Orphans of Earth

by Sean Williams

  Sensing movement behind her, she turned to see one of the aliens staring at her through the invisible barrier. Its faceplates moved in odd ways, creating a shifting series of line-drawn expressions, none of which made sense. Its mouth changed shape several times until it became an upside down triangle, stretched far out into each cheek. Inside the lipless mouth, sharp projections slid into view at the front. The plates around its eyes narrowed, and its black eyes glinted in the light.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is that thing smiling at me?”

  Alander stepped up beside her and peered closely at the alien. “It certainly seems to be,” he said. “But smiles aren’t necessarily friendly. Those teeth look sharp.”

  She ignored him, turning to Axford. “Drop the barrier,” she said. “Let it out.”

  “As you wish,” said Axford with amusement.

  “What—?” was all of the objection Alander managed to get out before the sudden rush as air pressures equalizing indicated that the barrier was down.

  “This isn’t funny, General,” said Alander nervously. From the corner of her eye she could see him edging away from her. “Bring the barrier back up!”

  The plane delineating the former boundary blurred as the yellow-tinged atmosphere the hole ship had provided for the aliens spilled into the human section. Once Thor was sure the boundary was completely gone, that Axford wasn’t simply baiting her, she leaped. The Roaches had necks that looked flexible but sturdy, so she went for the place in its chest where the soft-looking hole had appeared. She put all her strength behind the blow, lunging at the alien in the hope of freeing all of her emotions as the images of her dead crewmates flashed before her eyes.

  Nalini, Donald, Vince, Cleo, Susan, Angela...

  But the alien was too fast for her, and one of its mighty legs kicked up and out before she got anywhere near its chest plates. Rigid toes dug into her stomach and flipped her aside.

  She smelled iodine as it went past in a blur, leaping for Alander. The sound it made was like two trains shrieking by in both directions.

  She hit the wall hard and went down near the other alien, the “priest.” It was slowly coming to its feet, its movements jerky, cautious, perhaps. She wanted to kick out at it, but the intense pain in her midriff forced her into a gasping ball.

  “Axford!” she heard Alander bark as the creature came at him, its arms raised in readiness to rain blows down upon him. Before it could, however, a deafening crack split the air, and the barrier was back, curved in ungainly ways to separate human from alien.

  The attacking alien bounced off it with a roar, kicking out in anger, its wing sheaths snapping up and down in rapid movements.

  “Ambivalence take you!” it screeched.

  “I think it just told us to go to hell,” said Axford as his conSense illusion strolled over to where Hatzis lay gasping on the floor. He leaned over her. “You okay?”

  “Of course she’s not okay!” Alander snapped. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Axford shrugged with a self-satisfied smirk. “She wanted the barrier lifted,” he said innocently.

  Alander knelt beside her, reaching under her shoulders to help her up. She half managed to stand, hunching over the terrible burning in her gut. Every movement caused her pain.

  “Those bastards are dangerous,” she muttered, wincing as she spoke.

  “And never forget it,” said Axford from off to one side. “I-suits can only do so much.”

  Alander glared at him. “That’s why you did this? To teach her a lesson?”

  “Come off it, Peter. She wanted that barrier down. She’s been busting for a shot at these aliens all along. She needed to get it out of her system, that’s all. And now, hopefully, she’s done just that.”

  She knew he was right; she had, quite literally, asked for it. Nevertheless, his smug attitude was seriously rubbing her the wrong way.

  “Come on,” she heard Alander mumble. “Let’s get you back to Pearl.”

  Over his shoulder she could see the alien priest, its black-and-white expression completely illegible. It was impossible to tell where its all-black eyes were actually looking, but she knew it was watching her every step of the way.

  * * *

  “How are you feeling now?”

  She was lying on the couch in the cockpit, with Alander crouched beside her. She nodded slightly in response to his enquiry. It was the best she could do at the moment.

  “There’s no blood,” he said. “Nor any wound, for that matter.”

  His reassurances didn’t help. She felt as though her digestive tract had been turned to jelly.

  “There wouldn’t be,” she said. “The I-suit stopped the blow from killing me, and it’ll repair what damage did get through, I’m sure.”

  “Would you like me to take you...?” He stopped before finishing the sentence, looking pained on her behalf.

  “Home?” She laughed, but it was empty and humorless. “How, Peter?” The enormity of her loss welled up in her with greater urgency than the pain of her injury. For the first time, she truly had an inkling of what Sol had felt when the Starfish had destroyed the Vincula.

  He hung his head, embarrassed. “Earlier on,” he started. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive—”

  “I know,” she said. “We’ve all suffered losses. The only thing we can do about it is get on with life. Move on. Right?”

  He shrugged. “If you believe Axford, then yeah, I guess so. Darwin and all that.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He raised his head and looked at her. “I believe that, as things stand now, if it came down to a face-off between us and the Starfish, I’m pretty sure we’d lose. They’d squash us like bugs and wouldn’t even think twice about doing it, either.”

  She thought of the ants scurrying after the careless giant, too small to do anything to avoid every crushing footfall. Did the giant even notice the ants it crushed?

