by J. J. Green
“Wise words,” Garwin said. “And I’ll also say, the Woken have friends among us. Though I’m not one of them.” He grinned broadly, eliciting some laughs. “So be careful who you speak to. Is there anything else you’d like to say, Ethan?”
“No, I’m done for now.”
“Right.” He addressed the room. “Going forward, I think we should hold each meeting at a different place, day, and time. Between now and the next meeting, we need to watch and learn everything we can about what the Guardians and the Woken are doing. Everyone: watch, listen, and remember. Don’t make a record of anything except in your own heads. Don’t write anything down. The next meeting is… ” He gave the details. “Finally, farmers, don’t give up your weapons. Thanks, everyone. Until next time.”
The meeting began to break up. Those nearest the door slipped out. The rest waited, chatting before leaving in small numbers at irregular intervals so that their movements weren’t too noticeable. Garwin spoke to Ethan about the inner circle of Gen insurgents. As Ethan listened, he was surprised to discover that certain Gens had banded together months previously, even before Arrival, and begun preparations to fight the Woken, guessing they would try to assume control.
“The only thing we didn’t factor into the equation,” Garwin said, “was the Guardians. It was quite a surprise when they turned up.”
“A pleasant surprise at the time,” Ethan said, recalling how it was only through a Guardian’s intervention that he was saved from a grisly death.
“Maybe. They’ve shown their hand since then.”
“I can’t disagree,” Ethan replied. “But I think something else is missing from your equation: the Natural Movement. What about them? Where do they fit into all of this?”
“I confess that we don’t have that figured out yet. Who they are, how many they are, whether they’re Woken or Gens—we’re as much in the dark as anyone else.”
Ethan wasn’t sure if it was due to the man’s convincing speeches on both the Woken and the Gen sides, or due to something more subtle about his manner, but he didn’t think that Garwin was being entirely open.
Someone tapped Ethan on his shoulder, signaling that it was his turn to leave. He said goodbye to Garwin and went out. It was dusk and the shelf clouds had risen higher, looming swollen and black over the small town.
When Ethan arrived at the farmers’ hostel, a Guardian was awaiting him. She told him he had to surrender his gun.
Chapter Nine
As far as Cariad knew, she was the first of the colonists who had been invited aboard the Mistral. At least, she’d never heard of anyone going to the Guardians’ ship before, and that news would have spread through the colony like wildfire.
The Mistral’s shuttle had arrived for her not long after she received the comm from Strongquist. He’d said that he wanted to talk to her the stadium bombing and that it would be more convenient if she were to go to the Mistral. With Nova Fortuna’s reproductive facilities mothballed and human reproduction planetside only just starting up, she was at a loose end and eager to help with the investigation. She was also eager to learn more about the mysterious Guardians and their intentions.
The colonists’ relationship with the Guardians had never been formalized. No agreements made or guarantees given. The late arrivals had stuck to their story that they were there to help protect the colony from the Natural Movement plot to sabotage it, and according to the Guardian captain’s recent words at the stadium, they were also generally intent on safeguarding the colony’s success. On the surface, it all added up, but the Guardians’ apparently ready acquiescence to Anahi’s request for armed support of her move to increase Woken control made Cariad deeply uneasy. What else might the Guardians do if asked? Where would they draw the line?
Guardian technology was far superior to that of the Nova Fortuna. That much was clear from their weapons, the medical assistance they offered, and their shuttles. Cariad imagined that the same would be true of their ship. What she’d seen of the small, sleek vessel seemed to indicate it, most importantly the fact that it had caught up to the Nova Fortuna at the end of her long journey by the means of its faster-than-light engine.
If the Guardians used that technology to help the colony, that would be to the good, but if they changed their attitude neither the Gens nor the Woken would be able to do much to resist them. In truth, these visitors from an Earth Cariad had never known held the fate of the colony in their hands. She also worried that the colony might end up depending on them, and then they would have the ultimate control. Despite the fact that the Guardians had arrived in the nick of time during the First Night Attack and saved many lives, Cariad wondered if things might have turned out better overall without their presence.
She sat alone in the small passenger cabin of the Mistral’s shuttle as she was carried over, wondering what it all meant. The Guardians’ shuttle was smaller than Nova Fortuna’s transport craft but its superior quality and capability was clear. Cariad’s seat conformed perfectly to her body, and the shuttle had wide windows in the passenger cabin, unlike Nova Fortuna shuttlecraft. The vessel’s movement was smooth and unaccompanied by engine noise, and it seemed to Cariad that it was moving incredibly quickly.
Below, the planet surface skimmed past and the Mistral soon loomed up. Cariad had seen it before through Nova Fortuna’s scanners, but up close it looked even more impressive. Its proportions perfect, the ship’s designers clearly hadn’t focused only on its FTL capabilities. The ship was also an aesthetic masterpiece and in marked contrast to Nova Fortuna’s massive, chunky wheel. She wondered if the Earth engineers had built any more and if people had set out to leave the crowded Solar System and start new deep space colonies.
