He said, The FTL plan was going steadily by then. More and more nations had given their okay. They were on to arguing over who went in the ships, size and shape, how they could make sure it didn’t turn into a colonial exercise on the other side. That’s where they met resistance, because the trillionaires were all, But we’ve got our hand-picked guys. There’s only so much room, they’ve already undergone training, this isn’t a tourist trip. Nobody liked that. We’d been calling bullshit the whole time, and now we were getting some traction. I said, Give me a year and I’ll see if I can’t solve the Tau Ceti question by myself, we’ve already got plans, I could do a hell of a lot with the cryo cans now if you let me. Earned some Trans-Tasman support, but then the trillionaires banged the wanted criminal drum and put me on the back burner. The bastards said, Fine, we’ll make room for two hundred nominated people—two hundred! Two measly hundred!—and I was all, They won’t fall for that.
He said, They fell for it.
He said, Turns out everyone wanted to nominate someone to go on board, especially if they could nominate themselves. The absolute fuckers. Once they got that green light they said the first wave would leave in three months, we have to do this quickly, get the second wave ready before our next round of climate starvation.
He said, We paid people to find their engineering facilities. That was a huge pain in the ass. Like, talk about a group of people who couldn’t find somebody to buy weed off of, now out looking for mercenaries. Thankfully P— knew a bunch of army guys who knew ex-army guys, it was all very Soldier of Fortune. They got caught pretty much immediately, but I was good at long distance by then, I’d had to practise. I got eyes and ears on the plant that was meant to be the main building site and I immediately saw that it wasn’t to spec. The deliveries they were getting weren’t even the right stuff to build the ships. They were bringing in random crap to make it look like they were busy. It didn’t seem like they had enough people. The superstructures of the new fleet weren’t progressing. Best of all would have been to walk into an empty building, but what I saw was immediately suspicious enough for us to be sure it wasn’t enough.
He said, So I went to the governments that were still sympathetic, sort of, like ours, and all the Trans-Pacifics, and we threw down our evidence. All, Take a look at this, this isn’t working. They should’ve stopped the launch and seized the factories until they could investigate properly. But instead they asked the trillionaires for their point of view. And the trillionaires lied! They lied like their lives fucking depended on it! They had a glib answer for every question; I swear someone told them we were on to them beforehand! I mean, our cheapo mercs did get caught. They lied and everyone swallowed their shit. Not only that, they looked at us and were like, We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we? Isn’t it time you guys stop being independent actors, aren’t you recognised by most nations as a cult? We’re all legally appointed officials here, except for the trillionaires. Did you know cows recognise one another?
He said, I got mad.
He said, Back at home I told them, they want to call us a cult, let’s be a cult. It only takes a little bit of eyeliner and a couple capes. N— already had eyeliner and capes. We’d tried to keep everything so clean-cut and scientific, but now we were streaming quicker than they could serve us subpoenas. End of the world is nigh, that kind of thing. Join us. Live forever. Your governments are lying to you. Before, when it started, I’d tried to use all these scientific terms—tried to coin phthinergy, talk about a word that needed an antihistamine. I’d tried to make out like everything I was doing had principles I was probably going to write papers on later. I dropped all that, because turns out nobody wants papers, nobody wants principles. They want the magic bullet. They just want to be saved.
He said, I told them I’d save them. And I said, I’m a necromancer.
DAY FIVE
CROWN PLAYS HER PART—THE SAINT OF DUTY—PALAMEDES COMES CLEAN—THE SADDEST GIRL IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD—NONA WATCHES A DUEL—THE CONVOY—PAUL GETS BORN—ONE LAST TRIP—TWENTY-FOUR HOURS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.
20
WAKING UP, NONA DIDN’T know how much of the day and night had been part of her dream. Nona got the disorienting sense that nearly all of it had been imagined, and she was only now starting her day, and she would soon be telling Cam everything in front of the recorder and persuading her out of breakfast.
She woke up lying flat on her back with something warm draped over her, and the familiar cheap-soap-and-leather smell of Camilla tickling her nose. One of Cam’s jackets had been rolled up and put under her head on top of her pillow. For a happy moment, Nona thought she was home. But the floor underneath Nona was scrubby carpet, not tile, and the walls were unfamiliar. She rolled onto her side. Her vision swam horribly, and she found with a start that she was going to be sick.