by M. G. Herron
“Yeah, guess I did.”
Nearby, Thom rubbed his hands over his face. His eyes darted around the woods. Elya could understand how he felt. They weren’t all that far from the Kryl encampment and it wasn’t unlikely that some of the groundlings had followed their trail here.
“Father Pohl wants to talk to you,” Taylix said.
Elya glanced around. “Where is he?”
“Right over there.”
Elya lumbered to his feet and, while his knees didn’t knock together quite so badly, they felt weak, like wet noodles, barely able to hold him up. He grabbed his rucksack from Brill’s feet. The man stood like a door himself, sturdy and wide, pretending to pay no attention to Elya.
A pressure valve released in his chest when Elya’s felt inside his pack and his fingers ran over the plastic and metal bristles on Hedgebot’s back. He found the power switch and turned on the little bot. He’d climb out when he was ready. Elya’s hand then rested on the cold, hard edges of his cube.
He pulled it out, but the light was hard to see in the daylight. He gave a great sigh when, shaded, he saw that the LED light had gone a solid white.
Finally. His face lifted skyward, instinctively searching for a squad of Sabres to come screaming down toward him. But this was no animated feature cast on broadbeam. A tractor beam wouldn’t just magically appear and beam him skyward.
If they got the signal in time, they’d be coming for him. If not…
“Did it work?” Thom asked, rubbing his hands together, though it was hot and sticky, and following Elya’s gaze upward.
“Yeah, it did. Does your radio work?”
“Yeah, yeah, it should. I left it up at the cave, though.”
Elya found it odd that he wouldn’t bring the device with him, but shrugged and followed Taylix a little ways out of the clearing. She walked fifteen or twenty meters to where Charlie was standing, then paused and waited for Elya to catch up.
“Where’s the priest?” Elya asked.
He looked around, didn’t find him, then gazed up at the blue sky, searching for planes again. There was a shuffle of leaves, then the sky and the leaf-strewn ground traded places. The pain came next, slowly, throbbing at the back of his head.
The cube was pried from his fingers as Elya struggled to reorient himself.
“Throw him in.”
Elya reached up to take the cube back from whoever had stolen it. To his dismay, Thom pulled it back out of his reach. Elya caught a glimpse of the machinist’s sad eyes before Brill and Taylix stepped in front of him. As Elya struggled weakly, the larger, stronger soldiers lifted him bodily and dumped him, like a sack of soy paste, onto the ground.
Only he fell through the ground and landed with a thud several feet below. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. He grabbed at the floor, which was made of packed dirt, cold and damp to the touch.
With panic gripping his chest, Elya rolled onto his knees and gulped air. An object plinked into the dirt beside him, then a metal grate fell, clanging, across the opening above him. Charlie knelt down and bolted a chain onto it with a rattle.
“Hey, wait! Charlie. Thom! Hey. Hey!!!”
Thom appeared with a long face, glancing down at Elya, then away, ashamed.
“Sorry, kid,” Charlie said, “but we can’t risk the Imperials finding our hideout. And we both know that if they come to pick you up, you won’t be able to keep your mouth shut.”
“No! Don’t leave me here. Don’t walk away. Hey, I’m talking to you! It’s suicide to stay on Robichar! The Kryl will eat you alive. I don’t know what the priest did to scare off those groundlings, but he can’t protect you! Once the rest of the hive arrives, you’ll all be ground Kryl meat! You hear me? I’m your last chance off this rock. Hey! HEY!!!”
The faint whine of a skimmer drifted into his dirt prison. They had skimmers this whole time? And they made me hike down here on foot? Only now did he realize it had been done to tire him out, make him drop his guard. They had used him like the tool that he was.
Elya deflated. With shaking hands, he pulled the object out of the dirt—it was Hedgebot. The little bot had never turned back on. Turning it over, Elya saw that its battery had been forcibly removed and dropped in the dirt a few feet away. Scratches and grooves from a metal prying tool, maybe a screwdriver, had been made in the bot’s belly. The contact plates and mounting brackets were mangled beyond belief, so the battery couldn’t be reattached. Hedgebot remained dead in Elya’s hands, devoid of power.
