Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I take Sri’s hand in mine as we head toward the space elevator terminal. Hand-holding isn’t something we generally do, Sri and I. Maybe I’m a little shaken. Maybe that night with Devon Mujaba has opened a new hunger inside me for physical contact. (Maybe my hands are a little sweaty, too, but Sri doesn’t seem much to mind.)

My violin case is bulky in Sri’s other hand, knocking against their thigh. I reach around and take it.

“Is this stupid?” I ask. “Sending a seven-hundred-year-old violin into outer space?”

Sri cocks their head. “If you sold that violin instead, you could house fifty refugees for a year, if that’s what you mean.”

I look at the case in my hand. “You’re really no fun sometimes, you know that?”

“Justice isn’t known for being fun, no,” Sri says with fake solemnity.

“No wonder you and Devon Mujaba are such good friends,” I say, giving one of their nipples a crank in revenge. They crank me right back, before I can cover myself. “Asshole,” I gasp.

We just manage to find our composure before the elevator doors open. Because I’m still a Cusk, we get an onyx car into orbit. Landkeepers escort us to the elevator door, and no doubt landkeepers will meet it to deliver us to the Endeavor , but in the meantime we get half an hour of privacy as we ride. Well, “privacy.” It’s a Cusk elevator, and there’s no way my mother doesn’t have someone somewhere monitoring our conversation. But we’re the only two organic bodies inside.

“Going to the ship will feel strange,” I say. “Seeing where other versions of me will be spending their lifetimes.”

Sri stays quiet. They’re a crouch-before-you-leap type, so I know I’m about to hear something I don’t want to know.

“You’re a scientist of the heart,” Sri says. “Even if you don’t feel it now, all the details about the ship will be important to you. Where you’ll eat breakfast and where you’ll lay your head. You’ll fixate on it if you don’t get some answers now.” A few weeks ago, during our latest breakup, Sri went on a tirade about my similarities to Minerva and my mother, that I never said I was sorry or that I’d messed anything up or that I didn’t know something, and that made it impossible to get truly close to me. That I was always conquesting and never just being. They’d called me a “scientist of the heart” meanly then, but this time they say the phrase neutrally, like we finally know each other well enough to be at peace with who we are to each other.

I certainly do know that Sri’s right that I’m still in shock, that I probably can’t trust my own instincts. I’m grateful that I can lean on them to know what’s best for me, since I can’t do that for myself. Ah. Now I know why I’m holding their hand! Why am I such a mystery to myself sometimes?

“So,” Sri says. I tense, worried that they’re going to launch into whatever next veiled critique they’re planning to drop on me, probably some version of how I’m not using my Cusk influence to save millions of people, etcetera. “Tell me everything about hooking up with Devon Mujaba.”

“Ooh, gladly,” I say.

Unlucky for her, if Mother is listening in right now, she’s getting every detail of Devon Mujaba’s body. Down to the placement of each mole. I run my hand along the uniform fabric covering the back of my pelvis. “There’s a smattering there. Like a dash of pepper.”

“Sounds delightful,” Sri says.

“It really was,” I say. In the very beginning, we’d get jealous of each other’s trysts, but those days are past. Now we’re like a couple of intimacy gourmets, excited to hear about each other’s good meals.

I lie out flat, so my head is in Sri’s lap. They put one arm under my nape and the other around my shoulders. “You’re being all soft and tender, it’s totally confusing me,” they say.

“Yeah, don’t worry, it won’t last.” I move my cheek so I can feel Sri’s thigh through the thin fabric of their academy uniform. Bone and muscle and blood. Sex. One solution for the question of where to put an unwelcome feeling.

“I recorded my message to load onto the ship for spacefarer you,” Sri says. “You’d be proud. It’s polished and impersonal and not at all gooey.” Sri sucks in their breath. “Sorry to move us on in our conversation too early, but time is short and I have one last Devon Mujaba thought. But I can’t say it aloud.”

I move my head so I can watch Sri flip open their school satchel and pull out a piece of paper and a pencil. Real live vintage paper and pencil! “You’re so pretentious, I can’t take it,” I say into their lap.

