Alive

by Scott Sigler

  “We should be falling,” Boy El-Saffani says. “Why aren’t we falling?”

  Girl El-Saffani stamps her foot, testing the firmness of the metal grid below us. The metal rings, vibrates.

  “Solid,” she says. “Does the floor keep us from falling down?”

  Boy El-Saffani shakes his head. “It’s in front of our faces.” He points his bone-club at the planet. “We wouldn’t fall down, we should tumble forward.” He turns and looks at me. “Shouldn’t we, Em?”

  He thinks I have any idea what’s going on?

  Gaston pushes past them, slides around the ladder. He reaches out with both hands. I start after him, scared he is going to fall off the edge, but stop when his hands press against the barely visible curved wall. He leans forward, fearless.

  “The stars aren’t spinning, we are,” he says. He turns, his smile wide, his face alive with joyous amazement. “Hey, Aramovsky, remember how Spingate said we were walking on the ceiling and you argued with her?”

  Gaston points a finger straight up.

  I look. The ladder is still visible, but the tube around it is not. The ladder rises up into another impossibility: Spingate’s cylinder. It is smaller than the planet, I think, but still so big my brain can’t make sense of it. A coppery color, huge, sprawling, sides curving up and away, the length of it stretching out and out and out for I don’t know how far. The surface is dented, scratched and pitted, like the hallways where the battles occurred. The cylinder doesn’t spin at all: it is fixed in place above us.

  Only now do I truly understand what Spingate meant. We walked along the inside of that cylinder, as small as insects. We walked straight, but in a circle at the same time, until we looped up and around to wind up where we started.

  This ball-shaped room we’re in is outside that cylinder, connected by the tube that contains the ladder. The metal-grate floor of this ball is parallel to the cylinder’s surface.

  At the top of the ladder, I see two confused, gray faces peering down: Bawden and Visca, probably wondering why they can suddenly see us. To them, it must look like we’re standing in space.

  Gaston snaps his fingers and laughs.

  “It’s because the cylinder rotates,” he says. “That’s what makes us stick to the inside. I can’t quite remember how it works, but if it spun faster, we would feel heavier, and if it spun slower, we would feel lighter. That’s why it’s heavier here, in the ball, because we’re actually spinning faster than the cylinder below us. The farther out we are, the heavier we feel. I bet at the center of the cylinder, we wouldn’t weigh anything at all. We would float.”

  Float? Gaston sounds even more insane than Brewer. What he says is impossible. But the room of dead babies taught me that when he talks, I should listen. I need to listen to him now.

  Aramovsky raises his hands, tilts his head back.

  “Miracles,” he says. “We float above a planet, we float in space, but we do not die. The gods protect us. Brewer protects us—he truly is one of the gods.”

  I turn back to the hideous head hovering above the pedestal.

  The stars spin behind him, too, but in the opposite direction. On my left, the stars seem to move from up to down; on my right, from down to up.

  “We’re in a ship,” I say to Brewer. I know it’s obvious. The words just come out. “A ship, all this time?”

  “It’s called the Xolotl,” he says. “I find it hard to believe Theresa didn’t figure it out. Perhaps she is not as smart as she thinks she is. A shame to blame the game, but a tame dame never came to fame.”

  He’s babbling again, talking to himself more than to us.

  I point behind me, toward the spinning brown, blue and green planet. “What is that?”

  “That was supposed to be our home, our new beginning. Well, for me and Bishop and Aramovsky, anyway. For you, my little Savage bird, I doubt it would have been paradise, at any price, with or without sparkly ice.”

  Gnarled, black fingers come up to scratch his head. Fingertips dig between the wrinkles. He stops, puts his hands down and stares at my symbol.

  “Em,” he says, speaking the word like it is the answer to all questions. “I can’t believe I missed it, but of course. Of course you survived. Of course you are the leader. Would you like to know your first name?”

  My heart bangs so hard I feel it in my throat, in my ears.

  I need to know who I am.

  I nod.

  “Very well,” Brewer says. “Your name is Matilda.”

