The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “Jerome, I really need to discuss with you these chickens. That needs to be in a private place,” Sandie whispered.

  “Your spirit-ghost is impressed with our chickens. Yes, that is understandable. The chickens provide meat, eggs, and feathers which we use in so many ways. Let me show you the egg separator.”

  “So where is engineering?” Jerome asked. “I really need to get there as soon as possible. Remember, that child said my companion was here.”

  “The door, or is it a set of doors? Well, the place I told you about is at the far side of the hatchery. We will need to pass through the egg separator, and the mating place. From what Derrick said, your companion is already here and will be with Fedders. He would never let a stranger wander unescorted around the hatchery.”

  They walked through the brooder room, into the foyer of the place where Dick said eggs were separated. There were clear windows and Jerome saw many of the meter-high birds through those. There were several people walking about, back there, holding baskets and gathering the fist-sized tan and speckled eggs. Jerome walked over to the window and peered in. He watched intently. The chickens were climbing about on shelves which were covered by woven nests. The nest contained two eggs each, and the people were assessing the nest and removing the smaller of the two eggs. The chickens were not happy about this process and were using their yellow and black beaks to strike out at the egg separation people.

  “I thought you wanted to go to the engineering doors,” Dick stated smugly. “I know our facility is utterly fascinating, and I am willing to give you’re a proper tour, but we will need to go back and start at the brooder house. Otherwise…”

  “Yes, sorry. Please lead on to where Cammarry is located. I just have never seen chickens before.” Jerome waved his hands.

  “Well, since you are not of the Chicken People, it is understandable that you have not seen the live chickens before. Are there no feral chickens in the land where you and your parents live?”

  “I can honestly say, no. There are no chickens where I come from.”

  “A pity. So you must trade for everything.” Dick walked onward. “Follow me, I will lead you to my brother Fedders. I am sure he will know where this other person is.”

  The hallway which ran past the mating place, had several of the open chutes where the birds could run back and forth. Jerome did not see any more of them, but their presence was noted by the smell and the incessant squawking which came out from the open chutes.

  Cammarry and a man who looked nearly identical to Dick came walking up, with the boy Derrick in the lead. He was babbling on and on about wizards, women, chickens, men, and strangers.

  “Cammarry! Are you safe?” Jerome asked as he raced forward and threw his arms around her. “I was so very worried about you.”

  Cammarry embraced him, but then heard Shadow say, “He followed you here for a reason.”

  “I am doing our job,” Cammarry answered. “How did you avoid the radiation?”

  “Radiation?” Jerome pulled away and was instantly alert. “Sandie? Did we encounter any radiation?”

  “None that I could observe beyond the safe background levels already recognized on the Conestoga,” Sandie answered.

  “Sandie! I am sorry I lost the com-link.” Cammarry looked down at the floor.

  “I have it for you,” Jerome said and pulled it out from his backpack. He handed it to Cammarry.

  “Is it safe? I dropped it when I fell in that hallway which was flooding with radiation,” Cammarry resisted accepting the com-link.

  “It is safe,” Sandie added. “I am not sure what you mean about radiation, but the com-link was left in the ESRC.”

  “Yes, Cammarry, that is where we found it. You must have lost it when you were injured,” Jerome said. “But you have it now and it does not matter where it was lost. We are together again, and we are near to engineering. Is your arm healed? I could connect the medical kit if needed.”

  “You know where you lost the com-link. He knows your arm is healed. What is he really trying to do?” Shadow stated, but only Cammarry heard.

  Cammarry was unsure what to do or think. She then just hugged Jerome more tightly. “I am so glad we got back together.”

  “Me too.”

  Cammarry squeezed Jerome again and then said, “This man Fedders refuses to let me into engineering. The doors are shut, but he will not even let me touch them.”

  “Of course not!” Fedders roared. “There might very well be rats inside there, and we must protect the hatchery.”

  Dick stepped forward. “My dear little brother….”

  “Do not give me that little brother nonsense. Eight minutes apart is nothing!” Fedders spoke overly loud as he stared at his brother.

  Jerome and Cammarry were amazed at how much the two brothers looked alike, yet they acted so differently.

  Dick spoke calmly. “We can allow these people to open that door. We are both here, and with Derrick, and these two helping, any rat that might try to enter will be skewered immediately. That will give us a free meal.”

  “Absolutely not!” Fedders roared back. “We have never opened those doors, and we never will.”

  “It is about time we open them. It only has to be a moment to let these two strangers exit,” Dick stated. His brother’s ranting did not disturb him in any way.

  Fedders roared his response, and the argument continued. One brother ranting and raving while the other responded in calm and relaxed ways.

