Lifeline (3 page)

A quiet, warm voice made Ramis turn around. “We have always been able to find plenty of reasons for war, no matter how many problems we eliminate.”

The
dato,
Yoli Magsaysay, floated alone by the viewport. He looked thin, with mottled brown skin and flecks of gray and white peppering his bushy hair. The
Aguinaldo’s
president moved painfully on joints calcified from too many years of low gravity.

Magsaysay’s statement came as a fact, spoken in a musing tone that asked for no debate. The
dato
seldom talked in public anymore, but when he did, he bore himself in the tired, worn-out manner of a man who would not give in, even after seventy-five years.

“Father Magsaysay—” Ramis caught himself, afraid to say anything more. After what he had just witnessed, he did not want to disturb the
dato’s
thoughts.

Magsaysay acted as if he hadn’t even heard Ramis. He said to Dobo, “Please have Dr. Sandovaal prepare an analysis for the Council of Twenty. I will call an emergency session once he is ready.”

He closed his eyes and pulled a deep breath of humid air into his lungs. “This war will put the
Aguinaldo’s
future in grave danger. I suspect Dr. Sandovaal is already working on projections of our existing food supply.” The
dato’s
hand was clenched at his side; the long fingernails were digging into his palms. “The Council will need that information if we are to select our next course of action.”

“I will ask him, President Magsaysay.” Dobo frowned and dropped his voice. “But I cannot promise that you will like what he has to say.”

Magsaysay swept his hand out over the expanse of the star-filled viewing wall. “If the United States is no longer able to ferry food and supplies to the colonies, then we will face some hard decisions. I want to be sure that we are well informed beforehand.”

He went on, mumbling as if to himself. “The Soviet Union might not be as damaged by the war as the United States. We could be forced to open a dialogue with them if it is necessary for our survival—no matter what promises we made to the Americans. All the rules have changed now.”

Magsaysay stopped, then smiled down at Ramis. “I am chattering like an old politician. Dobo, I would like to speak with Ramis.”

Dobo bowed and moved away from Ramis and Magsaysay, heading for the observatory alcove.

Magsaysay stood in silence. He looked down at Earth, toward the curving horizon where the archipelago of the Philippine Islands would remain hidden under the swirls of clouds. The president spoke quietly.

“Luis Sandovaal and I were close friends many years ago, long before the
Aguinaldo
was even a dream. I knew your parents when Dr. Sandovaal recruited them to come with him up to L-4. I made it a point to know everyone back then. You see, if a leader loses touch with the people, then it is time for him to step down and let himself be replaced.” He shook his head. “But today there are so many people I do not know. How can I possibly make these decisions?”

He glanced at his timepiece, then frowned, as if time had no meaning anymore. Ramis remained quiet, unsure of what to say. The
dato
turned to leave, then looked Ramis in the eye, as if he had forgotten to say something.

“The future depends on people such as yourself, Ramis—people willing to take chances.” He held up a finger. “We need you, so do not get hurt when you go Jumping alone at night.”

Magsaysay stepped onto the stickum of the slidewalk, and rested his hand on the railing.

Ramis watched him, his face feeling flushed. How did he know?

Behind the viewing wall, the Earth was swirled with thick clouds now. Only a few sparse patches of blue managed to peek out from beneath the cover. No land was visible.

Ramis decided against flying freefall along the core to get back home. Though his barrio in the Luzon housing area was at the opposite end of the colony, he followed Magsaysay down the slidewalk. A shadow skittered along the ground in front of him. Overhead, a sail-creature nymph whipped past, released early by the unscheduled dawn. Ramis squinted, but he couldn’t make out any markings on the creature’s fins. Once on the colony floor, he caught a jeepney to his home.

***

Chapter 2

ORBITECH 1—Day 1

The industrial colony
Orbitech 1
hung at L-5 with its supply lines cut—fifteen hundred people, stranded and helpless. They pressed their faces and palms against observation windows, staring at the wounded Earth far below. Still in a state of shock, they had not thought to mourn for their past, for their memories.

Most of the people wallowed in self-protective confusion and shock. They had not yet faced the realization that they would get no more supplies from Earth.

But Duncan McLaris, the Production Division leader on
Orbitech 1,
came to that conclusion not ten minutes after the war started.

He tried to look casual as he approached the shuttle-tug
Miranda.
The
Miranda
was tied down in the colony’s docking bay, seeming to glow in the harsh lights reflected from the clean metal walls.

Boxes of
Orbitech 1
export products were tethered throughout the bay area: large, perfect crystals grown in zero gravity, three-dimensional computer chips, superconducting wires, pharmaceuticals, strange alloys with baffling electromagnetic properties … the list of Orbitechnology accomplishments ran on and on.

