by Nancy Kress
And might not get any. Marianne had never seen such tight security, except on the Embassy. She spent a fair amount of time on the computers in the mess, even though she knew her every keystroke was monitored. She found no information whatsoever about Luke, whom Stubbins said was “found in an orphanage.” Luke, like Colin, was able to hear in infrasonic and ultrasonic ranges. What did Stubbins want with him? What did Stubbins want with Colin?
She couldn’t ask him directly. Ever since her first morning here, when he’d come to the kids’ classroom (and why do that personally?), he’d been off-site. Judy didn’t know where.
“Washington, maybe,” she said. “David Chin keeps everything rolling along.”
They sat outside Marianne’s barracks on utilitarian metal folding chairs, there being nothing as frivolous as lawn chairs available, in a gorgeous November sunset. Both women huddled in heavy sweaters but the sunset was too good to miss. Gold, red, and an orange like ripe fruit faded slowly from the western horizon. The first stars pricked the dark blue above. A short distance off, Allison supervised the three boys, who climbed on a pallet of metal girders. The children became silhouettes against the sky, and a soft breeze brought, instead of the usual machine oil and dust, a fugitive scent of wild grapes. A hawk wheeled in the sky.
“I don’t see how World could be any lovelier than this,” Marianne said, before she knew she was going to say anything at all. The next moment she thought of what a small percentage of Earth this represented, while so much of the rest of it was struggling, starving, flooding, rioting, or all of the above. The Internet news just got worse and worse. She didn’t say any of this. Why spoil the moment?
Judy was hunched over an embroidery hoop, of all things; she said that embroidering flowers relaxed her. People were endlessly surprising in their hidden corners.
Marianne said, “How can you even see what you’re doing? The light’s mostly gone.”
“Yeah. I’ve pricked my finger twice.” She folded up her work and said abruptly, “Why do you think Stubbins is so hot to go to World?”
“I’ve wondered about that myself. I imagine he smells profit. He’s proven to have a good nose for it.”
“A lame pun. But profit of what kind? You know him better than I do, Marianne.”
“I don’t think anybody really knows him.”
“Yeah. ‘A grand, ungodly, godlike man,’” Judy said, making air quotes with both hands. Her embroidery slipped off her lap and fell onto the ground.
Marianne said, “I don’t recognize the quote.”
“Ah, you scientists. Deficient in the humanities.”
“Come on, Judy—you’re a scientist, too.”
“Yes, but only by default. I wanted to be an English professor.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“An overcrowded and underpaid field. But Melville remains my first love.”
“So—Ahab,” Marianne guessed.
“Correct. Ahab and our very own silver whale. As long as I don’t end up being Ishmael.”
“Let me ask you something,” Marianne said, because she’d been wondering on and off. “Do you think Stubbins uses those pheromone concoctions of his—I’m In Charge or whatever it’s called—to get people to come here and carry out his wishes?”
“You’re not the first to ask. My opinion is no, but who understands where the line is between pheromonal influence and the power of suggestion? Or the lure of plain old power? It isn’t—Uh-oh, visitors to the Pequod, escorted by the captain himself.”
Three figures emerged from the dusk. Stubbins hit a wall switch behind Marianne and a floodlight shattered the sweet gloom. Marianne blinked in the sudden harsh light, waiting for her eyes to adjust. When they had, she blinked again.
Oh, the poor things!
The woman and child with Stubbins, clearly mother and daughter, were both incredibly ugly. They had sallow skin, lips so thin they almost disappeared, and small eyes set too close together. Both of their lower faces sloped back so abruptly that they seemed to have no chins. The girl, who looked about six, also had a low forehead covered with bangs, so that her nose seemed to fill her entire truncated face.
“Marianne, Judy, meet my fiancée, Belinda Parker, and her daughter Ava. We got ourselves engaged this morning.”