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Sri proceeds to bring out a folder. The movement is awkward with my head in their lap, but there’s no way I’m moving.

When was the last time anyone used a folder, the 2200s? This one could very well be from then. Its corners are yellowed, and the cardboard cover bends in half even under Sri’s light touch.

I laugh. “What are you doing ?”

They tent the broken folder as best they can over the paper, cursing as they try to write with dull pencil, the paper crinkling over their knee. “How did anyone do this back in the day? Paper is so awkward!”

“I’m pretty sure in the vintage reels they’re always sitting at desks. Or tables. Or what was that 2100s horror reel about the exploding businesspeople? They used something called a ‘clipboard’ as a surface, I think.”

“Well, I couldn’t find any clipboards in the academy, so my leg will have to do.” Sri manages to write a few words with the distractions of weird paper and my head in their lap. “Sit up, and read this in secret,” they say, keeping the paper hidden under the folder as they hold it out to me.

I’m not sure what this game is, but it’s a welcome distraction. I’m smiling as I look at whatever love note Sri just wrote for me.

My smile drops.

It is not a love note. It’s not even a pornographic doodle.

You had your bender. You had your wallow. Now you fix this thing that’s been done in your name.

I sit up and take the dull pencil from them. Sri took up handwriting as a hobby, so theirs is surprisingly beautiful. My own looks like a child’s scrawl, and cramps up the muscles under my thumb. That’s what DM wants, too. But I don’t know what to do. How about I just crawl into a safe satellite suite with you and hope the world doesn’t explode beneath us?

Sri’s mouth draws into a tight line. Stop it , their mouth says.

If I contradict the Cusk story, they could call it treason , I continue to write. I don’t know how to put words to the other part, the ethics of putting my clones in jeopardy.

So your mother’s betrayal is fine, but yours is not?

That doesn’t make sense. But I get their meaning: my mother’s not the only one who gets to break the rules.

What if my coming out with what’s been done in my name means the Endeavor never takes off? I could be preventing Cusk Corporation from settling an exoplanet. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Intentional mission failure.

But if outcry means the mission doesn’t go, it would mean my clones would never have to wake up into their brief misery. Wouldn’t have to sit and wait to be murdered by their ship in the bleak emptiness of space.

The events of the past day make me wonder: Should humans be spreading out to exoplanets in the first place?

The war impending below, the ship about to launch above, me in the elevator in between with only a few hours to act. Will humanity potentially end here, or do we send out a seed for it to continue?

Which do I choose?

My hands shake as I fold the paper and hand it back to Sri. That piece of paper could get us executed. Or at least get Sri executed. I can’t imagine they’d kill a Cusk. Maybe one of the lesser siblings, but not me. I stare out the onyx elevator car window at the diminishing Earth. Sri writes for a while, then the paper is back in my view. I sigh and open it.

Look out at this planet. The mass extinction, the storms, the human misery. The mission for the glory of your family name. After one planet, what’s next but more?

Sri starts writing more. But I pull the paper away, scrawl my own pathetic handwriting on it. I need all the time I can get. My handwriting is slow and the elevator car is already nearing the end of its ride. I’m ready to burn it all down. Devon suggested I make a live announcement about the lie. Within the ship, so the reel is more viral. But when I do that, it’s only a matter of time until the investigation leads to you.

Sri considers my words, face impassive. They nod. I accept that. Now we say goodbye.

Oh, Sri. I let out a long breath and rest the back of my head against the clear surface of the elevator window, the refugees and rapidly shifting militaries and global storms miles below. Then I write: Can you get another message to Devon? To meet me?

They nod again, and then I crush Sri in my arms. They’re wearing the handmade necklace I gave them months ago, back when our relationship was monogamous; it’s sharp against my collarbones.

Sri has pushed me in the way I needed to be pushed, and now we say goodbye. I can wallow more later. I beam a thought to them: I’ll miss you.

We part from our hug when the elevator doors open. I hold my hands together, pointer fingers out, and then spread them in two directions. You go left, I go right. Maybe never to meet again.

