Planetfall (5 page)

I hesitate, feeling like she's taking over. But this is within her remit more than mine. She has to make sure he's not a threat to the colony's health and she'll have a better idea about how his microbiome will interact with ours.

“I'll keep you posted, Ren,” she says, brushing my arm with her hand. “The moment anything comes up, I'll ping you.”

“Okay,” I say, thinking of the vase I abandoned some hours ago. For a moment I consider going to get it, but it's too risky at this time of day. “Let me know when he wakes up,” I add as I head for the door.

“Ren—” She hurries over as I reach for the touch pad. “Don't feel guilty.”

I tense, thinking she's overheard something, or somehow—

“Because we all looked for them as best we could. It's not your fault.”

I look away, unable to manage the relief that she's just as clueless as everyone else. “Thanks.”

“Come over for a drink when you can,” she adds, knowing better than to wait for an invitation to my place. “Anytime you want. It's been a while.”

There's a change in the way she's looking at me, the way her hand rests on my shoulder. But there's no room inside me for anything like that now. “I'll try,” I say. “But I reckon things will be busy for a while.”

She nods and kisses my cheek. “See you soon, Ren.”

When I step outside, I feel the breeze cool the skin where she kissed me. Lots of people are outside, chattering to one another excitedly, in person and in the streams. I check for any trouble brewing but there is none; they just want to see Sung-Soo and they've realized he's inside.

Now they're all looking at me.

“Is he in there?” Zara calls from the rapidly gathering crowd.

I don't know what to do. Will they all try to go in to see him? I hear a little beep from the other side of the door. Kay has noticed the crowd and locked the door. A second later, a message arrives from her.

Tell them he's here for tests and recovery and that he's doing fine. No visitors yet though.

“He's being cared for by Dr. Reed,” I begin and watch the worry spread. “He's absolutely fine. Really. No visitors yet.”

“We're going to hold a welcome party,” Nick says, coming closer. “Can I just pass on the invite?”

“No,” I say too quickly. “Send it to Dr. Reed and she'll pass it on. He's asleep at the moment and he might not be up for it.”

Poor man. If I'd walked all that way, the last thing I'd want was a party thrown in my honor.

“It's an open invite,” Nick adds. “We'd love to see you there, Renata.”

“Are you free for a drink now?” Zara asks and Nick scowls at her.

Oh shit, they want to milk me for information. “Not right now,” I say. “And thanks for the invite,” I say to Nick. “I'll . . . do my best to be there.”

Before I even finish the sentence, the envelope icon is flashing again as private messages pour in. I shut it down and try to think of a decent enough excuse for getting away from them as soon as possible.

There's a ping with a “maintenance” tag attached. As Nick strides over, pushing his way past others to reach me, I open it. Carmen's printer has broken down. There's a personal note attached.
You can hide in here if you want.

Her house is mere meters away and I can see her at the window. She raises a hand when she sees me look over and then mimes having a drink. Hers is not the port of choice, but there's a storm brewing here and she's offering the closest sanctuary.

“Carmen's printer has broken,” I say. “I need to fix it. See you all at the party, maybe.”

CARMEN'S PLACE HAS
marble flooring that gleams beneath the dozens of bright, starlike lights floating beneath her ceiling in baubles filled with helium. There's enough light coming from the windows, which are bigger and clear plasglass instead of the murky aquariums that Mack favors, but she likes the sparkling. All of her home's energy is absorbed through the outer skin of the house, which looks like a shiny black marble half embedded in the earth, its surface broken only by the curved windows.

The inner space is totally open plan, aside from a bathroom partitioned off with a slab of polished granite. She shares her home with a different person every year. There's about a hundred or so who do that, believing that it's the best way to keep different groups knitted together in an expanding colony. She has two daughters, one of whom is asleep in her cot on the far side of the room. The other must be at the crèche or with her father perhaps. The other father is living with another man in
the group now. I couldn't imagine having to share my space with anyone, let alone having to get used to a new person every year.

“You looked like you needed a hideout,” she says, coming over to kiss me on each cheek, as is her way. I try not to think of the germs she's left on my skin, nor of the possibility that some left by Kay's kiss are now about to invade Carmen's body when she next licks her lips.

“I did,” I say. “Is your printer really broken?”

“I cracked the casing, just in case anyone checks up.” She grins. “Can't have them thinking we're colluding.”

“What would we collude over?”

