Stephen Baxter - Ark

“Such as, you specify here, the freedom to marry who you choose, to have babies with who you choose.”

“Yeah. We’re restoring the right of each woman to control her own body, her womb.”

“But this flies against what the social engineers recommended for optimal genetic mixing. That was a basic requirement of the mission.”

“The social engineers aren’t here,” Jerry said firmly. “We are. And no policy is going to fly if it’s rejected by the people, no matter how smart those long-drowned guys who thought it up were. My own and Wilson’s belief is that we should put our trust in the collective wisdom of the crew-of us.”

“You’re proposing education reform too.”

“Certainly. The curriculum we’ve developed for the kids so far has been based on wishy-washy stuff from the Academy. Ethics, for God’s sake. Philosophy. Comparative theology. Blah, blah, blah. Thank God none of the kids are old enough yet to have been too damaged by this stuff. We should stick to what these kids are going to need to learn in order to survive.”

“Such as, don’t dismantle the life support? You’re even restricting the science they’ll be taught. Usually in a school you’d reward curiosity, initiative, an ability to learn.”

“This mission is all about balances. Curiosity can come later, when we’re safely established on Earth II, and we have the luxury to wonder what’s over the next hill.”

“Hmm. Interesting experiment.”

Zane smiled. “In time basic human nature will reassert itself. But that time isn’t now. For now, we have to consider ourselves at war with an environment that will kill us unless we manage to maintain our defenses, without a single waver of concentration. And that’s the message we have to hammer home to the kids.”

“You assert we have rights concerning a supply of air and water. But that hands a lot of power to the central functions that maintain those resources.”

“Sure. Which is why Wilson is courting Holle Groundwater, getting her on his side, as I’m sure you already know. Because that kind of power resides with her and her team.”

Wetherbee came to the most controversial piece of proposed legislation. “You’re going to stop in-hull surveillance, the routine recording of everything that goes on.”

“Unless it’s for a specific purpose-yes. Humans have a basic right to privacy, of thought and deed. We need to trust our people, Doctor.”

“Thomas Windrup-”

“Was a one-off. And besides the surveillance didn’t stop him, it just proved his guilt when he’d already committed his crime, been caught, and confessed.” He laughed. “Of course Zane 3 thinks that if we pull the plug on the reality show, the controllers in Las Vegas will come in and shut us down, or punish us.”

“You know there’s a lot of debate over this. The crew will have no means of surveilling you, I mean Wilson and his team.”

“Oh, that’s just a theoretical quibble.”

“Theoretical? Maybe.” Wetherbee pressed his fingers to his lips, wondering how far he should take this discussion. His concern was Zane, not Wilson and his manifesto. His long-term goal was the reintegration of all Zane’s partial personalities. But to achieve that he was going to have to understand and work with each of them. He said carefully, “Kelly Kenzie is openly calling this a coup.”

Zane laughed. “Well, she would.” He actually winked at Wetherbee. “Listen, Doc-I think you and I can talk freely. I mean, you’re under no threat no matter who wins out on Friday. You can look at this on a number of levels. The social engineers tried to set up our little ship-based society the way the hunter-gatherer bands used to organize. There you have leaders on sufferance, their most important quality being prestige-ability. That’s Kelly all over, isn’t it? But Wilson looks ahead to tougher times-times like now, times when we came close to being destroyed by our unrelenting enemy the environment. At such times you need a more basic kind of leader.”

“Basic how?”

“Well, Wilson was always taller than Kelly. He’s been pumping up for years. And he’s a man-”

“Being a big strong man qualifies him as leader? Are you kidding?” Zane smiled again. “You have to consider what reassures people. And then there’s the timing. This is the year the flood wins…”

They had had no news of Earth, not since going to warp, but they had all followed the likely progress of the flood with simulations based on the best science models available. This year and the next were seeing the succumbing of whole continents. In January, Europe must finally have gone when Mount Elbrus, Russia’s highest point, was covered. In May it was Africa’s turn, when Kilimanjaro drowned. And the continental US would all be gone too by now, save a couple of mountains in Alaska. Next year South America, even the Andes, would be covered, and there would be nothing left in the western hemisphere at all, no trace of land.

Zane said, “Wilson always thought there would be trouble this particular year, the year the survivor guilt really cuts in. What people want above all else is stability, and that’s what Wilson will provide. People will welcome his rule, believe me.” His smile flickered. “I think Zane 3 is getting restless. Maybe I should go back now?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s always stimulating talking to you, Dr. Wetherbee.”

“For me too. Thanks, Jerry… Zane? Are you there?”

Zane slumped in the chair, and his face crumpled, as if he was about to cry. “Dr. Wetherbee?”

“Do you remember anything?”

“I don’t think so. I thought I saw you… I don’t remember.”

“It went very well. Close the door and lock up your room now. Have you done that?”

“Yes.”

“OK, come back to the surgery with me. Here we go, come back as I count backward from five. Five, four, three…”

July 2048

They held the ballot using paper from a sacrificed social engineers’ manual on optimal breeding policies. Holle moderated the process, with observers from all the crew’s principal factions. She even got little Helen Gray and Steel Antionadi, just six and three, to help gather the ballot slips and count them, as a way of tying in the new shipborn generation to the results.

In the first round Venus came third, and was eliminated. And in the runoff Wilson beat Kelly by two-thirds to one-third. Much to Holle’s relief, nobody disputed the result.

September 2049

“We might have a problem,” was all Venus would say to Holle, very quietly, over the command crew’s Snoopy-hat comms link.

So Holle made her way to the cupola, and took a seat, and waited in the humming dark while Venus and Cora Robles completed some complex number-crunching procedure, the data passing back and forth between their screens in columns of numbers, swirling curves and eye-boggling multidimensional displays.

In the cupola, you got used to long silences. That was Venus Jenning’s way. The cupola was an island of calm, with its scents of plastic and metal and electronics, even a new-carpet smell of cleanness, and the smooth humming of the air-cycling fans. It was like sitting inside a computer core. And beyond the glass walls there were only the patient stars. Sitting in here you could forget the hulls even existed, with their chaos and shabbiness and endless fractiousness, ruled over by Wilson and his allies with their aloof, faintly menacing power.

The cupola was a refuge for Holle, she freely admitted, and it was obviously a refuge for those who worked here too. All of Venus’s people were damaged in one way or another. All of them Candidates, all of them around thirty, roughly the same age as Venus and Holle herself: Cora Robles who had lost a child, Thomas Windrup mutilated in Kelly’s last act as speaker, and Elle Strekalov, traumatized by the long-drawn-out dispute between Thomas and Jack Shaughnessy.