After space exploration went completely private in the late twenty-first century, giant national craft became obsolete under deregulation, which meant launch satellites got smaller and smaller to service smaller and smaller craft—the type of people who could afford to visit the moon or Mars don’t want to get crammed into a spaceliner with strangers. Once the Cusk space elevators were built, spacecraft started being constructed in orbit, never coming to land. If a spaceship never has to withstand high g-forces, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for design.

That all means there’s only one spaceport large enough to house an old-school mammoth like the Endeavor , so I don’t need any help finding my way from the elevator’s arrival bay to the right launch satellite. If I had needed directions, I could have asked any of the no fewer than six spacekeepers who meet me outside the elevator doors. I’m sure they would call themselves assistants, facilitators, escorts, anything but armed guards, but I know what they’re here for. I’m officially a wild card to be kept in check.

The Endeavor —or I guess I should call it the Coordinated Endeavor , since that’s the name that’s projected in front of the bay entrance—is in the main hangar, resting on a bed of jetted air, to prevent any damage from contacting the hull of the spaceport. With no one around to fix them, even tiny defects will become cracks that will become ruptures. On a voyage this long, any small blemish could prove fatal.

I’m ready for the look of the Endeavor , because I trained on mock-ups of it and because Minerva departed for Titan on an identical craft, the Salaam . But as I step into the cavernous space, I see that the Endeavor has been doubled. The original Endeavor is shaped like something a giant weightlifter would use: a stick with bulbous ends, living quarters at one and slow acceleration engine at the other. That engine has been attached to the engine end of an identical craft, so it’s an even longer stick, with living quarter bulbs at either end and a double bulb of machinery in the middle.

After I scan through security, the uniformed facilitator explains that the Dimokratía spacefarer will live and work on one side, while the Fédération spacefarer—“me”—will occupy the other. Given that our countries only communicate in highly brokered summits, and that even those have fallen through lately, the relative isolation of the two spacefarers was deemed necessary unless our countries have a political breakthrough. Given the news today, that seems like a remote possibility indeed.

I take in the Aurora . Somewhere in there are twenty copies of a stranger from a hostile country, who will be my only companion. A young man—all the Dimokratía spacefarers are male—whom I will never meet. Who are you?

Violin case clutched at my side, I tread along the observation catwalk that runs above the ship, watching as technicians in jumpsuits and face masks pass UV lamps along the hull, the jets of supporting air setting their hair whipping around their heads as they scan for imperfections. They’re accompanied by warbot-framed military robot attendants, providing data support and replacement supplies instead of rocket launchers and machine guns. Warbots are no joke. Even these good shepherd versions give me a sharp pang of fear.

As I make my way down the hangar to the center, where the ships join, I find two clumps of soldiers. They wear slightly different camouflage, flecks of red in the Dimokratía one, blue in the Fédération. The Fédération soldiers take a long time checking and rechecking my authorization, then Dimokratía starts over and does the same, scanning my pass again and again. If I weren’t a Cusk scion that the press corps wants to keep happy and quiet until the ship launches, I’d never even be considered to go on board. Even with my status as it is, my chances are low.

While they do their checks, I step back and take in the joint craft. Despite my horror at what’s being done, it’s awe-inspiring, this colossus of engineering. The same level of grandeur—though not the beauty—of a redwood or a blue whale. Like it or hate it, we humans have done something remarkable.

The red-flecked soldiers get on their bracelets, peering at me while they speak rapid Dimokratía to their higher-ups. I can barely follow. Normally I’d be up in their faces, but the significance of what I’m about to do—beam a tell-all to the world—has me numb. I clutch my violin case in sweaty hands, like I’m waiting to go onstage for a recital. I guess I am.

A Fédération officer turns to me. “I don’t think this is going to be solved quickly. They don’t want you around the ship unless they also have a guest who gets to view the ship. They’ve got a person lined up already.” She drops her voice. “It’s ludicrous.”

I have a suspicion who’s gotten himself on the roster as their guest. But I’ll pretend to be outraged for a few moments at least. “Yes, totally ludicrous. Has anyone called Chairperson Cusk about this?” I ask.