Rah rah for the company,
McLaris thought.

The docking bay seemed deserted. Everyone else was huddling in their quarters or sobbing in the community rooms. The last shuttle looked empty and alone. McLaris called out, “Hello—anybody in there?”

Seconds passed. McLaris started to turn when the pilot, Stephanie Garland, pushed out of the shuttle, wiping her hands on her dark-blue coverall. She eyed McLaris and set her mouth.

McLaris wore a smile as he pushed off the floor, drifting in the zero-G bay until he reached the metal hull of the
Miranda.
Palms splayed, he absorbed the impact and maneuvered himself down to floor level again.

Garland’s hair was a salt-and-pepper shade of gray, but she didn’t give off a sense of being old. “I hope you’re not going to give me a pep talk, Mr. McLaris. Save that for your employees. I know what happened. I heard snatches of the broadcast. The Earth has turned into a shit pot and there’s no use my going back there.”

“Call me Duncan, please,” McLaris interrupted. “And you won’t hear any pep talks from me. I’m a realist. An ‘it’ll all come out right in the end’ speech would sound kind of hypocritical right now.”

McLaris locked his gray eyes with the woman’s gaze. He did recognize a well-controlled undercurrent of fear and despair in the pilot’s demeanor. He felt for her, was able to put himself in her shoes. He considered that the mark of a good manager.

Wild and contradicting reports were still coming in and being passed along over the
Orbitech 1
PA system; but the
Miranda
was apparently the only inter-orbital shuttle that had survived the War. The other two craft,
Ariel
and
Oberon,
had finished their runs to
Clavius Base
on the Moon and out to the L-4 colonies and had returned to low Earth orbit only shortly before the War, awaiting refueling. An extensive fleet of Earth-to-orbit rockets should have brought up more fuel, more supplies, perhaps a change of crew.

The two pilots had radioed back, in shock after the War, calling for any kind of contact. They had escaped destruction, but now the two—friends of Garland’s—were locked in low orbit, with no fuel and no place to go. Maybe forever.

The two shuttles could not land themselves because the craft had never been designed to withstand the stress of passing through the atmosphere. And they did not have enough fuel to reach the Lagrange colonies again … not that it would do them any good. The colonies weren’t any better off.

On her last run, though, Stephanie Garland had been half a day late arriving at
Orbitech 1,
and had only just unloaded the supplies. She announced that she would stay an extra day, exercising her option to claim R and R whenever she deemed it necessary to her performance. A coincidence. Otherwise, she would have been stranded as well.

In the docking bay, McLaris took a deep breath. “Why don’t we go inside and chat?”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, the docking bay monitors can’t pick up anything there, right?” Garland looked startled, but then realized—as McLaris had intended—just what he was going to ask her.

“I was wondering when someone would come,” Garland muttered. “I didn’t think it would be so soon. Zen, it hasn’t even been an hour yet!”

McLaris looked around the docking bay, saw the cameras mounted on the walls to monitor operations. It would be just like Curtis Brahms to be watching his division lead—“Just for me,” McLaris insisted. He felt a flush on his cheeks. It was very important to him that Garland understands why he had to ask this.

“I’m doing it for Jessie. If you could just take her, all by herself, I’d be willing to stay. I’d face what the rest of us have to face. But somebody has to help you. And you need me to get you out of the docking bay—I can double-talk the engineers and anybody else who might be guarding the shuttle. Brahms isn’t going to take long to figure this out.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to beat down the sickness of guilt building inside him. “Besides, I wouldn’t live long anyway if I helped you to escape and then stayed behind. They’d probably throw me into one of the metal processing units or something.”

Looking uncomfortable, Garland distracted herself with her equipment. Had he convinced her? McLaris couldn’t tell. He kept talking, recognizing that it was partly to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.

“I admit this is a snap decision. I haven’t had time to think about it. I’m afraid to think about it too much, because then I might change my mind or lose my nerve. But if I waste time considering the possibilities, somebody else will think of it too, and then we’ll lose our chance.

“You don’t know Brahms—he’s sharp and he’s fast and he does not hesitate. He’ll be only one step behind me.”

“He seemed nice when he came to greet me.”

McLaris clenched his hands. “I know him. He might appear to be a nice violin case, but he’s really carrying a machine gun inside.”

Garland set her mouth. “If we’re really going to do this, we’ll have to move fast. When do we go?”

McLaris felt a wash of cold sweat break out on his back, as if he had just stepped off a cliff. No turning back now.

“In an hour, if Brahms doesn’t seal off the shuttle bay.”

***

Chapter 3

AGUINALDO—Day 1

As he approached the open-air hall, Ramis realized he had attended only one other Council meeting in his life. Political discussions and tedious plodding through red-tape mazes of motions and counter-motions and rebuttals and addenda bored him.

