by Brian Yansky
“Vote?” she says. “I know how it will go. The girls will side with you and Michael will side with me.”
“It’s not about you or him,” Michael says. “It’s about what we should do to stay alive.”
“Fine,” she says. “Let’s vote.”
She’s wrong about the vote. Michael doesn’t vote with her. She smiles. “Fine,” she says. “That’s just great.” She walks back toward the house just as Bathamous and Addyen come out. She pushes past them.
We must leave, Addyen thinks. Bathamous must register.
“Register?” I say.
He must register. It’s the law. All new arrivals must register.
“Why didn’t he do it when he got off the ship?” Lauren asks.
It is for the city. You register in your city. You get a ship, some other supplies. All residents must register.
“You get a ship?” I say to Bathamous.
He nods. Once I’m registered.
I try to read Bathamous, but I can’t. I also can’t think of another way we can get out West.
“All right,” I say. “Get your ship. Let us borrow it. You can get rid of us, and we can get away.”
“No,” Michael says. “We can’t trust him.”
“We need a ship,” I say.
“He won’t get us a ship,” Michael says.
I will get you a ship, Bathamous thinks. Then I will be rid of you.
“Okay,” Michael says looking at me, “but Addyen stays.”
No, Bathamous thinks.
“She stays,” Michael says again.
Bathamous looks like he is going to turn Michael off. I’ve seen that look in Handlers. The others notice too. We spread out around him, not physically but with our minds. It’s like at the wall, almost like we’re holding hands again, like we’re linked somehow with our minds. We do this without thinking. I can feel Bathamous’s surprise. Anytime we surprise the aliens, I’m encouraged.
Please, Bathamous, Addyen thinks. You go.
No, Bathamous thinks. Enough. They are above themselves.
Please.
She doesn’t like this, any of it. Not her husband thinking of killing us and not us trying to dictate what she will and won’t do. But she tries to make peace.
Her husband sends her a message. It’s sudden and very quick. It’s like a passing shadow. I can’t see the solid part, so I don’t have a chance to hear it.
All right, he thinks to us, I will get you your ship, but you will leave.
“As soon as it’s dark,” I say.
PERSONAL LOG:
My wife is resting. After not seeing each other for so long, it is disappointing to argue so soon. We have hardly had time to come together and we are pushing each other away.
The lack of product in the house began the bad feeling. I had promised her sixty and she sees only five and all nonhearing. I promised her that I would bring more slaves in, but she is not satisfied by promises. She has never been in a primitive colony before. She didn’t realize how many things she would not have. Already she complains about the lack of nobles with whom to form a society.
Everything depends on good scouting. None of this is my fault. It is the fault of the company and my father’s sources, who did not investigate this world the way they should have. Will he take blame? I know better.
The reports on the destruction of product are good but not perfect. Besides my own five runaways, the other houses admit imperfect kills. Still, even accounting for false reports, there can be no more than forty or fifty escaped slaves. If they can be exterminated quickly, all will be well. Sanginians will come and most will not care that there is no hearing product. Most will just see a planet with much green and blue and many fair places to live. They will see opportunity. Yes, it will take the company longer to turn a profit. But I must keep my perspective; in the long run everything will work out.
I was about to write my father and update him and ask again, though I loathed doing it, for hearing product from his nearest colony, when a Handler interrupted me. He had news about the runaways. I ordered him in and he brought with him a short, fat merchant. He was, at least, a citizen of the Republic. I do not like to talk to those who are not. Even so, this meeting seemed a waste of my time. Why did he not simply send a report?
This is Bathamous. He is the husband of your cook. He has seen the runaways.
I was angry.
You have killed them?
He knew why I asked this, because if he saw them and didn’t kill them, then both he and his wife would be in violation. Their lives mine, citizens or not.
I could not.
Why is that?
They joined.
Impossible.
Still, it is true.
They are primitives.
Savages, he agreed. They would have killed me and my wife. They would have tried. I have skills but Addyen is only a cook. With them joined, I could not be sure of the outcome.
I want to discount this information. I have chosen my Handlers carefully so that we may join when necessary, but it is never easy and it is never comfortable. We cannot stay joined long. We are among the strongest in the empire and it is difficult for us. So I wanted to tell this merchant he was lying or mistaken.
But it is known that species who evolve rapidly, as these have done, whose talents have been ready for many generations, waiting for a spark, sometimes have one special skill. Never has it been one such as joining, and I feel uneasy and angry that it might be possible. I reason that even if true, they are primitives and their joinings are surely primitive. It is more likely this fat merchant exaggerated to save his life.
Where are they? I demanded.
At my house, lord. I made the excuse of registration and came right here. Please, Lord, do not let them harm her. They hold her prisoner.
He lied. He came here, and thought he could lie to me. I broke open his mind to see the truth. I heard him screaming as I did, and I watched him fall to the floor.
I am sorry for your loss.
He believed they joined, Anchise interrupted.
He was mistaken.
Of course, lord.
Kill my cook when you kill the product.
