I pour myself some coffee and make a face. Beth must have brewed this. She always makes it jet fuel.
“This’ll help,” Chris says, tossing me a sealed paper packet. I look at the label.
“Coffee creamer?” I say, thunderstruck.
“Dr. Kao said the admiral brought a stash from the Prairie,” Chris says, taking a sip from his own mug. He makes a face. “I think it’s vanilla.”
I dump the white powder into my coffee and swirl the mug to mix it in. The vague chemical sweetness doesn’t taste like vanilla, or much of anything, really. But it’s familiar. And right now familiar tastes good.
“What are you doing up at this hour, anyway?” I ask Chris, snagging one of the bowls of oatmeal on his tray.
“I never went to sleep,” he says, shoving a huge bite of oatmeal into his mouth and chewing around his words. “Chief G started printing cabin parts before you guys even got back from the Prairie. I volunteered for a second shift, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Not until Dad got home.”
“You see him yet?” I ask.
Chris nods. “He came and found me at like oh three hundred.” Chris takes another bite of his oatmeal and stares down at the bowl as he chews and swallows. Then, like he doesn’t really want to say it, he adds, “He cried.”
The closed fist of my mother’s face flickers through my memory. I swallow hard. “I think that might be better. Than not crying, I mean.”
Chris nods, still hunched over his breakfast. “Still.”
“Yeah.” I agree with the unspoken horribleness of seeing our parents so broken.
“I wish Mom were here,” he says.
“Me too,” I whisper.
But Chief Penny is dead.
This planet killed her.
Chris sucks in a snuffling gulp, forcing back tears. His voice is still gluey as he adds, “She’d for sure be itching to get her hands on all that raw they’re gonna bring down from the Prairie.”
“They’re bringing raw down? Already?” I ask, willfully allowing the distraction to shelter me.
“Sure,” Chris says. “Twelve weeks. Ten thousand people. There’s no time like the present.”
That plunges us into silence again. It’s so quiet I can hear Beth’s stylus scratching against her flex as she writes.
“They’re alive!” Leela’s voice shatters the silence as she crashes into the greenhouse, clutching a crumpled flex. “My family is alive. All of . . . almost all of them. My grandparents aren’t on the Prairie’s manifest, but all of my cousins and uncles and aunts and—” She throws her arms around me. I hug her back. Tight. She’s shaking like a leaf. Or is that me? I really can’t tell.
“My aunts and cousins are up there, too,” Chris says. “And Chief G said her sister’s family is on the manifest.”
“So are Jay’s mom and sister,” I say.
“I can’t believe he did this,” Leela says, pulling back. She’s still wearing pajama pants and a tank top under her parka. She must have just woken up and checked the manifest. “In the middle of the freaking end of the world, your grandfather cared enough to get all our families on that ship. I just . . . I can’t believe it.”
“He always says family is what makes people get up in the morning,” I say.
“Ironic,” Beth says. The word is like a shard of glass, puncturing Leela’s infectious joy.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand. My sister just keeps writing.
“Chill, Joey,” Leela says. “We’re too keyed up right now. Besides, I have to go. I just wanted . . . I needed to be excited for a minute. That’s all. And I knew you guys would get it. But I have to get back. Baba is a mess. He was already upset about the idea that his parents were probably going to die while we were here, and now . . . he isn’t taking it well.”
The thought is startling. I’ve never even seen Doc anything less than calm. I guess it’s only natural that he’s upset about his parents dying alone, light years away, but Leela’s dad has been my doctor since I was born. He’s brick in the foundation of the Project. Of my world, I guess. And now it’s all crumbling.
“How do you spell your grandparents’ given names?” Beth asks without looking up from her flex.
“S-I-T-A and C-H-A-N-D,” Leela says, throwing a huh look at me. “Why?”
Instead of answering, Beth writes something out on her flex and then double taps the stylus. The transparent touchscreen tiles that make up the walls and the ceiling are suddenly covered with neatly handprinted columns. Lists of names.
I cross to the wall to look closer at the nearest one.
Sami Farsakh.
Noam Levy.
Malik Jones.
The names are all familiar, but it takes me a moment to figure out why.
“Are these your lab mates at Stanford?” I ask finally.
“And miscellaneous other students and faculty,” Beth replies. “Also the sanitation staff.”
“Why are you writing a list of names of people you knew at Stanford?”
“Because I’ve already written down all the names I remember from primary school, Galactic Frontier Project HQ, MIT—”
“And everyone who worked at Jemison Memorial?” I say, my fingers tracing a long list of names I recognize from the medical center where I rehabbed after the accident.
“No,” Beth says, going back to writing on her flex. “Only the names of your medical team. I was too distracted by your recovery to properly introduce myself to the rest of the staff. I don’t know their names. And I’ll forget these if I don’t write them down. Everyone will.”
“You’re making a list of people who died on Earth,” I whisper, the realization welling up at the back of my throat like tears.
“Only the ones I can remember,” Beth says.
I look around the greenhouse walls again with fresh eyes. There are at least a thousand names written here. Maybe more. Beth’s memory isn’t photographic, but it’s the nearest thing to. Every name she’s ever heard, every hand she’s ever shaken, is burned into the folds of her brain forever.
And all those people are lost now, except in Beth’s head.
“You added my grandparents to your list?” Leela whispers. The quiet words are so dense with emotion that I can almost feel them, like the tactile language of the Sorrow.
“A hollow gesture, perhaps,” Beth says. “But remembering is the only thing I can do for them, or for Doc. Or for you.”
Leela gasps in a little sob. “It’s not hollow, Beth,” she whispers.
“I’d prefer we keep emotional displays to a minimum,” Beth says, starting to write again. “I’ve had quite enough feelings of late.”
“Pretty sure we all have,” Leela agrees, wiping at her eyes again. She swallows hard.
“Breakfast?” Chris asks, pushing a bowl of oatmeal toward Leela.
“No thanks,” she says. “I gotta get home. Aai wants to make an offering before the memorial. For Aajoba and Aaji.”
“Hey,” I realize. “Shouldn’t you be at reveille with Jay?”
Leela makes a face. “Nah. I’m still ISA. The admiral killed the transfer.”