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Indians, the French, Germans, Russians, Japanese—all of their scientists are coming to more or less the same conclusions.”
    “Two years?” Dinah piped up. Her voice was hoarse, broken. Everyone looked at her. “Until the White Sky?”
    “People seem to be converging on that figure, yeah,” Dr. Harris said. “Twenty-five months, plus or minus two.”
    “I know that this is a terrible shock for all of you,” said the president. “But I wanted the crew of the ISS to be among the first to know about it. Because I need you. We, the people of the United States and of Earth, need you.”
    “For what?” Dinah asked. In no sense was she the official spokesman for Izzy’s crew of twelve. That was Ivy’s job. But Dinah could tell, just from looking at her, that Ivy was in no condition to speak.
    “We are beginning to talk to our counterparts in other spacefaring nations about creating an ark,” the president said. “A repository of the entire genetic heritage of the Earth. We have two years to build it. Two years to get as many people and as much equipment as we can into orbit. The nucleus of that ark is going to be Izzy.”
    Absurdly, Dinah felt a mild flicker of annoyance that J.B.F. had appropriated their informal term for the ISS. But she knew how it was. She had spent enough time with the NASA PR people to understand. Things had to be humanized, to be given cute names. All the terrified kids down there who knew they were going to die would have to watch upbeat videos about how Izzy was going to carry the legacy of the dead planet through the Hard Rain. They would take out their crayons and draw cartoon pictures of Izzy with a torus halo and a big rock on her ass and a little anthropomorphic smiley face on the side of the Zvezda Service Module.
    Ivy spoke up for the first time in a while. A mere two weeks ago, the postponement of her wedding had seemed a big disappointment. But she had just been told that her fiancé—U.S. Navy commander Cal Blankenship—was a dead man walking and that she would never marry him, never touch him, never see him again except through a video link. To say nothing of everyone else she knew. She looked a little spacey. She was talking in her singsongy voice. “Madam President,” she said, “I’m sure you know that there isn’t much space up here to accommodate new people. I’m sure this must be a topic of discussion.”
    “Yes, of course,” the president said. “Your job is to—”
    “Pardon me, Madam President, can I take this?” Dr. Harris asked. Dinah noted the flick of the president’s eyes, the look of shock on her face. The president of the United States had just been interrupted.Shouldered out of the way. As a woman who had made her way up in the world, she probably had some raw nerve endings around that sort of thing.
    But this wasn’t that. It wasn’t J.B.F. asking herself did he interrupt me because I’m a woman? They were past all of that now. This was her asking herself did he interrupt me because the president of the United States doesn’t matter anymore?
    “Is Lina there?” Dr. Harris asked. “Pan the camera around please—ah, there you are. Lina, I have read your articles about the swarming behaviors of fish in the Caribbean. Great stuff.”
    “I didn’t know your interests extended to things underwater,” said Lina Ferreira. “Thank you.”
    People were funny, Dinah thought. Talking like this, at a time like this.
    “The videos are amazing. They all move in tight formation, until a predator comes through. Then, suddenly, a hole just opens up in the swarm and the predator sails through it and doesn’t catch a single fish. A moment later they’re back together again. Well, nothing’s been decided yet, but—”
    “You want to use swarming behavior in the ark?”
    “The proposal is called the Cloud Ark,” the president cut back in. “And you have it correct. Rather than putting all our eggs in one basket—”
    “Eggs . . . and sperm, ”