Diaspora Ad Astra (24 page)

"You all remember, of course, the time we launched
Galactic 3,
piloted by the android Isaac. That video of him waving to us from Gaia is certainly a classic. Some of
us grew up watching that video, thinking that maybe, just maybe, space
is
ours to conquer after all."

Doris remembered that moment well. She was still a freshman in college then, struggling with her pre-law degree. She had paused amidst the piles of readings she was cramming
just to watch that particular clip on livestream. She remembered wondering if it was all fake, if Isaac was actually just waving from some remote location on Earth, but decided in the end that it
probably was real. Nowhere on Earth could the surrounding plants be that green, that
alive
; none of the video techs would have thought to modify that.

"And now, two decades later," President Watson continued, "we are ready to go through with the final phase of the program: colonization." Doris leaned forward in her seat, and
she saw most of the other leaders did the same thing.

The hologram of Gaia was then replaced by scrolling images of several people, along with their names, occupations, and places of origin. "We have assembled a group of our best
scientists, engineers, terraformers, along with some members of the military, to become the first inhabitants of Gaia. These brave men and women will pave the way for future permanent
settlement."

Doris frowned at the list of names. She glanced at Ruben, who looked back at her, puzzled. She raised her hand, but the Premier of China beat her to it.

"This project," he said. His voice came out slightly mechanical, as he was actually speaking in Mandarin, which the microphones instantly translated into English. “You
say it is ‘our’ mission, but is this really true? I notice that all the names on this roster are citizens of America. Then it is purely a project of the Americans only?"

President Watson hesitated before nodding. "It is a product of my nation’s space program, yes. But this mission is not for our benefit alone, but for all of
us—"

Premier Ying muttered something under his breath, most of which were too soft even for the microphones to pick up; only a single word was translated as "Dung." He cleared his
throat. "But these ships you’re going to use, these ships are
ours
." He punched a button on his own remote control, and an image of several parts of the ship appeared in succession on the
screen. He zoomed in on the image. "See that? And that? Made in China."

Doris had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. For the first time that entire night, President Watson looked as if he had lost a bit of his confidence, but there was no hint
of surprise on his face, only regret. "It is true that the parts used for the ship were supplied by your country, Premier Ying," he said. "We imported them, through very legal routes. Our engineers
assembled the spaceships, and the program has been part of the US government’s plans for decades—no, two centuries, in fact. If you had wanted to be in on the program, you could have asked
for an alliance a long time ago."

"We were preoccupied with local matters," Premier Ying said. "Besides, none of you ever put up an offer for an alliance."

"Or with the rest of us for that matter," Prime Minister Waldorf of Britain said bluntly. "You Americans have always been so cagey about your plans for planetary colonization.
Are you still afraid of competition?"

"This is not it," President Watson said. "As I said, we
are
doing this not just as Americans, but as
humans
. We are doing this for all of you, so the rest of
you can follow."

"Pick up your leftovers, you mean," President Salazar of Mexico said.

"No, that is not—"

“Don’t try to fool us,” Prime Minister Al-Hashemi of Iraq said heatedly. “President Salazar is right. The rest of us will just get the parts of Gaia
that you would not want. You serve not mankind, but yourselves.”

“And may I remind you, President Watson,” Russian Prime Minister Yuri said, “that we have a space program as well.” Even the robotic quality of his
voice translated by the microphones was not enough to mask the cold hatred in his voice. "This is a race. Just as it always has been."

No one spoke for several heartbeats after his statement.

"Then I want our ships back," Premier Ying broke the silence.

"I’m sorry, Premier," President Watson said. "But these are no longer
your
ships. We have paid you amply for the parts, so you essentially have sold them to us. What
we did with the parts was our own discretion."

The rest of the crowd broke into agitated, restless murmurs, like the droning of bees. Doris raised her hand again. When no one acknowledged her, she stood up on her table and
pressed the
Project
button on her remote control. "Excuse me," she said, her voice carrying clearly across the room.

The murmuring quieted, but did not entirely cease. She cleared her throat and spoke clearly. She held her chin up to look directly at President Watson’s eyes—the real
one, and not the projection.

