“If the goddess is willing, we will have the others soon,” he said. “The Overseers appear to be keeping busy with the fomenting of violence, not planning for the future.”
Then he narrowed his eyes and squinted at far-off figures that appeared to be moving through the wreckage. He clutched the prayer stones around his neck in worry. The figures there did not appear to be moving like Tenctonese.
And though it was hard to be certain at this distance, some of them did not appear to have heads.
Buck had been found on the fifth day.
A young male with furtive eyes had seen Buck standing in line by a food station. Buck didn’t like the food, but it was better than what they tried to feed him on the second day.
On the second day, giant, thunderous, hovering machines had appeared all over the crash site, sending up giant clouds of dust from the planet’s deck—clouds that Buck first feared were more explosions. But the clouds were simply the result of the enormous wind the hoverers made, for whatever alien reason, and when they departed Buck saw that cargo pallets had been dropped from them.
Many Tenctonese had gone to the pallets right away, thinking that they would soon be instructed to move them somewhere. But there were still no Overseers. Then some had discovered the cracks in the pallets where crate sides had broken or the contents had spilled. The pallets held supplies.
There were containers of water and packages made from thin reflective metal covered with alien script. The word spread quickly: The hoverers were feeding the Tenctonese without requiring them to do work. It was a miracle, nothing less. Or else, some said bitterly, they had crashed during an alien religious festival when no work could be done. But soon enough the Tenctonese would return to being what they were meant to be.
Despite that fatalistic prediction, and others like it, a routine soon developed concerning the mysteriously provided supplies. Each time a pallet fell to the ground from a hoverer, a trio of Tenctons would appear, announcing that they were members of the resistance who had fought the Overseers. Buck suspected they were really Overseers themselves, though, because of the way they organized people into lines and made sure that each person got just the same amount of supplies as all the others.
After his first trip through a supply line, a young female showed Buck how to open his water container by using one of the big pieces of dirt on the ground to poke a hole in its side. The water tasted odd, but Buck saw that everyone else was drinking it with no ill effect, and his lips were cracked. By the time he had finished the entire container, he didn’t notice the taste at all.
The thin metal package was another problem, though. Buck used the large piece of dirt to poke a hole in it, then peeled the top part of the package away from the thick brown substance inside. It looked vaguely like meatgrowth, though it was much too dark, as if it had been burned in the crash. And when Buck smelled it, he began choking up the water he had swallowed. Whatever was in the package smelled like excrement. He threw it to the ground in disgust.
However, as he wandered the crash site that day, standing in line after line for more water, he realized that for every torn-open package discarded on the ground he saw other people eating happily from another. He soon figured out that different packages held different substances, and he guessed if he could decipher the alien script, then he would know what was in each.
He got together with a group of other children—none had a telltale scratch on the edge of a spot, though—and began to help them organize a list of what alien foodgrowth was good and what was bad.
The children gathered the empty metal packages from the refuse piles, carefully sniffed each one, then created three categories: Excrement growth, Acceptable growth, and Good growth. Sure enough, the children were quickly able to see a pattern in the odd, angular writing with which the packages were labeled. While most of the markings were the same from package to package, generally the largest symbols at the bottom of each package were different.
Buck’s favorites were the packages that carried the symbols: SPAGHETTI AND TOMATO SAUCE and GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH. In a pinch he could manage to eat the packages marked: HERSHEY CHOCOLATE and HAND SOAP, though he didn’t know why they had different symbols, because both had the same texture and taste, as far as he could tell. But the ones to avoid at all costs were any packages marked with, STEW, CHICKEN, or LASAGNA. One child who said she was a Watcher Youth and wasn’t afraid of anything actually managed to swallow a mouthful of STEW. It was almost as if her stomach had exploded, so quickly had she vomited.
By the morning of the fourth day—though the days and nights were confusing to Buck, neither seemed long enough to make much sense—the children at the crash site had become the key component in a site-wide network of trade in food and water. They could scan the packages that fell from the sky, quickly dividing them into three different groups, then run back and forth between the various dormitory groupings, seeing who had too much water and not enough SPAGHETTI, thus helping the resistance members move supplies around so that everything was equally shared.
The children also realized that there was advantage to be gained in their endeavors. Any liquid container marked with MILK appeared to be the favorite of many adults. The pallets that fell from the sky occasionally included blankets and towels and folded collections of pictures and a strange blood-colored foodgrowth that could be chewed and blown into huge bubbles that made the chewer look as if his or her or binn internal organs had erupted from the mouth. The adults hated it, calling it grotesque, but Buck and the other children knew that as long as they had a supply of MILK containers, the adults would gladly trade them packets marked BUBBLE GUM.
While the children ran from grouping to grouping, the adults busied themselves with digging toilet ditches and constructing shelters from the fallen pallets and blankets. Some of the pallets had included rolled-up tubes of some sort of chopped-up vegrowth that didn’t have much flavor, but invariably there were ignitor sticks packed with them. With those the adults were also able to construct fires for warmth at night, and funeral pyres for those who had died and whose religion permitted cremation. Many had died, Buck knew, because of the fighting on the first night, or because of hunger or thirst or, among the very old and very young, fear. The smell of decomposition was strong every time the air stopped circulating.
