“Well, here we are!” Kubota returned bearing a large tray laden with a silver teapot, three cups, a small bowl, and a plate of thin, brownish cookies.
“I’ll get that.” Seth jumped up and took the tray, then set it on the table. They both sat down.
“Cleo is not welcome at the table when we eat. We at least keep a pretense of civility around here.” Kubota snapped his fingers. “Kitty. Down.”
The cat stretched in Kiva’s lap, then jumped to the floor and padded over to a nearby table. She sat down under it and proceeded to lick her paw and wipe it across her face.
Kiva tried to keep her words light and normal. “She’s lovely.”
“So is my coffee.” Dr. Kubota poured three cups and held up the bowl, which was piled with sparkling white cubes.
“You’ve got sugar?” Seth made no effort to hide his surprise and ignored Kiva’s subsequent glare.
Their host smiled. “You’d be amazed what I have squirreled away. Of course, it also helped that nearly all of the passengers went into torpor within a year of launch.”
Seth’s eyes widened. “They’ve been under the whole time?”
Kubota nodded. “Most of them. Except for those of us who monitor the sleeping.”
Kiva glanced around. “Is someone else here? You’re not the only one awake?”
“Oh, now I am.” The man blew on his coffee. “I wasn’t always.” He pushed the plate toward Seth. “Eat, eat. These are special occasion cookies.”
Seth bit into one and smiled. “That’s good.”
“Cinnamon and molasses. I make the flour myself from the wheat. You were in the Versa Room long enough to see the wheat field, I take it?”
Kiva shot Seth a glance, but he gave his full attention to his cookie.
Did Kubota suspect they saw the body?
“And you, my dear.” Kubota pushed the plate toward Kiva.
Though the mere thought of solid food made her stomach flip, something told her that refusing the cookies and insulting their host would be a mistake. She took one. “Looks delicious.” But as soon as the man turned to Seth, she stuffed the cookie up her sleeve and feigned chewing when he glanced back her way.
“So, to answer your question, Seth, we monitored the sleeping in pairs of two. Shifts of six months.” Kubota took a sip from his cup. “My first shift was a year into the voyage. I’d been in torpor since early into the voyage, as I said earlier. I didn’t really have a chance to deal with everything that had happened.”
“It must have been horrible, to have to leave Earth like that.” Seth dunked another cookie in his coffee before stuffing it in his mouth.
“Yes, yes. Horrible is the word.” Kubota stared at the table, seeming to lose focus, the same as earlier.
Kiva said, “My mother told me that everything happened so fast.”
Seth’s hand froze midair as he reached for another cookie. He widened his eyes and shook his head at Kiva.
But she kept talking. “She said the launch was very chaotic.”
“Chaotic?” Kubota snapped out of his reverie and stared at her, eyes narrowing. “That’s what she said?”
Kiva gulped. “Yes sir.” The words were whispered.
“Chaotic is not the word I would choose.” With a grunt, he heaved his cup toward the closest wall, where it shattered on impact and coffee dripped down in long, brown trails.
Kiva held her breath. She couldn’t even look at Seth.
“Tell me.” The man set his elbows on the table. His eyes turned to slits. “Was that chaotic?”
13
Kiva held her breath. She didn’t know how to respond.
Dr. Kubota said, “Allow me to answer. Perhaps frightening? Alarming? Dreadful? Harrowing? Traumatic—”
“We weren’t even born yet,” interrupted Seth. “Forgive us, but we have no way of understanding how terrible it was for all of you.”
“Unspeakable.” Kubota’s gaze drifted to him.
Kiva exhaled slowly, grateful to Seth for turning the man’s attention away from her.
Kubota pushed the plate between the two of them. “You eat your cookies and I’ll tell you exactly what it was like. So perhaps you may understand a bit better.”
Seth took two more and Kiva one. She pretended to eat and hoped she was convincing enough.
