Ark

89

Three days after the blowout, with the situation in the hull moderately stabilized, Holle led Grace and Venus to the cabin Wilson had been assigned, on the fireman’s pole at around Deck Eight. He had been confined here the whole time since he had emerged from the airlock in his pressure suit, having abandoned shuttle A and Terese Baker to their encounter with the warp bubble wall.

Holle pushed her way in without ceremony. The others followed. Holle lodged herself into a corner of the cabin, and let her eyes adjust to the dark.

Wilson just stared as the women came in. He wore a grimy, much-used T-shirt and shorts. He was floating in the cluttered cabin, surrounded in the air by an unrolled sleeping bag, a sponge backside-wiper, a food packet. His muscular legs were drawn up against his chest, and he was holding on to his bare feet with his big hands. The T-shirt bore some kind of logo, a slogan impossibly faded, a relic of Earth, even of the days before the flood. Oddly Holle found herself wishing she could read it, read about some long-ago sports event or rock band’s tour.

There was no sign that Wilson had been doing anything in here, no handheld, no books. There wasn’t even a lamp glowing; the only light seeped in from the big hull arcs through seams in the walls. His skin looked oily, and he smelled of stale sweat. She wondered how long ago he’d washed, in one of the microgravity showers that she had finally got up and running again. But he looked healthy. He was the only survivor aside from Venus who had not had to live through the decompression.

Wilson and Venus were Holle’s colleagues from their long-gone days as Candidates. Now they were all nearly fifty, their bodies heavy, their expressions hard, their hair graying, their skin lined, their souls dulled by the tedious horror of half their lives spent aboard this Ark. She never would have imagined they would end up this way. But Wilson looked the most composed, confident. He even grinned at Holle.

Grace Gray looked intensely uncomfortable to be here.

Holle said, “Let’s just start. We can’t be overheard, we aren’t being recorded. What we say today passes between the four of us, and nobody else.”

Wilson snapped, “And what’s so special about ‘the four of us’?”

“We’re the people with power on the ship. Venus with her planet-finding and GN amp;C. Grace the doctor-”

Wilson jumped in again. “And you, Holle? You’re the plumbing queen, right? And me? What power have I got, in this new world of yours?”

“You’re the only specialist in the hull’s external systems we have. You’re also the only Earth-trained shuttle pilot left aboard. So you’ve got value, Wilson.”

“And that’s the reason I haven’t been thrown out the hatch, is it?”

Venus murmured, “We never discussed sanctions against you, Wilson, not yet-”

Holle overrode her. “Yes. That’s all that’s kept you alive, Wilson.”

Wilson glanced at a smoldering Venus, an increasingly withdrawn Grace. Then he focused on Holle, perceiving she was the instigator here. “I was competent,” he said coldly. “I ran this damn hulk for twenty years.”

“But you shut yourself off from the crew. You didn’t see Steel’s rebellion coming, and you had no countermeasures in place when it broke. What kind of competence is that?”

“So if this isn’t some kind of trial, what is it?”

“I think it’s a coup d’etat, ” said Venus, watching Holle.

They were all silent, waiting for Holle to speak. So the moment had come. Holle took a breath, her heart beating hard. She hoped that none of them could see her deep uncertainty and self-doubt. But they surely knew her too well for that.

She knew what she was letting herself in for, by stepping forward like this. She’d seen how Don Meisel had hardened when he was banished out of the Academy and sent to the front line. She remembered what she herself had seen the day she had got separated from her father when they evacuated the Academy, as Denver drowned. She remembered the nightmares that used to wake Mel in the night. She had grown up with the flood, but she had always been protected from the worst of it-the harshness of its human consequences, the cruelty, the arbitrariness of life and death. Now all the protective layers had been stripped away from her, even Wilson’s brutal control. And it was her turn.

But she reminded herself why she was doing this. Magda’s baby. Those long minutes in the crowded shuttle. Never again, no matter what it cost her personally.

The others were waiting for her to speak.

“I’m taking over,” she said. “Simple as that. I don’t care what you call it. No elections, no process, no show of hands.” She looked around. “Who else is there to do it? You, Wilson? The crew would destroy you the way they ripped Dan Xavi apart. You, Venus? Wilson faced you down once before; you couldn’t control him now.”

Venus was looking at her as if at a stranger. “And if I did stand against you, would you turn off my air?”

