Zoe's Tale

by John Scalzi

  “Maybe they’re still celebrating,” Magdy said.

  Gretchen smacked him upside the head. “You really are childish, Magdy,” she said. Magdy rubbed the side of his head and shut up. This evening was not going anything like he had planned. Gretchen turned to me. “What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They were talking about keeping the crew from talking. It means some of them might know what’s going on. It won’t take long to get to the colonists.”

  “It’s already gotten to the colonists,” Enzo said. “We’re colonists.”

  “We might want to tell someone,” Gretchen said. “I think your parents and my dad need to know, at least.”

  I glanced down at her PDA. “I think they might know already,” I said.

  “We should make sure,” she said. So we left the observation lounge and went looking for our parents.

  We didn’t find them; they were in a council meeting. I did find Hickory and Dickory, or rather, they found me.

  “I think I should go,” Enzo said, after they’d stared at him, unblinking, for a minute. It wasn’t meant as intimidation; they don’t blink at all. I gave him a peck on the cheek. He and Magdy left.

  “I’m going to listen around,” Gretchen said. “See what people are saying.”

  “All right,” I said. “Me too.” I held up my PDA. “Let me know what you hear.” She left.

  I turned to Hickory and Dickory. “You two,” I said. “You were in your room earlier.”

  “We came looking for you,” Hickory said. It was the talker of the two. Dickory could talk, but it was always a surprise when it happened.

  “Why?” I said. “I was perfectly safe before. I’ve been perfectly safe since we left Phoenix Station. The Magellan is entirely threat-free. The only thing you’ve been good for this entire trip is scaring the crap out of Enzo. Why are you looking for me now?”

  “Things have changed,” Hickory said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, but then my PDA vibrated. It was Gretchen.

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “I just ran into Mika,” she said. “You won’t believe what she said a crew member just told her brother.”

  The adult colonists may have been either clueless or tight-lipped, but the Roanoke teenage rumor mill was in full swing. In the next hour, this is what we “learned”:

  That during the skip to Roanoke, the Magellan had wandered too close to a star and had been thrown out of the galaxy.

  That there was a mutiny and the first officer had relieved Captain Zane of command because of incompetence.

  That Captain Zane shot his own traitorous first officer right there on the bridge and said he’d shoot anyone who tried to help him.

  That the computer systems had failed just before the skip, and we didn’t know where we were.

  That aliens had attacked the ship and were floating out there, deciding whether to finish us off.

  That Roanoke was poisonous to human life and if we landed there we’d die.

  That there was a core breach in the engine room, whatever that meant, and that the Magellan was this close to blowing up.

  That ecoterrorists had hacked into the Magellan’s computer systems and sent us off in another direction so that we couldn’t ruin another planet.

  No, wait, it was wildcat colonists-turned-pirates who hacked in, and they were planning to steal our colony supplies because their own were running low.

  No, wait, it was mutinous crew members who were going to steal our supplies and leave us stranded on the planet.

  No, wait, it wasn’t thieving crew, wildcat pirates or ecoterrorists, it was just some idiot programmer who messed up the code, and now we don’t know where we are.

  No, wait, nothing’s wrong, this is just the standard operating procedure. There’s not a thing wrong, now stop bothering the crew and let us work, damn it.

  I want to be clear about something: We knew most of this was crap and nonsense. But what was underneath all the crap and nonsense was just as important: Confusion and unease had spread through the crew of the Magellan, and from them, to us. It moved fast. It told any number of lies—not to lie but to try to make sense of something. Something that happened. Something that shouldn’t have happened.

  Through all of this, nothing from Mom or Dad, or Gretchen’s dad, or any of the colony council, all the members of which had suddenly found themselves called into a meeting.

  The common room, previously deserted after the new world celebrations, began to fill up again. This time people weren’t celebrating. They looked confused, and concerned and tense, and some of them were beginning to look angry.

  “This isn’t going to turn out well,” Gretchen said to me when we reunited.

  “How are you doing?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Something’s happening, that’s for sure. Everyone’s on edge. It’s putting me on edge.”

  “Don’t go crazy on me,” I said. “Then there won’t be anyone to hold me back when I lose it.”

  “Oh, well, for your sake then,” Gretchen said, and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Well. At least now I’m not having to fight off Magdy.”

  “I like how you can see the bright side of any situation,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Honestly?” I asked. She nodded. “Scared as hell.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “It’s not only me.” She held up her thumb and finger and marked the tiny space between them. “For the last half hour I’ve been this close to peeing myself.”

  I took a step back. Gretchen laughed.

  The ship’s intercom kicked on. “This is Captain Zane,” a man’s voice said. “This is a general message for passengers and crew. All crew will assemble in their respective department conference rooms in ten minutes, 2330 ship time. All passengers will assemble in the passenger common area in ten minutes, 2330 ship time. Passengers, this is a mandatory assembly. You will be addressed by your colony leaders.” The intercom went dead.

