At the Core, the three boys climbed off the transport under the shade of the tall buildings and made for the closest entrance. Past the doors, people coming from outside stowed their suits and immediately bought antiox treatments to offset the radiation they’d absorbed from the sun. The boys were low on units, though, so they walked past the antiox kiosk into the tangle of interconnected tunnels and skyways and made their way to the main promenade—a massive indoor thoroughfare of shops and restaurants. They went down to the lowest level and slipped into the darkest bar they could find.
Matthew and Adam sat in a booth out of the bartender’s sight while Silas walked up to the bar and pitched his voice low to order three beers. He’d told Matthew about the scam on the transport on the way over—his cousin’s friend’s husband was a low-level hack at the public information office, and Silas had supposedly bartered a short-term change in the age on his ident.
The bartender wasn’t buying it, though. From where he sat on the other side of the room, Matthew saw him shake his head, point at Silas, and begin to speak sharply. Silas’s face turned red and he looked like he was about to pick a fight; Adam got up and tried to pull him away from the bar. Somewhere in all the arguing, Silas or Adam must have let slip that they were just trying to show their buddy a good time before he shipped off to space, and the bartender’s face softened immediately.
“Well, hell,” he said, his voice booming over the din of the bar. “Why didn’t you say so? Get him over here!”
At the bartender’s prodding the three sat at the bar while he poured them drinks on the house. After the first round, a man sitting at the other end of the bar ordered them another round of beers, then moved closer and slid into a stool right next to Matthew.
“Thanks for the drinks,” Matthew said, grimacing at the bitter taste of the beer on his tongue.
“No problem,” the man said. “You can pay me back by finding a new planet for us. For all of us. This one’s had it.”
The man looked at Matthew’s face a moment under the glare of the lights just behind the bar. He squinted, cocked his head.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re just a boy. I thought the minimum age for the Project was seventeen. Are you even that old, son?”
Almost, thought Matthew.
Matthew was sixteen, but he’d be seventeen tomorrow—the same day he was scheduled to go into the freeze.
When Matthew had received his orders summoning him to report for cryostasis on his birthday, he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. He’d known about the Exo Project’s age minimum, so he figured they wouldn’t freeze him and launch him into space until he was seventeen—but he hadn’t imagined they’d schedule his departure on his birthday. It was so soon. He thought he’d have more time to say good-bye.
On the other hand, he’d been the one to sign up for a suicide mission, hadn’t he? If he was going to die, he might as well get on with it.
Besides, Matthew had never cared much about his birthday. At school, he had friends who made a big deal of their birthdays every year, threw huge parties with drinks and dancing and tons of gifts. But to Matthew, his birthday was just another day. In a way, getting frozen and being launched into space would make this his most memorable birthday ever.
Then Matthew looked at the postcard again. This time his eyes skipped past the departure date and fell on the destination they’d chosen for him.
Planet H-240, orbiting a star named Iota Draconis. One hundred light-years away. Even traveling at the speed of light in an Exo Project spaceship, it would take a century for Matthew to arrive at the planet. By the time he came out of the freeze, he’d still have only just turned seventeen. But Silas and Adam, his mother, his sister—everyone he’d ever known—would be dead.
Matthew blinked and shook his head.
Best not to think about it.
These thoughts flashed through Matthew’s mind in the space of a moment; if the man had been paying attention, he’d have seen it in Matthew’s face as a flinch, a microexpression of pain before returning to neutral.
What Matthew said was, “I’m old enough.”