  Derrick stood by watching. He was joined by several other young people, both boys and girls. They all were dressed similarly, and some were holding permalloy bars about a half meter long. Cammarry was struck by the difference in ages of the small crowd that had gathered. These young people were not five years apart like the age-mates always were in Dome 17. They looked to be all under twelve years old, or so, but some looked ten, or nine.

  Jerome was concentrating on the argument, trying to estimate who was winning. He could tell the quarrel was going to last a long time, so he leaned back against the wall to wait.

  “You must get to engineering,” Shadow whispered to Cammarry. “These fools will never allow you to proceed. Why are you waiting?”

  Cammarry stepped back away from where the young people were standing, and sidled along the wall back toward where she knew the doors to engineering were located.

  “I completely refuse!” Fedders yelled. “Mother and father should have never allowed you to know you were born first. It has just made you a rotten egg!”

  In a steady and controlled voice, Dick replied, “Better a rotten egg than mere feathers blowing in the ventilation shafts. Father was right about you. Remember when you…”

  “How dare you!”

  The argument continued as Fedders marched round and round shaking his fists and waving his arms madly. Dick got verbal jabs in via his still small voice, which further enraged Fedders.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jerome caught Cammarry sneaking away. He quickly and quietly joined her.

  “When the quarrel is lost, slander and insults become the tools of the loser. In this instance, no one wins,” Jerome said as he joined Cammarry.

  They walked unnoticed to the rear most part of the chicken hatchery. There they discovered a set of bulkhead doors which were striped in blue and gold colors. ‘Engineering’ was engraved in the permalloy above the egress.

  “I am getting into engineering,” Cammarry said.

  “Action is eloquence. I am with you. We are in this together,” Jerome replied.

  Cammarry pulled her molecular torch out of her backpack.

  “We should let Sandie try first,” Jerome said and pulled the cable from his com-link. He jacked it into an access port.

  Cammarry looked at her hands and realized she was still holding the com-link and the printed out route. She placed the com-link on her ear and folded up the route and slid it into one of the pockets of her RAM pants. “If Sandie cannot get the doors to open, we
cut our way in immediately.”

  “You are sure eager,” Jerome stated, but then he spoke to the AI. “Sandie, can you open these doors?”

  “I am assessing the nonphysicality now,” Sandie answered.

  The left side door slid back into a recess about half a meter. It groaned loudly which was followed by crunching and creaking noises. It stalled part way open.

  Cammarry slipped into the darkness beyond. Jerome pulled the cable from the access port and quickly followed.

  “Hey! They opened the doors!” The boy Derrick yelled. He was the only one who had not been focused on the argument so he witnessed what Cammarry and Jerome had done.

  “What!” Dick yelled for the first time in the verbal altercation. “They did!”

  “I told you brother! Come on everyone! We must stop all rats from entering!” Fedders rallied all the young people.

  “I am so sorry Fedders. I should have listened to you. You always were the most realistic!” Dick stated as he too rushed toward where Jerome and Cammarry were escaping. “I will help keep our home safe.”

  The open door to engineering snapped shut with a nearly deafening clang as it locked into its twin. The young people, led by Fedders and Dick looked diligently for any traces of rats entering the chicken hatchery. They found nothing. The mysterious place called engineering had swallowed up the two strange visitors, wizards, and both Fedders and Dick were pleased they were gone.

  10 what was found in engineering

  Jerome and Cammarry stood in darkness. There was a musty smell in the air, and the place they had found was warmer than the chicken hatchery.

  “Engineering? Did we find it?” Cammarry asked as she dug into her backpack and withdrew the fusion pack. Switching it on, the beam penetrated the darkness and displayed a lot of dust on the air.

  “No plants?” Jerome commented as he looked around the rectangular vestibule. The walls were a dull bluish green, but there was no sign of any plant life or any growth medium. The room was about ten meters deep with another door on the far wall, and five meters wide, with a pitched ceiling overhead. Some pipes ran along the ceiling at the top. There were several ventilation shafts with their grilles locked closed.

  “No chickens either,” Cammarry said with a smile.

  “Jerome? Cammarry?” Sandie stated through both com-links. “Those animals in what the Chicken People called the hatchery were not chickens.”

  “What?” Jerome asked. “I know chickens were some kind of bird, and we saw them.”

  “Yes, we saw those chickens,” Cammarry insisted. “I know they were real.”

  “One pecked my leg. Of course they were real.”

  Sandie the AI replied, “Yes, the animals you saw were real. I am speaking about their nomenclature, and classification. They are not consistent with the historical record of what was called a chicken.”

  “Our records are limited, and the old world had weird ways of chronicling things,” Jerome said. “When history is written, it is not always accurate, as it is too often written with an agenda.”

  “Yes,” Sandie said. “Our records are limited, and much was lost in the Great Event and the turmoil surrounding that era, and yes historical records are subject to bias by those who recorded them. Nonetheless, I am convinced that those animals were not historical chickens.”

