Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent Read online

  Moodri, on the other hand, remained exactly where George had last seen him, standing placidly with his hands neatly clasped at his waist, apparently unaffected by what they had both just experienced.

  “We are now undergoing a course correction in normal space,” Moodri announced.

  George nodded, having no idea what Moodri meant by “normal” space. But a course correction meant the ship would not stop. No cargo would be offloaded.

  “We will stay in this mode for approximately four crayg-ta. We will then be at our closest approach to the course correction star’s gravity well and will translate back into the superluminal realm.”

  Superstitious nonsense, George thought. Long-dead Tenctonese magic. But still, the old one had known when the moment of translation would occur.

  “How did you know?” he asked in spite of himself.

  Moodri smiled enigmatically. George decided that his uncle would either say nothing or launch into a mystical explanation of some complex calculation derived from the phases of Tencton’s moons. But the real answer was much simpler.

  “The Overseers told me,” Moodri said.

  George stared at him blankly.

  “We must always know our position in the heavens so the faithful can arrange their reclining platforms to face toward the galaxy of Cen’tawrs,” Moodri explained.

  “The Overseers just tell you what our course is?” George had never heard of such a thing.

  Moodri shrugged. “We have to ask, but yes, they will tell us what our heading is and when we will be changing course. It is but a small scrap of information that is of no importance to them, but quite important to us.” He adjusted his robe, preparing to leave. “Are you all right, Stangya? I’m sorry I was not able to come to warn you earlier.”

  “I’m fine,” George said. He stepped closer to his uncle, unsettled by what he had been told. Again he checked the corridor forward and backward for Overseers. Everyone knew how bad translation felt out by the hull. Naturally, the Overseers had not bothered to warn the hull workers what would be happening on this shift. But now that the moment of discomfort had passed, the Overseers would be returning to their duty positions. George knew he had to speak quickly.

  He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “Moodri, tell me the truth. If the Elders have been told our course and all corrections since we left Tencton, is it possible that you know where Tencton is among the stars?”

  Moodri showed no interest in understanding what George might be leading to. “Yes, the calculations are always kept current. We know precisely where Tencton is. Or was. With the movement of the stars—”

  George had no time for the old one’s meanderings and moved even closer, cutting him off. He could feel his hearts flutter with excitement. “And with such knowledge, would it not then be possible for . . . someone to pilot this ship home?”

  Moodri drew back. “Don’t speak such a thing. Don’t even think it.”

  George leaned closer, speaking in agitated whispers. “Don’t play games, Uncle. There is a rebellion on board. I know it. I hear the rumors as often as you do. You probably hear more than I do.”

  Moodri abruptly took George’s hand in his and squeezed with more strength than George would have expected. “Trust me, Stangya. There is no rebellion. There is no talk of rebellion. There is no chance of rebellion.”

  George tore his hand away from the Elder’s grip. “Then you’re useless. Your spots are fading, and you’re blinded by your spineless religion.”

  Moodri ignored the insults. “The goddess Ionia is not without her strengths, nephew. And if you persist in talking about such foolishness as a nonexistent rebellion, then you are bound for the recyclers and will leave your wife and children defenseless.”

  George opened his mouth to shout at the old one and then realized what Moodri had said. Cate-al. Children! Not cate-un—child.

  Of the children George and his wife had been permitted to have and to raise, Finiksa had been taken by the Overseers a year ago, his fate as much a mystery as whatever had befallen George’s mother and father. Little Dareveen—whom the humans would name Emily for reasons of their own—was now their only child. Yet Moodri had said “children.” Was it possible?

  “Do you know where my son is?” George asked. He could not bring himself to ask about the other—the memories of what had happened were still too painful, even after all this time.

  But Moodri dashed his sudden hope. “You know we aren’t allowed to know the disposition of our families.”

  “But Uncle, you found me and Ruhtra years ago,” George said. Even to his own ear valleys his voice had taken on the sound of desperate pleading.

