Nine, not counting him. The rest had been put ashore, to face whatever would happen to them on Earth. Noah would have much preferred to be with Llaa^moh¡, but she of course had duties. Even unannounced, departure was dangerous. Too many countries had too many formidable weapons.
So instead of standing beside Llaa^moh¡, Noah sat in his energy suit in the Terran compartment of the shuttle. Around him, strapped into chairs, sat the nine Terrans going to World. The straps were unnecessary; Llaa^moh¡ had told him that the acceleration would feel mild, due to the same gravity-altering machinery that had made the World section of the Embassy so comfortable. But Terrans were used to straps in moving vehicles, so there were straps.
Kayla Rhinehart and her little son.
Her sister Isabelle.
The surly Tony Schrupp, a surprise. Noah had been sure Tony would change his mind.
A young woman, five months pregnant, who “wanted to give my baby a better life.” She did not say what her previous life had been, but there were bruises on her arms and legs.
A pair of thirty-something brothers with restless, eager-for-adventure eyes.
A middle-aged journalist with a sun-leathered face and impressive byline, recorders in her extensive luggage.
And, most unexpected, a Terran physicist, Dr. Nathan Beyon of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nine Terrans willing to go to the stars.
A slight jolt. Noah smiled at the people under his leadership—he, who had never led anything before, not even his own life—and said, “Here we go.”
That seemed inadequate, so he said, “We are off to the stars!”
That seemed dumb. Tony sneered. The journalist looked amused. Austin clutched his mother.
Noah said, “Your new life will be wonderful. Believe it.”
Kayla gave him a wobbly smile.
Harrison said, “We did our best.”
“I used to tell my kids that,” Marianne said. “Just do your best, I’d say, and nobody can ask more of you than that. I was wrong.”
“Well, they were kids,” he said. His broad, strong face sagged with fatigue, with defeat. He had worked so hard. They had all of them worked so hard.
“Harrison,” she began, and didn’t get to finish her sentence.
Between one breath and the next, Harrison Rice and the lab, along with everything else, disappeared.
CHAPTER 11
S minus 0
She could not imagine where she was.
Cool darkness, with the sky above her brightening every second. It had been so long since Marianne had seen a dawn sky, or any sky. Silver-gray, then pearl, and now the first flush of pink. The floor rocked gently. Then the last of the knockout gas left her brain and she sat up. A kind of glorified barge, flat and wide with a single square rod jutting from the middle. The barge floated gently on New York Harbor. The sea was smooth as polished gray wood. In one direction rose the skyline of Manhattan; in the other, the Embassy. All around her lay her colleagues: Dr. Rafat, Harrison Rice and Ann Potter, lab techs Penny and Robbie, all the rest of the twenty-two people who’d still been aboard the Embassy. They wore their daily clothing. In her jeans and tee, Marianne shivered in a sudden breeze.
Nearby lay a pile of blankets. She took a yellow one and wrapped it around her shoulders. It felt warm and silky, although clearly not made of silk. Other people began to stir. Pink tinged the east.
Harrison came to her side. “Marianne?”
Automatically she said, because she’d been saying it so many times each day, “I feel fine.” And then, “What the fuck?”
He said something just as pointless: “But we have two more weeks!”
“Oh my God!” someone cried, pointing, and Marianne looked up. The eastern horizon turned gold. Against it, a ship, dark and small, shot from the Embassy and climbed the sky. Higher and higher, while everyone on the barge shaded their eyes against the rising sun and watched it out of sight.
“They’re going,” someone said quietly.
They. The Denebs. Noah.
Before the tears that stung her eyes could fall, the Embassy vanished. One moment it was there, huge and solid and gray in the predawn, and the next it was just gone. The water didn’t even ripple.
The metal rod in the center of the barge spoke. Marianne, along with everyone else, turned sharply. Shoulder-high, three feet on each side, the rod had become four screens, each filled with the same alien-human image and mechanical voice.
“This is Ambassador Smith. A short time from now, this recording will go to everyone on Earth, but we wanted you, who have helped us so much, to hear it first. We of World are deeply in your debt. I would like to explain why, and to leave you a gift.
“Your astronomers’ calculations were very slightly mistaken, and we did not correct them. In a few hours the spore cloud will envelope your planet. We do not think it will harm you because—”
Someone in the crowd around the screen cried, “What?”
“—you are genetically immune to this virus. We suspected as much before we arrived, although we could not be sure. Homo sapiens acquired immunity when Earth passed through the cloud the first time, about seventy thousand years ago.”
A graphic replaced Smith’s face: the Milky Way galaxy, a long dark splotch overlapping it, and a glowing blue dot for Earth. “The rotation of the galaxy plus its movement through space-time will bring you back into contact with the cloud’s opposite edge from where it touched you before. Your physicists were able to see the approaching cloud, but your instruments were not advanced enough to understand its shape or depth. Earth will be passing through the edge of the cloud for two-point-six years. On its first contact, the cloud killed every Homo sapiens that did not come with this genetic mutation.”
A gene sequence of base pairs flashed across the screen, too fast to be noted.
“This sequence will appear again later, in a form you can record. It is found in what you call ‘junk DNA.’ The sequence is a transposon and you will find it complementary to the spores’ genetic code. Your bodies made no antibodies against the spores because it does not consider them invaders. Seventy thousand years ago our people had already been taken from Earth or we, too, would have died. We are without this sequence, which appeared in mutation later than our removal.”
Marianne’s mind raced. Seventy thousand years ago. The “bottleneck event” that had shrunk the human population on Earth to a mere few thousand. It had not been caused by the Toba volcano or ferocious predators or climate changes, but by the spore cloud. As for the gene sequence—one theory said that much of the human genome consisted of inactive and fossilized viruses absorbed into the DNA. Fossilized and inactive—almost she could hear Evan’s voice: “Or so we thought…”
Smith continued. “You will find that in Marianne Jenner, Ahmed Rafat, and Penelope Hodgson this sequence has already activated, producing the protein already identified in Dr. Jenner’s blood, a protein that this recording will detail for you. The protein attaches to the outside of cells and prevents the virus from entering. Soon the genetic sequence will do so in the rest of humanity. Some may become mildly ill, like Robert Chavez, due to faulty protein production. We estimate this will comprise perhaps twenty percent of you. There may be fatalities among the old or already sick, but most of you are genetically protected. Some of your small rodents do not seem to be, which we admit was a great surprise to us, and we cannot say for certain what other Terran species may be susceptible.