Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  Shouts. The deep thuds of batons striking each other like swords. Hair singeing—skin singeing. Smoke and sparks and the ground shaking with a vengeance. The stampeding hooves of camels and bighorn sheep.

  Rail tried to crawl away, to find somewhere safe to hide, but everywhere he turned, the silhouettes of soldiers blocked his path. Convoy security had come to battle Pit security.

  Had the video in the sky been a message of peace, or pure distraction?

  At the moment, did it matter?

  In a blinding flash it was noon again. The sun directly overhead, the sky clear and cloudless. Rail pressed his face into the dirt, clamping his eyes shut against the sudden brightness. He curled up, trying to remain invisible.

  But someone pulled at his wrists, catching him by his restraints. He started to flail and fight.

  “No, it’s okay. It’s okay.” It was the boy that had come last to Eden—Thomas. He tugged Rail over to where Margarita bent over Diego.

  “Come on, son. Diego?” She pulled him into her lap. His eyes rolled dazedly in his skull and he panted like a dog, but he was conscious. Blood from a large gash above his left eye dribbled down his face.

  “I’m okay, Madre. I . . . really.”

  A shimmer in some nearby scrub caught Rail’s attention. He edged in its direction.

  It was the Warden’s glasses, bent and cracked. A few feet away, three security guards tackled the Master Warden, and he hit the ground with an audible oof. Arms and legs and batons whipped through the air.

  One security guard lost his grip. The Warden’s swinging baton caught a second in the ear, and he easily overpowered the third. His burning gaze snagged Margarita, and he scrambled to his feet, flicking his baton’s setting to lethal and diving for his glasses.

  “Look out!” Rail yelled.

  Instinctively, Margarita curled over Diego, protecting him. Rail threw himself across the back of her shoulders, but kept his eyes on the approaching madman.

  Thomas huddled with the Discontinueds and prisoners—their hoods still firmly in place.

  Mirrored glasses in hand, the Warden took one step in their direction, shock baton raised and crackling above his head.

  But he stopped midstride.

  All around them, great clouds of red dust rose in the wake of various scrimmages. Pit guards fell left and right, brought down by convoy members. The convoy security people were well organized. Clipped orders passed between them as they rounded up the infiltrators. Mahler’s free supporters dwindled.

  The color seeped out of the Master Warden’s cheeks. He knew what was happening. He was losing. And if he lost here, today, all support for him would drain away. They’d seen—they’d seen what he really was. Discontinued. Just like me, Rail thought. He’d seen enough power plays amongst the prisoners in the Pit barracks to know how brute-based control worked. He knew any failure, any show of weakness, could be the end. That’s what the Master Warden was facing right now. This was his only chance at power, and it was slipping away. His reign was over before it had begun. The tide had not turned like he’d expected.

  The Warden’s arm dropped, as though all the life had drained out of it. With shoulders slumped and spine bowed, he looked like a broken doll—abandoned, forgotten. Useless.

  They’d made him into a blunt instrument, then tossed him aside once he’d been bloodied and dented.

  Rail’s breath caught in his throat as it dawned on him: there was no place for a Master Warden anymore.

  Thank whatever powers that be—the man’s reign was over.

  “That’s it, then,” the Master Warden said, looking pointedly at Margarita. She lifted her head slightly, confused by his stricken tone. “I’m the last. No more.”

  With a flick of his wrist he placed the battered glasses back on the bridge of his nose. They sat slightly askew, their usual uninterrupted sheen broken through by myriads of scratches. But then he seemed to think better of it and threw the spectacles to the ground.

  “No more.”

  Before anyone could react, the Warden tipped the baton up and pressed it to his own temple. His pupils grew wide, as though in his last moment he’d glimpsed something unexpected, before his body teetered and fell.

  With the Master Warden dead, those loyal to him lost the will to fight. The brigs overflowed, and Hippocrates’ patient numbers surged.

