Ark

by Stephen Baxter

  Edward thumped the desk with his bony fist. ′I say again, horse shit! I know you, lady. I force-grew you like a greenhouse tomato. I know your strengths and your flaws. Yes, you were by far the outstanding Candidate, you always were. You had brains, athletic abilities, leadership skills, charisma. Hell, you even had a good body and a face to match. But you had a flaw, one deep flaw, and that′s your damn pride. You weren′t going to accept being forced out by Wilson Argent. That kind of thing doesn′t happen to Kelly Kenzie! So instead of applying your skills to some other aspect, you fucked over a multi-billion-dollar mission and wrecked mankind′s best hope of long-term survival in the process. And no justification about the good of the crew or the viability of the mission or how you longed to see your lost little kiddie again is going to wash with me.′ He was shouting now, his voice shrill, his body immobile. ′You′d rather have led your crew to hell than follow Wilson or anybody else to paradise. So you fell to Earth, like Satan.′

  ′You made me what I am, Dad, with your pushing and your lies. You never even told me this place existed! My flaws are your flaws.′

  Dexter said, ′And did you make me, Kelly?′

  Kelly felt a stab of shame that, in the heat of her confrontation with her father, she had briefly forgotten that Dexter was even in the room.

  Edward snorted. ′Christ. Look at us, the three of us stuck in a metal box at the bottom of the fucking sea, arguing like shit. What a family.′

  The door opened. Masayo stood there apologetically, holding Eddie′s hand. Thandie was at his side. Masayo said, ′I′m sorry. He missed his mom. I think he′s a little scared.′

  ′Come here, sweetie.′ Kelly held out her arms. Eddie ran to her, and with a boost from Masayo she lifted him up onto her lap.

  Edward watched, his heavy, frog-like face unreadable. His burst of anger seemed to have exhausted him. ′Well, at least you had the sense to come home, to the safest place there is.′

  Kelly said, ′Safe?′

  ′Sure. The last refuge. That′s the point of this place. Earth has had hard times before, so the brainiacs like Thandie Jones assure me. In the early days of its formation, when it was battered by moon-sized impactors, life always retreated to where it was safest. Down and in. You know there are life-forms down there in the deep crust that eat silica from the rocks and live off the mineral seeps and the heat, that have been there since the beginning. So now here we are too, living as best we can, off the fish and the black-smoker ecologies.

  ′But this Ark is only a waystation. In the longer term we should follow the life into its deeper retreat. I′m talking about a merger, of human DNA with extremophiles. I′m talking about sending prokaryotic bugs laced with the substance of humanity down into the deep hot biosphere, and maybe even beyond. It will be like the great endosymbiotic mergers of the past, where we took organelles like mitochondria within the substance of our cells. The essence of humanity sinking into the Earth, where a new genesis event will take place, in a hot Eden. At the heart of the Earth is a core of iron the size of the moon. Maybe our descendants will build cities on the surface of that inner world …′ He fell silent, his rheumy eyes watering. He dug out a handkerchief, dabbed his eyes, blew his nose, and then coughed, his bulky frame making the wheelchair shudder. ′That′s the vision.′ He was silent again.

  Then he began to snore.

  Thandie murmured, ′The sub′s ready to take you up, whenever you are.′

  ′We should wait until grandfather wakes,′ Dexter said.

  ′Yes.′ Eddie was falling asleep too. He wriggled on Kelly′s lap, trying to get his head comfortable against her belly. His weight, drawn by the pull of Earth, was huge, precious. ′Yes, we′ll wait.′

  Kelly wondered where Holle and Wilson and Venus were, right now.

  SIX

  2068-2081

  83

  MAY 2068

  Steel Antionadi waited for Max Baker by the wet farm in the base of Halivah, as far down-pole as she could get from Wilson and his thugs. Nobody was around. Nothing stirred except the green things growing in their glop tanks.

  She looked up along the length of the hull. She could see up-pole all the way to Wilson′s nest in the dome. In the middle of the day it was bright, the arcs glowing warmly, and people came and went, old folk and kids, and babies gurgling in the air. A work party had taken out the equipment racks from Deck Six and was scrubbing the walls in a spiral pattern.

