That would come, three or four years down the road. It always took longer to catch up when you’d taken a wrong turn.
Kirella breezed into the lounge. “Hi, Malena,” she said, dropping a bulging armbag and herself into adjacent chairs. “How did things go Thursday?”
“Like death. Like slow poison,” she said, tucking the slate into a side pocket on the airchair.
Kirella laughed. “They didn’t like him.”
“They never gave him a chance,” Malena complained. “None of my fathers can think straight on the subject. It’s so obvious. They’re so used to protecting me from the health Nazis and self-pity that they automatically extended the coverage to my virginity.”
“A little late for that, aren’t they?”
Malena smiled mischievously. “Just a little—not that I can tell them that. Not that they’d listen. They won’t listen when I try to explain to them why they’re being such asses. Father Jack even had the nerve to ask to see Ron’s medical record.”
“I hope he refused.”
“He did—which is when open warfare broke out.” She shook her head. “Ever since I met Ron on the net, the family’s been delighted that I finally had a flick friend worth locking them out for. It’d be too much for them if I was sexually repressed on top of everything else. But let him show up in person, flesh and blood instead of shimmers in the cube, and suddenly it’s bar-the-door Katie. Fear and loathing.”
“My old roommate had pet rats named Fear and Loathing,” Kirella said, chewing idly on a stick of strawberry.
“Your old roommate was a mutant.”
“No argument.”
The slate chirped from its pouch. “Malena—your nine o’clock Buddhist is here.”
“ ’kay,” she said, and the airchair lifted off the floor. “My favorite,” she said cynically. “Koan flakes for breakfast.”
Kirella grimaced and looked for something to throw. ” You’re the mutant,” she said pointedly.
“No argument,” Malena said with cheerful insouciance. “Later, love.”
The encounter room was dark save for the single candle on the floor between Malena and the young man seated cross-legged and bare-chested facing her. His eyes were closed, his head tipped slightly back, his arms floating as though weightless a few inches above the floor, his hands palm up and open, fingers loosely curled.
Pretty, she thought. Pretty. If only he was willing to try a few more of the eight Paths— “The negative energy is black and heavy,” she continued in a low, warm, patient voice. “Look inside and find the dark places, the heaviness. The pain of your guilt. The sadness of your loss. It is only your choice that holds them there. Release them. Choose not to keep them, and they will drain from your body. Choose to keep them and they will become part of you. Find the dark places and open them to light. Find the weight and release it. Feel it leaving your body, discharging into the Earth. Feel your body become light. Feel the light within.”
As she spoke, the young man’s hands dipped slowly toward the floor. When his knuckles brushed the wood planking, it was as though a static charge had grounded. A hundred muscles in his body relaxed, and his face at last looked peaceful. She felt him floating, freed, and floated with him. She heard his silent half-sobbing laughter of release, knew the moment that he achieved ephemeral egoless being and the moment it was permissible to call him back.
“Jeremy,” she said.
He opened his eyes and sought hers.
“We’re finished for today.”
A deep breath left him smaller and sadder. “Thank you, Malena,” he said, skirting the candle and coming to hug her.
Unwanted hugs were an occupational risk for counselors, and all the more so for her, a prisoner in the chair. This hug was not unwanted, and yet it made her uncomfortable all the same, for she had to wonder if she had projected her earlier thought. She accepted the embrace self-consciously and kept her contribution as chaste as possible, considering that the object of the hug was nude.
“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” she said finally, and the air-chair lifted. Way to go, bozo. Let him know that you noticed he was naked. Very professional—
The counselor’s lounge was empty, and she shut the door behind her in the hopes of keeping it that way. Hormones from hell, she fussed at herself as she drew a glass of hot cinnamon tea. Ron, you’d better be there tonight, or I’m going to end up drooling on Father Brett again—
It was not until several minutes later, when she retrieved her slate to resume reading, that she saw the V-mail marker blinking. The message was from Karin Oker, Supervisor of Selection, Diaspora Project, Allied Transcon.
She watched the message once, then immediately watched it again. For a long moment, she sat in her chair clutching the slate against her breasts, eyes glittering, hands trembling. Then she let out a whoop and sent the airchair into a dizzying spin.
The door flew open, and Kirella, the branch chiropractor, and the branch manager piled up in the doorway. “What’s the matter?” Kirella demanded, approaching. “Are you okay?”
Smiling beatifically, Malena tipped her head back against the rest and closed her eyes. “Cancel my appointments,” she said dreamily.
“What?”
“Cancel my appointments,” she said, opening her eyes to let the tears run free. “They picked me. They picked me, Kirella. I’m going to Tau Ceti.”
Ten thousand for Tau Ceti.
However euphonious it might be, the unofficial motto of the Selection Section was not quite accurate. Counting the core crew of roughly five hundred, drawn equally from Allied and Takara, plus between one and three hundred “discretionaries,” split between paying passengers and other payoffs, plus a handful of creative stowaways, the final outbound head count would be closer to eleven thousand.
And that was only if you discounted the quarter million frozen eggs (five per donor) and five myriad frozen sperm samples which would also make the trip—consolation prizes in the star-bound sweepstakes. In all, Karin Oker would get to say “Congratulations” not ten thousand, but a hundred and ten thousand times. (Lesser Selection officials would say “Sorry” to more than ten million.)
But it was the ten thousand pioneers who were the focus of most of the energy, most of the urgency, most of the romance, most of the anger. They were the elect, the chosen. They were the ones who would pass, knowingly and willingly, through what one popular commentator dubbed “the one-way door.” To those who would stay behind, the pioneers were humanity’s hope, or its arrogance; its idealism, or its idiocy; but most often, all of that and more.
It was different in Houston and Munich and Tokyo, in Brazil and Kenya, on Takara, on Memphis herself. To Karin Oker and the rest of Selection, to Hiroko Sasaki and the whole of Allied, the pioneers were the moving pieces in a complex ballet too serious to be a game. Ten thousand to pluck from homes and families across six continents. Ten thousand to process through the training and transshipment centers. Ten thousand to lift skyward a hundred at a time and ferry to the great sky city which would be their new and possibly last home. Ten thousand to meld into a working community that could survive fifty years in the crucible of interstellar flight.