“Hey, easy there fella,” Matthew leaned forward and put a gentle hand on Bob's forearm. “Whatever happened, I'm sure it wasn't your fault.”
Bob leaned forward earnestly. “Yes, yes it was being my fault! I did disobeying the rules. The People are not allowed to leaving the Colony! But me I did leaving, to helping this girl and her mommy. And I did not knowing that my own mommy's mommy she did seeing me leave and she did following me.” Bob began to wring his hands earnestly as he told them what happened next.
“My mommy's mommy did finding me giving these new peoples some foods. I did hearing her voice saying to me to standing back from them. She did holding a spade in her hands. Very afraid I was when I did seeing it, because the Taken they do not working in the fields – I did wondering what she was going to doing with that spade!
“She did coming closer to me and the new peoples and she did holding the spade in front of her and then she did push it very hard into her own neck, my mommy's mommy, right here.” Bob drew a line across his throat like Evelyn had seen men do in films about gangsters.
By now the others were all staring at Bob in horror.
“She … stabbed herself with a spade?” Kenji asked, incredulous.
Bob nodded sadly. “Me and those other peoples, we did not knowing what to do. There was a lots of blood and my mommy's mommy did falling over onto the ground where she did doing some very scary dances. That is when the very very bad, very very worst thing did happening. I did hearing a sound, like the bees when they do coming to eating the nectar of the flowers, and that is when I did seeing the Mind come flying out from my mommy's mommy's mouth and nose and ears. I did wanting to run away, but I was too scared even to moving my legs, and the Mind did going inside my own head, and I did becoming Taken.” Bob stopped here, his eyes taking on a faraway look.
“What happened to the girl and her mother?” Evelyn asked.
Bob shook his head from side to side, keeping his eyes firmly on the fire as it's reflection danced in the tears on his grubby cheeks. “I did taking the spade from my mommy's mommy ... and I did … I did killing the girl's mommy with it. She … she did screaming at the girl to running, running away! And I did wanting to screaming at her to running as well, but I could not using my voice, I could not doing anything! I could only watching. The Mind did taking my own body from me and using it for itself.”
“D-Did she get away?” Clove asked. “The girl?”
Again Bob shook his head. “I did not killing her, but she did not getting away either. The Mind did sending the hunters to killing that poor girl. I heard them howling and growling as they did chasing her.” He buried his face in his hands. “I heard her screaming when they did catching her.”
“The hunters? That's the wolves?” Kenji asked, looking around at the others for confirmation.
Evelyn nodded, and Bob said, “The hunters are being terrible creatures, strong and quick and always they are being hungry. But they do not go into the Colony. Only in the forest will they attacking the People.”
“But you know how to kill them, don't you?” Kenji asked hopefully. “I mean, you killed that one, right?” He pointed to Bob's fur cape.
“Oh no no, I could never killing one of the hunters. They are being too big, too quick. When I do hearing them coming I do climbing up into a tree and hiding there until they do going away.” Bob stroked his wolf skin cape. “This beautiful clothes I did making from the skin of a baby hunter. I did finding him dead with his tummy slashed open by one of his friends.”
“Great.” Kenji rested his head in his hands gloomily.
“Some friend ...” Matthew added.
“What happened after you became a Taken, Bob?” Evelyn prompted, reminding Bob where he had left off his story.
“I did being the Taken for my family for many seasons, and I could not telling them about the new peoples I did finding. I could not telling anyone anything. I wanted to going to looking for more peoples to bringing them and showing the People in the Colony that they are not all alonely, but I could not doing anything, and I knew I would never being able to telling them because when somebody does becoming Taken they do staying Taken until they do dying. So I could only watching: watching while I did beating my own mother when she did feeling too tired to do working; watching while my own father did working so hard that all the flesh did shrinking on his bones; watching while I did forcing my little sister, only a small girl, to working all the day long in the fields.
“But I did seeing other things, too, things I did never seeing before. When I was Taken I did leaving the Colony only one time. It was very very strange, to seeing the world outside the Colony for the first time. I did walking through the forest for a whole day, me and also two other Taken, until we did coming to a big open field full of very very strange things that did looking very just like the walls of your big hut from the sky.”
“Solar panels ...” Evelyn murmured.
“While we were there we did going to a small hut and inside were some very strange pieces of strings in many colors that we did tying together and when we did finishing the whole hut began to making a humming sound and we did returning to the Colony. But on the way back the ground I was walking on did falling down, deep into a very big hole. I did falling down too into that hole in the ground. I did falling quite far and landing on my head, so that I did dying. I do not knowing how long I did lying dead in that hole in the ground, but eventually I did opening my eyes, and the Mind it was being gone from me. I was being free, though I did having many cuts and sores on my body, and I was being stuck inside the hole. I could not climbing out the way I did falling in. Too weak I was feeling! But I did finding another way out, by walking through the very dark darkness for a long times. I do not know how long, because down in that hole there was being no day times, only dark times. When I did finally coming out of that hole I could not seeing the tall hut anymore, and I did finding it my very safe place.”
“Why haven't you gone back, Bob?” Clove asked. “To your family in the Colony?”
