“I’m going to go eat breakfast,” I tell OS while it whirs through the greenhouse, tending and watering.
“Good thinking,” Kodiak says. “I’m starving.”
As we eat our algae soup, I read to him aloud from the black book that had been hidden away behind the gray portal: if mission control is right, Sagittarion Bb has decades of environmental stability, followed by seasons of slow-moving cyclones. We don’t know where in that cycle we’ve landed, but it’s relatively safe to assume that we won’t face those cyclones for a few Earth years. Maybe even decades. At some point, though, we’ll need to be able to rapidly evacuate to elsewhere on the planet. “I’ll get started studying the vehicle designs in OS’s storage,” I say. “We’re eventually going to need to make this whole base mobile.”
“Check this out,” Kodiak says, leaning against a printed crutch while he nudges the wall of our latest structure. It pushes back at him, like a bouncy castle.
“That’s, um, fun,” I tell him.
“Ambrose, I’ve gotten it to float! With the right composition of gases inside the hollow polycarb walls, it will stop being a habitat and start being—”
“A vehicle!”
“A floating balloon, yes. So once we really get going, we can predict the weather patterns, and move our entire installation as needed.”
“Let’s hope that’s not needed for a very long time.”
“Yes, nhut.”
“‘Nhut.’ It’s time I learned some Dimokratía. It’s not fair that all this has been on my terms.”
Kodiak looks at me with sudden gratitude. “Thank you. I would be happy to teach you my language.” I stand alongside him, arm draped across his shoulders. He’s a stranger, a lover, and my life partner. We have lived and died lifetimes together, and it makes me shiver every time that odd truth comes over me.
“Hey, have you come across any regulations on how to name this planet?” I ask him.
“You’re the one studying the black book. I thought you said this was Sagittarion Bb.”
“Yes. How do you feel about making humanity’s last stand on something called ‘Sagittarion Bb’?”
He shrugs.
“I was thinking we might name it something a little more meaningful.”
“Like ‘Earth’?”
That shuts me right up. Human civilization on Earth is gone. We’re the last humans alive. Does that make this Earth? The prospect makes me feel like the narcosis has come back, like I could float right up into the atmosphere and go careening into the blue-green sky. Everything looms too large.
“Ambrose, are you okay?” Kodiak asks, eyeing me nervously.
“I’m a little faint, I guess.” I can’t look into his eyes, so I look into the sky, which gives me the view of the pale second sun. That only makes me even more light-headed. “I think I don’t want this to be another Earth. I want it to be something else. Something new. Something better than Earth was.”
Without quite meaning to, I sit heavily. Kodiak kneels beside me, stroking my back.
“This has all been a lot to adjust to,” I manage to say.
Kodiak surprises me by nodding. Heedless of the sludge that soaks his pants, he sits beside me, takes my clammy hand in his. The struggle we face has drawn us tight. “Would binge-eating engineered algae make you feel better?”
I laugh despite myself. “I don’t think it would, oddly enough.”
He rubs his fingers into the centers of my palms, hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to relieve. “What would make you feel better?”
I look into his eyes. My first thoughts about what would make me feel better all involve his full lips, shrouded in stubble. But there’s something bigger than that in this heaving mind of mine. “I know she’s been dead for thirty thousand years. But I miss Minerva.”
He tilts my chin so he can look into my eyes. “I have a thought about that,” he says. “Since Sagittarion Bb isn’t quite cutting it. I wonder if you’ve had this thought, too.”
I peer into his eyes. “I don’t know, have I?”
I do know where he’s going with this, and I surprise myself by crying. Kodiak’s thumbs stroke away the tears. His skin is so soft, so new.
“Welcome to Minerva,” he says.
There are four greenhouses now, and Rover-sphere is in the process of printing the fifth. A soft mechanical whining cuts the dawn air as our robot caretaker passes between the first four, tending the algal strains, testing for the right composition of oxygen, nitrogen, water. The fifth unit is reserved for growing something else.
