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all so profoundly. However, if we are unable to hear each other speak, I will be forced to clear the hall.”
    Magsaysay scanned the room. Only the rustle of people trying to get a better view disturbed the silence. The air-conditioning hummed, turned to high. Overhead, several sail-creature nymphs drifted near the core. Ramis glanced up, looking for Sarat.
    The dato spoke again. “Who started the War? Who won? Who survived? All contact has been severed, so we do not know and we may never know. But that is not our problem.
    “We may be forced to survive on the Aguinaldo without help from Earth. No supplies—only the resources we have here now.”
    He ticked off the points on his fingers. “That means no food. No clothing. No appliances. We have the Sibuyan Sea, but water is still going to be a problem. We have only leftover Moon rubble for raw materials. Even though the construction site of our neighbor, Orbitech 2, is barely a hundred kilometers away, we have no means to get there. We must assume that the Aguinaldo has to be totally self-sufficient from now on.”
    Magsaysay placed his hands on the podium. His big eyes looked very sad.
    “I have purposely presented the situation in the bleakest terms. The Council must consider this situation when we make our decisions. If we are too optimistic now, we could doom our entire colony.”
    Magsaysay raised his gray eyebrows. “Dr. Sandovaal, would you and your staff please brief the Council of Twenty on your projections?”
    “Most certainly—you must have named me chief scientist for a reason.”
    A nervous titter brushed across the hall as Sandovaal led his entourage of assistants on the stage. Dobo Daeng shuffled over to the large-display holotank. Sandovaal cleared his throat and tapped the microphone pad. The speakers squealed as he breathed into the pickup, making him jerk back. He glared at the microphone.
    “Mr. President, members of the Council, for the past four years my associates and I have been tracking the progress of my wall-kelp. You will recall that the Council wisely voted to adapt the kelp as the Aguinaldo’s main source of feed for our livestock. In addition, the actual crop space the wall-kelp has replaced is minimal.”
    Ramis wrinkled his nose. The stagnant smell of the wall-kelp had been the basis for numerous insults and expletives invented by the Aguinaldo colonists.
    “Luis, we all appreciate your work,” Magsaysay said from his seat to the left of the stage, “but at the moment, we need to know your projections of our ability to survive using our current supply of foodstuff.”
    Sandovaal’s expression grew stormy. Ramis drew in a breath, expecting an outburst from the scientist.
    “President Magsaysay, since you ask the question so bluntly, I will answer it bluntly: What are our chances of survival using our current supply of foodstuffs? The answer is none. Zero. No chance whatsoever. It is a simple calculation—anybody can see it.”
    He stopped and stared around at the faces stunned into silence. His blue eyes looked very cold. Magsaysay struggled to his feet and opened his mouth to speak, but Sandovaal waved him into silence.
    “Dobo, display the data. Show them.”
    Dobo touched the controls. A set of graphs appeared in the giant holotank. The curves rotated, then the window zoomed in on a chart labeled ASSETS—CURRENT CROP PRODUCTION.
    Dr. Sandovaal spoke over a growing murmur in the crowd.
    “The blue line is our current population. The red curve is our crop surplus, decreasing as we consume more than we produce.” He waited a beat, then continued. “As you can see, these two curves intersect at a point not three months in the future. That is when we start getting hungry. Shortly after that, I expect fighting and widespread killing. From that point, we cannot calculate accurately how long the survivors can last—it depends on how many there are after the riots.”
    A shout rang out from the back. The hall’s