  “A fortuitous glimpse of your spots in a crowd,” Moodri said, “nothing more.” George had heard that tone of voice before. Moodri would not say anything more on the subject.

  “I see,” George said in a low voice. He hefted the wand of his molecular probe in his hand. The mindlessness of work was better than this agony of thought, this terrible cycle of hope and despair. He touched the activator switch on the wand and felt it come to life. “Thank you for your warning,” he said flatly, without any inflection of gratitude.

  Moodri bowed his head and turned to go. But then he hesitated, and without looking directly at George he said, “Stangya, remember what I’ve said. Your family needs you now. In the crayg-ta ahead that need will grow.” And then, inexplicably, he met George’s puzzled gaze, saying one thing with his words but another with his eyes. “Don’t abandon them through foolishness. Don’t speak of things that don’t concern you.”

  Slowly, without quite knowing why, George raised his knuckles in a sign of farewell, and in the small smile that danced on Moodri’s lips just as he turned away George suddenly grasped the real purpose of his uncle’s visit.

  George went back to his work barely able to contain his elation. Outside the portal the stars hung motionless. A sign that the ship had slowed, making an approach, to where or what George didn’t know. The only thing of which he was certain was that the old one had been lying to him. About everything.

  And that meant there was a rebellion.

  And that Moodri was part of it.

  And something would happen soon.

  “In the days ahead,” the old one had said. And for once George had no reason to doubt him.

  C H A P T E R 2

  THE TENCTONESE YOUTH who would come to be known as Buck Francisco ran along the catwalk with the other children, their footsteps thundering through the dark and enormous food reprocessing chamber. Two open-deck levels beneath them, fifty huge, thick-walled, brown- and green-crusted vats of meatgrowth and vegrowth steamed and bubbled, filling the cavernous chamber with an almost choking overabundance of the damp and pungent smells that usually wafted only from the food dispensers.

  The excited children were still in the aftermath of the peculiar sensations of the ship’s translation only minutes earlier, which had not been painful this deep within the hulls. Their exuberant voices echoed as their Watch Leader came to a halt halfway along the catwalk and held her prod high, pressing its alert signal. Down on the processing floor the vat workers instantly ceased whatever they had been doing, looking nervously above, knowing that the high-pitched electronic whine was inevitably a precursor to punishment.

  Some of the younger children on the catwalk reacted as did the workers and stopped talking and laughing, still remembering the painful lessons of the Overseers’ prods. But Buck was one of the older ones present—almost eleven Earth-years old and a year gone from his parent’s quarters—and he and his crèche mate Vornho had come to understand that they had little to fear from the Overseers.

  As he watched the nervous vat workers Buck patted the shoulder of the eight-year-old girl beside him. Her hands were clenched tight around the catwalk’s railing as she stared down with large dark eyes at the motionless workers.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Buck said with all the self-importance of his years. “The alert is on
ly for cargo.”

  The young girl glanced up at Buck. Her voice was small in the presence of their Watch Leader. “But aren’t we cargo?”

  Buck smiled at her the way the Overseers smiled at him, as if a blessing was about to be bestowed. “Cargo’s down there. You’re up here,” Buck told her. “Don’t you get it? You’ve been chosen.”

  The girl’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Chosen?”

  Buck tugged at the crisp black scarf he wore over his gray tunic. It was the same space-black color as the Overseers’ uniforms. Even the silver clasp that held it in place was a miniature reproduction of an Overseer’s badge of rank.

  “For the Watcher Youth Brigade,” Buck said.

  Vornho came over to Buck and the girl. He was Buck’s age, thinner, taller, with cranial spots that were smaller than Buck’s and distributed more like paint splatterings than Buck’s distinctive strokes. But Vornho wore the same type of black scarf. The girl looked from one youth to another, eyes fixed on their silver clasps.

  “I can . . . be a Watcher, too?” she asked tremulously.

  “Well, not now,” Vornho explained. “You’re still too young, and you can’t be a member of the Brigade until you get away from your parents.”

