And while Dana and Blake had been away prospecting, Carlos had tweaked his seaside deuterium distillery past breakeven. They had begun filling their tanks, not depleting them.
Yes, it was hard to fault Dana’s good spirits.
Rikki still managed.
Dana sauntered toward the unoccupied end of Antonio’s bench. At the soft pad of her footsteps, Antonio, rather than avert his gaze, looked up. Rikki, from where she sat, couldn’t be certain, but just maybe Antonio had made fleeting eye contact with Dana. Was something happening between those two? If so, it was long overdue. Someone should be happy.
In principle, anyway.
Li had noticed their silent exchange, too, and her smile broadened.
That smirk made Rikki’s jaws clench and her teeth grate. Almost nonstop since landing day, Li had flitted about, blathering, full of vacuous good cheer. Blake called it Li playing cruise director. To judge by the funk Rikki tried to care that she couldn’t shake, Li was terrible at cruise directing.
Rikki slipped her good arm around Blake’s waist, shrugging when he looked at her questioningly. She knew a shoe was about to drop. Why?
Still smirking, Li went to stand in a shaft of brilliant sunlight.
Li was why. Rikki bent down and whispered, “A bit theatrical?”
“I’d say political,” Blake whispered back. And he detested politics.
“If I could have everyone’s attention, please.” Li, beaming, one by one caught the eye of everyone but Antonio. (And in the process, didn’t her gaze linger on Blake?) Li said, “I asked Dana to call us together, to give us the opportunity to celebrate our achievements.”
“Let’s all raise a glass of slime,” Antonio said.
For Antonio to joke, this was a special moment.
Li chuckled. “I have it on good authority, as it happens, that our farmed biomass is fermentable.”
“It’s true,” Carlos called out, grinning. “And Tuesday’s vintage is not undrinkable.”
“Then we have even more to celebrate,” Li said, again laughing. “Seriously, who could have imagined it? Who among us would even have dared to hope it? No one, I’m sure, and yet see what we have accomplished. A month after we first reached an unknown planet, we have not only survived, we’ve made a home for ourselves. We’ve…”
A month. Set at thirty days, after yet another inane discussion. A measure of time carried over from a world on which Rikki had never set foot. On which she never would. Billions, surely, had died on Earth. On Mars, everyone would have died. Recoiling from sudden gaping emptiness, Rikki tried to concentrate on Li’s words.
“…even feeding ourselves with locally grown food. I am so proud of us. We all should be proud of ourselves. Above all, I—and I believe I can speak for everyone—am grateful to our esteemed captain.” Li began clapping, and after a moment everyone joined in.
Rikki glanced over her shoulder. More than surprised, Dana looked…pleased. Maybe this get-together was mere cruise directing—
And maybe Li meant to blind-side Dana.
Li helped everyone with their tasks, but except for cruise director—and seeing to the occasional broken bone—she had no responsibility to call her own. Nothing to distract her from scheming.
But that could be changed.
“Since we’re doing so well,” Rikki blurted out, “maybe it’s time to take the next step. Maybe it’s time we begin raising some children.”
*
Dance, my marionettes. Dance.
Li kept her expression blandly cheerful. How subtly she had conditioned her companions to believe her unsubtle. With such understated skill had she primed them to speak their lines!
As pathetic, pliable, oblivious Rikki had just taken her cue.
“Children,” Dana repeated. Getting out the single word seemed to be a struggle. Beside her, Antonio twitched in surprise. Carlos nodded agreement, and Li had no difficulty reading his thoughts. But he was manageable; she had years before those perv tendencies would matter.
Li struck a contemplative pose, silent, waiting. Blake owned the next important line in this melodrama—as clueless as he, too, was of his role. She studied his pursed lips, his furrowed brow, the nuances of his posture….
He would take a while to get there.
“Can we?” Dana asked. “I mean, could we manage children? Li, what do you think?”
Li took a moment, hands clasped behind her back, pretending to consider. The point of the exercise was to make the decision seem anyone else’s idea. “The artificial wombs do the work. But are we ready? That’s harder.”
“Wrong,” Rikki snapped, rising out of her apathy to take the bait. “If we started today, we’d have nine months to prepare.”
How sprightly the puppets leapt as Li tugged their strings.
“Is anyone ever prepared?” Antonio murmured something more Li couldn’t quite make out. Something, maybe, about diapers.
Dana managed a wistful smile. “I remember my brother and his wife finding out they were expecting. They spent the entire pregnancy in a panic. And when the baby came, they did fine.”
Carlos offered, “And we have Marvin to keep an eye on them round the clock. It’ll take only a few cameras strategically placed.”
“True, children won’t be mobile right away….” Li allowed them to think that they were swaying her.
Dana tipped her head, looking unhappy. She wasn’t ready to take on parenting.
Blake looked close to a decision. When he next looked in Li’s direction, she, with an all but imperceptible nod, answered the question he still wasn’t quite certain how to articulate: would mothering raise Rikki’s spirits?
And at last—
“I think we should,” Blake said firmly. He gave Rikki’s hand a squeeze. “Sooner rather than later. Why are we even here, if not to restore the human race?”
Quite right. No matter that, at the moment, humankind’s future was merely Blake’s means to a very personal end.
Deep down, a part of Li regretted the pain she had caused. First, do no harm, the ancient dictum went, and she agreed. But in the face of extinction, her priority was the greater good. Of the six of them, who better than she to orchestrate a new society?
She had tried her hand
