Not With A Whimper: Preservers
Page 33
“They wouldn’t just leave us,” a man name Jones – name written on his coat – said.
Sidney laughed. “They wouldn’t? Let me tell you about your employers. They knew something like this was coming. So all the big pooh-bahs, they decided that they were needed up on the Stations – to look after the problems of smuggling seed to the colony worlds. If things went wrong down here – which they have – they would stay safe. If things went very wrong – which they have – they could emigrate to the colony worlds.
“Up until a short time ago, I worked Enforcement as an agent. But with the higher-ups going topside, I got promoted and promoted. That’s so they could leave me down here – with you, and the rest of the underlings.” He glared at Winston. “So, if you’re getting out of here, getting to safety, I’m the reason. Me. So, I’m going – and that’s final.” He turned to Pierre. “Fontaine, you made a deal with me.”
Pierre nodded. “Mr Tremblay definitely goes. The rest, well, the Families always deal with this sort of thing – well, not this sort of thing, because this sort of thing has never before come up – with the maxim of the most useful to the Family come first. We recruit for skills.”
Kiera felt her stomach drop. She knew what that meant. She knew two things: how to wait tables and how to provide sex to avoid that first.
“I stay,” she said, seeing her future die. “I’m of no use to the Families. We can all see that.”
She hoped that, possibly, Sidney might argue for her, that he would say that the seed bought two seats, not one. But he turned and walked away, heading for the nearest operating shuttle.
Kiera felt sick, like she might throw up. To have come so close. Better to have died in London, unknowing. Most of those in the city would have died before they even knew that the USNA had fired missiles. She would have a long, lingering death – if she didn’t take matters into her own hands. Suicide. Could she do it?
She walked back to the car. No, she would go back to the base, and live until the moment came when living no longer seemed a viable option. The base had food and water enough to last her – a single person – at least a year, probably a dozen years. A year, right now, seemed a lifetime. A year alone frightened her.
But, no, not alone; two others had to stay.
She saw Pierre arguing with some of the others who had come over. The pilots of the shuttles gesticulated, then turned and left for their respective craft.
Pierre came over to the car. She prepared to bid him good-bye. He smiled and took her hand.
“I know that this is not what you had hoped for, cheri. Sometimes plans run afoul of reality.”
She sighed. “I know.” The tarmac had suddenly cleared of other people. Only she and Pierre remained out in the open.
“You had better go. You can’t afford to wait around.” Tears came to her eyes, and she blinked them away. “Please go quickly. It hurts too much to see you here, knowing...”
He smiled gently at her as the first shuttle began to taxi to its take-off position. “Don’t you understand, my little friend?”
The other two shuttles began following it. The first took off with a roar of engines. The second and third followed it.
Understanding slowly overcame disbelief. “You’re staying with me?”
He shook his head, and wiped at the tears that started to flow from her eyes. “How could I leave the only woman who has ever impressed me beyond all others with her courage, intellect, and sheer goodness? Of course I stay with you.”
She looked around, seeing no one else.
“I thought we were three seats shy. Did you find room for one more?”
“No. My engineer volunteered to remain as well. He works on the shuttle. We still have a chance.”
Then he looked up, and she followed his gaze as three fireballs ascended the sky, heading for the unknown future.
She looked down, and discovered that his hand had found hers. He squeezed it gently. “Now,” he said.
“Now?”
“Now I would ask you to give me what you twice before offered. I love you.”
“Then it isn’t so bad.” She looked up again at the vanishing fireballs. “At least the seeds made it.”
“Oui. Preserved for future generations. We have accomplished that much. They will remember us as The Preservers.”
If anyone remembered them at all. But she took his hand. “It’s warmer up at the Institute, Pierre.”
“You feel the cold, yes?”
She shook her head. “I feel the cold, no. I don’t think I’ve ever felt warmer in my entire life.”
“Then why?”
She looked at the man who had traded his chance of safety for a short life with her.
“Here, the temperature makes me appreciate this coat. There, I won’t have any reason to preserve my modesty. Unless, as a preserver, you would prefer that. Then we should stay and enjoy the breeze.”
He got in, and started the vehicle. “I shall drive. Get in. I have preserved enough for one day.”
He laughed. In the face of sure death, this man, who wanted to be with her, who had sacrificed everything to be with her, laughed. A good sign. She would preserve the memory of it for as long as she lived.
Author’s Note
(Or, the trouble that authors can make for themselves.)
