Alien Child

by Pamela Sargent

  Nita unzipped the gloves over her hands, pulled off her boots, and examined her feet.

  “Any sores?” Sven asked.

  “A couple.” She pulled out her medical kit, cleaned the red spots with antiseptic, bandaged them, then pulled on her socks and boots. Even an untended sore could pose a danger out here; she worried about how many other problems they might face.

  Sven checked his own feet, then thrust them into his boots. “Well,” he said, “we’ve made it through one day.” The forest seemed quieter as they ate; the birds were chirping more softly. “Do you ache as much as I do?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I feel as if my hipbones are grinding themselves into pieces.”

  For some reason, this struck her as funny. She laughed, then choked; she was shaking. Sven took her hand. “Nita, do you want to go back?”

  “So soon? That’d be kind of silly, after all these preparations.”

  “I know.” He looked toward the gardener, who had settled on the ground near them. “I wish the mind could talk to us.”

  “At least it can see and hear us,” she said.

  “Maybe we should have done what I suggested,” he said, “and sent a robot to the city first. We could have followed it with another and known what’s ahead.”

  “But you know why we decided against that.” The people they sought would not know who had sent the robot out; if they were near the city, a robot might only frighten them away. The survivors had to see that two others of their kind lived. “Maybe they wanted us to follow them,” she continued. “Maybe that’s why the craft didn’t wait.”

  “But they couldn’t have seen us. They don’t know for sure that we’re alive.”

  “They might have guessed. Maybe they’re testing us to see if we’re brave enough to come out and search for them.”

  “I wonder if we are,” he replied. “I’ll keep watch first, if you like.”

  Nita shook her head. “I’ll watch. I don’t think I can sleep yet.” Her aches and her fears would be enough to keep her awake.

  She dug a hole for their food wrappings while Sven hung their packs on a low limb before he stretched out under a tree. They had brought a covering from one of the tower’s sleeping platforms, but Sven did not remove it from the robot’s packs. His suit would keep him warm enough, and the trees could shelter them here.

  She told the robot to touch her arm after four hours had passed, then settled down to keep watch. The clearing was completely dark now, the only illumination the glow of the fire and the gleam of the gardener’s tiny lights. She remembered how fearful she had once been of night in the garden; she had not imagined that the world could be so dark. She heard hooting nearby, and a sound that might have been a howl farther away; she shuddered and moved closer to the fire.

  The mind would be watching through the glassy panel just above the robot’s lights, but the Institute’s intelligence could do little to protect them. This forest had to seem as alien to the mind as it did to her—untamed, dark, a place where all traces of those who had created the mind had vanished.

  She fed another branch to the flames, setting it carefully on one side of the blazing triangle of wood. Except for seeing that the fire did not go out, there was not much else she could do. The burning wood crackled; she grew aware of a strange metallic chirping in the forest beyond. She huddled near the fire, trying not to think of what lay outside its light. The clearing made her uneasy; she wondered what other creatures might have passed this way.

  Only one day had passed, and she already wanted to be back at the Institute. But she could not turn back. She would not really know what she was until she found the survivors and learned what they had become.

  She managed to stay awake until the robot signaled her, then collected more wood before waking Sven. He groaned a little, sat up, rubbed his eyes, and took out his wand.

  “I don’t feel as if I’ve slept at all,” he said. He stretched, then moved toward the fire.

  Nita took out the cloth covering and lay down on it, but the ground was still hard and uncomfortable. She was conscious of every ache in her legs, shoulders, and back. Whenever she felt close to sleep, a cramp in her foot or leg roused her once more. Knowing that she had to sleep, that she would find the next day’s travel even more wearying if she did not, only made matters worse. At last she drifted into an uneasy rest.

  She was standing outside a wall. A door in the wall slid open. A woman with Beate’s fair hair was walking toward her; next to her stood a man who resembled Ismail. They were waiting for Nita; now they were saying that they had something important to tell her.

  Nita stirred, then blinked at the light. Was it morning already? Apparently she had slept, after all. Her muscles were stiff; she sat up slowly.

  Sven sat against a nearby tree trunk, his head bowed. A glance at the fire revealed that it had gone out. Sven had fallen asleep; she was suddenly furious with him.

  She stood up. Before she could speak, a loud rustling on the other side of the clearing told her that something was moving in their direction. Her hand crept toward her weapon. A brown furry beast was moving under the trees; twigs cracked under its feet. She pulled out her wand and fired.

  A roar filled the clearing. The creature rose up on its hind legs and she saw that it was a bear. She nearly panicked, then fired again. The bear burst into the clearing, moving more quickly than she had thought it could. Her beam struck it three more times before it collapsed on top of the blackened wood, its paws only a few paces from her feet.

  Sven jumped to his feet, awake now. “What—”

  “A bear,” she gasped as she thrust the covering into her pack. “Come on! We have to get out of here before it wakes up.”

  He pulled his pack from the tree limb as she tied hers to herself. “Follow us!” she shouted to the robot.