“Earth save us,” he croaked.
Exhausted, helpless, and sick to his stomach, Elya lowered himself to the ground and lay the lifeless bot in his lap. He gazed up through the grate at the open sky above, his ship and crewmates now farther away than ever.
Sixteen
Long after the men with their rucksacks and their guns disappeared from sight, Hedrick waited at the lookout point, watching in the direction they had gone, studying the crease in the landscape the big man they called Charlie had pointed. The others who had stayed behind, including his mother, waited with him for some time but they soon grew bored looking at nothing and wandered back to their chores.
He sat there a while longer, until only his mother was left with him, chewing on her lower lip and watching the others go about their work preparing food and hauling water from a spring nearby. Hedrick watched out of the corner of his eye while one man carried two giant plastic cans by straps, making three separate trips.
Eventually, even his mother got bored.
“Wouldn’t you rather be helping folks with the chores?” she asked. “Or maybe napping in the tent?”
In Charlie’s tent? Hedrick jerked his head from side to side. He didn't want to be in that man’s tent anymore. He hadn't wanted to be in it last night and he didn't want to be in it now. At least last night his mother and Elya had been there and their combined presence made him feel safe. After Elya left, another feeling had begun to build up, pressure rising up his toes through his kneecaps and into his stomach, flooding upwards into his chest until it burst forth into the outburst he’d made earlier when Elya was leaving. Even as it happened he was ashamed of himself, even as the tears flowed he was furious at them for showing. He hadn’t meant to cry, but he really didn’t want Elya to leave and he’d only realized it when he woke up and the pilot wasn’t in the tent anymore.
Eventually his mother stopped badgering him and he felt the grim satisfaction that he’d outlasted her and all the others by keeping his stubborn watch. His mother went about helping with the chores, always keeping him firmly in sight like he was a skittish dog she feared would run off at the first opportunity.
He hated when people treated him like he was so fragile he would break at the slightest touch.
He wasn’t gonna run off. After reason returned, he’d realized that Elya had been right. He couldn't leave his mother here by herself. Before the Kryl, he wouldn’t have given leaving her alone a second thought. He used to be out of the house early to play with the other kids in the village, sneaking away at sunrise and not coming back until long after sunset.
But those days were gone now. The pace of change made him dizzy.
Hedrick brushed the hair out of his eyes with his fingers and glanced furtively up at the sky, his body tensing at the sight of every strangely shaped cloud, every swooping bird he mistook for another egg plummeting down from space, pregnant with death and destruction.
He cast his eyes down in shame, the crease in the land and the bright green forests blurring as the memories of his actions returned to haunt him.
It was my fault, Hedrick thought. They saw us first because we were out in the field.
The egg had come down hard and fast. It bounced and tumbled like a giant ball. They had watched, naively fascinated, as it settled and then ruptured. They had stood frozen, fixated, as the egg’s walls petaled open like a flower in the springtime, revealing leggy creatures in yellowish liquid-filled sacs, until one broke through with a cla
wed hind foot.
The first week after they moved to Robichar, Hedrick had seen a mama cow give birth to a calf. It was an event because, before they got approved for colonization on Robichar, he and his mom had always lived on space stations or in eco-domes, where meat was grown in vats. So to see this majestic creature up close—so much more real than the holovids—giving birth to a calf both fascinated and grossed him out.
The Kryl emerging from its egg was kind of like that, but with giant insects instead of a cow—and far more alien.
Like when he’d seen the calf emerge from its mother’s hind end, he’d stood, transfixed, watching the Kryl. His friends all stood next to him, saying “Ewwww!” and “Gross!” as the creatures tore apart the sack and then began to eat it. It was disgusting and compelling at the same time, so unlike any experience he’d ever had before. He felt nauseated but was unable to tear his eyes away.
