Manipulate (Alien Cadets)

by Corrie [kids] Garrett

  “I recognize the vote of the Council committee,” said Greg. “Humanity is exempt from the non-disclosure clause. I will prepare the human sample for trial as planned. Thank you.”

  Sam hadn’t ruined humanity’s chances after all. Thank God.

  “There is still the matter of this human,” the Rik said. “Humanity is now exempt, but he broke the law. His sentence is not abridged.”

  “But he is one of the foremost witnesses!” Greg protested. “He must be allowed – ”

  “No,” said the Spo emperor. “A witness who will break the law is not a good sample. We will abide by the customary laws for this trespass."

  The emperor turned slightly, probably looking at the other screen. “I assure the Council that the human will be executed according to Spo custom.”

  Sam's knees felt weak and the Rik barked with laughter. “That is acceptable.”

  The Council image turned off. The emperor addressed Greg. “I know the human Sam is favored by you and my son. Gustav will handle his sentencing, no later than two revolutions from today.”

  The second screen turned off. Now they were alone again, and Sam sagged. “Executed?” he whispered to Greg. “I’m going to be executed?”

  Greg was so grey now he blended in with the floor. “There is nothing I can do. If we do not follow through we might compromise Earth’s status even more.” He turned away from Sam.

  “Your face melts before me,” he said. I mourn you already.

  “How?” Sam asked, when they sat on the shuttle again, separated from Gustav in the rear section. Sam’s shock was wearing off. “How do the Spo execute for this crime?”

  Greg would not gaze at his face. “A trouncer cage. Seven or eight animals. It does not take long.”

  Sam froze. “No. You’ve got to be kidding me.” He pictured the giant fanged creatures from their space travel and all the many sacrifices he'd made, taking their brains for the ship. The animals were remarkable predators, a symbol of strength and intelligence to the Spo. Greg would see this as an honorable death. Sam shuddered and forced himself not to ask anything else.

  Chapter 16

  When Shara slammed Nat’s head against the space capsule, Nat’s vision had narrowed to a point, she almost blacked out. Before Nat could steady her gaze, the Rik girl had stuffed her inside and handcuffed her to the interior wall of the spacecraft.

  Still reeling, Nat twisted in her chair to reach a button that would open the door. Before her fingers could hit it, the capsule shot off the ground. Nat was contorted in her chair and if it hadn’t been so well padded she might have dislocated her shoulder in the acceleration. As it was, the handcuff bit hard into her wrist and she could feel her shoulder pop as the inertia pushed her down.

  But something was wrong with the capsule. After the initial blast it started to slow. It was still rising, but slower and slower and... Nat screamed as the capsule came to a stop and started to fall. They were going to die. Right here, right now, they were going to die.

  Then the instant was over and the capsule shot upward again. This time it accelerated steadily, not in one blast, and she could feel herself sinking deeper and deeper into the padded seat. This wasn’t as bad though; during the brief moment of free-fall Nat had automatically righted herself in the chair.

  The capsule grew warm. There were no windows, but she knew they must be pushing out of the atmosphere.

  Nat turned her head so she could see Akemi, ignoring the pain in her wrist. Wherever they were going, Nat couldn’t do anything about it. So she focused on her sister.

  Akemi’s chest was no longer bandaged. The scar from her surgery peeked over the top of her pink V-neck shirt. The edge of the scar was reddish, but not bright. It looked like it was healing well. Of course, that didn’t mean anything about how her new lung was actually doing. Nat prayed that this crazy pressure wouldn’t damage Akemi’s already precarious health.

  Akemi would need her anti-rejection drugs, too. Nat groaned. Akemi had to take an immunosuppressant to keep her body from attacking her new lung and trying to devour it. She also needed to eat certain food to keep her illness at bay. Nat didn’t see a bag or any bottles of pills.

  Akemi’s wrists were handcuffed together, but they lay in her lap. She was being pressed down as hard as Nat, but at least her arms weren’t going to break. Nat was starting to feel like hers would. She tried to push against the pressure to give her wrist a break, but she was only gaining millimeters, if even that.