  “I don’t like what Axford says.”

  “He’s not stupid, Caryl,” he said. “He’s ruthless, yes, but maybe we need someone like him right now. Christ, he’s had the gifts barely a couple of weeks, and he’s already discovered things we had no idea existed. It would be wrong to turn our back on him.”

  The idea of ignoring Axford sent a chill through her. Turning your back on a man like that would be like turning your back on a rabid dog. He might not bite immediately, but he would always be thinking about it.

  She exhaled from what felt like the very depths of her soul. It was hard to think past Thor and concentrate on the things Sol would want her to consider. And how could she? She was only human—or trying to be, at least. Alander was no better. For all his apparent logic and reason, he was as much caught up in his own problems as anyone. Who was he to lecture her about dealing with grief? He who was alone and was dealing with it so stoically... ?

  “There’s something you should know,” she said. “It’s about Lucia.”

  Instantly on the defensive, his expression froze. “What about her?”

  “Sol mentioned that you’d never found her, from any of the missions you’d checked.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that until she mentioned it,” she said. “Lucia was on my mission—as were you, although your engram failed on start-up. Lucia’s mission was in Chung-9, and she had the usual job of scouting the lesser bodies along the way: the red dwarfs, the failed stars, the stellar remnants; all the things that we missed on our journey because we didn’t have the time or the delta-v to change course.”

  “She was the tourist,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “It was what she always wanted to be.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I don’t think any of us understood just what that really meant, though.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We received a transmission from the Chung-9 five years after we arrived at Thor.”

  Thinking of her former colony made her throat a
che, but she persevered, concentrating on the burning in her gut instead. “It was a long burst containing all the data it had gathered throughout its journey. It took an enormous amount of energy and forethought. This wasn’t some last- minute, spontaneous gesture; it was planned, right down to the last detail. She wanted us to have access to everything she’d seen and done.”

  His eyes tightened. “Do you know where she was when she sent the transmission?” he asked hopefully.

  “The transmission had a red shift suggesting she was accelerating for nu Hydra, maybe phi-3 Hydra. She didn’t say. If she keeps going in that direction, she’ll eventually come near a nebula called Ghost of Jupiter—and from there it’s just stars and galaxies forever.” She paused for a moment to let it sink in. “Do you understand, Peter? Lucia was enjoying being a tourist too much. She didn’t want to stop.”

  “But—” He didn’t finish the sentence. When he tried again, she suspected it wasn’t the same one. “We didn’t receive any such transmission in Upsilon Aquarius.”

  “Maybe it’s still on its way. It all depends on how close her flyby came to your colony. You were only there for ten years before the Starfish came. If she was eleven light-years away when she sent her data package, it won’t have arrived yet.”

  “Her mission might have failed.”

  She nodded. “It might have. That’s still a possibility. But all of them? I’d sooner believe in missed transmissions than a complete failure of all her secondary missions—and only hers. After all, other secondary pilots succeeded in their missions. And it really was just luck that we picked up her broadcast at all. If we hadn’t been looking in that direction, we might never have seen it.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long while, and she tried to imagine what he was feeling. Grief? Jealousy? Anger? Betrayal?

  She loved the stars more than she loved you, she wanted to say, to hammer the point home. Don’t give me any philosophical crap about accepting loss, or I’ll rub your face in this every chance I can get.

  He sighed heavily through his nose. “I guess there’s no point checking with the Dsiban mission to see if she arrived, then.” His voice was even, almost too even. “She wouldn’t be there. She’ll be Christ knows where by now, heading off all wide-eyed into infinity.”

  Don’t hide your pain behind poetry! she wanted to scream at him. Don’t be so fucking pragmatic! You’ve been in love with her ever since the mission started, and you’ve never given up hope you might see her again. And now you know you never will. Is that how you’re going to get over it, Peter, by being practical? Is that what you expect me to do?

  “Okay.” He stood, wiping his hands on his shipsuit. “Thanks for telling me. If you’re going to be okay, I’ll go and talk to Axford to see what he has in mind.”

  Show me some emotion, you goddamn robot! She forced herself to emulate his behavior; she wouldn’t be the first to crack.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said smoothly. “You go do what you need to do.”

  He nodded and, without looking at her, walked out of the cockpit and along the gangway.

  She sagged back onto the couch and listened to his footsteps recede into the distance.

  Far away, she thought. We’re light-years apart, even when we’re sitting next to each other.

  The thought dismayed her. No matter how awful it must have been for the twin of her in 64 Pisces—her sister on Ilmarinen—to die so distant from the people she was calling, at least she had died knowing that someone out there understood her, was part of her. But how could Alander bear it, being alone in this universe? First his sole sane twin died with Athena, and now the woman he loved had rejected him hundreds of times over. How was he going to survive?

  That he would survive she had no doubt at all. He wouldn’t have lasted this long if he didn’t have the will to keep going. Her purpose wasn’t to destroy him, anyway. It was to make sure he didn’t make her life any more miserable than it already was.

  1.2.4

  I’m beginning to wonder if she’s a liability,” said Axford.