It was a moment before Marianne could find her voice. Until three months ago, Stubbins had been married to an ex–super model, the fourth Mrs. Stubbins. All his wives except the first had been leggy blondes, so perfect in face and body that they scarcely seemed human. If Stubbins was engaged to Belinda, she must have something he desperately wanted. More money? Was he running out of funds to finish and launch the starship? But if Belinda was an heiress or ultra-rich widow, why hadn’t she paid for plastic surgery for, if not herself, this pathetic child?
Manners took over. Marianne stood and held out her hand. “Congratulations, both of you. Welcome to the Venture, Belinda.”
“Thank you.” The woman, unsmiling, studied Marianne and Judy. Ava gazed down at her shoes, which looked orthopedic. Judy rose and added her congratulations, her eyes glowing with curiosity.
Stubbins said, “Ava, here comes your teacher, lil’ darling. And here come your classmates. Hooboy, Ms. Blake, you’re sure enough going to have your hands full now! Jason, Colin, Luke, Ava.” He pointed to each as if choosing melons at a fruit stand.
The four children stared at each other. This is not going well, Marianne thought.
“You wanna play a video game?” Jason asked, and in his voice Marianne heard the echo of his uncle Noah, always quick to compassion. “We got Ataka! That means ‘attack’!”
Ava said, “Nah.” And then, fiercely, “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you. C’mon, Luke and Colin, let’s teach her.”
The boys started indoors. Ava didn’t move. Marianne waited for Belinda to say something like, “Go on, honey,” but Belinda said nothing. Finally Stubbins said, “Go on now, lil’ darlin’, y’all have fun with your new lil’ friends.”
Ava raised her face to glare at him, then followed Jason. Belinda continued to study Marianne. Finally she said, “Yer grandkids? They can hear spirits, too, huh? What’d he promise you to get here? How high was yer price?”
Judy’s eyes widened. Belinda raised her left hand. On the fourth finger gleamed a huge diamond, glinting in the floodlight. Belinda’s misshapen face looked as fierce as her daughter’s, but in the woman’s eyes shone the light of pure, unadulterated crazy.
* * *
The new girl looked strange. Luke was slow in his head—Grandma had explained it carefully—and Colin was a bad person because he’d deliberately hurt Paul with that tree branch, maybe even killed him although everybody said no. Ava wasn’t slow or bad—at least, if she was, he didn’t know it yet—but she was really ugly. All three of them weren’t normal, only Jason was. But the starship camp was a good place for people who weren’t normal, because here everybody was kind. So Colin had to be kind to Ava.
“We got an extra remote,” Jason said, handing it to her and plopping himself down on the floor before the big computer screen. “This game is Russian but it’s not hard to understand. First you gotta pick a character…”
Ava hit the remote from his hand and it fell on the floor. “I don’t wanna play.”
“Okay, what do you wanna do?”
“I’ll play. I’m just telling you I don’t wanna.”
Luke looked bewildered. “If you don’t wanna, then why—”
“Stubbins says I have to. You was there. Are you a retard or something?”
“Hey,” Jason said, at the same moment that Luke said simply, “Yes.”
Ava’s face changed. She peered at Luke from her small eyes and then turned on Jason. “And what’s wrong with you?”
Jason said, “You apologize to Luke!”
“It’s okay,” Luke said.
“No, it isn’t. We don’t call people derogatory names!” Jason said. Colin recognized Grandma
’s words.
Ava said, with unexpected meekness, “Sorry, Luke. But you’re a … you’re slow, and I’m ugly. So what’s the problem, you two?”
Colin saw that Ava was making a club, like the clubs at his old school. Paul had a club at recess and he’d said that Colin couldn’t belong. But Colin and Jason belonged here, and so did Luke. If Luke was in this club of people with problems, then Colin wanted to be, too. He had to tell Ava something, or she and Luke would be in the club and he and Jason would not.
“Well?” Ava demanded.
Jason said, “We don’t have any problems!” Which wasn’t true. Colin didn’t want his brother to be a liar, and he did want to be in the club. So he said, “I hear things.”