  Matilda…Matilda…Matilda. The word echoes through my head, discovers itself hidden deep in the blanked-out areas. I know he speaks the truth.

  My name is Matilda Savage.

  The feeling of relief overwhelms me. Despite the horrors we’ve been through, the problems we still face, I can’t help but smile.

  Bishop slaps his chest. “What about me? What’s my first name?”

  The monster’s spidery hand gives a dismissive wave. “It hardly matters. Everyone knows you as Bishop, and Bishop you are.”

  Brewer’s voice lowers, softens, becomes sad and wistful.

  “All of you can have what I can never possess. You could go to that planet.”

  Gaston slides between me and Bishop. He moves close to the monster’s face, even closer than when I lost control and screamed horrible threats. Seeing little Gaston standing right in front of Brewer makes me wince, as if the monster might reach out, bite down and drag Gaston into nothingness.

  “Is it safe?” Gaston asks Brewer. “The planet?”

  Brewer laughs so hard his furrowed head tilts back and he starts to shake. As before, the bone-scraping sound grinds into a coughing fit. This one racks his body, makes his limp hands flop about like boneless birds. Fluid bubbles up from leathery folds covering where his mouth should be—grayish red glistens on black.

  It takes a few minutes for the coughs to ease. We wait.

  He finally gets it under control. “Who are you, little tooth-boy? I don’t recognize you.”

  “My name is Gaston. Gaston, X.”

  The monster rubs a skeletal black hand across his face, across the leathery folds of his mouth. He looks at his palm, seems sad to see wetness there.

  “Not fair,” he says quietly. “Not fair-a-dair.”

  He focuses on Gaston.

  “Without the burns and scars, you aren’t nearly as dashing, Xander. Yes, the planet is safe. Well, the air won’t kill you, anyway. Hopefully you can break the mold. If you can’t, that was one very long trip for nothing.”

  I wonder what it’s like down on that planet. I try to imagine a place with no walls. Sky instead of ceiling, sky that goes on forever and ever. A place where the dust of the dead doesn’t cover everything, doesn’t coat our tongues and invade our lungs.

  Something about that planet calls to me.

  I don’t even care if it’s safe: I would rather die down there than live up here.

  A very long trip…the centuries have not been kind…

  Brewer’s words push and pull at my muddy mind. A sliver of memory sneaks out: a planet, but not this planet. Something brown, ugly. The thought slithers around like a snake, feeding, growing, becomes almost clear. Another planet…a dying planet. A desperate need to flee.

  And then, I understand.

  The planet we’re looking at doesn’t just call to me, it calls to us.

  It calls to the sleepers.

  It calls to the birthday children.

  “That’s what this ship was made for,” I say. “To bring us here.”

  The monster nods. “Very good, Miss Matilda Savage. And the journey took a mere ten centuries.”

  Bishop huffs. “No one lives that long.”

  “Some do,” Brewer says. “Many more should have, but revolts can get in the way.”

  A thousand years. If Brewer has been alive that long, maybe he is some kind of god.

  I think of all the bodies we’ve seen. So many corpses on this ship. A trip of a thousand years. More
things click into place.

  “The Garden,” I say. “All that fruit…food for the trip. And the pigs. Were they meant to be food as well?”

  “Filthy beasts,” Brewer says. “Did you know swine are smart enough to learn how to open basic husks? Simple buttons were a design flaw, I fear. Live and learn. Swine are always after that calcium. I warned against bringing them. The smarter a creature, the less likely it is to behave. Once they got out of their section, there was no getting them back in. You don’t see cows and chickens and sheep turning against their masters, do you?”

  Gaston gives a doubtful look. “Livestock? You’d need a lot of space for cows, and we haven’t seen any cows at all. Or chickens. Or sheep.”

  The image above the pedestal blurs and shifts. Brewer’s head disappears. In its place, a grassy field with dozens of animals. They have black fur, like the pigs, but are much bigger. Are those cows? In the distance, I think I can make out thicket walls.

  So the Garden isn’t the only room with food after all.

