Searching for Sun Chapter Ten

Ten

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy wuzzy was kind of bare,

Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,

Was he?

—Erika (Sanse) Five

Cloey’s JPV

Personal count, Day 365

Estimated time till landing day, Days: Zero and counting

Space, Resolute, Date: 2373

No sun to wake her, no bright moon to filter through the window, there was only the flash of her tablet’s alarm to signify morning.

“Lights,” Asami croaked into the darkness and was greeted by a blaze. “Dim lights,” silently cursing, she waited as the blaze gradually, taking its time, receded to a low glow that was not eye-gouging. “I need to fix that,” she muttered.

Cloey hummed beside her. Asami had ordered her to preserve energy, which meant no morning greetings and chatter. It also meant finding her shirt and sweatpants by herself.

Each morning she took the levels with Erika, seven flights of stairs to reach their Aikido class. The ship was equipped with lifts from deck to deck, but multiple staircases wrapped themselves all the way through the ship in case of electrical complications. Asami’s routine stairwell was tighter than most common traffic ways with see-through metal mesh. She tried not to think what would happen to her knees if she fell on the textured metal.

On Earth, Asami used to run the stairs up a hill to a park. The wind would blow through her, drying sweat to her neck. It was strange running in a self-contained environment. No changes from floor one to seven, either in view or breeze. A slight flow of air circulated down the floors, but she felt her body push against the stagnant breath.

When Asami boarded the Resolute ship she hadn’t known how much she would miss living things. She was used to noticing weeds in the cracks of sidewalk, tufts of grass beneath large trees older than she was. She especially missed the trees. It was unnatural to live day after day without seeing something growing outside the herbarium, beyond Alec’s facial hair—which really was growing.

The view of space flickering in the windows as she passed each floor circled in her mind as she ran. It reminded her that they were still moving, one day closer to home.

Erika paused ahead of her on the seventh flight. Maxi sat on the landing, her feet dangling as she stared down, dropping bits of bread from her breakfast sandwich and watching them circle downwards. She had her practice gun on the grate beside her hip. It was mostly harmless indoors, unable to puncture walls, but it could still put a hole in someone. She wasn’t supposed to carry it out of the practice room. Asami wasn’t going to tell anyone, though Erika probably would.

Everyone was required to undergo some specification of self-defense. Alec enjoyed the shooting range, coupled with modern, hand-to-hand grappling. Asami and Erika had opted for Aikido, a martial arts form that was half stretches, half self-defense, the goal being to safeguard the self without injuring the attacker.

When Maxi looked up her features turned feral.

“Wonderful, the silence and the mouth,” Maxi muttered as she twisted her brown braid across her mouth and stood, her foot kicking the gun perilously close to the walk’s edge. If the gun fell it could injure someone below much more than the lettuce and breadcrumbs tumbling from Maxi’s fingers as she brushed them off over the railing for some android to clean. She was toned and scarred, her naturally tanned skin speckled with freckles that were like golden badges on this ship.

“Good morning,” Erika waved with a sad smile.

Asami looked elsewhere, knowing Maxi would resent the pity in Erika’s eyes. Ever since the second freeze Maxi had been getting treatments and the only thing she seemed to hate more than those doses was the awkwardness reflected in what used to be her peers’ eyes—now that her status was lowered by her illness.

Maxi mimicked Erika’s smile but it lacked the genuine softness of Erika’s and her tone of voice curled in spite, “There is no morning here nitwits.”

Erika plowed on though Asami wished she wouldn’t. “We’re taking self-defense courses as well; did you see Alec at the shooting range?” Erika was slightly subdued, but her smile persisted.

“You call that self-defense?” Maxi hung against the rail. “I’m willing to shoot someone in the eye. You just want to make sure they land on their backs without hurting themselves as they try to stab you in the gut.”

Erika looked down, and Asami felt a stab of anger at Maxi as she made Erika say in an even meeker tone, “We’re all allowed to choose our way, Maxi.”

Asami thought Maxi might have forced herself to swallow bitter roots by the look she gave Erika. Her gaze switched to Asami for an instant and, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought Maxi pitied her for a moment. The snarl returned, back on Erika.