  Blood started to drip down her wrist when the pressure suddenly let up.

  Free fall, Nat thought. Her body lifted out of the chair, still accelerating in the sudden lack of gravity. Drops of blood drifted past her to splat softly on the ceiling. There were no straps in the capsule, like human astronauts tend to use. Nat, anchored only by her wrist, floated up sideways. Akemi, not anchored at all, lifted out of her chair until she bumped the ceiling.

  Nat didn’t mind free fall too much. Some of the cadets puked every time they even thought about free-fall, but she was fine. The Spo said that humans with gymnastic orientation, like Nat, had better spatial awareness and body control.

  She was worried about Akemi though. If Akemi threw up while unconscious, she could choke on her own vomit... not to mention making the environment really unpleasant for Nat. But there wasn’t much she could do, with her hand literally tied down.

  When the capsule lurched like a Spo on glass, Akemi’s body hit the wall. They were docking now, with whatever ship was waiting to retrieve them. Nat stretched out and used her free hand to grab Akemi and push her back towards her chair. A few moments later, the gravity kicked in and they both flopped down. Nat landed half on the floor, half on the chair, but thankfully Akemi landed squarely on her chair.

  The door dilated and a tall black guy walked in.

  Nat was confused. The Rik were not a humanoid species. But first that blond girl on the ground, and now this guy… The Rik she'd studied were an oceanic culture, and looked something like seals. They’d had some kind of catastrophe a few generations ago, and the Spo really hated them. That was all she knew.

  This person, however, and that blonde girl down on Earth, looked distinctly human.

  The black guy eyed the capsule carefully before stepping inside. “I am glad you didn’t reverse your digestive system,” he said fervently. “This body is very weak."

  Nat looked at his bulging triceps muscles as he took out a strange looking syringe and stuck it in her arm.

  “Not weak,” he corrected. “My stomach is… ambivalent.”

  “What’s in that?” Nat asked. “And who are you?”

  “I am Tishing. I am human,” he said.

  “A human wouldn’t feel the need to say so,” Nat said.

  He laughed. “You’re right. I’m newly human, I should say.”

  “You’re Rik?” Nat verified.

  “I was Rik. Now I am human.” He pulled the syringe out of her arm and pocketed it. “I’ll be right back.”

  He gently picked up Akemi and carried her out of the capsule into the bigger spaceship.

  Nat was creeped out. No one told her the Rik could take over other bodies. Surely she wasn’t being unreasonable to feel that the Spo made a gross oversight in not teaching the cadets this little fact. As far as she knew, no alien could body hop. She'd been taught that the idea of ego-stealing parasites or brain leeches was limited solely to human invention. Now she didn’t know.

  If the Rik could change bodies, that raised some pretty ominous ideas about why she and Akemi were here. Nat slumped her head back against the chair, looking at the red spot in her forearm where he’d injected her. Her head pounded with each heartbeat. She wasn’t sure if it was from Shara’s head slam, the space trip, or the stuff he’d just injected into her. She felt unaccountably tired. She should be analyzing her situation, thinking of possible leverage. Instead, she closed her eyes. Must have been an anesthetic...

  The black guy came back after a while. He u
sed a small pair of scissors to cut through her handcuffs. Good scissors, she thought groggily.

  “Why’m I so sleepy?” she asked.

  “I gave you a tranquilizer. I’m not an idiot.” He stood looking at her until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any more. She tried to fight it, but her body shut down.

  Nat woke to someone stroking her hair. That’s not something you feel a lot when the only humans you know are kids. Greg certainly never thought of stroking her head. It felt wonderful. But the smell was wrong. She smelled salt, bleach, and an organic stench of… Nat opened her eyes.

  Akemi sat cross-legged next to her, stroking her hair away from her face, untangling it from her neck. She gave Nat a small smile.

  Nat moaned. “I’m sorry, Akemi.”

  “It’s my fault,” Akemi whispered. “I told Shara all about us. I came with her all the way back to LA before she turned on me.”

  “Yeah, you really should have suspected she was an alien parasite,” Nat said with an attempt at humor.

