Chapter 2

Chapter 2

That night, I give my mattress to Ambrose, while I lie out on the mist-soft wooden boards of the floor. It’s not because I’m inspired to be a generous host—it’s because if Ambrose is on the bed, he has to crawl over me if he gets up during the night. I’m left in the middle, between this handsome intruder and a sheep. She’s the one who snores.

I know Ambrose can easily escape if he’s motivated to. But why would he? He came all this way to be here, and it’s not like I have anything worth stealing. I’ve never had anything worth stealing. All the same, I wake at any small rustle during the night, my body flooding with adrenaline each time, certain he’s trying to leave. Sometimes I hear his slow breathing, sometimes I hear wind passing through leaves, sometimes I hear nothing at all.

My final waking is to the sound of knocking at the door.

I dash to my feet, groping for a weapon and coming up with my frying pan. It’s not even a heavy one. But then I see that the sounds are coming from Sheep, striking the door with her sharp hooves.

I shrug on yesterday’s shirt, put my warmest cloak over it, scuff my feet into my boots, then open the door. Sheep bounds out into the chill morning, speeds to the nearest hummock of dewy grass, and pees.

The temperature might have dropped overnight, but at least it’s not raining anymore. While Sheep hops to the tree line, I go about cleaning up the debris from yesterday’s fight, the ropes and discarded arc thrower and even my corded-up shirt. Then, fighting down the panicky awareness that a stranger is in my refuge, an enemy combatant sleeping in my bed, I range out to collect firewood.

I’ve hauled back four large logs and have just gotten started splitting them when the hut door opens. Ambrose steps out. “Brr! It’s freezing! When did that happen?” he asks.

THUNK. “During the night,” I grunt.

“Wow. Is that an old-fashioned, plain old axe? And good morning.”

THUNK.

He comes over and stands at the far side, hands in his pockets, stamping his feet against the cold. “Can I try?”

THUNK.

I would not ordinarily hand a weapon to an enemy of the state. But I’m confident that I could take out Ambrose, even if he’s the one with the axe. And willingly handing over power is at times the ultimate power move.

He takes the axe in two hands, examines the head closely. He looks at me. He looks at the wet log positioned on the stump. “This axe sure is heavy, huh?”

I nod.

He raises it over his head. It goes flying out of his grip, soaring behind him and sinking blade first into the soil. Sheep bleats in alarm.

Ambrose retrieves the axe, lugs it over to me, and holds it out, palms up. “I think I’d better let you split the wood.”

I accept the axe and return to the logs, angling my body so Ambrose can’t see the smile on my face.

He coughs. “I think my belongings are under that tarp? I’d like to get something out, but I wanted to ask you first. I don’t know if you’ve searched my bag yet, or if you even want to.”

“Go ahead,” I say. THUNK.

I guess I’m willing to trust him for now. I guess that’s what my mysterious, juiceless organ of a heart has decided.

Ambrose rummages through, and comes up with two foil packets. “Supplies I raided from the Cusk Academy mission prep storage before slipping off on my own. The same provisions that they stocked on the Endeavor , actually . Okay if I heat them using the woodstove?”

I nod. THUNK.

He looks at the labels. “We have lentil curry or manicotti.”

I place the axe head on the ground and lean on the handle, like a cane. “Manicotti?”

“Yes,” Ambrose says. “An ancient meal made of pasta rolled around cheese, covered in tomato sauce.”

“Ambrose. I know what manicotti is. I’m just surprised that Fédération would think it was wise to launch manicotti into space.”

“Instead of what, protein-infused cabbage?”

I roll my eyes. “Okay, okay. This is very funny. A simply hilarious Dimokratía stereotype.”

“Much like that skirt.”

I look down at my skirt. “My fustanella? The military leather garment that allows for an unparalleled combination of protection and mobility on the battlefield? Sure. Maybe it’s remarkable to you because you’re not as free of stereotypes about male clothing as you pretend to be in Fédération.”

“Touché. Fine, Kodiak Celius, sure. You got me.”

Is this fun? Are we having fun? Maybe we’re having fun. THUNK.

Ambrose stamps his feet again. It’s not that cold. Perhaps he’s nervous. And why wouldn’t he be? I’m nervous, too. He takes a deep breath of air. “So. Without Devon Mujaba coming to order us around, we have to chart our own course. I’ve got some thoughts, but I’d love to hear yours first. What’s your plan out here?”

I look around. A sheep, many trees, bright open sky, mountains in the distance. What more could I want? “How do you mean, ‘what’s your plan’?”

“You know, where to go, what to do? A plan!”

