by Brin, David
As true pioneers on an untamed world, the first-wave colonists carried all the basic equipment, survival modules, prefab shelters, seed stock and embryos they would need to establish a settlement and prepare the world for human habitation. The pioneers were expected to have a thriving colony ready-made by the time the rest of the settlers came. That was the plan.
Birenda had been born en route and was four years old when the vanguard ship reached Antorra. She’d been much too young to understand the miscalculation that doomed them, but she remembered the shockwaves of terror, dismay, and hopelessness as soon as they arrived.
The long-range scientific probes were wrong, miscalibrated somehow; vital measurements had been scrambled by cosmic rays during the transmission, or perhaps the analytical instruments were poorly engineered. Antorra was not fit for human life after all. Although other parameters were within Terran norms, the chlorine concentration in the air was far too high. Not even the hardiest Earth algae could gain a foothold and begin converting the atmosphere.
The pioneers had traveled in space for a decade, with no turning back, only to reach a place where they could not survive.
Captain Tyrson marshaled all the colony equipment and pulled his people together. The habitation domes were self-contained, and the colonists could huddle down and eke out an existence. Antorra would never be the bright new home the faithful pioneers had hoped for, but if they could last for half a century, then the main colony vessel would arrive with all the expansive domes, materials, and scientific experts required to create a rough, but viable colony.
First-wave engineers erected power arrays outside to gather energy from sunlight that filtered through the caustic greenish clouds, but the chlorine corroded the arrays, and they failed one by one. However, with certain austerity measures imposed, an emergency nuclear generator provided enough energy to meet their immediate requirements. For a while, it looked as if the colony just might survive.
Then the corrosive atmosphere ate through the seals in the greenhouse dome, killing seven workers and, worst of all, obliterating much of their seed stock, the only food they could hope for on Antorra. A death sentence.
All of the data had already been transmitted to the main colony vessel that was plodding its way across the interstellar gulf. Among the hundreds of scientists and terraforming specialists aboard the huge vessel, somebody would find a solution in the decades available before they arrived—but that didn’t help the initial colonists survive in the meantime…
The captain had sealed himself in his main quarters with the full inventory of all their tools, their food stock, their energy supplies, as well as a breakdown of their bare-minimum needs. He did the math, double-checked his results, and could not refute the cold equations.
Now, as Birenda brooded alone in her chamber for hours during the sleep period, she reviewed the analysis and grim rationale that Captain Tyrson had left behind in his video farewell. The recordings were required study for every one of the children who had been born and taught on the Antorra colony.
Captain Tyrson called a special meeting of hand-picked individuals from among the colonists—himself and eighteen others. It was an eclectic mix of specialities, and no one could guess why they had been chosen. The tense and curious group gathered in the loading-dock module that contained the machinery, environment suits, and equipment needed for exploring the hostile planet.
Monitor cameras captured the captain’s last speech. Birenda had watched it over and over, and it still brought tears to her eyes each time.
As he faced the eighteen men and women he had selected, Captain Tyrson said, “This colony’s resources can support—at most—174 people. No matter how we tighten our belts, no matter how we conserve, there isn’t enough to sustain more people than that. According to computer models, only 174 can survive until the main colony vessel arrives. The choice is hard: only some of us will survive… or none of us will survive.”
Then he had opened the airlock and dumped the nineteen “extraneous personnel” into the deadly atmosphere, himself included. No one lasted out there longer than two minutes.
In a calm and detailed video message left in his quarters, Tyrson explained exactly why he had chosen those particular nineteen—because their skill sets, their health, their age made them the most dispensible. Birenda’s mother was among them.
In the twelve years since Captain Tyrson’s brutal decision, 174 had become a sacred number, rigidly controlled. Although the actual minimum number for survival could not be precise, due to individual weights, metabolic rates, or behavior patterns, the criterion had to be absolute so that it could be followed without question. It was the only way they could follow the grim necessity.
When leaving Earth with high hopes, the initial colonists had all expected to marry and have large families, to spread humanity across a verdant new planet. Now that was impossible.
Rigid birth-control measures were imposed and strictly enforced, but the colonists could not outlaw all births, because the Antorra colony needed a new generation, a turnover of personnel to stay alive for the next half century until rescue arrived—there had to be children, had to be replacements. Each time a colonist died in an accident, one carefully selected couple was granted dispensation to have a child.
In Year 3, when a female chemical engineer developed abdominal cancer from radiation exposure, the colony doctor suggested she might recover with thorough treatment, but the treatment would render her sterile. By unanimous vote—Birenda was seven at the time—the Council decided to euthanize the woman, and she had accepted her fate for the good of the colony. Some of us survive, or none of us survive. After her death, one of the healthy young couples received approval to have a child.
Once the first such decision had been made, the rest became so much easier.
