Diaspora Ad Astra (25 page)

This incited the rest of the audience to even more murmurs. Doris caught what one of the bodyguards of one of the leaders was saying (“Oh
right,
Filipinas come
from their country, you know, the nannies?”), and she bit back a bitter retort. This was too crucial for her to ruin by losing her temper.

“Maybe you may not wish to recognize our country’s contribution to the program in particular,” Doris said. “But what you
should
recognize,
President Watson, is that the program was not yours alone. Without the help—willingly or unwillingly given—of other countries, even the so-called third world countries, your program
would be nothing.”

President Watson looked at her, wide-eyed, his usual eloquence stunned to silence. Doris did not waste her advantage.

“My point is this, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “The colonization of space is
not
a race, not a contest between our countries. Instead, it should
be a cooperative effort. Before we could hope to conquer space, we should work at establishing a united, single, planetary identity first. We should stop thinking of ourselves as Filipinos, as
Americans, or as Chinese—we should start thinking of ourselves as the
people of Earth
.”

The room erupted into chaos. President Watson’s secretary pressed the bell remote, and a sharp ringing sounded throughout the room. The rest of the world leaders
reluctantly stopped talking.

“We get your point, President Garcia-Cruz,” President Watson said. Doris did not miss how the President said ‘
we
’—they were excluding
her. She was an outsider to him, an adversary. “And we have pushed for globalization in the past, but there have been protests regarding the abolition of cultures and—”

“Because you have been going about it the wrong way,” Doris said hotly. Ruben moved as if to stand up and say something, but thought better of it. “God, even
Hollywood
gets it wrong. Have you seen your digipics lately? Globalization does not mean whitewashing of cultures, it means embracing diversity—”

“I’m afraid this is a rather naive point of view,” President Watson said. “Forming a global identity is harder than it seems. And to put it simply,
there is no time.
" He shifted the picture of Gaia to that of Earth, and then to its wildlife, its rivers and oceans. "Like it or not, our planet
is
deteriorating. We are running
out of resources. We need to colonize Gaia as soon as possible, for the survival of our species. Our first ship to Gaia, the
Columbus,
has to launch next month, for it has already become
absolutely necessary.”

He looked at his wristwatch, and shook his head. “I’m afraid we must now move on to other matters. I shall finish all that I have to say first, and questions will
come later. I think some of you may have wanted to discuss our military’s continued presence in Dubai. We believe that we are justified, since—”

Doris was no longer listening. She knew why President Watson had chosen this next issue for discussion: it demonstrated their country’s power, their dominance.
The
oh-so-powerful world police have to be on top of everything,
she had once said sarcastically to Ruben, in private discussion. “Sometimes I wonder why you even bother going against
them,” he had said to her then. “Even if you push for an Earth identity, you know they will still dominate. We’ve hardly figured in world history throughout the years
anyway.”

“But that is just so
wrong
,” Doris said. “There’s so many of us scattered around the globe. You go into a country, and you’ll bump into a
Filipino. Hell, you can even go to Antarctica and you’ll even see a Filipino there! We are, essentially, all over the planet. Still, the rest of the world just sees us as servants, failing to
see our potential.”

“Because no one ever bothered to develop that potential,” Ruben said.

“Oh? You really think that?”

Doris smiled to herself, the same way she had smiled at Ruben then. He closed his eyes, just as he did then, as if he was afraid to see what was coming next.

“Doris,” he said.

He rarely said her first name, not even in private. Doris knew now that he was appealing to her not as the Vice President, but as an equal, a
friend
.

“Please tell me.” He opened his eyes, and finally met her gaze. “What are you planning?”

Doris knew that he was now calling upon their long years of mutual respect for each other—and most important of all, trust. It was a trust that had the stood the test of
many of Doris’ grand plans when she was elected as President; he always followed her, even when he never really understood what they were doing, and even when they were under fire from several
groups and their fellow politicians. It was a trust borne out of knowing that in the end, Doris’ plans would work out the way all of them wanted.