It is the law. Though they are citizens, they have hidden runaways. They have no protection and I have no patience.
Take another, I added.
Again, the Handler’s anger was too much to hide. A Handler is a powerful warrior. He is more powerful than a unit of soldiers, more deadly.
I will kill them.
Take another. They escaped you once.
I did not write my father. I did not visit my wife or my daughters. Instead I went up to the room where my second was kept. I looked out her window. I looked around the room. What happened here? What did she learn that is keeping them alive? How did she learn it?
Michael goes to talk to Lindsey, who is in one of the bedrooms.
Catlin and Lauren and I sit in the living room. I think Lauren’s going to start demanding answers from Catlin again. Instead she says, “I’m sorry about what happened to you with Lord Vertenomous.”
“I did what I had to do to stay alive,” Catlin says.
“There was nothing else you could have done,” Lauren says.
“I could have fought him.”
“You would have been killed,” Lauren says. “Every single person who fought them is dead. How old are you, anyway?”
“Fifteen,” Catlin says. Then she looks confused. “Sixteen maybe. I might have just turned sixteen.”
Then she begins to cry and maybe it’s because of what happened to her and maybe it’s because her birthday passed without her knowing. Lauren puts her arm around her, and they stay like that until Addyen comes in.
If you’re going to have a ship, she thinks, looking at me, you will need to fly it.
“You can show me,” I say.
I have a Reader.
“A what?”
It’s what we use to get information. There’s
one back in the bedroom on the left. It is in the closet. It will show you.
“Okay,” I say, kind of relieved to leave the room.
As I walk past the bedroom where Michael and Lindsey are, I hear them kissing. I guess she’s forgiven him.
I find the Reader right away. I find something else, too, hidden in a shoebox. It’s a handgun, a Smith & Wesson .357. I know the aliens are too strong for our weapons, but I take it anyway.
The Reader is easy to use, and it’s filled with information. The information doesn’t come in words exactly. It feeds directly into my mind in images.
I’m reading about their culture and history. I realize why they hate machines so much now. Machines almost conquered them on their own world, and machines are running a big chunk of the universe. Machines would like to run the Sanginians, too, so they often fight wars. Whenever they get too close to one another, they fight. So far neither has an advantage.
All the Sanginian machines, even something called an echo machine that they used when they invaded Earth, rely on the mental powers of the aliens to make them work. They’re different from our machines. We program a computer to do something and it does it. The aliens’ machines don’t work that way. They have to interact with them.
Lauren comes in and sits on the bed beside me, so close I feel her arm brush mine as she sits. I think she notices, too. I hand her the Reader and I show her articles titled “Earthlings: Their Violent History” and “Best Training Techniques for Primitive Species.”
“Weird,” she says.
We look at a manual for flying one of their little ships. It doesn’t look impossible. They have a basic engine but it’s the mind of the driver that makes it work.
“Can you learn how to fly one?” Lauren says.
“I think so,” I say. “Maybe. I’ll read it over a few times.”
She hands the Reader back to me.
We’re sitting close together and I remember the kiss she gave me a long time ago, the feel of her hair brushing my cheek.
I’m leaning toward her and she’s leaning toward me when the door across the hall swings open and Michael comes out.
“Oh, sorry,” he says.
Lauren practically jumps off the bed.
“What did you need?” I say.
“Lauren,” he says, a little sheepish. He turns to her. “Lindsey wants you to settle an argument. The girl won’t believe me.”
“About what?”
He shakes his head. “She thinks Malcolm X was a rap star. I told her who he was, but she won’t believe me.”
Lauren looks pleased to have the chance to settle an argument.
“Sorry, dude,” Michael says as they leave.
I’m disappointed that Lauren and I were interrupted, but then I tell myself I need to focus on keeping us alive, anyway. That’s where my mind should be now. I read some more, but I start yawning. Those yawns are hard to overcome after staying up all night. I slip off.
I have a dream. I’m back in our old garage, which my dad had converted into a gym.
“Looks like you’re in a tough spot,” my dad says, hitting the big bag. He’s punching it: a left, right, left, right, hook, combination. Then he steps back for a roundhouse kick and ends with an elbow strike as the bag swings back to him. He stops and looks at me. “Grasshopper.”
“Could be worse,” I say. “Oh, wait, no it couldn’t.”
“Could be dead,” he points out.
“Are you dead?”
“Can’t answer that one,” he says. “There are rules.”
“We’re stronger than we were,” I say. “But we’re not strong enough.”
He nods. “Remember when you used to spar better opponents in tae kwon do?”
I do. I remember being a yellow, green, and blue belt and sparring with black belts. Most of them were too good for me to stay with. They knew too much. They were too fast because the moves came to them without thinking. And they could always anticipate my moves. Well, almost always. Every once in a while, maybe once in a fight, I’d have a chance, an opportunity. That chance usually came from my doing something unexpected.
“It won’t be easy,” he says.
“You can’t tell me if you’re alive, if Mom’s alive?”
“This is a dream,” he says. “How could I know?”
