182: CLUSTER

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Captain Klees drafts a letter for Antarctica congratulating and thanking them for the successful launch, and noting that some last minute repairs to the shuttle were necessary and we’d had to build new docking arms that did, do our great relief, work, leaving the old ones behind for the Hylarans to cannibalise for parts.

“If you send that, they’re going to think that there’s a dangerous, powerful bomb just sittign there, armed and ready, next to their Vault,” Lina points out.

“I know,” Captain Klees grins. “Let them sweat. I want to see what excuse they give the Hylarans for getting it away.” He transmits it over radio, for the Hylarans to write and send, then heads off to the little kitchen bay nearest our rooms to make himself a coffee from the increasingly old ship’s coffee stores, the new coffee plants not ready for harvest yet.

“They can’t possibly see this and think we’re still not onto them,” I tell him, making a coffee of my own in a cup that Gavi, who turned out to be quite an artist, has drawn a little tree on to designate it as mine. “It’s way too much of a coincidence, that we’d happen to leave their bomb behind. They have to suspect something’s up. They have to have for a while now.”

“They probably have from the start,” he shrugs. “But I’m not breaking facade before they do. And at this stage, what are they going to do? They can’t starve the Hylarans any more, and they can’t risk anything that could damage the Vault or wipe out the colony. Hylara can trade their labour for the resources that they need from the Earth system, and Antarctica can be as mad as they want but they work on Hylara’s schedule now.”

“I wish I could see the face of Gatekeeper Rault when he reads your letter.”

“I bet he gets fired over this. I bet three levels of superiors above him get fired over this.”

I sip my coffee. “Delicious.”

“This coffee is horrible.”

“I wasn’t talking about the coffee.”

Things move quickly on the ship. I’ve barely recovered and settled in, when everybody aboard the Courageous is asked to make a choice. The choice. The choice that determines our entire futures.

Well, I don’t have to make it. The question of whether I’m staying on the ship or going back down is pretty much solved: my brain’s already spoken for, to help the AI. But for everyone else, there’s a big choice to make.

Most of the newly awakened colonists choose, to my great relief, to stay aboard the ship. Some people are frustrated by this, because a low planet-choosing ratio means waking a lot more people to get Hylara’s 250, but I’m just happy that such a large number of the colonists prefer our plan to the initial plan of dropping everyone onto Hylara. The choice was made without their input, and once we’ve dropped down Hylara’s 250, those remaining won’t get a choice; they’ll just be woken up, one day, on the spaceship that will be their new home.

Captain Kae Jin decides to stay aboard, unsurprisingly, even though Hylara would probably give her better medical care. A Stubborn Old Woman long before her time, she insists that this is her ship and the rest of the universe can just move around that fact. Her crew, unanimously, stick with her. For the rest of the crew, the ragtag team of colonists revived in deep space to keep this ship going, the decision isn’t so easy.

“I’m going to the planet,” Sam tells us all in the chronostasis ring where we have our little meeting, surrounded by our sleeping charges. “I just… it’s a whole new people, a whole new culture. I want to hear the stories their children tell each other. I want to learn about the travels of Storgalthan and Zamanna. I want to be a part of the culture we’re building together down there, merging our people with theirs. This is what we came to space to do; to colonise a planet. I’m not patient enough to spend a lifetime on a ship so that in a thousand years, my great-great-great grandchildren can do it.”

“You’ll be needed,” Dandelion agrees. “So am I. I have skills and information and experience that they need. I can save lives down there, I can…” She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, lets it out slowly. “But fuck ‘em. Say what you want about different cultures and all that, I can’t forgive them and I’m not going to try. The Hylarans down there already and the colonists we send down to joint hem are just going to have to do without me. I’m never setting foot in that place again.”

“I don’t want to go down there, either,” Lina says. “Life would be so much easier and more comfortable up here. So many of my friends are up here. But our skills are needed. There’ll be people down there who have spent decades in chronostasis; Hylara has modern tech and modern information manuals but they’re going to need someone with long experience in revivals and post-chronostasis complications. They need me, or the Fr – Dandelion, or Earl, and of the three of us, I’m the best choice. I have the most experience with the most critical patients, I’ve headed all of our research projects with the dead… I need to go down there.”

“You don’t owe anybody anything,” Earl says.

Lina shakes her head. “I do. I do, and most of the people I owe are dead. It has to be time to start doing the right thing sometime, right? I’m going to Hylara.”

“Me too,” Captain Klees says, shocking everyone.

“What?” I say. “You can’t!”

“You’re a captain of this ship,” Captain Kae Jin reminds him.

