Exodus (The Exodus Trilogy) (9 page)

This was said to be a learning experience
; no cuts, no weeding out this time, and it did seem to be true, at least for the time being. Maria Solis knew they were somewhere in Antarctica, probably on the high plains, because of the altitude. They could feel the thin air, and while they’d been blessed with nice weather, the sun warming just a little and no wind to speak of, the hard-packed snow still felt crisp beneath her feet, and her every breath stung just a little in her lungs, even with the face mask.

“
How ya doin’ over there, Solis? Breckinbridge?” she heard Jeremiah Lowell call at her and her friend Sophie Breckinbridge. He was standing a bit to their left, his back bent, trying to bring life back to the snowmobile, which seemed utterly dead at the moment.

“
How’s it gonna be? Y’all gonna just stand there, or ya’ll gonna help out? Jesse could use another pair of hands on the tent.” To people who didn’t know him, his Southern twang could sometimes seem faked, as he’d lose it from time to time, but Maria knew better. A professor in the Geology department at Cambridge, England, he’d somehow over time developed a curious mixture of his native accent and pretty standard Oxford English, and for some reason there was no apparent consistency to it.

She nudged Sophie with her elbow, and they walked over to Jesse Gibson, who was busy getting their tent ready for the night. They were originally a team of five, and had been put together from their various core groups that had been formed from the beginning. When the core groups had been split up, they’d known it was significant. So they’d decided it was the five of them for the remainder, and
had already gotten to know each other deeply during their early days as a team.

Now
, though, only four of them remained, and that was one of the reasons this usually cheerful lot seemed somehow quiet, glum. It had been but a few weeks since they were reduced to four, and it had made them all acutely aware of what they were a part of. The seriousness of the situation had sunk in, and although the mood had changed, they were even more determined than before. They all knew they were among the very few who still had any prospects. Something to work for, to stick together for, to do everything possible for.

Maria Solis
was the youngest of them at the age of twenty-one. She had been a high school senior when she came to Selection, instead of going to college, like most others her age. Although the Solis family was among the major contributors to the Consortium, she had no guarantees of being on the final list for the mission. Actually she’d expected to be among the first to be cut, but one of the other members of her core group had shown symptoms of mental illness early on, and one day he was simply gone, all his belongings removed and no explanation given. That had given her the necessary time to adjust to the situation. She spent hours upon hours studying, practicing, until finally she seemed to come to grips with some of the areas unfamiliar to her. She’d really struggled with agriculture and biochemistry, which were completely alien to her, but after some initial difficulty, those were areas she came to enjoy. Now she’d turned out to be one of the top students in agriculture and life-support systems, and although she didn’t expect to use the latter unless there was a serious emergency en route, she knew she was quietly etching out her little niche that just might earn her a spot.

The others on her team
were several years older than she was, with Sophie the closest, both in terms of age and relationship. She was twenty-nine, and already she had made a name for herself in academic circles, being among the top contenders for the prestigious Obama grant when she was picked for Selection. She had once told them how she had been approached by some government types and persuaded to come to Selection, even though she had never shown an interest for anything to do with space. She had reluctantly agreed to come after they had told her they needed knowledgeable people from various backgrounds and professions. Hers was law. Not a likely candidate for space, until now. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, they had said. She hadn’t really taken any of it seriously in the beginning. How could anyone have known it was the very last opportunity? After this, there would be no more opportunities for anything, for anyone, ever.

The professor, Jeremiah Lowell
, wasn’t a leader, usually, but in this group, that was the role he had assumed. Maybe it was his age; at forty-seven he was by far the oldest. Turned out the new role suited the professor, and it had stuck, even when others were put to the task. That was not necessarily a good thing, but he had that fatherly charisma that smoothed over most problems, even when he made his opinions clear, loudly, as usual. Maybe it was his concern for others or that strangely twisted way of speaking; who could tell?

The silent one was Jesse Gibson. He sometimes seemed an odd one, and usually took no part in discussions or sides whenever someone argued. But when he did speak up, he was usually right, and his voice and insight
always seemed to tip the argument. Introspective, bordering on antisocial, he somehow came to be a natural part of the group, someone they could rely on to complete his tasks in the most efficient manner, whatever they would be, and then help the others out.

The fifth member of the group had been John Rawlins, an engineer with
a military background, although he had turned civilian ten years prior to Selection. He was the classic engineer; with bridges, roads, buildings, tunnels, whatever came to mind, he’d done it already. A genuinely nice guy, with one … weakness … one might call it, that eventually caught up with him. Just before leaving for Antarctica, the news of Devastator had finally come out, and Selection took on a new meaning to them all. It was no longer a long series of cuts, training, more cuts, and then, for a lucky few, an adventure that no one really knew anything about, except that it had to do with space. It was about who would live and who would die. Get cut, and you die, simple as that. John was a married man, having left his wife and two kids at their home in Boulder, Colorado to participate in this project. He took the news harder than the rest of them. And one day, he simply packed his belongings, said his good-byes, and went to spend the rest of his time left with his family. Who could blame him?