  “And you have to prove yourself worthy,” Buck added. “And the Chooser has to choose you.”

  “But then you can probably join, too,” Vornho said.

  The girl’s mouth was open in wonder. “And the Overseers won’t . . . won’t hurt me anymore?” she asked.

  Buck and Vornho exchanged knowing looks. “You don’t have to worry about the Overseers,” Vornho said. “They won’t ever do anything to you. Their job is to keep the cargo in line. I mean, take a look down there at the vat workers. You can tell they’re lazy just by looking at their spots. They’re only out to cheat everyone else out of their fair share.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I mean, it’s not like they’re real Tenctonese or anything. Most of them have been . . . crossbred to malsina anyway.”

  The girl’s eyes grew even larger.

  Vornho nodded sagely, then went on. “But since you were taken out of the shift crèche for this outing, that means your bloodlines are pure. So you’re okay.”

  “I am?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Well, yeah,” Vornho said. “The Overseers don’t make mistakes about that kind of thing. They’re really smart.”

  “Like the Elders?”

  Vornho laughed and ran his hand over his skull as if wiping away his spots—a cruel gesture to indicate the absence of intelligence. “The Elders are a bunch of spotless wonders,” he said. “Tell her, Finiksa.” He and the girl looked expectantly at Buck.

  Buck hesitated. His great-uncle Moodri wasn’t a spotless wonder, though Buck knew he wasn’t supposed to let on that Moodri was his great-uncle. All their talks and meetings must remain secret, Moodri had told him. But he felt Vornho’s impatience, and he knew that hesitation was invariably a sign of weakness. Weakness was not tolerated in the Watcher Youth Brigade.

  “Look,” Buck said to the girl, “this is how it works. If your bloodlines are clean, then the Overseers keep a watch on you as you’re growing up. If you turn out to be smarter and better than the other kids, then you get asked along on special shifts like today, so you can find out about the ship and how everything works and stuff like that. And if you learn fast and behave, then when you finally get free of your parents you can go to a special luff crèche and . . . you can wear one of these scarves, too.”

  There was a bit more to it than that, Buck knew. He had heard the stories other children whispered, of secret ceremonies with the Chooser binnself, strange metal bands that covered the temples, even hints of ritual sacrifice—though of what, Buck didn’t know. But generally speaking, what Vornho was telling the girl was the truth. Just not the complete truth.

  Vornho couldn’t contain his pride. He continued the lesson. “And then, if you really do well in your studies and you show you know how to handle responsibility as a Watcher, and you show you know how to deal with cargo with a focused prod, then you can be an Overseer.”

  The young girl let out a puff of amazement and wonder.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” Vornho said.

  The girl’s face was transformed by the revelation Buck and Vornho had provided. “And then,” she began to ask breathlessly, “when I’m an Overseer . . . I can . . . I can look after my mother and father so—”

  Vornho pushed at the girl’s shoulder. “Aw, forget about your parents. The Overseers are a better family.”

  The little girl clutched her hands to her chest, and her bottom lip trembled. “But . . . but I don’t want to forget about my parents.”

  Vornho bent down to face her eye to eye. “Then you’re just going to be cargo for the rest of your shifts, aren’t you, you little eeb?”

  Buck pulled his crèche mate away from the girl. “C’mon, Vornho, this is her first time out. She doesn’t know anything yet.”

  Vornho leered at Buck. “What’s the matter with you? Sticking up for cargo all of a sudden? She’s a bit young for coupling, isn’t she?”

  “Eat salt,” Buck said.

  Vornho’s grin didn’t leave him. “You eat salt, mother hummer!”

  The little girl gasped at the foul language. Buck jumped back as Vornho came at him with an extended finger, trying to jab it in under Buck’s arm.

  “Cut it out,” Buck said, his anger turning to nervous laughter as Vornho was suddenly all over him, trying to get in at the sensitive nerve clusters under Buck’s stiffly clenched arms.