Bob actually shrank back from her in fear. “I can never going back, I cannot being Taken again, too much very bad it was being. And also too I could not going back because I have been waiting for you to coming in your big hut from the sky!”
“Right ...”
“Yes! I did waiting for you for many long times, but I did knowing you would coming soon to help me to freeing the People and destroying the Mind.”
“Um, what's he talking about?” Kenji asked.
“With your very special clothings the Mind it cannot going inside your heads!” Bob rubbed Kenji's suit excitedly. “This is how I know you did coming here to saving the people. It must being so, yes?”
The expression of hope on Bob's face was so pitiful that Evelyn didn't really know what to say. She cleared her throat. “The truth is, Bob, we had no idea there would be any people on this planet. We thought we would be alone here.”
“You … didn't coming to freeing the People?” Bob's expression of hope slowly began to fall away, and suddenly he looked much older.
“No … I mean, that wasn't our plan. But maybe we can help ...” She looked around at the others.
“I dunno …” Matthew said. “We don't even know what this … Mind is. How are we supposed to stop it?”
“Yeah, can’t we just stay in this nice cave?” Kenji added.
“No,” Evelyn said, her eyes flashing red with the reflection of the fire, and it suddenly occurred to her it was the first time she had ever looked into a fire. It felt as though the flames had done something to her, awakened something primal inside her ... “We may not know what the Mind is,” she continued, looking around at her friends, “but one thing's for sure: if we want to survive here it has to be stopped, and nobody else is going to stop it. It has to be us.”
17
They slept on the floor of Bob's cave, all of them too tired to care that it was hard and uncomfortable, or that outside the sun had only recent
ly risen. The fire warmed them, and they had food in their bellies. That was enough.
Evelyn dreamed of her mother. They were at the beach, a beach she recognized: there was a whale skeleton embedded in the sand. There was no one else at the beach.
Bright sunlight reflected off the white sand, searing her eyes, her skin.
Her mother wanted to swim.
“The water's too cold, mum, you'll freeze!”
“I'm cooking out here. I need to cool off.” Her mother's laughing face turned away as she moved towards the water, leaving Evelyn alone on the sand.
“Mum, come back!”
“I'll be right back, dear. I love you.” She jogged down the beach and dove into the waves.
Evelyn waited but her mother did not emerge from the water. She began to feel worried, then afraid. The panic welled up inside her chest, scratching at her insides and making her feel sick. Her mother was gone.
“The Bloom killed her,” said a voice in her head. It was the voice of the Mind, the voice that had spoken to her when she arrived on Janus, but it was also her mother's voice. “The Bloom is a product of human greed.”
“Leave me alone,” Evelyn said.
Then her dream changed. She saw a kind of village, like something out of a historical film, with mud huts and grass roofs, and people dressed in rags working fields with rudimentary tools. As she moved through the village, no one seemed to notice her. She reached the center of the village, where a tall structure rose up towards the clouds. It was a tower, built of a reflective material she did not recognize. Whatever it was, it was obviously far more advanced than the mud huts surrounding it.
As she stood there at its base, a door slid open revealing a small room. Inside the room Brenner stood, looking out at her.
When Brenner spoke, the voice was not hers, but that of Evelyn's mother; the voice of the Mind. “I have your friend, Evelyn, and I know how you care for your friends, so let's make a deal. You come here, to my tower, and I will let your friend go.”
“I don't believe you,” Evelyn said.
“If you do not come by the next sundown, I will kill your friend.”
“You're just a dream,” Evelyn said. “This isn't real.”
“If it isn't real then how do you know it's a dream?”
Evelyn had no response to the paradoxical question, and as she stared open-mouthed at Brenner her eyes suddenly turned black, and the smaller girl smiled an evil smile. “Sundown tomorrow. I hope you make the right choice. Now WAKE UP!”
The door slammed shut and Evelyn was sucked backwards by some invisible force, away from the tower, away from the village. Away from everything.
She woke with a start, the residue of her dream still clinging to her foggy eyes. For a moment she didn't know where she was, then she saw the glowing worms hanging high above her and remembered. The smell of the smoldering fire filled the cave. It had been just a dream after all.
She got quietly to her feet and looked around. Two things alarmed her: the blaster she had left beside her was gone, and so were Matthew and Bob. Peering around the cave she didn't see either of them, so she slipped past Kenji's snoring form and headed to the exit, feeling uneasy.
As she felt her way through the black passageway she bumped into something alive, and almost screamed.
“Whoa, who's that?” Matthew's voice asked from right in front of her. She felt his questioning hand on her arm.
“It's me,” she said. He still held her arm, and she found herself feeling for his hand in the dark. “Let's go outside. The others are still asleep.”
“Okay.”
Electricity charged in her chest as his fingers closed around hers and he led her from the cave. All thoughts of Brenner and of her dream were pushed from her mind, replaced by a kind of nervous excitement that made her feel instantly guilty. She told herself she wasn't allowed to feel like this, there were more important things to think about. But she didn't let go of Matthew's hand.
The sun was up outside, and the rain had cleared. Evelyn felt like she had slept for days.