  All this was background to Steel. What she looked for was other shippers like her, shipborn, where they clustered in their little territories, marked by scratchy graffiti signatures on the walls. To her they stood out against the hull′s drab background like stars against the black sky. Every so often you would see one of them glare down at you, making eye contact like a zap from a laser beam. There was information in the way they clustered, information in the way they looked and laughed. Nobody much older than Steel even saw any of this going on.

  Max Baker came swimming down. Slim and supple, he was good in the air, and he showed off for her, staying away from the guide ropes and handholds, letting the friction of the air slow him down. He was fifteen, she twenty-three. He somersaulted and landed neatly on a T-stool beside her. ′Got ′em,′ he said without preamble.

  She glanced around. Wilson said he had taken out the cameras, but everybody knew there were cameras and spies. But Wilson didn′t watch the wet farm because shippers didn′t work here mostly, and what he liked to watch was shippers, especially the younger ones. Still, she whispered. ′The caps. You got enough?′

  ′Yeah. Exterior store.′

  He was talking about explosive charges intended for such uses as blowing hatches in emergency evacuations, or separating the shuttles from the hull′s main body.

  ′Hid?′

  ′Yeah.′ He glanced up at Wilson′s nest in the dome. ′He won′t see them.′

  ′You sure you want to do this?′

  He looked back at her, thoughtful, conflicting feelings visible in his face. She could see he was trying to big up in front of her. Well, they had had a relationship. There were so few of them on the hull that everybody had done some kind of fooling with everybody else, on a spectrum of warmth all the way from best buddies to moms′n′pops. Every gradation of love and friendship had a name. There were even more names for kinds of enemies. With Max she had got as far as feelie-friends before they backed off. He was too young, or she was too old. Being with him reminded her of her time with Wilson, but sort of upside down, for with Max she had been the old one. Anyhow she liked Max, and respected him. She didn′t want him to get himself killed, which was a strong possibility if they went ahead with their plan.

  But he shrugged. ′He′s got Terese. Wilson. Cold-fucking her. That′s not right.′

  She knew that even the shipborn word, cold-fucking, wasn′t appropriate for what Wilson was doing to Max′s twin. He was using Terese just as he had used Steel, before she grew too old for his taste, her bones too long, her breasts too big. It was a word Max was using for comfort, a lie he told to himself. That was Max′s motive. Hers was deeper.

  She grabbed his arm. ′We′ll do this, end the lies.′

  He nodded, anger and fear warring in his expression. ′When?′

  ′You′ll know.′

  84

  JUNE 2068

  A single gunshot in the night.

  Holle sat bolt upright in her bunk, her blanket floating around her in the dark.

  A gunshot. A sharp, percussive crack. It was unmistakable. She′d heard enough gunfire in the final years on Earth, but none since the chaos of the launch itself. She′d always suspected that the weapons confiscated from the illegals all those years ago had ended up cached somewhere. By Wilson, probably; he was the kind who would have thought ahead, even back then.

  A gunshot in a pressure hull. She forced herself to stay still, to sniff the air, to pay attention to any popping in her ears, to listen for a breeze - any of the signs of a hull breach, of the loss
of the air she and her team kept cycling around the ship all day and every day, every molecule of it having passed through human lungs ten billion times, the air that kept them alive. The inner hull was coated with self-sealing compounds, and ought to be able to withstand a single bullet-hole. But how likely was it that only one shot was going to be fired today?

  Then she heard shouting, a kind of chanting. ′Break - out! Break - out!′

  She closed her eyes for one heartbeat.

  She had always known this day would come. She was forty-nine years old, and, enfeebled by confinement and zero gravity, felt and probably looked older. She didn′t want to face a revolt of the young, however inevitable it was. Maybe she could just lock herself in here, burrow down under the blankets, listen to her Angel and think about her father, and wait until Wilson and his thugs sorted out the mess.

  But she couldn′t hide. Somebody was letting off a gun inside the pressure hull-her hull. It had to be stopped.

  She moved, grabbing coverall and boots, dressing quickly. She pulled her Snoopy hat over her head, and tried to make contact with Wilson, Venus, anybody. But there wasn′t even static.

  It was Steel Antoniadi who had the gun.

  When Helen Gray emerged from her cabin it was 0400. The big arc-light panels glowed a dim orange, casting just enough light so the watch crew could see.