  Vornho started laughing, too, as the youths tussled against the railings. Vornho’s finger hit home first, poking into Buck’s armpit and causing the boy to double over with a gasp of shock and even more laughter. Then, just as Buck was rising to defend himself, a familiar deep voice said: “Boys! This is an educational tour, not a tournament.”

  Instantly Buck and Vornho stopped their fight and turned to face their Watch Leader. In less than two months an overworked national guardsman in an overcrowded quarantine camp would call her Betsy Ross, and she would go on to become a formidable leader in the Los Angeles underworld, but for now her name was D’wayn, and she was an Overseer in charge of youth recruitment.

  Her dark eyes twinkled almost merrily in her full and fleshy face as she gazed down, looking from Buck to Vornho. “Well, Watchers? What is your report?”

  Vornho stammered something inaudible. Buck was the first to speak intelligibly. “Um, we . . . we were just explaining . . . how to . . . how we can . . . maybe . . . how we can get to be Overseers.” Buck’s feet began to throb with the pain of tension.

  D’wayn lightly tapped her prod against the palm of her hand. She was a large female, and in her black uniform, studded with four heavy and gleaming silver rank badges on her left shoulder, she appeared to be as imposing as the hull crawler machines. She made a face of disappointment, and Buck was acutely aware of the staring faces of the other children who crowded behind her.

  “And is becoming an Overseer something that is to be taken so lightly as to inspire you two to . . . playfight?” D’wayn asked.

  Vornho and Buck bowed their heads as if they were wired together. “No, Watch Leader,” they mumbled.

  Vornho risked looking up. “The girl . . . she said she wanted to be an Overseer so she could . . . look after her parents.” He shot his head down again.

  “I see,” D’wayn said coldly.

  Buck didn’t like the thought of the young girl being punished for something so trivial. “Please, Watch Leader,” he said, peering up without raising his head too far. “She’s just a kid. She didn’t know how any of this works.”

  D’wayn stepped in front of Buck and lightly tapped him on the shoulder with her prod. Buck twitched, though the metal tube wasn’t even turned on to minimum charge.

  “Are you trying to explain something to me, Watcher Finiksa?” she asked.

  Buck dropped his head even lower. He c
ould see no way out. Overseers never explained anything. In their ranks it was the equivalent of mutiny. In the Watcher Youth Brigade it was cause for expulsion. And those who were expelled by the Watchers might just as well step into the recyclers, for they would never be accepted again by either the Overseers or the cargo.

  “Were you?” D’wayn demanded.

  Buck’s voice was like a croak. “I was just trying to report all the details, Watch Leader.”

  After a long, long moment of anticipation Buck felt the prod lift off his shoulder.

  “Very good, Watcher.”

  Buck was afraid to look up.

  “I said very good, Watcher. Watcher Finiksa? Do you enjoy making me repeat myself?”

  Buck brought his head up. Watch Leader D’wayn was smiling again. She winked at him, then turned to make sure all the others were paying attention.

  “Now you all be sure to remember this, children,” she said. “As Watchers your function is to be the eyes and ears of the Overseers. But . . . the best watching in the ship is useless if you do not combine it with full and detailed reports to your superiors. Do you understand?”

  A mixed chorus of young voices saying “Yes, Watch Leader” came back, almost too faintly to be heard above the background hissing and gurgling of the immense vats.

  D’wayn smiled broadly and nodded her head, creating fleshy rolls under her chin. She went over to the quaking child still standing by the railing.

  “Now is this the little troublemaker responsible for all this commotion?” she asked. The words would be enough to purge the flanges of any child, but the Overseer spoke them in the same way a parent spoke nonsense to a baby.

  Buck watched with horrified fascination as D’wayn lifted the girl in a careful embrace. He would not be surprised to see the Overseer toss the child into a meatgrowth vat below.

  But D’wayn affectionately brushed her knuckles against the girl’s temple. “What’s your name, little spotty head?”

  “Hambli,” the child whispered.