Stephen Baxter - Ark

124 DAYS 6 HOURS 12 MINUTES 13 SECONDS

124 DAYS 6 HOURS 12 MINUTES 12 SECONDS

And there was that slogan again, that she’d seen over the external door:

Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Genesis 11:6.

Under the clock and slogan was a big animated map, showing the North American archipelago. Grace had seen the same sort of display aboard Ark Three, though the ship’s elderly processors had not been able to project an image of this quality. Sitting here in Colorado, she was in fact on the largest surviving contiguous island, dominated by the Rockies, with peninsulas extending into the old high ground of the neighboring states, Idaho and Wyoming to the north, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico to the south and west.

On the ocean to the east, deceptively featureless on the restaurant map, the ship on which she had lived for six years of her life might be burning, sinking, the people she had lived with fighting and dying right now. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It hadn’t been her choice to be on the ship in the first place, any more than she’d chosen to leave it to come here today.

It was all irrelevant. Here was the flood, gathering around this last remnant of America. And here she was, with her baby growing inside her. It was as Gordo Alonzo had said. No matter how she had got here she had to consider her own survival, and her baby’s.

Holle brought her coffee in a chipped mug. When Grace sipped the coffee it tasted richer than any she could remember.

“So I’m investigating a murder. Tell me who died,” she said bluntly.

Holle leaned her elbows on the table, clasped her hands, and faced her frankly. “A man called Harry Smith. He was one of our tutors.”

“What did he teach?”

“He had a general role. Personal development. He was a kind of overall guide.”

“How did he die?”

“There was an accident at Gunnison. The launch center. A pulse unit test went wrong. There was an explosion.”

Grace was going to have to find out what a “pulse unit” was. “So this Smith got killed in the blast? Why is it thought to be murder?”

“Because the unit was tampered with. The test was with conventional explosives, not nuclear. But the detonation products were supposed to be shaped as in a full-scale Orion pulse unit.” She mimed a cylindrical form with her hands. “You get a concentration of vaporization products axially, which facilitates momentum transfer to the pusher plate-”

“Who figured out that this unit was tampered with?”

“Zane Glemp. He’s one of us, one of the Candidates. He has special areas of study-well, we all do. We learn about aspects of the project’s development, and monitor their progress. Zane’s includes the pulse units.”

“OK. So Smith was murdered. Who do you think might have killed him?”

Holle looked shocked. “Why would you ask me a question like that? A cop wouldn’t.”

“Well, I’m not a cop.” Grace studied Holle. If she was going to survive here she was going to have to work with exotic, alien creatures like this child-woman, this Holle Groundwater. “Look, Holle. You’ve grown up living in a functioning nation, the United States, with a continuity of institutions and laws reaching back to the pre-flood days. For me it’s been different. From the ages of five to twenty I lived in a migrant refugee community. Any law we had we worked out and applied ourselves. I’m not a cop, or a government worker. Gordo Alonzo wants me to solve this crime. Fine. But I don’t have any procedures, or rules. I’ll just get to the truth as fast as I can-or if I fail, I’ll pass it back.”

Holle nodded, interested. “I guess it makes sense in a way. On the Ark, we’ll be a self-governing community. We’ll have to work out our own ways to resolve issues like this. Maybe Gordo is using you as an example of how that might be done.”

Grace felt faintly disgusted. “Somebody died. You’re talking as if it is some kind of training exercise?”

Holle looked embarrassed, but then her natural defiance reasserted itself. “We’ve been training for this our whole lives, since I was six. How else do you expect me to react? Besides, you might find that some of us have got wider experience than you seem to think. And didn’t Gordo set this up as a kind of selection exercise for you?”

“Maybe. But I haven’t decided if I’m going to play his game. So can I ask my question again? Who do you think killed Harry Smith?”

“One of three people, all of them Candidates. Zane Glemp. Venus Jenning. Matt Weiss.”

“I need something to make notes.”

“I’ll get you a handheld.”

“You said this Zane discovered the pulse unit had been tampered with. But of course he could have been bluffing, he could have done it himself. What about the others?”

“They were all close to Harry. Closer than the rest of us.”

“Close?” There was something odd in the way Holle said that, a sub-text. “You mean sex?”

“I think so. I don’t know. ”

“And all three are still up for crew selection?”

Holle shook her head. “Not Zane. He was scrubbed a month ago. You understand we’re only a few months away from the launch target now. That’s our latest revised target-we had a lot of slips-originally we should have flown last year. Anyhow things are getting hectic.” Holle eyed Grace, sideways. “Suddenly lots of people are being nominated for the crew, some we’ve never heard of. Like you. But there are only eighty places. Every time somebody comes on board, somebody else has to go. Even us, the core group who have been training for this since we were children.”

“That’s tough.”

“Of course it is. Even Kelly Kenzie washed out because she had a baby, even though she’s kept up the training program for the sake of the rest of us… You’ll meet her. The point is they’re constantly reviewing us, looking for ways to wash us out. Zane went through a psych test and was told he wasn’t emotionally stable enough. It was Harry’s recommendation that did it, actually. Zane took it hard. His father was the main initiator of the whole program. But we had a disaster back in ’36. Jerzy was injured; he was removed from the program and died a couple of years later. So you can see why this was tough for Zane, to be excluded from the final selection pool. He wanted to be part of his father’s legacy.”

“So this Zane could have had a motive. And the means, he worked on these pulse units.”

“Yes, but so did Matt Weiss. Zane’s more a specialist on the warp generator, actually. I’m sure Venus could have messed with the pulse unit trial if she’d wanted to, maybe with help. Any of us could; we’re all familiar with the ship’s systems. But we all have specialisms.”

“So what’s your specialism?”

“The ship’s internal systems. Life support, the power supply. Plumbing,” she said, with a self-deprecating grin. “Right now I’m working on the installation of HeadSpace booths. Virtual reality systems, donated by the corporation that manufactured them. The social engineers think they’ll be a benefit in terms of morale, but they’re demanding in terms of computer resources.”

“And-what was the third name-Venus?”

“She’s a planet-finder. Looking for our destination. But as I said, we all multitask. Any one of the three could have set the charge, I think.”

“I’ll need to speak to these three.”

“Venus and Zane are here at Alma. Matt is over at Gunnison.”

“I thought Zane was off the project.”

“He’s still working as part of the ground support team. That’s what we do, how we are. Look, if you wait here, you can get more coffee or some food, I’ll send Zane or Venus down. Then I’ll organize a drive for you down to Gunnison, if you like.”