The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “Was there even really an operating system error?” I’m surprised I can get the words out.

  “Oh yes,” he says, his face shifting back to intense sadness as his focus shifts from Beth to me. “I wouldn’t have thought of such a thing if there hadn’t been. It was pure luck. An opportunity to reduce the population and give the planet a chance. No matter what I did, billions of humans were always going to die. And soon. But Earth didn’t have to die with them.”

  “It’s already dead!” Leela cries. “Your nanobots killed it when they chewed up the atmosphere!”

  “No!” Grandpa insists. “No. I was careful. I thought of everything. The filtration system’s fail-safe systems will kick in. It will reset itself before it reaches a threshold that the plant life wouldn’t be able to recover from. The survivors—and there will be survivors, living in the domes, in shelters—they’ll be able to start again with a manageable population.” He meets my eyes. “I thought through the moral implications of this decision, too, Little Moth. Please believe that. I planned to die with the others. To pay the same price I asked of all of them. But then the ISA offered me command of the Prairie. A new planet. A new beginning. With you. I was too weak to say no.”

  He turns to look out at the planet below, slowly disappearing in the cloud of green dots that mark the scrubbers. “I thought I could build a life for myself here. For my family. I thought I could finally be the father Alice deserved. But all my good intentions just slipped through my fingers.”

  “Something you said while you two were arguing about that fiasco in the solace grove tipped the commander off, didn’t it?” Shelby says, putting the pieces together. “I wondered why she freaked out that way. Bolted out of the room like you’d just set her on fire.”

  Grandpa sighs. “I was angry. It made me careless. And then it was too late. The look on Alice’s face when she and Nick confronted me . . . it was like I was lying in that bed again. I thought the guilt would crush my bones. I couldn’t live with it. I can’t. And I won’t.”

  “You don’t have a choice anymore,” Beth says. “We know. You can’t kill us all. In fact, given Lieutenant Shelby’s proficiency with her weapon, I doubt you’ll survive more than a few seconds after the scrubbers initialize.”

  “Aw.” Shelby coughs. She’s out of breath, just from holding her gun on Grandpa. “I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me, Mendel.”

  “I’m not afraid of a bullet.” Grandpa laughs morosely. “Actually, it will be a relief.”

  “No!” I plead. “You can still make a different choice. Turn off the scrubbers, Grandpa. Live with what you did. Do it for Mom. Do it for me.”

  “Joanna,” he starts to say, but I keep going.

  “You said you wanted to see Tau through my eyes, but that’s not what you need. You need to see yourself through my eyes. I know you’re strong enough to face what you’ve done. All you need to do is believe me.”

  He stares down at the planet, his cocked shoulder blades jutting against the fabric of his uniform like clipped wings.

  “I believe you,” Grandpa says. He turns to look back at me then, his eyes aching with something that looks like real regret. “I believe you, Joanna. But it’s too late. There’s no way to stop it now.”

  “What?” I stammer. “What do you mean, there’s no way to stop it?”

  “Exactly that, Little Moth,” he says. “I knew I would second-guess myself, in the end. Especially after you refused to come with me to safety. So I removed the temptation.” He smiles wryly. “I told you once that I was building this future for you. That’s still true. More than ever, now. Make wise choices.”

  “Screw that,” Leela snarls, pointing to the countdown clock. “We’ve got seven minutes until the scrubbers go live. We can still stop them. We’re going to find a way. Aren’t we, Jo?”

  I turn to look at Beth. Then Chris. Then Jay. Then Shelby. Her arm is shaking, but she’s still got her pistol pointed at Grandpa’s chest. I pivot away from her awful certainty, searching the three-sixty of space around us for answers I know aren’t there. The Pioneer is cresting the planet beyond the Prairie, her elegant fins spread behind her like she’s swimming through the stars.

  For a moment, I’m in another place and time. Pioneer’s cargo bay. My friends around me. Teddy’s arm around Leela. Miguel grinning. Excited.