“That’s the question, Holle,” Wilson said, probing. “So you have control of the air and water. The only way you can use that power is to withhold those basic essentials from the crew. Are you really going to do that? It violates the most basic principles of the Ship’s Law we evolved under Kelly, and the Bill of Rights I signed back in ’49.”

“Yes, it does. But all that matters now, Wilson, is survival. We have to last out thirteen more years to Earth III. Thirteen! We can’t afford another rebellion like Steel’s. And we can’t afford another self-indulgent autocrat like you, sucking up the resources and corrupting the kids.”

“And so, instead, we’ve got you,” Venus said.

Wilson laughed again. “I got to congratulate you, Holle. How long have you been planning this? Was it from the beginning, from the launch? Or was it even before then, back when we had to choose an aspect of the Ark’s design to specialize in? Maybe even then you saw control of the life support as your way to ultimate power.”

“I’ve been planning it since I was hanging in the vacuum in this fucking hull. That’s how long.”

“And you’d switch off the air if you had to.”

“If it meant saving the majority-yes.” She looked at them, one by one, forcing them to meet her eyes. “Unless you have any more to say, this is the end of that discussion.”

None of them challenged her. Grace had said nothing at all.

But Wilson kept grinning. “Well, well. Harmless little Holle. The mouse that roared. So what’s next on the agenda?”

“Survivability,” Holle said immediately.

Venus nodded cautiously. “Go on.”

“Since the accident we’ve secured the ship and its basic systems. Now we need a review and rebuild from prow to stern, fixing what got broken in the blowout. And I want to build in more security against failure modes, even against another hull breach. Design redundancy was compromised after the Split. We need to robustify the ship. Is there any way we can improvise leak-proof internal bulkheads, for instance? And we need a rota of crew with suitable equipment waiting in the refuges at all times, the shuttle and the cupola. Also at least one crew member, maybe two, partially pressure-suited. I want to up the crew training for the case of decompression, and other failure modes like fire and power loss. Wilson, you and I will work on this, figure out some kind of strategy.”

“OK. But I remind you that it was sabotage that caused the blowout. No amount of redundancy will protect you from that, ultimately.”

“True. But maybe a full restoration of surveillance systems will. Venus, I want you to work with Grace on that.”

Venus frowned. “Why us?”

“Because you, Venus, have the technical expertise, and Grace already knows the crew individually as well as any of us; she’s their doctor. I want to catch any more rebels before they get a chance to act. Grace, if you notice odd patterns of behavior or unexplained absences from work details or whatever, you come to me.”

Grace looked deeply unhappy. She hadn’t spoken since they’d come together. Now she said, “If I really was a doctor I’d say that violated patient confidentiality.”

“Well, you’re not really a doctor, so that’s not an issue. Oh, and do something with Zane.”

“Like what? Cure him?”

“No. There’s no hope of that. Abandon the therapy program, except for some kind of monitoring. We need Zane’s expertise. But keep him away from the crew, the younger shipborn.”

“How? Shall I keep him in a cage?”

“If you have to.”

Wilson said, “So what else?”

“We’re short of resources. We lost a lot in the trauma-the blowout, the explosion, the fire on your bridge. We were already under strain; after the Split our recycling loops were cut in half. Now we’re going to have to aim for a much tighter closure of the loops. Really, we need to achieve one hundred percent from now on. And that’s going to begin with the disposal of the dead from the blowout.”

“We’ve buried dead before,” Wilson said. “Over the side, and out to the warp bubble, and poom. ” He spoke flippantly, but handling their occasional “space burials” had always shown Wilson at his authoritative best. With due ceremony the bodies were sent out of the airlocks, accompanied by Wilson’s intonation of the old US Navy’s service: “We do now commit this body to the deep…”

Holle said, “Sure. But things have changed, Wilson. We’ve always encouraged people to think of recycling the dead through the ECLSS systems.”

Wilson grinned blackly. “Feeding loved ones into the furnaces chunk by chunk.”

“Do you know what percentage did that so far? Less than twenty percent.”

Wilson shrugged. “It wasn’t something I wanted to make a stand on.”

“Well, now we need to reclaim every drop of water, every scrap of organic material, and that includes corpses. We need to work out some variant of Wilson’s funeral procedure to honor those who give up their bodies to the furnaces. Make it clear that the greatest contribution you can make to the Ark is to keep it running for those who outlive you.”

“Have people will it,” Venus suggested. “Before they die. Lodge it in the archive. That might reduce the conflict after death.”

“Good idea. And Grace, you may need to work on some education program about reducing the taboo of consuming the remains of the dead.”