  Months had passed since the Battle of Eden. The discontinued prisoners had all been pardoned, and they were each staying with host families during the reintegration process. The mines were still open, still needed to be worked, but there were other steps to take before Bottomless could be fully rebuilt.

  They had to fix the SD drives. Figure out what the problem was. For real.

  Which meant they had to run tests. No more models, no more assumptions. They had to dive again for the sake of research, had to take the risk.

  “Are you ready?” Margarita asked.

  She, Vega, Diego, Thomas, and Rail all stood on Mira’s bridge, noting the countdown.

  Diego looked sidelong at Tom. He was proof that genetically identical didn’t mean the same. He was a good kid. Gentle. The antithesis of what the Warden had become.

  I.C.C.’s plan had worked, in a way. It had proven that the Discontinueds could be reintegrated.

  “T minus thirty,” called the navigator.

  “I never thought I’d be here,” Rail confessed to Diego. “Alive, I mean. Not after I stood up to the Warden.”

  “Sometimes I think denying yourself kills you quicker,” Diego said. “Pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. You couldn’t really live until you demanded respect.”

  “All steady on the bridge!” the captain called.

  “No more stagnation,” Vega said, grasping her wife’s hand and bringing it up to her lips for a kiss.

  The navigator raised her voice. “Subdimensional penetration in three . . . two . . .”

  “No more fear,” Diego said.

  “One.”

  Rail nodded. “No more.

  Chapter Eight

  Nika: Behind the Curtain

  One Hundred and Eight Years Later

  May 28, 271 PLD

  4101 CE

  Five days more and they’d drop out of SD into the solar system, just beyond Jupiter’s orbit.

  Five days more and they’d be home.

  Five days more and Nika Marov XI’s real work would begin.

  There are people out there, she said to herself, staring at a blank bit of shelving in her quarters. Earthlings. People who live on a planet. Living, breathing . . .

  Her job had never been to deal with the alive and willful. Hers had always been to chronicle the dead and gone. She was a historian, and a teacher, someone who took all the long and speckled details of the past and packaged them for consumption by those who needed to know where they came from.

  But a whole new career path would be thrust upon her in a few days. She wouldn’t be a historian, looking back over the stretch of humanity’s years. She’d be smack-dab in the middle of it all—making history, rather than recording it.

  A knock at the door made her jump. She wanted to tell whoever it was to go away, leave me alone, but knew the urge was childish.

  “Ms. Marov?” She recognized the voice of Donald Matheson—Mira’s head of Security. “Ms. Marov, the captain would like to speak with you. About how to phrase our next message.”

  I’ve been over this twenty times with him already. Captain Rodriguez was perhaps the only person more nervous about the homecoming than she—not that there was a single convoy member who wasn’t nervous. Maybe I.C.C. “Okay,” she said, but the acknowledgement caught in her throat and she had to croak it out again. “Okay, I’m coming.”

  Standing, she shook her limbs loose. Her entire body was scrunched with tension. Nika took the time to smooth her sleek black hair and put on a less wrinkled jumpsuit. Wishing she could have a relaxing cup of tea before the meeting, but knowing the captain would be annoyed if s
he kept him waiting, she hurried out the door. She was surprised to find Donald still there, patiently waiting to escort her.

  “I know where the situation room is,” she said.

  “And I know you’d rather take the long way round. No time for dallying today, Ms. Marov.”

  They walked briskly through the ship’s halls, passing many chattering crew members along the way. She tried to put on a happy face for them. They looked to her for information, for reassurance, for understanding. Most of them were blissful about the conclusion of the convoy’s mission. She didn’t want to disillusion them, put doubts in their minds and make them as anxious as she was. That wouldn’t be fair.

  It wasn’t the spotlight that bothered her so much as the knowing. The simple laws of SD travel meant they’d been away from Earth for nearly two thousand years, though less than three centuries had passed for the convoy.

  How much had changed from year 1 CE to 2000 CE? So many things were different between the two dates it was impossible to tally the alterations.