  “Well, what were they?” Cammarry asked.

  “I made multiple comparisons to the birds of the historical record, beginning with the animal routinely called the chicken. There were literally billions of those birds, with hundreds of different varieties and breeds. None of those are even close to the animal we observed. My conjecture is 98.87% that those birds were not a species of chicken, even if it had been evolving and or was enhanced by some kind of genetic revisions.” Sandie halted.

  “But you have not said what they are, and we have seen other things here that have been altered by the Conestoga’s crew or by the factors found on this ship,” Jerome said. “The mere presence of the plant life, and the goats, and rats we have already seen testify to that. Not to mention the effects of that strange Cosmic Crinkle we passed through.”

  “Yes, Jerome, we have seen modifications of the plants and animals, and there are unknown factors. Nonetheless, I have been studying them and comparing them to the historical record. The fruits appear to be simple biological hybrids of what were once widely available and commonly known fruits. The plants are modified, but in 98.6% of the foliage we have observed, I was able to identify the original species. I am less certain of the insect varieties, but there too a majority of the insect species are identifiable. In the case of those animals they call chickens, I am uncertain of their classification. That is vastly different from the plants, goats, rats, and insects. I can tell you these bird creatures are very likely of terrestrial origin, and I have made a tentative inference,” Sandie stated.

  “Terrestrial origin?” Cammarry asked. “You mean you considered they came from the planet we are orbiting?”

  “Yes,” Sandie answered. “I considered that possibility, but it is of a very low possibility. Instead, I reviewed the records and compared what I observed of those animals with all available records. After finding them highly unlikely to be any kind of chicken, I started the comparison with other known creatures: grebes, turkeys, emus, ostriches, cormorants, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis…”

  “Just tell me what they are?” Cammarry snapped angrily.

  “Yes, sorry. I was getting to that,” Sandie answered. “My best conjecture is that they are Raphus cucullatus, commonly called the dodo.”

  Jerome smiled and quoted, “Dodo said, ‘The best thing to get us dry would be a circus-race.’ I think that was what I read. Or was it the white rabbit who said that, or the jumjum birdie? It does not matter, for none of those animals were real, right? It is all just some entertaining fiction.”

  “That is an excellent question. I would have agreed with your suppositions about mythological or fabled animals before we observed these birds on the Conestoga. Jerome the records are limited, but I did find reference to an extant, although fragmentary, scientific paper. This fragment was found by the team of adventurers, Ken, Beth, and Hobart when they investigated Dome 9 and found the book collection outside the blast crater. It is the only known specimen from a journal called, ‘Technology Applied Today’ with the old-world date of November 24, 2038 which may shed light on this situation.”

  “We could certainly use more light on the Conestoga,” Cammarry stated.

  Sandie replied, “Yes, the dim nature of the light sources here are less than ideal. Back to the bird issue. In that article, which is titled ‘De-extinction Program Has Successes’ it describes a scientific process to recover extinct animals. Admittedly, there is only the one reference, which of course could be a fiction, or a hoax, or some other kind of propaganda. I conjecture that there is a 65% likelihood that the paper is legitimate. It described five species which were then extinct and were successfully retrieved from extinction using reconstituted DNA from various surviving tissue samples. Those animals included the thylacine, passenger pigeon, ibex, mammoth, and dodo. That paper states that the dodo went extinct circa 1700, but claims that there were twenty-four successful dodo hatchlings which survived. It is a fascinating report, even though we only have a fragmentary copy in the records. The article is incomplete and does not state the outcome of the project, but it claims to have been written when the five species were introduced to the world as being genuinely restored species. My conjectures are that the animal we observed, that the people on the Conestoga call a chicken, is actually a dodo.”

  “John would know about that,” Shadow whispered to Cammarry. “But it does not matter. You have found engineering, you need to now find the shuttles and make contact.”

  “Right,” Cammarry said. “Now to find the shuttles and get the communication gear working. Where will the shuttles be located?”

  “Sandie? Can you access deck plans or schematics?” Jerome
asked.

  “You should know already,” Cammarry said, referring to Shadow.

  There was no response from Shadow.

  Jerome thought Cammarry was speaking to Sandie the AI, so he asked, “Sandie? Do you know where the shuttles are located?”

  “The nonphysicality I last accessed was restricted to the area around the entry door. I will need to be reconnected to resurvey so as to find additional information,” Sandie answered.

  “You should already know! Come on! Answer me!” Cammarry snarled.

  Shadow said nothing.

  Jerome stepped over and tried to hug Cammarry. She pulled away. “We must finish the mission.”

  “Cammarry, perhaps we should camp here for a while. There are no animals, no plants, and the place is secure. We could rest here and then press on. When was the last time you slept? Ate?” Jerome asked.