My best course is obvious, isn’t it? I guess not. I cough. “We stay here. Going to Titan was more than a mission for me. It was my sole purpose in life. That was my greatest joy, conditioning myself for that transcendent purpose. When it was taken... it was hard. Very hard. It is good you didn’t come here even a few weeks ago. But I’ve started to feel something besides loss. I am surprised to find... triy. I guess you could call it ‘relief’ in Fédération. I’ve never been alone before now. For short periods, yes, but not like this. Now no one has control over my destiny anymore but me.”

“Until I bumbled along and messed everything up.”

THUNK. “I know you’re this bright shining light of Fédération society, but even so, that was maybe a little too self-important.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I think it was pretty accurate about my importance.”

“Your sister, maybe,” I say, putting a smile on so he knows I intend to tease. “She was that important. You? I don’t know.” I wonder what the Kodiak of even a few months ago would be doing in this situation. Chasing Ambrose off, no doubt. That Kodiak is gone, though. Everything was stripped from him, and this new me was born. The one who is willing to talk to a sworn enemy. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that the “sworn” part is gone. Maybe the very concept of “enemy” has less heat to it now.

I look up to the sky.

Ambrose follows my gaze. “Somewhere out there, copies of us are meeting. Or they will be. A long time from now,” he says.

He knew just where my thoughts had led.

THUNK.

“I don’t mind that you came here,” I finally say. “This is the sort of company I’ve wondered about. What it would be like to be around people who haven’t been assigned to be with me.” I think of Li Qiang, who might have hidden himself away here with me if we hadn’t come up through a system that pitted us so ferociously against each other. A vision: him pulling himself out of a dark pool, shirt ragged, face bleeding, hands empty. Gasping until he could finally speak, his eyes wild and wounded. You have stolen my future. Was he a friend?

“I wish we could know what will happen to us up there on the ship,” Ambrose says. He sighs heavily. “My brain isn’t able to imagine it.”

“I figured that Fédération would have selected someone whose brain could imagine it.” I meant that to be a joke, but when it comes out it is only mean.

He startles, then softens. “I see we’ve progressed to teasing each other. To be perfectly honest, Kodiak—and I think I can be, since you and I are never going to be on a mission together, just our clones—I’m almost certain that I’m not the strongest candidate. Not by a long shot. I’m sorry your clones have been saddled with me. But, with Minerva... dead, I’m the Cusk child remaining who’s had the training and is the right age. And my mother wasn’t about to send someone who didn’t have the last name of Cusk to be the future of humankind.”

I can’t imagine saying something like this back to Ambrose. Saying that I’m a failure. It’s just a way to sound weak. But it makes me feel warm to have thoughts like these said to me, like I could someday put words to the things I’ve failed at and not feel shame. It’s as hard to imagine as our clones’ lives on that ship.

Perhaps he’s gaming his way into my trust. I don’t think that is true, but then again, my feelings were wrong about my purpose in life, so perhaps my instincts aren’t to be trusted. Who knows, maybe Devon Mujaba didn’t set us up here to save the world, but to murder us in peace and quiet, and we’re actually safer because he’s been captured. The hard part isn’t not knowing things. It’s not knowing what I don’t know.

THUNK. “The war,” I say. “Getting hot. Tell me the details.”

I watch Ambrose as he considers what to say. “From what I was able to pick up on my way here, it’s armed conflict between all the Dimokratía and Fédération regions in South America. Significant flare-ups elsewhere in the world. Brasilia is the worst, though. It’s playing out a little like Juba did, back in the fifties.”

THUNK. “Let’s hope not completely. The aerosol that Fédération deployed, the petrifier. Horrific.”

“Um, you mean that Dimokratía deployed.”

THUNK. “You really believe that?”

Ambrose pauses. “Yes, I do. You think I shouldn’t?”

“This way you think about Dimokratía might not be the truth. You might be full of easy stereotypes.”

“Like you might be of us.”

“I’m pretty sure my impressions of Fédération are spot-on.”

“Yes, we sneer in the face of history and turn our backs on anyone who dares to even remotely value the past.”

“See! I’m right.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

THUNK. “I was, too.”

Ambrose kneels, holds his hand out to Sheep. She watches him suspiciously. Ambrose scuffs the ground with his pointer finger, momentarily distracted by a beetle that scurries out of the upturned soil. “I got surprised by the EMP dust situation when I arrived yesterday.”

“I noticed, when you tried to use your arc thrower. I’m not surprised that the EMP dust might have gone underreported by the Fédération press.”

