Ark

23

Holle had grown up with the flood. She had no memories of life before, how politics used to be. But even so she was surprised by the speed of President Vasquez’s decision-making.

Just two days after Gordo’s session, Vasquez appeared on TV and the web. Once the funerals and proper commemorations were done, she said, Project Nimrod would continue. The Ark would fly, if it was humanly possible to make that happen. That was her promise to the crew and those who were working on the project. And she promised further that there would be no repeat of the Byers accident, that the safety of the public would be paramount. (“Until launch day,” Kelly Kenzie muttered cynically.)

But there was a price to pay. It seemed that the President had had to make considerable concessions to win over dissenters about Project Nimrod within her own administration. She, Vasquez, would not stand for a further reelection at that fall’s election. It would have been her sixth term. She would step aside and endorse her vice president as a candidate.

And Jerzy Glemp would be removed from the project he had initiated, and face charges relating to his culpability for the Byers accident.

In the Academy, Holle was oblivious to the reaction of the students, their whooping celebrations, the way Harry Smith pushed through the crowd to get to a stunned Zane Glemp. All she could think was that the project was on, that the Ark would be built. That she might yet get to fly.