Children of Jubilee Read online

  “Yes, you need to eat the food from the trough, just like the rest of us, so you don’t starve,” I said. “I bet Alcibiades would insist on that, too.”

  “Yes, he did say to eat,” Cana agreed cheerfully. “He said his planet used to be known for having the best food in the galaxy, and he apologized for not being able to serve me pickled Alley-oops or candied Zeli-oots. He said once you eat those delicacies, you never forget.”

  How did a five-year-old know a word like “delicacy”?

  “So Alcibiades is from this planet?” Edwy asked.

  “Oh yes,” Cana said. “He says his people were the first ones the Enforcers . . . enslaved. He said his people were really sad when the Enforcers began bringing others here to torture too.”

  “What’s ‘enslaved’ mean?” Rosi asked in a whisper. “What’s ‘torture’?”

  “What’s happening to us, stupid,” Enu told her.

  How could Cana, a mere five-year-old, understand concepts like that, when twelve-year-old Rosi seemed never to have heard of them?

  For that matter, even Edwy had a blank expression on his face.

  “Who taught you those words?” I asked Cana. My voice came out harsh and accusing. “ ‘Enslaved’? ‘Torture’?”

  “Alcibiades,” Cana said, blinking her green eyes innocently up at me. Her face seemed to be growing thinner and thinner—it made her eyes look huge.

  “Oh, because of course someone who’s from this planet, who’s a total alien—of course he speaks the same language as humans do on Earth,” Enu said sarcastically. “So he can explain big words to you. That’s convenient too.”

  “No, Alcibiades doesn’t speak the same language as me,” Cana said, shaking her head emphatically. She giggled. “That would be silly. Because we are from different planets, and he didn’t have Freds helping him grow up. No, he just showed me where to find a translator device. It hangs on the wall outside his prison cell. Then he showed me how to use it. That’s how we can talk.”

  “Something like that would have to be electronic, right? You have to bring it to me,” I said, forgetting for a moment that everything Cana said was just make-believe, a little girl’s fantasy to help her cope with the horror of being imprisoned and alone all day long. “Bring it to me, and I can rewire it, and I can use it to send a signal into outer space, a call for help. . . .”

  Cana tilted her head to the side, deliberating.

  “That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “But Alcibiades says I have to put the translator back in the exact same place every afternoon before I come back here. Because the Enforcers come and check on them every night. If I took the translator device, the Enforcers would know. They might even come and punish you.”

  “But—” I began.

  Enu slugged me in the shoulder.

  “This is all pretend, remember?” he half whispered, half snarled in my ear. “Don’t waste your energy getting all excited about having a new electronic device to play with. What she’s talking about? It doesn’t even exist!”

  “Yeah, I know,” I admitted sadly.

  Just thinking about an electronic device had made my hands itch with longing. Without even thinking about it, I pulled out my mobile phone and began patting its screen. If only . . .

  My gaze fell on the pebble I’d managed to smuggle in the first day, which we left with Cana every morning. We circled around it like it was a fireplace every evening. It seemed miraculous that it was still glowing.

  “Wait—that pebble is some kind of power source, right?” I asked Enu. “What if I figure out some way to link up my phone and the pebble? Probably all I need is some extra wire, and then . . .”

  “You are not breaking our only light!” Enu shouted at me with so much force I had to blink back tears. Big, tough, fifteen-year-old Enu was still afraid of the dark?

  Well, yeah, so am I right now. . . .

  What would we do when this pebble burned out?

  “You guys, we have to try harder than ever to find a way to bring another pebble down here,” I told the others. “And, Cana, when you’re wandering around on your way to visit—what’s his name? Alcibiades?—look for any spare wire or cord you can find, anything I could use to hook my phone to. . . .”

  “And why don’t you teach Alcibiades your language, and have him teach you yours?” Rosi told Cana. “That will give you both something fun to do, and it will show respect for each other’s cultures.”