The next moment, the shuttle was docking. As soon as the portal opened, air infiltrated the cabin. It smelled different from that aboard Nova Fortuna. Circulation and filtration units worked hard on the colony ship to eliminate odors, but after a trip planetside the slightly sweaty, moldy smell of the interior was distinct. The air aboard the Mistral smelled clean and mildly fragrant.
Strongquist was there to meet Cariad. His dark eyes were deep and unreadable, as always. “Thank you for coming.”
“It’s my pleasure. I admit I’m curious about your ship. Am I the first you’ve invited aboard?”
“You know, I think you are.”
“Ha, you say that like it wasn’t intentional,” Cariad joked. “You must know how curious we all are about you.” She was skating close to the line of politeness. She didn’t want to overstep it and cut short her welcome, but on the other hand, she wanted to take advantage of the favor Strongquist was showing her.
Strongquist’s expression became grave. Had she pushed things too far?
“Curiosity is to be expected, I guess.” He left his response at that, shutting the conversation down. “Come this way, please.”
As they went through the ship’s corridors, one of the first things Cariad noticed the total absence of grime. Nova Fortuna had her sanobots—simple, fist-sized, self-repairing machines that constantly crawled the surfaces of the ship, brushing and wiping as they went. They would automatically discharge into the trash chutes and return to recharging stations when they ran low on power. But sanobots weren’t perfect. There were areas they couldn’t reach and others that, for some reason, their programming missed, resulting in certain ever-present patches of dirt.
Whatever was maintaining the cleanliness aboard the Guardians’ ship was doing an excellent job. Not only were there no perma-grime spots, every surface gleamed like new.
Cariad asked what was cleaning the ship.
Strongquist replied with a word that sounded like gibberish.
“I never heard that word before. Is it a trade name?”
“No, it’s just what we call the nano that cleans the ship.”
“Weird. It sounds like a word from another language.”
“No. It’s English.”
Cariad’s brows knitted. She was no
linguist, but it didn’t sound like any English she knew.
“You have to understand,” Strongquist said, “English has evolved since Nova Fortuna departed. You would probably find modern English difficult to follow.”
“I thought I was speaking modern English.”
“No, you speak mid-third millennium English, as do the Gens because their learning and leisure materials are all in mid-third English.”
“Wait a minute,” Cariad said. “How can I understand you if English evolved so much after we left?”
Strongquist gave a rare smile. “You can understand me because I’m speaking mid-third English. Here we are.”
They stepped into a small room that had consoles on every wall.
“I’ve been doing some more investigating into the name you gave me,” said Strongquist. “I’ve been searching the data bank of recordings we have from twenty years before and after Nova Fortuna departed.”
“Twenty years after we left?” Cariad asked. “Why so long?”
“While the Nova Fortuna was within a reasonable distance from Earth, transmissions could have been sent and received pertaining to the Natural Movement’s attempt to sabotage the mission.”
“But not after twenty years?”
“Perhaps, but it was less likely. There was also a limit to how much data we could bring. We have millions of zettabytes.”
Cariad was about to ask another question, but Strongquist said, “I have something I want to show you.”
He looked toward the empty space in the center of the room. A holo started up, though Cariad hadn’t seen the Guardian do anything to start it. She wondered if he was using a mind interface. Researchers had been working on prototypes in her time, but no one had been able to tolerate the web insert in their brain.
She was looking from an above-head view down into a lobby, as if the camera had been stationed on the ceiling. Glass walls allowed a view of a street and on the opposite wall a line of elevators stood. The lobby was empty. From the dim light shining in from outside, Cariad guessed it was either around dawn or dusk. If it was dusk, the place seemed quiet.
“What am I looking at exactly?” she asked Strongquist.
“I don’t want to suggest anything to you,” he replied. “Please, just watch and tell me what you notice.”
A figure appeared, coming down the street. A man wearing clothes from Cariad’s time. As the man approached the glass doors, they opened. He came into the lobby and went to the elevator. While he waited, another figure entered. A woman. Both were dressed for office work. Their clothes were light and cool, suggesting that it was summer.
It was a very ordinary scene, but a strong sense of displacement struck Cariad. These people she saw arriving for work were long dead, though from her perspective they’d been alive only two years previously. She was now living in a future people of her time had only dreamed of, yet to the Guardians she was a living relic, speaking an archaic language.
The man and woman had entered an elevator and disappeared, but more people were arriving.
“It would help if you would tell me what I’m looking for,” she said, her feeling of dislocation giving away to frustration. She wanted to catch the Natural Movement terrorists, not play Strongquist’s games.
“I can’t,” Strongquist said. “If I did that, I couldn’t rely on what you tell me. The human mind is very suggestible. Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable.”
Witnesses? Was something about to happen? Was a bomb about to go off? Cariad scanned the scene.
“It would be helpful if you would watch the people,” Strongquist said.
The lobby now held eight workers. Another appeared and joined a group that had congregated around an approaching elevator. The new figure was a man. Something about his features attracted Cariad’s attention. She leaned forward to look more closely. It was hard to see his face clearly due to the camera angle. But there was something about him…
She touched Strongquist’s arm. Immediately, the scene froze. He’d stopped it somehow.
“What do you see, Cariad?”
