Zane paid no attention to any of this. His slight body clumsy in the bright Lycra uniform, he looked disconnected, as if barely conscious of what was going on around him-barely aware of the gravity of this moment, which could shape his entire life.
They neared the selection machine, and the line ahead cleared. They were all in the next group of ten to be called forward and lined up before Gordo Alonzo. Holle noticed an armed man behind Gordo, and another by the machine, watching silently. Behind them senior figures like Edward Kenzie and Liu Zheng stood waiting. Holle glanced over her shoulder. There was still no sign of her father.
Gordo faced them, uniform sharply creased, hands folded. “OK, you people, time for the game show. By standing here you’re stating your willingness to serve on the Ark. Yes? Now we’ll see if you’re selected.
“You’ll each step up, in turn. You’ll place your right hand on this pad.” He showed them how. “If the machine’s uncertain of your identity you’ll feel a prick of your thumb, a blood sample. OK? And if you’re on the list you’ll be given a token.” He held up a gold-colored coin. “Like this. Numbered one to eighty. Don’t lose it. Seems kind of crude I know, but once the tokens are issued you have your pass to the Ark come what may, even if we get hacked, even if the systems crash, whatever. Now, if you don’t get a token, you haven’t been selected, and we ask you to move on.” The armed soldier beside him stiffened, cradling his rifle. “Who’s first?”
Zane stepped forward. He placed his palm where they had been shown, the machine rotated, and coughed out a token. Gordo handed it to Zane, who closed his hand over it without looking at it, and moved on.
With no further trouble, Wilson and Venus both passed through. Venus was trembling; she looked hugely relieved to have made it and clutched her token to her chest.
Kelly went next, striding confidently. When Gordo handed over her token she held it aloft and whooped, as if she’d won an Olympic medal. Her father, Edward, clapped his liver-spotted hands. Holle couldn’t believe Kelly could behave this way.
The army boy, Morell, went forward next. He was shaking visibly. Gordo had to show him where to place his palm; the kid wiped his hand on his trouser leg and reached out nervously. But the machine produced a coin for him; he grabbed it and hurried on.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” said Mel. He patted Holle’s shoulder. “You next, hon. See you on the other side.”
Holle stepped forward, alone. Suddenly she was nervous, her heart hammering, a feeling of lightness in her head. She was aware of Gordo watching her, the guard at his side, Kelly and the other successful Candidates waiting for her, Mel behind her. It was as Kelly had said. All her life she had been preparing for this mission. She would never know how much she had sacrificed for it, what kind of a childhood she might have had otherwise. And it all came down to this one moment, to a decision made by some intangible expert system cooked up by Gordo and the social engineers.
There was no point hesitating. She slapped her palm on the pad. It was greasy with other people’s sweat. The machine turned. A token dropped into the slot with a rattle. She just looked at it for a long second, barely believing it. Then Gordo handed it to her, and she clutched it tightly as she marched over to join Kelly and the others. Nobody slapped her back, nobody hugged her-nobody grinned, save Kelly. It didn’t feel like that kind of moment. The Morell kid just stood there shaking, maybe more afraid that he’d made it than if he hadn’t.
Mel approached the machine. He placed his hand on the pad. The machine turned, but no token emerged. Mel frowned, staring at the machine. He went to put his hand down again, but the guard stepped forward.
Gordo put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, son.”
Mel stood straight for a long second. Then he nodded, turned on his heel, and marched away, without glancing back at Holle.
Holle couldn’t believe it. “There’s been a mistake.”
Kelly said, “Somebody had to make room for daddy’s little soldier. Tough break.”
“No!” Holle lunged forward. Kelly grabbed her arms and held her back.
38
The successful crew, the final eighty, were led by Gordo and his staff out of the hall into a smaller lecture theater. Gordo climbed up to the stage, where a podium with a blue seal on the front had been set up. A glass-walled compartment at the back held spectators. The candidates-no, the crew, Holle thought-sat in their rows, filling barely a quarter of the theater. There were so terribly few of them. And she estimated that no more than sixty percent wore the uniforms of the official Candidates.
Kelly and Wilson escorted Holle to a seat and sat to either side, making sure she stayed put. Kelly couldn’t conceal her exhilaration. Wilson was grim-faced, massive in his determination.
Holle couldn’t believe Mel wasn’t here, beside her. She felt as if she was on autopilot, unable to make decisions for herself, unable to imagine a future without Mel. She didn’t even know if she’d be allowed to see him again, unless she somehow busted out of this crew assignment.
Everybody around her shuffled to their feet. Glancing at the stage, she saw that President Peery was walking up to the podium.
Pat Peery was a short, stocky man, with a bald pate and a wide face; he wore a dark blue suit and lapel pins, a US flag to the left and his own patent whole-Earth pin to the right. He was followed onstage by a phalanx of dark-suited men and women, some of them surely security people, others maybe aides. Holle had never seen Peery in person before. He looked more like a comedian than a president, she thought, one of the stand-up comics whose improvised black humor about food shortages and eye-dees and epidemics was pumped out on the news channels in the small hours to distract insomniacs.
Peery spread his hands. “Please, sit down. I can imagine how you’re all feeling after the lottery business out there.” He patted his own belly. “Butterflies, right? I don’t want anyone fainting on me.”
His audience sat, and there was a tangible sense of relaxation, Holle thought, even a ripple of laughter.
Peery said, “Now, just nine years after my predecessor spoke to this project, we got our eighty, we got our crew. And before you prepare for your ascension I thought I should address you, and remind you of where you’ve come from, and where you’re going, and why.” He spread his hands. “These are extraordinarily difficult times for all of us. Well, you know that. You wouldn’t be riding an atom bomb to the stars otherwise. And it has been an extraordinarily difficult time to be President of this great country. You may not agree with every decision I’ve made while in office, every measure I’ve ordered. But I can assure you that every step I took was intended to ensure the survival of something of our nation beyond this dreadful historical terminus-survival of its heart and soul. And every step I took, I took in the eyes of God.
“That is as it should be. In a sense the whole trajectory of our nation’s history has been a kind of mission-I use the word in the best and bravest sense. I reversed President Vasquez’s policies regarding the secularization of the state. I may say I never tried to tamper with the Ark crew selection in that regard; things had gone too far. But you will know, if you have listened to my words at all over the last five years, that I have brought God back to the heart of our nation’s destiny.
“And in doing so, I believe, I have preserved your great project. I have argued in these final days that you, your Ark, are a pure and noble expression of the mission brought to this continent by our founders, an expression in an age of an ultimate crisis they could never have foreseen. That is how I have rallied the nation to support you. And I have also ordered the continuation of a second mission, a second Ark, a project to build a sanctuary on the Earth itself. No, I know you never heard of that before- they never heard of you. Such are the times we live in.