“You’re going to a new colony,” I said. “Not the afterlife.”
Zo? smiled at this. “You weren’t paying attention to the gravestone,” she said. “I’ve been to the afterlife. Coming back from that’s not a problem. It’s life you don’t get over.”
“Jane’s taking a nap,” Savitri said, as Zo? and I returned to our stateroom. “She said she wasn’t feeling well.”
I raised my eyebrows at this; Jane was the healthiest person I knew, even after she had been transferred into a standard human body. “Yes, I know,” Savitri said, catching the eyebrow. “I thought it was odd, too. She said she’d be fine, but not to disturb her for at least a few hours.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks. Zo? and I were going to go to the rec deck anyway. You want to come along?”
“Jane asked me to work on some things before I got her up,” Savitri said. “Some other time.”
“You work harder for Jane than you ever did for me,” I said.
“It’s the power of inspiring leadership,” Savitri said.
“Nice,” I said.
Savitri made shooing motions. “I’ll ping your PDA when Jane is up,” Savitri said. “Now, go. You’re distracting me.”
The Magellan’s recreation deck was arrayed like a small park, and was packed with colonists and their families, sampling the diversions the Magellan would offer them on our week-long journey to skip distance, thence to Roanoke. As we arrived, Zo? spied a trio of teenage girls and waved; one waved back and beckoned her over. I wondered if it was Gretchen Trujillo. Zo? left me with a quick backward glance good-bye. I wandered around the deck, watching my fellow colonists. Soon enough most of them would recognize me as the colony leader. For now, however, I was safely and happily anonymous.
At first glance the colonists seemed to be moving freely among each other, but after a minute or two I noticed some clumping, with groups of colonists standing apart. English was the common language of all the colonies, but each world also had its secondary languages, largely based on the stock of its original colonists. I heard snatches of these languages as I walked: Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, German.
“You hear them, too,” someone said behind me. I turned and saw Trujillo. “All the different languages,” he said, and smiled. “Residue from our old worlds, I guess you would say. I doubt people will stop speaking them when we get to Roanoke.”
“This your subtle way of suggesting that the colonists won’t be in a rush to trade in their own nationalities to become newly minted Roanokers,” I said.
“It’s just an observation. And I’m sure in time we all will become . . . Roanokers,” Trujillo said, pronouncing that last word as if it were something spiky that he’d been required to swallow. “It will just take some time. Possibly more time than you now suspect. We are doing something different here, after all. Not just creating a new colony from the old-line colony worlds, but mixing ten different cultures into one colony. To be entirely honest about it, I have my reservations I think the Department of Colonization should have taken my original suggestion and let just one of the colonies field settlers.”
“That’s bureaucracy for you,” I said. “Always messing up perfect plans.”
“Yes, well,” Trujillo said, and waved his hand slightly, to encompass the polyglot settlers, and possibly me. “We both know this is as much about my feud with Secretary Bell as anything else. She was against Roanoke from the start, but there was too much momentum from the colonies for her stop this from happening. But there was nothing stopping her from making it as impractical as possible to manage. Including offering the colony leadership to a pair of well-meaning neophytes who have no idea where the landmines are in this situation, and who will make convenient scapegoats if the colony fails.”
“You’re saying we’re patsies,” I said.
“I’m saying that you and your wife are intelligent, competent and politically expendable,” Trujillo said. “When the colony fails, the blame will fall on you, not on Bell.”
“Even though she chose us,” I said.
“Did she?” Trujillo said. “I heard you were suggested by General Rybicki. He’s well enough insulated from political fallout because he’s CDF, and they’re not required to care about politics. No, when the shit hits, Perry, it’s going to roll downhill, right onto you and your wife.”
“You’re sure the colony will fail,” I said. “And yet, here you are.”
“I’m sure the colony could fail,” Trujillo said. “And I’m sure there are those—Secretary Bell among them—who would be happy to see it fail, as payback against their political enemies and to cover up their own incompetence. They certainly designed it to fail. What can keep it from failing are people with the will and experience to help it survive.”