  And Steel was waving a gun around. Steel was in shadow, but the orange light glittered in her eyes, and reflected from the gun′s metal shaft. The evidence of the one shot she′d fired so far was a crease in the padding that swathed the fireman′s pole. It was an incredible sight. Helen, twenty-six years old, had never even seen a gun before, outside archive pictures, HeadSpace simulations. Now, anchored with one hand to a guide cable, here was Steel, one of Helen′s oldest friends, holding the ugly black thing above her head. And Steel was shouting, rhythmically. ′Break - out! Break - out! It′s time, time, our time!′

  Helen glanced up. Beyond the fireman′s pole with its string of ragged cabins was a wall of steel that sliced off the upper section of Halivah. Wilson and his henchmen and their catamites now occupied the hull′s upper four decks, barricaded off from those they governed by layers of mesh-floor partitions. It was dark up there, a mass of shadow, and there was no movement, no sign of any of Wilson′s people coming down to take control.

  But other crew did come, and were already gathering around Steel - the younger crew, the generation of shipborn. The youngest Helen saw was Max Baker, aged fifteen, brother of Wilson′s latest lover. Steel herself was probably the oldest, at twenty-three. One woman, Magda Murphy, came swimming up with a baby in her arms, a fractious child, tired, a second-generation shipborn. Only Steel had a gun, but the others were armed with spanners and wrenches, knives, bits of piping. They belonged to different clans and gangs, as Helen could tell from their tattoos and dyed hair, coming together for this climactic moment.

  Steel laughed as they gathered around her. When she opened her mouth you could see the gaps in her teeth, a legacy of the beating Wilson had given her when he′d finally thrown her out of his bed. Steel had clearly planned all this. Planned this moment, put together this ragtag rebellion, uniting the warring factions, entirely out of sight even of Helen, who thought she knew most of what was going on in the hull.

  Helen was bleary with sleep, confused in the dark. This had to stop, before people got hurt - or worse. She pushed forward. ′Steel!′ she hissed. ′What the hell are you doing?′

  ′Ending it,′ Steel said, loudly enough for the rest to hear. ′Ending this farce!′ She was wild, manic, her gestures uncontrolled.

  Helen considered grabbing her arm, then looked at the gun and thought again. ′What farce?′

  ′We′re wasting our lives in this tank, our whole lives. Whatever this mission is, whatever it′s for, we′re just prisoners.′ She gestured at the woman with the baby. ′Now we′re having children of our own, more babies born into this cage. Do we want our kids taught the way we were? Do we want them to be punished for being smart?′

  There was a rumble of support, and some of the crew hefted their weapons.

  Helen understood the resentment. She was one of this middle generation herself, a generation for whom the ship was turning out to be a prison. She would be nearly forty when, if, the ship got to Earth III - old! Her life half used up, her youth gone. But she also understood that now they were under way, there was no choice but to go on. That was the hard, inhuman truth.

  Now she did grab Steel′s arm. ′Steel, for God′s sake, you′ll get us all killed. We′re in a spacecraft seventy light years from Earth. It′s not big enough for a revolution!′

  Steel shook her off. ′You′ve swallowed the lies,′ she said coldly. ′You and those other fools who let Venus Jenning fill your head with rubbish. You go back to your cupola and your telescopes and your learning, you′re a traitor to your own kind—′

  ′What lies? You can′t mean the rubbish Zane talks.′

  ′Rubbish, is it? You think you′re a scientist, don′t you? What′s more likely, that we′re in a spacecraft hurled between the stars, or we′re in some HeadSpace tank in Denver or Alma or Gunnison?′ She waved her hand. ′They′re out there, standing behind walls of glass, making notes, watching us the way we watch the plants in the glop tanks - looking on our useless lives, and they′re laughing at us. And when our children start to grow, the prettiest and brightest will be picked out by Wilson′s men. Taken up there to his palace of shit. Are we going to bow down to that? Are we?′

  That, Helen suspected, was what this was all about, whether Steel realised it or not. This was Steel taking revenge on Wilson for the way he′d treated her.

