Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

twenty-nine minutes to
get to - ’
    She had made a mistake: that was his first thought. Had she
forgotten that there were still sixteen days to go before the
Coalition ships were due? But he could see from her face there was no
mistake.
    Twenty-nine minutes. He reached down to his bedside cabinet,
pulled out a nano pill and gulped it down dry. Reality bleached,
becoming cold and stark.
    He dragged on his skinsuit and sealed it roughly. He glanced
around his room, at his bed, his few pieces of furniture, the Virtual
unit on the dresser with its images of Lora. Bring nothing. Andres
wasn’t a woman you disobeyed in the slightest particular.
    Without looking back he left the room.
    The corridor outside was bedlam. A thousand people shared this
under-the-ice habitat, and all of them seemed to be out tonight. They
ran this way and that, many in skinsuits, some hauling bundles of
gear. He pushed his way through the throng. The sense of panic was
tangible - and, carried on the recycled air, he thought he could
smell burning.
    His heart sank. It was obviously a scramble to escape - but the
only way off the moon was the Ships, which could take no more than a
thousand. Had the sudden curtailing of the time left triggered this
panic? In this ultimate emergency had the citizens of Port Sol lost
all their values, all their sense of community? What could they hope
to achieve by hurling themselves at Ships that had no room for them,
but to bring everybody down with them? But what would I do? He could
afford the luxury of nobility; he was getting out of here.
    Twenty minutes.
    He reached the perimeter concourse. Here, surface transports
nuzzled against a row of simple airlocks. Some of the locks were
already open, and people were crowding in, pushing children, bundles
of luggage. His own car was still here, he saw with relief. He pulled
open his skinsuit glove and hastily pressed his palm to the wall. The
door hissed open.
    But before he could pass through, somebody grabbed his arm.
    A man faced him, a stranger, short, burly, aged perhaps forty.
Behind him a woman clutched a small child and an infant. The adults
had blanket-wrapped bundles on their backs. The man wore an
electric-blue skinsuit, but his family were in hab clothes.
    The man said desperately, ’Friend, you have room in that
thing?’
    ’No,’ Rusel said.
    The man’s eyes hardened. ’Listen. The pharaohs’ spies got it
wrong. Suddenly the Coalition is only seven days out. Look, friend,
you can see how I’m fixed. The Coalition breaks up families, doesn’t
it? All I’m asking is for a chance on the Ships.’
    ’But there won’t be room for you. Don’t you understand? And even
if there were - ’ There were to be no children on the Ships at
launch: that was the pharaohs’ harsh rule. In the first years of the
long voyage, everybody aboard had to be maximally productive. The
time for breeding would come later.
    The man’s fist bunched. ’Listen, friend - ’
    Rusel shoved the man in the chest. He fell backwards, stumbling
against his children. His blanket bundle broke open, and goods
spilled on the floor: clothes, diapers, children’s toys.
    ’Please.’ The woman approached him, stepping over her husband. She
held out a baby. ’Don’t let the Coalition take him away. Please.’
    The baby was warm, soft, smiling. Rusel automatically reached out.
But he stopped himself cold, and turned away.
    He pushed into his car, slammed shut the door, and stabbed a
preset routine into the control panel. The woman with the baby
continued to call after him. How could I do that? I’m no longer
human, he thought.
    The car ripped itself away from the airlock interface, ignoring
all safety protocols, and began to haul itself on its bubble wheels
up the ramp from the under-the-ice habitat to the surface. Shaking,
Rusel opened his visor. He might be able to see the doomed family at
the airlock port. He didn’t look back.
    It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
    Andres’s Virtual head coalesced before him. ’Sixteen minutes to
get to Ship Three. If you’re not there we go without you. Fifteen
forty-five. Fifteen forty…’
    The surface was almost as chaotic as the corridors of the hab, as
transports of all types and ages rolled, crawled or jumped. There was
no sign of the Enforcers, the pharaohs’ police force, and he was
apprehensive about being held up in the crush.
    He made it through the crowd and headed for the track that would
lead through the Forest of Ancestors