“We’re trying to pull her out of a meeting right now. But given the invasion this morning, it doesn’t look good.”

“Invasion?”

She looks at me shrewdly. “Yes. Dimokratía landers have dropped infiltration drones across the lake crossing through Patagonia.”

I recognize this officer, a woman with hair dyed a rich brown red. Her tag says Sharma. She gestures toward my violin. “In any case, the Dimokratía guards don’t have a problem with that being on board, as long as we allow them to examine it first. I’ll get that process started.”

I look at the ship, and the tense soldiers from two countries at war. I’m never getting on this ship.

I shoot for second best. “Can I at least check out the rest of the operation here? Even if I don’t get on the Coordinated Endeavor itself, it will help me be a little more at peace about what’s happening.”

Sharma nods. “I don’t see why not, so long as I’m with you.”

“We won’t need special access?”

“You’ve already got it, to be here in the hangar. We can move freely within a zone of similar clearance.”

I place my violin case on the security table, then open it to take one last look at it. We spent many years together, that instrument and me. It was Minerva’s at first, but she quit after a year and so it became mine. Vivaldi to Mozart to Mendelssohn to Suarez. My fingers are calloused from my hours of moody vibrato. I latch the case closed and watch Sharma transfer it to the Dimokratía officers. They mount a few stairs, then disappear into the Aurora .

“Thanks for helping get it on board,” I say to Sharma.

“No guarantees, but it looks likely it will pass Dimokratía inspection. Are you ready?”

I make myself look exasperated. “It’s fine by me if they want their Dimokratía guest to come with us, too.”

We head off into the spaceport, tailed by one of the Dimokratía soldiers. I wave and smile at him, but he just broods back. I didn’t know that someone could brood actively until now.

“This hangar has been locked down for months, limited to the highest clearances,” Sharma explains. “We’ve all been sleeping and working here.”

“You must miss your family,” I say.

She shrugs, even as she smiles wanly. “Accepting this assignment got them out of Melbourne and onto the Telos satellite. It was an easy choice.”

Sharma stops in a makeshift lobby area, where two Dimokratía guards are flanking another special guest. One I happen to have recently met.

“Ambrose Cusk,” Sharma says, “I’m not sure if you’re already familiar with Devon Mujaba?”

Devon grins broadly and holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Ambrose. It’s an honor.” The smile drops. “I’m very sorry to hear about your sister.”

I shake his hand, remembering where else it has been recently. “Thanks for your kind words,” I say formally. “It’s an honor to meet you, too.”

“That’s so nice to hear,” Devon says coolly.

“We’re taking reciprocity down to the letter here these days,” Sharma says. “Dimokratía had only a couple of hours to pick their own VIP guest to the facility, and Devon Mujaba was already in local orbit.”

“I played a quincea?era on Disponar,” Devon says. “Not sure if you noticed. It was a very last-minute booking. Since I was already here, the Dimokratía foreign minister thought he’d pass me a favor.”

I look at Sharma, drawing on all my playacting skills. “So Devon knows...”

“He already knows the content of the upcoming press briefing, that the mission has changed to colonization,” Sharma says.

“The true mission... wow,” Devon says. “This must be a complicated time for you.” He winks. He actually winks . The daringness makes me flush.

“Shall we?” Sharma says. “Even if we can’t go on board the ship, we can walk the observation platforms.”

Devon and I fall into step behind her, hands behind our backs. He smiles at me, almost says something but bites it down. Instead he keeps up that convincing fake smile.

“Sri told you I’m up for a broadcast?” I whisper.

“Yes, they did,” he replies. “It’s time the truth was told. I’ll start the recording whenever you give me a nod. It will be sent out live. The violin case...”

“Already on.”

“Did you...” He makes a motion of his hands flying apart from each other.

I shake my head sharply. Does he really think I’d put a bomb on board?! Of course not. And yet Devon looks disappointed.

His expression makes me wonder if I should back out of this whole plan. Devon would have been okay if I detonated the ship? I realize all over again that I really don’t know him or what he’s capable of.