Now, to do this story justice, we have to go back to “Pelgraff”. In “Pelgraff”, I made mention of several things that had happened before Armageddon on Earth – some 450 years prior to the events on Pelgraff. These details added depth to the story, and included mention of Jaswinder Saroya, who discovered the ‘J-Channel’ in hyperspace; sleep-learning; and soldier-fanatics, amongst others.
The Jaswinder Saroya character interested me, and I wrote a short story: “Courtesan”. But she kept bugging me, asking me to tell the rest of her story. I finally relented and added to the short story to make it a novel. Then, after writing and publishing “Courtesan”, I received several requests to do a sequel. I thought, why not? Thus came the idea for “Not With A Whimper”. I should know better. Thinking only gets me in trouble.
I started out in 2011, figuring I’d write a book that dealt with the other details from Pelgraff, which would take me up to the final Sol System war. As it dealt with Armageddon, I decided to call it, “Not With A Whimper”, as in, the world ended with a bang, not with a whimper. I figured it would grow to about 90,000 words (my longest previous novel just topped 100,000 words). It went very quickly, until I reached about 80,000 words (novel length in itself) – but I then realized that I was only about half-done, and I had so many different threads that I wasn’t doing any of them justice. It became just too much, so I let it lie fallow while I concentrated on other works.
But I kept coming back to it, wondering how I could make it work. Finally, I made the decision: I would take certain threads out of the uncompleted story, fill them out, and make them into their own novels. I figured about 4 books each one of about 60,000 words – short novels, shorter than Courtesan, which had 70,000 words.
The first one I dealt with, I called “Producers”. It encompassed a single thread. It ended up at 63,000 words, about what I had figured one. It came relatively easy and, thus encouraged, I went blithely on, not realizing what I had begun.
Each book after that became more difficult because they ran concurrently. Not only did I have to ensure that no character knew on, say, August 12th, things that happened in another book on August 14th, I had to deal with the fact that I had certain things happening on certain days and thus had to build up to them, use them in the other books. Not only that, when characters from the one book met characters from another book, they had to do that in the other book as well, though from an alternate viewpoint. It became a nightmare.
“Destroyers”, the second book I wrote, took two threads from the original unfinished book: that of the sleep-learning scientist, and that of the Germans soldiers. I had only minor difficulties integrating it with “Producers”. “Destroyers” ran up t
o 67,000 words.
Then the nightmare hit full force. I still had a lot of threads left. I pulled out two that seemed to fit together – one about saving the knowledge that those on Earth had accumulated, the other about saving the seeds of Earth plants. I called it, “Preservers”. But now I had to deal with the two previously published novels, as well as the fourth, unfinished one. And that started my real problems. I made the decision that I would have to wait until I finished the fourth novel before I published the third, because there existed just too many places where I could get in trouble – and I did. I began to loathe the mere idea of working on “Not With A Whimper”. Not because I didn’t like the story, but because the writing of it had become so terribly complicated.
“Preservers”, far from the 60-70,000 words I’d originally envisaged, ended up at 98,000 words. And I knew that the fourth, “Survivors”, would top that, because it took up all the remaining threads. Not only did it start before any of the others (on the time line), it finished after them, and had to tie up all the threads from the previous three, because they all meet at the end of the fourth. As well as that “Survivors” contained the major threads of the original – those of Jaswinder and Wen Carson. It ended up at a whopping 137,000 words, 30,000 words longer than any of my previous novels.
Altogether, the whole story (four books) of “Not With A Whimper” came to 365,000 words, or approximately 1100 pages in a print book. That was over 4 times what I had originally planned on for my little sequel. It took me 7 years of work and procrastination (mostly procrastination, because I just couldn’t figure out how to handle it) to get NWAW finished.
In the end, I have to say that it was worth it for me, personally. I like the stories; I’m glad they are out there – and completed. But, I also have to say: Never Again!
I hope you enjoy it. Please consider leaving a review.
D. A. Boulter.
Books by D.A. Boulter
D.A. Boulter’s Amazon Page where you can find all the following books:
Not With A Whimper Books:
Not With A Whimper: Producers
Not With A Whimper: Destroyers
Not With A Whimper: Preservers
Not With A Whimper: Survivors
Yrden Chronicles Books:
Trading For The Stars (Book 1)
Trading For A Dream (Book 2)
Other Amazon Books by D.A. Boulter
Courtesan
Pelgraff
Pilton's Moon / Vengeance Is Mine
ColdSleep
The Steadfasting
Prey
Enemy of Korgan
Ghost Fleet
In The Company of Cowards
A Throne At Stake
D.A. Boulter’s blog: http://daboulter.blogspot.ca/
D.A. Boulter can be contacted at: mailto:dougboulter@gmail.com