  Akemi didn’t laugh. “I should have.”

  “I was kidding. Come here.” She hugged Akemi close to her.

  “Ouch!” Akemi gasped.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Nat said, letting go of her. “I forgot. Did I hurt you?”

  Akemi touched her chest gingerly. “Just awfully sore.”

  “You don’t look too good,” Nat said. “Are you feeling sick?”

  Akemi shrugged.

  “Look around,” she told her sister, clearly changing the subject.

  They were in a cage, plain and simple. The smell was rank. The cage had diagonal bars, like a chain link fence, and a locked mesh door. Unfortunately it was not locked like a hamster cage with a simple lift and twist door latch. It had no visible lock that Nat could find. More Rik technology she didn’t know about. Their cage sat near the front of a large room filled with other cages. Nat and Akemi were the only humans in the room, but they were not the only occupants.

  “What are they?” Akemi asked. “Have you ever seen them?”

  “These are Spo trouncers. They’re used for the biocomputer in the spaceship. And for executions.” Oh god, Sam’s trial. How long had she been out? She might not ever know if Sam had been sentenced to execution! Nat opened her mouth to tell Akemi and then shut it. Why frighten her?

  “Trouncers?” Akemi said.

  “That’s what the Spo call them.”

  “But trouncers?” Akemi protested. “How about 'enormous evil toads?'”

  “You got me there,” Nat said.

  The trouncers were roughly the size of mountain lions, but hard and oily, like the Spo themselves. They had bent legs like a frog, but they usually shuffled around on all fours until they leapt in attack. Their front limbs ended in four wicked claws, and their mouths were fanged with two rows of incisors. They had long purple tongues they flicked in and out constantly, and long tails they flicked when they were excited, like a cat.

  “They need live animals for their computer?” Akemi asked, looking nervously at the huge cages around them.

  “They need a brain with at least high-level animal intelligence,” Nat explained. “Like a dolphin or an ape, if not more. The Spo use biocomputers – half-computer, half-tissue – to control their space travel. The higher level the animal the better their biocomputers work. Each brain only works for one or two trips, though. So to play it safe, you only use a brain once. That’s why they have so many.” She gestured at the room, counting. “Fifteen trouncers, fifteen jumps – maybe thirty if they’re bold."

  The girls contemplated their situation for a moment. Akemi looked at the animals, at their cage, at the door to the huge room they were in. Nat just looked at her sister.

  Akemi looked bad. Her skin was yellow; not normal Japanese yellow, but a frightening jaundice-yellow. Her blood wasn’t getting cleaned properly, or else it wasn’t getting oxygenated well. Either could happen after a transplant rejection.

  The black guy who'd taken them out of the capsule sailed back into the room and waved cheerfully at them. The tattoo on his wrist, so white against his dark skin, momentarily drew Nat’s gaze. In his other hand he carried a red tool box.

  “Hello girls,” he said. “It’s me, Tishing. I deeply apologize for putting you in a cage. They’re preparing a room for you now.”

  He set down the box next to one of the trouncer cages.

  “I need one of these guys, so we can jump out of Earth space.” He went to a closet in the far wall and removed a gun, loaded it with clear darts. “Do you know how the Spo jump-drive works? It’s quite ingenious."

  Tishing went back to the cage, talking quietly to the animal. He spoke in a different language now. Not English, not Spo, must be Rik. The trouncer’s eyes followed Tishing as he neared the cage. At first it shuffled back and forth, but when he was only a few feet away, the animal got still.

  “See how he’s frozen?” Tishing said, in English. “He’s about to attack.” He took one step nearer the cage and the trouncer hurled itself at the door with a metallic clang. Akemi flinched back. Tishing laughed and fired the gun at the trouncer. Two darts buried themselves in its neck, and it crashed to the floor like a broken motorcycle.

  Tishing waited a few moments. “You can’t be too careful with these,” he said. “Sometimes they play dead.”

  “Like possums,” Akemi said.

  After a moment, Tishing opened the door to the cage. His hands were gloved.