But by the fifth day Buck could sometimes forget that there had ever been a ship or that he had ever done what he had done on the bridge. There was excitement in having so much to do that was new and different without ever being told to do anything.
He decided he liked this world. And he never once wondered what its indigenous species looked like or what it thought about him and his people. He was free, just as D’wayn had promised, and he didn’t know how life could get any better.
Then the young male had come up to Buck in a food line by a fallen pallet. He had grabbed Buck’s chin and forced the boy to look up at him. Then he had placed a finger on Buck’s spotline, counted over three spots, and flicked Buck on the scalp.
“What’s your name?” the male asked him, and there was no disguising the tone in his voice.
“Watcher Finiksa,” Buck said. He felt the eyes of the other people near him in the line. Everyone spoke of how the Overseers had vanished. Everyone spoke of how happy they were. “Watcher” was not a word that anyone liked to hear these days.
“Come with me, Finiksa,” the male said. Then he turned and walked away, and Buck had no choice but to follow. Even five days on a new world was not enough to break the conditioning of the Watcher Youth Brigade.
The male led Buck behind a series of windbreak screens that had been erected around a toilet ditch. He struck the boy.
Buck reeled back. He touched his face where he could still feel the Overseer’s slap.
“Never,” the Overseer said, “never identify yourself as a Watcher! Do you understand me, boy?”
Buck nodded.
“Let the cargo think we all died on the ship. Our t
ime will come soon enough.”
Buck nodded again in fear.
Then the Overseer squatted down and smiled warmly at Buck just the way D’wayn did. “So, Finiksa, who was your Watch Leader?”
“Watch Leader D’wayn,” Buck said.
The Overseer nodded. “A good officer. One of the best. Did she tell you what was expected of you now that the cargo are temporarily in control?”
Buck lowered his head.
The Overseer looked around to make certain they were alone. “Do you know about the beacons?”
Buck nodded. “They can call the fleet.”
“And the fleet will rescue us. My job is to find one of those beacons. You’re going to help me.”
“Yes, Watch Leader,” Buck said reflexively.
The Overseer held out his finger to Buck. “Don’t ever call me that again. My name is T’ksam. You will call me that, understand?”
“Yes, T’ksam.”
“Very good.” The Overseer stood up. “Follow.” He strode out from behind the windbreak screens. Buck stayed with him. But he was confused. T’ksam wasn’t heading toward the wreckage of the disk. He was going in the opposite direction.
“Where are the beacons, Watch—T’ksam?” Buck asked.
The Overseer glared at Buck, then stepped close. “Don’t speak of them where others can hear,” he hissed. Then he reached for something under his tunic top—a chain, Buck saw, like a string of prayer stones but with only one item hanging from it.
T’ksam cupped the object on the chain in his hand and let Buck look at it. It was a metal ring, but instead of carrying a decoration it held a tiny, flashing red light. T’ksam moved the ring back and forth. In one direction the red light slowed its rate of flashing. In another it sped up. “This ring will take us to the beacons.” He looked out toward the desert, where the wall of fire burned, glowing red by night and staining the sky inky black by day.
“How did they get out there?” Buck asked. He was petrified. That’s where the indigenous species was.
T’ksam dropped the ring and chain back under his tunic. “We have plans for every eventuality. Two beacons remained on the disk. Two others were automatically ejected at various altitudes to fall safely away from any risk of explosion.” He straightened his tunic. “They’re out there, Finiksa. Not far.”
“But . . . but aren’t the . . . the . . .”
“The aliens?” T’ksam said with amusement. “Is that what you’re fearful of?”
Buck nodded.
The Overseer smiled broadly. “I’ve seen them, Finiksa. They are nothing to be afraid of. You know what they call themselves in their language?” He cleared his throat to prepare himself for the alien word. “Sold’yurz. And they look even funnier than their name sounds.” He patted Buck’s shoulder. “But most important, they’re easy to kill. In fact, I’ll even show you how to do it.” He winked at Buck exactly the way D’wayn had. “I think you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Buck nodded. It was the only way he knew to hide his fear.
On the night of the sixth day George heard alien music. He trudged to its source—a gathering of Tenctonese too small to be a dormitory grouping. There was a large white object beside them, too—a gleaming metallic box with two tiny black wheels. George had seen them being pulled around the crash site by aliens in self-propelled vehicles. He had yet to see an alien himself. Only glimpses of them, covered up in large white overalls that disappeared into a tiny black device that sat between their shoulders where their heads should have been. George felt his spots pucker as he tried to imagine what awful organ must be hidden under the small metal cap and glossy lens of the device. But at least they had two arms and two legs, though he supposed they could also have tendrils hidden under their strange bulky clothes.
