Lifeline

As he approached the open-air hall, Ramis realized he had attended only one other Council meeting in his life. Political discussions and tedious plodding through red-tape mazes of motions and counter-motions and rebuttals and addenda bored him.

But now it seemed that most of the Aguinaldo colonists were trying to push their way into the hall. Their future hung on what the Council of Twenty would decide in the next session.

He had attended that other Council meeting when he had been twelve years old, four years before. Dr. Sandovaal was testifying about the course of agriculture and food production on the colony—about some of the work Ramis’s parents had helped him begin before their accident.

Sandovaal had at first seemed a mysterious and frightening man, spiteful for no particular reason, and Ramis’s parents were in awe of him. But that Council session—where Sandovaal debated, and defeated, the Aguinaldo’s agricultural specialists—had elevated the stature of the unorthodox Filipino bioengineer on self-imposed exile from Earth.

Ramis could still see Sandovaal’s ruddy face shaking in rage. “In order to produce a viable food source in space, we cannot just attempt to grow the same old feed crops!”

Sandovaal put an expression of supreme distaste on his face, glaring at the other agricultural specialists and speaking in a mocking voice. “Listen to you—rice and wheat! Corn and abaca! Are you idiots? Do you have tumors for brains? Those crops adapted to Earth’s planetary environment—it took them millennia to perfect themselves in that particular ecosystem. Here on a Lagrange colony, plants grow under completely different rules.

“Do you begin to see? Have you opened your eyes? We are not on Earth anymore. It requires us to take a radically new look at how plants and animals are put together. We must first acquire a new feed crop for our animals—a crop high in protein, but without a high overhead to produce. After that, we shall be free to develop new crops for ourselves.”

After Sandovaal had stirred their anger, he then smugly presented his first samplings of wall-kelp. Ramis knew that was the way Sandovaal always did things—he made his opponents angry to get their attention, then slapped them in the face with what they should have seen all along.

Sandovaal’s preliminary wall-kelp data astounded the Council. The genetically modified kelp, combined with some traits of chlorella algae, had an unheard-of growth rate, incredible efficiency for waste conversion, and—most important of all—a digestible mass of protein. Since the wall-kelp was photosynthetic, it produced oxygen as it grew. It was a starting place, a beginning success for Sandovaal’s team. And Ramis’s parents had worked with him on it.

Back then, when the Council members and the audience gave Sandovaal a standing ovation for his work, the old scientist sniffed, as if he had expected nothing less.…

Ramis smiled to himself at the memory. He came back to the present as Yoli Magsaysay rapped the podium for order. The hall overflowed with people; many squatted on the steps and in the aisles. The noise nearly overwhelmed the PA system. Magsaysay rapped once more. “Quiet, please. Let us begin.”

The dato cleared his throat. At first, his voice could not be heard, but the president continued in the same low tone. Like his famous namesake in Philippine politics several generations before, Yoli Magsaysay knew how to handle people. The room grew still.

“… reminded that the Council hall has a tradition for holding open meetings—especially in this instance, where everything will affect us all so profoundly. However, if we are unable to hear each other speak, I will be forced to clear the hall.”

Magsaysay scanned the room. Only the rustle of people trying to get a better view disturbed the silence. The air-conditioning hummed, turned to high. Overhead, several sail-creature nymphs drifted near the core. Ramis glanced up, looking for Sarat.

The dato spoke again. “Who started the War? Who won? Who survived? All contact has been severed, so we do not know and we may never know. But that is not our problem.

“We may be forced to survive on the Aguinaldo without help from Earth. No supplies—only the resources we have here now.”

He ticked off the points on his fingers. “That means no food. No clothing. No appliances. We have the Sibuyan Sea, but water is still going to be a problem. We have only leftover Moon rubble for raw materials. Even though the construction site of our neighbor, Orbitech 2, is barely a hundred kilometers away, we have no means to get there. We must assume that the Aguinaldo has to be totally self-sufficient from now on.”

Magsaysay placed his hands on the podium. His big eyes looked very sad.

“I have purposely presented the situation in the bleakest terms. The Council must consider this situation when we make our decisions. If we are too optimistic now, we could doom our entire colony.”