“And to ensure these great projects were protected and adequately supported, I have had to take measures that many of you would find unpalatable. Which I find unpalatable. I’ll pick out one example that has affected you directly, right here today in Gunnison.
“We brought you in here to the Zone early, without warning, so as not to allow the eye-dees and saboteurs and other crazies any chance to blow up the Ark or throw their babies over the fence, or otherwise disrupt the mission. We got you locked down before they knew what was happening.
“But here’s the blunt truth. In order to secure the loyalty of my generals, my senior military people, I had to grant their children places on the Ark. This wasn’t done arbitrarily; the kids had to satisfy basic standards of health, genetic diversity, competence and the rest. But now those men, those senior people, will be protecting their own children. They’ll do a job, believe me. But the process to which some of you have devoted your whole lives has been subverted at the very last minute. Maybe you hate me for this. I don’t blame you if you do. But if I had not, I don’t believe I could have guaranteed your security for the seven days left before you launch. I hope you understand, and will forgive me.
“Look, that’s enough from me. You have an enormous amount of work to do, and not very many hours left to do it in. Just remember that I, and all of your parents’ generation, have given you all we can to ensure your remarkable journey is successful. Some of us have blackened our very souls. Remember us, on Earth II.” He glanced at his watch, and at his aides. “I guess that’s it.” He walked away from the podium.
Everybody stood up.
As the President’s party left the stage, Edward Kenzie and Patrick Groundwater walked in from a side door. They hurried to the stage to join Gordo Alonzo, who was earnestly talking to Liu Zheng. Patrick looked around, scanning the audience anxiously, until he saw Holle, and he beckoned her urgently.
Holle ignored Kelly and the rest. She grabbed her bag and hurried down the steps, rushing to the stage. “Dad, oh, Dad-”
“Sweets.” Patrick grabbed her, hugging her close. He was hot, sweating, unshaven, as if he had been working through the night.
“I thought I wasn’t going to get to see you again.”
“Don’t be silly.” Patrick stepped back, smiling tiredly. “I just had to wait for the President. Quite a speech.”
Gordo grunted. “Same old horseshit from Pat Peery. It wasn’t about the project, he’s angling for the statues you’ll build to him on Earth II.” He shook his head. “Well, he’s a brutal operator. Including wrapping the whole thing up in a holy mission. What the times need, I guess.”
Holle didn’t care about Peery. “Dad. You know what happened-you know about Mel?”
“I’m sorry, sweets. You know there’s nothing I could do about that. You load in twenty outsiders at the last minute, you’re going to have to make space by dumping twenty insiders.”
“I won’t fly without Mel.”
Patrick cupped her cheek, as he had when she was very small. “Your whole life has led to this. You have to fly. Do it for me.”
“And besides,” Edward Kenzie murmured spitefully, “here you are. I don’t see you handing your token back to Gordo.”
Patrick turned on him. “You arsehole, Edward-”
Gordo said, “Can this wait until later? Holle, we got a kind of urgent situation on our hands we need your help with.”
Holle glared at him. “You’ll get no help from me.”
Gordo sighed and rubbed his face. “Jesus Christ-kids! Look, can you just pretend you’re still part of the fucking crew for another hour?”
Liu Zheng said, “Of all the Candidates, he will only speak to you.”
“Who?”
“Matt Weiss. He is waiting.”
Bewildered, she let herself be led away, while Kelly and the others stared after her.
39
Matt’s cell was basic, a cave in a concrete block of a building, the walls rough and unfinished. He had a chemical toilet, a sink, a cupboard with books, a bunk, a TV. But there were no windows, no natural light.
Matt was sitting on his bed when Gordo opened the door. Liu and Gordo followed Holle in; Patrick stayed outside.
Matt stood up, looking away as if embarrassed. He wore a coverall of some rough recycled material. “Wasn’t expecting you,” he said to Holle. “I know I said that I’d speak to you if you came, but-”
She forced a smile. “Wasn’t expecting to be here.” She still didn’t know what they wanted of her. She sat down on the bunk, and he sat beside her. Liu Zheng sat on the room’s only chair, a hard plastic upright, and Gordo leaned against the wall, arms folded.
“Sorry it stinks in here,” Matt said. “I shower every three days. But it’s poky, you know.”
“In a couple of weeks the whole Ark will probably stink just as bad.”
“Maybe. I’ll never know, will I? I bet you didn’t know they had a prison on the launch site.”
She shrugged. “I’m not surprised. The whole place is like a prison now, crawling with cops and soldiers and National Guard. They’ve kept you here since-”
“Since I confessed to killing Harry, yeah.”
“What about a trial?” She glanced up at Gordo.
Gordo said, “We’re kind of busy. Mounting trials isn’t a priority.”
“I don’t want a trial,” Matt said firmly. “What would be the point? It would make no difference to the outcome.”
Holle shrugged. “OK. But what now? I guess they’re going to move you away from here.” In this cell they were no more than four hundred meters from the base of the Orion stack.
Liu Zheng leaned forward. “That’s what we need to speak to you about, Matt. We need volunteers.”
“Volunteers?”
“Look-” Liu pointed up and out, in the vague direction of the Ark. “You understand that when the bird flies, everything within several hundred meters of the launchpad will be destroyed. The Zone will be smashed to the ground, and much of the wider Hinterland-”
“I know, I know. Nothing close in to the Orion will survive. So what?”
Gordo said, “But somebody needs to stay ‘close in.’ Right to the end, right to the moment when those cannon start spitting their thermonuclear shells down through the pusher plate.”
Liu Zheng sighed. “Matt, the Ark is an experimental machine. It is a sick joke that we will still be building it at the moment it flies. Well, it is true. Even now a slew of design modifications afflicts us. We will have no time to implement most of them, let alone test them. You know that launch control will be run out of a bunker at Pikes Peak. But remote command and support will not be enough. In the final hours, as we run down the countdown clock, we are expecting many failure modes to occur-some we can anticipate, surely many that we cannot.
“There will be a team,” Liu said. “A team who will stay right until the final minute, until it is too late to escape the blast zone-you must understand-a team who may find themselves crawling through the Orion fixing leaks even as the atomic bombs begin to fire.”
“A suicide squad,” Matt said slowly. “And you want me to be on it.”
Holle felt she could barely breathe. After a day of shocks, this was one development she had not foreseen.
Gordo said, “According to your aptitude tests, you were pretty good at math and physics and nuclear engineering, but you were one of the best hands-on mechanics in the Candidate corps. So here’s a chance, kid. A chance to do something for the project you devoted your life to.”
Liu Zheng reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “And I,” he said, “will be with you. I will lead. This is my project, after all.” He smiled. “It will be glorious. Think of the honor. Think of the spectacle as the bird flies, seared on your retinas-”