It was a trust that Doris did not want to lose, but still she said nothing. Explanations would come later.

She took his hand, but gently shook her head.

She let go of him and brought out her palmtop. She accessed some of the files her agents had gathered over the past months. Aside from America’s
Columbus,
she now knew
that there were other countries ready to launch ships, although they had not been as open about it: Russia was set to launch a week after the
Columbus
, then Japan two days later. She knew
that whoever gets to Gaia first gets to control it, and they would all be left behind. The Philippines had no ships, no resources.

And yet despite all this, she still smiled.

"If it’s a race they want," she said, "then it’s a race they’re going to lose." Her smile grew wider.

The Vice President of the Philippines gulped.

***

Eckert watched as Sal stopped walking and crouched down, surveying the scene in the relative safety of the dark corridor they were in. About a dozen men and women, all carrying
rifles, guarded the front of the ship’s communications center. She could see the three operators inside the center, speaking into their headsets, their fingers flying off their
keyboards—an ordinary scene inside the comm center, except for the expressions of terror on the operators’ faces.

She exhaled, and counted to three, before throwing the bottle in her hand.

The bottle fell among the guards, enveloping them in a dense cloud of talcum powder. She took off without a look back.

She rejoined Eckert and the children, and they sank deeper into the shadows.

“I’m afraid,
yaya
,” Lotte said. She was shaking from head to toe. “I want to go home, I don’t want to go to Gaia
anymore—”

“Ssh, Lotte,” Eckert said. “They’ll hear you.”

The center’s guards pressed onward, clutching their rifles.

“I’m sure I heard something,” the man said. “Find them.”

“Don’t cry, Lotte. Ssh! They’ll hear you. You have to be strong, Lotte—”

The men exchanged glances, and moved forward toward the sound. On they rushed into a room in the hallway, but they barely made a sound. Sal held the children tightly in her
arms. Eckert tensed, and looked ready to battle their laser fire with his own bare fists.

The men turned the corner, ready to shoot.

The man at the head of the line stumbled on the Barbie Bot that lay in the middle of the room. “Don’t cry, Lotte, I love—” The doll was cut off
mid-sentence. The men stood staring at the doll quite stupidly when the steel doors behind them suddenly descended, locking them inside.

Sal, Eckert, and the children emerged from right beside the comm center, where they had been hiding all that time. Sal beamed at Will as he walked over to them. “Wow,
Will,” she said. She turned to Eckert. “Your son
may
have a career in computers after all. That was some great programming!”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Will said modestly. He adjusted his glasses. “With messing with Lotte’s dolls and all. Cracking the barricades'
security codes was nothing.”

“Great job, kiddo,” Eckert said. He ruffled Will’s hair. Some things really do run in the family, he thought with a grin that he could not suppress, despite
their situation.

“Your plan worked,
ya
—” Lotte caught herself in time. “Sal. You’re so smart!”

“We can’t relax yet,” Eckert said. “Come on.”

They inched towards the comm center, and Eckert almost bumped into a man coming out of the comm. room. Eckert was about to hit the man with his fists, if the man had not
spoken. “Sir! Oh God, Professor Eckert, I’m so glad you’re all right!” It was Jhonjhon, one of the ship’s comm center operators.

Eckert wordlessly rushed inside, with Sal and the children following close at his heels. Jhon closed the door. Dingdong and Lala, the ship’s two other operators went
forward to meet them, looking overjoyed. “Thank you for saving us,” Lala said. She took and shook Sal’s right hand. “Those men were holding us hostage. We couldn’t
send help. They were watching us the whole time.”

“We have no time to waste,” Eckert said. “Let’s call for help. Call Houston, now.”

“We already are,” Dingdong said. “There was a problem a while ago with the communications—they had overridden our system. But I’ve fixed it now,
and we’re connecting.” He pointed to his screen.
Call in progress
, it said, with a bar that slowly, too slowly, filled up with green color.

Music filled the room: the call had finally connected. Eckert gripped the tabletop, hard.