  “Their slime burns human skin,” he explained. He kept talking in a friendly way while he took a small, vibrating knife from the box and used it to open the animal’s skull. Its blood leaked out, green and thin: Spo blood.

  Tishing carefully cut off portions of the skull until he could remove the entire brain. This part always bothered Sam, Nat thought, as he lifted the brain free. Of course, neither she nor Sam had ever seen a fresh human brain, but this is what they thought it would look like. Akemi moaned and turned away from the sight. Or perhaps it was the smell getting to her. The stench of the trouncers was now layered with the fishy smell of their blood.

  When Tishing had the brain out, he took a spherical black container out of the box, and popped it in half. The brain went inside, and then he snapped it back together.

  “I’ll get the carcass later,” he told them. “Captain is waiting to jump. We can’t linger in Earth space too long. The Spo might notice.”

  “Wait,” Nat said. “Akemi is sick. She needs certain medicines or she’ll be very ill. She needs water too, and some food probably.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tishing said. “We’re just taking a quick jump toward Mars’ orbit. After the jump you’ll be escorted to your room. I know the doctors there will take good care of you.” He left with another flash-of-teeth smile.

  Akemi leaned back against the wall of their cage and sighed. “I know he’s an evil alien and he just vivisected an animal right in front of us, but doesn’t he look just like Will Smith?”

  After a brief jump, which nauseated Akemi, and Nat too, a little, they were locked into a small room. Two cots, a sink, a toilet. It was like a prison, and that made it almost relaxing compared to the trouncer room.

  Akemi had gotten out of breath on the short walk to their room, however. She wheezed and her abdomen jerked at each breath. She had a hand on her chest, as if to protect it.

  Nat helped her lay down on a cot, and Akemi winced as she leaned back, pressing her arm tighter over her chest.

  “It’s very tender,” she told Nat. “It hasn’t hurt this much since the first day.”

  Nat placed her hand on Akemi’s forehead, and Akemi closed her eyes. Her head was hot, clearly feverish. It seemed a long time before her breaths began to slow. She still sounded wheezy, but not quite so labored.

  “When was the last time you had your meds?” Nat asked gently.

  “Um. The evening I left with Shara. Maybe – two days? Three days?” Akemi didn’t open her eyes. “Is there another blanket on that bed?”
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  Nat pulled the white blanket off the other cot and doubled it up over Akemi. She went to the sink and tried the handle. Something clear and wet flowed out, but Nat was nervous. She’d learned that indoor plumbing on alien spaceships didn’t always give you water.

  She smelled it a bit, and eventually tested it with a finger. Then her hand. Then a touch on her tongue. Water, or close enough. She didn’t have anything to put it in, so she cupped some in her hands and splashed it in Akemi’s mouth. Akemi asked for more, so Nat went back and forth from the bed to the sink until Akemi nodded.

  This was bad, really bad. If Akemi’s body rejected her new lung, she would die. Vicious white blood cells would destroy the only organ putting oxygen in her system. Convinced that the lung was a foreign body, her temperature would continue to rise as her body tried to burn out the intruder. A combination of things: fever, infection, and lung deterioration, would kill her. Akemi’s other lung was not very effective. Only 15%, if Nat remembered correctly.

  The door of their room was solid with no window. It fit seamlessly with the walls, no doorframe stuck out that might have weaknesses. The walls didn’t look the same as the hallway. This room must have been added later for humans, and Nat wondered with dull horror how many humans had been locked up here. The Rik taking human bodies could not be an entirely new thing. They must have been studying humans for years to achieve that kind of biological success. Tishing and the blond girl looked very comfortable as humans.

  Greg taught them that alien abduction stories were common on most planets. They arose from a desire to believe the truth of alien existence before it was proven. He explained that the stories were particularly prevalent on Earth because of the human subconscious. Most species did not have a subconscious. In fact, only the humans, the Crosspoint, and possibly the Rik, were suspected of having a subconscious. Most species could process feelings and data, or they could not. But they couldn’t do the half thing that humans did, pushing thoughts and ideas to a secondary level for continued consideration.