So here they were, the four of them, setting up camp in the
middle of this last wilderness left on Earth. All sounds were muffled, the snow and ice and sheer vastness absorbing most of them, and there was no background noise at all. Will it be something like this in space, Maria wondered. She knew this was nothing compared to space, but still, she felt some familiarizing or something like that had to be their purpose for being here, not just getting used to bulky clothing, face masks, and spending time in a tent. There was usually more to every exercise, every test, and every lecture, than first assumed. Nothing was ever just what it seemed; everything had a specific purpose and an opportunity to grasp some higher meaning, if you only looked beyond the surface of things.

That evening they shared a nice
meal together, something Jeremiah had magically cooked up from their usually bland provisions, a mix of canned foods and MREs.

“
My secret ingredient,” he winked smugly. “I could tell y’all, but then I’d have to kill ya.” Maria liked the professor; she really hoped he’d make it through Selection. He did have useful qualifications, but she knew the competition would be harsh until the final names were to be announced. And even then, she wouldn’t bet on anything. His age could be a problem. They might be looking for younger people, since some kind of breeding population would obviously be an aspect of this. Then again, he was still here, wasn’t he?

“
So, what do you guys think?” Maria changed the subject. “What is the destination? Could we colonize the outer solar system somehow?” She didn’t direct the question anywhere, but as usual, Jeremiah was the first one to address it. He shook his head.

“
Doubt it. Titan or Europa could be habitable, somehow, but they just seem too darn … hostile … I mean, the environments of those two just seem hostile, unfriendly, nothing invitin’ about them. They’re probably more likely candidates than Mars would have been, had it still existed, and training in Antarctica definitely seems to hit the bull’s-eye, but still …”

They all knew the professor sometimes spoke with some of the suits that turned up from time to time, usually whenever there was time for a cut, or some major information to be revealed, although he never
shared anything he learned from those brief encounters. But somehow he always seemed to know more than they did, and he was usually a step further along, as information went. So his opinion definitely mattered. Sophie and Jessie had been listening, but weren’t really participating in the conjecturing. Sitting quietly, leaning in toward each other, they seemed to have some kind of thing going, although if there was anything more than a tight and mostly quiet friendship, it wasn’t obvious to anyone outside their group.

“
So what do you really think, Jeremiah?” Maria said. “Are we talking outside the solar system, could it be done? I mean, we’d be talking light years. And the last time I heard we didn’t have the means to go any further than Mars. With manned flight that is. And even that was a total screw up.” Jesse and Sophie both nodded in agreement. They all knew this story well. It had been decades, but still the memory of how the colonization of Mars had turned into tragedy was part of common knowledge, taught in schools as an example of how NASA, in their final mission, had revealed every negative trait the organization had ever developed. Of course, official history also claimed it showed every negative trait of society as such, and the aftermath of the Mars incident had paved the road for the reforms brought on by Holloway and Andrews. They had never discussed this on the team, but the one thing they all knew was that the Mars incident had meant an effective end to manned space exploration beyond Earth orbit, and when Devastator appeared, it all had to be reassembled from scratch.

“
I believe there is a lot to be learned,” Jeremiah said. “And it’s been what, a little more than four years now, since Mars got blown to pieces. And from the moment someone could see where this was heading, people with considerable resources have been gathering to solve the issues, to create a plan so that we don’t go extinct. And I believe the remaining years will be utilized to the fullest; we’ll see the absolute pinnacle of human ingenuity. There will be breakthroughs, even up until the last moment, and maybe even beyond launch, so I’d be very wary of saying we can’t.”

When Kenneth Taylor
, at the age of twenty-six, had washed out of the space academy in Houston, Texas, he thought his life and everything he’d ever dreamed of was over. Before that, he’d been a rising star, with a dual degree in biology and psychology from Harvard, with excellent grades; and his record at the academy up until then had been outstanding. He’d been marked for success, and already stood a good chance at being one of the cadets to be chosen for the Mars mission. Ever since he’d seen John Scott and Oliver Reynolds set their feet upon the surface of the red planet, and with a decent insight for an eleven-year-old kid as to what would be the next great step, his dream had been to one day be among the pioneers to colonize the planet. To be one of the very select few who, as his forefathers had done more than two centuries earlier in the American west, would seek and explore new lands to create a new world.