“That man.” She pointed, her finger poking through his face in the holo. She hesitated. The feeling was tenuous. She didn’t trust it, especially as the holo had frozen when the man’s face was slightly turned away. “Can you let it play on?”
The holo started up, and, as if on cue, the man turned and looked upward, almost directly at the camera. It was like he was aware and concerned that he was being recorded, though from the direction of his gaze, it was clear he couldn’t see the camera. The elevator doors opened. He stepped inside and was gone. The holo played on.
Cariad turned to Strongquist. “I think I recognized that man.”
“Good. Where do you know him from? Do you remember?”
Cariad mentally replayed the moving image of the man’s face. “Not right now. I can’t place him, but I’ll think about it.”
“I have other scenes I can show you to help jog your memory.”
“You do? I’d like to see them.”
The holo was replaced by another. It was a laboratory at night.
Cariad asked, “So you were showing me that man among other people hoping that I would pick him out?”
“Exactly. If I’d shown you only his image, you might have been convinced you knew him simply because it would be obvious he must be important in some way. I needed you to pick him out from a crowd of strangers.”
“Wait a minute,” Cariad said. The holo stopped. “Who is the man I saw?”
“Oh. I was hoping you would know.”
“Huh? If you don’t know who he is, what makes you think I would know him?”
Strongquist only looked at her.
The penny dropped. “It’s Frederick Aparicio, isn’t it?”
“We believe so.”
“So I did know him, or I wouldn’t have recognized him. But where from?” Cariad thought back to the time of the Nova Fortuna project. She was sure that Frederick Aparicio wasn’t a distant relative. She was also sure he hadn’t been a work colleague either. The work on the project had been intense and relationships extremely familiar. Everyone had spent most of their waking hours on the job. Some had even slept on site.
Perhaps Aparicio had been one of the more peripheral workers. They’d numbered in their thousands. But if that were the case, why did his name and face stick out?
“Should I play the next holo?” Strongquist asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But I wanted to ask, how are you controlling it?”
Strongquist smiled. “The lesson in modern tech will have to wait for another day, I’m afraid. Now, if you don’t mind…?” His eyebrows gestured to the scene in the lab that was frozen in midair in front of them.
“Okay. Go ahead.”
***
Cariad watched four more holos of Frederick Aparicio before Strongquist said that was all they had on him.
Cariad couldn’t tell him any more at that time but said she would let the Guardian know as soon as she remembered anything. “Can I take the recordings with me to watch them again?”
“Yes, of course,” Strongquist said. “I had them converted to play on Nova Fortuna’s drives.” He took a vidring out of his pocket and handed it over. Cariad took it, wondering why, if she could have watched the holos on Nova Fortuna, the Guardian had brought her there.
“Would you like a tour of the ship before you go?” Strongquist asked.
“I’d love it.”
He took her to the bridge first. It was surprisingly similar to Nova Fortuna’s. Much less instrumentation adorned the consoles, however. The Guardians present didn’t offer any greeting but one stood up as Cariad walked in. She recognized Faina, who had addressed the crowd at the stadium.
“Cariad. Welcome to the bridge. Strongquist said he was bringing you aboard. What do you think of the ship?”
Did Cariad detect tension behind the woman’s words? Or was it a subtle anger directed at Strongquist? The man’s express
ion was as enigmatic as ever.
“I haven’t seen a lot of it yet, but it’s very interesting,” she replied. “Amazing, even. Everything’s so much more advanced than on the Nova Fortuna. It’s to be expected, I guess. But coming here, I feel like I’ve stepped into the future. Our ship was the pinnacle of human technology when we left but I’m going to struggle to see it like that now.”
“Don’t forget that our ships serve separate purposes,” Faina said. “Nova Fortuna was built for stamina, not speed, and it was intended to be home to two thousand. Our ship was built for speed and… not for comfort.”
The slight hesitation was almost unnoticeable. Almost. What had Faina been about to say before she changed her mind?
“But I could talk forever about my ship,” the Guardian continued. “Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure Strongquist has plenty more he’d like to show you.”
Cariad would have loved to stay longer to discuss the Guardians’ ship’s specs, but Strongquist was already ushering her away. As they went down the corridor, Cariad asked him, “So Faina speaks mid-third English for our benefit too?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You all learned the language before leaving Earth?”
“No. We learned it on the way.”
“You all speak it so well. I can’t hear a trace of your original accent. How long did it take you to learn?”
“Not long. Would you like to see the FTL engine?”
“You can actually see it?”
“Oh yes.”
By the time her visit was over, Cariad had seen the living, eating, and recreational quarters, supply hold, and the engineering section. Several times she attempted to extract more information from Strongquist but he politely and adeptly deflected her inquiries. She was left with few answers and a growing sense of unease.
Chapter Ten
It had been agreed that they would stash the weapons in a certain shed for farm equipment. Conscious of the fact that he was openly carrying the gun after he’d informed a Guardian that he hadn’t been issued one, Ethan headed quickly in the direction of the tool shed. Evening had fallen, and the settlement seemed unusually quiet. Perhaps the emptiness of the streets would work in his favor.