"I am Doris Garcia-Cruz," she said, "and I am the President of the Republic of the Philippines, and I have something to say."

***

It took every ounce of patience Sal had to keep from screaming. The children were being simply
insufferable,
as always. Lotte was crying her lungs out (it was almost
literal, for Sal believed that Lotte was beginning to consume all the ship’s supply of oxygen with all her crying) because her brother Will had taken her Barbie and had programmed it to say
things like “Lotte is like, the meanest little girlie ever,” “Lotte is so fat she can’t fit into her dress anymore,” and, “I hate, hate,
hate
Lotte.” Sal grabbed the doll from Will and gave him her most venomous glare, but the little brat only smiled up at her, unperturbed.

“You bad, bad, boy, Will!” Sal said as she reprogrammed the doll. She shook the remote control at him. “I’ll tell your Daddy about this, and
you’ll be in
so
much trouble—”

“Daddy’s always busy anyway,” Will said. He adjusted his glasses. “He’ll never care.”

“Just because you feel ignored and abandoned doesn’t give you the right to act so horrible,” Sal said. “Don’t psychologize me.”

“Psycho—what?”

“You’re a smart kid, right?” Sal said. “Look it up.” She smoothed out Lotte’s hair and took the little girl into her arms. “Hey come
on, listen to what Barbie’s saying. Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry.”

“I love Lotte,” Barbie said on cue. The doll’s expression even seemed to change from what had seemed like a mocking sneer earlier to a gentle, loving smile.
“Lotte is a brave girl. Lotte is nice and sweet.”

“Thank you, Barbie,” Lotte said. She took the doll and hugged it, then hugged Sal as well. “And thank you,
yaya
.”

“Don’t say that in front of your Daddy, okay?” Sal said. “I don’t think he’ll approve of me teaching you new words that aren’t
English.”

“Then I’m going to tell Daddy,” Will sulked.

“He’ll never care anyway,” Sal said. Will responded to that by thrusting his lower lip out and turning away from them.

Sal winked at Lotte, who giggled. The buzzer rang, and when Sal opened the door, a large pile of food trays appeared at the door.

“Delivery,” a voice said from behind the food trays. Sal blinked and peeked from behind the trays to see the small woman holding them.

“Oh hi,” Sal said. “Thanks.”

“Just get the goddamn food, woman,” the ship’s cook said crabbily. “I still have a lot of deliveries to make.” Sal still thanked her and went back
inside. Will and Lotte were at it again—this time, he had taken Lotte’s talcum powder and was sprinkling it all over her.

"
Stop that
!" She took the powder from Will’s hand and pocketed it. “Is it too much to ask you to please eat your dinner in peace this time, Will?
It’s your favorite. Chicken in vinegar and soy sauce.”

“I’m not hungry,” Will said. But when Sal opened his tray, he grabbed it and started wolfing down his food. Lotte and Sal exchanged a glance, and Lotte
collapsed on the floor in gales of laughter. Sal looked fondly at her two wards. Will was twelve, and was a bit too smart for his age, and compensated for it by acting perfectly immature toward his
sister and Sal. Lotte was eight, and was sweet, most of the time, except during her crying spells. They were probably the two most annoying children in the world, Sal thought, and yet she loved
them, still. Of that, she was certain.

And then the door burst open in a blast of fire and smoke.

Lotte’s giggles were lost in the sound of the blast. Sal shielded the children with her body, and they fell to the cold, hard floor of the ship in a crumpled heap.

Sal was the quickest to recover, and the first thing she did was to check on the children. Lotte was too stunned to cry, but her face was slowly rippling, and in a few minutes
the child was going to start bawling, she was sure. Will was shaking, his glasses askew. The two children seemed to have nothing but a few minor abrasions—at least neither of them was
bleeding. It was only when Sal was sure that they were okay that she finally started checking if all her limbs were still intact.

“What was that?” Will asked. “What’s happening,
yaya
?” In his fright, he had forgotten himself.

