“If she was a more familiar-looking organism exhibiting behaviours as unique as these, you wouldn’t do this,” Romesh argued. “You know you wouldn’t.”
Holly shook her head in disbelief. “Romesh, if we had reason to believe it would keep rapidly evolving in a way that could soon take it beyond our control, you’re damn right I would kill it! We don’t know what that thing could become, but today you’ve shown me enough to know that we can’t risk finding out. I thought you would know by now that I will tolerate nothing that puts this colony at risk, but you show me this and expect what… a pat on the back? Accelerating these mutations without any authorisation is the most irresponsible stunt any of our researchers have ever pulled. From you, of all people, I expected a lot more.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Holly said. “This was your project and you’re leaving… there’s no way something as volatile as this is staying behind, just like there’s no way it’s going with you. And before you say anyone else can take over, they’re going to hear about this, too. Your assistant researchers clearly knew about this and chose to keep it from me, and there will be consequences. As for you? On Arkadia you’ll have Peter to answer to, and if you think his reaction to something like this would be as measured as I’m being right now…”
Grav chuckled involuntarily. “Never a truer word spoken, Hollywood.”
Holly didn’t respond. “Chase is going to hear about this, too,” she continued, looking intently into Romesh’s increasingly distressed eyes.
“Chase?” he echoed, as though the mere taste of the word riled him. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“In case you didn’t get the memo, neither of us are moving to Arkadia,” Holly said, moving a finger between herself and Grav. “Peter will be Head of Security and the Harringtons will see that things run smoothly, but Chase is going to be calling a lot of shots, Romesh. If you have some personal hangup about his relationship with your daughter, you can take that up with them.”
Romesh glared at the floor. He didn’t necessarily dislike Chase, but the borderline hero worship everyone else threw at him would have irked Romesh even if Nisha hadn’t sided with Chase in every minor discussion point during the prolonged planning of Arkadia itself. It had been impossible for Romesh not to feel frozen out and as though Chase had turned his daughter against him in some admittedly minor matters, even if Chase had always been direct in his dealings with Romesh and nothing but straight down the line.
“I didn’t mean that last comment to sound overly personal,” Holly went on, regretting her tone if not the words, “but that’s the point: I don’t want any of this to be personal. Chase is going to be in charge of a lot of things on Arkadia — he’s on the Executive Council with Viola and Peter, outranked only by Robert — and if that’s going to be a problem for you, it’s important that you say so now.”
Romesh shook his head. “It’s not.”
“Good,” Holly said. “So we’re on the same page?”
Predictably, Romesh hesitated. “Grav?” he eventually uttered weakly, more in hope than expectation that he might find an ally at the last minute. “Tell me you can see my side here?”
“What the fuck did you think she was going to say about this?” Grav sighed, clearly taking no pleasure in agreeing with Holly’s suggested course of action but understanding that what had to be done had to be done.
“Then I’ll stay!” Romesh said, blurting out the idea as it came to him. “Listen, Holly… if you don’t think it’s safe to have Nancy here without me, I’ll forget all about Arkadia and stay here to see this through. I can oversee everything and keep it all under control, just like I have so far. I can even dial things back. Please, just hear me out. I’ve put too much into this project to let it die. Holly, please… this is eight years of my life! I’ve done far too much—”
“Damn right you’ve done far too much!” Holly interjected. “You’ve never mentioned anything close to this level of development. Keeping something like this, let alone actively trying to engender further mutation, has never been authorised!”
Romesh considered his next remarks carefully, silently acknowledging that Holly had a point.
She continued: “And whether you decide to stay here, Nancy is going to be… well, however you want to phrase it, this experiment is over. Grav, make sure he doesn’t leave this room while I find someone to deal with this.”
Romesh took Holly’s now-empty seat and put his head in his hands.
“Unless you want to be the one to do it?” she asked, speaking gently in a genuine attempt to give Romesh the opportunity. She was angrier at him in that moment than she had been at anyone in a very long time, but when all was said and done Romesh Kohli had been a good friend for many years.
His grief over Nancy’s imminent demise was far more understandable to Holly than her emotional detachment was to him, and his lack of a response came as little surprise.
Holly nodded to Grav to reaffirm how important it was for him to keep Romesh in the room — not that it looked like he would be going anywhere anytime soon — and Grav raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.
The door closed quietly behind Holly, leaving nothing but the low sound of Romesh’s sobbing.
Grav placed a firm hand on Romesh’s shoulder. He felt his own anger at Romesh, if not quite to Holly’s level, and would have been responding very differently had Romesh not broken down like this.
As far as Grav was concerned, he had acted tremendously selfishly — not just in relation to the rest of the colony but also in relation to Nancy, who he proclaimed to care so much about. Romesh’s desire to see just how much Nancy could be stimulated to mutate prior to his departure to Arkadia was understandable in Grav’s mind, but it was also now responsible for the entirety of the remarkable eight-year experiment being consigned to history.
