Heart of the Nebula (30 page)

“
What about the ship
captains?” James asked.

“
The General Assembly is
considering that right now,” Sara answered him. “As of last hour,
the leading plan is to randomly generate each colony ship roster,
keeping families together, and have each group elect their own
captain, who can then trade with the other captains for any
specialists that they might need.”

“
It’s a good plan,” said
the patrician, “but the captains will be too busy figuring out each
ship’s personnel roster to prepare for every potential problem.
Meanwhile, we need to make sure that when we leave the Colony, we
have all the supplies and equipment that we’ll need.”

It’s an even bigger mess
than I’d thought,
James realized. Just
thinking about all the issues they’d have to work through was
giving him a headache. What’s more, he was almost certain that he’d
end up as a captain for one of the ships. The news broke yesterday
that he was the one who had saved the Colony from the Hameji, and
just as Sara and her father had predicted, the response had been
overwhelming so far. Words like “hero,” “guardian,” and “savior”
were popping up in almost every dispatch that mentioned his
name.

“
Commander McCoy,” said the
patrician, “I want you and Sara to prepare a database with the
names of every citizen who is young and healthy enough to go into
cryofreeze. Make those lists available to all the colony ship
captains within a week of their elections, at most.”

James frowned. “Uh, shouldn’t you put a
nurse in charge of—”

“
We can handle it,” Sara
said, cutting him short. She turned down the volume until he could
barely hear what the patrician was saying.

“
What is it?”

“
Dad’s given us our
assignment already,” she answered. “He won’t have anything more for
us until after the meeting’s over.”

“
But—”

“
Trust me. I know how he
operates.”

James glanced at the nearly muted
wallscreen, then back to her. “But what about the rest of the
meeting? What if we miss something important?”

She sighed. “Dad’s on the way out,
James—can’t you see that? This is his last real act of authority
before handing over the reins, and it doesn’t really count because
it has no binding authority.”

“
What about the inner
circle?”

“
Once we split up for our
different ships, the office of patrician will be annulled and the
shadow council will be meaningless. It will all be up to the
captains then, until we arrive at Chira.”

She reached out and took his hand, squeezing
it gently. Their eyes met, and he felt that she was trying to
reassure him—or possibly herself.

“
Is this you wrapping me
around your finger?” he asked.

“
No,” she said quickly. “I
mean, it’s not what it looks like—not like how my father wanted it,
anyway.”

Still, she didn’t let go of his hand.

“
We’re going to be really
busy over the next few weeks,” he remarked.

“
Yeah,” she said, smiling.
“Busy together.”

James’s cheeks blushed
bright red.
I suppose I should have seen
that coming,
he thought to
himself.

* * * * *

Kyla woke up to the smell of freshly baked
bread. In her semi-conscious state, it gave her a waking dream of
wandering through a bakery. There were all sorts of breads and
pastries there, of every size and type she could imagine. There
were big round sweet rolls glazed in butter, braided rye bread with
seeds all over the top, flaky fruit-filled croissants, kolaches
with cream cheese and berries, and pigs-in-a-blanket with dark red
sausage poking out at either end. Her mouth watered as she ran from
display to display, trying to decide which ones to get or whether
she should just eat them all. It was heavenly.

Just before she came fully awake, though,
she saw a girl standing outside the bakery window. She was small
with black hair, dressed in rags, and looked unbearably hungry.
Kyla tried to reach out to her, but the doors were closed, and the
glass was too thick for the girl to hear her. The girl stared
forlornly at the food that she would never get to eat, her lips
quivering and her big, round, glassy eyes staring at the feast.

Stars,
Kyla realized.
That girl is
me.

An instant later, she was lying in her bed,
staring up at the blue-painted ceiling. She slipped out and
followed her nose to the source of the delicious smell. Jessica was
slicing a fresh loaf on the kitchen table, and the steam that rose
out of it was absolutely heavenly.

“
Good upshift, dear,” said
Jessica. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Kyla stepped into the kitchen and quietly
took a seat across the table. Her pajamas clung a little, so she
pulled them loose and kicked her feet absent-mindedly beneath her
chair.

“
How did you sleep?”
Jessica asked as she finished with the bread.

“
Good.”

“
I’m glad to hear it.” She
pulled out a plate and placed two steaming hot slices on it. After
buttering them generously, she handed the plate to Kyla, who all
but snatched it out of her hand.

“
You’ve got a healthy
appetite, I see. How about some eggs?”

“
Yes, please,” Kyla said
between mouthfuls. The bread was every bit as soft and rich as the
stuff from her dream. It was all she could do to keep from stuffing
it all in her mouth at once.

As she ate, Jessica’s husband Adam came in.
He was wearing the dark blue jumpsuit of a dockyard worker and
seemed anxious, as if looking for something to do with his hands.
He didn’t sit down, but instead walked straight to the food
synthesizer and poured himself a cup of black coffee.

“
Hello, dear,” said Jessica
as she hydrated the powdered eggs. “Any news on the colony ship
rosters?”

“
The randomization measure
passed the General Assembly just last night,” said Adam. “We should
be getting our assignments anytime now.”

“
What assignments?” Kyla
asked.

Adam withdrew his coffee mug from the
synthesizer and sat down at the table next to her. “The assignments
telling us which ships we’ll be on. They’re keeping families
together, so there’s no danger of us being separated, but it’s
anyone’s guess as to who will be put with whom.”

“
How do they know how to do
it?”

“
It’s simple,” he said
after taking a long lip. “The computer pulls a list of names from
the census database and organizes people into families. It uses a
simple randomization algorithm to give each family their colony
ship assignment. When the rosters have all been decided, each group
will elect a captain, who can trade people off with the other ship
captains until everyone is reasonably satisfied.”