“Sometimes trying to kill your opponent is far more merciful. If someone wants to kill you, they expect you to kill them back. Your way is just more roundabout. You’re a hijacker wasp, give your prey a little sting, hijack its brain, lay your eggs in its belly and keep it alive to incubate your young. Just shoot me, honestly.”

Erika stiffened and actually glared at Maxi.

Maxi rolled her eyes back to where Asami stood breathless, trying to look as though she were not puffing, though she was still out of breath from climbing steps.

“And what about you, Asami? Are you too pacifist to defend yourself for real?” Maxi had a way of dripping sarcasm at everyone. It seemed a habitual game: to see if she could ruffle enough feathers, stir up anger instead of pity.

When Asami mentioned the tension between her and Maxi, Heidi had dismissed it. Analyzed it as retaliation against the silence of space, and a limping recovery from freeze. Asami knew better. Maxi was a star jittering to go supernova. Over the past year awake onboard, Maxi hadn’t broken away from her need to clarify what had happened to her in freeze, and for some reason, upon waking from those cursed pods, she had thought Asami could give that clarity.

That second awakening, clawing free of the freeze, Asami remembered waking up differently. It wasn’t the lethargic melting of an icy sleep—not that gradual un-numbing sensation; this time she had cracked out of sleep as if the ice encapsulating her had broken open. She had kept still, as if her body was used to being surrounded by enemies, and she kept her breathing even, had even slowed her heart from its first galloping rush of action as if she hadn’t wanted the nurses to know she was awake. She remembered that night as clearly as if she were reliving it.

Someone spoke to her, it wasn’t human, its voice was inside her, speaking in her brain. It hurt. Whispering, always there, talking to her those past twelve years . . .

New voices filled her ears. Maybe if she held still enough, they would leave her alone.

She was being forced to wake up. Had it all been a dream?

“Doctor, her brain is abnormally active. She’s thinking, I mean had been, before the injection.”

“It’s just dreams.”

“They aren’t supposed to dream.”

“Get them both out. And prep a sedative.”

Pain woke her completely, driving away memories, and suddenly she was afraid. Lost in a place without oxygen, her lungs filled with water.

She tried to breathe first and became aware of the deep, shuddering gasps, her lungs sucking in air. She was coughing up syrup and gel. Her lungs were heavier than plastic bags stuffed with frosting. Her throat felt sliced like the cracks and lines in tree bark.

 Beside her, a woman began to scream. Asami felt her bones groan, certain that the scream had followed her up through sleep into the waking world. The nurses shushed and said the struggler’s name over and over, like mothers soothing a child from a nightmare. “You’re alright, Maxi. Do you know where you are?”

Asami’s eyes snapped open. She wondered if she had ripped her eyelashes as the nurse peeled gel from her face, ice from the corners of her eyes. She was being excavated.

Instinctively, she knew she would leave faster if she appeared normal, unstressed, relaxed. Her mind held her body still though she badly wanted to thrash about like the neighboring body. The doctor’s face peered down at her with detached interest, his eyes scrutinizing her reactions, not her form. When she showed no sign of screaming, he set aside the thin circular sticky patch that would have leaked a chemical into her system, forcing her to relax like a noodle. Asami preferred to contain her alarm and channel it towards movement.

The nurse rubbed aside most of the gelatin from her face and began peeling the clouded, aged gel onto the floor where it slipped through a grate to hiss and evaporate in a smoky mist. Her arms free, Asami touched her face, feeling her skin still smooth and cold. She pulled her foot free from the suctioning gel and gripped at a nurse for balance as she set her bare feet on the metallic floor.

Maxi bit at the gel restricting her shoulders. The entire tube shuddered as she wrenched her torso free. Two nurses arrested her arms as the doctor wiped a patch onto her straining neck. She went limp, half out of the tube, her eyes glaring up at Asami, who stood wringing gel from her hair, shutting out the commotion as she had grown used to doing while wandering in the ice lands of sleep.

“You won’t fight anything, will you . . .” Maxi panted over the nurse’s shoulder before her mouth went numb, her words slurred.

Asami’s thoughts skipped, her mind unsure where to land. Two lives floated in her head, one before freeze and one after. Anywhere but during. Why was Maxi angry with her? They had argued before freeze. It seemed like ages ago. Her mind had to reach backwards.