  “Come on,” I said to Gretchen, and pointed to the platform where, earlier in the evening, she and I counted down the seconds until we were at our new world. “We should get a good place.”

  “It’s going to get crowded in here,” she said.

  I pointed to Hickory and Dickory. “They’ll be with us. You know how everyone gives them all the space they want.” Gretchen looked up at the two of them, and I realized that she wasn’t terribly fond of them either.

  Minutes later the council came streaming in from one of the common area side doors and made their way to the platform. Gretchen and I stood in the front, Hickory and Dickory behind us, and at least five feet on every side. Alien bodyguards create their own buffer zone.

  A whisper in my ear. “Hey,” Enzo said.

  I looked over to him and smiled. “I wondered if you were going to be here,” I said.

  “It’s an all-colonist meeting,” he said.

  “Not here, in general,” I said. “Here.”

  “Oh,” Enzo said. “I took a chance that your bodyguards wouldn’t stab me.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said. I took his hand.

  On the platform, John Perry, the colony leader, my dad, came forward and picked up the microphone that still lay there from earlier in the evening. His eyes met mine as he reached down to pick it up.

  Here’s the thing to know about my dad. He’s smart, he’s good at what he does, and almost all the time, his eyes look like he’s about to start laughing. He finds most things funny. He makes most things funny.

  When he looked at me as he picked up the microphone, his eyes were dark, and heavy, and as serious as I had ever seen them. When I saw them I was reminded, no matter how young he looked, how old he really was. For as much as he could make light of things, he was a man who had seen trouble more than once in his life.

  And he was seeing it again. Now, with us. For all of us.

  Everyone else would know it a
s soon as he opened his mouth to tell them, but right then was when I knew—when I saw the truth of our situation.

  We were lost.

  PART I

  ONE

  The flying saucer landed on our front yard and a little green man got out of it.

  It was the flying saucer that got my attention. Green men aren’t actually unheard of where I come from. All the Colonial Defense Forces were green; it’s part of the genetic engineering they do on them to help them fight better. Chlorophyll in the skin gives them the extra energy they need for truly first-class alien stomping.

  We didn’t get many Colonial Defense Force soldiers on Huckleberry, the colony I lived on; it was an established colony and we hadn’t been seriously attacked in a couple of decades. But the Colonial Union goes out of its way to let every colonist know all about the CDF, and I knew more about them than most.

  But the flying saucer, well. That’s novel. New Goa is a farming community. Tractors and harvesters and animal-drawn wagons, and wheeled public buses when we wanted to live life on the edge and visit the provincial capital. An actual flying transport was a rare thing indeed. Having one small enough for a single passenger land on our lawn was definitely not an everyday occurrence.

  “Would you like Dickory and me to go out and meet him?” asked Hickory. We watched from inside the house as the green man pulled himself out of the transport.

  I looked over at Hickory. “Do you think he’s an actual threat? I think if he wanted to attack us, he could have just dropped a rock on the house while he was flying over it.”

  “I am always for prudence,” Hickory said. The unsaid portion of that sentence was when you are involved. Hickory is very sweet, and paranoid.

  “Let’s try the first line of defense instead,” I said, and walked over to the screen door. Babar the mutt was standing at it, his front paws up on the door, cursing the genetic fate that left him without opposable thumbs or the brains to pull the door instead of pushing on it. I opened the door for him; he took off like a furry heat-seeking slobber missile. To the green man’s credit, he took a knee and greeted Babar like an old friend, and was generously coated in dog drool for his pains.

  “Good thing he’s not soluble,” I said to Hickory.

  “Babar is not a very good watchdog,” Hickory said, as it watched the green man play with my dog.

  “No, he’s really not,” I agreed. “But if you ever need something really moistened, he’s got you covered.”

  “I will remember that for future reference,” Hickory said, in that noncommittal way designed for dealing with my sarcasm.

  “Do that,” I said, and opened the door again. “And stay in here for now, please.”

  “As you say, Zoë,” Hickory said.

  “Thanks,” I said, and walked out to the porch.

  By this time the green man had gotten to the porch steps, Babar bouncing behind him. “I like your dog,” he said to me.

  “I see that,” I said. “The dog’s only so-so about you.”

  “How can you tell?” he asked.

  “You’re not completely bathed in saliva,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’ll try harder next time,” he said.

  “Remember to bring a towel,” I said.

  The green man motioned to the house. “This is Major Perry’s house?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “All his stuff is here.”

  This earned me about a two-second pause.

  Yes, as it happens, I am a sarcastic little thing. Thanks for asking. It comes from living with my dad all these years. He considers himself quite the wit; I don’t know how I feel about that one, personally, but I will say that it’s made me pretty forward when it comes to comebacks and quips. Give me a soft lob, I’ll be happy to spike it. I think it’s endearing and charming; so does Dad. We may be in the minority with that opinion. If nothing else it’s interesting to see how other people react to it. Some people think it’s cute. Others not so much.