If I’d stayed in the lower
decks, I probably wouldn’t be assigned anywhere,
Kyla thought to herself. Even if she was in the
census data, she doubted anyone would have come down to the lower
decks to collect her, and even if they had, there was no way she
would have come with them. She would have been stranded on the
station long after everyone else had left.

“
Where is James going?” she
asked.

“
Oh, he’ll be with us,
dear,” said Jessica as she placed the hydrated eggs into the
cooker. She keyed the machine to start and wiped her hands on her
apron. “In fact, he’ll almost certainly be elected
captain.”

“
That’s right,” said Adam,
his face unreadable. “In every straw poll, James comes out on
top.”

Then we’ll be safe,
Kyla thought to herself.
James will see to that.

She looked down at her plate and thought of
the girl from her dream—the one who wanted into the bakery but
couldn’t enter. How many people like her were starving while she
had food on her plate? How many people were going to be left
behind?

Barely a moment later, Jessica pulled out
the eggs and served a massive portion—almost half—onto Kyla’s
plate. “There you are,” she said in her motherly voice. “Eat
up!”

Do I really deserve all
this?
Kyla wondered. She ate it, but her
doubts weighed on her.

Adam’s wrist console beeped. “Aha!” he said,
his eyes lighting up almost immediately. “I’ll bet that’s our
colony ship assignment.”

“
Put it up on the main
screen, honey,” Jessica said, nearly as excited.

Adam toggled his console, and the wallscreen
above the table flickered into a list of names, organized
alphabetically. Kyla skimmed over them, but nothing stood out to
her. For Jessica and Adam, it was a very different story.

“
Look, dear!” said Adam.
“The Nyes and the Hansens are up there!”

“
All of them?”

“
All except for their
married daughters. And it looks like the Stewarts will be with us
as well.”

“
Oh, that’s good. What
about the McClaires?”

Adam squinted. “I don’t see them. Do
you?”

“
No, I don’t. I guess we’ll
have to wish them well. So many people we won’t be seeing
again.”

They went back and forth for several
moments, picking out the names of friends and paying even more
attention to the names that weren’t there. Kyla finished her food
and sat quietly, watching them.

“
What’s the big deal?” she
eventually asked. “Aren’t we all going to the same place? Aren’t
you going to see all these people again?”

“
Unfortunately no, dear,”
Jessica answered. “We’re too old to undergo the cryofreezing
process. But you’ll be able to go down, so don’t you worry, you’ll
be able to see all these other people again.”

“
Is James going into cryo?”
Kyla asked, ignoring Jessica’s attempt to reassure her.

Jessica and Adam both looked at each other.
The expressions on their faces turned suddenly serious.

“
James is young and healthy
enough to go under,” said Adam. “Besides, the people are going to
need him a lot more when they arrive at Chira than when we’re all
sealed up on these colony ships. He’s probably going into
cryo.”

A sinking feeling grew in Kyla’s stomach as
she looked them each in the eye. “But doesn’t that mean that you
won’t see him again?”

“
It does, dear,” said
Jessica. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
“But that’s just the way things go sometimes. We can’t control what
life throws at us, only how we respond to it.”

“
But it hasn’t been decided
yet, right? I mean, if we all get to vote on what we do next, that
means we get to choose whether we stay awake or go into the long
sleep.”

“
That’s right to some
extent,” said Adam. “And for you, that choice is very much open.
But for us, we can’t go into cryo—not when it would be better for
someone younger and healthier to go down instead of us.”

Just like someone else
might deserve this food more than I do,
Kyla thought. She tried to put it out of her mind, but it was
too difficult.

“
I wonder if Lars will go
into cryo or not,” Jessica mused.

“
Lars is coming with us?”
Kyla asked.

“
That’s right, dear: Lars
and all the rest of the Stewart family.”

“
And a good thing, too,”
said Adam. “It looks like most of the centralists have been
assigned to other ships. The patrician will be on the third
ship—thank goodness for that.”

“
What does that mean?” Kyla
asked.

“
It means that Adam won’t
have to put up with politics he doesn’t agree with, dear,” said
Jessica. “Now go get dressed—can’t wear pajamas all
day.”

Kyla rose from her seat and quietly returned
to her bedroom. As she went, though, she couldn’t help but wonder
whether she’d be going down in cryo—and whether someone else
deserved it more than her.

* * * * *

“
How’s your work coming
along?” James asked

“
Pretty well,” said Sara,
looking up from her terminal. “I’ve more or less got everyone
ranked for cryo readiness, with two or three hundred special cases
for the nurses to look at.”

“
So you can handle the
rest, then?”

“
If you’re asking whether
you can move on to your new duties as colony ship captain, then go
ahead,” she said. “And congratulations on your election, by the
way.”

“
Yeah,” James said
absent-mindedly. The leadership position was looking to be a lot
more difficult than he’d thought. Not only was he a captain of the
ship in the military sense, but he was the highest ranking civilian
leader on the ship as well—something like the patrician, but on a
much smaller scale. Since he was supposed to be in charge of the
civilian side, there were all sorts of things that he didn’t know
how to handle. Sara had suggested that he focus instead on finding
competent specialists and delegating most of the duties to them,
but the randomization of the assignments had left several key areas
where they just didn’t have anyone to fill the proper role.
Consequently, he had to do a lot of personnel trading with the
other captains, but that involved splitting families and causing
headaches for everyone. Meanwhile, problems kept popping up left
and right, faster than he could possibly solve them all. It was a
mess.