The Mayflower Project Read online

  And then, there were the big purple streamers that would warn you of approaching intersections, and the white strobes to let you know you were coming onto an airborne.

  A lot to remember when your brain was screaming.

  Green, green, green, as MoSteel got used to The Pipe, got used to the diameter, the unmarred smoothness. He slalomed a little, riding up and down the sides. How fast would he have to be going before he could pull a three-sixty?

  Then, all at once it was bye-bye, stomach, and he was blazing down through a blur of yellow.

  Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhh! he yelled, an expression of purest joy. Aaaaahhhhh!

  His link rang in his ear.

  What? Hed blocked his link, he had definitely blocked his link, and now he was crouched low, beating the air resistance, building speed, and the phone was still deedly-deedling in his ear.

  Faster, faster, so fast he could go airborne with a fart. Red lights ahead!

  Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

  So fast now the wind was vibrating his cheeks, stretching his lips into an oblong O.

  Going red! The red neon was a blur. A smear of blood-light all around him.

  The link rang again. Distracting, to say the least, when the slightest wrong move would result in his sliding ignominiously down the entire remaining length of The Pipe. Oh, the humiliation!

  Deedly-deedly.

  Argh! Link: Answer already! he shouted in frustration. Purple streamer. Left or right? Left or right? He tried to remember the simulation hed had to run through three times and master before he could be allowed to ride The Pipe.

  Left. No, right!

  A voice in his ear. Mo, whats up?

  Jobs? Aaaaaahhhhhh! Yeah! Yeah!

  Mo, what are you doing?

  Left, left, left! A sudden, jerking, yellow-neon-three-gee-turn, then a sickening drop into all-red territory and man, hed only thought he was going fast before. He was falling like a rock, gravity, Mother G had him, falling faster and faster, skates barely touching the tunnel.

  Im riding The Pipe! MoSteel yelled.

  What? Now?

  He pushed off ever so slightly, did a forward flip, and landed on his glove-wheels. Now he was rocketing along backward while standing (more or less) on his hands.

  It was perhaps the most deeply satisfying moment of his life.

  Strobes! MoSteel screamed giddily.

  Hey, this is kind of important, Mo.

  Ahead there was a perfect circle of sunlight. Somersault. Upright and he was there before he could take a breath. There and all at once out of the pipe and flying through the air, shouting in glee, yelling, scared, wild, totally adrenal.

  The gap was thirty feet. Thirty feet of open, pipeless air. A flash of green and brown and a weirdly long, dream-slow view of blue sky.

  The opening of the next segment of pipe was flared wide to allow for windage. MoSteel pulled his legs up, raised his toes, spread his arms out like wings and hit the flared lip perfectly.

  Jobs, you have got to do this! Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhh!

  Mo, listen to me, man: no more broken bones. Take it slow. Something is happening. Something big. You dont want to be in a body cast when it happens.

  Aaaaahhhhh! No, no, no yellow, no yellow, give me the red! Give me the red! Gimme RED! Whats happening, Jobs? What big thing?

  Mo, theres an asteroid going to hit Earth. I dont want to ruin your day, but it kind of looks like the world is going to end.

  Oh, that. Yeah, I knew that. My dad told me. Why do you think he paid for this trip? Is that it?

  A long pause. A peevish, dissatisfied silence. Then, Yeah, Mo, thats it.

  Cool. Aaaaahhhhh! Later.

  DAYS TO IMPACT:4

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WOULDNT BE LIKE KILLING IN A NORMAL WAY.

  Cant they blow it up?

  No.

  D-Caf thought about that for a moment. He trusted Mark, respected him. But at the same time he had always thought his brother lacked imagination. Mark was brilliant, no one argued with that, but he was not an imaginative person.

  D-Caf said, In this old movie I saw on TV, I forget the name, something about an asteroid, anyway, they blew it up. Most of it, anyway.

  Its too big, Hamster. If they were lucky maybe theyd knock a chunk off of it.

  D-Caf bit his lip, then bit his thumbnail. Dont call me Hamster. My name is D-Caf, everyone calls me that. You can call me Harlin if you cant handle D-Caf. Not Hamster.