“Sure. Yes. The important part for us is that it means I’ve gotten a one-way ticket here, since I can’t exactly call myself a return ride. Which is good, because, well, I guess I’d like to get to know you, Kodiak. To maybe make a plan together. Sheesh, this is awkward. Let me just say for now that I’d rather not head out anytime soon, not if you’ll have me here. You and I could have a lot to talk about. We have a responsibility to our selves that will be up there, living out their lifetimes together. A responsibility that I’m only starting to wrap my head around.”

He goes quiet, and I realize he’s waiting for me to talk. But what is there to say? “Okay,” I finally reply.

“With the world at war,” Ambrose continues, “and with you and me both on the run from our governments, it would be useful to get some updates on how those two countries are doing. Whether they’ve managed to obliterate each other while we’ve been sipping our orange pekoe tea.”

THUNK. I take a moment to rest my muscles, blinking at Ambrose. “What are you asking?”

“Is there anywhere nearby that’s not covered in EMP dust? Where we can link in and find out where everything stands? Maybe get some updates on whether Devon Mujaba has had a trial, too, and if there are any reports of his brain being mapped.”

Has this princelet really never encountered or even studied the most influential dirty weapon of the past century? EMP dust creates a baseline level of electrical activity that scrambles tech—but sinks through water. As soon as the water is deep enough, it ceases to have any effect on the surface. “Yes, of course. There’s a lake not too far from here,” I say. “We can row to the center and check for updates.”

“Great,” Ambrose says, “let’s go.”

I don’t want to. It takes me a few seconds to come up with the reason why. “I’m not sure I want to know any updates. I’d rather not know about the doings of the world.”

“Even Devon Mujaba?”

I nod. THUNK. “I never had his zeal for taking down the system. I was just happy to have his help escaping captivity. But. I’m willing to give you the chance to look at the news and tell me if there’s anything I should know.”

Ambrose stands up tall, brushes his hands together. “You coming, Sheep?”

THUNK.

The rowboat is small. I’m at the oars, and Ambrose faces me on the opposite seat, his clothed knees pressing against my bare ones. He faces the open lake and I the shore, but we also face each other, which means our eyes can’t help but meet. It’s so unexpected to have human company that I find myself looking at him more than I’d expect. I hope he doesn’t notice. Each time I catch myself soaking in the lines of his face and body I turn my attention to Sheep, who is staring out at us from the waterline, tapping the surface with her nose, clearly wishing she could follow. I like seeing my home from this angle, so small and so easily hidden by the surrounding woods. It is a place I like. The newly cleaned glass wall gleams in the late morning sun. It was worth the risky trip into former civilization to get the cleanser—and of course, to get the shears that saved Sheep.

When I return my gaze to Ambrose, I find him staring right back at me. Highly alert. “What is it?” I ask, turning to see if I’m steering us into some obstacle.

“You’re very good at rowing,” he says.

I feel my face flush, and regret my choice to leave my shirt back at the shore. It’s just that it’s a pain to clean once it’s sweated through.

“I made you blush,” Ambrose says.

“Stop, please stop,” I say. I look down at the bottom of the rowboat, the small puddle that spilled in as we got in at the shore, that sloshes left and right as I stroke. I see my thighs in their leather skirt, my belly with this narrow line of soft hair. Unbidden, I imagine a set of hands on me, taking the oars away, running their way along my chest up to my neck. I swallow.

“How far from shore do we need to be?” Ambrose asks.

I row harder. “Almost to the middle. That will be our best bet.”

“I’m sorry,” Ambrose says. “Really. We’re not on a pleasure satellite somewhere. Here I go pretending I’m from the progressive country and then I go harassing you.”

“No, the attention is actually fine,” I say. I pretend to cough, to fill some space. “Uncomfortable but fine.” It’s been so long since I had an erotiyet. I had assumed that part of my life was over once I fled from training. That celibacy was part of the peace of my isolation. I had accepted—welcomed it, actually. But it turns out I would also welcome that set of hands. Discovering what is beneath Ambrose’s own shirt. Not that I would ever say so.

I release the oars and find myself placing my hands underneath my upper arms, to make them look bigger. “You’re not going to activate your bracelet, right, without cloaking code in place? I don’t want your mother’s forces on top of us any sooner than they will be already.”

Ambrose raises an eyebrow. “I’m not an idiot. Appearances to the contrary. You’re actually sitting with one of the best programmers in the academy.”

“Good for you,” I say. “Now go. We’re out far enough.”

He activates his bracelet, brain-op’ing the projecting feeds, reversed images spinning in the air before my eyes as he scrolls and scans. I look at the shore through the gaps in the backward text, watching reeds draping their green fronds over the brown water, ducks paddling in circles. Blips of audio come through in Fédération: Prosecution. Protection. Escalation. Devon Mujaba.

