Вероника Рот - Ark

“It looks like a dandelion,” Dan said as Samantha leaned closer to the images the database had presented to her.

“So?” Averill said. “Even dandelions need to be logged.”

“Listen, we’re not going to get through all the samples before liftoff,” Dan said, “and personally, I’d rather preserve the genetic material of a rare African violet than a dandelion. Is that such a crime?”

“You can’t go picking and choosing,” Averill argued. “One man’s dandelion is another man’s African violet.”

“I don’t accept the argument that there are no objective standards of beauty or value.”

“It’s not a dandelion,” Samantha said. She pointed at the leaves at the base of the plant. “Dandelion leaves are… poky . This one’s leaves are smooth. See?”

“That an official horticultural term?” Josh asked from her right shoulder. “Poky?”

“Shut up,” she said. “I think I’ve found the match.”

She went through the checklist of terms associated with the species she thought she had identified. Wales, check. Shaggy stem, check. Whorl of leaves around stem, check. By the time she had reached the end, she was smiling.

“It’s a Snowdonia hawkweed,” she said. “Categorized as ‘rare.’”

“Ooh, I know about those,” Alice said from somewhere behind her, her Irish accent distinct. “Almost went extinct because of overgrazing, and then some foot-and-mouth disease killed off a bunch of sheep and wham—the flowers were back.”

“See?” Averill sounded smug. “It’s more African violet than dandelion. Told you.”

“That is not what you told me,” Dan retorted.

Samantha carried the sample over to the cart for it to be stored, her fingerprints smudging the glass.

Samantha could mark her childhood years by her favorite colors. When she was five, it had been purple; at seven, it had been green; and at ten years old, she had liked navy blue. The color of the night sky just after sunset, she had told her mother, and together they had painted Samantha’s bedroom again. Her mother had looked up a constellation chart to arrange glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls in the right positions, held in place by sticky tack.

She had been wearing a navy-blue shirt when her father took her out to Warren Field one July night. Warren Field was in the middle of the preserve, so they parked in the lot at one end and hiked together down the winding paths, slapping at mosquitos. She still remembered the sweet, medicinal smell of the repellant he had sprayed all over her before they left, telling her to close her eyes and hold her breath first.

They didn’t talk. Her father didn’t tell her why they were going into the preserve late at night, when there was no moon, to look at the stars. She had known since she was young that the more she spoke to her father, the more likely he was to take things away from her. Dessert, sometimes, or if she wasn’t so lucky, special trips he had promised her—the ice-cream parlor, the zoo, her grandfather’s house. But silence often brought a reward.

Her skin was sticky with sweat by the time they reached the field, and her father trudged through the tall grass to the middle of it, so just a fringe of trees was visible on either side of them. Then he started setting up the telescope, screwing the pieces together with his hands, stowing the cap for the lens in his back pocket. He took out his phone to get the right coordinates, and she saw his face lit up blue from beneath as he scowled at the screen. The deep lines in his forehead and the pale whiskers in his beard.

“I want you to look through the eyepiece there, and pay attention, because this thing is only gonna pass for a second,” he said. “I’ll tell you when.”

She leaned over the eyepiece and waited, careful not to lean forward and knock the telescope out of position or to lean back and miss the moment. Her back was stiff and her legs ached by the time her father said, “Five, four, three, two, one— now .”

She saw it, a streak of light, a white glow between the stars.

“See it?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “What was it?”

“Finis,” he said. “That was the asteroid that’s going to collide with Earth one day. Asteroids always make a couple swoops in their orbits, like a criminal scoping out a jewelry store before he steals its diamonds. I thought you should see it, because hopefully the next time it comes that close, you’ll already be living someplace else.”

Samantha felt a little pocket of warmth in her chest at the thought. This rare thing, Finis passing Earth, and he had given the moment to her instead of taking it himself.

He crouched down next to her. It was too dark to see all the details of his face, but she could make out the rise of his cheekbones and the hollows beneath them.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her.

He looked down at her shoes. One of her shoelaces had come untied, so he started to tie it, his thick fingers fumbling a little with the short, muddy laces.

“It’s okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure what he was sorry for. The dread of Finis was the only thing she knew. It was the first segment on the nightly news, the top category of every news website, and the easiest reach for every comedian.

Now that she was older, she understood that there had been other possible lives to live before Finis. Lives without evacuation plans taped to the refrigerator or emergency go-bags stashed in the hall closet. Lives full of plans, for college and houses, children and golden retrievers, retirement and last rites. Those lives had not been lived in the shadow of Finis. And he had known when he made her that they wouldn’t be possible for her.

So maybe he had been apologizing for giving her life in the first place, when he knew it would be full of dread.

She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year—those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.

In the lab, the next time she was called up to draw straws, she swapped her long straw for Josh’s short one, and for the fourth time that month went to see Hagen’s orchids.

“Which one is your favorite?”

Hagen gave her a blank look.

They were potting some of the tissue samples he had brought over from the laboratory, spare ones that wouldn’t be necessary for the Ark. Samantha spread the gravel evenly at the bottom of the pot, to keep the roots from rotting if the plant were overwatered. It wasn’t until she was already finished that she realized it was probably unnecessary. There were only four weeks until the launch of the Ark, and a few days after that for the asteroid to collide with Earth, and then, if he managed to survive the collision, Hagen wouldn’t have long before he ran out of food. The plant would die from lack of sunlight before its roots rotted.

She frowned down at the pot.

“I don’t have a favorite,” Hagen said.

“You know,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially, “they can’t hear you.”

Hagen laughed. “I’m serious! I see value in all of them, and therefore I am impartial.”

Samantha rolled her eyes.

Hagen’s eyes wrinkled at the corners as he laughed again. They were very bright, Samantha thought. They would have been cold, like a pale winter’s morning, if he hadn’t smiled so often.

“You think I’m full of shit,” he said.