Some of the girls got scared and ran back to the village but, like a fool, Hedrick had stayed to watch.
And then the creatures had noticed them.
“What are you doing?” Amy’s mother said. She had walked up behind them. “Kids, get over here! Inside. Quickly now. To the nearest house.”
“I’ve got to get back to my mom,” Hedrick replied.
“There’s no time! Oh, Earth’s last lights, they’re coming. Run. Run!”
Amy went with her mom. Ignoring her instructions, Hedrick sprinted back toward his house. Clifton ran alongside him for a minute, but the chubby kid was slow and wheezy and Hedrick rapidly outpaced him.
He searched for the new door his mom was supposed to be putting on the house today. It was colorfully painted and hard to miss. The new door had been leaning up against the house when he left that morning. There it is. As he approached he saw the new painted door had been hung and the old one was off its hinges, leaning up against the side of the house.
His mom had shouted at him to get inside, just like Amy’s mom had, to hide, to get out of sight. Hedrick panicked and dove behind the old door that was leaning against the house, thankful for the shelter, for any shelter.
And then the slaughter started.
Hoarse screams. Heavy thuds. The sound of rending flesh—
Hedrick staggered to his feet as the forest and rolling hills ran together in his vision. He sniffed, wiping snot away with the back of his hand, and blinked his eyes free of the memory.
He forgot why he was waiting here, watching the forest. He probably looked like some moon-eyed sissy, crying by himself. It wasn’t like Elya was just going to walk up that path and smile and bring his friends back from the dead.
Nothing could bring them back.
Hedrick’s stomach growled and he was ashamed to be grieving and hungry at the same time. Clifton didn’t have the luxury of being hungry anymore. Dead people didn’t get hunger pangs.
Hedrick looked around. His mother was up to her elbows in soapy water, scrubbing their dirty shirts from yesterday—someone had provided baggy hand-me-downs to them both—and handing each item off to the gold-skinned servant bot, who rung the shirts out with his rotating mechanical arms and hung them on a line in the sun. She was smiling and laughing at a story another woman was telling, but Hedrick couldn’t help but feel sad watching her. They had machines for washing clothes in the village. Was this kind of daily drudgery their whole future?
He forced himself not to look skyward as he hurried into the shelter of the cave. Once inside, safe in the covered half-light, Hedrick let out a sigh of relief. At least in here the sky didn’t glare ominously down at him. At least in here it was cool and quiet and nothing would rain death and destruction from outer space.
Except for one or two old folks napping in their tents, the cave was empty of people.
Hedrick found leftover stew in a covered container, set aside away from the fire. They’d used last night’s leftovers for breakfast this morning and this was all that was left.
He snuck a few bites, looking around to see if anybody had seen him. They hadn’t. And when he’d eaten as much as he dared, enough to sate his hunger but not enough to make them think he’d stolen it, he replaced the lid on the container.
Hedrick’s throat was parched now and he wanted a drink of water but didn’t see any nearby, so he walked around the perimeter of the cavern, searching. They’d been hauling water earlier, but maybe that was for laundry or bathing. He didn’t know where they kept the drinking water. Probably somewhere cool and dark and dry. They may have been weird, but these people, these followers of Animus, were no fools. Hedrick recognized some of them. Several had come to his village along with the priest, helped him set up Solstice services—arranging chairs, gathering folks for the sermon that Father Pohl gave, and distributing offerings afterwards. On the one hand, that made these people all seem a bit more trustworthy. They weren’t total strangers to him. But on the other hand, if they’d been hiding in this cave, he wondered what else they’d been hiding. They must have been socking supplies away for months and months, long before the Fleet arrived to evacuate the colony.
Though he found no water, the food began to reach his stomach and the satisfied feeling of being full calmed him. Hedrick always felt better after he ate. His mom said it ran in the family. Hedrick just thought it was that he liked food. He’d eat anything. Apart from salad, but that wasn’t really food, in his opinion.