  And now here the convoy was, two millennia further still. She’d devoted her life to the memory of Earth, to all the data the archives possessed. But the official files ended when the convoy left. Her knowledge was only sound up to 2125, spotty until 2988, and nonexistent after that.

  The others knew that—intellectually, anyway. But either the majority didn’t understand what that meant for their re-arrival, or they didn’t want to think about it.

  She’d hoped that once they got closer the messages would start up again. Hell, everyone had hoped. It’s just the SDs, she’d told herself. Something wrong with the system. Earth will answer when we get back in range. It’ll be there.

  It’ll be there.

  No messages during her grandparents’ time. None during her parents. None still.

  The logical conclusion, the one everyone came to first but couldn’t bring themselves to mention until last . . . Was that humanity had gone.

  Did they kill themselves fighting it out to the end in some massive global war? Had an asteroid hit? Had a super volcano exploded? Had the core seized up? Had the magnetic field failed?

  Had they simply piled into rocket ships and sailed away to the stars?

  “Hello, Nika.” The shy greeting from Reggie Straifer shook her out of her fear-inducing thoughts.

  “Oh, hello, Reggie.” She smiled sincerely as they passed each other. He wore maintenance-worker white—the mark of a genetic line once discontinued but now on perpetual parole.

  Poor Reggie. His genes had fallen from grace. Like all those whose genetics held a fatal flaw, he’d been educated to the hilt, but raised as a maintenance worker. It was a safe, reliable position. No one could get into much trouble wielding a mop and broom.

  Reggie was a sweet, intelligent man, someone Nika had always desired to know better. But he was white-suited and she was purple. And it was uncouth for any other color of uniform to fraternize with the resurrected lines in this newly stratified society.

  When Nika and Matheson reached the situation room, Matheson gave a little bow and left. The door automatically slid open. Captain Rodriguez sat alone at the long, familiar table, staring at a blank monitor. His large hands were folded thoughtfully before him, and his wide nose flared with deep breaths.

  Nika briefly followed his gaze—nope, nothing there—before taking a seat. She didn’t speak.

  “I’m worried,” he said, rubbing his small, weary eyes. “About what they’ll think of the Web.”

  “The Web? That—that’s not my department. Matheson said you wanted to compose another hail, though. Shall I get the head of Engineering in here as well?” That would be a relief.

  “No. I need you. I’ve been thinking about how they’ll take it: knowing there was once, and could still be, another advanced civilization out there. What if we come back to a planet full of warmongering, xenophobic, neo-Nazis who’ll want nothing more than to head back out and blow the Web to bits?”

  Nika looked down at her lap, where her fidgeting fingers picked at each other. “And I thought I had wild ideas.”

  “You know what I’m getting at. What if they think it’s a threat?”

  She looked up again, stilling her hands. “So what? If they’re all neo-Nazis, we’ve got more immediate issues.”

  “I don’t think the rest of the convoy can so easily dismiss the Web’s fate.” With a sigh, he stood and turned his back on her. “You understand why most people are so excited, don’t you? Yes, it’s the end of a pilgrimage, but it’s also a beginning. They think the discovery will be lauded to the skies; they’re expecting parades and awards. What if we get marching orders instead? What if we’re to lead the charge back to LQ Pyx? Back to destroy the Web?”

  “How am I supposed to help with this?” she asked, her tone probing—cautious. She was a historian, not an officer—not even a board member.

  He turned back and leaned across the table, his expression rigid. “Do you think it’ll happen? Do you think we can convince Earth otherwise?”

  “Captain—” she cleared her throat “—there are so many variables in play that it is nearly impossible for me to predict what their society—” She stopped short. It was the twitch of his left eyelid that reined her in. His stress levels were stratospheric. Written across his face was imagined pain—the pain he thought the crew would experience, should they be ordered to destroy the discovery. “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t think that’ll happen. Curiosity almost always overcomes fear.” And that’s why I won’t hide in my room when we land . . .

