A Handful of Seeds

A wrenching hand pulls me from the comforting blackness. I don’t want to leave, but the hand is insistent; the deep night dissipates, lightens, blooms into a kind of day.

And there she is, gripping my shoulder. After a few moments, her face comes into focus – a gentle face, her bright eyes fixed on mine, concerned. I smack my lips, trying to generate some saliva; my mouth’s horribly dry. She offers me a beaker of water and I drink. The cool liquid hits all the key spots – lips, tongue, throat. I sense it slipping down my gullet on its way to my stomach. I’m feeling nauseous because of the lack of real food; I hope the water doesn’t bounce back – not in her presence, anyway.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“Does the Pope–” I croak but pull myself up. I’m not with Scott or Gupta now, where vulgarity would be quite normal.

“I’ll rustle something up,” she says. I watch as she walks unsteadily towards the galley.

The section is dimly lit but it’s glaring to my newly-awake eyes; I have to squint to get my bearings.

Over on the other side of the room are Scott and Gupta, sleeping on. They don’t need to come out this first time since it’s only a routine maintenance break. I’ll miss Scott's banter and Gupta's sense of humour; her jokes never fail. I like Miller, but it’s not the same thing.

She wanders back in and beckons me to follow her. I disconnect the alimentation, waste and vital lines before swinging my legs out of the pod and putting my feet on the deck. The first few steps are always going to be shaky – seven years with zero ambulation does that to you – but automatic manipulation and muscle stimulation during sleep, and our training, make it a minor difficulty.

Breakfast is simple – compound paste – but good and I’m glad to note that my taste buds haven’t died. We enjoy a cup of steaming-hot coffee and chat about home; talking is as essential and welcome as that first beaker of water.

Miller tells me that her father was also an astronaut, which I didn’t know. I admire her; the patriarchy that held sway at the time of our leaving meant that things were very difficult for women, so the fact that she got through the filters speaks volumes for her qualities, yes, but also and primarily for her determination. It’s reassuring to have that kind of person heading your team.

Breakfast finished, we know there’s work to be done so we clear the counter and tidy up. I make my way to the command centre to run the general diagnostics, while Miller goes to check up on the embryos. Her check is automated, naturally, but it’ll still be time-consuming; there are an awful lot of them, after all.

I’m long finished and relaxing with vids of my family when Miller finally re-appears, looking exhausted. I make her some tea and she asks me about my work. There’s nothing much to relate – all the main systems seem to be working within acceptable parameters. But I can tell that she’s not really listening; she seems to be preoccupied with something.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What?!” she says, coming round.

“How are things on the embryo deck?”

She still seems distracted but shakes her head slightly.

“I think we have a problem.”

My heart sinks at those words; understatement can be a powerful thing.

“How many,” I ask.

I see her dry-swallow before answering.

“Twenty-seven, or…” Her voice cracks. “Twenty-eight percent?”

“Jesus!”

We sit in silence for several moments while the import of that data sinks in.

“What…? How…?” I manage eventually.

Miller shrugs.

“Inherent defects? Faulty programming somewhere?”

“Well, we ought to run targeted diagnostics,” I say.

“I did. Came up blank,” she says, frowning.

“We could do a physical check,” I say; I’m clutching at straws.

“Where would we start?! It’s vast,” she says, referring to the embryo deck. I can see tears welling up in her eyes. I feel a prickling in my own.

“When did it happen?” I ask, hoping that perhaps it was all down to a momentary glitch, which might, statistically speaking, be unlikely to happen again.

“Over time, according to the monitoring prog,” she says.

We know what each other is thinking now, and we start to voice it at the same time.

“We can’t–”

I let her finish.

“We can’t go back to sleep.”

To leave the embryos to automatic care for another seven years would be to risk yet more major loss – over fifty percent if it continued at the same rate. Even if we re-set awakening for five years’ time, or even sooner, who’s to say what would happen during that period? The rate of loss might be even more rapid. No, it needed manual monitoring of the care systems, and at a certain point, perhaps it would be possible to discover the cause of loss and correct it.

“One of us could…” I’m flailing around for ideas, knowing before this one’s even formulated that it wouldn’t work.

“And leave the other alone?” she says. “Remember what they told us in training about isolation psychosis? We’d need each other to stay compos mentis. And besides – manual handling of all the systems needs more than one pair of hands, more than one mind.”

“What about waking Scott and Gupta?” I don’t know why I ask the question because I know the answer. Maybe I’m just talking for the sake of it – a mixture of post-hibernation confusion and a sense now of helplessness.

“What would be the point?” Miller says, and she’s right. Awakening would have its own risks – they’ve been medicated for a fifteen-year wake-up call. Apart from that, two people can do the monitoring work we’re already planning in our heads; three or four would be better, but not entirely essential.

My eyes start prickling again; Scott and Gupta are good friends, and the possibility that it’ll be years before I speak to them is hard to take.

And another thought occurs to me.

“What if we can’t figure out where the problem is?”

The idea chills me to the bone and I’m sure Miller’s feeling the same. The colony’s demographic situation was critical seven years ago, when we set out. What will it be like in fifty years’ time? How desperate will the settlers be for the rejuvenation we’re supposed to deliver? And if we – or maybe Scott and Gupta only, if Miller and I have to stay out of the pods – arrive with fifty-thousand tiny corpses…?

But then Miller does something that both surprises and warms me.

She reaches across the counter and takes my hand. And in those bright eyes I see a scintilla of hope.

If we can’t bring fifty-thousand, then Miller and I, with the help of Scott and Gupta later, can try at least to deliver a handful of seeds for the future.