“This moment will change history,” Devon says. “Maybe now human civilization will break out of the Cusk Corporation vise. I’m proud of you.”

Compliments from Devon Mujaba on top of utter dread. My stomach doesn’t know which way is up.

Tailed by the soldiers, Sharma guides us through labs and holding areas. This is the cauldron where the Frankenstein versions of myself are prepped. I pretend to be curious, calm. Like a museum visitor instead of the protagonist of a horror reel.

I’m not sure my pretending to be calm is convincing Sharma. “You seem to be taking the change in mission in stride,” she says as we pass along cavernous hallways, crates with obscure codes painted on their sides in Fédération or Dimokratía language, draped in army-green netting. Her tone indicates she means the opposite.

I shrug, like she just did. “The Ambroses on that ship are not me. Not really.”

She smiles sadly, like I haven’t yet realized something about my own feelings. “I can only imagine what you’re going through. It’s been a big few days for you.”

“Yes,” I say crisply. She’s rising above her station.

“May I ask what’s in here?” Devon interrupts.

She has brought us past a smaller lab. The door is a thick material, so that whatever is inside can be kept at a constant temperature. Through the window, I can see vertical vinyl flaps, to prevent too much airflow. Most likely something organic is stored here. Devon has a good eye.

Sharma cuts a glance at the Dimokratía officer nearest us, then stands with us at the door’s window. “This is where we keep the embryos that will produce generations of human life on Planet Cusk. Over a thousand of them, from discrete lineages across the Earth. Of course, half are from regions held by Fédération, half by Dimokratía. We are very careful about fairness.”

Devon gives a hard-to-interpret snort. “They’re not really embryos yet,” he says. “The genetic code has been joined but gestation hasn’t begun, so these are really just chunks of biological data. They can’t be considered embryos until they begin to divide and grow on the exoplanet.”

Sharma blinks. “Is that so?”

“A Heartspeak Boy and also an amateur biologist. You’re quite the renaissance man, Devon Mujaba,” I say.

“No, no science background, just fascinated by this mission. I’ve spent the last hour researching as much as I can about what it would involve.” Devon flashes his demolishing sunray of a grin again.

“And we should move on,” Sharma says, cutting an eye to the Dimokratía guard tapping an impatient finger on his plasma rifle.

The hallway has curved around the expanse of the ship, and as we come to the end we’re again in the cavernous hangar space, the sleeping Coordinated Endeavor hulking below us. Only now we’re on a catwalk that runs above the Aurora portion before ending at the central joint where that ship meets the Endeavor. “May we?” Devon asks, gesturing along the catwalk.

Sharma glances at the time on her bracelet and nods. “If you keep it quick.”

The inspection catwalk is so narrow that we have to go single-file. We wait for a refitted warbot to clear the gangway before we start. Devon goes first, and I follow, my stomach churning. “I’ll meet you back here,” Sharma says, deep in her bracelet messages.

We go a few paces down the catwalk, its metal ringing out under our boots. “Anyone following?” Devon asks.

I scratch my chin against the fabric on one shoulder so that I can casually glance behind us. “No. There’s only one exit point, and Sharma and the soldier are just waiting there.”

“Looks like a pretty good stage,” Devon whispers as we come to a stop at the end of the catwalk. “The ship below, all these lethal warbots milling around, to remind viewers of the weapons of war. A producer couldn’t design better.”

I stand next to him, looking down at the ship. “I’m going to pretend to be overwhelmed. That I need a hug,” I say. “For Sharma’s sake. So she doesn’t wonder why we’re lingering.”

“What?”

I lean into him, press my head against his neck. “Oh,” he says.

The hug is nice. Very nice. But it’s not the point. Devon’s smooth arms are around me, and I feel his hand reach into the fold of my wrap. My hand meets his within the fabric, and I find the streamer. It’s a small device the size and shape of a dragonfly that transmits to a secure server and pings the connection using dedicated hardware to confirm it’s happening in real time. Without that level of verification, no one will believe what I’m about to say.