But now it seemed that most of the
Aguinaldo
colonists were trying to push their way into the hall. Their future hung on what the Council of Twenty would decide in the next session.

He had attended that other Council meeting when he had been twelve years old, four years before. Dr. Sandovaal was testifying about the course of agriculture and food production on the colony—about some of the work Ramis’s parents had helped him begin before their accident.

Sandovaal had at first seemed a mysterious and frightening man, spiteful for no particular reason, and Ramis’s parents were in awe of him. But that Council session—where Sandovaal debated, and defeated, the
Aguinaldo’s
agricultural specialists—had elevated the stature of the unorthodox Filipino bioengineer on self-imposed exile from Earth.

Ramis could still see Sandovaal’s ruddy face shaking in rage. “In order to produce a viable food source in space, we cannot just attempt to grow the same old feed crops!”

Sandovaal put an expression of supreme distaste on his face, glaring at the other agricultural specialists and speaking in a mocking voice. “Listen to you—rice and wheat! Corn and abaca! Are you idiots? Do you have tumors for brains? Those crops adapted to
Earth’s
planetary environment—it took them millennia to perfect themselves in that particular ecosystem. Here on a Lagrange colony, plants grow under completely different rules.

“Do you begin to see? Have you opened your eyes? We are not on Earth anymore. It requires us to take a radically new look at how plants and animals are put together. We must first acquire a new feed crop for our animals—a crop high in protein, but without a high overhead to produce. After that, we shall be free to develop new crops for ourselves.”

After Sandovaal had stirred their anger, he then smugly presented his first samplings of wall-kelp. Ramis knew that was the way Sandovaal always did things—he made his opponents angry to get their attention, then slapped them in the face with what they should have seen all along.

Sandovaal’s preliminary wall-kelp data astounded the Council. The genetically modified kelp, combined with some traits of chlorella algae, had an unheard-of growth rate, incredible efficiency for waste conversion, and—most important of all—a digestible mass of protein. Since the wall-kelp was photosynthetic, it produced oxygen as it grew. It was a starting place, a beginning success for Sandovaal’s team. And Ramis’s parents had worked with him on it.

Back then, when the Council members and the audience gave Sandovaal a standing ovation for his work, the old scientist sniffed, as if he had expected nothing less.…

Ramis smiled to himself at the memory. He came back to the present as Yoli Magsaysay rapped the podium for order. The hall overflowed with people; many squatted on the steps and in the aisles. The noise nearly overwhelmed the PA system. Magsaysay rapped once more. “Quiet, please. Let us begin.”

The
dato
cleared his throat. At first, his voice could not be heard, but the president continued in the same low tone. Like his famous namesake in Philippine politics several generations before, Yoli Magsaysay knew how to handle people. The room grew still.

“… reminded that the Council hall has a tradition for holding open meetings—especially in this instance, where everything will affect us all so profoundly. However, if we are unable to hear each other speak, I will be forced to clear the hall.”

Magsaysay scanned the room. Only the rustle of people trying to get a better view disturbed the silence. The air-conditioning hummed, turned to high. Overhead, several sail-creature nymphs drifted near the core. Ramis glanced up, looking for Sarat.

The
dato
spoke again. “Who started the War? Who won? Who survived? All contact has been severed, so we do not know and we may never know. But that is not our problem.

“We may be forced to survive on the
Aguinaldo
without help from Earth. No supplies—only the resources we have here now.”

He ticked off the points on his fingers. “That means no food. No clothing. No appliances. We have the Sibuyan Sea, but water is still going to be a problem. We have only leftover Moon rubble for raw materials. Even though the construction site of our neighbor,
Orbitech 2,
is barely a hundred kilometers away, we have no means to get there. We must assume that the
Aguinaldo
has to be totally self-sufficient from now on.”

Magsaysay placed his hands on the podium. His big eyes looked very sad.

“I have purposely presented the situation in the bleakest terms. The Council must consider this situation when we make our decisions. If we are too optimistic now, we could doom our entire colony.”

Magsaysay raised his gray eyebrows. “Dr. Sandovaal, would you and your staff please brief the Council of Twenty on your projections?”

“Most certainly—you must have named me chief scientist for a reason.”

A nervous titter brushed across the hall as Sandovaal led his entourage of assistants on the stage. Dobo Daeng shuffled over to the large-display holotank. Sandovaal cleared his throat and tapped the microphone pad. The speakers squealed as he breathed into the pickup, making him jerk back. He glared at the microphone.