  Whatever. Mark returned his gaze to the monitor, gazing intently, working, worrying an idea, tapping fitfully at the keys, occasionally muttering a simple spoken command.

  D-Caf watched with what minimal patience he could summon. His brother had just announced the end of the world, and he seemed almost uninterested, distracted by the streaming number series on the monitor.

  Arent they at least going to try? D-Caf pressed. I mean, in this old movie they landed on the comet, I mean I think maybe it was a comet, and they were drilling holes down into it and putting nuclear bombs and

  Let it go, Hamster. Just let it go, all right? Mark yelled. He slammed his hands down together on the desktop, sending a souvenir pencil holder from Ocean City crashing to the floor. He leaned over and picked it up, put the pencils back in, and returned the cup to its place.

  Look, Mark said, its too big, its too fast, its too close. Its about four days away. If you dug a hole right to the center of it and piled every bomb on Earth in there all youd do is crack it in half and both halves would hit Earth. Or maybe youd melt some of it, and then wed get hit by two great big rocks plus a few million cubic yards of molten rock and maybe some nickel and iron. You got the picture? Last big rock that hit Earth drilled a hole about a mile deep and left a crater almost a mile across. You know how big that rock was? One-hundred-fifty feet. Not miles, feet. So guess what? The Rock is coming, the Rock is going to hit, and its going to be like swinging a sledgehammer into a watermelon.

  Mark spun back to his monitor, mad at himself for blowing up at his little brother, mad at D-Caf for making him blow up. He was more than just a big brother. He was all D-Caf had for family. Their parents had died ten years earlier when Mark was fifteen and Harlin was five. Under most circumstances the brothers would have been sent to foster homes. But Mark Melman was a resourceful kid. A prodigy in the arcane world of data flow mechanics. He was already employed by a major e-tailer while still in school, and he was able to use his income and his skill to evade the Maryland child protective services and keep his brother with him.

  Once he turned eighteen he sought and was granted legal custody. By then Mark Melman was employed by Oono Systems Inc., which, among other things, held major contracts with NASA.

  He had raised his little brother, doing a good job, mostly. But there had always been stresses and resentments. Mark hadnt had much of a childhood himself and the weight of parenting had made him short-tempered, impatient.

  And D-Caf was honest enough about himself to know that he had never been an easy kid to handle. He was a daydreamer, a spacer, a person for whom ordinary life seemed dark and dull and slightly threatening. He spent his days reading, playing by himself, wandering away on long walks by the bay, watching the sailboats, forgetting homework, times, dates, duties. He would gladly have spent from sunrise to long after sunset with his face buried in a book, living a vicarious life.

  When he was around people, in school, at church, at the summer camp his brother forced him to attend each year, he switched personalities entirely, becoming hyper, chatty, nervous, like someone on his tenth cup of coffee. (Hence the name D-Caf.) He made bad jokes. Too many bad jokes. People made him tense, and tension made him jumpy. The presence of other people had a sort of toxic effect on D-Caf, like they were a drug that altered his sense of himself, turning him into someone that he himself could not stand.

  He was getting that way now, he could feel it, reacting to Marks tersely delivered, shattering news. His leg was bouncing. He was rocking back and forth.

  Th
ey cant just sit around, though. I mean, theyre trying something, right? I mean, all the technology we have, all the scientists and all.

  Mark snorted derisively. Yeah. Theyre trying something all right. Theyre calling it Mayflower. Thats fairly pathetic. Mayflower? They had two weeks notice. What do you think theyre going to do in two weeks, build themselves a brand-new ship? Theyre hauling some tired old shuttle out of mothballs, tacking on every half-tested bit of quack technology they can find I mean, solar sails, hibernation, anything lying around in somebodys lab. Theyre gonna tack it all onto this shuttle, load it up with people, and shoot them off into space.

  And theyre going to blow up the asteroid?

  No, Hamster, theyre going to go floating off through space like some lost lifeboat. Thats the big plan. Thats it. Thats all theyve got.

