“Valda,” Oz said quietly. “He could be lying.”
“It doesn’t matter if he is telling the truth,” Dirk said. “You’re not doing it.”
His tone clearly brooked no arguments. The decision had been made. Not that I could fault him. It almost seemed too fantastical to be believed, and yet hadn’t I just spent years inside a system I could barely imagine, much less have participated in the creation of before?
“The technology exists.” Hatch enunciated each word carefully, but his gaze remained fixed on me, even as the others glared at him. “It dates back to pre-pandemic times when they were still focused on the idea of off-world colonization. Some of the research fell by the wayside, but companies like Blossom Foundry didn’t let it go.”
“How many others do you think have it or are close?” Andreas asked.
“Who cares?” Dirk demanded as he pinned his glare from Hatch to Andreas. “She’s not doing it.”
“No one wants her to do it,” Oz spoke, calm and soothing, but Dirk wasn’t interested in being soothed. I couldn’t fault him for his objections. Hadn’t they all been through enough? “That said, we can’t just dismiss it out of hand. It’s not our decision to make.”
The chair Dirk had been gripping the back of splintered, and he picked it up with one hand and then flung it across the room, where the wood broke apart against the stone wall. I wrapped my hands around the mug of tea. It was still steaming hot, and it chased the chill from my fingers.
“Tell me you’re not considering it,” Dirk ordered, and I met his gaze evenly.
“I won’t lie to you.” Even to make him feel better. “I have to consider it. That said, I don’t know if I believe him. It sounds…”
“Convenient,” Oz supplied, and he scrubbed a hand over his face.
Without another word, Dirk stalked out and I let him go. Sometimes, we all needed a moment to breathe. To sort it out. Hatch pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “I’ll check on him.” Then he murmured next to my ear, “I love you.”
I caught his hand and tilted my head back for a real kiss. One he offered freely. Then with a brief brush of his knuckles against my cheek, he strode out to follow Dirk. Oz pushed back from the table and moved to clean up the debris.
The information weighed on me. We’d asked why Smithson had been so determined, but the answer had not been at all what I expected.
Then again, I wasn’t sure what I expected the answer to be. Not…not off-world colonization, long-term cold storage travel, or helping to maintain the passengers’ sanity for the long journey.
“What are you thinking?” Andreas asked, and I gave him a small smile.
“What if he isn’t lying? Am I selfishly denying what might be a real opportunity to colonize another world? To save lives?” Before he could answer me, I continued, “But how does he even know it will work? And they’ve never successfully launched a colony off-world, everything is theory and conjecture. Granted, the science is fairly sound, but that doesn’t mean the results will be what he wants them to be.”
I focused on the tea, like it could possibly hold the answers.
“What if he isn’t?” Andreas asked, echoing my own thoughts. “He’s not a scientist. Hell, he’s not even an engineer. He’s a corporate hack. He looks after their bottom line. Even if they launch that ship, even if you can hold up the framework and they can plug that many minds in for you to support, there’s no guarantee it even arrives at the destination. But it doesn’t have to for him to win.”
The jaded view was not one I was used to hearing from Andreas. At my raised eyebrows, he gave a little shrug.
“You put together a crew of people, passengers willing to pay, others you are willing to ‘donate’ the space to but are just troublemakers you want out of the way. Then you launch them. The world receives ‘hope’ for a better tomorrow. In turn, the Blossom Foundry profits from that hope both in power and prestige, but also by eliminating competition for resources both tangible and intangible. So it doesn’t have to work. It could be what, a century before the ark they want to send out even arrives at its destination. How much longer before any kind of message comes back?”
Dumping the broken bits into a trash receptacle, Oz sighed. “In other words, it could detonate as it achieves orbit, and as long as no one saw it, he would still be profiting from it.” He moved to stand near the table and folded his arms. We’d not left the kitchen since we’d trailed in, one after the other. Like the bedrooms we’d used—well, I assumed they’d used as well—the kitchen offered no windows.
Someday, I needed to ask Hatch about this place. We had other issues to tackle for now.
“What do you want to do?” Oz asked me, his gaze careful and his tone gentle, as if he didn’t want to influence my decision.
That, or he worried he would already hate whatever choice I made.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “There is very much a part of me that is intrigued. I won’t lie.”
Who wouldn’t be? The idea that I could support such a mental framework? That I could keep so many others alive? That there was this rare chance to leave behind a troubled world and find a fresh start elsewhere? Who was I to stand in the way of that?
Then I looked from Andreas to Oz and exhaled slowly. It wouldn’t just be me committing. It would be all of them. No guarantees. No assurances. Just wild, gambler’s luck and fingers crossed.
My mind might not even survive the journey if I had to immerse myself so deep to protect others. The pressure of the framework with the five of us had been one thing. It had begun affecting them as well, especially Hatch. How would it interact with the others aboard the vessel? Or would it?
Too many improperly explored scenarios with far too many variables.
Frankly, the last time I gambled, I’d lost.
“Valda, making this a possibility is not your responsibility.” The steadiness of faith underscored every single word. “Your mother made a choice, when she locked herself up on that island with your father. Both of your parents did. They made a choice when they created you.”
Created, not gave birth.
“They made a choice when they worked to repair your DNA, and when she used you to incubate some of the tests.”
With each word of Andreas’ revelations, Oz straightened. Outrage filtered through his gaze. He was a doctor. He had to understand the depth of my mother’s choices. Choices I’d accepted and forgiven a long time before.
“I don’t have to agree with the choices to respect that she felt like she had no other alternative. She didn’t create the virus that in turn led the pandemic. She was in charge of a research team trying to find an antiviral, and they simply couldn’t work fast enough.”
I licked my lips and sighed. He’d read through the journals. Viewed her diaries. He’d devoured all the information I’d given him access to while I’d been in the immersion tank. His long-standing hatred for Aloria Bashan had faded with what he’d learned, and I wouldn’t say transformed, but it no longer plagued him as it once had.
My mother had been far from perfect. But she’d done the absolute best she could.