“Once again, to be clear,” he says finally, “I have confirmed nothing. Do you understand?”
I hesitate, then shake my head. I’m honestly not sure that I do.
“As I said before,” Marshall says, his voice now low and even, “this colony exists on a knife’s edge. This is true of all beachhead colonies, but given our unique circumstances, perhaps even more so for us.” He pauses then, and I consider mentioning how many of our current unique circumstances are the direct consequences of his decisions. Discretion is the better part of valor, though, so I hold my silence until he goes on. “Many elements could finally be responsible for pushing us over the edge, Barnes. Crop failure. Equipment failure. Hostile action. Do you know what the most common cause of colony failure is, though?”
It takes me a moment to realize that this isn’t a rhetorical question.
“No, sir,” I say. “Please. Enlighten me.”
His jaw tightens at my tone, but otherwise he doesn’t react.
“Panic,” he says. “The most common cause of colony failure is panic. Every beachhead encounters difficulties. Many encounter disasters. The ones who face these setbacks with calm leadership and courage survive. The ones who succumb to rumors and viral fear? They die. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Barnes?”
“Um,” I say. “I think you’re telling me to keep my mouth shut about the reactor?”
He leans forward in his chair, hands flat on the desk in front of him. “I’m telling you there is nothing wrong with this colony’s antimatter reactor. It has sustained us for eleven standard years now, and it will continue to do so for as long as we require it. I am also telling you that we have not been pulling expendables out of the tank. To say that we have is inflammatory, and could lead to exactly the sort of panic reaction among the general colonists that we need to avoid. Again, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“No, sir. Not think. I do. I understand.”
His face relaxes, and he gives me what might even be the hint of a smile.
“Excellent. So I can rely on you to avoid spreading these types of rumors?”
I’ve already spread them to Nasha and Berto, of course, and would have to Jamie as well if he had the cranial capacity to understand them. This probably isn’t the time to mention that, though.
“Yes, sir. I’ll be sure to keep my thoughts on these topics to myself.”
“Excellent,” he says. “I’m happy that you understand the necessity of discretion.”
I nod.
He nods.
I glance over my shoulder. The door is still closed behind me.
“So,” I say. “This was very helpful. Can I go, then?”
“What?” Marshall says. “No. Do you think I called you down here to talk about these ridiculous rumors? I told you, we have a job for you.”
Right. That.
“Two years ago,” he says, “you went down into the creepers’ labyrinth with two antimatter bombs. When you came back, you only had one.”
I shake my head. “I only carried one. Eight had the other one, and Eight was not me. I thought we’d established that.”
Marshall’s mouth twists in disgust. There must have been a really good reason for him to start pulling Mickeys out of the tank again. He can’t even talk about multiples without looking like he’s about to be sick.
“I’m not interested in semantics,” he says. “The two of you left this dome with two bombs, and you only returned with one.”
I shrug. “Okay. So?”
“So,” Marshall says. “I need you to go back to the creepers now. I need you to get that bomb back.”
I let that hang between us for a beat. Marshall’s belief that the creepers have possession of that bomb is the thing that’s guaranteed my continued survival for the past two years. I do not want to disabuse him of that notion, and even more than that I really do not want to bring that bomb back to the dome.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say finally. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Think again,” Marshall says, his voice suddenly flat and cold. “When you sat in that same chair two years ago and announced that you were refusing to do your job, when you resigned from a position that you had no right whatsoever to resign from, we were forced to send a drone into the core in your place to attempt to reload the fuel from your bomb. The drone malfunctioned. Ling believes that the intensity of the neutron flux in the core damaged the damned thing’s brain. It, in turn, severely damaged the antimatter feed mechanism, although that did not become apparent until very recently. Six days ago, we came within ten seconds of an uncontrolled chain reaction that would have turned this colony into a smoking crater a hundred kilometers across.”
“Oh. But you did shut it down, right?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Barnes. The fact that you are sitting here in one piece and not dispersed into your component elements and drifting through the stratosphere right now is a strong indication that we were able to bring the situation under control. In order to do so, however, we were forced to spoil over ninety percent of our remaining fuel stores. Do you understand what that means?”
“Um…”
“What it means, Barnes, is that we do not currently have the necessary energy reserves to survive another winter.”
Oh. That’s not good.
“But … I mean, there are ways other than antimatter annihilation to keep warm, right? Humans survived weather as cold as Niflheim’s back on Earth, back when all they had to keep them warm were animal skins and fires.”
Marshall sighs. “Setting aside the advisability of starting a fire inside the dome, or the possibility of doing so outside in an atmosphere consisting of less than ten percent oxygen, or the practicality of making a warm winter cloak out of a creeper’s chitin—what do you suppose those hardy humans back on old Earth were eating?”
I actually have no idea what prehistoric humans ate. Probably not creepers? I’ve already had this conversation twice, though. I know where he’s going.
“Even with what we’re managing to grow outside right now,” he says, “the cycler is still responsible for over a quarter of the calories our population consumes. Moreover, our population cannot remain static. At some point relatively soon, we need to begin decanting babies. If we wait too long, there will not be enough adults left to raise them when we do. There have been extensive studies done to determine the optimal number of infants per caretaker, and that number is closer to one than to a thousand. In order to feed those babies that will need to start coming out of storage soon, we will absolutely need the cycler. Do you have any idea how much power that system draws?”
I do, actually. That was one of the things Jemma Abera covered in detail during my training back on Himmel Station prior to boost.
The answer, in case you were wondering, is a hell of a lot.
“Look,” Marshall says. “I don’t particularly like you, Barnes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. I objected to the inclusion of an Expendable on this mission on principle, but I was overruled on that point. I objected to not throwing you out of the air lock after we boosted out from Himmel Station, but I was overruled on that as well. I was extremely displeased that you returned from your mission to the creepers alive and with your weapon still on your back, and I was even more so when it became apparent that I would not be able to shove you into the cycler face-first afterward. Are we clear on all of this?”
Again, this is apparently not a rhetorical question. After a long, awkward silence, I nod. Marshall leans across the desk, and for an instant I think he’s going to kill me where I sit.
“Good,” he says, “because I want you to understand how much it hurts me to say this: Get me that bomb back, and everything is forgiven. I will not ask you to perform the duties you signed onto this mission to perform, ever again. I will sit quietly and watch you tend tomatoes and play with bunnies until the end of your days, if that is what you choose to do. Without that antimatter, we are lost. Once the weather turns, our reliance on the cycler will jump to nearly fifty percent of our total caloric requirements. Under that load, our current remaining fuel stores will last for a year—maybe two if we cut rations to an absolute minimum, reduce the base temperature in the dome, and minimize waste cycling. Berrigan in Physics tells me this star’s next down cycle may last for seven years or more. If that is true, and if you cannot retrieve the antimatter that we require, I tell you that there will be nothing in this dome but starved and frozen corpses when the weather finally warms again.”