  Marks voice dripped contempt. But then contempt was Marks default tone. Eighty, ninety people, whoever they can round up on no notice. For about ten seconds the NASA brass considered assembling some neat cross-section of humanity, geniuses of every type, every race and whatnot, then they realized, oops! They had no time for all that. NASA started handing out tickets to the people they needed, the people they owed favors to, the people who might screw up the plan if they werent taken care of. And theyre going to send those poor fools floating off through space, more or less aimed at a star they think might have a livable planet, which they might reach in a century or two, by which point theyll be freeze-dried, radioactive, as full of holes as Swiss cheese, and oh, by the way, dead.

  D-Caf and his brother were like a before and after picture. The younger brother was fighting a weight problem, the older, Mark, looked like a guy who might not have exactly won that battle but had at least avoided losing it.

  D-Caf had dark hair, dark eyes, teeth that would need correcting. He was already as tall as Mark and on his way to being taller. But he concealed this advantage by his habit of walking a little stooped forward. He had been tested in the usual ways and was, in fact, a bit more intelligent than Mark. But this was another advantage D-Caf could never exploit. Mark was his parent and his brother, and their relationship depended on an assumption of superiority for Mark. D-Caf had no interest in challenging the one real relationship he had.

  D-Caf considered Marks statement, the way he delivered it, the sense of things being left unsaid. He was practically vibrating, forehead frowning and releasing, frowning and releasing, trying to resist the cascade of tension-agitation.

  Can we go? D-Caf asked. Can we go on the shuttle?

  Didnt you hear what I just told you?

  Yeah. But you kind of look on the negative side of stuff, Mark.

  To D-Cafs surprise, his brother barked out a genuine laugh. Yeah, I do, huh? But, Ham but brother, this isnt about positive or negative. The Rock hits, thats it. I wasnt going to tell you. I was just going to make it all good for you: movies every night, all the junk food you want, whatever you wanted because what does it matter anymore, right? But even if you are annoying sometimes, youre a very smart kid, and Ive never lied to you yet.

  D-Caf looked hard at his brothers face. There was something more, something he wasnt telling. D-Caf had the gift of knowing peoples emotions, understanding. Empathy. He felt some hesitation, some indecision from his brother.

  He waited, and stared, and said nothing, and at last Mark sighed and hung his head. We cant go on the Mayflower because were not a regular, stable family. Thats what theyre looking for. Theyre rounding up NASA people and NASA contractors, and yeah, maybe thats me, but only intact families. Anyway, the whole Mayflower Project is a stupid waste of time. But I guess theres a small but measurable chance it will succeed, and no chance with anything else. He sucked in a deep breath and looked hard at his brother. So, look, if you want to, were going.

  How?

  Mark leaned forward. He twined his fingers, twisting them almost painfully. Everyones doomed, brother. Everyones death warrant is signed, sealed, and waiting to be delivered. So killing . . . I mean, it wouldnt be like killing in a normal way. And I still have Dads old gun.

  D-Caf blinked. He knew his brother didnt believe his own words, but he also knew he was very serious.

  The crew of the shuttle, just two guys, they have to deploy these experimental solar sails after theyre in orbit, well into the flight. Theres a space that connects the flight deck to the pod, the Mayflower capsule, whatever you want to call it. They have two hibernation berths there for the crew, just above the rest of the berths. Theyll come back there after they deploy the sails and carry out their final burn. Thats where well be, Hamster. Thatll be our place. Well be waiting.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  YOU UP FOR SOMETHING STUPID AND DANGEROUS?

  A weird day had passed since Jobs had guessed the truth from the much-dismissed news story. A day when he had gone to school, done his homework, followed his usual routine.

  His parents had said nothing. But for the last twenty-four hours the air in their home had been electric with unspoken fears. Conversation was stilted. His mothers eyes were rimmed with red. His father withdrew into a shell of silence, reading the paper for too long without turning a page, staring at nothing, squeezing his wifes hand too often.

  But the next day, things changed. The atmosphere was just as charged, but Jobs guessed that whatever consideration had imposed the delay, the time had come at last.