  This is going to be our world. Not some hand-me-down held together with duct tape and good intentions.

  Tau might not be our world, but it’s our home now. I don’t want our history here to start like this. But it’s going to. There’s no way to change that now.

  The wall screen flickers and my parents’ bruised and filthy faces replace the view of space around us.

  “Mom!” I cry, longing and fear and relief that she’s still alive splashing through me. “How did you—”

  “I turned off the jamming,” Beth says, looking up from the comms panel she has open on the wall screen in front of her. “I wanted to see Mom and Dad one last time.”

  “No! No! Not one last time.” The words shatter the acceptance in my head. “We’re going to fix this. We can find a way—”

  “Chris,” Beth says. “Is there any hope that we can hack into the Vulcan’s computer in time to stop the scrubbers?”

  “I already tried,” he says, “But there’s nothing to hack.”

  The despair in his voice is crushing.

  “So we destroy it, then,” Leela cries. “Ram it into 3212—”

  “Vulcan is on autopilot,” Grandpa says, quietly. “You can’t take manual control. I did not want to be able to stop this. There is no way you can, Little Moth. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Never.” I hurl the word at him. “I will blame you forever.”

  “Listen to me now, Joanna,” Mom says, pulling my attention away from him. “We’re going to have to ask more of you five than I ever dreamed. And I’m sorry for it. But you can do this. I trust you.”

  “No, Mom,” I beg. “Don’t say that. I don’t . . . We’re not ready to take responsibility for the survival of the human species.’”

  “You think we were?” Dad says with a bleak chuckle. “No one is ready for something like this.”

  “Wake your aunt when you go to the Prairie, Lee-lu,” Doc says, stepping up beside Mom. There’s a fresh red scar running over his bald head. “She’s a neurosurgeon, but she should be able to serve all your medical needs and help you wake the others.”

  “Okay, Baba,” Leela says. She’s crying, but her shoulders are square and firm.

  “I’m putting field promotions in all of your files,” Mom says. “No one currently on the Prairie will be able to give you an order.”

  “What? What does that mean? How do we—”

  Mom cuts me off gently. “You’ll figure it out, love. But right now, Trey and Kirti are here.” She gestures for Dr. Howard and Mrs. Divekar to step into the three-sixty. “We need to give them time to say goodbye.”

  Chris bolts.

  Dr. Howard closes his eyes. Pained. His brown skin has gone gray. “He’s so young.”

  “We’d never have gotten so far without him,” I whisper. “He’s not a little kid anymore.”

  Dr. Howard offers me a sad smile. “Yes, he is. But I know you’ll take care of him.”

  “They’ll take care of each other,” Mrs. D says.

  “Ninety seconds to activation,” the computer informs us.

  My whole body clenches.

  “We love you,” Leela says. Her voice still clear and calm, despite the tears running down her cheeks.

  “We love you, too,” Mrs. D says. “All of you. But now it’s time to hang up.”

  I shake my head.

  “Turn it off now, Joey,” Mom says. “You don’t need to see this.”

  I want to turn it off. I want to run away to wherever Chris is hiding. But then Leela grabs my hand. Jay’s arm goes around my waist.

  I can face this. We can face this.r />
  “No, Mom,” I say, holding my other hand out to Beth. “We’re not going to leave you.”

  “Thirty seconds to activation,” the computer says in its bland voice.

  Doc grabs Mrs. D’s hand and starts speaking in Hindi, something soft and repetitive. He’s praying. Beside me, Leela mouths the words along with him.

  Mom looks past me to where I’ve completely forgotten Grandpa is standing behind us.

  “Don’t get in their way, Dad,” she says. Her voice isn’t even angry. The words are clear and empty. Less of a request or a demand than a warning.

  “I’ve done what I can,” he says. “This is not the new beginning I planned, but it is a new beginning.”

  “We’ll be okay,” I say. I don’t believe it for a second, but to my surprise, my voice isn’t even shaking. It’s even. Confident. I recognize it, but not as my own.

  That’s the commander.