Curiosity kills more than cats, Grav thought to himself as his hand rose and fell with Romesh’s rhythmic sobs.
But there was a time and place for such comments, and in that moment Grav opted to silently support a friend in need.
Neither man said anything until Holly returned a full ten minutes later. They both looked up.
“I’m sorry, Romesh,” she said, her words and tone crushing any hope he’d been holding out that her mind might change.
Romesh Kohli wiped his eyes and stood up. “So am I, Holly,” he said. He extended a hand, but Holly ignored it in favour of moving forward for a conciliatory hug.
“We all make mistakes,” she replied, “and we all move on from them together.”
Romesh exhaled sharply as they parted. “I really should have just kept my mouth shut instead of calling you two in here,” he said, almost but not quite breaking into a smile at his own gallows humour.
Grav slapped Romesh warmly on the back, no harder than usual but still hard enough to make him flinch. “Come on, dumbass,” he said, ushering him to the door. “Let us get you to Arkadia.”
seventeen
Shortly after the artificial sun rose over Terradox the following morning, the entirety of the colony aside from a small number of core operational staff gathered for a farewell ceremony in honour of the few among them who were set to undertake the one-way trip to Arkadia.
Everyone on Terradox had been automatically eligible for a place, but the comfort of their current lives and the uncertainty of what lay beyond combined to ensure that the take up from their number had been very low. The same was true of the Venus station, which like Terradox housed only the families of highly qualified researchers who had naturally already been vetted prior to their arrival.
Holly and Dimitar had always made it very clear that pre-vetted researchers were free to head for Arkadia, partly because neither Terradox nor the station could safely harbour any resentful colonists; in this regard it was deemed unfair as well as unwise to hold people to long-term research contracts they may not have signed if they’d known that an opportunity like Arkadia would pr
esent itself.
Both were delighted that the vast majority of the populations under their respective leaderships had opted to remain in place, and even their rivals in the Rusentra boardroom had to acknowledge that this point spoke well of the jobs they were doing.
The farewell ceremony currently underway in front of the temporary grandstands in Terradox’s Romotech Production Zone wasn’t the first of its kind, what with a permanent human presence having been established on Arkadia shortly after Chase Jackson’s first visit and with a handful of former colonists having joined teams from Earth in making the trip. It was, however, by far the grandest.
The scale of this particular ceremony owed not only to the fact that today’s departure to Arkadia would be the last, but also because of exactly who was leaving.
The Ferrier sitting outside Terradox Central Station would soon carry six colonists to their new home, and not just any six. Although it had been on the cards for many months, the reality was only hitting some colonists now that they would soon be without all four members of the Kohli family, the inimitable Bo Harrington, and, perhaps most irreplaceably, the widely adored Chase Jackson.
While Bo was set to be reunited with his own family in an orbital rendezvous before their landing on Arkadia and the Kohlis were of course travelling together, a common topic of hushed conversation among the crowd was that Chase’s parents hadn’t wavered in their decision to stay on Terradox. This was good news for the colony given that both Christian and Jillian’s contributions rested on a pedestal almost as high as their son’s, but everyone understood the emotional strain that his imminent departure must have been placing on all three.
Prior to today, the largest farewell ceremony had been for a small Arkadia-bound crew which included Chase’s travelling companion on his initial scouting mission to the new world — Rachel Berry, who had already settled on the new world three months earlier and was well into her work in its Shipyard. The botanical irregularities detected on their joint mission had been a point of near-constant consideration for the better part of a year, with Christian Jackson’s expertise being called upon to ensure that there was no danger of the wind causing any more plant-related problems once Arkadia was fully populated and particularly once it ventured irreversibly beyond the bounds of the kind of as-live communication with Earth which might be necessary for the application of advice in an emergency scenario. Bradley Reinhart, another friend of Chase and a high-ranking Communications officer, was also among those to have already made Arkadia their home.
Rachel’s expedited departure was primarily related to a piece of precious Arkadia-bound cargo which would begin the journey with Chase and the others in just a few short hours: the asteroid probe which had been constructed on Terradox and which would be launched towards its target from Arkadia very shortly after arriving.
Somewhere around the midpoint of the well-attended farewell ceremony, Holly publicly revealed the existence of the harmless asteroid in question for the first time, referring to it by the ‘NGB-2’ designation that those in the know had been using for months.
Since she was talking to a very scientifically literate crowd, the word asteroid didn’t conjure up mass panic as it may have done on Earth under slightly different circumstances, but there were nevertheless more than a few gasps in reaction to the news.
Holly proceeded to speak passionately about the opportunities NGB-2’s relatively close passage past Arkadia presented, and in reality took greater pains than necessary to justify the shift in focus from the previously vaunted idea of launching a minisphere from Arkadia’s Shipyard as a matter of urgency. Many in the crowd, just like many in the boardroom, still viewed asteroid mining as a venture of tremendous potential value despite Holly’s own view that the continued development of romotech rendered the search for extra-planetary material resources far less important than it may once have been.