Throughout the more than two decades that had passed since that dreadful day, which
, although it saved his life, did crush his dream of Mars, he’d often wondered how everything could turn out the way it did. He had no good answer to that, and however he phrased the question to himself, whatever angle he chose, he still couldn’t understand what really had happened. The facts were simple enough, but the reasons, the reactions, the chain of events—they were still a mystery to him. Now, as a man closing in on fifty years, he sometimes took on an analytical view, to meditate on how the experience had changed him. Of course, there were the apparent changes, like his shift from confident space cadet to renowned academic. With time, his ambitions had recovered and taken on new shapes, and led him to an eventual Harvard professorate, and over the years he’d shown much of the same excellence that had led to such high hopes back when Mars was still the ultimate goal. But the subtle changes, the ones no one really noticed, were perhaps of greater importance as to who he was today. For instance, he never gave away his reactions to people, unless they were part of his agenda, and he’d developed a certain flair for reading people without making it obvious that he did.

Politically, he’d also had quite a development, from being quite ignorant and uninterested to gradually becoming more critical
of where the country and the world were headed. He’d started noticing how more and more democratic values and civil rights were being sacrificed in the name of “security.” The plague of terrorism that had swept across the world at first bolstered the free world, united them in a common cause. But then, gradually, as time went by and terrorist cells continued to strike, policy shifted toward authoritarianism. When terrorists nuked Seattle, fear seemed to creep into every corner and every critical voice was perceived as a destructive element. America, like most of its allies in the western world, was still a democracy of some sort, but many rights had been revoked, like the right to assembly. These days, if an interest group wanted to legally assemble, they had to be approved by a committee, led by a judge and comprised of two government officials and one layman. The implications were obvious, and this was just one example. Taylor came to resent this development, but public sentiment actually supported it, and he and others of like mind were outnumbered by people who just wanted to live their lives without fear of bombs going off in the streets. He had no problem understanding this, but somehow he felt more and more alienated and isolated from the society in which he had once been such a star.

After Seattle, the critical voices had gone silent, or been subdued by wrecked careers, and sometimes legal action.
Some had switched views, due to the horrible acts of terrorism, and chosen what they thought of as the lesser evil. In some cases, the persecution had actually led critics toward more extreme views, and a very few had become involved in terrorist activity. Then there were the likes of Kenneth Taylor. He hadn’t been a very vocal critic, which probably was the reason he seemed to escape under the government radar, and after Seattle, he quickly saw the implications. So he went silent. He kept in touch with a few of like mind, but severed his ties to most others. On the surface, there were enough personal and professional reasons to justify him staying in touch with those few that remained, so he never personally experienced any difficulties due to his connections, and it didn’t hamper his career any. But when he was alone, the thoughts would come, and he felt like he was the only person in the world who could see the poison that was seeping through the nation. For a long time, he had great difficulty seeing how things could be changed to the better, and although his earlier fall from grace had thickened his skin and made him less prone to despair, he definitely had his black moments.

Kenneth was still unmarried, and when the news of Devastator broke, he was on his yearly hiking trip near Mount Washington with three other bachelor friends. They were taking a break, and when he checked his messages,
there was one from one of his research assistants that just said “see news—important!” So he went online, and that’s how he learned about the end of the world. Of course, that became the main topic for the rest of the trip, and although it didn’t seem real to any of them, he could still remember one of his friends mentioning that for mankind to survive this, they would have to build arks and settle on another planet. Of course, that all seemed like science fiction at the time.

But it was real enough. Three years later
, he was called into the office of the head of the Psychology Department, where two government officials greeted him as they got the room to themselves. That’s when he learned of the Exodus project and was asked to participate in the selection process out west. When he had asked why he was the one to be approached, as there were almost as many psychologists as there were lawyers, he was told that he wasn’t the only one. There were other psychologists out there, but his research had been noticed as groundbreaking where the fields of biology and psychology converged, and his extensive studies on the psychological effects of waking up from a prolonged coma was also an asset that separated him from most. By then, selection had been going on for four years, but he was told that his entry would not be unusual; at times, new candidates would enter, as the plans developed, and needs arose, and he was one of those late candidates. Actually, the first launches were less than a year away, so he had to leave immediately. At that moment, he rediscovered hope. There would be a new world out there, like a tabula rasa, a blank page, waiting for whatever would fill it. That was the moment he made a silent vow to himself that his role would not be limited to what the government officials intended. It was too early to fully comprehend the implications, or to consciously figure out how to make an actual impact. He just knew that this was a chance to make a better world than the one he’d leave behind, and he’d be damned if he didn’t grab that chance with both hands and hold tight. As he shook hands with them, he knew that the opportunity he could only have dreamed of had arrived. As much as the prospect of Earth dying was a miserable one, he couldn’t help it. He felt excited, beyond anything he’d ever felt in his entire life.