Stephen Baxter - Ark

The two youngsters behind him stepped up, looking uncertain. One wore air force blue, the other a kind of police uniform. They snapped to attention, straight and tall.

Alonzo glared at the students. “You kids in this pansy palace don’t know the half of what’s going on out there in the real world. Well, these two are no older than many of you, but they’ve been out there. Mel Belbruno here is what I used to be, an air force brat. But he’s been in a cadet corps since he was ten, and has gotten himself experience with what’s left of NASA. He’s a real life space cadet, and he’s precisely the kind of student that ought to be working on this mission.

“And this here is Matt Weiss. Matt’s in a police cadet corps with Denver PD. You want to know where Matt cut his teeth? Out on the front line, on the coastline of what’s left of America, a coast that recedes every day. Matt has been out there helping senior DPD officers choose whose children get to land and whose don’t, and implementing those choices. Which of you has experience to compare with that?”

Kelly Kenzie put her hand up. “Colonel Alonzo, I don’t deny the validity of what you say. But there’s no room here, on the course. We’ve all been training specifically for this mission for years. If these two are to join-”

“Good point, blondie. I’ll have to make room,” he said with a cold brutality. His gaze swept along the row.

Holle saw people cringe back as if from a laser beam. She told herself to stand tall.

Alonzo stared at Kelly, who’d asked him the question. And then he pointed at Don Meisel, who stood beside her. “You. Redhead. Pack your bags. As of now you’re filling Matt’s place with DPD.”

Don was shaking. “Me? You don’t know anything about me. You don’t even know my name! And I didn’t say anything-”

“Exactly. Kid next to you had the guts to speak out.” When Don didn’t move, he spoke with an ominous calm. “You still here?”

Don turned and walked. He pushed past Holle, his face red, eyes burning with humiliation and anger.

“And in the morning,” Alonzo said, “I’ll pick the second ejectee. Now go to work.” He turned on his heel and walked out.

All Holle felt was a cold horror. Since the day she’d joined the group, Don Meisel had been one of the obvious leaders. She’d even imagined he might make captain. And now he was gone, just like that. If Don Meisel could lose his place so arbitrarily, then who might go tomorrow?

Less than thirty minutes after Gordo Alonzo’s speech, Don Meisel was delivered to the door of the Denver police department head-quarters on Delaware Street.

He walked into a crowded hall full of cops coming and going, in shabby uniforms or plain clothes, some shouting into the air or listening absently to Angels. Heavy security doors, all closed, led off deeper into the building. Many of the cops carried paper cups of coffee; the smell of the stuff was strong in the air. The fluorescent lights seemed dim, the paint on the walls a muddy yellow. With the noise and the murky light, it felt like walking into a cave. None of it seemed real, in fact. He couldn’t believe he was here. One man, a heavyset Latino, sat on a plastic chair, his hands cuffed before him. His nose looked flattened, the nostrils plugged with bloody tissue. He stared at Don in his gaudy Candidate’s uniform and sneered, showing a mouth full of broken teeth. Don shrank, self-conscious.

A uniformed cop came up to Don. She was maybe fifty, with thick graying hair tied back in a bun behind her head. Her face was a mask, the wrinkles around her mouth and small nose chiseled deep, and her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. She had a small scar on her right cheek, maybe inflicted by a punch by ringed fingers. She was carrying a clipboard and handheld. “You’re Don Meisel, from the Academy?” She didn’t look at him as she said this.

He stayed silent.

That made her look up at him. “Don Meisel,” she said more firmly.

“Yes.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She looked at him more closely, focusing on his face.

“Defiant cuss, are we? You won’t find that goes down well here. OK, Meisel, we don’t want you here.”

“And I don’t want to be here.”

“Then we’re equal. Equal in mutual loathing.” There was a flicker of humor in her eyes. “Look, I’ll give you a once-only head’s-up about how your life is going to be from now on. After that you’re on your own. OK?”

He nodded stiffly.

“I can imagine how you’re feeling. Really I can. Getting thrown out of your cushy berth, the wonderful expensive program they’re running back there. Thrown down into the pit, here on Delaware. That’s how it feels, right? And I know what you think your life will be like now. Policing food riots and battling eye-dees with TB.

“But it’s not all like that. This is still a city, it’s still populated by American citizens who are still preyed on by corner boys and touts and pimps and drug slingers and all the rest. And we’re still professional cops. I’m talking about ordinary, old-fashioned policing, of which the challenges have only got worse as wave after wave of refugees have washed over this town of ours.” She looked deep into his eyes, challenging him. “Think you might find some satisfaction in that kind of work? You’re a smart kid, I can tell by the files they sent over from the Academy. It’s still possible to build a career in this department. Just focus on the job and we’ll see how you prosper.”

Don said nothing.

“OK, Meisel, your training starts as of now. Down the hall to the left, ask for Officer Bundy. I asked him to find you a berth in the squad for the first couple of days, and a partner. He’ll show you where to get a cadet badge and pick up a uniform. You seriously need to get out of the Spider-Man outfit.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Ma’am.”

“Oh, and Meisel. Ask Bundy about lodging.”

“I don’t need lodging.”

She sighed. “Yes, you do. You’ll get no more support from the Academy. Look, it’s not so bad. One time you had to be a Denver resident to be a cop here. Now it’s switched around, if you serve as a cop you have a residency entitlement. A rookie cadet like you has a right to a quarter-share in a dorm room. Bundy will give you the paperwork. Go, go, get on with it.”

He walked stiffly into the building, ignoring the stares and grins of the officers he encountered.

September 2036

The morning’s class debate in the isolation camp was between Zane who had to defend the Ark’s latest draft design model, and Mel Belbruno who argued for the tough engineering disciplines that had been brought into the project by veterans of NASA, the USAF and the Navy.

The Candidates were in the Cultural Center at Cortez, a small museum once run by the University of Colorado in this tiny little town in the southwest corner of the state, maybe five hundred kilometers from Denver. Within the walls of this hundred-year-old building, the Candidates in their gaudy scarlet-and-blue jumpsuits looked vivid against the drab background. Zane was on the stage, facing Mel, listening intently. Mel, though a fully fledged Candidate, had always been subtly excluded by the rest since being forced on the project by Gordo Alonzo four years back. But Zane knew Mel was no fool, and he had powerful allies.

Mel said forcefully, “In the Ark you’re looking at a single machine big and complex enough to keep humans alive, that’s going to have to function to something like its optimal parameters for years, decades even. In the military and aerospace we’ve been doing this for a long time. Look at the B52, fleets of which we kept flying for fifty years and more. Or the space shuttle, which lasted over three decades from first test to final operational flight, and which despite its problems had a safety record in terms of human flight hours per casualty that was second to none-”