In the eyes of some others, and with Chase Jackson perhaps being the greatest proponent of such a view, exploration of all manner of celestial bodies was an end in itself and could deliver answers to questions that no one had even yet thought to ask.
And as exciting as the utterly unexpected asteroid news was to the crowd, they took it in their stride as Holly continued with the final formalities of the day; perhaps because the rapid progress of technology was by now a firmly established part of their lives.
It briefly crossed Holly’s mind that if someone had just woken up from a fifteen-year coma and learned of Arkadia, they would have been forgiven for thinking that they had in fact been out for fifteen hundred. The use of embryonic romotechnology on this scale was something that still astounded whoever paused to think about it, but most now took the technology’s existence and efficacy for granted to the extent that such thoughts were rare.
The final section of the ceremonial departure saw Bo and Romesh formally hand over leadership of the Rover and Primosphere divisions to their respective successors. This was emotional for all involved, as friendships built over eight years of close proximity proved difficult to relinquish without more than a few tears being shed.
Once the official ceremony was complete, and to the equal surprise and delight of the crowd, Chase spent three full hours shaking hands and saying goodbye to the thousands of colonists who were sad to see him leave but excited about what might come of the unprecedented project he was spearheading.
Chase stayed long after Holly ushered the rest of the imminent leavers towards Terradox Central Station, where a very small number of the departing individuals’ close friends and family members had been invited to make their far more intimate farewells. She had taken one look at him slowly working his way along a seemingly endless line of well-wishers of all ages and happily decided to leave him to it. That was Chase all over, she thought; endlessly giving with his time and energy, even on what had to be the most difficult day of his life.
By the time he reached Terradox Central Station, only fifteen minutes remained until the Ferrier’s scheduled departure time.
This could have been pushed back, of course, since Holly made such calls and the Ferrier was clearly going nowhere without its most important passenger, but she was nevertheless glad to see his transport capsule arrive outside just in time to meet the original launch window.
“I’m not late,” Chase called, running in through the station’s vast doors and pointing to the time on his wristband as though anticipating a rebuke.
None came.
The emotions on display within Central Station were not mixed by any normal understanding of the term, with only young Vijay Kohli exhibiting anything other than a sombre realisation of the finality of the impending Ferrier launch.
Everyone knew how keen Vijay was to reach Arkadia — he rarely missed an opportunity to tell anyone who would listen just how much he was looking forward to seeing Peter and Viola again, in particular — but the sadness of the moment was such that even his full-hearted youthful exuberance couldn’t cut the air of solemnity.
What did cut the air, very loudly, were the last-minute efforts of Bo Harrington’s girlfriend to persuade him to stay. This was difficult for everyone else to hear and see, but nowhere near as difficult as it was for the couple themselves. Bo said little, as he so often did, instead trying to silently console her and let her say what she had to say.
Chase, for his part, was immeasurably glad that his parents weren’t making a similar case and were so far holding up on their end of an agreed upon bargain that they wouldn’t try to convince him to stay with them on Terradox and he wouldn’t try to convince them to join him on Arkadia.
The arguments over this had been explosive at various points over the past year, until everyone reached a point of acceptance that no one was budging and there was no sense of living the rest of their time together in resentment.
Christian had been quicker to stop badgering Chase than Jillian had been, and he had been begging her for weeks not to make Chase’s departure more difficult than it had to be by
making him feel guilty about it.
It was rare for a mother to see her child leave and know that he would never be back, but Jillian’s pain was numbed if not lessened by the length of time she had been enduring it — really ever since Chase first shared his desire to spearhead the Arkadia project, given that she knew his stubborn nature well enough to know that nothing would change his mind.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Chase said, walking to his parents for the last time. “You still have a great team here with Holly and Grav and we’re going to meet up with Peter, Viola and Robert.”
“And you’ll listen to Peter,” Christian said, an unexpected tangent. “You hear me? People might see you as the leader but Peter is Head of Security and he knows what’s best for keeping everyone safe.”
“There’s going to be a decision-making structure in place,” Chase replied. “And it’s not going to be like here where everyone still turns to Holly even though she tried to spread responsibility around. No one is going to be the decision-maker, and no one wants to be.”
“As long as you and Peter stay on the same page, everything will run smoothly,” Christian said. “I know everyone who’s going has been vetted and quarantined and everything, but still… if there was a trouble-maker, he’s not going to try his luck with you two standing in front of him.”
Christian said this partly to reassure Jillian that everything would indeed be okay on Arkadia, where a Peter-Chase team did have the potential to become a formidable force for stability.
Jillian appeared receptive to the points. “I said something like this to Viola about her and Holly a few years ago,” she said, her voice relatively stable now that she momentarily had something to think about other than the imminent launch. “If the people at the top have any resentment for each other or any interpersonal problems, that can filter all the way down. If something is disallowed on safety grounds, you need to respect that.”
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