“Mr. President, members of the Council, for the past four years my associates and I have been tracking the progress of my wall-kelp. You will recall that the Council wisely voted to adapt the kelp as the
Aguinaldo’s
main source of feed for our livestock. In addition, the actual crop space the wall-kelp has replaced is minimal.”

Ramis wrinkled his nose. The stagnant smell of the wall-kelp had been the basis for numerous insults and expletives invented by the
Aguinaldo
colonists.

“Luis, we all appreciate your work,” Magsaysay said from his seat to the left of the stage, “but at the moment, we need to know your projections of
our
ability to survive using our current supply of foodstuff.”

Sandovaal’s expression grew stormy. Ramis drew in a breath, expecting an outburst from the scientist.

“President Magsaysay, since you ask the question so bluntly, I will answer it bluntly: What are our chances of survival using our current supply of foodstuffs? The answer is none. Zero. No chance whatsoever. It is a simple calculation—anybody can see it.”

He stopped and stared around at the faces stunned into silence. His blue eyes looked very cold. Magsaysay struggled to his feet and opened his mouth to speak, but Sandovaal waved him into silence.

“Dobo, display the data. Show them.”

Dobo touched the controls. A set of graphs appeared in the giant holotank. The curves rotated, then the window zoomed in on a chart labeled ASSETS—CURRENT CROP PRODUCTION.

Dr. Sandovaal spoke over a growing murmur in the crowd.

“The blue line is our current population. The red curve is our crop surplus, decreasing as we consume more than we produce.” He waited a beat, then continued. “As you can see, these two curves intersect at a point not three months in the future. That is when we start getting hungry. Shortly after that, I expect fighting and widespread killing. From that point, we cannot calculate accurately how long the survivors can last—it depends on how many there are after the riots.”

A shout rang out from the back. The hall’s sergeant-at-arms scuffled with the person and ejected him. Ramis felt a surge of despair ripple through the gathered people. After watching the War on Earth, this was too much in one day. Ramis no longer felt proud to think of the part his parents had had in Sandovaal’s work. Dobo looked up, frowning at Sandovaal’s attitude.

Magsaysay looked beaten. He held up his hands. His low voice barely projected over the rising din. “Quiet! Please allow Dr. Sandovaal to continue.” When the sounds ceased, the
dato
turned to his chief scientist. “Luis, are your numbers correct?”

“The calculations are simple—you will find no errors. But I was talking about something much more important when you interrupted me. Several years ago we succeeded in producing a highly efficient feed substitute.

“When you tasked me this morning with projecting the
Aguinaldo’s
food supply, you placed ridiculous restrictions on what we are capable of doing. You said ‘using our current supply of foodstuff and allowed for nothing else.’ That is nonsense. The answer is staring you in the face. Maybe a few hunger pangs will improve your intellect.” He cracked his knuckles in front of the microphone pad, making a sound like muffled gunshots.

“Now, this second set of charts is also correct.” Dobo quickly changed graphs in the holotank.

Sandovaal allowed the people to study the new curves in silence. He seemed to be forcing down a smug smile. The red and blue lines in the holotank held an uneasy balance, but never intersected. The supply of food remained above the consumption level.

Magsaysay stared and frowned. “What does this show?”

“What do you think? It is certainly not a new idea. A few minutes ago I tried to explain our only way to survive, but you were not interested. You wanted only the bottom line, so I gave it to you. By continuing our present course, wasting too much time and too many resources on inefficient crops, we will starve in a few months.

“We must act immediately if we are going to save the
Aguinaldo.
As you can see from the curves, we have little margin for hesitation or error. If we decide quickly, we can survive—we can all survive.”

“What is it we have to do?” Magsaysay asked. “Make it plain for those of us who are stupid.”

Sandovaal turned to stare at him. He didn’t seem to notice the slight sarcasm in the
dato’s
tone. “Just look at the data! What do the curves tell you?

“We must grow wall-kelp on a massive scale. Use all our available space. Cover the viewport end, the athletic fields, the grazing lands.”

The senator from Cebu interrupted. Her accent was heavily Americanized, since she had grown up near the bases. “But wall-kelp tastes like water buffalo manure. And it damn well looks like it, too.”

Ramis thought Dr. Sandovaal was going to jump over the table and strangle her. “I presume you have tasted both?” he asked.

Over the snickers, the chief scientist shook his fist at the statistics displayed in the holotank. “We have the means to survive—for all people on the
Aguinaldo.
But we must act now. So what if the wall-kelp’s original purpose was animal feed? Will that make you lose sleep at night when you are starving? So what if it tastes worse than tofu or taro? It is protein, and we can produce it fast enough to meet our needs.”

The chamber erupted into scattered shouting. Ramis found himself realizing with a half-smile that Dr. Sandovaal had done it again: shocked his audience, then rubbed their noses in the only possible answer.

***