She’s obviously put a lot of thought into this—and she’s the expert, not me. “You’re basing the math on our current number, right? Not the original population?”
Natalin’s jaw twitches. “Do I look like an idiot to you? You honestly think I wouldn’t have considered that?”
I shrug. “Had to ask.”
“Youdidn’thave to ask. I don’t make mistakes like that.”
“None of us are above making mistakes,” I say. “I was just hoping for an easy solution.”
“If there were an easy solution, we wouldn’t be having this meeting.” She picks up pacing where she left off, from the VP shelf to the dry grains shelf and back again.
“Listen, Nat, we’re on the same side here.” I try to meet her eyes, but she deftly avoids me. “I’m here to help, okay? Don’t treat me like this is my fault—”
She turns to face me, and her glare is a force. “So whose is it? Mine?”
“I didn’t say that. And that isn’t what I think, either.” I grit my teeth, try to summon my mother’s patience so I don’t make things worse. Becauseseriously?
“They’re going tosayit’s my fault,” she says. “When they’re starving and thirsty, they’re going to blame me, right? We have tofixthis.”
“So let’s fix it. Let’s focus on what we can do about it, okay?” I’m talking to myself as much as I am to her—there’s a fine line between handling things and spiraling into panic, and I’m doing all I can to stay on the calm side of that line. “We have plenty of VPs to last us. If they starve because they won’t eat them, that’s onthem, not you.”
Reluctantly, she joins me at the shelf. We stare at the pouches, their slick SpaceLove logos and glossed-out vegetable artwork. “What if they won’t send another shipment? They’ve already skipped one, and look where we are.”
There it is, the real problem. I’d be lying if I said the same thought hadn’t crossed my mind—right before I shoved it into a drawer and locked it inside. “They know we need food, Nat, and I’ll put in a call for extra measure. They’re not just going to leave us up here to starve.”
“But what if they do?”
I try not to let it show that I’m every bit as unnerved by this as she is—one of us needs to act calm, right? Even if it’s the furthest thing from what we feel? We usually get a shipmentevery fourth week, but we’re closing in on seven weeks since the last one—our rations have stretched this long only because we’re smaller now by half.
“They didn’t cancel the last delivery forever,” I say. “They just postponed it until we were all in the clear.” It’s my best effort at encouragement, and it falls admittedly flat.
“But we’renotin the clear,” she says. “You really think they’re going to risk a delivery when they find out the virus has mutated? That it killed Mila? We could send a new strain straight back to Earth.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, try not to let her fear get under my skin, where it will only stir up my own. “Let’s just focus on what we can control, okay? We have enough food to last seven or eight days, longer if they’ll eat the VPs, even longer if we ration those.” I think, do a couple of quick calculations in my head. “Sit with the numbers this afternoon and figure out a way to make them stretch—take body weight and muscle mass into consideration. Age, too. We’ll give new guidelines first thing tomorrow.” I have no idea how much these will actually help, but Natalin seems to be turning things over in her head, so I guess I at leastsoundlike I know what I’m talking about.
“They’re not going to like this.”
“Pretty sure they’d like starving even less.” I crack open the door, feel the warm air rush in. “All we can do is our best.”
13
ORIGAMI
I SLIP UP to Control, find it deserted and dead silent. It isn’t unusual to find Zesi tinkering up here with our systems—it’s become his safe place, where he can lose himself in tech and forget about flesh and blood for a bit. Many of our people do the same, I’m noticing, only it takes different forms: they read, they run, they party more than they used to, they do flight sims until it makes them dizzy or sick. I hear rumors of hookups. Rumors of theft. Rumors of words that cut like knives, rumors of nightmares. Everyone wants an escape from reality, but there’s nowhere to go, so people end up folding in on themselves like origami, flightless paper cranes.
It’s my job to smooth over the resulting paper cuts—never mind that I’m still healing, too.
I settle onto the rolling stool, its unforgiving metal cool even through the thick fabric of my pants. I’m not nearly as familiar with the control board as Zesi is, but the message-system panel is pretty easy to pick out amid the various knobs and dials. No one ever got the chance to train me on this, but how hard can itbe? Two seconds of poking around pulls up a directory—I tapNashville, where our Earth-based team is planted, thenconnect.
And then I wait.
And wait.
Having never put a call through to anyplace other than inside our own walls—let alone all the way to Earth—it’s entirely possible I simply need to be patient. We’re far out,veryfar out, and perhaps fifty unanswered rings is only half as many as it takes?
By the hundredth ring, I cut the call short.
This doesn’t feel right. This is unsettling.