  Enu rolled his eyes at me.

  “You know none of this is any good,” he said. “If there was any life on this planet, any time in history, they’re all dead now. And we’re going to be too, soon. Don’t you see how skinny we’re all getting?”

  At least he had the grace to keep his voice down, so I was the only one who heard.

  “We’ll be fine,” I told him. “We are going to figure out a way to escape.”

  But days passed—weeks? Maybe a whole month?—and nothing changed except Cana’s fanciful stories every night. And the fact that, as Enu had pointed out, all of us kept getting skinnier and skinnier. The pebble’s light didn’t burn out, but none of us managed to smuggle another pebble down into our prison cell. I couldn’t decide: Did the Enforcers know we had the pebble, and they didn’t bother taking it away because we were trapped regardless? Or did they neither know nor care, and they never watched us underground—because we were trapped regardless?

  All my thoughts led back to being trapped. We couldn’t figure out how to get past the door down the hallway that was locked every night. We couldn’t figure out any other way to escape either.

  And then one morning, something did change. I awoke when Enu’s elbow dug into my ribs as he rose to his feet. I could tell by the way he moved that he was under the Enforcers’ control. Quickly I grabbed Cana’s hand and turned it over so the pebble bled light throughout the cell. Enu, Edwy, and Rosi were all marching toward the feeding trough. We’d all been sleeping piled up together so Cana would know to wake up and eat too, but she moved more groggily—more like a normal child awakened too soon and stumbling sleepily toward breakfast.

  Only I still lay on the floor.

  “Wait—what just happened?” I asked, almost as panicked by not having the Enforcers controlling me as I’d ever been by them taking control. “Are they having us work in shifts now? Am I going to have to go out there all by myself?”

  Enu, Edwy, and Rosi continued strutting toward the feeding trough as if they hadn’t heard me. But Cana whirled around and threw her arms around my shoulder.

  “Alcibiades said this might happen someday!” she cried joyfully even as she hugged me tight. “I didn’t know you’d be the first one!”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, blinking stupidly. “What’s going on?”

  “You get to stay the whole day with me!” Cana announced. “You finally get to meet Alcibiades!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Um, okay,” I said weakly. I sat up, and everything went momentarily black. I swayed, almost falling back to the floor.

  Cana grabbed my shoulder.

  “Oh, oh—you have to eat first!” she cried. “Because Alcibiades says if one of you gets to stay home with me, it’s probably because you’re not getting enough food!”

  “Food, right,” I said. It occurred to me that every morning when we all stood at the food trough, Cana stood by me, and so whatever she ate came out of my share. So maybe I had been getting less than everyone else.

  All of us had been hungry constantly since we’d gotten to the prison, so it hadn’t even seemed that noticeable.

  If I ate now, would it be like I was taking food away from one of the others?

  I let Cana tug me over toward the food trough, but it was much harder to eat the nasty, slimy concoction when I had control over my own mouth and throat, my own ability to chew and swallow.

  “Come on, you have to,” Cana whispered. “That’s what all of you told me!”

  I bent over the swill and
pretended to lick it up. Mostly I was just trying not to vomit.

  It was so weird to have control over eating again.

  Quickly the food was gone, and Enu, Edwy, and Rosi turned toward the gap in the prison cell walls, toward the hallway leading out to the stairs.

  “Now that there are two of us, maybe we can stop them!” I told Cana as I reached for Enu.

  “I don’t think so,” Cana said sadly. “Don’t you remember how I tried before?”

  I circled my fingers around Enu’s wrist, but he yanked away from me as if I didn’t even exist. I wanted to scream, Look at me! I’m your sister! I’m trying to help! You fight too! But of course that was ridiculous. Enu had no control of his body.

  And did I really want to do anything that might attract the Enforcers’ attention?

  Why would they even care if I live or die, if I’m not working for them digging up pebbles? I thought, and shivered.

  My chance to hold on to Enu—or Edwy or Rosi—slipped away, just that quickly.