While OS diligently gardens, I walk along the soil beds in that last greenhouse, run my fingers over soft felty plants that are the colors of rust and bricks. They thrive equally well on Minerva’s soil as they did on the ship. I wonder how competitive the plant’s home world was, for it to be so robust in so many sorts of environments. What a motley ecosystem we’re forming here, with beings from three different worlds.
We’ve been six months on Minerva, which means OS and I need to adjust the algal crop’s fertilizers to prevent burnout. A pail of extruded fats, proteins, and carbs hanging from the crook of an elbow, I return to the table of our home base, with its mixture of chairs, both newly printed and scavenged from the Endeavor. I set the elements heating and mixing into our usual meal, then open the black book to the “Month 6” tab while I wait for Kodiak to return for his lunch.
I didn’t sleep much the night before, and can’t keep my vision from blurring as I read through rows and rows of recommended nitrogen percentages. I almost miss the footnote at the bottom of one plasticine page: Welcome to your sixth month, Settlers Cusk and Celius. Now that you’re established, you may access special messages for you in the Endeavor’s stored memory. Partition 07:14, code Bb06.
As soon as Kodiak’s on the horizon, making his slow progress back to base, I’m up and waving my arms. “Hurry, hurry!”
The young man sits on a folding chair in a plain room. It would be totally nondescript except for the window behind him that blazes with blue sky, sunlight flooding the frame. The Earth sky. The Earth sun.
The boy is spangled in the highest fashion Fédération accessories: a gold circlet around his head, a cream-colored wrap of the softest fabric, hemmed in silver. Expensive skinprint mods glitter on his cheeks and neck.
He’s me.
“Well, this is weird,” the boy with my voice says.
“No kidding,” I whisper back, cutting my eyes to Kodiak. He’s impassive, hands clasped before his lips, barely blinking as he watches the recording.
“I’m Ambrose Cusk. You know that. Because you’re Ambrose Cusk, too.” He whistles awkwardly. “I’m the original. We split after I had that medical screening. They recorded my, our, brain there. A couple of months ago. Now I know the truth. That Minerva’s distress beacon never triggered, that mission control lied to me. You needed to believe that, though, to have the will to survive each time you were woken up, so that’s why they mapped my neurons while I still believed, too.
“Mother saw the writing on the wall for Earth, had a plan to continue the human race, wanted her own offspring to be the foundation of its second stage, to be the one who carried the torch of human civilization.” He laughs ruefully. “You know, typical Mom. She’s always been a woman of simple ambitions.”
He looks at someone off camera, then shakes his head slightly. “No one ever asked me about this plan,” he continues. “I was furious about it for a long time, what it was doing to me—to you—without your permission. The violin was my one small rebellion—I insisted that mission control give you that. It’s the very one we grew up playing. One small thing that you got instead of me. At least, since you’re hearing this, you’ve arrived on the exoplanet. I’m sorry there wasn’t one any closer. You’re the lucky clone, the point of all this. You’re also likely the last humans alive. You and whichever spacefarer Dimokratía wound up selecting. The mission was just too ambitious to accomplish without Cusk, Fédération, and Di
mokratía all involved, and Dimokratía wouldn’t have invested without getting to place someone on board, too.”
Ambrose fiddles with a gold bracelet. “I hope he’s kind to you.” He looks off camera again, where there’s clearly someone monitoring what he says—maybe the Academy Admiral, maybe our mother. Ambrose nods.
“Save this recording for the rest of humanity to turn to in the centuries to come. Let them know who sent you, and why. You should call this planet Cusk. That’s Mom’s dream.”
Kodiak is suddenly on his feet, fast enough to fling his chair along the muddy heath. He staggers out of the shattered wreckage of 06. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Delete it!” he yells over his shoulder as he stalks off.
“Kodiak!” I call, running after him while the long-dead version of me drones on in the background.
His back is to me, with the green-purple sunset sky of Minerva before him, the bioluminescent plains spread out underneath.
