Raven's Children

by Sabrina Chase

  “We don’t wanna go there,” Yolanda said abruptly. “I see that name mentioned a lot in that stuff of Toren’s we took. They got a depot there or somethin’.”

  Moire sighed. “They might tell us to get lost anyway, if they’ve heard about us.”

  “I think we can convince them,” Gren said. “We can pay 'em, and nobody knows for sure we’re pirates. They may not have heard the rumors.”

  “What about me?” Moire asked. “What about the kids? Jessack could be crawling with Toren people. It’s too risky.”

  “No more than usual,” Yolanda said. “Their station is in pieces, but they don’t know why. They don’t know who.”

  Moire spent a restless night alternately dozing and admiring the Sequoyah night sky, which blazed with stars, trying to figure out what needed to be built first, and how.

  The cave was perfect—‌the pseudotrees sheltered the entrance, and the rock was deep enough to mask most heat signals. Underground, or at least hidden, she decided. They could build visibly once they won.

  If they won. She’d have to build well; well enough they could carry on without her. She’d made a promise to Fleet to turn herself in when it was safe.

  Be honest. You made a promise to Ennis. That’s what you really care about.

  She squirmed on the thin padding and discovered she wasn’t alone. Alan was crouched beside her sleeping pad, just visible in the dawn light. Behind him, not quite brave enough to follow, was a group of Created.

  “Urm?” she asked, blinking her eyes clear. “'s something up?”

  “They wanted to know how I have a name now. I said you gave me one,” Alan said earnestly. “I thought maybe you have names for them too.”

  “Ah.” She got up, feeling stiff, and folded her pad and blanket. “Breakfast first. No names on an empty stomach.”

  How long had they been waiting for her to wake up? She puttered with the galley equipment that had been placed on long tables along the side wall of the cave. They had a lot of people to feed now.

  Juice and a drybar would do until somebody started cooking. She handed out the same for the others. There were three: the boy with white hair Harvey had mentioned, a pale girl with grey eyes, and another boy who looked like his gene mix had some Japanese.

  Moire found a seat near the mouth of the cave, in front of the transport ship. “So you want names, huh? Let’s take a look at you.” She noticed the Created didn’t seem to mind being outside the cave. She’d have to watch that. If they decided they wanted to explore, her crew might not notice they had gone.

  First in line was the white–‌headed one. That was easy. “You’re George.” As in Curious. The others took more thought. As she looked at them, she thought she could see slight resemblances to people she’d known in NASA. It made sense; the kids had gotten their DNA from the NASA tissue storage facility.

  The girl she named Ash, and the other boy Hideo. Bon Accord’s biologist, Michiko, had a brother named Hideo.

  They’re all going to want names. I’ll never keep two hundred plus of them straight. Finding a paint pen and roll of plastic strapping, she made up some dog tags.

  They hadn’t gotten brave enough to talk to her yet, but from the way they held the tags, carefully examining their own and each other’s, the names were quite satisfactory.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  It felt strange, having a name. He wondered what a George was, if it did anything special. She had said it, so that’s what he was. He wondered how she knew.

  The sleeping space here only had little places, so they couldn’t all be together. They sat on the floor, close, and then it was almost the same. Alan didn’t. He stayed on his sleeping space—‌he called it a bunk—‌and looked at his square thing with words in it.

  They all had names now. He pulled out the piece of plastic with the marks on it. The one with all the fun tools had made a hole in it so he could wear it around his neck.

  He spelled out the letters in his head. George. The others had tags too, with their names. Ash and Hideo.

  “Do you have a tag?” George asked Alan.

  Alan shook his head. “She didn’t give me one.”

  “Why not?” Hideo wanted to know. He did that a lot. Now they could ask any questions they wanted to, and they wouldn’t be punished.