  I think my green friend fell into the “not so much” camp, because his response was to change the subject. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I know who you are.”

  “I’m Zoë,” I said. “Major Perry’s daughter. Lieutenant Sagan’s, too.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I pictured you as younger.”

  “I used to be,” I said.

  “I should have known you were his daughter,” he said. “You look like him in the eyes.”

  Fight the urge, the polite part of my brain said. Fight it. Just let it go.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m adopted.”

  My green friend stood there for a minute, doing that thing people do when they’ve just stepped in it: freezing and putting a smile on their face while their brain strips its gears trying to figure how it’s going to extract itself out of this faux pas. If I leaned in, I could probably hear his frontal lobes go click click click click, trying to reset.

  See, now, that was just mean, said the polite part of my brain.

  But come on. If the guy was calling Dad “Major Perry,” then he probably knew when Dad was discharged from service, which was eight years ago. CDF soldiers can’t make babies; that’s part of their combat-effective genetic engineering, don’t you know—no accidental kids—so his earliest opportunity to spawn would have been when they put him in a new, regular body at the end of his service term. And then there’s the whole “nine months gestation” thing. I might have been a little small for my age when I was fifteen, but I assure you, I didn’t look seven.

  Honestly, I think there’s a limit to how bad I should feel in a situation like that. Grown men should be able to handle a little basic math.

  Still, there’s only so long you can leave someone on the hook. “You called Dad ‘Major Perry,’” I said. “Did you know him from the service?”

  “I did,” he said, and seemed happy that the conversation was moving forward again. “It’s been a while, though. I wonder if I’ll recognize him.”

  “I imagine he looks the same,” I said. “Maybe a different skin tone.”

  He chuckled at that. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Being green would make it a little more difficult to blend in.”

  “I don’t think he would ever quite blend in here,” I said, and then immediately realized all the very many ways that statement could be misinterpreted.

  And of course, my visitor wasted no time doing just that. “Does he not blend?” he asked, and then bent down to pat Babar.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “Most of the people here at Huckleberry are from India, back on Earth, or were born here from people who came from India. It’s a different culture than the one he grew up in, that’s all.”

  “I understand,” the green man said. “And I’m sure he gets along very well with the people here. Major Perry is like that. I’m sure that’s why he has the job he has here.” My dad’s job was as an ombudsman, someone who helps people cut through government bureaucracy. “I guess I’m just curious if he likes it here.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I was just wondering how he’s been enjoying his retirement from the universe, is all,” he said, and looked back up at me.

  In the back of my brain something went ping. I was suddenly aware that our nice and casual conversation had somehow become something less casual. Our green visitor wasn’t just here for a social call.

  “I think he likes it fine,” I said, and kept from saying anything else. “Why?”

  “Just curious,” he said, petting Babar again. I fought off the urge to call my dog over. “Not everyone makes the jump from military life to civilian life perfectly.” He looked around. “This looks like a pretty sedate life. It’s a pretty big switch.”

  “I think he likes it just fine,” I repeated, putting enough emphasis on the words that unless my green visitor was an absolute toad, he’d know to move on.

  “Good,” he said. “What about you? How do you like it here?”<
br />
  I opened my mouth to respond, and then shut it just as quickly. Because, well. There was a question.

  The idea of living on a human colony is more exciting than the reality. Some folks new to the concept think that people out in the colonies go from planet to planet all the time, maybe living on one planet, working on another and then having vacations on a third: the pleasure planet of Vacationaria, maybe. The reality is, sadly, far more boring. Most colonists live their whole lives on their home planet, and never get out to see the rest of the universe.

  It’s not impossible to go from planet to planet, but there’s usually a reason for it: You’re a member of the crew on a trade ship, hauling fruit and wicker baskets between the stars, or you get a job with the Colonial Union itself and start a glorious career as an interstellar bureaucrat. If you’re an athlete, there’s the Colonial Olympiad every four years. And occasionally a famous musician or actor will do a grand tour of the colonies.

  But mostly, you’re born on a planet, you live on a planet, you die on a planet, and your ghost hangs around and annoys your descendants on that planet. I don’t suppose there’s really anything bad about that—I mean, most people don’t actually go more than a couple dozen kilometers from their homes most of the time in day-to-day life, do they? And people hardly see most of their own planet when they do decide to wander off. If you’ve never seen the sights on your own planet, I don’t know how much you can really complain about not seeing a whole other planet.

  But it helps to be on an interesting planet.

  In case this ever gets back to Huckleberry: I love Huckleberry, really I do. And I love New Goa, the little town where we lived. When you’re a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It’s life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There’s not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who’s been invented who doesn’t find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens—and all the same people you’ve known all your life and will know all your life—begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It’s all still the same, of course. That’s the point. It’s you who’s changed.