Kodiak’s shoulders heave. I approach him, lay a hand on his shoulder. He goes still.
I position myself in front of him. Looking into his eyes, making sure it’s okay for me to embrace him now, I press myself against him.
In the background, the Earth Ambrose is still speaking. “Are you okay, Kodiak?” I ask.
He sobs in response, his tears wet against my cheek. “Shh,” I soothe him. “Shh.”
He shakes and shudders, his body wracked with convulsions. I stand against him, holding him in, shocked into silence by his tears.
“I hate them,” he finally manages. “I hate them all.”
“There’s a recording of you up next,” I say. “Don’t you want to hear what the original Kodiak has to say?”
“No.” He shudders. “He doesn’t deserve for me to hear him. None of them do.”
I nod against his cheek. “Okay. We’ll turn it off. I don’t want to delete it, though. Okay?”
He pulls away, puts his hands tenderly on my shoulders, turns me around. “Look at this sunset.”
The sky is a violent crush of greens and pinks and purples, Minerva’s distant second sun jagging it all with reds and oranges. “It’s so beautiful,” I whisper.
Kodiak presses against me, arms wrapping around my torso as he pulls me in tight. “Don’t get me wrong. I love being here with you. I am in awe of what we’re doing together. It’s terrifying and wonderful, all at the same time. But it’s ours. Not theirs. Ours.”
I nod, grateful for the warmth of Kodiak’s body against my back, his arms holding me so near. Grateful for the simplicity of what he’s just said.
We never watch the rest of the recordings.
One good thing does come out of watching those reels: Kodiak tracked down the violin in the wreckage. He made it his present to me on the one-year anniversary of our arrival.
It’s an important milestone in more ways than one. I play the violin all morning, then put it away. Kodiak and I stand solemnly in front of the gray portal. There’s something we need to bring out. Something alive.
Considering how closely we stuck to the Endeavor during our first few weeks, it’s surprising how far we’ll range now. We spend days at a time away from the wreck, sleeping on our slow floating polycarb hovercrafts, waking from our tight embrace only when we hear OS starting to tend our algae crops.
The Endeavor has been slowly sinking in the muck. Room 06, which was once the main viewing point for the stars around us—real and fake—is now fully dark, and half-full of liquid methane. It’s only a matter of time before the ship disappears entirely, becomes a ruin for future residents to excavate and ponder.
The gray room has risen higher into the sky as the heavier end has sunk. We have to climb to reach it, using the very rungs that our previous clones must have used back when it was in zero g.
There’s a hum inside.
At the very back of the hold is a whirring device. Kodiak and I place our palms against it, like expectant parents. As expectant parents. The vibrations give an extra throb every 1.3 seconds, when the centrifuge’s arm spins past. The revolutions provide force identical to the gravity of Earth, for optimal fetal development.
On the outside of the machine is a clock, which has been counting down since Kodiak and I activated the gestation device 217 Minerva days ago. Only seven minutes remain.
We hadn’t been able to choose which embryo would grow first. According to the Minerva book, there are thousands of zygotes frozen in the shielded interior unit, extracted from genetic strains from across Earth, from both Dimokratía and Fédération and the few unincorporated territories, to prevent inbreeding in the future generations on the planet. We will relocate the gestation device to our base and then draw from these embryos for thousands of years, as long as there are humans alive on Minerva to raise them.
I imagine, sometimes, what will happen if Kodiak and I die from a freak storm, if these feral children will grow up worshipping shreds of polycarb and a half-broken violin, digging up a sunken ship and studying its artifacts for information about the old gods who abandoned them to figure out the world’s meaning for themselves.
Maybe all young parents have a version of this worry. But ours is extreme.
Only six minutes remain. I take Kodiak’s free hand in mine.
We’ve spent the last few weeks preparing for this moment. Raiding the ships for whatever soft materials remain, introducing strains of algae that produce a mix of nutrients close to breast milk, creating a cozy smaller habitat with a higher temperature. A nursery.
