by Matt Levin
With the material Isadora was going through at the moment—dispatches relayed from the Exemplar—she figured having the computer read them aloud would be a waste of time. Nadia was frustratingly economical with her words: “halfway to Calimor,” “Boyd working out so far,” and “initial descent in an hour!” were the latest three messages.
Bare-bones reports aside, Isadora liked her settlement adviser. She had the same kind of moral certitude as Meredith. Especially when her daughter got into arguments with Isadora.
She rolled her eyes, grinned, and closed the dispatch file on her wrister. Then she propped her legs up on the desk and sank into her chair. It had always felt like stress gathered in her temples, causing a throbbing sensation that only worsened considering her sleep schedule. Even the dispatches from Nadia had taken embarrassingly long to read.
She massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers and let her mind drift. Isadora’s thoughts usually revolved around wanting to wake Meredith and go settle in the middle of nowhere. They’d find someone else eminently more qualified to lead the refugees, and she could finally get some sleep.
When Isadora first came out of cryo, she could barely do her job while thinking about her daughter. Then, several weeks in, she had finally learned how to work through her aching heart. She hadn’t missed her daughter any less, but she had reminded herself that Meredith would support what she was doing.
She knew, logically, that they probably had enough resources to support another person coming out of cryo. They had about four months’ worth of nutra left. She could wake Meredith up, and they’d only lose a week’s worth of food with an extra mouth to feed.
But she figured the others had family or friends too, and none of them had made any requests to wake them up. What kind of leader would she be, what kind of example would she set, if she put her desires above the good of the larger refugee population?
Still, she couldn’t deny that her pining for Meredith had come back with a vengeance in recent weeks.
A sudden thought raced through her sleep-deprived, stress-addled brain. “Computer,” she said.
“Yes, Isadora?” the ship’s mechanical voice said.
“Do you have anything in our data drives on the most famous political leaders in human history?”
“I have extensive information on various aspects of Earth history ranging from—”
“—great. Summarize for me, if you would, some of the most well-regarded ones.”
“Their regard by subsequent historians largely depends on what kind of leader you are interested in. If you see yourself in the mold of the great imperial autocrats, I could forward information on emperors like Qianlong or Peter Alexeyevich, or monarchs like Elizabeth I or Louis XIV.”
Isadora snorted. “I’m not out here to establish an empire. We are a democratic people.”
Are we? A sudden doubt reared its head in her mind. For the past two months, she had been making unilateral decisions for a population of 40 million. Even if Russ or Nadia or Vincent had given her counsel, her decisions were the ones that ultimately went through. There was a word for what she was, and democrat absolutely wasn’t it.
“Perhaps a liberator, then?” the computer offered. “I might suggest readings on individuals like Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Gim Daejung, Simon Bolivar…”
Isadora’s old-Earth history was admittedly rusty, but even she knew those names. How could some no-name district representative like her ever measure up to the titans of human history?
“Or perhaps you see yourself as someone who employs even more extreme methods? If you see yourself as a genuine revolutionary, perhaps someone like Che Guevara or Mao Zedong…” the computer continued.
“Definitely not,” Isadora interjected. “To be honest, I’m not sure I can stack up to any of these names.”
“I fail to understand your query.”
Well, she thought, serves me right for trying to use the damn computer as my personal therapist.
“I do not know if it will comfort you, but there are certainly individuals in my data banks regarded more highly in posterity than they may have been during their lifespans,” the computer said.
“Like who?” Isadora asked.
“These entries include retroactively justified autocrats like Nikita Khrushchev, for example.”
Isadora sat in ponderous silence for another minute, trying to remember all she could of the names the ship’s computer had spat out at her. All she could think about was how much she just wanted a few hours of rest.
If she were talking with a real person, the silence might have been awkward. It was one of the small perks of conversing with the ship’s computer: she could just stop responding and it was never awkward. She couldn’t hurt its feelings.
“Is there anyone who just, you know...quietly went about doing their jobs?”
After a brief pause, the computer replied. “Yes. You may be looking for names like Yoshida Shigeru, or Clement Attlee, or—”
“—great. Forward me primers on those two. That’ll be all for now.”
Isadora checked her wrister, confirming the receipt of two new files from the Preserver’s data cores. She yawned, slipped off her work shoes, and crashed on her bed unit. She pulled up the first file and read.
“Isadora, forgive me,” the computer’s voice again spoke through her room’s intercom system, “but you have approaching visitors.”
She closed both her wrister file and her eyes, and eventually pushed herself back up. She slipped into a pair of purple, synthetic-velvet slippers and opened the door to her cabin. Both Vincent and Russ were standing in the hallway.
“Come in. I was just working on a gene therapy routine so that I no longer require sleep,” she said with a grin. The two men immediately noticed her choice of footwear and exchanged brief, uncomfortable glances before walking in. She beckoned them toward a pair of visitors’ chairs opposite her desk. She sat down facing them.
“So,” she said, interlacing her fingers, “what can I do for you?”
