That was about as much social life as Rusel wanted. Otherwise he just worked himself to the point of exhaustion, and slept. The complex mass of emotions lodged inside him – agony over the loss of Lora, the shock of seeing his home destroyed, the shame of living on – showed no signs of breaking up. None of this affected his contributions to the Ship, he believed. He was split in two, split between inside and out, and he doubted he would ever heal. In fact he didn’t really want to heal. One day he would die, as so many others had, as Lora probably had; one day he would atone for his sin of survival in death.
Meanwhile there was always the Ship. He slowly widened the scope of his work, and began to develop a feel for the Ship as a whole. As the systems embedded, it was as if the Ship was slowly coming alive, and he learned to listen to the rhythm of its pumps, feel the sighing of its circulating air.
Though Andres continued to use the fanciful name she had given it, Rusel and everybody else thought of it as they always had: as Ship Three – or, increasingly, just the Ship.
Almost a year after Jupiter, Andres called her ‘council’ of twelve together in the amphitheatre at the base of the Ship. This big chamber had been stripped of its acceleration couches, and the dozen or so of them sat on temporary chairs in the middle of an empty grey-white floor.
Andres told them she wanted to discuss a little anthropology.
In her characteristic manner she marched around the room, looming over her crew. ‘We’ve had a good year, for which I thank you. Our work on the Ship isn’t completed – in a sense it never will be completed – but I’m now satisfied that Mayflower will survive the voyage. If we fail in our mission, it won’t be the technology that betrays us, but the people. And that’s what we’ve got to start thinking about now.’
Mayflower was a generation starship, she said. By now mankind had millennia of experience of launching such ships. ‘And as far as we know, every last one of them has failed. And why? Because of the people.
‘The most basic factor is population control. You’d think that would be simple enough! The Ship is an environment of a fixed size. As long as every parent sires one kid, on average, the population ought to stay stable. But by far the most common causes of mission loss are population crashes, in which the number of crew falls below the level of a viable gene pool and then shuffles off to extinction – or, more spectacularly, explosions in which too many people eat their way to the hull of their ship and then destroy each other in the resulting wars.’
Diluc said dryly, ‘Maybe that proves it’s just a dumb idea. The scale of the journey is just too big for us poor saps to manage.’
Andres gazed at him challengingly. ‘A bit late to say that now, Diluc!’
‘Of course it’s not just numbers but our population’s genetic health that we have to think about,’ pointed out Ruul. This lanky, serious man was the Ship’s senior geneticist. ‘We’ve already started, of course. All of us went through genetic screening before we were selected. There are only two hundred of us, but we’re as genetically diverse a sample of Port Sol’s population as possible. We should avoid the founder effect – none of us has a genetically transmitted disease to be spread through the population – and, provided we exert some kind of control over breeding partnerships, we should be able to avoid genetic drift, where defective copies of a gene cluster.’
Diluc looked faintly disgusted. “‘Control over breeding partnerships”? What kind of language is that?’
Andres snapped, ‘The kind of language we’re going to have to embrace if we’re to survive. We must control reproductive strategies. Remember, on this Ship the purpose of having children is not for the joy of it or similar primate rewards, but to maintain the crew’s population levels and genetic health, and thereby to see through our mission.’ She eyed Diluc. ‘Oh, I’m not against comfort. I was human once! But we are going to have to separate companionship needs from breeding requirements.’ She glanced around. ‘I’m sure you are all smart enough to have figured that out for yourselves. But even this isn’t enough, if the mission objectives are to be ensured.’
Diluc said, ‘It isn’t?’
‘Of course not. This is a desperately small universe. We will always rely on the Ship’s systems, and mistakes or deviances will be punished by catastrophe – for as long as the mission lasts. Non-modified human lifespans average out at around a century; we just haven’t evolved to think further. But a century is but a moment for our mission. We must future-proof; I’ve said it over and over. And to do that we will need a continuity of memory, purpose and control far beyond the century-long horizons of our transients.’
Transients: it was the first time Rusel had heard her use that word.
He thought he saw where all this was leading. He said carefully, ‘Port Sol was not a normal human society. With respect. Because it had you pharaohs at its heart.’
‘Yes,’ she said approvingly, her small face expressionless. ‘And that is the key.’ She lifted her hand before her face and studied it. ‘Two centuries ago the Qax Governor made me ageless. Well, I served the Qax – but my deeper purpose was always to serve mankind. I fled Earth, with others, to escape the Qax. Port Sol was always a refuge for the undying. Now I have had to flee Sol system itself to escape my fellow human beings. But I continue to serve mankind. And it is the continuity I provide, a continuity that transcends human timescales, that will enable this mission to succeed, where even Michael Poole failed.’
Diluc pulled a face. ‘What do you want from us – to worship you as a god?’
There were gasps; you didn’t speak to a pharaoh like that. But Andres seemed unfazed. ‘A god? No – though a little awe from you wouldn’t come amiss, Diluc. And anyhow, it probably won’t be me. Remember, it wasn’t a human agency that gave me my anti-ageing treatments, but the Qax…’
The Qax’s own body architecture had nothing in common with humanity’s. They were technically advanced, but their medicinal manipulation of their human subjects was always crude.
‘The success rate was only ever some forty per cent,’ Andres said. She inspected her hand, pulling at slack skin. ‘Oh, I would dearly love to live through this mission, all fifty millennia of it, and see it through to its conclusion. But I fear that’s unlikely to happen.’ She gazed around at them. ‘I can’t do this alone; that’s the bottom line. I will need help.’
Diluc suddenly saw it, and his mouth dropped open. ‘You aren’t serious.’
‘I’m afraid so. It is necessary for the good of the mission that some of the people in this room do not die.’
Ruul the geneticist unfolded his tall frame from his chair. ‘We believe it’s possible. We have the Qax technology.’ Without drama, he held up a yellow pill.
There was a long silence.
Andres smiled coldly. ‘This is no privilege. We can’t afford to die. We must remember, while everybody else forgets.
‘And we must manage. We must achieve total social control – control over every significant aspect of our crew’s lives – and we must govern their children’s lives just as tightly, as far as we can see ahead. Society has to be as rigid as the bulkheads which contain it. Oh, we can give the crew freedom within limits! But we need to enforce social arrangements in which conflict is reduced to negligible, appropriate skill levels kept up – and, most importantly, a duty of maintenance of the Ship is hammered home into every individual at birth. That is why a long-lived elite must ensure perfect continuity and complete control.’