“Not yet, no.” Arthur shrugged. “Standard explanation, delivered by recorded video. Very few original questions in response. A lot of verbal abuse. Pretty routine.”
He popped up another window. “Hey, by the way, got a report from Homer. Well, we were talking, and he filled me in. They’ve identified more than enough resources system-wide to build three ships. Almost enough for a fourth. Although some of the stuff is pretty far out in the outer system.”
I nodded. I’d received a report from Homer and had skimmed it. I’d actually been hoping to be able to build at least a half-dozen ships, but I didn’t want to give Arthur another reason to get all glum on me. Not that he needed much in the way of reasons.
But it was progress.
Bill – October 2158 – Epsilon Eridani
[Communication received from Milo]
“Right on time.” I grinned at Guppy. Predictably, he returned a fishy poker face. “I wonder if he found Vulcans.”
[Not quite]
I raised an eyebrow. That was a far cry from the flat “no” that I’d normally expect from Guppy. If he responded at all. Now my curiosity was way up.
I’d been deep into one of my pet projects—creating realistic artificial bodies. The ultimate problem was producing a muscle analog that worked, looked, and generally acted similar enough to the natural thing. Gears, pistons, and cables would never produce a workable android.
I forced myself to close the project folder, invoked a coffee, kicked off a goose that had settled into my lawn chair, and sat down. Spike ambled over, ignoring the angry goose, and set up shop in my lap.
“Okay, Guppy. Let’s see it.”
Milo’s report spread before me in mid-air. System schematics, close-ups of the twin planets—two habitable planets!—and biological analyses. I chuckled at his insistence on naming them. I’d have done the same. Probably would have picked the same names, come to that.
I sat back, staring into space, so preoccupied that I stopped patting Spike. I was reminded of my primary duty by a furry head butting against my chin.
“Sorry, your highness.” I smiled at the cat and resumed justifying my existence.
Two planets. In a system that was generally considered a marginal candidate for any habitable planets. Were the astrophysicists wrong? Granted, so far we only had three data points, including Earth. But that’s three out of three, if you were willing to be generous with Ragnar?k.
Well, first things first. I queued up the report to be forwarded to Earth, just in case Milo hadn’t sent a copy that way. Hopefully, Riker would be listening.
That left the million-dollar question, which was whether there was anyone left back at Sol to take advantage of this. I was periodically transmitting the plans for the SCUT to every system within thirty light-years, just in case there was a Bob there at some point. But the first transmission to Sol wouldn’t arrive for another nine years or so. I was going to be chewing my nails for a while, looked like.
I pinged Garfield. “Hey, Gar, have you read the latest from Milo?”
He popped into my VR and pointed at his face. “Does this look boggled enough?”
We shared a laugh, and he continued, “It’s awesome. We have a place to put people. Assuming there are still people.” Garfield grimaced. “That would be just the kind of sick joke the universe likes to play. Let’s hope not this time.”
I nodded. “Yeppers. You know, it’s funny. When I left Earth, I just wanted to get away from humanity. Now I find myself acting like some kind of, I dunno, shepherd or something.”
“How does the old joke go? I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”
“Hmm, well, we’ll know in a few years. Meanwhile, how’s the Kuiper mapping going?”
Garfield popped up a schematic. Because of the time required to get a chunk of ice from the Kuiper to Ragnar?k, we were taking the time to look for the biggest chunks. The extra effort up front would pay off later. Most chunks seemed to be too small to bother with, but Gar had found a couple of good icebergs and dropped beacons on them. I still hadn’t quite decided how I was going to get them moving in the right direction.
Riker – March 2158 – Sol
Final count, fifteen million people. The entire human species, represented in a two-page list. That was definitely a downer, and Arthur was not letting the opportunity pass him by.
“We’re not going to be able to get them all off-planet, you know.” Arthur shook his head, eyes downcast.
I wondered if he was really sad, or reveling in the irony. I sat back, put an arm over the back of my chair, and gazed at him in silence until he stopped.
“Arthur…”
“Yes?”
“Please shut the hell up.”
Arthur gave me a half-grin and a shrug by way of response. “You know I’m right.”
“Yes, and you were right the last twenty-five times you said it. Are you keeping score?”
Arthur shrugged and, without another word, popped up the latest Construction Status report. Ah, blessed silence, at last.
Just the same, I couldn’t really blame him.
We’d accounted for every group of people larger than about a hundred on the planet, with very high confidence. It seemed very likely that groups smaller than that simply couldn’t survive, or had seen the advantages of joining larger groups. There’d definitely been consolidation. A few locations actually had a higher population now than they had pre-war.
About half of the global population was currently living in New Zealand, Madagascar, and, strangely, Florianópolis, Brazil. The two island nations made sense. They hadn’t really been part of any conflict, and didn’t represent strategic targets. Their populations were way down, but their climates were still mild enough to maintain the current numbers.
Florianópolis was a weird one. Most of South America was a blasted, jagged moonscape. Between Brazil pounding their neighbors, and China pounding Brazil, there was very little livable land left. But for some reason, the southern tip of Brazil had been spared. It was likely that the population had been augmented by refugees coming in from other areas.
The rest of the global population was scattered around the planet. A lot of people had ended up in island clusters, such as the Maldives, French Polynesia, Marshal Islands, and so forth. Again, probably not prime targets, and their climates would be comfortable for the longest.
Then there were the marginal locations, such as Spitsbergen island, San Diego, Okinawa, and the USE enclave outside Augsburg, Germany. It seemed likely that a lot of the current populations had migrated there over time. And mortality must have been significant for the first couple of years.