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

by John Thornton

  “No. Your boat was one of the few that I have ever seen come here. No one wants to get crushed on the sea. The sea is not for boats or swimming anymore. Not as long as I have been alive. No the leftovers come by the roads, mostly. They sneak into your house at night then drag you away. They wrap you in a chain, and tie it to a block. Then, in the dark of the night, usually on a bright moon night, they toss your body into the sea at the end of the pier. You sink into the water, alone, cold, and that is how you die. The last of your air bubbles up to the surface.”

  Cammarry’s mouth hung open as she listened to Adeilson. The boy went on with his tale. “I come out here to watch and see. If you watch, sometimes you can see a body float up. They get all bloated and sometimes fall apart. Then they get loose from the chain and float to the surface. I watch for them. I saw one just the other day. I wonder what my body will do when the leftovers come to kill me.”

  “Is this town called Quady?” Jerome asked, trying to divert the subject from such a gruesome tale.

  “Quady? Yes the signs say it is Quady. No one calls it that anymore. People call it Death-town now. What with the crushers and the leftovers coming to kill us chosen siblings. The Ferryman says the crushers are here to dispense wrath on us all. No one is safe if you walk into a crusher.” He had no expression on his face as he went on. “A crusher is better than being killed by leftovers, but both end up the same. Alone in a crusher, or alone under the water, the end is the same. Dead.”

  “Is the Ferryman here?” Cammarry asked.

  “Sometimes. He brings the leftovers in by the roads. It can be the starboard road or the port road. It does not matter. Some say he lives in the walls and lets the leftovers enter from there. I have heard him calling out to the leftovers he brings here. He tells them which houses have a chosen sibling. Then that one is taken.”

  “Adeilson? What about your parents? They will protect you, right?” Cammarry asked.

  “No. All the parents are too sad, too scared, and too alone. No one protects anyone. They did not protect my three brothers, but left them to die. I am the chosen sibling, but now I wait for death. Why should they protect me now? I just remind them of their sins.” There was no emotion in the child’s voice. He was just stating facts. “Now that the water is back, they know what they did was wrong. Parents are all saying they should have waited. The sea is rising. Soon the water pumps will bring in water again to the factory to make it clean to drink. Fish will be back, and people will have enough to drink. The Ferryman says our parents deserve to suffer for what they did. Even if my brothers are dead, eaten by bears or big cats, the crushers will still get me. No one can stop the Ferryman’s predictions. The Ferryman is right, always right. Quady is Death-town.”

  Jerome walked over and touched Cammarry’s shoulder. He gestured and indicated they should leave. Cammarry’s lips quivered as she struggled to know what to do. So many thoughts were racing through her mind. With Jerome’s urging she stood and turned to walk away. Then she hesitated.

  “Maybe you two are Jerome and Cammarry?” The child said. “The Ferryman says those two are dangerous and need to be removed. They brought the crushers.” His voiced changed as he quoted the Ferryman. “Yes, Sandie, Cammarry, and Jerome, instruments to purge us from our sins.” Then it went back to his child-like, but emotionless tones. “That was the meaning in that repeated lesson, told over and over and over. For a while you could not be alone, that message was playing everywhere. You saw the parents tearing down the speaking boxes. They did not want to hear it anymore, but they know what it means. They cannot forget. They heard the message, they know the truth. Even if they can go back to silence, they cannot escape their guilt and shame. So says the Ferryman.”

  Cammarry’s heart was racing and pounding. She deeply wanted to comfort this child who spoke so strangely, yet he also was terribly frightening. The dull and resigned look in his eyes was haunting. His flat words were penetrating. His comments about the Ferryman were engrained in his heart.

  “What are the ‘crushers’?” Jerome asked.

  Adeilson pointed out over the sea. “There are three crushers out there I can see right now. On the water they flatten down the waves. On the land they crush down anything that walks or flies into them. Rip down houses after only a bit. The Ferryman says that here in Death-town there are more crushers than anywhere else. There are more crushers all the time and they are getting stronger and bigger.”

  “Why do you stay here?” Jerome asked. “Your parents could take you somewhere safe, away from the gravity…away from the crushers.”

  “Leave here? I have heard from some of the children that there are merry-go-round places, with pretty music and fun animals. I would like to see that, but I do not really think they exist,” Adeilson said rather wistfully. He shook his head sideways. “Just one more empty dream.”

  “They are real. I have ridden the carousel,” Cammarry said. “Jerome has as well. Your parents could take you somewhere and there are people who could point you to a carousel.”

  “What will it matter? Why? Leftovers will find me wherever I am, so why chase something that is just an empty dream? I might as well stay here. My parents do not care. They hardly look at me anymore, they just want to be alone, in silence. I remind them of the children they abandoned, so they mostly ignore me. Besides, I have always been here. Some parents brought their chosen sibling to live in Quady, they said this was so far away from Seron they would be safe. They told me of those carousels, but I was born here. Now it is Death-town. Crushers are here now, so there is no place to hide. The Ferryman says crushers and leftovers will kill all the parents and chosen siblings. Only he knows how to survive. He speaks to those who follow him.” He tossed a pebble. It sank into the water, making ripples. “You called him Jerome, so really you are that Jerome and Cammarry who brought the crushers.”