“You really are just a dream?” I was trying to convince myself I’d somehow dreamwalked to a real place and my father was real. The way he looks at me, sad and distant, is my answer.
“You’d better wake up now,” he says.
I don’t want to leave him, though. I struggle against the urge to open my eyes.
When I do, it’s because I hear a sound I’ve heard before. A ship is landing.
I run to the living room. Everyone else is already there. A ship has landed in the yard of the house next door. At first I think it’s Bathamous, but he’s not in the ship. No one is.
“What are we waiting for?” Lindsey says.
“I thought I heard two ships,” I say. Something is wrong. “Where’s Bathamous?”
Michael says, “Maybe he’s around back.”
“We need Addyen,” I say.
“You better get her, then,” Lindsey snaps.
Lauren runs to the kitchen; in a second she’s back.
“Addyen’s gone,” Lauren says. “No one is in the back.”
“No one was watching her?” Lindsey says.
“That’s right,” Lauren says to Lindsey. “No one was watching her. Not you or Michael, that’s for sure.”
“This is a trap,” I say. “Something’s wrong.”
Lindsey opens the door. “We’ve got to make a run for it. We can’t just stand here.”
“It’s going to be tight,” I say. “Those patrol ships aren’t that big.”
“Who’s going to fly it?” Michael says.
“It can’t be that hard,” Lindsey says. “Anyway, they fly close to the ground.”
Right, I think. Just like driving a car for the first time. No problem. But really, what else can we do?
We step out onto the front porch. All of us except Lindsey stop there. We all sense that something is wrong. There’s at least one Handler here. I feel him. Lindsey keeps walking, seeing only the ship.
“Wait,” I say.
“Come on,” she says like we’re all stupid or slow. She starts to run.
“There’s a Handler,” I shout.
“Come on, Michael,” Lindsey shouts.
“Where is he?” I say to Catlin. “Do you know where he is?”
“I don’t,” she says, “but there’s another ship, a second Handler.”
Then she sends me an image and I see, in my mind, the ship in the backyard two houses up.
“Wait,” I shout to Lindsey.
“Michael,” Lindsey shouts. “Come on, baby.”
She’s stopped seeing anything but escape. The ship. Michael. New York. She wants to leave us.
Michael goes after her. I grab for him, but he eludes me like he once eluded all those tacklers.
“You and me, Michael,” Lindsey shouts.
“Come on.” Michael motions for us to hurry.
Lindsey gets to the ship. It opens. I hear her thinking she’s a survivor. I hear her thinking she will survive even if it means leaving the rest of us behind.
Michael hears her, too. He stops in the middle of the yard. He looks back at us.
“They’ll get another ship,” she says.
He’s about to say something, but I will never know what because a Handler appears next to him. Michael raises his arm and lowers his shoulder as if to block a punch. His mind mirrors his physical action. It slows the Handler, but it doesn’t stop him. He turns Michael off, and then he turns Lindsey off.
They go silent and still. But the Handler doesn’t say it. He doesn’t apologize.
We don’t have time to pause for even a second. I yank Catlin and Lauren inside. I reset Addyen’s block at the door. We run for the back, L
auren leading. As we go down the porch steps into the backyard, I hear the Handler break through Addyen’s block.
Then I realize it isn’t the one who killed Michael and Lauren. It’s Anchise.
We loop around the house. There’s nowhere to run, but we run anyway. We run down the street. Anchise steps out the front door, aware of us, taking his time now. I think he’s smiling.
“Where’s the other one?” I ask Catlin.
“He’s leaving. He’s taking Michael and Lindsey.”
“Why would he take them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe he didn’t kill them,” I say hopefully. Maybe Michael’s block was enough that he survived. The alien wouldn’t just carry off the bodies, would he?
We run down the street and I look back and see Anchise step off the lawn and into the street. His mind is like a storm and from that storm comes a wave, like that gigantic and terrifying wave at Lord Vert’s. We run but we can’t outrun this wave, which is monstrous and moves faster than any person can move. Just like before, I feel the confusion inside me. It scatters my thoughts and I can’t concentrate.
Then a bus pulls up next to us; a large, creaky city bus. The door folds open with a cough and a snap.
Get in! Addyen shouts.
She doesn’t stop, just slows, and we have to run alongside and jump in through the narrow door. When we’re in, she accelerates. Unfortunately we’re talking bus, not sports car, so we sputter and cough forward. The bus is no match for the speed of the wave.
You’ve got to slow it down, Addyen thinks.
The wall of water is twenty feet high. It roars in my ears, and I can feel it trying to pull me back to it.
Catlin is throwing something at it, almost like stones that start to stack together to form a wall but collapse almost immediately.
I get behind Addyen and ask her what we can do to slow it down.
You joined when my husband threatened you. Do it again. Make a wall behind us.
I shout at Catlin that we have to join and make a wall. She says she understands. I say I don’t.
“Like this,” Catlin says, and tries to show us. It’s complicated. I see that we join hands again, join minds, but it’s hard to understand the building of the wall.