  The image shifts again. A tall metal rack filled with small cages, and in each cage, a black bird. These I recognize: chickens.

  The image blinks, and we’re again looking at Brewer’s horrid head.

  “Don’t base reality on what you have seen when you have seen very little,” the monster says. “The Xolotl is vast. Far larger than your young minds can comprehend. You might say that the journey of a thousand years begins with more than a single flightless bird.”

  This ship came from another planet, a trip that seems desperate and impossibly long. People must have worked together to make that happen. And it seems like they had plenty of food. How many people were on this ship before the killing began?

  “Brewer, what happened here?” I ask. “What made you do these things to each other?”

  He raises a long, bony black finger and wags it side to side.

  “Oh no-no-no, Miss Savage. You won’t get me to laugh again, no matter how funny you are. What happened? Some people do not approve of being sacrificed.”

  I look at Bishop; he shrugs. Brewer is talking in riddles and I’m getting tired of listening to him.

  I feel Aramovsky’s hand on my shoulder again, gently pushing me aside so he has room to speak.

  “The bodies,” he says. “The adults, the children…they were sacrifices?”

  I don’t like the way Aramovsky speaks that word, so breathy and excited.

  “Not all,” Brewer says. “Many, yes. Many more chose to not go gentle into that good night. For twenty years, this ship shuddered from war. A war to liberate those that did not need to be liberated. And in the end, they’re all dead anyway.”

  War. Revolt. Sacrifice. The Grownups did this to themselves. It has nothing to do with us. If we stay here, we’ll wind up like them—butchered and burned, our flesh turned to powdery dust.

  “Brewer, how do we get down to that planet?”

  “You fly,” the monster says. “Fly-fly-fly, a rocket in the sky. Down there you can start over and never-ever-never worry your pretty perfect little heads about the real cost of your trip, about the sins of those who came before you. To get down there, you need a special ship, a shuttle. And oh, irony of ironies, as big as the Xolotl is, only one shuttle remains.”

  A shuttle. The word calls up a flash of memory—a long ship with wings. It will take us away from here. We can go where we were meant to go, and, maybe, leave these monsters behind forever.

  “One shuttle,” I say. “Does that mean if we take it, your kind can’t follow us down there?”

  Two gnarled hands rise up, slowly clap together.

  “You understand what the word one means,” he says. “And people said that Matilda Savage was stupid. Correct, my kind can’t follow you, but you can also never come back.”

  I fight to stay calm. If he’s telling the truth—and I have no way of knowing that he is or isn’t—we can leave this nightmare behind.

  “Tell me where the shuttle is.”

  Brewer sighs, a chest-puffing thing that rattles the black folds hiding his mouth.

  “Long, long ago, during the revolt, I sealed your chambers off from the Mutineers. I had machines destroy corridors, cut away floors, even melt doors to your area.”

  I think about the first intersection we found, back when our long walk began. The black wall that looked like frozen ice. Brewer did that? To keep us safe?

  “Why did you protect us? You say I killed you, yet you keep talking about how you kept us alive. Why would you do that?”

  Brewer doesn’t answer immediately. We wait, long enough that I’m not sure he heard me. I’m about to repeat the question when he finally speaks.

  “I’ve asked myself that a million times,” he says. His eyes have calmed down to a pale red. “Sometimes it is because I hope that I can change the way things work, even though I know that is impossible. Sometimes it is for revenge. Sometimes it is because if all of you die, who will I have to keep me company? These reasons and more, but looking at you now…maybe it is none of them. Perhaps the real reason is because I’ve known all along that you were made for the planet below. A millennium’s worth of lies leads to a single truth—the future belongs to the young, if the old would kindly die and get the hell out of the way.”

  I’m not entirely sure what all of that means. I latch onto one part of it.

  “We were made to be down there,” I say. “You’re right. I can feel it. Let us do that, Brewer. Let us go where we belong. Tell us where the shuttle is.”