  “I don’t know, she just didn’t.” Alan thought for a moment. “She gave me this, though. Maybe it’s the same thing.” He tugged the ends of the beautiful red thing tied to his arm. It had small sparkles inside, like the metal shavings in Carlos Montero’s workshop, but it was bendable all over. If there were any letters on it, they were too small for George to see.

  “What’s her name?” Everybody looked at Ash, and she tried to make herself small. Ash hardly ever talked. She looked at things a lot, and thought about them.

  “It’s Captain!” Hideo said, excited. “I heard the one with the long black hair say it. Grrrenn.”

  George rolled his eyes. “No it isn’t. That’s just a…‌it’s a what you do. Like Carlosmontero, that’s his name, and Maintenance is what he is.”

  They all considered that for a moment.

  “I thought Maintenance was the place he works,” Hideo said.

  “It’s sort of both,” Alan said. “All together.”

  George looked at him. “Do you know her name?” Alan had been with her the longest—‌months and months. He knew more than any of the other Created.

  Alan ducked his head. “Sometimes it’s Ren Roberts, but that isn’t the real one,” he said slowly.

  “What is the real one?”

  “She doesn’t want me to say it where people can hear.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she said, that’s why,” Alan said, scowling. “Somehow it’s bad.”

  Nobody said anything for a while. Then Ash wiggled restlessly. “I wonder what names the others got.”

  Hideo lifted his head off her shoulder. “Go ask them?”

  “The big door doesn’t work. I tried. The little picture on it is all black. I can’t see the cave or anything.”

  “We aren’t in the cave,” Alan said, shaking his head. “We’re going somewhere else.”

  “Before, the cave was outside. We went in the room full of seats, and if you looked in the little picture in the big door the cave was there,” George said doggedly.

  Alan sighed. “We aren’t there anymore. That was the shuttle. The ship is…‌is like a box, and we’re in it. The box moves, and when we get out it’s someplace different.”

  George frowned. If they could find it, the door should open to the same place it had before. All the other doors in the ship stayed the same.

  Ash opened her mouth as if she was going to ask something, but then the comm on the wall buzzed. Alan got up and listened for a while. George just heard a small voice, but no words.

  Alan looked at them. “She says we are at Jessack. Nobody is supposed to leave the ship, because it is dangerous. There are Toren people here!”

  “Toren is what?” George asked. Alan seemed worried, and that made him scared.

  “Toren is Controllers,” Alan answered quietly. “I’m going to find her.”

  He left, and they all huddled closer. “She’s not going to give us back, is she?” Ash whispered, shaking. George nudged her with his shoulder.

  “She doesn’t like them. Remember? Alan said she killed one. Maybe she’s going to kill the ones here.”

  Her mouth quivered. “I don’t want to be in a box,” she said, her voice going squeaky at the end. “They could get us.”

  George looked about their room. It wasn’t big; it just had the sleeping spaces on the walls and the empty space between. Nowhere to hide.

  “Let’s find a better place,” he said, getting up and pulling Ash with him. “Where they won’t see us.”

  The others moved with him out the door. If Alan was there they could ask him a good place, but George didn’t know where he’d gone.

  George saw someone in t
he hallway and started. “Ooh! People!” He turned to run, but Hideo stopped him.

  “We know those ones. Remember?”

  Even the familiar faces made him want to run now that he was scared, and he knew the others felt the same way. When they saw Gren walking down the corridor they did run. None of them could figure out Gren. He was one of the good people, but he had a fierce face and he yelled at them when George was trying to figure out the interesting tools. Then sometimes he would give them good things to eat and just look at them sad, not saying anything.

  “We should go where he is,” Ash said in her soft voice, almost too soft to hear. George stopped.

  “Why? He would say mad words at us again.”

  She swallowed, struggling to say her thoughts. “He is…‌he would be that way to the Controllers, if they came. He could make them go away. If we are where he is, but he doesn’t see us, it would be safer.”

  When she said it, he could see how it would happen. It was a good idea. They carefully retraced their way, keeping out of sight of their target. George could still hear him. He was half–‌saying words to himself, like he sometimes did after yelling.