The freeze had started before Maxi had gotten her last word in. Had she been nursing that comment for years? Her brain fighting the lethargic freeze to keep that phrase alive? Asami almost admired her persistence. It was Maxi’s nature to fight.

Snow drifted up in Asami’s memory, freeze snow, pulsing like the sluggish beat of a heart, iridescent as wet blood.

The nurse handed Asami a towel to scrub off the quickly drying gel. It was forming stringy clumps on her bodysuit. Asami sat on a metal bench, willing herself to control the phantom images, the phantom memories that threatened to blur her vision and loop her mind into memories of pain. She concentrated on peeling gel from between her fingers and toes and felt the pressure of those memories recede. Maxi was cut from her cocoon and laid on a medical bed; a nurse stroked her hair and explained things gently.

“You’re doing fine. Try to remember why you’re here. You’re on the Resolute, a spaceship. We’ve traveled a total of nineteen years across space.”

Nineteen years for those aboard the ship but thirty-eight for anyone’s friends or family on Earth.

Maxi’s face was turning purple as she worked her mouth and throat trying to speak.

“What is it Maxi? I know you think you’re cold but the sensation will pass.” The nurse was stroking gel from Maxi’s long brown hair.

A noise gurgled up around Maxi’s sedated tongue. Asami thought she made out the words, “Burn witch.” The nurse straightened with a sigh.

Asami wondered what satisfaction Maxi got from the outbursts. It seemed that when she was not able to physically expel her energy, she let it loose through her mouth like a dog barking. Was it a relief to let go of every inhibition? Perhaps she had no doubts, no small voices to question what she did with her body, or what came out her mouth.

 Asami breathed on her hands and pressed her palms to her forehead, which felt numb. She couldn’t help looking at the calming patch stuck to Maxi’s neck, pink and translucent like an extra layer of tissue. The patch seemed to be a quieter type of violence, stripping the will from the body. Maxi had gone still while looking at her. Asami bent to scrub her calves clean of the now papery gel in order not to see those wide, staring eyes.

When the nurses were out of earshot, Maxi rose from the medical bed, hair still wet with strings of blue gel from the freeze pods. Her face drained of color; the hollows of her eyes dark as if bruised. Sticky patches hung from her neck like peeling bandages, she must have been sedated three times already, must have pretended to go down so the nurses would leave her for a moment. A question lurked in her eyes and sprang out at Asami.

“Why did you let them do that to me?”

“They’re just trying to help you. If you stop fighting, they won’t sedate you.” Asami suppressed the urge to get up and walk away.

“I saw you. You were with them, talking to evil spirits. And when they killed me, you watched again and again.”

She was crazy. Out of her mind. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Maxi.” Asami stood. “You don’t look well. I’ll call the nurse over.”

“Don’t pretend you care,” Maxi snarled. “Stop lying to me. You were there, every time.”

Maxi’s nervous twitches reminded Asami of Sam, and the connection hit like a punch to her stomach. “Don’t talk about whatever you think you saw, Maxi,” Asami lowered her voice, “you know what they will do—what they did to Sam to—”

“That’s always your solution, isn’t it, Asami. Stay quiet,” her voice was rising, drawing the nurse’s attention, “don’t ruffle the queen’s feathers!”

“Maxi, do you want to get killed?” She looked over her shoulder trying to smile at the nurse. “Look, whatever you experienced, I know we aren’t supposed to dream, but the first time, I was alone in this room, or sometimes a green field—”

“This wasn’t some fantasy!” Maxi screamed. “You can’t dream spirits like this up. They read my mind. They wanted to rip the chip from everyone’s brain like it was a sport.” Her hands went to her head, as if pressing it back together.

“You don’t even have a chip, Maxi!”

When the nurses returned and Maxi kept screaming, Asami knew it was over. Maxi would get the same treatments Sam had. A small part of her was ashamed at the doubt she felt, whether Sam had known something after all. Maybe the freeze had driven them both mad.

 “You remember!” Maxi kept shouting. Gripping Asami by the front of her shirt, tearing it. It took three nurses to pry Maxi off of her.

