Serendipity

by Dennis Ingram

  Steve Rickard missed his life on Earth. With his wealth and the power that came with it, he’d had a life envied by many. He missed his opulent mansion, his holiday homes, his private jet. He missed the cut and thrust of business and the challenge of building his empire. But most of all, he missed the food.

  When you are rich and fond of food, the world of culinary pleasure beckons. No restaurant turned away his custom. He hosted lavish dinner parties to show off his skill in selecting the best chefs and the best dishes for them to prepare.

  God, he missed the food. Perversely for a gourmet such as himself, he craved the simplest of things. He dreamt of New York pizza. Hamburgers. Tacos. All things he couldn’t find here.

  To be fair, the food here wasn’t bad. Some of the colonists were exceptional in the kitchen, considering what they had to work with. Nathalie in particular, he thought with affection, could find work at any top-class boulangerie. She’d grown wise to him, though, and he found it harder and harder to persuade her to part with more than one of her pastries at a time.

  No, he couldn’t complain about the good, healthy food Haven offered. He had to admit it felt good to shed a few pounds (well, more than a few to be honest), but what use is a slim figure if one is denied the basic pleasures of life?

  As he thought of what he missed, it didn’t take long for his dreams to mate with his natural entrepreneurial spirit.

  There’s no burger joint here. Why don’t I do something about that?

  Once conceived, the idea took on a life of its own. It progressed from Why don’t I do something? to I should do something to How do I do it? within the space of a day.

  The challenge was daunting. He had no real experience of cooking food. He was a connoisseur, an appreciator of the art of others. Haven had no supply chain – if you wanted to prepare food, it meant harvesting the crops or slaughtering the animal yourself. If the ingredients you needed weren’t growing at the moment, you were out of luck. He couldn’t pay someone to build him a hamburger joint because he had no money. Hell, no one had any money, because there was no money! Even if he set up a fast food business, how would anyone pay him?

  He had a problem of epic proportions. But Steve hadn’t grown rich by giving up in the face of a challenge. He grinned. No sir. He ate challenges for breakfast.

  To his disappointment, Nigel had found no one to share his passion with since they’d arrived. There’d been the occasional flutter of interest, but no one willing to put in the hours of effort and dedication to train.

  But this morning he had two students: Joyce and Simon.

  Joyce, he knew, had lived in her own private hell. Jake Cooper and Roberto Sevos had killed her mother. They had assaulted, kidnapped, and almost raped Joyce. They stripped away her childhood innocence and catapulted her into adulthood in the worst possible way. Now it warmed his soul to see a mix of hope and determination in her eyes.

  He knew Simon’s motivations were simpler: he wanted to do what Nigel could do, then he wanted a rematch.

  Nigel passed a small bundle of white clothes to each of them. He’d been down to the fabricator that morning.

  “This is your gi,” he said. “Put it on and we’ll begin.”

  He showed them how to tie their belts and stood back to assess them.

  “Your belts are white. This is where you start your journey, in the tenth kyu. As you improve, your belt color will change, until you earn a black belt, like mine.”

  “Then will we have finished learning?” Joyce asked.

  Nigel laughed. “No. Then you will be good enough to start.”

  “This is outrageous!” Carla’s pinched face showed her anger as she paced up and down.

  Franz was sitting on the ground, near the edge of the lake. The last of the evening sun filtered through the small dome to the west, picking out the tops of the wild lands trees with coppery light.

  “You did shoot him,” he said.

  Carla’s head snapped around. “Whose side are you on? Of course I shot him! The point is, I did them all a favor. None of them understand just how bad their lives would’ve been under Edward!”

  She pointed to her chest. “I knew. I was there with him through every step! They should be thanking me, not persecuting me!”

  “Well, you’ll get your chance to explain all this soon enough,” Franz said, turning to admire the play of sunlight on water.

  “Franz!”

  He looked up at the snap in her voice. “Yes?”