“What things? Voices? Like my mother? My mother is wacko. She hears angels and demons.”
Colin blinked. But he’d started this, and he was going to finish it. “Not voices. I hear the ground.”
Ava’s squinty little eyes widened and her mouth fell open. One tooth was black. “Really? You’re fucking with me!”
More words Grandma wouldn’t like, but Colin let it go. “No. It’s the truth. I can hear the ground. So can Luke. And plants, too,” he added, in case the ground wasn’t enough to get him into the club. As soon as he was in, he’d figure out how to get Jason in, too.
Ava swung her head to look at Luke, then back at Colin. And then she burst into sobs. She covered her face with her hands and sunk to the floor, sitting on the remote. She sobbed and sobbed, and after a moment of fright, Luke reached out with his big pale hand and patted her skinny hunched back, over and over.
CHAPTER 21
S plus 6.5 years
Two months later, the ship was nearly complete. Workmen riveted and shouted in the main compartments, engineers tested displays on the pristine bridge, everyone viewed the containers being loaded into the hold. There were a lot of these, including food, mostly freeze-dried, for twenty-one people for three months.
Marianne said to Judy, “How do you know you need three months? Or twenty-one people?”
“We don’t.” Judy’s fingers flew over a keyboard, crunching some data incomprehensible to Marianne. They had stopped by Judy’s “office,” a cubicle in the raw-wood building closest to the ship. Everyone called the building “the command center,” although the commander, Jonah Stubbins, and his second, David Chin, actually worked elsewhere. This cavernous, ugly building was filled with scientists and engineers, working furiously on computers or arguing tensely across cheap conference tables. There were a lot of arguments. Marianne, who had never been around so much as a garden shed being built, let alone a starship from plans nobody fully understood, had begun to think the Venture would never get off the ground. Not unless it could be fueled by sheer hot air.
She said, “You don’t know how long it will take to get to World?”
“Wait just a moment … I just have to … there.” Judy turned her attention to Marianne. Judy looked tired, the broad planes of her face drawn down in sags. She wore overalls and another of her exquisitely embroidered silk shirts; the effect was of the world’s richest handyman. “We’re pretty sure the star drive distorts the fabric of space-time and that it won’t take much time at all to arrive at World. Of course, ‘not much time at all’ is a matter of debate, like everything else around here. But we don’t know how long we need to be there, or who will stay on the ship, or what. There are sleeping cubicles in the design for twenty-one people, so twenty-one people go.”
“From everything I’ve read, Terran space travel was planned with ships that were self-sufficient biosystems, at least as much as possible. Hydroponic tanks for growing food, algae-based air scrubbing, waste recycling. The Venture doesn’t have that.”
“There will be plants aboard,” Judy said.
“But it won’t be a sustainable closed biosystem.”
“We never got that to work even on Earth. You know that, Marianne.”
“So that means that nobody stayed aboard the mother ship when the Denebs came to New York seven years ago. It was empty.”
“That seems to be what it means, yes.” Judy grinned, a weary grin. “I know what you want to ask. So ask it.”
“Okay. Who are the twenty-one?”
“Nobody knows. Stubbins isn’t saying. Except, of course, for David Chin.”
“Do you want to go?”
Judy gave her a duh look. “Of course I want to go. Everybody here—well, most everybody—wants to go. But I don’t think my chances are good, not for the first trip. We’re all hoping for subsequent trips. What we want is a bus route to the stars, with regularly scheduled commuter routes. Don’t you want to go?”
Marianne said slowly, “I don’t know. Noah is there, but Ryan and Elizabeth and the boys are here, and—”
“I forgot—you’re a breeder. Well, that does tie you to terra firma, doesn’t it?”
“Judy, why am I really here? What does Stubbins want with Luke and Ava and Colin?”
Judy grasped Marianne’s shoulder. “Put on your coat and let’s go on over to the mess. I’m starving.”
