Ark

39

Matt’s cell was basic, a cave in a concrete block of a building, the walls rough and unfinished. He had a chemical toilet, a sink, a cupboard with books, a bunk, a TV. But there were no windows, no natural light.

Matt was sitting on his bed when Gordo opened the door. Liu and Gordo followed Holle in; Patrick stayed outside.

Matt stood up, looking away as if embarrassed. He wore a coverall of some rough recycled material. “Wasn’t expecting you,” he said to Holle. “I know I said that I’d speak to you if you came, but-”

She forced a smile. “Wasn’t expecting to be here.” She still didn’t know what they wanted of her. She sat down on the bunk, and he sat beside her. Liu Zheng sat on the room’s only chair, a hard plastic upright, and Gordo leaned against the wall, arms folded.

“Sorry it stinks in here,” Matt said. “I shower every three days. But it’s poky, you know.”

“In a couple of weeks the whole Ark will probably stink just as bad.”

“Maybe. I’ll never know, will I? I bet you didn’t know they had a prison on the launch site.”

She shrugged. “I’m not surprised. The whole place is like a prison now, crawling with cops and soldiers and National Guard. They’ve kept you here since-”

“Since I confessed to killing Harry, yeah.”

“What about a trial?” She glanced up at Gordo.

Gordo said, “We’re kind of busy. Mounting trials isn’t a priority.”

“I don’t want a trial,” Matt said firmly. “What would be the point? It would make no difference to the outcome.”

Holle shrugged. “OK. But what now? I guess they’re going to move you away from here.” In this cell they were no more than four hundred meters from the base of the Orion stack.

Liu Zheng leaned forward. “That’s what we need to speak to you about, Matt. We need volunteers.”

“Volunteers?”

“Look-” Liu pointed up and out, in the vague direction of the Ark. “You understand that when the bird flies, everything within several hundred meters of the launchpad will be destroyed. The Zone will be smashed to the ground, and much of the wider Hinterland-”

“I know, I know. Nothing close in to the Orion will survive. So what?”

Gordo said, “But somebody needs to stay ‘close in.’ Right to the end, right to the moment when those cannon start spitting their thermonuclear shells down through the pusher plate.”

Liu Zheng sighed. “Matt, the Ark is an experimental machine. It is a sick joke that we will still be building it at the moment it flies. Well, it is true. Even now a slew of design modifications afflicts us. We will have no time to implement most of them, let alone test them. You know that launch control will be run out of a bunker at Pikes Peak. But remote command and support will not be enough. In the final hours, as we run down the countdown clock, we are expecting many failure modes to occur-some we can anticipate, surely many that we cannot.

“There will be a team,” Liu said. “A team who will stay right until the final minute, until it is too late to escape the blast zone-you must understand-a team who may find themselves crawling through the Orion fixing leaks even as the atomic bombs begin to fire.”

“A suicide squad,” Matt said slowly. “And you want me to be on it.”

Holle felt she could barely breathe. After a day of shocks, this was one development she had not foreseen.

Gordo said, “According to your aptitude tests, you were pretty good at math and physics and nuclear engineering, but you were one of the best hands-on mechanics in the Candidate corps. So here’s a chance, kid. A chance to do something for the project you devoted your life to.”

Liu Zheng reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “And I,” he said, “will be with you. I will lead. This is my project, after all.” He smiled. “It will be glorious. Think of the honor. Think of the spectacle as the bird flies, seared on your retinas-”

“Before my brain fries.”

Gordo said, “You get a full pardon. In writing from the President, if you want. We need you, kid. Holle needs you.”

Holle snapped, “That’s so manipulative. It’s a death sentence!”

Matt looked at her. “You’re flying?”

Both Gordo and Liu looked at Holle. Now she understood why they had brought her here. Miserably, she said, “Yes, Matt. Yes, I’m flying.”

Matt nodded. He reached out and shook Liu’s hand. “Give me a monkey wrench and I’m your man, boss.”

Holle could bear no more. She ran to the door, which opened to release her, and fell into the arms of her father.

When they took her out to the car she smelled burning. From all around the horizon, smoke was rising, black and ugly. It turned out that President Peery had ordered the firing of a trench, more than six kilometers long and filled with precious oil, that ringed the whole of the core Zone. The trench would be kept burning until the engines of the rising Ark obliterated it.