Kubota pushed his glasses up using one finger on the nosepiece. “I’d been on the airship project for nearly seven years. I was able to do my engineering from home half of each month. I lived with my family in California.” He stopped.
Kiva felt like he was waiting for them to say something. She took a chance. “Your family?”
“My wife, Angie. My daughter, Casey. We celebrated her tenth birthday the night before I flew back to the ship’s construction site at a salt dome in Louisiana. She and I went up on the balcony and watched the NEO through the telescope.” His eyes glittered. “She wanted to go into space more than anything. I almost told her about my work that night.”
He took a handkerchief out of his sleeve and wiped his eyes. “The airship project was a secret. But we were on the manifest. My family and I had space on the Pinatubo whenever it was time to evacuate Earth. My Casey would get to live in space.”
Kiva’s stomach clenched more and more as the man kept rambling. She wanted so badly to look at Seth, but didn’t want Kubota to notice and possibly take offense. He was a powder keg simply waiting for a match.
“I had a bad feeling that day.” Kubota poured more coffee for Seth, who had managed to drain his cup. “We were on the ship when sirens went off. The launch code started.” He dropped his head into his hands.
Seth let loose with a loud yawn.
And he was worried about her setting this guy off? Kiva kicked him under the table.
He jerked straight up and seemed more alert.
Kubota kept talking, his voice muffled. “It happened so fast. I tried to get them to stall. My wife was a pilot; she could have stolen a plane if she had to. If only there had been more time. But we launched within the hour.” He sat up. “People flooded on. People who were not on the manifest. They took the place of those who were but couldn’t get there in time.” He shook his head. “I wanted to be with my family, even if it meant staying on Earth. I would rather perish than abandon them and I tried to leave. But security wouldn’t let me. I was essential to the project.”
“I’m so sorry.” Kiva held her breath, expecting him to shout at her.
Instead, he seemed to gather himself. “I had a job to do. Make sure that those of us who did make it on the Pinatubo would survive. Once we were in space and everything was running smoothly, I begged to be put in torpor. I didn’t want to be aware anymore. And they put me under.”
Seth stretched his arms above his head. “For how long?”
“A few years. A few blissful years.” He tapped the table. “Then they woke me up. Told me it was my shift.”
Seth yawned again, and his eyes drooped.
Kubota glanced his way, but either he didn’t notice or care. “With just two of us awake, I had so much time to wander the ship. And think. Too much time to think.” His gaze met Kiva’s. “Do you know what an impact winter is?”
Although she knew little, Kiva nodded.
“Do you know what happens to the people in one?”
She hadn’t considered that in detail.
“My family lived in California where it was warm all year. Oh sure, sometimes we needed a light jacket in the winter, maybe we would turn on the heat now and then. When that meteorite hit…” He teared up again. “Temperatures dropped around the globe before we even launched. Within days, crops around the planet would have begun to die. People would have started hoarding, looting. They would know what was going to happen, that supplies would run out, resources. Crime would have peaked.” Tears spilled over and he removed his glasses. “Some people, of the doomsday ilk, had stores of food and water. They would have run out eventually, but at least they had a chance. Some
hope for a while. A way to feed their children.”
His volume elevated and the tempo of his words increased, along with Kiva’s heartbeat. She felt he was ramping up his way to something.
Kubota set his glasses on the table and let out a rasping sob. “My family? We maybe had a pantry full. I didn’t plan. I didn’t have to! We had passage out.” He covered his face for a moment.
Kiva thought perhaps he was done.
But then he dropped his hands. “But my wife and daughter didn’t get to use their tickets! Instead—” He gestured wildly in the direction of the torpor chamber. “Instead a bunch of lucky bastards who happened to be in the right place at the right time, they took my wife’s place. My daughter’s place.”