  “Activation in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

  Mom turns into Dad’s arms, clinging to him. He buries his face in her hair.

  “Four . . . three . . . two . . .”

  Doc reaches a hand out to the screen. “Lee-lu!”

  “Baba! Aai!” Leela cries, weeping for her parents.

  Sound slams into me on all sides. It feels like someone jammed my whole body in one of the ship’s superconductors.

  The screens sizzle to black.

  The sound dies away.

  It’s quiet. Quieter than a spaceship should ever be. The background hum of the wall screens, the environmental controls, the computers, it’s all gone.

  “Was that the scrubbers?” Jay says. His voice sounds loud in the unnatural quiet.

  “No,” Grandpa says sharply. “That was our ship. Dying.”

  Red light zips around the seams where the wall screens meet the floors. It swells, filling the room with orange light. A sentence fades up on each wedge of wall screen.

  Emergency power cells activated.

  “Did it work?” Chris demands, charging back onto the bridge. Nor and Tarn follow him. I hadn’t even noticed they were gone.

  Nor and Tarn.

  “You destroyed the computer.” I gasp. “You . . . Tarn. And Nor. And—”

  “If they can take down a shield pylon, why not a mainframe?” Chris says. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. Did. It. Work?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “The feed cut, and—”

  My flex buzzes on my wrist, cutting me off.

  It’s an incoming call.

  Tears are already running down my face as I slap my flex to accept the call.

  “Mom?” I whisper, not daring to believe it’s possible.

  “We’re still here,” she says, her voice filled with marvel.

  “It worked!” Chris cries, grabbing Nor and spinning her into a combination hug and jig. “We did it!”

  I shake out my flex with hands so numb, I’m afraid I’ll drop it. The video feed flickers up on its screen. There’s a lot of hugging and shouting going on there, too, a jubilant backdrop to Mom’s incredulous smile.

  “We’re safe,” Dad says, leaning in to add his bursting grin to hers. He looks past me to Grandpa, his goofy grin going ferocious. “See, Eric? I told you including families in the E&P team was a necessity.”

  Grandpa doesn’t try for a retort. He’s staring at my flex. At Mom, I think. There’s so much emotion in his face. Anger. Relief. Resentment. Love. Fear. Not that long ago, I’d have wondered how all those conflicting emotions could fit together. But not anymore.

  There’s only one thing left to do.

  I look back to Mom.

  “Permission to come home, Commander?”

  “Granted.”

  Thirty-Three

  The Prairie is fully visible above Tau as I swing the Vulcan into the long elliptical arc that will take us back through the atmosphere.

  It took us a couple of hours to pull enough power couplings from 3212 to replace the ones that Tarn blew out on the Vulcan. Some of the systems are still fried, but navigation is online and that’s all I need to get us home. Beth says the scrubbers are designed to break apart when they run out of power. Their remains will become part of Tau.

  So will we.

  Even if Grandpa is right and Earth isn’t dead, we can’t just go home. The survivors have been in deep sleep for too long. We have to wake them up and bring them down to the planet. Then we’ll have to figure out how to repair the Prairie. It’s going to take time. Maybe years. By then we’ll be a part of this world, no matter what happens to ours.

  The Prairie’s enormous golden disk soaks in the light of our new sun. Ten thousand people. All depending on us, on the choices we’ve made. I look back at Tarn and Nor, who are studying the planet as we drop toward it. Make that ten thousand people and I don’t know how many other beings on this planet who are all depending on us to work together. To be better than we have ever been. Will this work? Will we take the Sorrow and the phytoraptors down with us?

  I have no idea.

  But I know how to land this spaceship. Right now, that’s all I have to know.

  I’m okay.

  I kept my promise to Teddy, after all.

  The realization washes over me in a wave of emotions that aren’t entirely happy or sad. I don’t force myself to dissect them, I just feel them.

  I look up at the wall screen ahead of me, and for just a moment, the great green belly of Tau is gone and my soot-streaked, singed big brother is standing there, hand pressed against the screen.

