Joe Haldeman - Worlds Enough and Time

“And we can’t be sure how long it will take to get things growing and harvested again. Everything we grow, and a few thousand other plants, exist in the form of genetic information, sealed away against any possible catastrophe, for Epsilon. But we haven’t yet reclaimed the knowledge to go from there to an actual plant.

“Food isn’t the only problem, of course. Breathing. The virus is also going to kill every plant in the park. No photosynthesis, no new oxygen, except what we manufacture ourselves. We can do it—we have to, in the process of turning carbon dioxide into nutrient solution for the yeast—but we can’t do it on a scale adequate for the whole population.

“We do have reference seeds for all of our food crops. Once we have the hydroponic beds cleaned out, the virus sterilized, we can start over on a small scale. But it will be more than two years, probably three years, before we’re back to anything like normal production.

“So about seven thousand of us have to volunteer for suspended animation. Perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘volunteer.’ There will be some people who will have to stay on to keep things going smoothly, or at all. First, though, about the suspended animation. Cryptobiosis. Sylvine?”

Sylvine Hagen stood up slowly. “Uh… I wasn’t prepped for this”

“Sorry,” Nagasaki said. “No time.”

“Well… I gave a presentation a couple of years ago; not much has changed since. It’s on a crystal; I’ll edit it and put it on everybody’s queue, code ‘crypto.’

“Here’s the basic fact: we have plenty of room for seven thousand people, but the recovery rate is not wonderful; seventy-five to eighty percent. We don’t have a lot of experimental data, but it looks as if the recovery rate is highest for people from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties. It rapidly declines after about sixty. It would probably kill anybody over eighty, eighty-five, and would definitely be fatal to anybody under nineteen or twenty; anybody still growing.

“Once you go in the box, you won’t come out for at least forty-eight years, which is about ten years before we arrive at Epsilon, of course.”

“There’s no way to hurry the process, or interrupt it?” Sato asked. “Assuming we can get the farms operating again.”

“Not that we know of. We’ll continue researching it.”

“‘We’? You don’t want to do it yourself?” Mandell said.

She reddened. “I do want to. I’m curious about it. And I’m fifty; I don’t want to put it off for too long. But I should stick around for a few years.”

“That’s a point,” Eliot said. “We have got some flexibility. How long does it take to get those coffins warmed up, cooled down, whatever?”

“Just hours. It’s an emergency facility.”

“So say we take everybody who’s somewhere between marginally helpful and certifiably useless, say five thousand people, and tuck them away this afternoon. We got enough yeast to feed half the rest. That leaves two thousand who have to go into the box sooner or later, basically living on the 160 to 321 kilo-man-days Mandell says we got. If they all ate regular rations, they could stick around for 80 to 160 days. That’s sayin’—to simplify the numbers—that the two thousand who aren’t goin’ in those coffins start eatin’ yeast tonight.

“But what we really got is like a decay function, exponential decay. I mean, say, half those people get their shit wrapped up in a week, go in the can. That leaves a thousand people to munch on what’s left. If I can do arithmetic, that means they’ve got 146 to 306 days’ worth. Then after a month, half of them go in. The five hundred left have got 232 to 552 days. And so on. Not like those numbers are that exact, but you get the picture.”

“Well put, Eliot,” Sato said. “A few people could stay for as long as ten years before going into cryptobiosis.”

“It may be moot,” Nagasaki said. “We may be hard pressed to find two thousand who wish to stay awake. To what extent do we make it voluntary? As Dr. Mandell said, certain people must stay, to keep the ship running smoothly and safely.”

“They have to stay at least long enough to train replacements,” Sato said. “Morales, this might be your domain. It falls somewhere between public health and propaganda. You see what I mean?”

Indicio Morales was in charge of Health Care. “I think so. You’ve got these two classes of people—the ones we want to go and the ones we want to keep awake. But each class is divided into those who themselves want to go or stay. So you want us to come up with some approach whereby everybody thinks they’re being heroes by doing what we want them to do. To sleep or not to sleep.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, we have psychologists. People who know about motivation, people who know about crowd psychology. But if anybody has propagandists, it’s Kamal.”

“We don’t have any propagandists,” Kamal Muhammed said. He was in charge of Interior Communications. “We have ‘public opinion engineers.’” Some people did laugh. “You get your shrinks together and I’ll get my manipulators and let’s meet for lunch.” He checked his watch. “Studio One, eleven-thirty?” Morales nodded.

“Good,” Nagasaki said. “In the meantime—right now, I guess—you take Mandell and Hagen down to prepare a brief public explanation. Just the plain truth about the crops and the need for swift action. Sato and I will be along in a few minutes.”

The three of them went to the door, which opened on a small murmuring crowd, including two police officers and two of Muhammed’s reporters. He made shooing motions. “Later, boys. Public statement down in One.”

The door closed on eerie quiet. “Well,” Sato said, “we have to come up with criteria, go or stay. Within our own specialties and in general.”

O’Hara spoke up. “Women with children should be allowed to stay. Men, too. The idea of waking up and having your child suddenly older than you are—it’s grotesque.” Daniel looked at her and nodded slowly, perhaps deciding.

10 September 2103 [9 Confucius 304]—So ends one of the most hectic days of my life, of everyone’s life. I had until noon today to divide my staff into sleepers and wakers, trying for a four-to-one ratio. I canvassed them yesterday morning, and this is what I got (I’ll just copy in the memo):

TO: Sylvine

RE: The list

Okay, you said you wanted a preliminary list. Mine is nothing but trouble. This is what I have for raw material—

The guidelines allow me to keep seven people, including myself. I especially don’t want to lose Hermosa, Lebovski, and Saijo, and especially don’t want to spend the next half-century with Taylor and Grady. So I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon juggling people, and hope to give you a final list by tonight.

When all this dies down, let’s get together for a luscious yeastburger. Still play handball?When I was sixteen (and Sylvine twenty-six), she taught me handball at gym. That was not a sport that translated well to Earth. If you learn it in a rotating frame of reference, you expect the ball to drift consistently to the right or left. The one time I played it on Earth, I almost broke my wrist, overcompensating.

So I spent all day cajoling, and finally laying down the law. Of course I couldn’t force anyone who wanted cryptobiosis to stay awake, no matter how much I wanted their company, but I was able to invoke the common good to put Taylor and Grady safely to sleep.