He’s armed and I don’t think he’s afraid of death the same way most men are. If he really wanted out, he’d have done it. But he’s hanging on.”
“Don’t assume he wants to be saved, Martin.”
“I won’t. But he believes in something bigger than himself, or else he wouldn’t be a soldier. That’s what gives you the courage to take risks. Tribe, family, regiment, nation, God — they’ll still be there even when you’re not, and that lifts you because you know things will be okay. It’s belief in the future.”
“He could go back to Britain. That’s still okay.”
“But that’s not what he’s looking for. Whatever it is, it isn’t there. Maybe there’s too much past there for him to bear.”
Doug wasn’t sure why he was worrying about a man he barely knew, but today had been his first real brush with the heartbreak of others beyond the normal cycle of birth and death, and his first experience of watching it bring tough men down. He’d avoided all that. He felt like he was finally waking up very late in life.
“Opis is as good a place as any to look for it, then,” he said. “And I suspect he won’t be the only one.”
* * *
Ainatio Shuttle D750K, Approaching Orbital 1:
1845 Hours
One way or the other, it was over.
Erskine could do nothing now except sit and wait like the rest of the Ainatio staff crammed into the shuttle. It was like the worst airline flight she could imagine: painfully cramped, nothing to pass the time, her head throbbing thanks to the microgravity, and a giddy nausea that she could only keep under control by shutting her eyes. Despite the medication and an empty stomach, she’d come close to vomiting. Several people already had. The air scrubber hadn’t quite killed the smell.
It was also unnervingly silent, considering that there were so many children on board. A few kept crying, occasionally shushed into silence, but apart from that the only sounds were the clicks and creaks from the shuttle itself.
And I can’t even have a coffee.
Erskine couldn’t risk opening her eyes to check her watch in case she finally threw up. Would she pass the fourteen-hour threshold for cryo? It was going to be hours before the chill-down began, so she’d be all right. The next thing she’d taste would be when — or if — she was revived from suspension, decades in the future and trillions of miles away. The oblivion of a dreamless sleep couldn’t come soon enough.
A couple of clunks and a shudder passed through the shuttle. Knowing that it was only the ship docking under the control of the dumb AIs didn’t reassure her, but then she felt herself sinking in her seat and realised the shuttle was now under the orbital’s partial gravity. It still didn’t feel normal, but it was enough to tell her brain which way was up. At least that would help stop the nausea.
The Best of Us Page 49