  Carla’s expression softened as she brought her anger under control. She had to be careful – she needed Franz. She didn’t care about him, but right now she needed someone she could rely on, someone she could bend to her will.

  She sat down beside him and placed one hand on his knee. “I need you.” Her lips parted as she leaned in. “These people, they want to throw me to the wolves.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She licked her lips and dropped her eyes. “I need someone to support me, at the trial.”

  Franz’s eyes widened. “Are you asking me to be your lawyer?”

  Fuck no! I actually want to walk away from this!

  Carla smiled and planted a kiss on his cheek. “No. I will defend myself. But I need someone to support me, to bear witness to my good character. Can you do that for me?”

  Franz’s eyes narrowed and Carla nuzzled her face into his neck. “They will respect you Franz. I need that.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Of course. You’re a starship captain, aren’t you?”

  His eyes betrayed his hurt. “You know that never happened.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t your fault.” She gripped his arm. “They’ve wronged both of us. But they still respect what you were, what you can achieve. It hasn’t worked out the way it should have, but we can still found a colony together, you and me.”

  Franz nodded as she spoke. “Yes. Yes, we could.”

  “We need to get through this first,” Carla said, her eyes bright. “Help me through this and we’ll make plans to leave.”

  Franz paused for a heartbeat, but she saw she had hooked him again, as she always did.

  He nodded again. “Of course.”

  “Sabine?” Veronika asked.

  Sabine’s eyes misted and she looked away.

  “You are OK?” Veronica had sent her two boisterous twins, Lilya and Lidya, packing after an unsuccessful attempt to extract permission to go outside.

  Sabine nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes. It’s just …”

  Veronika’s eyes softened. “Yes, I understand.”

  “What?” Felicity asked. “What’s the problem?” She and Silvia Ramirez sat with Sabine and Veronika, steaming cups of tea in front of them.

  Veronika exchanged a look with Sabine. Felicity made great company and, being Haven’s sole beautician, had become popular with the women of the colony. But no one would call her tactful. Life could be cruel sometimes, and people like Felicity made it worse, even though they didn’t mean to.

  Sabine turned to Felicity. “It’s just I … I can’t have children. And …” Her voice broke.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Felicity said, touching her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know …”

  Sabine glanced at Veronika, a silent plea for help.

  Veronika felt her heart melt. It had been only a few weeks since Sabine’s diagnosis, and she was almost as upset as Sabine, knowing she couldn’t fix the problem.

  Or could she?

  Sabine’s problem wasn’t infertility. She had eggs, but she couldn’t carry a child to term. There was nothing wrong with Simon’s fertility, so …

  “I thought my child-bearing days were over,” Veronika said. “Six children, it seemed enough.” She smiled as she looked over to where the twins were playing. “Sometimes more than enough.”

  The other mothers laughed, exchanging knowing smiles.

  Veronika looked at Sabine. “But I could do one more.” She took Sabine’s hand in her own
. “But this time, I think a surrogate. We should all have had surrogates, but we never did.”

  None of them ever talked about this deviation from the plan. They’d brought human ova, sperm, and embryos with them, frozen in liquid nitrogen and carried in their stasis chambers. They were there to expand the limited range of their small genetic pool. Their mission planners had intended they would be used to mitigate the risk of their tiny population, but the colonists had left them alone. When it came down to it, none of them wanted cuckoos in their nests, and there’d been an unofficial “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about their intentions. The one time Veronika remembered the subject coming up there had been a comment about “preserving the embryos for future generations,” and that had been the last time anyone had mentioned it.

  This time she had an emotional connection to the parents, and that made all the difference.

  “Do you mean …?” Sabine asked, not daring to say it.

  Veronika nodded, smiling even though she had a tear in one eye. “Da. Da, I will carry your child. For you and Simon.”

  Sabine couldn’t hold back her tears either. “Veronika, I don’t know what to say!”