Maxi still had that cold, calculating look in her eyes. “Wasp got your tongue?” Maxi sneered, “I’m sure your brain never stops buzzing. Your silence always screams that you are thinking, thinking, thinking. Just like a spider weaving. But you never share a word with us. Who knows what happens in that great, broad forehead of yours. All you give us is static.”

 “Moons above.” Asami shook her head and started down the walk.

“No thoughts behind those cloudy iced-up eyes? Did the freeze damage your interest in conversation?” Maxi called after her.

“It certainly seems to have addled your capacity for quiet,” Asami snapped, turning, caution escaping, “do you ever shut up? You sulk because everyone calls you mad, but every word out of your mouth is crazy!” And she was glad to let some of the energy out of her bones.

Erika shifted nervously, “Well, it was so nice meeting you here, Maxi.” She turned down the walk, pulling Asami after her.

“Maybe you aren’t completely spineless,” Maxi called. Her brown eyes watched Asami like a predator eyeing its next meal. “Maybe you will survive, if you are selfish enough. Take care of yourself first. Hate me all you want; I won’t let you forget. The way you let them torture me. You think just because it was a dream it doesn’t matter?”

‘Wow,’ Erika mouthed. “I don’t think her treatments are working that well,” she whispered.

Why did Maxi keep dragging Asami back to the freeze, a constant reminder of Sam? She studied the metal rafters above Maxi’s head and imagined them bursting outwards into space, dragging everyone out like birds in a cyclone where space would crush and free them.

 Erika motioned her to keep moving, trying to draw Asami after her.

Did she hate Maxi?

Asami sighed. “If they did torture you, in that freeze dream, I doubt it had anything to do with me.” Asami took Cloey’s advice—in dreams, we invent our own tortures.

“That’s it?” Maxi smiled at her almost fondly, “here I thought you could be the least bit honest with me. I certainly hate you.”

The weight of Sam and her nightmares clouded her head. “I don’t know that you do. You just like to fight.” And who else could she fight against? As dissimilar as they were, Asami felt it was the difference of opposites. Maxi couldn’t contain anything, and Asami couldn’t let go of control.

 “Oh, goody. Are you going to psychoanalyze me? Do tell me more, I’d love to hear about my coping mechanisms from a fellow botanist. Does studying plants give you insight into my violent psyche?”

Asami rolled her eyes, sympathy evaporating, “Plants are predatory. They simply know how to control themselves. You, for example, would make a lovely Puya chilensis.”

She continued down the walk towards her class, blocking out the scream she imagined pulsing from Maxi’s dilated pupils. A scream echoing back inside her.

 “Well, that was interesting. Least I’ve caught my breath. I’m always too winded after those steps.” Erika stretched when Asami failed to speak first. “You know, Maxi is crazy, thinking you both met in dreams during freeze, but she’s also right. You’ve been more silent since—”

 “—What do you think she meant, about being more merciful trying to kill someone?” Asami cut her off.

“Is it that hard to talk about it? We all went through it.” Erika pressed, concern emanating from her, trying to draw Asami out.

“I suppose my mouth just got used to being closed.”

“Very funny,” Erika’s eyes narrowed.

“Maybe I’m practicing to be a ventriloquist.”

“You can’t deflect forever.”

“Maybe I’ll make a career out of it.”

“Deflecting!” Erika jabbed at her.

“I can try,” Asami muttered as they entered the class. She fell into stretches, joining three other freezys on the mats. The rest of the class was dominated by ghosts. She loved the rhythm of her body circling through patterns of movements meant to sink into her muscles and be used at need—it was almost like a dance: the shift of her bones, the balance. The concentration of each muscle drew her attention away from her thoughts until her head was blissfully hovering in concentration.

Erika looked ready to pounce on her again after class, but Asami funneled out the door with the other students, calling back, “I have to run, but I’ll see you at the viewing.”

“Oh, I won’t be there, but I’ll see Gliese from the work deck, everyone will be let out for ten minutes. The supervisors aren’t that mean,” Erika called back, looking annoyed.

“You would sign up for work on the single most historical day of our lives.”

Erika shrugged, waving over her shoulder, “Someone has to.”

Asami couldn’t get entirely used to Erika’s martyring tendencies. At first, she thought her friend did it for attention, to be liked. But she didn’t think so anymore. Perhaps because she had seen the way G.P. children were designed. Heidi needed peacemakers as much as she needed boundary pushers.