  They thrashed through the underbrush. She did not think of where they were going, but only wanted to get as far from the clearing as possible. She was soon panting, and dropped behind Sven as they ran. She looked back hastily, then pushed on, keeping her weapon ready, listening for the sound of the bear in pursuit. The robot was behind her; it was floating over the thick foliage that kept threatening to entangle her.

  They continued to flee until she thought her chest would burst. Ahead of her, Sven cried out; he swayed and then abruptly dropped out of sight.

  She staggered after him and found herself teetering on the edge of a sharply sloping hill; she caught herself before she could fall. Sven was rolling downhill; his hands flailed helplessly at the thick leaves on the ground. He struck a tree and lay still.

  She inched her way down the slope after him, impatient to reach him but afraid she would slip. He was moving, but she feared that he was injured.

  “Sven!” He sat up and leaned against the tree. “Are you all right?”

  He was gulping for air. “Caught me in the chest,” he said weakly. “I think—”

  She knelt next to him, opened his suit, and felt at his chest. “I don’t feel any broken bones.”

  “I’m all right. Just knocked the breath out of me.”

  “Can you get up?” she asked.

  “I think so.” He rose and kept his body bent as they crept down the slope, then pulled out his compass as they came to the bottom of the hill. “We’ve been going east.” He pointed to his right. “We have to go that way.” They waited for the robot to float down to them, then began to walk south.

  Her panic, she realized, had endangered them as much as the bear had; Sven might have been seriously hurt. A warm wave of relief swept through her, followed by the chill of fear; she began to shake.

  She sank to the ground. Sven halted and turned toward her. “I must have drifted off,” he muttered. “I couldn’t have been asleep for long. I was sitting there, and then—”

  “The fire was out,” she said accusingly. “It wouldn’t have gone out right away.”

  “Nita, I’m sorry. I made a bad mistake. I
t won’t happen again.”

  “I was counting on you!” she shouted. “You were supposed to keep watch!”

  “Go on, keep shouting—let every bear in the wood know where we are.” He took a breath. “Don’t you remember what the records said about bears? They’re usually shy, the library said—you might have frightened it off without firing at it. You probably provoked it instead, and wounded bears are more dangerous. Then you get so panicky that you scare me into racing off without being able to see where I’m going.”

  “And I’m sure you would have thought of all that,” she responded, “if you’d been awake the way you were supposed to be. You just want to blame me for something. I don’t know why we came out here. What good are we going to do anybody else if we can’t even look out for ourselves?”

  The robot settled on the ground near her, apparently waiting for orders to move on. Nita glanced at its viewplate; she could almost sense the mind watching them through it. This display, she thought bitterly, would make a fine addition to the Institute’s records of her kind.

  Sven said, “Do you want to go back?”

  “Do you?”

  “If you’re going to keep after me about one mistake, maybe we should. I said I was sorry, and that it won’t happen again. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “We can’t turn back now.” She got to her feet. “Besides, we’d have to go back the way we came, and I don’t want to be anywhere near that bear.”

  “How many times did you hit it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Five—maybe six.”

  “You might have killed it.”

  “We’d better not count on that.”

  They did not speak for the rest of the day, not even during the times when they stopped to rest. By afternoon, they had reached a large clearing bordered on one side by an outcropping of rock. Sven peered up at the sky. “It’s still light enough to keep going,” he said.

  Nita started at the sound of his voice; she had been wondering if he would ever speak again. “I think we should stop here,” she said. They would have shelter under the rocky shelf, and the clearing was wide enough for them to spot anything that entered from under the trees. “It must be close to evening by now, and I’d rather stop here than in the forest.”

  She gathered wood with the robot while Sven prepared a place for the fire near the outcropping. This time, they managed to get a blaze started after only two attempts.

  Nita took off her boots, checked her bandaged blisters, then pulled the boots on again. Her eyes stung from lack of sleep; she felt filthy and longed to bathe. Her muscles ached from walking, and the heat of the fire was making her sweat; the air had grown hot and sticky that day. She sipped a little water, then leaned back against the rock.

  Sven took his bottle from his pack. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Eating just makes me more thirsty. I’ll eat in the morning.” She studied her bottle, then put it back into her pack. “We’ll need more water soon.”

  “I know. If we don’t find any, we’ll have to use the water the gardener’s carrying to make it back.”

  “Do you have any idea of where we are?”

  He reached under his suit and pulled out the map. “I’m not sure, because I can’t tell how far we’ve come. Reading a map is one thing—moving around out here is something else.”

  “All our plans,” she said. “They don’t amount to much, do they, even with a gardener and all our supplies.”

  “We knew it wouldn’t be easy. But if we keep going south, we have to find the river and the plain.”

  “If the river’s where it was,” she said. “We can’t even be sure of that.”

  “I don’t think a river that large could have altered its course that much, but if we don’t find it, we can still turn back and make other plans. We’re not going to get to the river or the plain, anyway, unless we find more water soon.” He slipped the map under his suit. “Why don’t you sleep now? I’ll keep watch first. I’ll stay awake this time—I’ll tell the robot to nudge me once in a while to make sure.”