  “I do!” Silvia said. “This has gone on too long!”

  Both Veronika and Sabine’s heads snapped around at her brusque statement.

  “What?” Veronika asked, eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

  “For goodness sake, Veronika! You don’t have to do this! Sabine can just put her baby in an egg!”

  A range of emotions washed across Sabine’s face, ending in confusion. “An egg?” She looked at Veronika, whose face had tightened.

  “Why are you saying this?” Veronika said. “You know it doesn’t work!”

  “What? What is she talking about?” Sabine asked. “I don’t understand!”

  Veronika shot a dark look at Silvia and turned to Sabine. “She means an artificial womb. We call them eggs because they are shaped like one. It’s how we produced our first generation of animals years ago, after we’d landed and set up our first habitat.”

  She glared at Silvia again. “But they don’t work on humans. She knows that!” She frowned. “Unless …” She raised an eyebrow, her face a question mark.

  Silvia had one hand clamped over her mouth. She looked left and right, as if worried about eavesdroppers. “I’m sorry I … I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Veronika narrowed her eyes. “So, it’s true.”

  “What?” Felicity asked, her eyes wide. “What’s true?”

  Veronika looked at Silvia, whose cheeks had flushed. “They have new technology they haven’t told us about. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Silvia looked away, removing all of their doubts. “The eggs, they didn’t work well for humans. Even if they had, they were too small. They didn’t scale up. But that’s not true anymore, is it?” She glanced over her shoulder as if expecting punishment for speaking. She shook her head. “I’m an egg baby,” she whispered, startling even Veronika.

  “Bozhe moi,” Veronika said. She looked at Sabine. “I don’t think you need limit yourself to one child now.”

  Steve’s wife Stella cocked her head to one side when she first heard the plan, but she soon found herself nodding. She’d heard schemes like this from him in the past, and he delivered more often than not. This one was small in size but breathtaking in scope. Steve not only wanted to start a fast food franchise, he wanted to invent a monetary system to support it!

  “Think of the potential, Stella,” he said. “Not only do we start a business; it will be the first business on this world! If we get in on the ground floor, we can set up the currency and control it. We would become the colony’s bank. We would be the only employer. We would have the real power!”

  She nodded. “It’ll be hard work, at first.”

  “Pssh. Soon enough we’ll be able to hire some of those kids to do the real work. Then all we have to do is count the money.”

  “It’s not much though, not here.”

  Despite her offhand comment, Stella knew Steve saw her interest. She too missed the wealth and influence they’d had on Earth, and the thought of finding a way to regain a piece of that lost glory intrigued her.

  “It’s a small pond, my dear, but there’s no harm in being the biggest fish living in it.”

  “So what else don’t we know about?” John’s voice crackled over the video link. “I mean, a human-capable egg is great and all, but what else is there?”

  “It isn’t just great, John, it’s life-changing for us,” Nigel said. “All of those eggs, sperm, and embryos we didn’t use – now we can use them, all of them.”

  The others exchanged uncomfortable looks as they thought about what they should have done.

  “I mean, even if we had used them, we couldn’t have used them all. Now, we can. We can produce a vibrant, varied population where we needn’t track everyone’s genealogy all the time. That’s big.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that,” John said. “But if they have the eggs, there must be more, right?”

  David looked at Nigel, ignoring John’s comment. “All of them?” he asked. “How many do we have?” He knew they had brought a lot of material with them, but he’d left the details to Nigel and Josh.

  “A thousand,” Nigel replied, raising eyebrows in the room. “Enough material to create at least one thousand genetically distinct human beings. A cross-section of all human races. All of them selected for their superior genetic heritage.”

  David blinked, as stunned as the rest of them. “And we need to use them or lose them?” he asked, his mind spinning with the possibilities.

  “Well … yes. But remember, they were in stasis during the journey here. Also, an embryo can last for a long time if it’s kept frozen. So we don’t have to use them all now, but we should aim to bring them to the point of viability over the next few decades.”