In the following nine years, the Council developed several lists—waiting lists for couples who wanted to have children, and ranking lists of all Antorra settlers prioritized by age and value to the colony. Birenda’s father had been an astute colony leader for the past two years, but he was now the oldest member, and his name was next on the mortality list.
It was a delicate balance—174. No more, no less.
And Birenda had gotten pregnant.
“How could this happen?” Deputy Bill Orrick pretended to be horrified. “Do we need to impose mandatory sterilization on all fertile young women except for those approved to breed?”
Her father tried to sound calm and reasonable. “This is our colony’s first accidental pregnancy in a decade. Haven’t we already taken enough extreme measures?”
Birenda could see the strange smile as the deputy considered the consequences and came to the obvious conclusion. Before she could answer him in front of the Council members, Orrick shot a glare at her father. “You know what this means, Administrator Fleer. I’m sorry, but the list cannot be changed. It’s agreed upon by every member of the colony.”
“I know what it means,” said Walton Fleer. “I always knew this day was coming, and I’m content to know that I will get a new grandchild out of it.”
She and her father had kept the secret for as long as they could: Birenda hid her morning sickness and wore looser clothes so the swell of her abdomen didn’t show, but it was only a temporary fix. Everything about Antorra Colony was only a temporary fix.
She had considered finding a way to abort the baby, researching techniques or drugs in the colony databases. She had told her father this was the only solution, but he was deeply upset. “I will not stay alive on those terms, at the price of an innocent child. We may have set aside many of our beliefs in order to survive here, but I will not ignore that one.”
Each day, during the dreadful waiting, she had watched engineering teams work outside in the hazardous environment trying to build a new habitation dome out of scrap materials. It was hazardous duty, and accidents happened—frequently. A fatal mishap, or even a sufficiently grave injury that warranted euthanasia, would ev
en the numbers, keep the 174, and her father wouldn’t have to die so that she could have her baby. Then he could live for a little while longer, be a grandfather, hold his baby grandchild. With the colony’s reality, Birenda knew it couldn’t last, but everyone on Antorra clung to each day, grasped every moment.
But, week after week, all the workers remained safe. No one developed a terminal disease. No one accidentally died. And the time came when Birenda and her father could no longer hide the pregnancy.
“But she wasn’t next on the list to have a child!” said Lucia Boma before the Council. “My husband and I petitioned two years ago. We were supposed to be next.”
With tears streaming down her face, Birenda had been forced to confess the full story, raising herself up for censure—not for immoral behavior, but because she had upset the delicate balance of the colony.
She and Ando Rivera were about the same age, and it was assumed that they would be matched as a couple, since the colony offered so few possible candidates. Every settler had his or her set of duties; she and Ando were often assigned to go outside to set up racks of genetically modified algae webs, testing strain after strain to see if anything could survive in Antorra’s environment.
One day, while returning from their duties, Birenda and Ando had been in the changing room, removing their suits, stripping down to clean jumpsuits as they had done hundreds of times before. They both were sixteen, saturated with hormones, half naked, alone together—and it had just happened. They hadn’t paused to consider preventive measures.
Ando had avoided her for many days afterward, and she hadn’t even been able to tell him when she first knew about the pregnancy…
“She will keep the baby,” her father said to the Council, as if daring anyone to countermand him. “There will be no talk of forcing her to get rid of it, just because this wasn’t in our plans. I know what it means, and I have several months to prepare myself before my daughter gives birth.”
Deputy Orrick looked pleased and self-important; he’d been waiting for his turn as the next administrator, as soon as Walton Fleer was gone. Birenda despised the man. Her father was a long-term thinker who planned for the future of the colony, aware that he would be long gone when the main colony ship arrived in thirty-eight years to save them all; Orrick, on the other hand, considered only his own brief flash of prominence once he became the colony administrator. (He shouldn’t be looking too far forward, Birenda thought, since his name was also on the list, and only a handful of names from the top.)
After glancing at his fellow Council members, the deputy folded his hands and gave a solemn nod. “One life begins, and another ends. Some will survive, or none will survive.”
Birenda’s stomach knotted, and she forced herself not to say anything. When the solution came to her, it seemed so clear and so obvious, she caught her breath.
She would have to kill Orrick.
For the next several months, Birenda concocted and discarded numerous possibilities, all the while hoping that her thoughts of death did not taint the life within her. She felt overwhelmed with love for the unborn baby, a powerful nurturing instinct. She wanted to protect it, provide a home for it.
Dr. Hajid provided basic prenatal care but performed only cursory tests, clearly resenting her for her indiscretion, which had sent repercussions through the fragile equilibrium.
Even before leaving Earth, the bulk of the colonists on the main ship had considered the tough, conservative pioneers to be a little backward; they refused to check the sex of a baby or perform anything but the most rudimentary of prenatal screenings. The colony doctor was even more aloof than necessary with Birenda, though, as if he didn’t care whether the baby was healthy or not. She realized that some in the colony secretly hoped for her to miscarry, or perhaps die in childbirth, so they could get their chance.