  She curled up on top of the cloth as Sven crawled out to sit by the fire.

  “Nita, wake up.”

  She opened her eyes; Sven was leaning over her. In spite of the hard ground, she had slept deeply.

  “Wait,” he said. “Don’t move.” The firelight flickered behind him as he pulled on his gloves. He groped at her side, then stood up swiftly and hurled something toward the trees.

  She sat up quickly. “What are you doing?”

  “A snake was lying next to your leg.”

  She let out a gasp.

  “It was probably trying to keep warm. It couldn’t have bitten you through the suit, but you should probably keep your gloves on when you sleep.”

  She shuddered and moved toward the fire while he stretched out on the cloth. She checked the pile of wood and saw that there was likely to be enough for the rest of the night, then sat back on her heels, keeping her wand ready.

  This night seemed darker than the last. She looked up; even the stars were hidden. A distant snarl, like that of a cat, broke the silence, and then the forest was quiet again. The air was still; she could hear nothing except the crackling of the fire.

  Her people had lived out here once, long before they had buildings to shelter them and cybernetic minds to tend to their needs. Every day must have been a struggle, and every night a time of terrors and fears. They had been threatened constantly; she could understand why they might have seen their lives as a long fight.

  But they also could not have survived out here without depending on one another. They would have needed friends whom they could trust; a solitary person would have found it hard to live. Whatever her kind had become later, they must once have been people who faced the dangers of the world together without fighting those like themselves. Their days would have taught them how precarious their existence already was; their nights would have shown them how alone they would be without their friends.

  She looked back at Sven for a moment. He was asleep, his head cradled on one arm. The trees whispered and whined overhead; she realized that the wind was picking up. She huddled closer to the fire; the wind rose to a shriek. The sky was suddenly bright with light; a thunderclap brought her to her feet.

  She let out a cry as the thunder rolled. The sky brightened again as rain began to fall. “Under the rock!” she called out as she gestured to the gardener; the robot floated under the ledge.

  Sven was awake. The rain sizzled as it hit the burning wood; their fire would go out. She hurried toward the boy as he stood up.

  “Our fire—” she began to say.

  “Nita. Don’t you see? We’ll have water now.”

  She gaped at him, then reached for the helmet lying next to her pack as Sven grabbed his. They propped them just beyond the ledge against a few stones as the rain fell.

  Sven touched her arm and then lay down again; his head rested lightly against her thigh. The fire blazed up once more before it died. She sat in the darkness, listening to the howl of the wind and the patter of the rain.

  The storm abated before morning. Nita waited until the sky was gray before awakening Sven. They gulped some of the rainwater in their helmets, then poured the rest into their bottles before eating their morning meal.

  The ground was softer and muddier as they walked; droplets fell on them from the tree limbs above. Her spirits lifted; they had a little more water, and they had made it through another night.

  When they stopped to rest and relieve themselves, her newfound confidence was beginning to fade. By the time they halted again to eat a few nuts and dried fruits, the effort of walking was tiring her.

  Sven stood up when he had finished eating and moved toward a tree trunk. He touched the scratches on the bark with one gloved hand, then stared at the ground. “Do you see those marks?” he asked. “There, where it’s muddy. They look like animal tracks.”


  She gazed at the ground. The wet earth made the tracks more obvious. She reached for her wand, thinking of the bear she had encountered.

  “It could be a trail,” he said. He took out his compass. “Seems they were going west. Animals need water as much as we do. Maybe if we follow it—”

  “But we have to go south.”

  “We could follow it for a while, and turn south later. We might be close to a source of water and not even know it. There might be a spring or a pool that isn’t marked on this map, that didn’t exist when it was made.”

  “We don’t know what made those tracks,” she said. “It might be dangerous.”

  He sighed. “We have our wands. We have a little more water than we did. We ought to use the extra day it’s given us to see if we can find more—at least that’s what I think.”

  “I think we should use it to get nearer to where the river’s supposed to be,” she said.

  “But we don’t know how far we’ve come,” he replied. “We don’t know how far we still have to go. If we don’t find more water in a couple of days, we’ll have to go back anyway.”

  “We should have brought more water to begin with.”

  “You know we couldn’t have carried it,” he said, “and the gardener’s weighted down enough as it is—it wasn’t made to carry heavy loads.” He paused. “Well, what do you want to do?”

  He was leaving the decision to her, but he clearly wanted to follow the trail. “You decide,” she said.

  “Oh no. We’re in this together. I’m not going to decide things alone.”

  “All right, Sven. We’ll follow the trail.”

  They walked west, searching out the tracks. Nita grew so nervous at the thought of what they might be following that she often fired her weapon at any sign of movement. Her rays hit only bushes and shrubs; she suspected that the sight of the beam was enough to scare animals away. She forced herself to curb her nervousness. Her weapon’s charge might get used up; she did not want the wand to fail her if she needed it again.