  Jobss parents were waiting for him when he got home from school. They asked him to stay home. That night, after a family dinner, after Edward had been freed to go play in the family room, they made it official: It was real.

  It will be devastating. I mean, you can do the math, son, his mother said.

  Theres this escape plan. They call it Mayflower. Its an old shuttle loaded up with new technology. Hibernation, his dad added helpfully.

  Ive read about the hibernation technology, Jobs said. They tested it on baboons. Sixty-two percent of the baboons survived. That means thirty-eight percent died. And that was a short-term test: twelve hours in hibernation.

  Thats just whats been declassified, his mother reassured him.

  But his dad gave him one of the secret looks they sometimes shared. Jobs and his father had an agreement, a sort of truce that papered over the fundamental differences between them: They didnt lie to each other. Jobs nodded slowly: message received. His mom was trying to soften reality.

  It was a lot to absorb. One thing to deduce, based on sketchy, not-entirely-serious news reports that the world was coming to an end. A whole different thing to have your parents lay it out.

  His father said, The thing is, kid, theyll come for us sometime in the next day or so. In the meantime, were being watched. All communications in and out of the house are being monitored. Same with the cars, with your link. You cant talk to anyone about this.

  I called Mo yesterday after that news story ran. He was in Colorado. He already knew.

  And you got the call to go through? His mother frowned. Idiots! On an open link and they didnt block it? You encrypted at least?

  Jobs nodded. Of course, Mom. Mo and I have our own cryp.

  Thank God for that at least. This cant get out. The shuttle only carries so many people, you know, and almost all the spots are spoken for. There would be panic.

  The story was on CNN, Jobs said.

  His father waved a dismissive hand. Thats a deliberate leak. They set it up so they can knock it down. Makes the newsies cautious about reporting anything else on it till theyre dead sure. He winced. Bad choice of words.

  Jobs went to his room. He contacted MoSteel on his link. The call did not go through. Dead air. He e-mailed. E-mail returned, unreceived. Weird.

  He sat there, staring at the glowing screen of his main monitor. How could he punch through? He could tack an e-mail onto a virus, piggyback it onto a simple request for a movie.

  He had a virus hed used before, a benign, harmless, nearly invisible virus created only as a test. He called it up, bundled it into a standard request to view a mov
ie. What movie? He thought for a moment. Lord of the Rings, Part III.

  He punched in the request.

  Request denied: virus detected.

  And then, an instant message from Watcher 27@DSA. The IM said, Nice try, kid.

  Jobs didnt answer. He pulled his hands away from the keyboard.

  DSA: Data Security Agency. He was being actively monitored by the DSA. Jobs had often considered a career that would begin with a couple of years at DSA.

  He couldnt reach MoSteel. That was clear. Of course, he wasnt really interested in reaching Mo. Mo was already in the know, Mo could take care of himself.

  Cordelia was a different matter.

  What would I even say? Jobs wondered. You barely know me, but the world is ending and maybe I could get you on some doomed shuttle to nowhere?

  A silly, romantic gesture, he knew. Grandiose. Melodramatic. Ludicrous.

  But the need to do it, to try, to make the grand, silly, romantic gesture, those feelings were real. He couldnt just do nothing. He couldnt just write off the human race, so long, Earth, so long, Homo sapiens. So long to the kiss.

  He noted with some surprise that he felt like throwing up. He was sweating. His hands were shaking. It disturbed him being this disturbed.

  He tried to take deep breaths, tried to calm himself down, impossible to do any good thinking when you were this upset. Deep breath. Deep breath.

  Calm down?! he demanded, outraged at himself. Calm down? Everyone is going to die, calm down?!

  Sudden thought: Had they bugged his room? Were they watching him even now, watching, listening, and getting readouts on his pulse and respiration and brain waves?

  He shot a look around his room. Pointless, of course: The sensors the FBI had access to were too small to be detected without the right equipment. Yes, of course they were watching, of course.

  How to play it out? Theyd seen him try to contact Mo. Seen him from both sides of the keyboard. Still, their resources must be limited.