Asami relaxed when she turned down her room’s hallway. It was empty. She paused, leaned her forehead into the glassy surface. It felt cool against her skin, not as arctic as space, more like a container against that dark cold. She could feel the chill seeping through the walls, a friction of molecules giving warmth.

Ghosts began to file past her into the stairwell. Asami became aware that her leggings were damp, and her shirt clung to her collar and lower back. She escaped the now crowded space, headed for the shower.

Water was a precious resource, recycled like their air and used sparingly for cleaning. Asami stepped into the shower and felt the familiar disappointment as warm mist blasted over her sweaty skin. It felt like she was being blow-dried with soapy air. The worst part was her hair. The shower left a powdery residue, which absorbed oil. Then she was buffeted again with dry air that removed the powder from her body but left her hair in a wild cloud, which she had to comb back down.

She dressed in her casual clothes, a slouchy, green, sweater and grey sweatpants. Cloey would scold her for leaving the room with her hair in a static plume, so she braided it.

She had considered dressing in uniform for the occasion. Today would only happen once, the first viewing of their home world, but she didn’t want her life on Gliese to be about the G.P. and its mission. She wanted to remember today with hope for her future, a future including an existing colony, new people who had traveled before the chip existed—people like her.

Asami’s personal tablet blinked up at her. <Gliese update>. She felt an uncomfortable moment of dread even as excitement danced across her skin. Outside, the windows to space were still dark. She wanted planet-side so much it hurt, like an ache in her gums. She wanted to feel the sun again. To soak in its warmth across her face. To feel air in her lungs that hadn’t been filtered and mixed and recycled. The more they waited the more she wanted. And she didn’t think she could bear it if the colony didn’t welcome them. One more month aboard the Resolute and she might resort to spacewalking just to get away from the walls.

Across from her, Alec sat frozen, his gaze distant as he took the news feed directly into his senses, a download into his brain. That was another thing about the chip that bugged Asami. When anyone was focused completely chip-ward, their whole body tended to freeze. When they were just thinking, emotions colored their faces with expression and opinion, but when their mind went chip-ward, their faces seemed empty.

Asami turned her attention back to her tablet. She always felt like a creeper studying the others when their brains were chip-ward. It was like watching someone sleep—only more boring. Everyone had work tablets that could be passed around, but those with a chip in their head tended to leave their pads for work use while Asami carried hers around by necessity. She scrolled through the alert, scanning the rehash of information about Gliese, a dry proclamation about their home.

Alec’s hand had paused on his drink as he tuned into the feed. Condensation dripped from his pinky. Asami suppressed the urge to dab his hand dry. His pale skin looked translucent like fragile rice paper over blue veins, and when he blushed from the alcohol his arms turned pink. All the kids born after Earth were called ghosts because they’d never seen the sun. Their complexions were all perfectly porcelain, varied in shade, but their very pores seemed invisible. In comparison, she still had a pleasant yellow-brown pigment marred with sun-darkened scars. Her straight, sandy hair should have made her feel light next to his dark head, but he had been born on the ship and not even a freckle marked his nose. Everyone had paled over the voyage, even Erika, whom she had always thought of as sun touched, her skin soaking in color, deep and bronzed brown. Asami surveyed her hands. The paleness of her skin felt ashy. She almost looked forward to her next sunburn.

The room was a square with a circular bar and a floor-to-ceiling window. They had taken a plush green booth with a view of flickering space. The flickering stilled, a hard tug at Asami’s core rocked her back into the booth, the pressure of the ship slowing and smashing the back of her head into the cushioned booth.

Alec’s drink sloshed over his pale fingertips, coloring him orange.

They’d arrived.

Through the window, Asami could see stars—twinkling, unmoving constellations.

Her heartbeat thrummed in her neck, faster and faster. She felt slightly dizzy.

They were finally here.

Leaving the booth where Alec still sat, sightless and unhearing, like all the other inhabitants of the lounge that used the chip, tuned into some uplink about the planet, Asami moved to the large window to look down at Gliese with her own eyes. The window was aglow. Her new planet looked peaceful, the silence of that world, orbiting the red dwarf star like the moon orbits Earth. Tidally locked, Gliese 581g would only show the sun one side of her face. Her other half watched space. Like a stone, baked on top, cold underneath.