  “Go and get them, she says. At least McNaulty will talk to us. And what do we do if they turn us down? Build it ourselves? Can’t leave those children like that….‌”

  Hideo stumbled into Ash, who made a startled noise. Gren turned, frowning, and they quickly darted into a side passage before he saw them. George scowled at them, then peeked around the corner. Gren was walking away again, sighing and shaking his head.

  “Quick! He’s going through a door!” Hideo whispered. They ran up, just as the door almost closed. George held it open just a little.

  “I didn’t know that room was there,” Ash said, surprised. “It’s really big.”

  “Lots of places to hide,” Hideo added.

  There were ladders to places high up, in shadow, and stacks of boxes and big machines. George moved out carefully, looking for Gren. He didn’t see him.

  The room was very big. Maybe too big. George frowned, feeling scared. He wanted to find Gren now. Maybe he yelled, but he belonged to them.

  Nobody had seen which way he went. They walked down one way, but it was just a wall. The other direction went on and on, and still no sign of Gren. Somebody else was walking toward them. She was almost as tall as the nice Madele but with the same kind of warm brown skin as Kilberton, the pilot. She smiled as she went by.

  George had never seen her before. He was all of a sudden cold, and his stomach squeezed itself.

  “We gotta hide!” he said, and ran for the nearest area of shadow, behind and under a big metal thing with legs. There was room for all of them, just. The others were breathing hard now too. They knew, just like he did.

  He didn’t understand how it had happened, but they were Outside. Where the Controllers were. And he didn’t know how to get back in.

  CHAPTER 6

  WAYFARING STRANGER

  George carefully watched the people walking by the hiding place. The people didn’t look like Controllers. Maybe they were safe for right now, but when the Controllers came they wouldn’t be. How were they going to get back? There were lots of doors along the wall and they were all the same.

  Ash and Hideo were pressed close to him and they were shaking. He was shaking too. There should be someone to tell him what to do. Not a Controller, but one of the rescuing people. “Find Gren,” he said, and felt a little better. He could tell himself what to do.

  “How?” Hideo asked. “We looked and he wasn’t there. Maybe he went in one of the doors!”

  They all contemplated the many doors.

  “We could open them and look in,” George said. They waited until nobody was in sight, and scrambled out from under the machine. There was a door directly ahead of them. Hideo pulled the long handle, but it didn’t move. When they tried pushing on the little pad by the door, it flashed the message “Authorization Failed.”

  “We walked and walked before we came here,” Ash said after they looked at each other, worried. She squeezed her eyes closed for a minute, then blinked them open. “When we came out of the door there was a small box, and it had some yellow stripes on it. We should go back and look for that box, maybe….‌” her voice trailed off, and she looked frightened again.

  “That box has yellow on it,” Hideo pointed.

  George shook his head. “It isn’t stripes, though.”

  “Hey! What are you doing?” George spun around. The door was open now, and a man was standing in it. He looked angry. “That’s ours. Were you messing with the door?”

  George was to terrified to speak or move.

  “We’re looking for a box we can’t find,” Hideo said in a fast, gasping voice.

  “Oh.” The man didn’t look so angry now. He glanced at Ash. Her face was all white and her eyes were big. “Sorry if I startled you. Yeah, stuff can relocate here. You’re gonna get yourselves shot if you look for it that way, though. Go to the security station.” He pointed, and glared at them until George grabbed Hideo’s arm and pulled him away. Ash was already walking quickly in the direction the man had pointed.

  George knew why. The man had said go, and when you were Created you did what someone said to you. He glanced back over his shoulder as he followed Ash. The door was closed now.

  “Wait,” he said. “What’s a security station?”

  They stopped and looked at each other. “There’s a sign,” Ash said in a whisper. She nodded her head forward with a small twitch. “But people are there!”