He blew his nose. “And my job was to take care of those usurpers. Monitor their life support, day after day after day. All the time knowing that my wife should be here. My daughter should be here.” He took a deep breath. “And, they are not. They’re dead. They probably starved to death. Or froze to death. Or—”
Seth’s head clomped on the table, his eyes shut.
“Seth?” Kiva touched his shoulder, certain that Kubota wouldn’t appreciate one of his uninvited guests dozing in the midst of his tragic story. She shook him. “Seth!”
But Kubota seemed not to care that he’d lost half his audience. “The only reason those people were here, on the ship, was because they took the rightful place of people like my wife and daughter.” He pushed the plate of cookies closer to Kiva. “You need more.”
She already had two stuffed up her sleeve, but she took another. There had been close to a dozen to start, there were two left. Kubota had eaten none, which meant that Seth had eaten the rest.
And he was asleep.
Which left her to fill the uncomfortable silence. “What did you do?”
“Henry and I were on a six-month-long shift, caring for the sleeping.”
“Henry?” asked Kiva.
“Good man, I thought. But we had a lot of time to talk. Turns out Henry was on vacation in Louisiana with his family. His wife and two daughters. When Holocene hit, they were at a hotel and the owner’s son was a contractor at the Pinatubo site. Henry and his family got on board.” Kubota stopped talking for a moment. “That very day, as he was telling me this? He’d just visited his wife and daughters in the torpor hall.”
Kiva said nothing. Kubota was getting more and more riled, and she didn’t want to do anything to add to it. Especially with Seth suddenly passed out.
The man put his glasses back on, took a brisk tone. “Henry got me thinking. I went searching for the manifest. The original one naming the True, the ones meant to be on the Pinatubo.” He curled one hand into a fist and pounded it on the table once. “Because there’s no room for the others, the ones with no right to be here.”
Kiva’s hands trembled. The red monitors on the torpor chambers. Was Henry’s family dead? Did Kubota kill them? And Henry? “Is Henry in one of the chambers?”
Kubota clapped a hand over one of hers, startling her. “Oh no. Henry went for a swim one day.” His mouth drooped at the corners. “He never made it back.”
Kiva froze.
“As for the True.” Kubota smiled. “I take good care of them. The True are safe and sound.”
She managed to eke out a question. “And the others?”
“They’ve been taken care of as well.” His smile disappeared. “They’ll never take the place of anyone again.”
Kiva gulped. “But you said they were dead by their own volition.”
“Not an untruth by any means. They chose to be usurpers. There was a penalty to pay.”
A visual jumped into her head of him meandering the hall of torpor chambers, choosing who would live and who would die, a misguided, vengeful whim. If he truly cared for the future of their civilization, wouldn’t all the survivors have equal footing?
Shouldn’t they all have a rightful place?
Kiva and her mother would have as much right to survive as Seth and his father.
Kubota’s eyes narrowed. “Now tell me, you must be feeling sleepy?”
She said nothing, but her hand felt the hidden hardness up her sleeve.
“Henry turned out to be a fan of my cookies. In the end.” He leaned forward. “Everyone says you should wait an hour after eating to swim.”
Kiva tried not to react.
The cookies were drugged. She felt stupid for not noticing sooner.
But she hadn’t eaten any.
What would Kubota do if he found out?
Kiva yawned, as large as possible without seeming fake. “No, I’m not sleepy.” She rubbed her eyes, then opened them wide, as if fighting it.
He watched her.
She set her arm on the table and set her chin in her hand. “Go on.” She yawned. “I’m listening.” She shut her eyes, trying to slow her breaths even as her heart drummed in her chest with both anger and fear, so hard she was sure he could hear it. Slowly, she let her arm slide down until her head hit the table.
“About time.” Kubota’s chair squealed as he pushed back.
The cat meowed.
“Oh, Cleo, it had to be done. These two were going to take up far too much of my time. And they were much too curious for their own good.” His footsteps went away.
Kiva remained motionless but opened her eyes.
Across the room, he grabbed ahold of the cart and pushed.