He didn’t find any water. He did, however, find the cloth-covered stash of weapons the man, Charlie, had pulled a gun out of the night before when he heard the planes flying overhead. The pile was noticeably slimmer but it still looked like there were plenty of weapons. More than enough to spare.
Hedrick replaced the tarp and walked farther back into the cave. It was dark and shaded here and none of the electric lights or bots were positioned behind the last tent, the biggest one, which belonged to Father Pohl. Hedrick glanced in and saw a single bare cot with a rumpled blanket and a plain wooden desk. A leather-bound book on the desk. Its spine read, Scriptures of Animus: The Great Migration, Volume III. The rest of the set of books lined a small shelf on the floor in the corner.
Hedrick lost interest and moved back behind the tents. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that his assumption had been right. Dozens of crates were stacked here, ostensibly with supplies. Weirdly, one was filled with dirt and stank to the high heavens. He supposed that was some kind of fertilizer to help grow food. They’d had plots of planted vegetables in the village that smelled the same way.
Hedrick found another couple of boxes that had little plastic vials, each filled with a handful of seeds. That was odd. Or was it? He supposed not. These people really were hoping to outlast the Kryl. How long would we have to stay here? Hendrick wondered.
He moved on and eventually found what he was looking for. Water barrels. It didn't occur to him until now that perhaps this kind of water wasn’t even drinkable, but one of the barrels had a spigot and he was too thirsty by this point to care. If it was good enough for the plants, it was good enough for him. The water had a strong sulfur taste with metallic undertones, but it was cool and refreshing and he didn’t mind the mineral flavor. As he was tilting his head to catch the water falling out of the spigot Hedrick noticed something—a faint sparkle shimmering down the hall. Rocks speckled with what looked like gold shone at the very back of the cavern, fifty meters or so beyond where the stash of supplies ended.
Is that why the priest and his followers were risking their lives to stay in this cave? They were hiding some kind of treasure?
Back on Erythro, the cramped and decaying space station where they lived before they immigrated to Robichar, he’d known a bald old geezer named Yujene with a missing front tooth who collected gems and geodes. The stones looked like plain rocks on the outside but, when split open, revealed a miniature garden of colorful crystals on the inside. Hedrick spent hours with the old man tilting the geodes in the light and rolling their names over his tongue—quartz and amethyst, agate and gypsum, black
calcite, lapis lazuli.
In outer space, where a pound of water was the most valuable material, geodes were expensive luxury items. Yujene told him they were an indulgence even for the ultra rich. But the geezer collected them anyways and always said that if you polished them smooth and worked the crystals into decorative lamps or the base of a holoscreen, people paid enough for them to make it worth his while.
Yujene also had a few samples of a rock called pyrite. Practically worthless, pyrite is the same color as gold and can even seem to exhibit the same characteristics. As Hedrick approached the back of the cavern, he thought of this impersonator metal—commonly called “Fool’s Gold” because people mistook it for actual gold. That’s what the flakes on the far wall looked like to him, Fool’s Gold. Except he’d forgotten what Yujene taught him about how to tell the difference.
Still, the flakes drew his curiosity and knowing what little he did know made him more interested, not less, about the glittering among the darker vein of granite.
As he followed the pattern in the rock, the gold flakes gathered and twisted around each other in an undulating wave pattern, braiding up and down in a startling dance. Something about it didn’t seem natural. Hedrick followed the twisting pattern around the corner and, though he expected the cave to get darker, he began to notice a faint green glow up ahead.
Hedrick looked back in the direction of the supply crates and, beyond them, the tents. It would be easy to find his way back. The hallway branched two ways. He’d just take his next right, then the next right after that and he’d be back where he started.
His mother would probably start worrying soon, if she noticed he was missing. Maybe Hedrick could just peek around this corner and see what that green glow was coming from. He wanted to know so he could maybe send a message back to Yujene, share what he discovered. Who knows? Maybe it would pique the man’s interest, and anyway, it gave Hedrick a reason to send him a message. The old geezer would be delighted to hear news of geodes on Robichar.
