Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

This wasn’t new ground either, wondering how some had made it even through the first round of selections while others weren’t offered an interview. ‘It’s luck, isn’t it. Or I don’t know, the professors had their reasons. Maybe—’

Poppy was shaking her head. ‘Second round of selections, when they published that list of the fifty people who’d made it through ranked in order of how suitable we were. I was forty and Christy was forty-eight.’

‘That didn’t matter in the end anyway, remember, cos Christina dropped out. Her parents revoked consent. Said they didn’t want their daughter going up into space when she’d do better on Earth as a surgeon or something.’

‘Exactly.’ Poppy stabbed a finger at Jesse.

‘Exactly what?’

‘I think they chose us because we’re expendable,’ she said.

Jesse’s stomach sank. That couldn’t be it.

‘No,’ he finally said. ‘That’s not right.’

‘I was going through the records on Fae’s computer, looking at our old test scores. Even in swimming there was not one test where Christina came below number twenty. She was in the top five for most things.’

‘So…?’

‘So, in every way – on every scale they had – there was no way she was forty-eight out of fifty.’ Poppy paused to open the bag of popcorn, steam curling up to her chin. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘I can just pick the burnt ones out.’

‘So maybe they have other scales,’ Jesse suggested. ‘Ones we can’t see, and on those ones Christy ranked lower than you.’

‘That’s what I thought, but what would they be?’ Poppy was flicking burnt popcorn from the bowl. ‘And what’s the point of having all those other tests, all those horrid hoops we had to jump through, getting up at dawn, doing those drills on the lawn, those fit-checks and holding our heads underwater until we choked, five-, six-hour exams – what was all that for?

‘Well, I think that if you really were going to build a colony, a new country somewhere else, and it would take twenty-three years to get there, what would be more important than physical fitness or swimming badges?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. What?’

‘You’d want people who really wanted to be there,’ Jesse said slowly. ‘People who would give up their family, their future, a chance to be a surgeon or whatever and to travel across the stars for twenty years. Maybe those tests weren’t about what we thought they were. Maybe they wanted to see how much we could sacrifice. How much we wanted to be in the Beta. Needed it. And the six of us wanted it the most. And maybe, on the last day, Ara didn’t.’

THE SHIP WAS QUIET by the time Jesse walked back along the frosted corridor. The low rumble of a voice drifted through the half-open door of Igor’s bedroom.

‘Two funerals in one month…’ He recognized Igor’s heavy breathing,

‘It’s more than I can bear,’ said Fae. ‘I don’t think she’ll last the night.’

Jesse caught his breath and began to run down the corridor towards Solomon Sheppard’s room. As he did, he struggled to shake away the thought of Juno dying, of wrapping her body in a sheet as they had for their commander and watching as she was jettisoned out into space.

Jesse fought against the clenching in his throat until he reached the bed where Juno lay, and dropped down to his knees and began to beg. He’d felt this way before, with his sister Morrigan, although he’d been a lot younger then. They’d been driving home from a cousin’s wedding in Murang’a – rust-red roads, all the windows open, baking in the heat of the car – when his sister had slumped against him, her head hot with fever, and complained of a headache.

‘Probably dehydrated,’ their mother had said. What she always said when one of them complained of a headache.

The next morning she had not come downstairs for breakfast, and Jesse’s mother had screamed when she found her, tangled in her bedsheets, her limbs thrashing, foaming at the mouth. Jesse remembered the feeling of the condensation on the cool marble under his bare feet, the sound of the fan whacking the hot air and the medicine man’s prophecy coming back to him. That Morrigan would fall sick, but not leave this world. Like a talisman, he turned the old man’s words over in his mind, even after she was rushed to hospital, even after she slipped into a coma, mouth half-open, dead to the world. The doctors had washed their hands of her but when she’d lived they’d said, ‘Miujiza!’

‘Jesse?’

He looked up, brought back to his own body by a voice that sounded like Juno’s. She was standing in the doorway for a moment, but then he realized. ‘Astrid. It’s you.’

The next thing he knew Astrid was standing next to him, her arms squeezed around her. This pain, he knew, they could share.

‘Fae said that she doesn’t think she’ll make it through the night,’ Astrid said.

‘I heard…’ Jesse said.