  “Decades,” David echoed, stroking his chin.

  “Just as well,” Nathalie pointed out. “These children will need families. We don’t want to bring them up in some kind of soulless baby factory.”

  “Thirty years of families should do it then,” mused David. “If every family adopted two children …”

  “… we can guarantee a strong, viable colony,” Nigel finished. “One with no worries about inbreeding, ever.”

  David nodded, a light in his eyes as he thought of the possibilities.

  Nathalie soon brought him crashing back to earth. “If they aren’t destroyed by the asteroid.”

  It was as if the sun disappeared behind a cloud. David looked at Nathalie and nodded. “You’re right. We can’t bring new lives into this world until we know there will be a world for them to live in.”

  John called Ernie as soon as the meeting broke up. “Come on, Ernie, spill it. You must know.” He found the possibilities of the eggs exciting too, but he wanted to hear about other new technologies he felt sure the new arrivals had.

  “Well …” Ernie said, pushing his cap back and scratching his head, “we didn’t leave that long after you folks. There wasn’t much time for progress.”

  “Bullshit. It was thirty years. That’s plenty of time for change on a planet with nine billion people.”

  “Really, there wasn’t much,” Ernie said, spreading his hands, but he had difficulty meeting John’s eyes.

  “I was on the Inspiration, remember?” said John. “I saw some things. Not much, to be sure, but there were those fancy walls. Smooth until you pull on them, then your hand sticks. And the whole wall lit up like a TV screen, anywhere. No seams, either. How do you explain that?”

  “I didn’t say there were no improvements,” Ernie said. “Just no magic, that’s all.”

  John narrowed his eyes. “Somehow I don’t think you’re telling the whole story, mate. We’ll talk more about this later.” He shot Ernie another glance as he reached for the screen control. “This isn’t over.”

  Ernie watched his image fade out before letting out a lon
g breath. This would not be easy.

  “A penny for them.”

  Nathalie looked around and smiled at Sheldon as he entered the office. “Just thinking about Doom.” Her mouth turned down. “That’s all I think about now. That and John.”

  Sheldon didn’t know who first called the asteroid heading their way Doom, but the name had stuck – even Nathalie used it now. He smiled and walked closer. “Perhaps it’s time we found something more pleasant for you to think of.” He touched her on the shoulder, then frowned as Nathalie pulled away, turning back to her screen.

  “I haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said.

  Nathalie glanced at him over her shoulder through tired eyes and shrugged. “It’s been hard with John away. The children don’t have a father to turn to, only me. I worry about him.”

  Sheldon kept his face impassive. He tried to thrust aside the thought of what might have been if John hadn’t survived. Then Nathalie wouldn’t worry about John and she might spend more time with him. He wanted to tell Nathalie how he felt, but he knew she wouldn’t want to hear it, not now. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” he heard himself saying instead. “Hope will take care of him.”

  Nathalie pressed her lips together and Sheldon knew she thought otherwise. They all knew John’s food supply wouldn’t last much longer. How could she not worry?

  “What is the most important part of your contract?” Carla asked. “What is it?”

  Silvia shifted her feet, dreading what might come next. She did know Harper Industries insisted on secrecy above all else. After all, she was one of those secrets. Silvia herself was as much a product of Harper Industries as her parents, something she hadn’t been allowed to forget.

  “I didn’t mean to. It just slipped out.”

  Carla drew back, her lips compressing into a thin line. “Slipped out,” she said. Her eyes continued to drill their way into Sylvia’s soul, or so it felt.

  This whole situation seemed surreal. While Edward lived, Sylvia had had no doubts as to where her loyalties lay. They’d all signed their contracts with Edward himself. Now he was dead, did she owe any loyalty to Carla? Carla claimed to be the head of Harper Industries now, but was she really? After all, she’d murdered Edward, so how could she assume any kind of moral authority over her?