“Do you want to start it off, or...,” I ask.

“You’re doing this alone,” Devon whispers, stepping back from our embrace. “You’re a Cusk. Of course your mother will do whatever it takes to shield you from what comes next. I don’t have that luxury. I’d rather not be executed.”

“You’re Devon Mujaba,” I say. “Not exactly an unknown.”

“All the better to make an example of me. Even with war broken out, they’re going to fight to hold this consortium together long enough to launch the mission. If they can’t unite the people through hope, fear will do just as well.”

He’s right. I just don’t want to do this alone.

Devon can see I’m waffling. He puts a hand on each of my shoulders. “They lied to you about your life’s purpose. They dishonored your sister. They have this coming. You’re doing the right thing.”

“I don’t know...,” I start to say.

Devon reaches into the fold of my robe, hands digging along the belt of muscle over my hips, until he finds the streamer again. He pulls it out, clicks it, and tosses it into the air so it hovers before me. “Show’s on,” he says. I hear his rapid footfalls on the catwalk as he heads back toward Sharma and the guards.

I stare at the hovering streamer, which sends out an array of light to pick up every pore of my skin, all the magnitude of the joined ship, every authenticating detail of my surroundings. Devon hurled it in such a direction that my body mostly shields what I’m doing from the view of Sharma and the guards, but I still don’t have much time until they catch on and forcibly stop me.

Ambrose Cusk is broadcasting from the ship he was supposed to pilot to rescue Minerva. That’s a draw—lots of people’s bracelet OSes will autoplay this one. Already the watching count on the streamer has ticked up into the tens of millions.

How to start? I’ll try to start by not throwing up. “I’m going to make this quick,” I manage to say despite the fear that sets my body shaking. “The mission to rescue my sister wasn’t canceled because of new information. It wasn’t scrubbed at all. It was never meant to go. Dimokratía and Fédération lied to you, trying to misdirect your attention from what matters. By manipulating you. They lied to me, too. It’s all so that my clones would believe. There’s a Dimokratía spacefarer on board as well. That’s his ship you see. They lied to him, too. Our copies will live disposable lives on a trip to an exoplanet, where only the last clone will survive. I have been spun a tale to keep me pacified, while they did this in my name. Just like they are doing to all of you.”

I hear bootfalls ring out on the catwalk behind me, harsh words in Dimokratía.

“I don’t have much time,” I say. “This mission can’t go, not if you resist. Not now that you all know the truth. It’s immoral. It’s dishonest. They’ve lied to all of us. They’d never have told you about this future, because it means Cusk has decided its destiny is off-planet. That you are doomed.”

Rough hands are on my back, hurling me away from the catwalk. “I’m Ambrose Cusk!” I shout.

Then I hear the readying of a gun, the click of a trigger. The streamer flutters to the hull of the Aurora , hopping once and then giving up, like it’s been slain.

I cover my face where I lie on the ground, as boots clomp on the catwalk around me. I can understand the Dimokratía language when I concentrate, but right now I can’t manage it. I just hold my hands in front of my face, waiting to be killed. Then I’m heaved to my feet, my wrap swirling around me, and dragged roughly along the catwalk, sandaled feet bumping rhythmically along the metallic mesh of the walkway as I try and fail to stand on my own.

Sharma is ashen. “What have you done?” she asks.

I shake my head, beyond words.

“I was in charge of you,” she says, putting her hand over her mouth. “What have you done to me ?”

I hadn’t thought about that. I just needed to speak the truth.

She’s not angry. She’s terrified. “The world is falling into war. And you expected people to stop fighting to protest this mission? How naive can you be?”

The guards drop me in the hallway. They shout at each other, bracelet-messaging their commanders. I hear footfalls as the Fédération guards rush to join them. These soldiers will no doubt bring me to my mother.

If I want to get out of here before I’m arrested, this is my one chance. While everything is still chaos.

Now, Ambrose. Act now.

Will the Dimokratía guards shoot me, even though I’m Ambrose Cusk? I honestly don’t know.

I stagger to my feet.

I swallow my vomit.

And I run.