“Nothing. Would you like a drink?”

“Water, please.”

I watch her walk over to the kitchen area, which is nothing more than a countertop and a couple of hot plates for when the mood to cook takes her. There's a food printer and a few other gadgets hidden behind gleaming panels of crystal. I don't know how she copes with all the sparkling. The outside world must seem very dull and matte to her children.

She slides one of the panels across, finds a glass shaped like a lily and fills it with water from the dispenser next to the printer. I know the water is pure; I built the filtration system. The glass isn't one of her design; she only uses downloadable templates.

“Thanks,” I say and drink most of it straightaway, not appreciating my thirst until now. She refills it for me before getting one for herself and then beckons me over to join her as she sits on the wide white sofa.

I perch at the other end of it, feeling like I'm taking sanctuary from wolves in a bear's cave. “How are the girls?” I ask, having forgotten their names.

“Fine, fine,” she says. “So tell me all about him.”

I knew it was coming. “Is that the price for my rescue?”

She sniffs. “Mack answered everyone's questions, but didn't say what he was like. Is he savage? He must be, living without any access to the cloud.”

“People don't become feral just because they're not chipped!”

“I didn't think he would be.” Her smile makes me curse myself. I resolve to not give any more away. “Will he be at the party?”

“I've no idea.”

“Mack said he can talk, like us.”

“Carmen, he wasn't raised by gorillas!”

Leaning back, she sips from her glass. I have the feeling she's building up to something. “So he understands how we live. Enough to join the colony, at least.”

“Is there something that's worrying you?”

Carmen puts the glass down by her feet and sits on the edge of the sofa, suddenly focused and businesslike. “You must have thought about the timing of this.”

I keep quiet. Does she mean how long it took for us to discover they'd survived, or something else?

“It's less than two weeks before the next message from the Pathfinder.” When I keep silent, she sighs and says, “Renata, don't you think it auspicious that her grandson—one that we didn't even know exists—comes here in time to receive her message?”

“‘Auspicious' is a loaded word.”

“What would you use?”

“Coincidental.”

It's not what she wants to hear. There's the tiniest shake of her head. “You don't think it's significant in any way?”

“I think him coming here is significant, not the timing.”

“God guided him here to us—”

“He memorized a map.”

“In time to receive the Pathfinder's message,” she continues, ignoring me. “And I think it should be he who takes the seed.”

I rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. I'm too tired for this shit. “Carmen, there are rules about this; you know that.” I don't say anything about how I feel about them, how much I dread the event nor how the ritualization of it all makes me sick to my stomach.

“Rules that
we
made, not God.”

“They were made for good reasons.”

“But this sign from God should take precedence over anything Mack decided was the way to do things over twenty years ago!”

I don't like the sound of this. “It wasn't just Mack; it was the council, and you bloody well know why they decided this was the way.” She doesn't know the true reasons; none of them do, aside from Mack and me. “And anyway, saying it's a sign from God is an interpretation, not a fact.”

“It's too close to be anything but!” Carmen's cheeks are flushed and the baby is stirring in her cot, disturbed by the tone of her voice. “He could have arrived just after the ceremony, or six months afterward, but no, he comes in time to receive the seed himself. We have to acknowledge that God must have planned it that way.”

The resurgence of this kind of religious talk makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle. The times it's blossomed in the colony have brought us closer to self-destruction than anything Mack has kept hidden.

“I don't want there to be any religious talk,” I remember Suh saying at the first meeting with Mack.

He stared at her for a moment, half laughed and then fell silent when he realized she was serious. “You have half the planet saying you're the next prophet, you've said yourself that
you want to build a spaceship to find God, and you don't want anyone to talk about religion?”

“You said the whole world is talking about me when we spoke on the phone,” she replied. “What's the other half calling me?”

“Mad,” I said as he squirmed. “Messiah complex, mostly. Some of the kinder ones are theorizing that you can't handle being a late-blooming genius, so you're claiming a divine element as a defense mechanism.”

Suh shook her head, closed her eyes for a moment and then looked at Mack. “What do you think I am?”

“Ambitious,” he replied without hesitation. “Brilliant. Fascinating.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“Ren does.”

He looked at me for the first time. “And you are?”

“My best friend,” Suh answered for me. “And before the coma, about twenty times more intelligent than me.”

He didn't stop looking at me. “And what do you think?”

“I think that something has sent a message through Suh.”

“God?”