Kiva shut her eyes as the screech grew closer and closer. She held her breath when it stopped.
“We’ll do the boyfriend first.”
He’s not my boyfriend.
Kiva was grateful she had thought to face her head away from Seth. She scrunched her eyes shut until the wheels moved again, their screech slowly retreating until it had diminished completely.
She opened her eyes, then sat up and dumped the cookies out of her sleeve.
“Meow.” Cleo gazed up at her and blinked.
Seth was gone.
Kiva ran over to the exit, stopping mere inches shy of the doorframe so she could peek into the hallway.
Kubota rounded the corner, pushing the cart in front of him, Seth on top of the crate. He was headed in the direction of the hall with the torpor chambers.
Kiva pressed herself against the wall. Was that his plan? To stick them in torpor with everyone else?
But they could remain there forever, if he didn’t decide to throw them in the lake with poor Henry.
Either way, whichever fate, no one would ever know what happened to them.
She had to grab Seth and get out.
But how?
Kiva tiptoed to the end of the hallway and peered around the corner.
Kubota wasn’t yet halfway down the corridor to the chamber. That limp hindered his speed. Yet he also seemed in no rush, apparently confident that whatever he’d laced the cookies with would last plenty long enough to seal them in torpor.
The cookies had worked on both Seth and Henry.
What if she had eaten them too?
Kiva shivered.
Beyond him lay the Tomb, their escape.
“Think, Kiva.” Even if she was able to haul Seth out of there, the tractor beam would keep them from leaving. She had to turn it off.
The bridge was near where they entered. She could run there, deactivate the subordinate system that controlled the tractor beam, then get Seth.
But she would only have ten minutes once the system shut off before it could be reactivated. She didn’t know how far away the Tomb had to be before it was out of range of the tractor beam, but there needed to be as much distance as possible. That whole ten minutes, or as much of it as possible, would give them the best chance of escaping Kubota.
The only way to make it work was to get Seth to their shuttle first, then run back in and shut off the system.
As soon as Kubota entered the torpor room and the door shut, Kiva sprinted past the door and around the first corner. There she crouched, heart pounding. What if he
sealed Seth in before going back for her?
She cursed herself for not learning how to unseal the torpor chambers.
But the space was so big, there were so many people.
If Kubota sealed Seth in, she might never find him anyway. She crossed her fingers that Kubota would go back to the dining hall to collect her first.
Otherwise, she would be better off to run for the bridge, turn off the tractor beam, and leave by herself.
“No.” Not without Seth.
“I can do this.”
She had to.
A few moments later, screeching filled the corridor.
Kiva slid over enough to see.
Kubota began his return to the dining hall with the empty cart. If his glacial pace was the order of the day, Kiva had about five minutes to get Seth back in the shuttle and turn off the tractor beam.
“Not enough,” she whispered. There was no way it would work if she waited for him to disappear around the corner.
She slipped off her boots.
When Kubota was only a few yards beyond the entrance to the torpor hall, she stepped into the corridor.
If he turned around, he would catch her.
She ran for the door. As she tried to stop, her stockinged feet slid on the slick floor and went out from under her. She landed hard and rolled, then popped up to sitting.
Kubota’s back, and the screeching, continued to recede up the corridor.
Kiva crawled inside the torpor hall. Her breaths were shallow and fast as her heart pounded. Then she clutched her chest. “Thank the Gods.”
Seth lay on the floor in front of an open torpor chamber, less than ten feet away.
She stripped off her socks, then ran to him, her feet slapping on the floor. “Seth?” She grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
Nothing. He was out cold.
A few feet away was the wooden crate.
The HCU.
The part they needed to save everyone on the Krakatoa.
Her gaze went back to Seth.
No way did she have time to get both back to the Tomb.
She had to choose.
Kiva turned her back to Seth and squeezed one of his feet under each arm to keep his legs tight against her hips.