  “Almost,” he repeated with a sigh.

  “I wish I could tell you there’s a fluffy utopia down there, where everyone gets along and sings ‘Kumbaya.’ But I can’t. I can’t sugarcoat this for you or pretend to know something I don’t. Maybe if they hadn’t stopped responding to our communiqué packages a thousand years ago we would know something about them. But we don’t.”

  “You realize this isn’t a homecoming, don’t you?” he said sternly.

  “I know,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “It’s First Contact.”

  They’re just people, she had to remind herself. Even if we’re millennia apart, be we convoy member or Earth born, we’re all people.

  But that was just it, wasn’t it? She didn’t deal with people—she dealt with articles and papers and primary documents and essays and old photographs and maps. She didn’t deal with people.

  Why had the genetic screeners thought her well suited for history and diplomacy? She wasn’t an ambassador. She could spend weeks locked up in her office with nothing but ‘flex-sheets and tablets to keep her company and not for a second feel lonely. But put her in a crowd of people for too long and she’d climb the wall fixtures to escape.

  People were great when they’d already done things. They weren’t so great when they were doing things—especially in Nika’s vicinity.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like people—she just didn’t like a lot of them at once.

  And landing on a planet with billions . . . and billions . . .

  Deep breaths.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and straightened her uniform. The captain had invited her to a special dinner. Selective members of the board and his staff would be there. Though he’d spun it as a relaxing night of socialization, she knew he had more practical reasons for throwing the get-together. He wanted to discuss possibilities on a more casual level.

  The private dining room sat off the mess. She gave a nod to her usual meal-mates as she strode by, and spared a glance for the White Corner, where those with repurposed genes ate. Reggie sat there, bent over his food tray, apparently consumed in the act of consuming.

  The only other department known for keeping separate from the rest of the convoy was Security—especially those who were part of the hypergrowth program. They didn’t eat in the mess hall at all. At least, Nika’d never seen them there.

  She knocked before entering the private dinin
g room. Captain Rodriguez beckoned her. “Come.”

  “Oh, I—” She stopped just inside the door. No one was in uniform. The captain had gone so far as to don a T-shirt. “Sir, when you said casual, I didn’t realize you meant—” She waved her hand flippantly.

  “Doesn’t matter, Marov. Sit.”

  The room was no more elaborate or glamorous than the rest of the mess. It was simply more private. Nika took a chair between Margarita Pavon and Nakamura Akane.

  The food arrived moments later, arranged in slightly more appealing patterns than the normal scoop-and-slap of mess hall service. Chicken curry—but nothing like Earth chicken curry in terms of its prep and origins—oozed on the plate before her. It sent a noxious zing through her nose.

  She hated curry, but wasn’t about to make a fuss over it tonight.

  Utensils clicked and clattered. Captain Ahmad from Eden sounded like a dishwasher when she chewed. Small talk inundated the pauses between bites, but eventually Rodriguez said, “So, we can’t see Earth yet. No telling what it might look like. Shall we start a betting pool?” His tone was playful, but it had a hard edge.

  “What happens if they aren’t there?” asked Pavon. “I know we’ve been avoiding the question during board meetings because the notion has nothing to do with the mission. But if we get there and the planet is ruined—or, at least, the people are gone—the mission is over.”

  “Then we’ll be released from our duties and have to design a new destiny for ourselves,” Rodriguez said, all humor set aside. “And if humanity really is gone, there’s no rush. No need to form an instant plan of action.”

  “Who says?” Nakamura jumped in. “It’ll all depend on what’s there, not what’s not there.”

  “Please elaborate.”

  “There could be something there that constitutes an immediate danger.”

  “Quite right, which is why we already have emergency action plans in place for the entire convoy. I’m talking long-term. We might not know what our options are until we get there. If the planet is healthy, we might be able to recolonize—but how we go about it will depend on the variables we find.”