Her new sun, she could almost feel its warmth, though she knew it was her imagination. The ship shielded them from that heat. But the light bathed her in red.

Asami’s gaze turned, feasting upon their new world. The Libras had settled right between the line of night and day, a zone called terminator. Asami had dreamed about meeting the first colonists. She imagined herself free of the current hierarchy on the spaceship Resolute, free of the continuous physical checkups and psychoanalysis. The Libra colony would be her introduction into a real habitation, large enough to get lost in, a permanent one. She didn’t care how advanced or regressed.

The silent spell broke as buzzing voices filled the room.

“She looks amazing,” Alec said.

Asami thought she detected a little bit of that childlike wonder that came with experiencing something for the first time.

Others had joined Asami by the floor-to-wall window. She glanced back at him. The chip had finally released them from its news flashes. She wondered if it had also left a calming residue, a subtle nudge that had lowered chip users’ excitement as they waited for the colony to hail them. Even she wanted to jump up and down, but the atmosphere remained hushed.

They had come to the small cantina to wait for this report, to celebrate their arrival at their new home. She tapped at the screen eager to read the first greeting from the Libra colony below them. A report that would tell them if the voyagers had been successful, if the Libras had thrived, or diminished.

No report came.

The crew grew restless, glancing at one another, calculating the time it would take to send and receive a response. Back on Earth the silence had been more plausible—as it took over twenty years for the Libras to send their first message back to Earth, and twenty more for Earth’s response to reach Gliese. Laser communications were the fastest means of transferring data, traveling at the speed of light itself. No one had expected a response from Earth or Libra in flight, but now, hovering over the planet itself? Communication should be instantaneous between the Resolute and Gliese.

Perhaps their communications were down or moved. Asami remembered the briefs she had received on worst-case scenarios.  The Resolute crew would be out of Earth’s communications for the duration of their trip—over forty years. They could send data back to Earth, but Earth would be unable to contact them without very specific calculations to target their communications systems—or some sort of satellite relay system to send data across lightyears of space to designated locations. If the Libras had moved their communications center, Earth’s messages would never be received. Asami imagined a regressed colony, one more in tune with the world around them, and less internally wired.

A memo finally flashed across her tablet screen.

<Conducting planet scan. Please return to your duties.>

She had waited all day, staring at the planet almost as fixedly as the ghosts, who had never seen a world before. Alec grinned madly and kept topping off her glass, his eyes flickering from the planet and back to her face.

The light they had been waiting for flashed again on her tablet. Asami scanned it quickly and then paused on a line.

<Missing Libra colonists have yet to be accounted for. Colony evacuation unknown.>

Gone? Asami thought numbly. Easily over one thousand people—if they had procreated—whom she had never met, but whom she had already considered family, had vanished. It had never occurred to her that the colony would be gone; regressed in science, maybe, socially primitive, but surely not gone. Any number of variables could account for it, such as a disease or a genetic deficiency. Asami closed her eyes and felt her cheeks and forehead numb over, a residue effect from cryo freeze whenever she felt anxious.

The androids should have survived unless the humans had disassembled them. She could picture the colonists, patching their equipment with pieces of android, a lexicon chip for a computer code, a chip in a mainframe for access to the net. An image of Cloey crossed her mind, disassembled, and Asami stopped thinking. Would this be her future too? To come all this way, and find the planet unlivable?

She played the minute-long footage of a drone’s spatial sweep of the planet. A color pallet of heat signatures and atmospheric scans blurred in her vision as she took in the implications of the news. Small heat signatures shifted across a pin drop spot on the globe, probably belonging to the animals that the first colony had introduced to the world. But the Libra colonists, the human signatures, were missing. There were larger dots, too cold-blooded to be human. What could have happened? A colony that had been established eighty-one years ago, that had sent word to Earth that the project was a success, that had sent the go-ahead on sending the next wave—the G.P.—gone. It was possible they simply hadn’t reproduced, but it was equally unlikely that no one had.

 “No first contact. Who would have thought we’d arrive to a mystery?” Alec smiled with anticipation.