  “Don’t we have to hurry?” I asked Cana. “So we get out of the prison cell before the bars close again?”

  “All the prison doors stay wide open during the day,” Cana told me. “We don’t have to do anything in a hurry.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Enu, Edwy, and Rosi were in the hall now, and turning toward the stairs. Their every move was regimented and precise, perfectly in step.

  “Did you ever try to follow us?” I asked Cana. “If I went up those stairs right now, could I slip out the door?”

  My heart pounded at the thought of the Enforcer who stood at the top of the stairs every morning. Could I take him by surprise and knock him out?

  For a moment I could see in my mind how this would work: I would be like an action hero in one of Enu’s video games from back home. I’d give the Enforcer one karate chop in the back of the neck, and he’d crumple to the ground.

  I tried to lift my arm. It trembled so badly, I had to use all my strength just to hold it a few inches out from my side.

  In my mind’s eye I saw myself crumpling at the Enforcer’s feet before he even noticed me standing there.

  I didn’t dare follow Enu, Edwy, and Rosi out where the Enforcers would see how weak I was.

  “There’s, like, an invisible wall that blocks the stairs from me every day after everyone leaves,” Cana told me. “Alcibiades says it’s a pressure lock, just part of the security system. It will block you, too.”

  I felt strangely relieved that I couldn’t try to be an action hero.

  “But do you think one of the Enforcers will come down to check on me when I don’t show up at the top of the stairs?” I asked.

  Cana shrugged.

  “They never came to check on me,” she said. “Alcibiades says if a person is too little or too young or too weak to work very well, the Enforcers don’t care what happens to them. Because Enforcers aren’t very nice.”

  I knew Alcibiades was imaginary—so how had Cana managed to figure all that out by herself? Once again she stunned me by sounding too mature for a five-year-old. But it wasn’t like I knew dozens of five-year-olds to compare her with.

  “Come on,” Cana said, tugging on my arm. “Let’s go see Alcibiades.”

  I stumbled after her. My head felt woozy. Maybe I wasn’t just hungry. Maybe I was sick. Really sick.

  It was hard to tell, because I’d felt sick with fear ever since we’d arrived on this planet.

  We reached the other side of the prison cell, and just as Cana had predicted, the bars stayed in place, letting us slip out easily. This was especially helpful, since I didn’t feel like trying to outrun anything. I felt like I’d used up most of my energy just crossing the cell.

  “Alcibiades says he has lots and lots of stories to share with us,” Cana said. “He’ll probably have a new one just for you!”

  “That’s . . . nice,” I said dimly. I was mostly focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

  After what felt like an eon or two, we reached the prison cell where we’d found Cana that first night.

  The solid door that had stopped us from walking on down the hall that night stood wide open.

  “Oh,” I murmured. “You weren’t making up that part of your story.”

  “Of course not,” Cana said, laughing. “When I make up stories and tell people about them, I say they’re just make-believe!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I stepped past the door that had stopped us before. In the glow from the pebble light, the hallway ahead of us looked just like the one behind us: full of empty prison cells.

  “Yeah, that was worth the walk,” I muttered.

  My head throbbed. I put my hand on Cana’s shoulder to steady myself.

  “Okay, this has been interesting, but if it’s all more of the same ahead of us, maybe I’ll go back to our prison cell and sleep the rest of the day,” I told Cana. “Then, after that, maybe I can come up with a plan; maybe I’ll figure out . . .”

  I couldn’t even put the words together to say what I needed to figure out.

  “But Alcibiades wanted to meet you most of all!” Cana said, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. “I told him how good you were at using your mobile phone to find us a safe place to hide, back on Earth.”

  “I am? You did?” I asked. I was a little touched that Cana even remembered me leading everyone to safety, back in Refuge City.

  Well, what we’d thought would be safety.

  It was easier to let Cana keep pulling me on than to summon the energy to turn around. For several paces I just trudged forward, my gaze trained on the floor.