Many minutes go by. I listen to the water lapping the edges of the rowboat, the distant anxious bleats of Sheep. I watch the sun’s glint pass along the waves, broken by the ripples of water striders. I watch Ambrose take in the news. Finally the suspense is too much. “What? What’s going on?”

Ambrose shuts off his feed, looks at me with wide eyes. “Do you want to watch with me?”

I don’t like this indirectness. “Tell me what you’ve found, and I’ll tell you my response.”

His lip quirks. “The trial of Devon Mujaba. I tracked down a pure feed of it.”

A hawk wheels above. Sheep stands at the water’s edge, staring at us worriedly. Ambrose waits for me to respond.

I nod.

Ambrose holds out his bracelet. “It’s going to be in reverse for you, I’m not sure...”

I gesture to the space in front of me. “Come over here.”

The benches of the rowboat are too narrow to sit next to each other, so Ambrose crouches and reverses, so that he’s squatting in front of me. He eases down to sit on the bottom of the rowboat, his shoulders between my thighs. The seat of his jumpsuit is instantly soaked with lake water. “Good?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. Good.

He calls up the trial on his bracelet, manipulating privacy filters to mask our location and bypass the official adulterated feeds to get to the bootleg.

The footage is grainy, single-recorder, unresolvable, but unmistakably a pure feed from the trial. It shows Devon Mujaba on the stand, no one else visible except the shoulder and half the face of the judge. Courtroom clamor in the background.

Devon’s wearing the plain purple-and-white stripes of a Fédération prisoner. With none of his stage makeup on, he looks less like a Heartspeak Boy and more like the hardened trekker who greeted me on the hillside outside of the Dimokratía cosmology academy: sunken-faced, resolute. Not the silly kitten he plays onstage.

“The trial was apparently four hours, so I can autojump to the most viewed parts, if you want,” Ambrose says.

I nod. Ambrose can’t see me, but either somehow senses the movement through my thighs or just decides on his own to leap ahead.

The judge is speaking. “... of using your access and influence in an attempt to spread propaganda about the joint mission to settle Planet Cusk, coercing the two spacefarers whose clones will settle that location to spread lies about the nature of the venture. Do you contest these charges?”

“I contest your characterization of them,” Devon says. “Nothing Ambrose Cusk said on that broadcast was a lie. But no, I’m not ashamed of what I did.”

“Then this trial need not go further than the evidence already placed into record. The court finds you guilty of the charges of espionage and actions against the state. Being uncontested—”

“I request to make a statement before I am sentenced,” Devon Mujaba says.

“That is your constitutional right.”

“This is where the illicit feed is key,” Ambrose says. “There’s no way that Cusk would have allowed a statement from him to be broadcast live.”

I hold up my hand to shush him. I want to hear what Devon says.

“—have done what I did for the overall good,” Devon says, in practiced tones. “This is the moment that humanity could remain contained to Earth, or spread beyond. The loss of Minerva Cusk’s mission to Titan was not a failure to many of us. It was an opportunity to rethink the blind expansion of humankind. Look at the evidence of this planet. Once we can settle exoplanets, we’ll expand exponentially, ruin broader parts of the universe. The decision to spread beyond home is the most important branching moment for humankind. It was not something to be done in secret, with only the highest levels of Dimokratía and Fédération and the Cusk Corporation knowing about it.”

“Thank you,” the judge says. “The court will now—”

“I’m not finished,” barks Devon Mujaba. “The live transmission from Ambrose Cusk did nothing to stop this launch. The ship is already well underway. But I do hope that it might change things on Earth before it’s too late. War is the best time for a revolution, while the powers that be are back on their heels. We can craft a more peaceful world from the ruins.”

“Thank you.”

Devon’s voice rises to a shout, sending a flock of geese into the air even here in Old Scotland. “I am not finished! You don’t know what I’ve done yet.” He looks directly into the camera, like he knows which is the illicit feed, which one Ambrose and I will one day watch. Impossible, and yet it still feels like he’s talking right to us.

“People of the world, know that this mission is doomed to fail. The wirepullers are trying to spin this exoplanet colony as our new hope, a story to dangle in front of you so they can manipulate your hearts to distract your brains from their use of human capital for institutional power, that is now leading to the industrial murder of war. They want you to be swept up in imagining a new world, tens of thousands of years from now, when we here are all starving and dying. But humans will not spread. I have made sure of it.