George had been told by others that the metal containers were larger versions of the pallets that had been dropped from the hoverers in the first few days when everyone had feared the aliens of this planet were trying to poison them with foodstuffs that would kill them. The metal containers held even more supplies. Equipment as well as food and water. But George had not felt the need to investigate. He had spent his days trudging from dormitory group to dormitory group, trying to find his wife and daughter. He had had no luck. And the piles of bodies were growing daily.
Tired and dejected, he walked through the night toward the music and the large metal container. The music sounded nothing like the group singing that his people had been comforting themselves with as they sat around their makeshift fires, waiting for the impossibly short night to end with rousing songs such as “Ee Take Naz Nahj?”. George had the strange thought that perhaps, while he had been searching for his family, the aliens had come into the crash site to entertain their visitors. Wait till they find out we’re not just visiting, George thought.
As he got closer to the large metal container, George saw that it was different from the others he had seen. It had two doors on one side, and in the middle was a large, puzzling design—two thick red bars that overlapped each other at right angles. There were tables set up around it, and portable light banks shone from its roof to illuminate the crowd of Tenctonese who stood nearby. The music seemed to be coming from one of the tables. But George only saw a small black object sitting on it, with a series of green warning lights flickering across its face.
As he got closer, he heard people discussing what they listened to. “Can you understand the words?” George asked. He wouldn’t even have been able to say that the music had lyrics, alien or otherwise, but he knew from experience that he, along with the rest of his people, would rapidly sort out yet another alien language if necessary, as they had so many times in the past on the different worlds to which they had been sent to labor. The process was already beginning.
“It is a simple language,” a young female said.
“The problem is,” another added, “there seem to be a great number of them.”
George moved on through the crowd. There were windows on the metal object as well, and lights shone out through them. It was like a small miners’ barracks, he decided. He wondered if there were any aliens inside.
He stopped beside a binnaum and a female arguing over the lyric’s meaning.
“Sanhos’ay is an actual place on this world, not a spiritual absolute. I have asked the interpreters,” the binnaum said.
“But the interpreters I have spoken with have said that the goal of the journey there is to achieve peace in one own’s mind. Why would a journey to a physical location be necessary for such a spiritual reason?” the female replied.
The binnaum looked impatient. “You’re not listening. ‘Ellay izza grey’tbig free-ay,’ the creature sings. I happen to know that Ellay is the major population center near the crash site, and that a free-ay is a major road path for the carz we see them operating. Don’t you see the resonance? Ellay? Free-ay? Their entire culture must be devoted to travel.”
The female laughed. “How could any culture get anywhere if its people didn’t stay in one place? How could there be any peace?”
“I don’t know,” the binnaum admitted. “But the song clearly says that if you go to Ellay, you will become starstuff in just, um, seven—or is it fourteen?—of their crayg-ta.”
The female’s eyes widened in awe. “They can achieve complete spiritual transmogrification in . . . in just a matter of crayg-ta?” George saw her spots pale. “What manner of creatures are these?”
The binnaum folded binn arms knowingly. “When you consider that they’re not in service to the ships, even though they’re on a common route, we might have to face up to the fact that we’ve just landed on the world of the galaxy’s most spiritually advanced beings.”
The female swore softly to herself. The music ended. A chorus of voices asked that it be performed again. George moved deeper into the crowd to see how the music was made, not daring even to consider the possibility that if this was a world of spiritually advanced beings, then perhaps the
Overseers would be incapable of returning.
The music began again. Oddly harmonic even though it didn’t expand through the total range of audible frequencies. George decided it must be a form of artistic discipline, like writing poetry with only specific numbers of words.
He came to the edge of the crowd. He fixed his eyes on the object on the table. The sound was coming from it. He decided it must be like the communications devices that the Overseers used and that the performers were on the other end of the connection. They were certainly being patient to play the entire song again.
The female who stood by the music communicator smiled at the crowd that had gathered. She wasn’t dressed in a gray tunic from the ship. Instead she wore one of the brightly colored orange jumpsuits that had come from the pallets. She saw George and nodded to him as she had to the others. She glanced away. Then glanced back. She looked at George with curiosity. She gestured to have him come forward.
“Do I know you?” George asked as he approached the female.
“No,” the female said. “I am Gelana, a cargo specialist. We have never met, but I recognize your pattern.” Cathy Frankel traced the backward-pointing trident of the Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh on George’s head. “I know two of your kin. An Elder named Moodri and a child named Finiksa.”
George grabbed Cathy’s hand in excitement. “Do you know where they are?”
Cathy bowed her head. “Not now. I saw them in my infirmary just before the crash.”
“Together?” George asked.
“Together,” Cathy said. “They were both involved in the resistance. I . . . I don’t know what happened to them. There was a fight. The gas came. I don’t remember much after that.”
Somehow that didn’t matter to George. Just knowing that he hadn’t lost his son to the Overseers was a victory. Ever since he had seen that hateful black scarf around Buck’s neck in the water hub he had felt like a failure, as if he hadn’t been able to pass on anything worthwhile to the next generation. But this cargo specialist’s news proved otherwise.
Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent Page 39