We’ve talked forever about names. We could name this child after people who have been dead for thousands of years, leaders and thinkers from Earth that our new society ought to acknowledge. But we’re not going to name this child yet. We’re living on a frontier, and this child is more likely to die than to live. Once they’ve reached their second Earth birthday, we’ll name them.
Four minutes left now.
I think of our long-dusty home, struck by an asteroid, likely losing its atmosphere in the process. Not just humans gone if that happened—everything eradicated, except maybe some anaerobic undersea bacteria.
I think of this fertile, primordial planet, ripe and unexplored.
I think of OS and the Coordinated Endeavor, its thousands of years traveling across the universe to find a new home. Its murderous Rover, now the gentle gardener of a new world.
Kodiak leans his ear against the gestation pod, a look of wonder on his face. A new father.
One minute left.
I put my face right alongside his, staring into his eyes as the centrifuge slows. The vibrations subside.
We ease to the lip of the gray room, where it tilts into the face of Minerva’s blue-green sky, and perch in a ray of chill sunlight. We don’t know how much space the pod needs to deliver. We have never witnessed a birth before.
The timer clicks down to zero. For a moment, all is still.
Then a panel in the gestation pod clicks open. Kodiak and I watch and wait. My hand is in his. I kiss the side of his neck. “It’s happening.”
A cry.
Kodiak clambers to the gestation pod and gasps. He turns with a small human creature in his hands. It’s moving. Little arms and little legs, little fingers and little toes. All of it slick with clear goo.
A baby.
I clear the small face, hold the newborn upside down so its airway will open. Then I cradle it in the crook of my arms, warming it with my own body heat.
Kodiak joins me, stroking the baby’s face, his heat joining mine.
Our child is born.
Acknowledgments
Never in my writing life has an acknowledgments page felt more warranted. It’s already tricky to keep a novel’s events in order, but this one’s logistics were on a whole new level. My brain would not have been up for this book on its own.
I got a whole lot of help from all sorts of humans. Here are some in particular I’d like to thank:
Michael Howard, Principal Consultant at N
ASA, jumped in headfirst with a generous and astute read.
Mathematician Edith Starr helped me with all sorts of space-time logistics.
. . . as did my husband, Eric Zahler, who put up with salt and pepper shakers standing in for spacecrafts and old radio signals during our dinners at home, even when it meant the delicious pasta he’d made was going cold. I couldn’t have written about the love of a lifetime without first experiencing one with him.
My writers’ group, Marie Rutkoski, Jill Santopolo, Marianna Baer, Anne Heltzel, and Anna Godbersen, were my front-line feedback-ers, as usual.
At the moment I started making notes for this book four years ago, Nicole Melleby was my first student at the Fairleigh Dickinson MFA in Creative Writing. Now she’s a star author of middle grade fiction, and a wonderfully astute critique partner. Minerva 4eva!
Emily Greenhill, also a former student and terrific author, helped keep the Coordinated Endeavor on course—as did my FDU colleague Minna Proctor, who helped me get deeper into the emotional wounds behind Ambrose’s regal bearing.
My mom loathes science fiction. This book didn’t change her mind, but she still gave it the best line edit you could imagine. That’s another model of love.
I’m a huge fan of Elana K. Arnold’s novels (go read them!), and it made me nervous to have her genius focused on a draft of this book. But getting a mind as generous and wise as hers on these pages was indispensable. Thanks to all my colleagues at the Hamline MFA in writing for young people.
My author friend Justin Deabler has an equally impressive brain and heart, and has been crucial to this book from start to finish. His debut novel, Lone Stars, is one to watch out for!
Writer friends and lunch buddies (or phone buddies, in these times of the coronavirus pandemic) Donna Freitas and Daphne Benedis-Grab have been crucial sources of support for over a decade—I relied on them hard for this book, as I ever have.
I think Richard Pine, my agent, can do just about anything. That he puts his mind on getting my books into the right hands is something for which I’m daily grateful.
The Darkness Outside Us Page 26