Stephen Baxter: Ark

A kind of collective murmur ran around the hull. Holle always stuck to her decisions, and implemented them in every last detail. Everybody old enough to understand what was being said knew that their fate was already determined.

Holle’s expression softened. “And you’re wrong about something else, Max. The number’s not twenty-five. Twenty-five’s not enough. I went back over Project Nimrod’s original design documents. Twenty-five individuals don’t provide enough genetic diversity for a viable human colony. Well, we found a way to take more than that. We think we can carry about forty. That still might not be enough, but it may be the best we can do.”

Max snapped back, “How?”

“We rebuild the shuttle’s interior. We install new couches… Max, we take children. That’s how we fit in forty. It will be a ship full of children, with three adults to manage the landfall and help them through the first years.” She looked around. “That’s why I’ve been encouraging you all to have kids these last years, frankly. I always feared it might come to this, if we didn’t find a miracle solution to the shuttle issue, and we haven’t.”

Helen could feel the tension rise in the hull as Holle’s basic logic sunk in.

She kept talking. “I’ve selected a list of children from the ages of two up to fifteen. Thirty-seven of them, most of them ten and under. No siblings, to maximize diversity. And no relation to the adults. There will be no mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. Just as when we launched from Earth, in fact.” She glanced around. “You older ones, I picked you carefully, it’s going to be hard for you. You’ll have to help the adults manage the little ones as you establish the colony. The shuttle is full of gear to help you get through the first months: inflatable habitats, freeze-dried food packs. But it will be tough work. There will be ground to be cleared, and-”

Max challenged her again. “You’re sending very young children away from their parents. It’s inhuman.”

“Of course it’s inhuman,” Holle said steadily. “Everything about this mission is inhuman.”

Magda pushed forward. “You have no kids of your own. You’re only half alive yourself. That’s how you come up with cruelty like this.”

Holle, flinching, took a breath. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Magda. I’ll announce the full list later. I’ll speak to the parents individually first. But, look-your Sapphire is on the list. She’s the youngest in the shuttle crew, she’ll be the youngest person in the whole world. Think of that-”

“You murderous bitch, you won’t take another baby from me!” Magda threw herself away from the wall. There was an eruption of shouting, of anger, people grabbing at Magda.

Holle waited by the pole until the commotion had subsided. Then she said clearly, her amplified voice booming, “The adults.”

Again she was the focus of attention, in silence save for Magda’s wretched sobbing, and the thinner cry of an upset child.

Holle said, “These three have to be the core of the first days, weeks, months-a core of expertise, and of discipline until the older children can take over. I’ve selected them for necessary competences, and, with one exception, for experience of Earth. I don’t want everybody on that shuttle to freeze the first time they step through the hatch and onto a planet.

“So, first: Jeb Holden. I know you don’t all love him. But he came from a farming background. He saw a hell of a lot of the world as an eye-dee and then a Homelander. Nobody else aboard has that breadth of experience. So, Jeb goes.”

Helen, shocked, looked for Jeb. He had taken Mario off his shoulders and was staring at him, immediately realizing the implications of Holle’s choice. No parents, Holle had said. If Jeb was sent down to the ground, Mario and Hundred would be left aboard the ship. Jeb looked stricken. He was a good father, for all his faults; this was going to be terribly hard for him. But at least Helen would have the children, she thought with a stab of savage, selfish relief. At least she would be here with Hundred and Mario, on the Ark.

“Second,” Holle said now, “we need a shuttle pilot. If those few minutes of the descent go badly, none of the rest matters. And though we’ve tried to train up replacements, we only have one experienced flier. That’s Wilson Argent.”

Wilson looked dumbstruck. There were howls of protest.

Max turned on Holle again. “He’s the man who raped my sister and left her to die! He’s the man who took the damn shuttle to save his own skin, that created this mess in the first place. Now you’re giving him the planet, him and his thug Jeb-”

“He’s the only pilot, Max. That’s all that matters. There’s nothing remotely fair about this process.”

Wilson drifted in the ruins of his palace. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice barely audible.

“Finally,” Holle said, “I chose one shipborn, of the middle generations. Somebody who can empathize with what the youngsters are going to have to go through to adjust to life outside the ship, yet is old enough to offer perspective, some kind of guidance. Somebody who has some piloting training to back up Wilson. She has family bonds to one other on the shuttle crew, though not genetic. Maybe that will help stabilize things in the early days. And she’s somebody you respect, I know that.

“I’m sending Helen Gray.”

Everybody turned to stare at Helen. For a long heartbeat she couldn’t understand what Holle had said, the implications.

Then she hurled herself across the hull, looking for her children.

August 2081

Helen and Jeb spent one last evening with the children, a normal routine at the end of a final day of chores and schooling. There was supper and cleanup, and a complicated zero-gravity basketball game for Mario with his father, and story-reading from his mother’s handheld for little Hundred.

Helen suspected that seven-year-old Mario knew what was going to happen, but if he did he was being brave for the sake of his little brother. Even Hundred wasn’t quite himself that evening, but he played gamely, and gurgled when he was tickled as he was dressed for bed. Then they all piled into the parents’ big sleeping bag, suspended across the interior of their cabin where it hung on the fireman’s pole, and Jeb and Helen held the children until they slept.

When they gently disentangled themselves, Mario stirred. He opened his big eyes and looked at his father, who was pulling on his T-shirt and shorts. He whispered, “Am I in charge now, Dad?”

“You’re in charge, big guy.”

Mario just smiled. “I’ll look after Hundred.”

Helen couldn’t bear anymore. She pushed out of the cabin into the dim light of the hull’s night watch.

Her mother was waiting outside. Grace looked gaunt, old. But she hugged her daughter. “I’ll go climb in with them,” she whispered. “So there’ll be somebody there when they wake.”

“Thanks,” Jeb said gruffly.

“It’s going to be strange for you, Mum,” Helen said.

Grace shrugged. “I was a hostage. Then I was a princess. Then I was an eye-dee, a walker. Then I was a sailor. Then an astronaut, and a doctor. Now I’ll be a grandmother, full time. I’ll adapt.” She released her daughter. “We’ve said all there is to say. Go now, it’s time.” She pulled herself inside the cabin.

Helen wasn’t crying; she seemed to have done all the crying she was ever going to do in the month since Holle had announced the split of the crew. But she couldn’t speak at all. Passively, she let Jeb take her arm and guide her up through the silent hull.

At the open hatch to shuttle B, the forty crew were being suited up. The older children, wide-eyed and subdued, helped sleepy youngsters into their suits. The lightweight pressure coveralls they were to wear during descent were just flimsy shells of polythene, enough to protect them if the cabin lost pressure. They had been stored in a locker for four decades, and, unusually aboard this battered old hulk, smelled new. They even had AxysCorp logos on their chests, cradled Earths. With spares there were plenty to go around, but they had been cut down to fit the smaller children, and turned into simple sacks to contain the very small ones. The shuttle launch had been timed for the night watch, when the children, drowsy with sleep, might be more easily handled. Perhaps they could be loaded aboard the shuttle and thrown down to the new world before they woke properly and realized they had lost their parents forever.