The two again looked at each other, perhaps trying to come to a nonverbal agreement as to who should talk first. Vincent eventually opened his mouth, but Russ beat him to the punch. “We’ve been drawing up plans for the population of our future Calimor settlements. Just as you asked, ma’am,” Russ said.
Isadora wasn’t sure how she felt about Russ calling her “ma’am” all the time. At first she had hated it, seeing his forced respect as just another reminder of how out-of-place she felt in her new position. But then it grew on her. Russ was from a military background after all, and maybe her office did have a certain dignity to it. Even if she didn’t feel she deserved it.
Still, she wasn’t about to ask Vincent or Nadia to call her “ma’am.” For the others, she had to earn it first.
“Good work,” she said. “Per the latest dispatch, Nadia has touched down on Calimor. I’m hoping she’ll be able to find a viable settlement location soon.”
“That’s true, ma’am, but we believe that a difficult choice has to be made,” Russ said.
Isadora arched an eyebrow. “Lay it on me. I’m getting really good at making hard decisions.” Neither laughed. Another dud, she rued.
“Setting up a new colony will be extremely difficult for the first few months. Maybe years,” Vincent said. “It could be a long time before the colony is profitable, much less self-sustaining.”
“What Vincent means to say is that we will need to be careful with how many people we bring out of cryo,” Russ interjected. “Too many, and they’ll sap more resources than they produce. Too few, and we won’t be able to operate the colony effectively.”
“That makes sense,” Isadora said. “I guess I’m not seeing the issue.”
“The issue is that we will need to be discriminating in who we bring out of cryo. And who we don’t,” Russ said.
“We wake up those with skill sets that translate most directly to spice cultivation and colony maint
enance,” Isadora said. “According to the reports, that’s all Calimor is good for.”
“The issue is that a lot of those people have families,” Vincent countered. “What if we want to bring an agricultural scientist out of cryo, but they’re married to an artist?”
Of course. The vast majority of the refugee population had left Earth alongside relatives and friends, just like her. She imagined being one of those they would wake up to work in some dusty Calimor plantation. It was a decision that would doom them to a long period of backbreaking, around-the-clock work. And if their spouse or child or best friend didn’t have a critical skill, they’d endure it all alone, aging slowly while their companions stayed frozen in time.
“But on the other hand,” Russ said, “if we bring entire families out of cryo, that could lead to uncontrolled population growth.”
Isadora furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand how—”
The two men looked uncomfortable.
“—oh. Oh. Right, of course.” How tired was she that she couldn’t pick up on the most basic of implications?
“We need to decide whether to prioritize bringing only those with necessary skills out of cryo for the colony, or whether to prioritize families,” Russ said.
Isadora’s thoughts went to the long list of names the computer had spouted off at her just minutes earlier. All of them had to make gut-wrenching decisions in their careers. And she had an inkling this wasn’t even going to be among the top ten most difficult choices she would have to make.
She had to do it. There was no counterargument. She would bring out only the most qualified, only those with skills absolutely vital to the survival of the colony, and consign them to labor and toil in miserable conditions for months on end, all apart from their loved ones. She would do all that because that was the only choice she could make.
She’d offer empty platitudes about how everyone was making sacrifices. She’d point to the fact that she had kept even her own daughter in cryo. And she’d feel hollow inside throughout it all.
Maybe if Nadia were here, she would have given Isadora an earful about what the right thing to do was, and maybe if she was feeling up to it, she’d actually feel a little convinced by the other woman’s self-righteousness. But in this instance, Nadia would be wrong.
“Let’s go ahead with prioritizing only those with vital skill sets,” Isadora said weakly. “Their families will have to wait.”
“Okay,” Vincent nodded. “I’ll go ahead and assemble a list of possible first-wave colonists from the database.”
“I think you made the right choice, ma’am,” Russ said.
“Yes, I believe I did,” Isadora said quietly. “Now, I’m going to have to get some sleep.”
“Of course. Goodnight,” Vincent said.
“Goodnight ma’am,” Russ said. She waved at them as they left, and she crawled into bed immediately after.
She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Most of her dreams normally centered on Meredith, but tonight she dreamed she was walking through a valley filled with giant statues of all the great political leaders of history. They were so gigantic that a single one of their toes was the same height as her.
In her dream, she walked among them and tried to get a glimpse of the statues’ faces. She’d even settle for them laughing at her. Anything so they would acknowledge her presence at all. But all of them ignored her in stony silence. She was alone, small, and insignificant. An imposter among giants.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
Russ wasn’t worried that Isadora was going to make the wrong decision when it came to prioritizing skill over family ties in setting up a colony. But that was only half the question. And on the other half, he feared she wouldn’t be as clearheaded.
He and Vincent approached a split hallway, the left branch heading to Vincent’s cabin and the right leading to Russ’. “You didn’t talk to her about the other thing,” Vincent observed.
Russ had come around to Vincent, even if he found the other man too open to Nadia’s starry-eyed delusions. Still, he did his job quietly and professionally. His dossier sure was a lot thinner than Russ’, Isadora’s or even Nadia’s, though.