  I reach out to place my hand against his ghostly fingers. Everything we thought our lives would be shimmers between us.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper. To myself. To the universe. To him.

  “What are you muttering about?” Leela asks, throwing me a curious look.

  “Just talking to myself.”

  She shoots me a dubious look as pink flame licks at the shields, painting the black glow of space in a thousand shades of fire. Then the brilliant turquoise skies of Tau burst onto the wall screens and dense green and glittering crystal spread below us.

  A soft sound brushes at the back of my neck, like the leaves of a fido tree nuzzling me. Tarn is singing. Nor joins in as we drop through the morning, her delicate voice weaving through his swelling melody. They aren’t singing to us, I realize. They’re singing to their planet, spread out below them.

  The song fades as I twist the Vulcan belly down so she can settle on her haunches in the shorn grass of the Landing’s airfield, where a pair of Sorrow flyers is waiting beside our own. A dozen humans and Sorrow are already running across the airfield toward us.

  Mom and Dad are first to the ramp. They look like they might smother Beth, both trying to hug her at once.

  I should go out there.

  What am I waiting for?

  “Joanna?”

  I turn to look at Grandpa, who is standing behind me.

  Shelby still wanted to shoot him, of course. Beth suggested that we owed the Sorrow a say in his fate. Tarn said he wanted to discuss it with Mom. I don’t know what they’ll decide. I don’t know what punishment could possibly be adequate.

  “What do you want?” I say, my voice quieter than I wish it were.

  “I want you to thrive,” he says, without hesitation. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Don’t do that.” My voice is almost a whisper now. I clear my throat and try again. “Don’t do that. Don’t make me spend the rest of my life thinking it’s my fault that you . . . that you . . .”

  “No, my dear,” he says, hurriedly. “My mistakes, my hubris, those things are mine alone. But they don’t change my intentions.” He looks past me to the wall screens, where pioneers and Sorrow are mixing with each other. Talking. Planning. He shakes his head. “Please. Don’t waste your life on this . . . fruitless daydream. Humanity needs you to fight for our future.”

  “No,” I say, realizing the truth in the words as I speak them. “It doesn
’t. We aren’t fighting for the future. We’re fighting to live right now. For our families. For Tau. For Earth. If we do that right, the future will take care of itself.”

  With that, I step past him and walk out of the ship, without looking back.

  “Took you long enough, Hotshot.”

  I turn to find Jay leaning against the landing strut.

  “Haven’t you had enough of being in a hurry for one lifetime?” I say, letting my feet carry me to him of their own accord.

  He tucks me close, our bodies shaping to each other. He rests his cheek on the top of my head. Then he makes a what the hell noise and straightens, lifting a piece of melted hair and sniffing at it. “Smells like . . . rotten apples,” he says, leaning in to smell my head again. “And . . . aspartame?”

  “I’m going to shower forever,” I grumble, yanking my fried hair away.

  “At least an hour,” he agrees.

  I kick him.

  He kisses me.

  “Guess what.”

  “Jay,” I grumble, “I’ve used up every brain cell I possess canceling the end of the world. There will be no more guessing.”

  He grins so hard I think his face might split. “Oh fine. I guess I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Nothing much,” he says, still looking like he’s trying not to laugh. “Just something I forgot to say, a while back.”

  “You remember that thing about the shower?” I ask. “Cuz—”

  “I love you too, Joanna Watson.”

  I blush. Instantly. He bursts out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I demand, pressing my hands to my burning cheeks.

  “Nothing,” he says, his voice still sparkling with joy. “Everything. Me. Us. We’re alive. We pulled it off. And everything is pretty much just as screwed up as it was this morning but at least now tomorrow feels like, I don’t know, a real thing. Which doesn’t make any sense—”

  “It does,” I say, cutting him off. “It makes sense to me.”

  His stupid grin gets even bigger. “Which is just one of the many reasons I love you.”

  “Jay!”

  “What, you started it.”

  He’s right, so I kiss him. What choice do I have?