  “Is that why you tried to have her killed?”

  Alander was in Mercury with Axford, discussing what they should do next. Arachne had left an hour earlier, with Sol. Thor remained in Pearl, resting while her I-suit went about whatever repairs were needed after that single, disemboweling kick from the alien. The alien captives themselves were once again hidden behind an opaque bulkhead, which suited him for the moment. After the incident earlier, he’d be happy to keep his distance from them for a while—both physically and visually.

  Axford laughed dismissively at Alander’s accusation. “Come off it, Peter,” he said. “She was itching for a shot at those aliens; she needed to get it off her chest.”

  “Or to be put in her place, perhaps?”

  Axford shrugged unapologetically. “Either way, it’s out of her system,” he said. “Now she might be a bit more levelheaded.”

  “I’m sure she’ll perform splendidly,” said Alander wryly, “once she’s able to walk properly again.”

  “Tell me, who is it you’re most concerned for? Hatzis or yourself?”

  Alander creased his brow. “Huh?”

  “I rid myself of all of my crewmates,” Axford said. “I loosed that alien upon Caryl. You must be wondering right now how far you can trust me.”

  “I daresay you’re wondering the same about me.”

  Axford smiled noncommittally. “Whatever,” he said with another shrug. “The point is, I’m not sure she’s going to help us achieve our objectives at the moment.”

  Even though it made him feel as if he was betraying her, Alander had to agree with the ex-general. There were negotiations Axford would find easier to perform without Hatzis in the exploratory mission to Alsafi, but the loss of Pearl would make things more difficult for them. Splitting the Mercury back into two and housing the aliens in Hermes would increase their flexibility, certainly, but it also took away any tactical advantage of showing the Yuhl just what they had learned about the hole ships.

  “Well?” pressed Axford. “What are your thoughts on this?”

  “At the moment,” he answered slowly, reluctantly, “I guess I’d be happier if she wasn’t part of our plans.” Her comments regarding Lucia still stung, as she had undoubtedly intended them to. He wasn’t sure just how levelheaded either of them would be working together. “At least in the short term, anyway.”

  “And what about in the long run?” Axford’s bearing was conversational, but Alander didn’t doubt that he was being carefully scrutinized. Just because the conSense illusion of the man wasn’t looking at him didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t being closely watched.

  “In the long run?” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think we’ll survive without her. All of her.”

  Axford nodded. “I agree.”

  It was ironic, Alander thought, that the future of humanity should rest in the hands of identities like Axford and Hatzis, whose uniquely multiple viewpoints set them apart from anything humanity had been beforehand. In a very strange way, he realized, out of all the engrams, he himself was the closest thing left to a traditional human. To the best of his knowledge, he was the only copy of himself alive at that moment. The other UNESSPRO programs had been multiplied almost beyond comprehension. He wondered if the only way for humanity to survive was to allow it to become something it was not: a society of identical clones, like Axford, or a self-obsessed group mind like Hatzis. There had to be another possibility, surely?

  If not for us, then for whom?

  He’d asked Lucia this in a completely different context, but it was as applicable now as it ever had been. And perhaps her answer was equally applicable: It won’t be us, Peter. And yet it will be. I try not to get tangled in the metaphysics of it all.

  The thought of Lucia in her tiny probe ship—all the copies of her in many such ships—radiating outward from Sol on independent missions of exploration, boldly defying UNESSPRO mission guidelines and thumbin
g her nose at her fellow surveyors, gave him a warm feeling. It was exactly the sort of thing she would have done: impulsive, yet requiring extraordinary effort and planning. It was also typically self-centered, and the part of him that missed her, the part of him that had grieved for her in Upsilon Aquarius, assuming she was dead, wanted to use the hole ship now to find her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and say: It’s not for me, and it never was. How could you have led me on like that?

  But it was an idle thought, a foolish thought. She was as lost to him as she’d ever been. Finding her would be as difficult as finding a single grain of sand in a thousand oceans. And there were much more important things to consider.

  “So we go to Alsafi,” he said, shaking her image from his head. “Without Caryl. And then what?”

  “Then we see what happens.” Axford’s image clasped his hands together as he spoke, reminding Alander of an excited schoolboy. The idea of jumping into the unknown clearly thrilled the man.

  “What about Caryl?” said Alander. “Is there any damage she could do here?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” he said. “If the Roaches couldn’t get me, she sure as hell won’t, either.”

  Alander nodded, keeping his head bowed slightly, unable to meet the ex-general’s eyes. He knew it was the right thing to do, but he felt guilty for it, nonetheless. Plus he wasn’t looking forward to being the one to bring the news to her—

  “Ah.”

  Axford’s exclamation intruded upon Alander’s introspection. “What is it?”

  “I think the matter of Caryl Hatzis has just become a moot point.”

  One of the screens in the cockpit lit up, showing the section of gantry where Pearl had docked. The cockpit had swung free of the walkway and was already falling into the central part of the ship. When it was gone, the hole ship began to shrink. Before Alander had chance to consider calling out to her, it vanished altogether.

  “What the hell is she doing?”