  But whatever Steel′s real motive, she was hitting a raw nerve. The ragged chanting started again: ′Break - out. Break - out.′ The crew were agitated, fired up, shouting, and they shook their blunt tools and bits of pipe. Helen shrank back, fear clenching her gut. And, as Steel waved her gun to lead them, the mob started to move, pulling themselves up towards the bridge.

  Helen looked around. She thought she saw her mother at the hull′s other extreme, by the hydroponic beds near the base. She swivelled in the air and threw herself that way.

  With an audible hum the big arc lights flickered to their full brightness, and the hull was flooded with their glare.

  On Wilson′s bridge, as he called it, it had been Theo Morell who had pulled the big emergency handle that had fired up the arc lamps. Clinging to the fireman′s pole he drifted down to the floor, cleared blankets and rugs out of the way, and tried to peer through the protective layers of mesh partitions to see what was going on.

  This ′bridge′, in the hull′s nose, was like a big domed room. Its walls had been draped with blankets and rugs, hand-made by the crew from scraps of worn-out uniforms. Wilson and his inner team had their own private sub-cabins, lashed to the floor and wall brackets. Venus had once said this was like Genghis Khan′s yurt. On a rack attached to the fireman′s pole were the remains of last night′s feast, plates sticky with the remains of a mushroom risotto, an empty bottle of rice wine. Clothes, discarded carelessly, drifted in the air, and the private lavatory had its door open, and a fetid smell hung around it. Ordinarily the mess would have been cleaned up by servants, a detachment of the crew coming up through the floor hatches, before Wilson woke to begin his day. But - Theo checked his watch, it was only a little after 0400 - nobody would be cleaning up tonight, or doing any more sleeping.

  As the noise level rose Wilson′s men started to push their way out of their cabins. There were four more aside from Theo and Wilson, all men, all about Wilson′s own age of forty-nine, all illegals. They were all naked or dressed only in shorts, as Theo was. Other faces peered out of two of the cabins behind them, small, frightened, one boy, one girl, both about fourteen. Theo wasn′t sure of their names.

  Jeb Holden pushed his way over to Theo. ′What the fuck you doing, soldier boy? Why you turn the damn lights on?′

  �
�Didn′t you hear the gunshot, asshole?′

  ′What gunshot?′

  Theo heard a rumbling of voices, that distant chanting. ′Break - out - break - out …′ Not so distant any more. He peered down through the mesh, and glimpsed some kind of group climbing up the fireman′s pole, around the dangling cabins, towards the barrier. Steel Antoniadi was in the lead. Some of them were just kids. There was Max Baker beside Steel. Theo knew Max′s twin sister was in Wilson′s bed right now.

  ′Break - out - break - out—′

  Jeb snapped, ′What the fuck?′

  ′Just kids,′ Theo said, uneasy.

  ′Kids with fucking weapons. Steel′s got a gun.′ Jeb lay flat on the floor and yelled through the mesh, his spittle splashing against the metal. ′Steel, you fucking whore! This all because Wilson passed you over to the Pig, isn′t it? Steel, you worn-out slut, put that fucking gun down now!′ A descendant of Iowans, Jeb had actually been born on a raft, but when he was fourteen he had fought his way onto dry land and joined a local militia to fight off those who might have followed him. Then luck had left him in the right place at the right time to steal a place on the Ark, when it launched from Gunnison.

  Steel and the rest were only a couple of metres beneath the floor now. She pointed her weapon at the partition. ′The game′s up, Jeb, you bastard. Open up the floor or it will be the worse for you.′

  ′Oh, will it?′ He laughed, and he spat at her, but most of the gob of phlegm stuck to the mesh, and Theo could see his fear in the way he clung to the partition, his fingers locked in the holes. ′Whore! Fucking whore.′ He threw himself away from the partition and looked around. The others, including Dan Xavi who the catamites called ′the Pig′, were pulling on their pants. ′Where′s Wilson?′

  ′Right here.′ Wilson came floating out of his own cabin. Theo stared, amazed. Wilson already wore a cooling garment, and he was pulling the heavy outer layers of a pressure suit around him. Behind him Terese Baker, fifteen, skinny, was wrapped in a blanket, looking around with wide eyes. ′Shit,′ Wilson said, ′I don′t fit in this suit any more. I′m a fat bastard.′ He laughed.