“You think they all died.”

Alec nodded, and a little bit of that cold adult logic entered his eyes. “It’s possible, maybe even for the best.”

A part of her couldn’t help suspecting Alec was glad the Libras were gone because of his ghost’s stigma. No Libras meant one less faction of humanity that would see them as different, also less competition for possible resources. He had no dreams of meeting a society down there, no desires to talk to people who had grown up on Gliese, only insecurities. To Alec, the colonists must have seemed like an obstacle. His psychological profile had been designed to emphasize logic and purpose. A Growth Project kid, just like her, bred for this world, alive almost as long as she had been—but she felt so much older than his eighteen years. She didn’t think it was the age gap, five years was nothing in the long run. But she was from Earth. She’d seen societies coexisting. She’d seen the bustle of millions across a globe. She felt older because her profile, her design, was supposed to include empathy, and that feeling had made her wonder what it had been like for those first colonists and dream of meeting them.

She looked down at her arms, red light flickering, the light of their new star; she had the sun back, but it was cold and distant.

“Twenty credits say they don’t let us near the surface for a week.” Alec turned from the window losing interest. A steady stream crowded into the space, cluttering the air with speculation.

“Why not?” Asami had lost money to worse odds. She could mourn her dreams in private. A new worry rose to her mind. What if the Libras couldn’t survive on the surface? She said as much to Alec.

“What if they send us back to Earth?”

“Never going to happen.” Alec stretched and led the way back to the bar.

“We have the fuel reserves for it.”

“At half the speed of light, it’s taken more than forty years to get here in Earth time. Going home isn’t the viable option it was made out to be. There aren’t enough freeze tubes and the new Growth kids are too young to go into cryo. No one signed up for a trip home. People would riot to get down to that planet, colony or no colony.” He looked determined. “We will thrive or die here.”

The idea of mutiny rose before her eyes. She hoped he was being poetic. This ship was all he had ever known for eighteen years. She could sympathize, having only spent one year awake on board she was already half mad to get out onto land with open skies. Even more than her, Alec was determined not to spend his entire life on a spaceship.

Asami knew he was right. Returning to Earth was a terrible option, the equivalent of failure, and a loss of billions of credits, and hundreds of Growth Project kids with no citizenship. They would probably be held on the moon for processing or assigned to mine asteroids. Only those with biological ties that wanted to claim them would be welcomed on Earth, and by the time they returned, they would be dealing with their genetic donors’ grandchildren. But the wary side of her instincts told her this planet was also a disaster.

She left Alec at the bar. The protocol had been drilled into all of them: make contact, and start migration. No one had ever told them what to expect if that plan failed. She wondered what they weren’t airing on the net.

Asami went to the freeze chamber. Now that they had arrived, all the freezys would be woken, if they were landing.

“Are you still de-freezing?” Asami asked a nurse on break.

“Everyone’s getting out.” The woman had hard brown eyes that looked at Asami sharply.

“Thank the moons,” her partner called as he pulled gel from a freezy’s ears. “This might have been fascinating for the first couple of years, de-freezing you lot, but I am ready to hit ground.”

They were landing then, and soon, or else the rapid process of de-freeze would have been put to a halt. There wasn’t enough room on board to house and feed everyone. As uneasy as she felt, she was also relieved. She was starved for land and water.

“This isn’t a good time to gawk,” one of the nurses told her.

“Let her alone, she’s always here.” The doctor called the nurse over. The new freezy watched her, twitching, eyes darting. Asami wondered what their experience had been. Had they stayed suspended above dreams? Had time elapsed as if they were waking now from a coma?

Asami breathed in the sterile smell. She wondered if the freeze would ever leave her. If it had frozen sparks of fear or joy that had once existed. Sometimes the thought occurred to her that she wasn’t human, that she had died in the cryo process and been sustained by an android’s body. She imagined wires running beneath her tissue instead of bone and sinew.

She had woken from that last sleep hardened. Her heart a stiff, brittle log that remained half-baked, and all she wanted was to forget. She wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Heidi, about the nightmares that had begun to recur since the second freeze. She wouldn’t let them inject her with the garbage cure that had killed Sam, that had done nothing for Maxi. She would find her way through, she would find a new dream—she would make one.