“I don’t know,” Sal said. “But we have to—“

Sal never got to finish her sentence, for someone suddenly grabbed Lotte, pulling her away as well. Will reached for her and their fingers entwined, and they were all dragged
outside. Her scream died in her throat when she realized who had grabbed them: it was Professor Eckert, the ship’s top biologist, and Lotte and Will’s father.

They passed a group of military men, who were shooting at someone behind them. One of them gave a strangled cry and dropped down to the ground, heavy as lead, unmoving, yet his
eyes still blinked rapidly. Lotte screamed while Will shut his eyes tightly to keep from seeing the scene. Sal did not bother to look back and see who—or what—the military men were
shooting at.

She and the children turned a corner and rushed into a deserted corridor. Eckert pulled them towards a small room, and he locked the door after them. Sal was about to press the
light switch, when Eckert shook his head.

“I’m so glad the children are safe,” he said when they had all caught their breaths. “I barely escaped, myself. We have to get help, and
fast—”

“What’s going on, Daddy?” Lotte cried. Terror had made her voice shrill. “Are we going to die?”

“Not if I can help it,” Eckert said. “But they’ve taken control of the ship. They disarmed Captain Ericson and his crew, and have taken the other
passengers hostage in the dining hall. And as you saw, even the soldiers were helpless against them. They were far too clever; this was all too well-planned—”

“Who, Daddy?” Will said. “Is it the Chinese? I heard they were pretty angry at us when the President told them about going to Gaia."

“Maybe,” Eckert said. He was looking at the door, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to his son. “I’m not sure who it is. All I know is that
right in the middle of our meeting, people just suddenly started shooting. I didn’t stop to understand what was happening, I just ran. They were shooting at me, but I used some of my other
colleagues as shields—”

Sal gasped and looked at him in horror.

“It was necessary, you hear me?” Eckert said. "I had no choice!" He slumped on the floor.

Will looked as if he too was about to cry. "What do we do now, Daddy? Is it really hopeless?"

Eckert looked at his son and seemed to shake himself out of his despair. "We need to get help," he said. "I tried to get into the ship’s comm center a while ago, but I couldn’t
get in. People kept shooting at me even after I’d told them who I was. And they looked like Americans, too." He shook his head. "I guess the enemy was among us all this time. It’s
just—" He looked at Sal, his expression identical to Will’s, and at that moment he looked not like her boss, but a lost little boy. "It’s so confusing. Who
is
attacking us? Who
would—who—"

Sal knew that what he was really asking was:
Who would dare attack us?
And:
Why are they succeeding
?

"Sir," she said. "Why it happened doesn’t matter. What matters is that the ship is under attack, and we’re the only ones left now. It’s up to
us
."

"We have no weapons," Eckert said numbly.

Sal looked at Will, who was furiously cleaning his glasses in an effort to ease his fear, and Lotte, who was still sniffling and hugging her Barbie tightly for comfort.

"We do," Sal said. "We can always have weapons. You just have to know where to look for them."

***

Doris felt all eyes on her, and thought with a small measure of triumph that because of her position on the topmost row of the hall they were finally they were looking
up
at her. But it was still too early to celebrate.

“Premier Ying has a point,” she said. “It is not entirely right for the United States of America to monopolize this mission when in fact the project has been
dependent on other countries from the very beginning. Perhaps you
have
been the forerunners of the project, collated everything to make it all possible, but you are not the only ones who
should be given the credit.” She clenched her fists, so hard that all blood seemed to leave it. “For instance, we provided most of the project’s labor force.”

Mutters broke out among the world leaders, and one of the leaders blurted out, “What country are you from again?”

“Phi-lip-pines,” Doris said, so irritated that she emphasized each syllable carefully. She took the remote from her desk and projected an image of the Earth, and
pointed at her country. “Here. We come from here. Anyway, this is irrelevant.”

She pressed the button and a new list of names appeared. “These are the names of the engineers, programmers, and other workers who previously served under the Kepler
mission, as well as janitors, cooks, stevedores, and the like. A whopping 88% of them are Filipinos, overseas contract workers. The main commodity that my country exports is labor, and the rest of
the world has benefitted from our workers for decades.” She smiled, mirroring the President’s own earlier. “No,
centuries.
”