“The gods work in mysterious ways,” Oliver said, smiling up at us.
We all met—as we had agreed to the night before—just outside the command module. The mud-caked and morose shuffled in from all directions like refugees displaced by war. The shredded tarp fashion seemed near-universal, but many of the colonists had cut slits in theirs, popping their heads through them and thereby freeing their arms. A few colonists wore zipped-up hazard suits they had pulled from intact emergency kits. They looked like aliens among us, shiny and new.
Seeing the looks these colonists got from the others—and recognizing the early signs of in-grouping and out-grouping—I wasn’t at all envious of their garb. Nor did I expect the look to last, despite the obvious advantages. The social discomfort in those things had to be worse than the physical annoyances provided by the tarps.
The four of us in our sleeping group merged with another small group from a neighboring tractor. Together, we melded with the audience that had formed around the command unit’s door. Stevens—the boy who had conversed with Colony the night before—stood just outside the module and spoke with a few other colonists. I scanned the crowd and saw several faces I recog-nized, including Hickson, the big mine security guy. I noticed the way he kept shifting from one foot to the other as he chewed on his lower lip.
“Listen up, everyone,” Stevens said, raising his hands. “If you’ll please hold still, Myra is going to get a head count. As stragglers arrive, let’s have them come to this side so we don’t miss them.”
The girl sitting in one of the computer chairs the night before came forward and jabbed the air with her finger. Her lips moved with a count of the not-dead. Stevens ran his hands through his hair, then clasped them behind his back. He looked out as us with a grim expression, his lips pressed thin.
“These are unusual circumstances,” he said, “and they are going to call for an unusual force of will, and of cooperation. The Colony has wakened us fifteen years early after briefly deciding our settlement was nonviable—”
A murmur coursed through the crowd, swelling to a grumbling. Stevens held his hands out, his elbows at his waist. “I understand,” he said. “Nobody was closer to the fire than me.” He shook his head. Even from a dozen paces away, I could see his cheeks quivering. I felt a sudden urge to run to him, but he was able to win back his stoic mask.
“If you’ve had your orientation training module, you know how this works. Colony has been teetering between viable and abort since year one. Our new home has much to offer us, but it has many risks as well. I can promise you this, we will make it work.”
“That’s not what Colony said,” Hickson blurted out. He turned toward the audience. “Colony definitely said unviable last night. I heard it.”
The grumblings returned, several of the colonists shifting about uncomfortably. I became distracted by Myra, who cursed at the movement and started jabbing her finger at our side of the crowd once again.
“People, listen to me,” Stevens said. “Hickson has half the story, and I know it’s easier to believe the worst, but we must stay strong through this. We are awake for a reason—”
“The mission package,” Hickson told the crowd. “We have a very important task, a directive from Colony itself.”
Stevens clapped his hands together loudly, but the colonists had begun talking amongst themselves, creating a dull roar of impossible-to-follow discussions. I felt Kelvin brush up against me and watched him step out between the audience and the command module.
“Listen up!” he yelled, his voice booming above the din. He had his tarp wrapped around his waist, his wide chest exposed and smeared with cakes of dirt. I found myself oddly fascinated by the large sweep of his neck down to his broad, rounded shoulders. His stomach rippled, bunched with knots of muscle as he yelled the crowd to attention. The force of it all stirred something inside me, something that likely merited my professional attention.
Tarsi moved close in his absence as the crowd stilled. I wrapped my arm around her, feeling as protective over her as a mother hen might. Kelvin nodded to Stevens and walked back over to join us, frowning at me as if disappointed by the behavior of the rest of the colonists, his eyes darting between Tarsi and myself.
“Raise your hand if you want to die in the next few days,” Stevens said. He stepped away from the command module and scanned our faces. “If any of you want to die, if you feel a mad compulsion to not live among us, please take your bickering and move on. I have not slept a wink, staying up all night to converse with Colony as I made a case for our long-term survival. If any of you want to live on half-truths and innuendo, please go elsewhere.” He locked eyes with Hickson as he said this.
“We do have an important mission, but we will also devote time to settling this world. The local star,” he pointed up, even though its rays barely filtered through the canopy overhead, “was once given a name by Terran astronomers. We will rename it. We will rename this planet, but not before we scratch a toehold in it. If you trust in me, I promise you we will overcome our challenges. Colony was halfway through the construction phase, which means no protein generators and no farms cleared.”
He held up one hand and ticked off three fingers with the other. “Food, shelter, and clothing,” he said. “Those are our survival priorities. We have enough water collected from the rains to filter and last us for at least a week or two. The rains here are supposedly frequent, so we will not want for bathing and drinking.”
Stevens nodded to Myra, who had rejoined the small leadership group by the module’s door. “What did you come to?”
“Fifty nine,” she whispered, but we all heard the count.
A moan slid through the crowd; I could feel myself contributing to it. Not that I had expected much more, but the harsh finality of the number squeezed my air out. It couldn’t be sixty, or sixty-five. Our hopes had been given mathematical limits. The fuzziness of wishes had collapsed into solid dread.
“I want all the sciences to this side,” Stevens said, pointing to our half of the crowd. I looked at Tarsi and Kelvin, wondering who amongst us qualified. I think the entire gathering became confused. We shuffled in place as we discussed our professions with strangers and debated with each other.
“That includes anyone with mechanical or electrical aptitude. All the construction personnel, including miners and farmers, please come forward. Anyone with support occupations, please go over that way.”
“I guess I’m over there,” Kelvin said, raising his arms and frowning.
Tarsi squeezed his arm and nodded. “I’m going to go over to the support side. I have a feeling we’ll be the ones cleaning up this mess.”
“I’m staying here,” I said. “I guess we’ll meet back up tonight?” They nodded, and I gave each of them a quick hug.
Oliver slid up beside me as the other two departed. We were soon joined by almost a dozen other colonists; we took turns introducing ourselves and our professions. Some—like Mica, a geologist—knew they belonged among the scientists. Others, such as an electrician named Karl, weren’t sure if they should be with us, or with the construction crew.
Several colonists were clearly fudging the semantics of their occupational labels in order to remain together. I watched Tarsi introduce herself to some people in her group and began to think of myself more as a health worker, clearly a sector of support. But before I could pull myself away, Stevens approached our group and began to address us.
“I heard we have an electrical engineer over here?”
Karl raised his hand. “More of an electrician, sir. My name’s Karl.”