  “You will be nice to Alcibiades even though he looks different, right?” Cana asked anxiously. “You know he’s my friend.”

  “Sure,” I muttered.

  Maybe I’d be less dizzy if I looked straight ahead, instead of down? Maybe that would make me feel less like I was about to fall over and smash my face against the floor?

  I lifted my head, the motion making me dizzy all over again. The hallway curved ahead, and the stones directly in front of me were coated in some sort of mold or mildew or fungus. It was probably some life-form we didn’t even have on Earth.

  “You would have kept me from running into that, right?” I muttered to Cana.

  She didn’t answer. She broke away, running past the curved wall and crying out, “Alcibiades! Alcibiades! Look who came with me!”

  I turned to follow her. And there, for the first time, was a prison cell that didn’t have any gaps in the bars . . . and wasn’t empty. The vast, barred cell ahead of me teemed with . . . Were those giant slugs? Overgrown air-breathing polliwogs? Mutant squid? Even with the bright light of the pebble Cana carried, it was hard to make sense of what I was seeing. My mind tried out classifications: Amphibians? Reptiles? Giant paramecia? Then I settled on the proper word: Aliens. These creatures are aliens.

  One of the slugs/polliwogs/squid/aliens let out a bellow that sounded like a dying moose.

  “He says he’s happy to see you!” Cana reported, patting a—what would you call it? A tentacle?—that one of the slugs stuck out through the bars of the prison cell. “Alcibiades, meet Kiandra! Kiandra, meet Alcibiades!”

  Alcibiades wasn’t imaginary. He’d never been imaginary. He was just . . .

  Horrifying.

  The floor rose up to meet my head, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I came back to consciousness as something wet and slimy slithered up my arm. I heard the dying moose sound again, followed by a chorus of grunts and groans. The whole prison cell full of slugs—dozens of them, or maybe even hundreds—seemed to be crying out.

  Correction: The whole prison cell full of slugs, plus Cana, who was making dying-moose groans and grunts of her own.

  “Yes, yes, of course—I’ll get the translator,” she said, switching back to human language.

  I turned my head to see her pull a small black device down fro
m the wall. The grunts and groans and moans faded into background noise, and I heard a mechanical voice say, “I think this one is a human child too, but it’s hard to tell with alien species. . . .”

  “Yes, Kiandra is a kid, but she’s a big kid, almost an adult, and I’m just a little kid,” Cana said. Now the translation device let out a stream of grunts and groans, turning her words into slug language.

  The slimy thing on my arm took hold and pulled me closer to the prison bars. I shrieked, and the slug creatures let out a series of dismayed clicks and clacks and groans. Even without the translation I could tell: They didn’t want to be close to me any more than I wanted to be close to them.

  A wave seemed to move through the prison cell, as most of the slug creatures pressed toward the back wall, trying to get as far away from me as possible.

  Now, for the first time, I could see the slug creature who was touching me as an individual, not just one part of a giant lump of sliminess bulging with tentacles. He (she? It?) stood completely apart—or maybe crouched completely apart, kneeling on two of its four legs. (Did the appendages still count as legs if they ended in suction cups rather than feet?)

  “Alcibiades, please—can you help Kiandra?” Cana asked, bending down beside me.

  The translator put her words into the dying-moose tones of the slug language, and this set off another round of horrified grunts and groans and bellows from the pile of sliminess trying to escape the horror of me. My ears rang, and I missed the translation. But then the slug holding on to me—Alcibiades, I guess—replied in a firm, clear voice, and that silenced the others so thoroughly that the translation broke through the fog in my brain.

  “If I want to spend my dying breath trying to save another creature—even an alien creature—what concern is that of yours?” Alcibiades asked. “I still have that choice left to me, do I not? When every other freedom has been taken away from me by the Enforcers, why would you deny me this decision as well? Allow me this one moment of independence!”