“That won’t be hard for the shipborn,” Grace said. “They’ve grown up knowing that every sip of water they take has already passed through other people’s bladders a zillion times. They don’t have the same hang-ups as the older crew. We will be the problem. I’ll look into it.”

“You need to think about the refuseniks,” Wilson said. “There will always be some.”

“They won’t get the choice,” Holle said flatly. “OK. Then there’s the question of punishment for the actions leading up to the blowout.”

“Ah.” Wilson sat back and folded his arms. “So this is some kind of trial after all.”

Holle shook her head. “No. Listen, Wilson, you’re indispensable. But you are going to have to survive in this ship, and it’s a damn small place. I’m not putting you on trial, you won’t be formally punished. I won’t even criticize you in public. You need to make some kind of recompense of your own. Find ways to apologize to the kids you hurt, and their families. That’s up to you.”

Wilson nodded. “Well, that’s pragmatic.”

Grace said, “If we aren’t punishing Wilson-who?”

Venus said, “I’m guessing Steel Antionadi.”

Holle nodded. “Right. For the crime of a rebellion that nearly killed us all. We have to make an example of her.”

Wilson grinned again. “Why not just say it straight out? You’re going to execute her.”

Grace laughed nervously. But Holle kept her face expressionless.

Venus gasped. “Are you serious? Holle, the kid was abused by this gorilla here, she had her head filled with rubbish from Zane-what chance did she have? Her crime was our fault, our generation’s.”

Grace said, “And to execute her-in Walker City we had crime, we had rape and murder. But we rejected capital punishment, the mayors did. We were too small a society for that. Each of us would have been too close to the executioner, each of us would become a killer. And compared to this crew, we were a mob. Everybody will be tainted by this.”

“Good,” Holle said.

Venus said, “Besides, Holle, you said we can’t afford any more losses. Steel is one of the brightest of her cadre. Even if you consider the rebellion, she showed vision, leadership, planning, even a kind of military skill. She managed to unite all those teenage gangs. And she was thorough. She cut the comms links, including the backup. She sabotaged the shuttle. All in complete secrecy-”

“I don’t want leadership,” Holle said. “Not among the shipborn. I don’t want vision, or idealism, or curiosity, or initiative. I don’t want courage. All I want is obedience. It’s all I can afford, until we’re down on Earth III and the day comes when we can crack open the domes and let the kids just walk away. Yes, she’s the best of her generation, and that’s why she’s such a danger. We have to make the process as public as possible. In fact that’s the point. But in the end, yes, she’ll die. Grace, I’ll expect you to make recommendations on how we do that, fast and painless.”

Wilson blew out his cheeks. “Wow! You really have been thinking this through, haven’t you?”

Venus shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. Just accept my verdict.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I’ve known you almost your whole life, Holle. Now you’re imposing a regime of total surveillance backed up by total power. Is this you?”

Holle faced her. “Remember all those theoretical debates, back in the Academy? About the conflict inherent in a situation like this between human rights and the need to sustain life itself? The truth is, no matter what system we tried, we were always going to fail in the end. The only way we can survive now is to impose total control from the center. And the only right the crew have left is the right to a chance of surviving the journey.”

Grace murmured, “Maybe Holle’s right. It’s not our fault. Nobody should be made to endure a journey like this. Nobody should condemn a generation of children to grow up in a cage.”

“It was necessary,” Venus said. “Or so the mission planners thought.”

And maybe, Holle thought, clinging to Grace’s words, the crew would be able to forgive her.

“Well,” Grace said. “This has been-eye-opening. So is that all?”

“For now,” Holle said. “Let’s get to work.”

Without another word, and apparently with relief, Grace arrowed out through the hatch, with an unconscious skill born of decades in free fall.

Wilson prepared to follow. “Have to admit I never saw this side of you either, Holle. Shame it didn’t come out earlier. We’d have made a great team.”

When he’d gone, Venus lingered for a moment. “I guess the others didn’t pick up on our long-term problem.”

“What problem?”

“The loss of shuttle A. I don’t have any solution to that. Do you?”

“No,” Holle whispered. “No, I don’t.”

Venus nodded. “Well, it’s a long way to Earth III yet. We’ve time to figure it out. As for the rest-” She looked at Holle for long seconds, as if she’d never seen her before. “Ah, the hell with it.” She floated up out of the cabin after the others.

Holle was left alone in Wilson’s cabin. She sat still. Then she folded over on herself, hugging her knees. She dared not cry for fear that she might be overheard.