Nua'll
Page 24
“Smell food,” the children whispered.
“Minder, danger,” Ude replied quietly.
“Hungry,” they said.
“No,” Ude ordered quietly but sternly, and the children slipped away.
Ude fell asleep with Nata, waiting for more time to pass. When he woke, she was gone. He decided to chance another look at the minder. Reaching the far wall under the walkway, Ude’s hand touched the arm of a child. He pressed a dirty finger against the little one’s mouth to prevent her speaking.
Stepping around the child, Ude realized the entire band was lined along the wall. He felt his way around the row of bodies until he reached the front of the line, where he spotted Nata’s pale face in the minder’s light.
The smell of food drifted down from the walkway, and Ude could hear the whimpers of the young ones. Some of the noises became muffled cries, and still the minder didn’t move. Ude reluctantly accepted that the end had come. Capture was inevitable. There would be no more band. It would die under his leadership, and he felt betrayed by his limited abilities.
Ude signaled Nata to stay put with a soft double tap on her cheekbone. In the dark of the tanks and lower decks, it was the best means of communication, tapping on a hand or face, especially when absolute silence was required. He’d made up his mind to surrender and to be the first sacrifice.
Etoya watched a skinny, scab-bodied boy of about eleven emerge from the dark. He walked slowly up the stairs toward her. His resignation was evident in the drooping shoulders. It made Etoya wonder why he was coming forth. It didn’t seem to be for the food.
As Ude climbed the steps toward the minder, he expected other minders to burst from the shadows and grab him, but his keen hearing detected no one else. When there were no more steps to take, Ude winced from the bright light, and the minder lowered its level.
Etoya tore off a piece of a bun and handed it to the boy. He was reluctant to accept it, but the whimpers of others below convinced him to take it. A dirty hand reached out and snatched the morsel away, dropping it into a torn, fabric bag the boy wore suspended over a shoulder and across his chest.
Food for others, Etoya thought. She wanted to hand the emaciated boy everything she had in her pack, but more than a hundred years of experience curtailed her impulse.
Ude looked pointedly at the remainder of the food object in the minder’s hand. He could smell its tantalizing odor. The minder handed him the entire bun. Holding it to his nose, Ude inhaled deeply, savoring the fresh scents, before he slipped it into his bag.
Etoya gestured to Ude to sit, and the boy lowered his thin frame onto the metal stairwell. She dug out a bun with a savory filling. She tore off a piece and ate it. Then she gave the boy a bite to eat. When he started to add it to his bag, she said softly, “No.”
Ude glanced fearfully at the minder. The female was shaking her head in negation, and he withdrew his hand from the bag still holding the morsel. The minder indicated that he should eat it. His stomach rumbled in protest at the thought that Ude wanted to save it for others. Giving in to the tempting scents, Ude popped it in his mouth, and his jaw spasmed from the rush of saliva.
Etoya saw more faces emerge from the shadows. Children five to ten years old filled the stairwell. She could see more than twenty and estimated the number was as high as thirty. A small, six-year-old girl edged beside the boy, and he slid a comforting hand around her waist. She reached out a filthy hand to Etoya, who placed another bit of the bun in it. The girl hastily popped it in her mouth, her eyes momentarily closing in delight.
Curiosity, as to the group’s internal workings, drove Etoya’s next action. She tore off another piece of the bun and handed it to the little girl. Immediately, the child passed it to an older girl behind her, who handed it backward. Etoya smiled and nodded in approval. Then, she tore the remainder of the bun into pieces, handing them one at a time to the little girl. In every instance, she passed them behind her.
Etoya opened her pack and extracted water bottles and wrapped buns. She tilted a bottle, squirted some water into her mouth, and smacked her lips in pleasure. Then she handed the bottle to the older boy and indicated he should try.
Ude imitated the minder’s action, choking on the rush of water into his mouth and down his throat. Nata worried that he’d been harmed by the liquid and placed a concerned hand on his shoulder. Ude chuckled and laughed, while he coughed. It was the first the band had heard those sounds from him since he became their leader.
“Clean water,” Ude told the band. “Squeeze the cylinder lightly.” Then he held the bottle over the mouth of the little girl next to him. She tilted her head, opened her mouth, and Ude squirted a small amount.
“Fresh,” the little girl said happily.
Etoya didn’t understand the language the children shared, but she understood their arrangement. It was highly social for wild children, and she wondered where the adults were who must have set the pattern for them. While she considered their small organization, she unwrapped another filled bun and handed it to the older boy. He handed it to the girl behind him, the one who worried when he choked. She tore it into pieces, handing them behind her.