As they left the dark passageway behind them Matthew awkwardly released her hand. Not looking at her, he said, “It's just after dawn. We slept a whole day and night.”
“We needed it,” she said, wandering down towards the river and glancing back at him to see if he would follow her. He did. She sat on a rock, scaring a frog who leaped into the water with a splash. Matthew stood silently a few paces away from her, slightly too far to hold a comfortable conversation. He was nervous, she could tell. So was she. Her hand still tingled where his fingers had touched hers.
She looked around at the jungle, unsure of what to say, and couldn't help but marvel at how much life there was here. Everywhere she looked something scuttled or scurried or fluttered. “Bob's not in the cave,” she said eventually. “And my blaster is missing.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I saw him a while ago. He said he was going to get us breakingfasts.”
They both laughed at Bob's endearingly peculiar vernacular.
“Why do you think he speaks like that?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
Matthew moved closer and sat on a fallen tree trunk opposite her. “Maybe all the people here speak like that.”
“Maybe … but I don't think so.”
“Oh?” He looked at her with an amused smile. “Why's that?”
“Because there's no pattern to his speech. He mixes up his tenses and adds extra verbs, but not consistently. I think he used to know the correct structures and grammar, but hasn't spoken to anyone in so long he can't remember them.”
Matthew looked at her, clearly impressed. “I didn't notice that his use of language wasn't being consistently.”
Evelyn looked at him, then burst out laughing again. “Don't be mean,” she said, despite herself.
Smiling, he held up his hands, “No, you're right. I shouldn't make fun of the guy. He's really taking care of us.” He looked off into the forest. “Wonder what he'll bring us for breakfast. I think he was planning to shoot something with your blaster.”
“I can hardly wait,” Evelyn answered, with a sarcasm that was at least fifty percent heartfelt. What she wouldn't give for a plate of Eggz 'n Bakon, the lab-made breakfast made popular after the Bloom had wiped out nearly all of Earth's livestock.
After a few moments of silence it seemed that they had run out of lighthearted banter, and Evelyn, not wanting this moment alone with Matthew to end, turned to more serious matters. “So, what do you think of Bob's request?”
“You mean to take down the Mind and free the People?” He shrugged. “We don't even know what the Mind is. Personally I think we have enough of our own problems.”
“The Mind is one of our problems. It killed Holly and Nelson,” she snapped, a little more harshly than she'd intended.
“I know, I know.” Matthew stared at the river. “It's just, how are we supposed to fight that? It's like … it's like magic, you know?” Seeing the amused look on her face he continued. “Come on, you've got to admit it. That stuff is like some kind of dark sorcery, getting into peoples heads. Controlling them.”
“There's no such thing as magic,” she said. “The Mind is something else. We just don't know what. Yet.”
“But you have an idea?”
Evelyn had fallen asleep pondering the Mind, but before drifting off she had come up with one idea, and it suddenly came back to her. “Well …I think it might be some kind of nanotech. Something like the NAMs.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“The way I see it, if OrbiCor managed to send others through the Rift before we even arrived on Janus that means they had some kind of improved space flight. Which begs the question: what else did they manage to improve?”
Matthew nodded. “I think I see where you're going with this. But then, who's controlling the stuff?”
“Not who: what. At least that's what I'm thinking.”
“Wait, you've lost me.�
��
“Think about it, no person could be controlling everything the Mind is doing. It would have to be something else; a program. Or an AI.”
“An AI? On Janus?”
“Why not? The fact is we have no idea what's happened in the last ten thousand years. Maybe OrbiCor had a successful community here. Maybe they used an AI to run their systems, like back at TAD. Maybe it went rogue. And remember Bob's story, the solar field he went to? All the electricity must be getting used for something.”
“Hmm, this is starting to sound like the plot of a sci-fi film I've seen ...” His eyes smiled at her.
“Look, the point is that if we want to make a life for ourselves here we're going to have to figure out how to deal with the Mind. It's bad enough we have to find food and avoid wild animals, never mind having some dark sorcery trying to kill us,” she mocked him in return.
Matthew chuckled, shaking his head in wonder. “I don't know how you even have the presence of mind to think about this kind of stuff, after what's been going on.” Seeing her slightly hurt look he added, “No, I mean I think it's amazing. I think the rest of us, myself included, are all a little too overwhelmed by the present to be thinking about our future here. We're lucky to have you with us.”
Evelyn felt her face flush and looked away shyly, only to find herself face to face with a massive spider dangling from a thread an inch from her face. She shrieked in fright, nearly falling off her rock in her attempt to get away. Matthew's hand at her back steadied her, and she straightened up, laughing at herself. He was smiling too, and his hand was still on the small of her back. He stood very close to her. She looked at his face. She could see the individual hairs of his eyebrows. Her hands were on his chest, she suddenly realized. How had they gotten there, she wondered, as she felt his lungs fill with air. Her own breath was coming rapidly. Neither of them were smiling anymore; instead their faces had taken on the same expression: something like wonder, something like terror. When Matthew's lips began moving towards hers Evelyn felt like lightning was shooting through her body. She tilted her chin, raising her mouth to his.
The Cloud Page 14
