Ark

61

Halivah was stirring, ending another ship’s night, but the lights were as low as aboard Seba. The ground-mandated routine of having the two hulls on different day-night cycles, so there was always half the crew awake and functional, had soon been abandoned for the tensions it caused between two sets of crewmates in different states of wakefulness. There had even been a petty dispute about which hull should have the honor of being slaved to Alma time, and which should be eight hours out of sync. Now both hulls followed the same clock cycle, both mirroring Alma time, with a rota for a small night watch in each hull.

The feel of this hull was strikingly different, however. The social engineers’ paintwork, urban design in contrast to Seba’s natural colors, had been meticulously scrubbed away, to reveal the raw textures of the artificial surfaces beneath, the plastic, the metal, the glass. Even the mesh decking plates were bare. The Halivah inhabitants as a group had decided on this as a kind of artistic gesture of their own-they chose to live with the cool mechanical reality of their environment, rather than try to mask it with the colors of a planet none of them would ever see again. Holle was enough of an engineer to appreciate the stripped-down beauty of the result.

But some surfaces had been filled in with artwork, rendered with precious smears of paint, crayon and pencil. On the fifth deck Holle paused by one painting of a kind of house filled with light, surrounded by

a dark, threatening sky-and a knock on the door represented by arcs of yellow paint. The painting was signed: HALIV. DREAM CIRCLE 4.

“Psst.”

The whisper came from under her feet. She glanced through the mesh floor to see Wilson on the next deck down, in pants and a vest that showed off his muscular torso. “You like the artwork?”

“Not much. It’s well enough done. But the subject’s obvious, isn’t it?” This was one of the most common dreams, or nightmares, endured by the crew. Here were the last humans alive (possibly), fleeing through space in these metal hulls: what if there were a knock on the wall?

Wilson grunted. “I don’t like these damn dream circles. All they do is recycle morbid rubbish like this. Feeding off each other’s mental garbage.”

“Maybe. But some days there’s nothing to do but scrub down the walls, Wilson. People need some kind of stimulus from outside their own heads.”

Wilson wasn’t impressed. “It’s just another fucking fad. The circles only caught on when we started rationing access to the HeadSpace booths. And speaking of HeadSpace-”

“Let’s go see Theo.”

“Yes.”

Holle followed Wilson down a few more decks. They passed through cabin villages that were subtly different from those aboard Seba, the crew fiddling with the partitions and gradually modifying the place to suit their own tastes.

Holle said, “I take it you haven’t found little Meg.”

“No. I got the night watch searching, and when everybody else has woken up we’ll start a top-to-bottom inspection. Probably have to take the damn ship apart to do it.”

“These kids are growing up here. I guess they’re going to know these hulls better than we ever will.”

“Yeah. Poor little bastards. Morning, Theo.”

Theo Morell was waiting for them outside a small cabin, the eleventh deck’s HeadSpace booth. He was leaning against a wall, arms folded, a handheld dangling from his waist. “I see you brought backup.”

“Thought it was safest to have a woman here, in case Cora kicks off again.”

“Oh, she will,” Theo said airily. “She always does.”

Wilson glanced at the booth, where a red light glowed over the door. “She’s in there now?”

“Yeah. Been in all night. She’s alone. Doesn’t even take her kid. You want to see?” Theo hefted his handheld and pressed a button.

A screen on the wall lit up to show a little girl playing on a sunlit patio. She was outside an apartment that overlooked a sparkling sea. Dimly realized avatars shared the space with her. The patio was wide, the sea a gleaming plain that stretched to a sharp horizon with a blue sky.

The basic premise of the scene was obvious: it was about space, room to run and play, alone and free of the pressure of people all around, free of adult responsibility. A copyright stamp, dated 2018, said that the scenario, based loosely on Sorrento, Italy, had been devised as a personal space by Maria Sullivan, a HeadSpace user in Manchester, Britain, and donated to the Nimrod project by the corporation. Holle wondered what had become of Maria Sullivan.

“So Cora is the little girl?”

“You got it. Look, I tried to get her out of there. I tried all the tactics you recommended, Wilson. Like doing deals, another half-hour and then you come out. Nothing works, not with her. Believe me, calling you was the last resort.”

“I don’t want to hear your justifications,” Wilson said. “Just shut it down.”

Theo raised his handheld, and poised his thumb over a key. “You ready for this?”

“Just do it.”

Theo stabbed down his thumb and stood back. The light over the door turned from red to green.

Almost immediately the booth door slammed open. Cora Robles came staggering out, pushing a sensor mask from her face. She wore a black all-body suit, gloves with thick touch-stimulating finger pads, and she trailed a fat cable back into the booth. She glared at Theo. “You shut it off? I wasn’t done!”

He backed off. “Cora, look, I asked you enough times-”

“Give me that console.”

“No, Cora.”

“Start me up again, you little prick!” She launched herself at Theo, her gloved fists raised.

Holle lunged forward and put herself between Cora and Theo. She took a couple of blows on the chest, and then she got her arms wrapped around Cora’s torso. Cora flailed, trying to get at Theo, but for all her anger she was weak and not difficult to contain. The suit was tight enough for Holle to feel how thin she was, her bones prominent, her shoulder blades, her hips. Either she had been skipping meals or she had been swapping food for HeadSpace credits. Wilson hauled at the data cable connecting Cora to the booth, pulling her away from Holle. Cora slipped and fell backward to the mesh floor. She lay there, panting hard, her face twisted.

Holle was shocked at the state Cora was in, and felt guilty she hadn’t noticed. Holle had grown up with this woman. Cora had always been beautiful, bright, flirtatious, a live-wire party girl. Maybe all that energy had been turned in on herself, in the confines of the Ark.

Holle kneeled down beside her. “Look, I’m sorry that had to happen, Cora. You needed to come out of there. Your little girl’s lost.” As Cora had left Meg’s father back on Earth, she was the child’s prime carer.

Wilson snapped, “She knows. We fed it into the booth. Didn’t make any difference. She cares more about her HeadSpace fantasy than about her own kid.”

“And she’s out of credits,” Theo said, grinning down at her.

Wilson wasn’t impressed by his attitude. “What are you laughing at? You run this fucking system, gatecrasher. You should take responsibility for dealing with hassles like this.”

Theo held his hands up. “Last time I tried to get Cora out of there she accused me of assault. Not risking that again. She’s a Candidate, after all, she’s one of you. At least I want witnesses.”

Once it became clear it would be necessary to ration access to the HeadSpace booths, it had been Holle’s idea to give Theo the responsibility of running the rationing system. He did it competently enough, with a system of credits maintained in the public areas of the Ark archive. But Theo was too damn cocky. Maybe there was truth in the rumors that he had been bartering HeadSpace credits for other stuff, that he was turning into a kind of pusher for addicts like Cora. Holle hadn’t wanted to believe it. Theo had grown up a lot since the launch, she thought, though he was still only twenty-one. And not all that growing up had been in a good way.

She turned away and put an arm around Cora. “Come on. Let’s get you on your feet and out of this stupid suit. You look like you need a drink, food and sleep, not necessarily in that order. And then you’re going to have to help us figure out where Meg might be…” She led her away.

Wilson stormed off, with a final glare at Theo.