Unwrapping a handful of buns, Etoya handed them to the older boy. Dutifully, he took them, made his way down the stairwell, and distributed them. Etoya handed the next batch to the older girl, who followed the boy’s actions. Etoya continued to distribute water bottles and food until her pack was empty. The children sat quietly eating and drinking until the buns and water were consumed.
Ude was confused by the minder. He was grateful for the tasty food and clean water, and he was willing to be captured, but the minder showed no interest in doing that. Something about the minder teased Ude’s mind. Then the thought materialized. Slowly, he reached across the short space between the minder and him. The female didn’t move, while he parted the hair on her forehead. Ude was shocked. There was no plate, and Ude heard the children’s gasps.
Ude touched his forehead and pointed to the minder, who shook her head no. It struck him. The woman wasn’t a minder. She was free, and she had food. More important, her skin was clear. She suffered none of the ugliness that haunted the band. She was whole!
“Etoya,” Ude heard the woman say. She was pointing to herself. Then she pointed to him.
“Ude,” he replied, touching his chest.
As Ude spoke to Etoya, her heart broke at the sight of his ruined teeth. The decay went hand-in-hand with the open sores that marked the children’s starved bodies. We’ll see you healthy, one and all, Etoya thought. Overcome with emotion, Etoya reached out and softly cupped Ude’s face.
Ude felt hot wetness stream from his eyes. The woman’s touch had struck a deep need he didn’t know he had. Certainly, no minder had ever touched him in that tender manner.
The little girl, who sat next to Ude, watched the tears flow down the leader’s face. With a tiny finger, she touched a tear and stared at it. In the light, it glistened. She regarded the woman and made up her own mind. Then she crawled into the female’s lap. She curled up tightly, her thumb in her mouth.
Yes, young ones, we’ll get you food, medical care, and emotional comfort. And, most important, we’ll get you time in a refresher, Etoya thought, rocking the child, and wrinkling her nose at the onslaught of horrendous body odor.
When the time seemed right, Etoya lifted the child off her lap and stood. She shouldered her pack and reached out a hand to the little girl, who accepted it. Then Etoya left the walkway, stepped through the hatch, and made her way toward the upper decks. Only once did she glance behind her, as she navigated a landing on the stairs. The children trooped behind her. The older girl led, and Ude was at the rear, ensuring no one was left behind.
It was more than two hours of work to navigate the stairs and decks with the children, who needed help in their weakened states, to reach the special dormitory that had been prepared for them.
Etoya had covered half the climb of the staircases before her implant transmission wa
s received by Miriamus. She signaled for her staff to be ready to receive their new students. She was reminded by the SADE that it was 3.87 hours in the morning, and it would require some time to mobilize them.
The staff arrived at the dormitory, signaled the door open, and turned on the lights. A quarter of an hour later, Etoya trudged around a corner, holding the hand of a small girl. She led the troop of thirty-two children into the room.
A staffer took the little girl’s hand and led her to the refresher at the back of the dormitory. A few Méridien women shucked their clothes and climbed into the refreshers with the children, peeling off the soiled rags they wore and washing the children from head to toe. Other staffers prepped small meals from the dispensers and served the remaining children, while they waited their turns.
Etoya turned to the doorway. Ude stood there, examining the room. She could read his thoughts. He was seeing similar conditions to the ones he fled. She decided not to coax him inside. Instead, she turned to helping her staff.
The turning point came when the first children to exit the refresher returned to the main room. Their little faces and bodies were clean. A salve of medical nanites had been applied to their sores. They wore fresh clothes and slippers, and they hurried to the open tables to get their share of the food.
Etoya glanced at the door. Ude was gone, and she thought for a moment that he’d run away. Disheartened, she returned to her next chore and saw him pick up a small boy to seat him at a table. She was tempted to signal the door closed, but decided that could happen after all the children were clean, fed, clothed, and asleep.
-25-
Enlightenment
There are minders, and, then again, there are minders, as Ude and Nata discovered.
Etoya estimated that it would be a mere days’ worth of food, water, rest, and medical nanites before the older wild ones made a break for it. After three days, she requested the Dischnya stand guard, during the day, in the corridor outside the wild ones’ dormitory.
True to Etoya’s thoughts, it was the morning of the fourth day after the wild ones had been installed in their new room that Ude and Nata made their escape. Etoya and another staff member, who intended to wake the children for refreshers and morning meal, signaled the door open. The moment the door slid aside, Ude and Nata slipped past them like fish in a stream.
The two children made the corridor and slid to a halt. The direction they had chosen to run put them in the path of a Dischnya warrior. Habits took over, and they reversed direction even as fear shot through them about what they’d seen. In the opposite direction, they faced Homsaff. Chancing it, they split to either side of her.