“I want to go with Suh,” I replied, dodging the question. I hadn't made up my mind yet. Some days I thought she was mad; some days I found myself weeping at the local church, thanking God for choosing my best friend. “What I think is going on isn't important.”

He nodded at that. “True. It's what investors think that counts. Unless you happen to be a billionaire?”

“No,” I said. “But I'm an engineer, so I can help.”

Mack smirked. “That's like looking at the national debt of the United States and saying that you've already had a friend promise to pay back a dime.”

“Ren is very gifted and I trust her. That's the thing that worries me about all this.” Suh waved a hand at the tentative drawings she'd made of the craft that went on to become Atlas. “If this is going to happen, we need to bring in people I've never met, but who will have heard of me. I've had death threats. How can I trust them?”

Mack steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “You want to travel millions of miles into outer space, and it's that that worries you the most?” He smiled with that gleam in his eye. “I'll worry about the people; you worry about whether you know where we're going.”

“Where
we're
going? You want to come too?”

“If you'll have me. I can put in twenty million dollars by the end of today, another ten when I've liquidated some assets. I wouldn't have offered to fund-raise for you if I didn't believe in the project.”

“I thought you offered to fund-raise so you could earn your fee,” I said, not liking the way he was obviously trying to charm Suh.

“I'll waive my fee, on one condition.” He was focused fully on Suh again. I wasn't important. “You let me help you choose who comes on board. I'll make sure that none of the crazies get anywhere near this.”

Suh didn't even hesitate. “Agreed. And remember: no religious talk. We focus on the science and downplay anything else I might have said when I wasn't being careful.”

“So you don't think you're building a ship to find God anymore?”

“I didn't say that,” she replied, glancing at me. “I just don't want that to be the only thing people are thinking about when they're considering joining the project.”

We argued that night. I couldn't understand why she trusted
Mack and she couldn't understand why I was so upset. I couldn't articulate the reasons back then because I couldn't admit my feelings about her. She got her way, of course. And her instincts were correct about him, though it took me several years longer to admit that.

He did an excellent job of screening candidates, but there was always a risk of zealotry in some of the people accepted onto the ship. Carmen's profile certainly showed leanings toward it, but we engineered our way of life to try to keep it in check. I wonder if this is the beginning of destabilization, the start of the allergic response to the new social pathogen.

No, I shouldn't think of Sung-Soo like that.

“I think that interpreting events as signs from God is a slippery slope,” I begin but she cuts me off before I can finish.

“But that's what the Pathfinder did! You followed her—we all did. How can you do that and live at the foot of God's city and reject this sign?”

“Don't you remember what happened the last time people said stuff like that?” It's a low blow, but I want her to think about what she's doing.

“Of course I do. But this is completely different.”

I stand up. I can see there's no reasoning with her and that she's built up enough steam in her own head to start something off. Mack needs to know and I can't warn him while I'm here. “I should fix that casing.”

“Renata.” She stands too, taking care to calm her voice after a glance at the child starting to fidget herself awake. “Please at least think about this. I'm not the only one who sees it this way.”

“What about Marco? He's been preparing himself for the last six months. Do you think it's okay to tell him it's all for nothing?”

Marco was living apart from us, a mile away on the other
side of God's city, cut off from the cloud and our network, with only a medical app monitoring his health, programmed to alert the doctors if there is anything outside of normal parameters. He is living as pure a life as he can, as agreed upon in the year after the first message seed was “found.”

“He would understand.”

“I don't think he would, nor his group, nor the people who thought he was the best candidate. Look, Carmen, none of this is up to me. I'm sure the council will consider this.” I put some space between us by going over to the printer.

“Oh, they will. I've already notified my group leader and there's a stream debating it right now.”

Shit. This isn't going to go away. “Can you give me temporary privileges?” I point at the printer and in seconds I receive a ping to that effect. It's only a hairline crack in the plasglass and takes less than five minutes to fix. She watches me the whole time, occasionally taking a breath to say something but then deciding not to. The baby settles again and I head toward the door.

“Will you at least consider her grandson as a candidate?” she asks and I stop.

“Next year,” I reply. “But not before the next ceremony.”

“If God wanted him to have the seed next year, he wouldn't have guided him to us in time for this one.”

“You were the best astrophysicist in Europe,” I say, pressing my hand against the pad on the door frame. “I would stick to interpreting data that can be verified objectively. For all our sakes.”