John Scalzi - The Last Colony

"You're just saying that because you never had to deal with them," I said. "You should have tried it, one time."

"If I had dealt with them, one time would be all I needed," Jane said.

"How was your thing today with General Szilard?" I asked, changing the subject before my competence could be questioned further.

"It was fine," Jane said. "He was saying some of the things Trujillo was saying to you today, actually."

"That the DoC wants the colony to fail?" I asked.

"No," Jane said. "That there's a lot of political maneuvering going on that you and I don't know much about."

"Like what?" I asked.

"He didn't get into specifics," Jane said. "He said that was because he was confident in our ability to handle things. He asked me if I wanted my old Special Forces body back, just in case."

"That General Szilard," I said. "A first-class kidder."

"He wasn't entirely joking," Jane said, and then raised a placating hand when I gave her my best confused look. "He doesn't have my old body on hand. That's not what I mean. He just means he'd prefer not to have me go to this colony with an unmodified human body."

"That's a cheerful thought," I said. I noticed Jane had begun to sweat. I felt her forehead. "I think you actually have a fever. That's new."

"Unmodified body," Jane said. "Had to happen sometime."

"I'll get you some more water," I said.

"No," Jane said. "I'm not thirsty. I feel like I'm starving, though."

"Ill see if I can get you something from the galley," I said. "What do you want?"

"What have they got?" Jane said.

"Pretty much everything," I said.

"Good," Jane said. "I'll have one of everything."

I reached for my PDA to contact the galley. "It's a good thing the Magellan is carrying a double load of food," I said.

"The way I feel right now, it won't be carrying it for long," Jane said.

"All right," I said. "But I think the old saying is that you should starve a fever."

"In this case," Jane said. "The old saying is dead wrong."

"It's like a New Year's Eve party," Zoe' said, looking around the recreation deck from our perch on a small dais, at the mass of colonists celebrating around us. After a week of travel by the Magellan, we were less than five minutes from the skip to Roanoke.

"It's exactly like a New Year's Eve party," I said. "When we skip, the colony's clock officially starts. It'll be second one of minute one of day one of year one, Roanoke time. Get ready for days that are twenty-five hours, eight minutes long, and years that are three hundred and five days long."

"I'll have birthdays more often," Zoe said.

"Yes," I said. "And your birthdays will last longer."

Beside me and Zoe, Savitri and Jane were discussing something Savitri had queried in her PDA. I thought of ribbing them about catching up on work, now of all times, but then I thought better of it. The two of them had quickly become the organizational nexus of the colonial leadership, which was not at all surprising. If they felt something needed to be dealt with right that moment, it probably did.

Jane and Savitri were the brains of the outfit; I was the public relations guy. Over the course of the week I spent several hours with

each colonist group, answering their questions about Roanoke, myself and Jane, and anything else they wanted to know about. Each group had its quirks and curiosities. The colonists from Erie seemed a bit distant (possibly reflecting the opinion of Trujillo, who sat in the back of the group while I talked) but warmed up when I played the idiot and trotted out the fractured Spanish I learned in high school, which led to a discussion of the "new Spanish" words that had been coined on Erie for native plants and animals.

The Mennonites from Kyoto, on the other hand, started off genially by presenting me with a fruit cobbler That pleasantry out of the way, they then grilled me mercilessly on every aspect of colonial management, much to the amusement of Hiram Yoder. "We live a simple life, but we're not simple," he told me afterward. The colonists from Khartoum were still upset about not being berthed according to planetary origin. The ones from Franklin wanted to know how much support we would have from the Colonial Union and whether they could travel back to Franklin for visits. Albion's colonists wondered what plans were in place if Roanoke were attacked. The ones from Phoenix wanted to knew if I thought they would have enough time after a busy day of colonizing to start a softball league.

Questions and problems large and small, immense and trivial, critical and frivolous—all of them got pitched to me, and it was my job to gamely field them and try to help people to come away, if not satisfied with the answers, then at least satisfied that their concerns were taken seriously In this, my recent experience as an ombudsman turned out to be invaluable. Not just because I had experience in finding answers and solving problems, but because I had several years practice in listening to people and reassuring them something would get done. By the end of our week on the Magellan I had colonists coming up to me to help them settle bar bets and petty annoyances; it seemed like old times.

The question-and-answer sessions and fielding issues of the individual colonists were useful for me as well—I needed to get a sense of who all these people were and how well they would mesh with each other. I didn't subscribe to Trujillo's theory of a polyglot colony as a bureaucratic sabotage tactic, but I wasn't pollyanna about harmony, either. The day the Magellan got under way we had at least one incident of some teenage boys from one world trying to pick a fight with some others. Gretchen Trujillo and Zoe' actually mocked the boys into submission, proving that one should never underestimate the power of teenage girl scorn, but when Zoe recounted the event over dinner, both Jane and I took note of it. Teenagers can be idiotic and stupid, but teenagers also model their behavior from the signals they get from adults.

The next day we announced a dodgeball tournament for the teenagers, on the theory that dodgeball was universally played in one form or another across all the colonies. We hinted to the colony representatives that it would be nice if they could get their kids to show up. Enough did—the Magellan didn't have that much for them to do, even after just one day—that we could field ten teams of eight, which we created through random selection, casually thwarting any attempt to team up by colony. Then we created a schedule of games that would culminate with the championship match just before the skip to Roanoke. Thus we kept the teenagers occupied and, coincidentally, mixing with the kids from the other colonies.

By the end of the first day of play, the adults were watching the games; there wasn't much for them to do, either. By the end of the second day, I saw adults from one colony chatting up adults from other colonies about which teams had the best chance of going all the way. We were making progress.

By the end of the third day, Jane had to break up a betting ring. Okay, so maybe it wasn't all progress. What are you going to do.

Neither Jane nor I were under the illusion that we could create

universal harmony through dodgeball, of course. That's a little much to rest on the shoulders of a game played with a bouncy red ball. Trujillo's sabotage scenario wouldn't be sent out of the game with a snappy pong sound. But universal harmony could wait. We would settle for people meeting and getting used to each other. Our little dodgeball tournament did that well enough.

After the dodgeball final and the award ceremony—the underdog Dragons managed a dramatic victory over the previously undefeated Slime Molds, whom I had adored for their name alone—most of the colonists stayed on the recreation deck, waiting for the few moments until the skip. The multiple announcement monitors on the deck were all broadcasting the forward view of the Magellan, which was a blank black now but would be filled with the image of Roanoke as soon as the skip happened. The colonists were excited and happy; when Zoe had said it was like a New Year's Eve party, she hit it right on the nose.