“I didn’t want to bother her with more hard questions,” Russ said. “There will be more time to talk in the morning.”
Vincent flashed a wry grin. “But it still affects my work.”
“We mostly know the kinds of people we’ll be bringing out of cryo,” Russ said. “Just start compiling lists of skilled individuals. We’ll weed it down later.”
Vincent nodded. “All right. Will do.” He gave Russ a tired wave of his hand and headed for his cabin.
Russ could tell that Isadora was working herself harder than the rest, but long nights weren’t exactly uncommon for any of them. When Russ was on active duty in the Earth Defense Forces, he had always emphasized the importance of getting enough sleep to his squad. Soldiers that weren’t awake couldn’t fight effectively.
Even if Russ wasn’t as bad off as Isadora, he figured his sleep schedule would’ve still horrified his old team.
He passed a viewscreen on the way to his room. It had been weeks since the last Union warship had departed back for the other side of the system’s asteroid belt. In reality, the distance didn’t matter. A warship could lob a nuke at them from anywhere in the Natonus System, and modern computer targeting technology would give the projectile a good chance of taking out the Preserver. Russ hardly trusted the Union military’s no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons.
Russ returned to his cabin and immediately pulled up the file he was reading before meeting with Vincent and Isadora. His datapad snapped on with a holographic projection of a small desert world: Zoledo, the system’s closest planet to the Natonus star.
Alongside the projection of the planet, slowly spinning on its axis, was a gently scrolling block of text describing conditions planetside. Zoledo had been colonized well after the first wave of cryo ships arrived in Natonus, once the original settlers had invented suit technology to withstand the world’s blistering heat.
These days, Zoledo was mostly controlled by a massive criminal conglomerate called the Syndicate. After a bloody gang war over a decade earlier, the Syndicate had either gotten rid of its rivals or subsumed them.
Russ wasn’t particularly intimidated by the thought of working with the Syndicate. If anything, he relished the opportunity to get away from the Union’s bullshit. The prime minister had made a friendly first impression on them, but she was surrounded by armed soldiers. She had made a big song and dance of cooperating with the refugees, and then allowed for her people to deny them almost any opportunities for settlement.
The Syndicate’s ruthless reputation felt comfortably straightforward to Russ. You helped them, you ignored them, or they killed you. Those were the only options. If Russ never had to work with the Union’s two-faced deception ever again, it’d be too soon.
If they were still back in the Sol System, Russ wouldn’t have been caught dead working with an unsavory organization like the Syndicate. As a soldier, the law was important to him—his people’s law. But he had no qualms about going behind the Union’s back. If the Union didn’t seem to care about helping the refugees, then he didn’t see why he should care about playing by their rules. He’d do whatever it took to secure his people’s livelihoods.
Russ skimmed through the details of Zoledo once more and closed the datapad. He wrote Isadora a message requesting a meeting that he was positive she wouldn’t see till she woke up.
Then, without much else to do, Russ plopped on his bed and watched a news stream on his wrister. The story that immediately popped up was an interview with Owen Yorteb, the ranking marine on Tricia Favan’s joint chiefs. Someone whose name was worth committing to memory, in other words.
The interview was about their arrival in the system. A too-cheery journalist was asking the Union general whether the refugees were presenting any kind of threat to the
system’s people. “We can’t rule out that the new arrivals could present a major security threat,” the general said. “Until we know otherwise, it is our policy to proceed with the utmost suspicion and caution in our dealings with them.”
Well fuck you too was the last thing Russ remembered thinking before falling asleep.
. . .
According to his wrister, Russ had slept for six hours. He yawned, stretched, and pushed himself to his feet. He immediately checked his wrister and saw that Isadora had responded to his request for a meeting two-and-a-half hours earlier. The woman is a machine, he thought, and keyed in a confirmation.
Normally, he’d head to the Preserver’s rec room after waking up. The stiffness he felt when he woke up really drove home that he wasn’t in his twenties anymore. He hoped daily weight-bearing exercises might keep him as spry as possible, for as long as possible.
But Isadora responded almost immediately, proposing a meeting in the conference room in half an hour. So much for a workout, Russ thought, forcing his tired body into the vapor bath stall on the far side of his cabin and trying to get himself at least somewhat presentable.
He headed toward the conference room with five minutes left to spare. Ship life was getting monotonous, Russ thought, surprised he hadn’t actively noticed it bothering him earlier. He could dim the lights in his cabin, but other than that there was no visual difference between day and night aboard their vessel.
Plus, he spent almost all day, every day, in just three rooms: his cabin, the conference room, and the rec room. All three were close enough together that he could move between them in five minutes or fewer. My life for the past two months, he thought.
Back in the EDF, they’d sometimes spend extended periods of time aboard a military vessel, just to get used to the rigors of life in space. But even then, there was more variety. And far more opportunities for social interaction. Russ, Isadora, Nadia, and Vincent tended to be solitary workaholics—Russ briefly wondered if those qualities had played any role in the computer’s calculations that the four of them were optimal to bring out of cryo first—and it wasn’t uncommon for them to spend most days working by themselves in their cabins.