“Beyond the gray portal of the Coordinated Endeavor are the protozygotes that the spacefarers will gestate and raise. They are composed of genetic code, and genetic code can be modified just like electronic code. At the very time Ambrose Cusk was streaming his disavowal of his family, I used the distraction to sabotage those protozygotes. I inserted a virus that will replicate and spread in them as they gestate, altering the DNA it finds. Some will become unviable from the start. In case that spurs the new colonists to find a workaround, the virus will also code the zygotes’ adrenal glands to produce excessive amounts of testosterone over their lifetimes, influencing their amygdalae to turn them aggressive. I’ve done the same to the yaks they’ll raise—predisposed them to become killers. Since the zygotes are stored in an inaccessible part of the ship, beyond the gray portal, OS can’t repair them. The colony will fall from within.”

Gasps in the courtroom. Devon glances toward the judge, waiting to be interrupted. But the judge is shocked silent.

Devon takes the opportunity to continue. “This malicious code will doom the mission. I did not do this to be cruel, but to prevent a false flag of hope from misleading the people yet again. I’m taking the risk of telling you this now so that they cannot spin stories to keep you cowed. Comrades, do not fight for those who would willingly see you go to war for their own ends! They cannot dangle promises of humanity’s destiny in a new home. That hope is now dashed!”

Ambrose’s torso is utterly tense between my legs.

The reel continues. Blurry shapes as Fédération officials move within the courtroom. The judge bangs his gavel and shouts something incomprehensible as the officials place handcuffs on Devon’s wrists, haul him to his feet. Then, as the hubbub dies, I can make out the judge’s words: “... sentenced to finishing your period of neural search, and after that forty-eight-hour period is over to be killed by neurotechnical means for espionage and treason. Your collaborators will be hunted down by warbot and brought to justice.”

“Oh my lords,” Ambrose breathes. “It can’t be true. We haven’t executed anyone since 2461.”

And yet it is true . “Any state will make this exception for treason, to keep itself in power. Looks like Fédération is as ‘barbaric’ as Dimokratía,” I say. “Which I already knew, of course.”

“Poor Devon,” Ambrose says. “Dear god.”

I give Ambrose a shove at the nape of his neck. He whirls on me, a flash of indignant fury in his eyes. The rowboat rocks. “What’s that for?!”

“‘Poor Devon’?!” I say. “Poor us! Get on your bench. We’re going to shore.”

Glaring at me all the while, Ambrose creeps to his bench, faces me, and sits down. Feelings storm across his face. Shock, upset, sorrow, anger.

“Crishet.” I splash the oars back into the water.

“Would you please tell me what you’re thinking right now?” Ambrose asks.

I stroke with one oar to turn us toward the shore. Sheep bleats with joy. Once I have us redirected, I pull hard, grunting as my heaving chest muscles forcibly compress the air out of my lungs.

Somewhere in its invisible, frozen realm, my heart is quaking. I find words. “What am I upset about?! Our doomed future selves. Us right now. Your mother and Fédération are killing Devon Mujaba as an example, to prevent an uprising. And they will send a warbot here to do the same to us, as soon as that neural mapping is finished.”

Ambrose’s expression turns grim. “We need to get to shore. We need to prepare.”

“A warbot , Ambrose,” I say. “There is no preparation that can keep us alive.”

A warbot will mean our instant, streamed death the moment it arrives. There is no defending against one. I make a few more strong pulls, the force of the strokes lifting the front of the rowboat clear out of the water. Then I realize the magnitude of what this stranger has done to me. I could have lived my years out in peaceful isolation. When Ambrose first broke it by arriving, I was surprised to find myself grateful. But now he’s brought the outside crashing down on me. He’s ruined the scrap of a life I pulled together for myself.

The horror at Devon’s sabotage lingers beneath this feeling somewhere, but is too abstract to feel under the hot burst of this current anger.

A warbot. Whole armies have been taken down by a single warbot. We’ll be vaporized in seconds.

“I guess it’s too much to hope that EMP dust will stop a warbot?” Ambrose asks.

“Yes,” I say darkly as I stroke. “It is too much to hope. The military wouldn’t let EMP dust stop it. Every warbot after the first generation has dynamic shielding that adjusts to each interfering wavelength.”

I look at Ambrose. He’s staring back at me with something other than admiration. It’s fear at whatever he’s finding in my expression. I crack my knuckles. “Good luck,” I say.

“Good luck?!” Ambrose says. “What is that supposed to mean?” He’s indignant again, like I’m a servant who’s just spoken out of turn.

I stand, the rowboat rocking under my feet. Then I dive into the lake and start the long swim to the farthest shore. Alone.