Outside, Judy spoke in a low voice as rapid as her stride. For a short woman, she could move amazingly fast. “Nobody knows what Stubbins wants with those kids. Believe me, there’s a lot of speculation. Luke’s been here since site selection. So you tell me: What’s special about these three kids? Is it true that they can hear in infrasonic and ultrasonic ranges?”
“It’s true of Colin and Luke. I don’t know about Ava. She doesn’t talk to me.”
“She doesn’t talk to anyone but the other kids. A prickly pear, that one. But Stubbins wanted her badly enough to pretend he’s going to marry her mother. He never will, of course. Why don’t you ask him why he wants these kids? You’re the one with a right to know.”
“God, I’ve tried!” Marianne said. “I can’t get to him. When he’s on site, and I actually succeed in finding him, he’s rushing off to somewhere else, hollering folksy crap at me over his shoulder. ‘Catch you soon, lil’ lady!’ And Belinda—she’s not here, either. She’s off getting reconstructive surgery for her face, which was apparently her price for coming here. Ava’s next.”
“Well, that’s good. That poor kid needs—What the fuck?”
Sirens sounded all over camp: three short blasts and one long, over and over. Security had conducted extensive drills; this pattern meant “not a drill”! Marianne, with Judy panting behind her, took off at a dead run for the underground bunker where Allison Blake would take the children. The bunkers were small and crude, except for communications, but they could protect everybody from anything less than ballistic missiles.
The attackers had ballistic missiles.
Packed into the rocky caverns, shivering without their coats, the four children pressed close to her and Allison. Marianne put her coat around Colin and Ava, the smallest two, without taking her eyes off the bunker’s LAN-fed TV. The ground underneath her was hard and damp; moisture dripped along the walls; Ava clutched Marianne’s arm hard enough that the girl’s untrimmed nails drew pinpoints of blood. Marianne felt none of it. Her gaze never left CNN.
Minutes ago a short-range tactical missile—“possibly a Scud” said the visibly shaken newscaster—had hit the California site of SpaceX. Images of twisted wreckage, burning buildings. On the Internet, credit was being claimed by ACWAK, No Contact with Alien Killers.
Judy said raggedly, “A Scud! Those things can carry nuclear warheads. This one must’ve carried only conventional explosives … ‘only,’ Christ, listen to me … fuck them to hell!”
Marianne said, “How could an American hate group get a Scud?”
“Oh, fuck, Marianne, the Russians sold them to everybody. Congo had Scuds. They’ve been drifting around ever since, sold and resold on the black market. They can be launched from mobile launchers and their accuracy within, say, fifty miles isn’t too bad. Although these fuckers got really lucky, the—”
Colin said in a small voice, “You
’re saying bad words.”
“Sorry, kid.”
Jason said, “Is that spaceship all the way wrecked?”
“Yes,” Marianne said. She pried Ava’s nails off her hand. But we’re completely safe, she wanted to say—but was it true? She turned her full attention to the children.
“Listen, all of you. Mr. Stubbins has really, really good security here. You know that. I don’t think any missiles will ever get to his ship. We’re—”
“But you ain’t all the way sure,” Ava said, with a mixture of defiance and fear that tore at Marianne’s heart.
“No,” she said. “Nobody can know exactly. But I’m pretty sure, and meanwhile we’re going to stay down here until the all-clear sounds.”
Allison said, “Yes, and we’re going to play a game. See—I’ve got the Fantasy Fighters deck right here. It’s like online, only more fun. Ava, what character do you want to be?”
Ava said, “Snot Thrower.”
Marianne watched Allison skillfully engage all four children, arranging them with their backs to the TV. Bless Allison. Marianne turned back to the screen. Initial reports put at least twenty-seven dead at the SpaceX site. The ship was a total loss.
There had been seven “Deneb ships” being built in the world. Now there were six.
* * *
The missile had been a modified SS-1e Scud-D, carrying a high-explosive warhead, fired from a mobile launcher twenty-five kilometers away. The launcher was quickly found. The three men on it were dead by their own hands. They wore ACWAK uniforms.