  “Can we help you somehow?” Cammarry asked. She wanted to reach out and hold him, but refrained. His manner, words, and the look on his face were unsuited to a child. The air of fatalism around him was thick.

  “No. No one can help me. The leftovers will either come and kill me soon, or they some later. The crushers will either get me soon, or they will get me later. Either way, I am dead.” He tossed another small pebble out into the sea. It plopped down and sank under the waves. The ripples of water passed out in concentric rings from where it had impacted. They got shorter as they got wider.

  Jerome tugged on Cammarry and they slowly walked away from the creepy child who was again throwing another pebble into the sea. When they got some distance away she asked, “How does he know what the Ferryman saying?”

  “Childish rumors,” Jerome answered. He was unsure if he said that to convince Cammarry or to convince himself. “Just rumors, gossip, and a wild imagination.”

  “I disagree. His words ring with the essence of things witnessed, not things imagined,” Cammarry replied. “We know children were left out to die, and you said something about Dewi and Nabila running off to follow the Ferryman. Are they going off to kill their parents?”

  “I just do not know. The roustabouts talked about it, and Bigelow went with them. The Ferryman is evil and wicked, but inciting the murder of children? Can that be?” Jerome flexed his hands in agitation. “We cannot do much now, with what limited things we have. Do a survey of what we know. It is all just strange incidents, rumors, and lack of Dome 17 technology. We need to get to Sandie. The map shows that the hanger bay is somewhere inside that wall. It is just to one side of a large place marked Gravity Manipulation Command.” He pointed to the enormous wall which rose up behind the ruins of the town of Quady. “Wandering through this town is certainly different than Seron or Wolf City.” His concerned expression changed as he looked lovingly at Cammarry. “The essence of beautiful things is consistency in variety. You and I will be consistent.”

  Cammarry touched his arm tenderly. “I am not sure how we can help that boy, or any of the others, until we do reconnect with S
andie and get our technology back in operation.” She patted her holster. “Only one weapon, and a few tools.”

  “We will find a way. That factory where the water pipes lead may be a place to start. If there is a way to get into the walls and corridors, it would probably be in there.” He looked over at the crowd who had just finished smashing down another announcing box. They were milling about, sticks and poles in hand. He could no longer hear Sandie’s message.

  “Shall we get away before that crowd notices us?” Cammarry suggested.

  Hand in hand they sprinted down the lane toward the building that the child had indicated as where the water had once been processed. One end of it had a roof with tears and holes. Over the front doors the word ‘Desalination’ was embedded in the permalloy frame. The doors were standing partially open.

  “Hey! You there!” A man yelled. He was part of the crowd of people who had been vandalizing the speaker boxes. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “Look at that man’s clothing! I have not seen that before. They must be the ones!”

  “Oh dear, my RAM suit gives us away.”

  “No time to explain to that mob! Besides, they would not take time to listen to our story anyway,” Cammarry said.

  “Right. They are a bizarre bunch. They sabotage property but let their children get murdered. Maybe this place is even worse than Alpha.” Jerome pulled Cammarry into the Desalination factory.

  “That must be Jerome and Cammarry!” a woman in the crowd screamed. “They brought the crushers! If we kill them the crushers will leave!”

  “Get them! Find that one named Sandie who talks all the time. Kill them all. Turn over their bodies to the Ferryman!” Many others in the crowd called out similar things as they all surged toward the factory doors. Sticks, poles, and other tools were waved about by the mob.

  Jerome tried to shut the doors to the Desalination factory, but the hinges were rusted in place. He briefly considered drawing the Willie Blaster, but then remembered Cammarry had it on her waist.

  “The doors will not close!” Cammarry stated emphatically. She placed her had on the holster. She shook her head. “Not again. We best beat a hasty retreat.” She looked out over the interior of the factory. Her heart skipped a beat or two. She was reminded of Terraforming and Restoration. She had a huge feeling of déjà vu. “Jerome, there will not be vats, and tanks, like with Project Angel Food here, right?”

  “No. That was at the whole other end of Habitat Beta.” He took her by the hand. “Come on, we will find a way out. The rear of the factory must have egress to the corridors. We can cut our way out if necessary, and there is no way I will abandon you. No way!”

  Together they ran away from the doorway. The factory was a dull, rusty tan color on the inside. Slanted windows let in the light from the sky tube. Jerome’s mind kept thinking of the tan walls and how they reminded him of the images on the view screens which showed the exterior of Dome 17. He swallowed hard and controlled his breathing as they ran along. Large pipes came up from the floor, and they were consistent with the structure of the intake pipes they had seen down by the sea. Those pipe entered room-sized horizontal processing and initiator apparatuses. Those massive machines were inside a housing framed in permalloy which was intact. The weaker metals in the mechanisms, like steel, were rusted and encrusted over with particles. The blades, turbines, and coils would never rotate on those machines again.

  Turning a corner, they found a small walkway which led directly toward the stern. At that junction, green graffiti had been sprayed making a large arrow and the words, ‘Almost there Hayward MacDonald’ across the wall.

