He allocated me an extra three hundred kcal then, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it. This still left me pretty hungry, but I decided to let it lie there, for what I thought were some fairly compelling reasons:
1. I don’t have a ton of friends, but the ones that I do have seem to actually like me, and they’re pretty good about spotting me a mug of cycler paste here and there when I’m looking particularly gaunt.
2. The creepers do not actually have an antimatter bomb.
3. Even if they did, I have not really been in contact with them. I’ve told Marshall that they’re staying clear of the dome because of my ongoing brilliant diplomacy, and he seems to be buying it, but the truth is that I haven’t heard a whisper from them in almost two years. For all I know, they hibernate over the summer and when winter comes again they’re going to pop up through the floor of the dome and kill us all.
So, to sum up, my continued survival is based almost entirely on an extremely shaky tower of lies. Given that, I’m not too inclined to blow a fit over a few hundred kcal.
“BARNES,” MARSHALL SAYS. “Have a seat.”
I let the door swing shut behind me and settle into one of the chairs across the desk from him. This is the first time I’ve spoken to Marshall, let alone been in his office, in almost two standard years. The last time, I resigned my post and he threatened to have me killed. I’m hoping that this meeting goes at least marginally better.
Marshall leans forward, plants his elbows on his desk, and stares me down for a solid ten seconds, which gives me time to reflect on how little he’s changed in the eleven years since I first met him. The brush cut and mustache have a bit more gray in them than they did then, but other than that? Hieronymus Marshall is probably the oldest human on Niflheim. Even back on Midgard he’d be well into middle age—but looking at him now, I have a sudden premonition that he might outlive us all.
“So,” he says. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to catch up. How’s retirement treating you, Barnes?”
Huh. That’s not what I expected.
“Oh,” I say after a short, awkward pause. “It’s great. Thanks for asking. I’ve been playing pog-ball, mostly, and doing a little traveling. The grandkids don’t call as often as I’d like, but what can you do?”
He leans back, and his face twists into a scowl.
“Fine,” he says. “So much for pleasantries. Do you have any idea why I called you in today?”
I shrug. I have my suspicions, but I’m not sure this is the time to voice them. Marshall’s scowl deepens. “Before we get into that, let’s get this on the table right up front: You’re not pulling your weight, Barnes. You haven’t been since the day you decided that the job you’d agreed to do, the job that got your unqualified ass onto this mission in the first place, the job that you fully understood at the time you agreed to take it on was a lifetime appointment, was no longer to your liking. For the past two years, you have not been a colonist. You have been a freeloader—and while that sort of thing may have been fine back on Midgard, where I’m quite sure you were perfectly content to drift through life as a subsidy brat, you know as well as I do that freeloading is not permissible on a beachhead colony.”
I open my mouth to say something sarcastic about how, sure, I might have been a subsidy brat and I might not exactly be doing the things I signed on for at the moment, but that on the other hand as far as I can tell he hasn’t done an honest day’s work since we boosted out of orbit eleven years ago—but then I remember at the last moment that this man actually does have the power to have me killed if I push him to it. I back up, clear my throat, and start again.
“I hear you, sir. However, I do feel that I should point out that I have not, in fact, been freeloading. I pull a duty shift every day, just like everyone else on Niflheim. I’m basically doing exactly what I was doing before I resigned, give or take the occasional gruesome death.”
“Yes,” Marshall says. “I’ve reviewed your duty schedule. Tending the tomatoes. Cleaning floors in the chem lab. Playing with bunnies. You’re doing make-work, Barnes. The occasional gruesome death, as you put it, was what you were brought here to do. The rest was just killing time in between your assignments. The honest fact, and I think if you examine yourself you’ll be forced to agree, is that nothing you’ve done over the past two years has contributed anything of any actual value to this colony. The survival of a beachhead is a knife’s-edge thing, and every day that you continue to exist here, eating and excreting, drawing resources and putting nothing back, tips us that much further toward failure.”
“Okay,” I say. “So you’re suggesting I should … kill myself? Because I have to tell you, sir, that’s going to require a lot more convincing than what you’ve done so far.”
Marshall leans forward again, and his voice drops to a growl. “No, Barnes. Much though I might appreciate that, I am not suggesting that you kill yourself. I am suggesting that you consider the burden that your existence has been to your fellow colonists since your retirement, and that you then make a decision to do something that will even the scales.” After a painfully awkward pause, Marshall leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “You’re obviously thinking that I’m asking you to return to your previous position. To be clear: I am not. As I just said, I am not asking you to kill yourself. In fact, I’m asking you to consider doing what is necessary to save yourself, as well as everyone else in this colony.”
“Riiiiight,” I say. “And this thing you’re asking me to do, it really doesn’t involve me dying in some incredibly painful way?”
“No,” he says. “Not necessarily, in any case.”
I roll my eyes, push back from the desk, and get to my feet.
“Look,” I say, “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind here, sir, but I’ve honestly got a pretty full plate at the moment, what with the bunnies and the tomatoes and, let’s not forget, the creepers. So unless there’s anything else…”
“Barnes,” he says. “Sit down. Please.”
It’s the please that gets me. I don’t know that Marshall has ever used that word with me before. I sigh, and drop back into the chair.
“Fine,” I say. “What’s the ask? Clearing a jam in the reactor core?”
His eyes widen slightly, and I can see the muscles in his jaw bunch.
“What do you know about the reactor core?”
Huh. That’s interesting.
“Well,” I say, “for one thing, I know you’ve grounded Berto and Nasha to conserve power.”
His eyes narrow. “That was a routine measure. Aerial reconnaissance is not productive at this time. The lifters were grounded as a matter of basic efficiency.”
“I also know that you’ve been pulling copies of me out of the tank, and I know you’ve been throwing them into the core. Is that routine?”
That brings Marshall to a full stop. When he finally speaks again, his voice is a flat monotone.
“Who told you that?”
I give him a tight-lipped smile. “Nobody told me. I saw one of them in the corridor yesterday. He was with Maggie Ling. They were clearly in a hurry. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure where they were going, but your reaction pretty much confirms it, huh?”
Marshall stares me down for what feels like a very long time.