  George bumped her with his shoulder to make her feel better. “This place is different. We can go look and they won’t say we are wrong.” Even the angry man hadn’t said they were wrong, he just told them to go away.

  He could see lots of people up ahead. They were in an even bigger room. Now they were close enough to see the sign on the wall, and it said, “Jessack Station Security Post.” It was next to some windows in the wall, and he could see inside to the room there.

  “Controllers!” Hideo pushed George and Ash hard, away from the place with windows. George scrambled for somewhere to hide, but the only thing near was a wheeled machine. They hid behind it, gasping.

  Nothing happened. George peeked around the corner of the machine. He saw what had made Hideo want to hide. Inside the window place the people were wearing clothes that were all one color, like the Controllers did, and they had belts with things on them. He frowned. Controllers wore bright colors, but these people were wearing a green that was dark. He almost hadn’t seen it as green.

  He wrinkled his nose. The machine didn’t smell very good. “I think it’s OK,” he said slowly. “They just look like Controllers.” He shifted forward.

  “No!” Ash had a wet face from crying. “D–‌don’t! I don’t want to be b–‌broken….‌”

  Something moved in the darkness, just a little shifting noise, but it hadn’t come from them. George went closer to see what it was. It looked like a pile at first, but then he saw it was a person. The bad smell was stronger there. He remembered a smell like that from the Place. The ones who were punished smelled like that before they were cleaned again.

  The man shifted again. “Look!” Hideo pointed. “A Created! He has a hurt bracelet!”

  Two eyes blinked open. Deep blue eyes. George froze, frightened again. The man was breathing hoarsely now, and his face looked like pain when he moved the arm with the green plastic bracelet away. George blinked. The man was trying to get away from them. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt them.

  Hideo came closer, cautiously. “Why do you still have that?” he asked. “She took all of them off!”

  The man stared at them, and gasped. “Medic…‌need medic.” His mouth hardly moved, and it was hard to hear all of the word when he said it. “Hide me….‌”

  If they found the way back in again, they could take him to Madele. She was a medic. She could take the cuff off too. Maybe they wouldn’t be mad at them for leav
ing the ship if they rescued someone.

  Ash was hovering behind them, nervously watching as people walked by their hiding place. George heard her gasp, and he quickly looked her way.

  “Gren!” Ash pointed. George put his arms behind the hurting man and lifted. The man made a horrible sound, but he kept his mouth closed so it was quiet.

  “Help me lift him,” George whispered. He didn’t want to hurt him anymore, but they had to get back and find Gren.

  Ash flapped her hands. “Hurry! He’s going away!”

  Hideo took the other side, and they quickly darted out from behind the wheeled machine. They moved as fast as they could, but there were more people now. He wasn’t scared of them, though. Maybe if he thought about it he would be, but he was thinking too hard about finding Gren.

  Ash was ahead, looking from side to side. She didn’t see the man stopped in front of her until she ran into him. She made a small sound in her throat and backed away when he turned.

  It was Gren. George didn’t care if he was going to be yelled at, he was so glad to see him again. Then he saw a small box with yellow stripes outside a door, and felt even happier. They’d found the way back!

  Gren’s mouth went open, all the way. His face started to change color. “You were told to stay on the ship!” Then he saw who they were carrying. “What did you…‌where the hell did you get him?”

  “He’s hurt!” Hideo protested. “Can’t we even take this off?” He held up the man’s arm, showing the bracelet.

  Gren’s eyes widened. “Get in the ship! Quick!” he whispered harshly, opening the door and shooing them inside.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Kolpe Anders adjusted his ID before entering the office, simultaneously standing a fraction taller and lifting his chin. He'd be a regional inspector this time. Ordinarily he wouldn't have made contact so soon, but Meniran had stressed speed and accuracy. He needed the most current information they had.

  The staff was properly deferential, making a private office available. Anders accessed the main system, via an account that did not match any of his assumed identities, and made a minor change to a file. He then accessed a new account that had just been created.