Assuming they didn’t screw it up. Which was really the topic of this Scape call with Julia. She was floating in her arklet. She seemed to have adjusted to zero gee; she’d figured out how to pull her hair close to her head, the moon face had abated, she wasn’t visibly nauseated. People were drifting to and fro in the background. The only one Doob recognized was Camila. A couple of other kids were doing what looked like work: prodding and massaging their tablets purposefully, looking up from time to time to engage in brief conversations. A South Asian lad, an African girl, another girl who was probably Chinese.
Girl, kid, lad, girl. His politically correct superego, cultivated during long years of service in academia, was trying to light up his shame neurons. Doob felt no shame—he was way past that—but he was struck by just how young the Arkies were, how different they were demographically from the General Population. It gave him a vaguely troubling sense of being out of touch. It had been decades since he had been young, but he had always been one of the cool kids anyway, with a big following on Facebook and Twitter. Now he was stuck on Izzy and Julia was stuck in an arklet. The two of them were hanging out with completely different populations. GPoppers saw each other all the time and talked face-to-face. Arkies were isolated in their arklets and had to use social media to reach out. Doob hadn’t looked at his Spacebook page since the White Sky, and this call with Julia had been delayed for fifteen minutes while he’d tried to figure out the user interface on Scape—something with which Julia was obviously familiar and comfortable. She used it all the time, and if it didn’t work, one of those kids in the background would help her with it.
Another straw in the wind: while Doob had been fumbling with Scape, he had overheard a brief snatch of conversation from the other end in which the South Asian kid had addressed Julia as “Madam President.” This seemed so odd that he was tempted to bring it up in conversation. But he knew what the answer would be: It was just a courtesy. Former presidents were always addressed thus. It didn’t mean anything. Why was he making a big deal about it? He would come off as some combination of uncouth and comically hypersensitive.
“Dr. Harris, as you know, I’m something of a fifth wheel around here, and so I want you to know I appreciate your taking any time at all out of whatever it is you are busy with to touch base,” Julia began.
“Not at all, Madam . . . Julia,” Doob said, and then, because this was a video connection, resisted the urge to slap himself.
She found that interesting but decided to overlook it. “I feel like a camp counselor here,” she said. “Of course, I was on top of every detail of the Arkitects’ work during the run-up. But to sit in the White House looking at PowerPoints is one thing. Actually to be here is quite another.”
This was quite obviously bait. Fully aware of what a sucker he was being, Doob said, “How so?”
“Well, of course the range of cultural perspectives is vast,” Julia said, “but, modulo that, I find a lot of uncertainty. A sense that all of the Arkies’ talents and energies are bottled up—like so many genies just waiting for someone to rub the lantern. They all so keenly want to help.”
“It is, of course, less than two weeks since the Hard Rain began,” Doob pointed out. “We have five thousand or so years left to go.”
“The Arkie Community is well aware of those numbers,” Julia remarked.
The Arkie Community. Wow. He had to admire the way she’d slipped that in.
“Julia, what’s the purpose of this call? Am I to understand that whatever answers I give you will then be somehow disseminated to the Arkie Community? Because we have an email list for such purposes. An email list that includes every living human being.”
“That list was most recently used two days ago. An eternity for bottled-up Arkies.”
“We have been just a tad busy with the New Caird expedition.”
“There is a lot of curiosity about that in the Arkie Community.”
“There’s a lot of curiosity about it here.”
“I mean about its purpose,” Julia said.
“How could its purpose be any clearer?” Doob asked. “Anyone who made it through the screening and the training required to become an Arkie”—which doesn’t include you, Julia—“will understand exactly what we are trying to do from an orbital mechanics standpoint.”
“Obtain the stupendous amount of water that will have to be expended in order to attempt the Big Ride gambit,” Julia said. “Yes, Dr. Harris, even I understand that.”
“Gambit? Really?”
“Do representatives of the GPop ever make much of an effort to reach out and acquaint themselves with the thoughts and perceptions of the AC?” Julia asked.
“The what?”
“The Arkie Community,” Julia explained, with the slightest roll of her eyes.
“At any given time, about ten percent of the Arkies are rotating through Izzy. You know this. It is the largest number we can accommodate.”
“I’ve talked to several who have experienced that rotation. They all report the same thing. As soon as one enters the privileged environment of Izzy, with safer conditions, more room to move about, better food, and greater exposure to senior staff, the GPop worldview seems so sensible. Which only accentuates the reentry shock upon being deposited back into one’s arklet.”
Doob bit his tongue.