  “Is that a sign?” Cammarry asked.

  “Like an omen, perhaps? Gratitude is the sign of a noble soul. I think we shall we go that way as well,” Jerome remarked.

  “The crowd behind us leaves us little choice, unless we fight our way through them. I am not eager to do that again.” Cammarry grabbed Jerome’s hand and they raced away.

  The sky tube light from the windows and broken roof cast a gloomy, shadowy and melancholy milieu all around the back of the factory. Dust puffed up from where their running feet struck the floor. Again, that tan dust prompted Jerome to think of the dead world outside of Dome 17. He had to consciously force his body to breathe slowly as he ran. His grip on Cammarry’s hand was just as tight as hers on his.

  “Where are they?” a voice from the crowd came echoing from back by the door.

  “Who would come in here?” Another called out. “Maybe this is where they control the crushers?”

  “Or that noisy one, Sandie lives in here!”

  “At least we stopped that incessant message from playing! The Ferryman will reward us for that!”

  The crowd’s words were angry and menacing.

  Jerome and Cammarry continued to run, further and further away from the door. The machinery was more densely packed together the further they plunged into the old factory. The sky tube lights from the slanting windows disappeared behind the machinery, and occasional light fixtures were all that illuminated their journey. Jerome pulled out his fusion pack and turned on its beam of light.

  They came to a place where the walkway turned back around on itself. The machinery here were almost completely covered in rusty, rough oxidation. The permalloy even had overgrowth of white, salty, crust on it in places. High above this section of the factory, the ceiling was missing. Artificial light flooded down but only from fixtures set around the damaged hole in the ceiling. Darkness was all that could be seen above and within the hole. The darkness had an odd depth to it. Those floodlights on the remaining ceiling around the hole only added to the strangeness.

  “We are inside the wall now. Not in the habitat any longer,” Cammarry observed. “That explains why above us it is now black, not lit by the sky tube.”

  The fusion pack light reflected off the dust floating in that air. The dust was causing a sort of grimy fog. The smell was bad with stagnant oil, rust, and other chemicals reeking out of the busted equipment. Jerome waved his hand before his face to free the air of the tan dust.

  “Not everything is broken,” Jerome said and nodded. A machine sat humming away, doing some unknown task. A pool of shiny blue fluids was surrounding the base of the vibrating machine where it sat into the back corner. The machine went all the way to the ceiling, roughly twenty meters high. Some of the ceiling over it was still covered by the roof, but most places were broken in and wreckage hung from various places overhead. One large beam of light, several meters wide, came down at an angle from a fixture high overhead. That brightness contrasted with the murky and shadowy areas around. Some long streaks of discoloration had dribbled down the machine’s sides. Those streaks had not quite obliterated the labeling, ‘Gravity Manipulation Works: Oscillator 6’.

  “This place did more than just purify salt water,” Cammarry stated as she looked over the factory’s equipment. “This is where gravity manipulation is done, or augmented. That old machinery might be where the fields for this area originate. Right here. Those are graviton stimulators, and I believe that large construct there is for blending gravity waves. Antique machines, for sure, but that looks like a microcepheidoidic alternation device, blending electromagnetics and with subatomic metamorphosis. Yes, that is a pseudobaryonic particle projector. This is where gravity manipulation is done, or part of it anyway. The energy is then channeled out to the various radiators, attractors, or repulsive plates of the habitat.” Cammarry stepped over several small pipes and walked toward the control board set on the side of the large machine marked ‘Oscillator 6’. She was about to step into the beam of light from above, when Jerome yelled.

  “Wait! No dust! Cammarry! No!” Jerome said as he looked at the broken ceiling, the damaged roof, and the rubble all round. “It is too symmetric! Gravity sink hole!” He lunged out and grabbed her roughly. Flexing his muscles, he pulled her backward. She stumbled over the pipes, but Jerome caught her.

  “No dust!
None in there! It must have been crushed in! See that roof damage? It is too round. The angles are too regular. Like it was cleaved open.” Jerome kept his grip on Cammarry but pointed with his other hand while he tipped his head. “Look at it from that angle.” He waved his hand at an angle along the line of the damage. “I did not see it at first, but remembered the tilted places where we first docked to Beta. How strong is the gravity in that diagonal hole. The one between here and that still functioning oscillator? Look at how the permalloy is severed! There is no dust floating. None!”

  “You are right!” Cammarry remarked as she too stared at the area. She bent down and picked up pieces of debris. The chunk of steel was about palm sized, and she lobbed it up and over toward where the light was shining down. It flew in a neat arc for a moment and then abruptly dropped almost directly along that same angle as the light and clanged into the floor. It did not bounce or roll at all, but just stuck to the floor. “Wow! That would hurt so badly!”

  “It might easily kill you.” Jerome wiped his forehead of the sweat beading there. “We will gather up some other chunks to toss ahead of us. But watch for the dust. That was what alerted me first. To think, dust saved our lives. Outside Dome 17, dust was the enemy, here it is our ally and friend, giving us a sign.”