Homsaff saw the human pups glance toward the spaces between her and the bulkheads. Clever, she thought, as the children lunged to either side of her. She caught the girl in her arms, and her powerful tail wrapped around the boy’s throat, bringing both of them up short. Homsaff turned the girl around and gently pushed her toward the open door, where Etoya stood.
Nata took two steps and stumbled to a halt. She stared tearfully at the creature, which held Ude by the throat. She cringed at the thought that she would witness his death. Instead, the thing reached around, grabbed Ude by the arm, unwound its appendage from his neck, and shoved him in her direction.
When Ude was brought up short in the grip of the freakish entity, he believed he was dead. Then, in the next moment, he was propelled toward the room he’d fled. He stopped and stared at the thing that had captured him. Scary as it appeared, he could see the intelligence behind the yellow eyes.
“Ude,” he said, smacking his scrawny chest with a small fist, as if to declare his person.
Homsaff bared her savage teeth, in imitation of the human smile, tapped her palm to her breast and replied, “Homsaff.”
Seemingly satisfied, Ude turned around, slipped a hand in Nata’s, and led her into the room.
Despite Ude’s warning to the other children of who waited for them outside the room, there were several more escape attempts. Their angst was due to their new conditions, which imitated the previous ones. Yes, the new accommodations, with all its trimmings, were much better, but the wild ones knew they were restricted to a single room, when they had seen a much more voluminous space.
Ude watched the creatures, who the children had learned to call the Dischnya, return members of his band to the room multiple times. He saw the deference the creatures paid their female with the tail, who had captured him, and he focused his attention on her, when she entered the room. She moved with precision and power, and he admired that. Leader, he thought.
One afternoon, when the Dischnya returned two more escapees, Ude rose from his training station, and advanced on the one with a tail. Despite his scrawny frame, he walked erect, with his shoulders back. He closed on the female until he stood nose to muzzle to look into her eyes. A growl of condemnation issued from a Dischnya male, and the female’s hand slash quieted the male.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ude saw the whiplike tail of the female rise above her shoulder, and he took that as a warning.
Etoya heard Ude speak to Homsaff, and she requested a translation from Miriamus, who supplied it from Faustus.
“It’s a question, Homsaff,” Etoya called out. “He asks if you’re a leader.”
Homsaff nodded her muzzle, never taking her eyes off Ude’s.
Ude pointed to himself and repeated his words.
Homsaff understood Ude was declaring himself to be a leader too. She nodded, accepting his pronouncement. Seemingly satisfied, once again, Homsaff watched Ude stride to his training position. After he resumed work, his eyes frequently strayed to her.
Before Homsaff left, Etoya commented to her, “I believe you have an admirer.”
“You’re mistaken, Etoya,” Homsaff replied, with a huff. “That one is a warrior, and I might have a recruit.”
Homsaff had heard Etoya’s musing about the absence of adults among the wild ones and the ex-crèche director’s concerns that other children might be roaming the ship’s bowels. She sent small teams to investigate the lower decks. The warriors’ keen senses of hearing and smell were put to good use. They didn’t uncover any more individuals, but they did discover the vac chamber.
The chamber’s heavy, insulated hatch identified it as a cold storage unit. Logic indicated it was once used for freeze-dried items, probably genetic material that was destined for cultivation by the colonists. The Dischnya didn’t bother to open the hatch. Their noses told them what the vac unit contained, and the warriors reported their discovery to Homsaff, who updated Alex.
Alex sent a recovery team to accompany the Dischnya, who led the way to the vac chamber. Based on Homsaff’s report, Alex had ordered the team to wear environment suits. At the vac chamber’s hatch, the recovery leader, Gerling, checked his helmet for readouts. There was a high concentration of gases he associated with decomposition. He turned to speak to the Dischnya, intending to warn them to step away, but they were gone. I’d like to run too, he thought, an instant before his team cracked the hatch.
Alex had been right to warn the recovery team to don suits. The tall, deep storage room was stacked with bodies in various stages of decays. All ages were present from young children to adults. The team sprayed medical solutions into the air to break down the decomposition gases. Then they pulled the nearest body out, sprayed it in a solution to seal it, and slipped it into a star services bag.
Gerling connected with Miriamus, pleased that his suit’s comm had the range, which his implant didn’t.
Gerling sent the quantity of bags he had on hand. Then he stepped into the cavernous vac room and surveyed the space and the stack of bodies, allowing Mi
riamus to record his helmet’s view of the scene.
Gerling sent.
Gerling detailed the team’s findings to Alex, sparing him the visuals. It was enough that he and his team were going to experience nightmares for a long while.
Despite the grisly surroundings, Gerling smiled to himself at the idea that Alex, the leader of the expedition, was phrasing an order as a request.