Nevertheless, Birenda knew that the baby was progressing well. She studied all the information available in the colony library about pregnancy and childbirth—and she found plenty, because Antorra should have been a place teeming with children after only the first few years.
As she thought of the future, Birenda was sure that her child would still be alive, perhaps even the colony administrator, when the main ship arrived. Thirty-eight years… that wasn’t so much to ask for her son or daughter. What seemed less likely, though, was that her father would survive long enough for the baby to remember its grandfather. The vagaries of the list would shift and change, and sooner or later Walton Fleer would be the one.
But perhaps not now.
When she reached her eighth month, Birenda felt a growing sense of urgency. As soon as the baby was born, her father would be taken away. She was young, and since this was her first pregnancy, she knew she could easily go into premature labor. She had to put one of her plans into practice, before it was too late. She had to get rid of Deputy Orrick, so the numbers remained balanced.
Birenda reviewed Captain Tyrson’s last message again and again, drawing strength from his brave words. All her life she had been taught the realities of the colony. Every person inside the sheltered domes knew the math and the reasons for it. The colony had to survive. Some of them, or none of them. All was never an option.
It wasn’t hard to think of a way to kill Deputy Orrick; she simply had to choose which method would be easiest. Since life on Antorra was already so hazardous, a slight tweaking of life-support parameters would do the trick. Perhaps she could loosen a seal in his environment suit the next time he was scheduled to do outside work. Or she could arrange for a leak in his private quarters, allowing poisonous chlorine air to seep in while he was sleeping.
Planning a fatal mishap for the obnoxious deputy did not strike her with any undue terror. She’d seen people euthanized all her life as their names rose to the top of the list, and accidents claimed many more. Only the number 174 remained a constant…
Day after day, Birenda sat for long hours with her father, resting her hands on the curve of her stomach, but she kept her dark thoughts to herself. Back in their quiet quarters, Walton Fleer was preoccupied, his mood bittersweet. He savored every remaining moment he had with his daughter. She didn’t dare tell him what she planned, because then he would feel obligated either to stop her or report her to the Council. Deep inside, she didn’t want him to know.
Walton talked wistfully of her mother, his wife, and the times they had spent together during the long journey from Earth, the plans they had made for their future, and how they had hoped Birenda would be only the first of many children. Birenda remembered the woman, but not well. Her most vivid image of her mother was from Captain Tyrson’s security tape. She had studied her mother’s face, then watched as the woman and eighteen others were sucked out the airlock, sacrificed so the rest of the colonists could survive.
Birenda wished she had known her better.
“We’ll only have a few more weeks together, child,” her father said, then let out a sigh. “It’ll be enough.”
To kill Orrick, Birenda decided to use one of the new mutated strains of algae that, according to preliminary tests, exuded an extremely toxic substance. It was a trivial thing for her to slip it into the deputy’s daily food ration. In a way, she thought, his death and autopsy would provide valuable medical data for the colony’s benefit.
Sitting next to her father, she was distracted, thinking of her plans. Walton Fleer just stared at her, drinking in every detail of her face. “I love you, Birenda,” he said.
Because she had already planned it through, and also because she felt the ticking time-bomb inside her womb, Birenda acted quickly. She did not feel guilty, made no effort to speak with Deputy Orrick one last time. She was simply moving his name to the top of the list, maintaining the colony balance. 174. Her father would stay alive, and the baby would have another loving, nurturing presence for as long as it might last.
She supposed she would have to marry Ando Rivera. After her confession during the bitter Council meeting, the young man ha
d acted strangely around Birenda, as if he didn’t want to see her, as if he blamed her for getting pregnant. But that would change after the baby was born—for the good of the colony. Maybe someday their son or daughter would look up to Ando with the same warmth and appreciation as Birenda looked up to Walton Fleer. She smiled at the thought.
When her father came back to their quarters, his sickened expression told her that she had succeeded. “It seems I have been given a reprieve,” he said. “Deputy Orrick just died.”
“That’s terrible.” Birenda needed all of her strength to keep from jumping up with joy. “How did it happen?” The words sounded false even to her ears.
“Extreme allergic reaction to one of the algae strains in his food. They’ll be running other tests, but he’s dead… we’re in balance. 174.” He sank into the hard chair, shaking. “I was ready. I had my mind made up. But I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t like to see my grandchild.”
Birenda clamped her mouth shut before she could reveal what she had done. He must never know.
Then the first hard contractions hit.
In the medical center, Dr. Hajid tended her, fully professional now, though he still didn’t approve. With the baby coming, a new life for the colony, he was the doctor and he took his responsibilities seriously. His face was pinched, his dark eyes intent, but he voiced no criticism. He didn’t really know what he was doing, with little opportunity to gain obstetrics expertise, considering the few births allowed, but he was the best the colony had.