And a welcome voice finally filled the room.

“This is Houston,” a young man said, and he appeared on the screen. “Columbus, is anything wrong?”

“We’re under attack,” Eckert said in a rush. “We need your help, immediately. My name is Roger Eckert, and I am the chief biologist of this ship, and we
were headed towards Gaia when the attack began. They’re still here. They took out our pilots and the other soldiers. We need backup—”

The operator’s voice sounded calm, as if Eckert was just doing a social call. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I am transmitting your message to the air force as
we speak. Would you happen to know who is attacking you?”

Eckert looked at the three operators, who shook their heads.

“Th-they didn’t say anything,” Lala faltered. “They had no identification on their uniforms, and they never spoke to us. They didn’t look like any
race I was familiar with—”

“They seem to hate Americans,” Jhonjhon ventured helpfully.

Eckert barked into the phone. “Does it matter now? We’re under attack, we need help now!”

“Please calm down, sir.”

“Well,
you
try being calm when you’re being attacked by goodness knows who or
what
and help is not coming—”

“That’s right, sir. Help is not coming.”

Eckert’s eyes widened. “What?” he said after a pause.

His hands dropped to his sides. On the screen now, instead of the operator’s face, was a word he did not understand, in bold letters. The screen blacked out, then was
filled with the same word, typed over, and over, and over. He looked at the three operators, and could only stare at the grim, unreadable expressions on their faces.

“Salome,” he said. “Get Lotte and Will. L-let’s get out of here.” There was no answer.

“Salome!” he said, more urgently. He looked back and saw that Sal and the children were nowhere in sight.

Hands grabbed him, rendered him immobile, powerless. He did not even fight the drug they injected into his left arm. He gave in to insensibility readily. It was a welcome
state, better than the madness he had now been thrust into.

***

Sal stood over the now unconscious Eckert, who was strapped into a bed.

“The children?” Jhonjhon asked.

“Safe, and as of the moment, unsuspecting,” she said. “They’re with the other children in the ship’s play area. Eventually one of them will figure
out, probably Will, but I told the rest of the
Yaya
unit to be careful, even of them.”

“I shall report to the chief then,” Lala said. “Good job, Agent Salome."

“We’ve always been resourceful,” Sal said. She looked at all her fellow agents: the entertainment band, a group of nurses and nurse aides, the head of the
ship’s janitorial services—and many others like her, civilians,
servants
. She then looked up at the screen, at the same word streaming on the screen, over and over. The irony amused
her: it was a word her countrymen used to welcome the foreigners to their land, a word she had grown to be sick of saying in the years of subservience to them.

“Mabuhay,” she whispered to Eckert’s unconscious figure. She watched with a small smile as they wheeled him to the ship’s containment area, where the
rest of the prisoners were held.

***

The ship’s cook sat in her kitchen, stirring chicken in the dark soy and garlic sauce in the pot, finishing up the meal with a dash of salt. She tasted the sauce, and
smiled, satisfied. "Adobo," she said to the life-sized holographic image of a man beside her. "A very simple yet comforting dish. It’s not surprising people from other countries know this dish,
even if not a lot of the others know it came from us. You sure you wouldn’t want some?"

Ruben looked incredulous. "You’re sure everything really went well, your Excellency?” he said. “No casualties?”

"You just can’t believe that it all worked, can’t you?" Doris said. “Well, some were injured. It couldn’t be helped. But there were no fatalities, not even among
the Americans. I made sure of that. I am not a murderer, you know. That nerve toxin Florentino Flores isolated while working as Roger Eckert’s—ultimately unrecognized—assistant
certainly was useful in neutralizing the soldiers. Everything went smoothly enough, after I had given the signal all over the ship.”

"And they’re really neutralized? All of them?"

"Yes," Doris said. “Jhonjhon has reported to me that Agent Salome from the
Yaya
unit has effectively neutralized the remaining military men who had established
their last stand in the comm center, so now we have complete control.”