He shrugs. “You captained this ship on your own for twenty long years, and if there’s too many people aboard for you to do it alone any more, you have a big crew of experienced astronauts to pick co-captains from, and two thousand people in chronostasis after that. There were things that happened to us down there, things that were the results of cultural differences, of misunderstandings, things with no malice behind them that simply cannot be allowed to happen again. There’ll be other things. Other wrong assumptions, other injuries, other offenses, on both sides of the cultural divide. Somebody with experience and history down there needs to be there to resolve them. If we take off into space, I’m… look. My daughter was born a century and a half ago. She’s dead. And the thing is, I don’t know how she died; I don’t know if she had a short life or a long one, I don’t know if she died peacefully or violently, I don’t know if she was happy or miserable, I don’t know if she thought of me fondly or thought I abandoned her. I jumped off the planet and left her to her nebulous fate; I didn’t have a choice. But I do have a choice this time. If we ever make it out of orbit and head off into space, I’ll never have another peaceful night without wondering what sort of unforeseen atrocities could be happening down there; wars have sparked between smaller populations, over less. I know that this ship will be fine. I know that, because it’s full of people with experience in every disaster that this thing can throw at you. But the two hundred and fifty people we throw down there are going to need someone who knows how the planet works and also how Texan prisons work. They’re going to need someone with established relationships with the Leadership down there. They’re going to need me.” He smirks. “Besides, if I don’t get to see Antarctica’s response after this ship leaves orbit, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Oh, fuck,” Tinera groans into Denish’s collarbone. “Fuck it. He’s right.”

“Tiny?” Denish tightens his arm around her, but she pulls away.

“I’m sorry, ‘Nish. I know I said I’d stay, but you know how torn I was about the decision. And the cap makes a great point. We are needed down there.”

“After what they did to you? Your hand!”

“So what? People fuck other people over all the time. You think I’m gonna turn my back on nearly six hundred and fifty people because a couple of doctors decided they get to control my body? If anything, that just proves how much we’re needed down there. I don’t have Captain Klees’ diplomacy, but I do know how to wrangle and organise large groups of people.” She meets Captain Klees’ eyes. “A lot of people respect your gentle way of doing things, Captain, but a lot of people don’t. And you’re going to need somebody who can back you up, who knows how to talk to the sorts of people who don’t listen to guys like you.”

He nods. “I think you might be right.”

“Of course I’m right. Fuck.”

“I can’t go,” Denish says, sounding distressed. “Tiny, this is my ship. I know it better than anyone else; I have plans for making it better.”

“I know. I know.” She kisses him. “You look after our crew. Keep their world safe for them.”

“Of course I will.”

“I have to stay, too,” Tal adds. “For the AI and everything. Besides, I don’t think there’s gonna be many zeelites down there.”

“So then,” Captain Klees says. “It’s all decided, I suppose.”

“We’ll wait a week, then send down those here who chose to descend,” Captain Kae Jin says. “Once you’re all down, we can start sending down other colonists at whatever rate you feel is best.”

“You’ll want to send people down in groups of eight,” I say, “if that’s feasible. Or groups of four that can be combined into groups of eight on the ground. That’d be culturally easiest.”

“There is one other thing that we must do,” Note says, before any of you go down. Something that must be done together.”

Xanthe frowns. “Note, what are you talki – oh.”

Note is opening a vacant chronostasis pod that has been converted, somewhat sacrilegiously in my opinion, into a storage box. They pull out a tiny germination box, with a little pot of soil, a water inlet, and a small grow light. It’s too inefficient, in terms of size, to be from the food production systems; they probably scrounged it from the laboratory equipment or something.

There’s a tiny baby tree inside. It’s not an Arborean species of tree, but I recognise it by sight; it was one of the first trees I learned about, as a child.

It’s an aspen.

“This ship has gone far too long,” Note announces, “without a node tree. And the whole cluster should be present for its planting, shouldn’t they?”

“Oh!” Captain Klees’ face lights up. “That’s a great idea!”

“What is a node tree?” Denish asks.

“It’s just an Arborean custom,” I mumble. “It’s stupid. We don’t need one, it’ll just confuse everyone.”

“I think it’s really for the people who are staying to say,” Captain Klees says, “but it does seem that unity is going to be important.”

“Your cluster deserves one, do they not, Aspen?” Note asks, and I feel the weight of the gold ring in my hair.

“It’s not… it’s not their culture. You can’t expect people to just… no one would… it’d just make the Texans uncomfortable.”

Lina rolls her eyes. “Right, yes, when heading off into space to start entirely new civilisations, the important thing is to bring forth the practices of the culture that imprisoned everyone and forced them out to do their dirty work. Certainly, that is what would make all of these colonists the most comfortable. And that’s what matters the most in any case, momentary comfort and never having to contend with new things.”

“What is a cluster?” Earl asks. “That’s like a family, yes?”

“I’d say we’re family,” Tinera says, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Anyone here who doesn’t feel like family yet will after another decade in this tube,” Asteria says. “Believe me.”

“Well, then.” Captain Kae Jin leans forward in her wheelchair. “Aspen, you’re the expert. How does one plant a node tree? Is there a special ceremony?”

I glance at Dandelion, who surely knows as much about this as I do, but everyone seems to be expecting me to answer. I can feel my cheeks heating up more and more the longer this conversation goes on. “There’s… there’s not really a ceremony, as such. When the mainland is expanded, we just… plant new trees to hold everything together, and in any given area, one’s a node tree, and all the clusters in the area come to see it planted. Then as it grows, it becomes a meeting point. Trade meetings between clusters, and festivals, and funerals, and ceremonies for people joining new clusters… they happen at the local node tree. Everyone is there for the planting to be like, well, we all know where it is. But it doesn’t have a ceremony of its own; it’s part of the environment.”

“Great.” Captain Kae Jin smiles under her mask. “Let’s get everyone on the ship into a greenhouse ring and plant a tree.”

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