  “Ah, yes, the shuttle,” he says. “Fly fly fly, like a rocket in the sky. For centuries they have tried to get to you, and for centuries I have stopped them. Sadly, Miss Savage, when I sealed you in, the shuttle was sealed out. You will have to go to the Mutineers’ section and take it. And while you’re there, see if you can find your Bello, because that is where she’ll be.”

  Bishop takes in a sharp breath of surprise. “You think she’s still alive?”

  “Perhaps,” Brewer says. “Although I suppose that depends on your definition of the word.”

  More riddles. I wish this thing would give us straight answers.

  According to Brewer, our way off the Xolotl is to go where these “Mutineer” monsters are. We will have to face the things that attacked us, that took Bello.

  Bello…could we get her back and get out of here?

  I glance at Bishop, wondering if he’s thinking the same thing. His chin is at his chest. He’s staring at Brewer’s image from beneath furrowed brows. If there is any chance to get Bello back, Bishop is ready to take it.

  Knowing he is with me gives me strength. I stand tall once again.

  “Brewer, tell me how to get to the shuttle.”

  The monster shakes his head. “If they found you, then you found them. As the cleaning flea said to the dirty elephant, Perhaps I missed a spot. Surely I can’t let you sully a pristine, perfect planet if you’re not smart enough to figure things out for yourself.”

  I whip the spear down, a short arc that rips through Brewer’s head in a spastic cloud of sparkles. The blade clonks against the pedestal top, taking a chunk out of the white stone.

  “Stop playing games with us! We’ve already lost three people. The longer we stay, the more that will die. Let us go!”

  He gazes at me for a long time.

  “Maybe I kept you all in your husks because I didn’t think you would survive outside of them,” he says. “But you have. I tried to kill you, little Savage, and yet here you are. Maybe I was wrong…maybe you can make it off this ship. If you do, you deserve to create a world in your own image, not ours. Those that don’t know history aren’t poisoned by it. I will wipe the records clean. And when you go, don’t forget to take your little friends. I’ll start waking them up now.”

  Little friends? Does he mean there are more of us?

  “Brewer, you—”

  A sparkle-wave ripples his face. His image bloats into a black cloud, then vanishes.

&n
bsp; Brewer is gone.

  Bishop nudges my arm. “Em, what did he mean?”

  The air above the right-side pedestal flickers, glows.

  A black face with red eyes appears, but it is smaller and slimmer than Brewer’s. Rage billows within me when I recognize it—it’s the female monster from the Garden.

  She stares at me like I am the only one here.

  “You found your way to the Crystal Ball,” she says. “It used to be my favorite place. In a way, I suppose I should be proud.”

  That voice, the voice of death. So similar to Brewer’s—old and hissy and ancient and wrong—but different, so different, in a way that makes me start to shake.

  I realize why the voice is familiar: I know this creature.

  My teeth grind as I fight to get my body under control. I can’t show weakness, not now. I squeeze the spear shaft so tight it makes my fingers hurt.

  “I am the leader of our group,” I say. “Who are you?”

  The new monster shakes her head. “You haven’t figured it out yet? That’s too bad. You are the leader of nothing. You are nothing. You aren’t even a person.”

  Why does her voice terrify me so? I know her, I know this thing. I know she hasn’t always looked like this, I feel it in my chest, but I can’t put the pieces together.

  “I am a person,” I say. “We all are, including Bello. Give her back to us.”

  “You are property,” the creature says. Her eyes narrow, the swirling red eyes squeezing into thin slits. “You are an empty shell waiting to be filled, an egg with no yolk. You will lay down your weapons and stop fighting us, and you will do it at once.”

  That voice…that voice…

  My breaths are ragged gasps ripping in and out. My head hurts. A realization is bubbling up through my mind, pushing away the muddy thoughts, and now that I almost have it I suddenly, desperately don’t want to know. I want my brain to stop, to leave it alone, but it’s too late for that. Cold stiffness spreads through me, swirls in my belly and turns my heart into a frozen lump.

  Bishop’s hand on my arm, reassuring, supporting—whatever we face next, he will face it with me.

  I shake my head. “We will not lay down our weapons.”