Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (3 page)

George had often seen those machines through the portals. They were large oblong shapes, space black, broken up by inset panels, overlaid by wiring conduits, and gently curved like overturned plates. Each machine was as wide as four Tenctonese lying side by side, as thick as a single individual, and each skated across the outer hull on six metal legs, squatting here and there to press itself against the ridged and geometrically textured metal of the hull as orange-white light flared out from beneath its saucerlike body. The light had something to do with restacking molecules, George assumed. Whatever that meant.

George knew that some of the other slaves who had seen the machines on the hull believed that they were what commanded the ship. The Elders said that wasn’t true, that the hull-crawling machines were as enslaved as the Tenctonese. But in some quarters of the ship the Elders’ proclamations were beginning to carry less weight than before.

Also, from time to time, similar though smaller machines were sighted in the wide corridors leading to the restricted areas of the ship, resulting in intensified flurries of rumors that there were thousands of other machines hidden somewhere
inside
the ship. What more proof was needed that the machines were in command? But the rumors also said that there were alien races on board in sealed-off sections of the cargo disk, that Celine and Andarko’s frozen bodies were on board, that the planet Tencton itself had been shrunk and that
it,
too, was on board. George had come to ignore all the stories. He only believed what he could see, and the only thing he could see was the ship.

For the moment, George stood by one of the portals that studded the ship’s hull—a teardrop-shaped slab of transparent material that the Elders were still unable to identify, twice as tall as George and as wide as his outstretched arms. The Elders often argued about the very presence of the portals on the ship. They claimed it made no sense for so many windows to be installed for the use of slaves. Some among them believed the ship must have been built for purposes other than slave-running. But whatever that original purpose had been, it had been lost in centuries of time—the pitting and scarring on the ship’s outer hull spoke of thousands of years of travel, the Elders said. And given the efficiency of the machines that crawled across its surface conducting repairs, perhaps even
tens
of thousands.

For his part, George sometimes had trouble envisioning how something the size of the ship might have been
built
in the first place. As he stared out through the portal at the leading part of the craft its hulking outline seemed so tremendously large that surely the ship had to be the size of one of the three moons of Tencton.

In the terminology of the planet that was destined to be George’s new home, the ship was just over two miles long. The disk-shaped cargo section in which the Tenctonese were kept was approximately half a mile in diameter and, by volume, the Elders estimated it to be little more than one tenth of the total ship’s size. In the more than a century they had spent on board the Elders had mapped the cargo disk well, determining that the Tenctonese inhabited only four of the five wedge-shaped sections it contained. Some speculated that the other section of the cargo disk might also contain living cargo—perhaps Tenctonese, perhaps not. Though rumors of strange creatures and devices ran rampant as always, no one had ever publicly produced any reliable evidence that other cargo existed.

In any case, the Elders maintained that whatever else might be living on the ship, if anything else
were
living on it, at least part of the cargo disk had to hold maneuvering and landing engines as well. When the ships had come to Tencton—by the hundreds or the thousands, no one who had lived through that time could be certain, so suddenly had they come—only the disk sections of the ships had landed, leaving the bulk of each vessel still in orbit around Tencton. So the larger portion of the ship was most likely the stardrive engine, the Elders had concluded, though by this point in the communal history lessons George usually lost track of what the Elders went on to speak about. Without the fabled calculating devices and thinking mechanisms that supposedly had existed on the home world George found it difficult to accept most of the arcane and unverifiable pronouncements that the old ones termed “science.”

For some reason having to do with this ancient discipline, the Tenctonese who had lived at the time of the coming of the ships had believed that it was impossible to travel faster than the speed of light—though clearly that meant travel between most stars would take dozens if not hundreds of years, and George knew for a fact that it often took only a matter of months. But when, in his youth, he had had been brave enough to question the Elders on these matters, they had gone off into impenetrable discussions of faster-than-light dimensions, the impossibility of the artificial gravity fields that maintained up and down on the ship, vacuum energy extractors, and a dismayingly confusing assortment of other topics that had had no relevance whatsoever to the harsh realities of being a slave.

So George did now what he had done then, what all slaves did from time to time. He turned off his thoughts and simply stared at the passing stream of stars and the seemingly unmoving expanse of the ship and let time flow by him. Without conscious thought his fingers brushed the portal’s smoothness, and, unknown to him, part of him wondered what it would be like to be free. Consciously he had given up that hope years ago.

“Step back from the portal.”

The voice startled George from his reverie, and he jumped back on the metal grating that formed the ship’s corridor floor in this part of the hull access zone. Reflexively his eyes closed, and he cringed, waiting for the burning sting of the Overseer’s prod.

But nothing happened.

Fearfully he turned to face the person who had spoken to him.

It was Moodri.

Unlike George in his stiff and shapeless gray tunic and trousers, the frail Elder wore his prayer robes—immaculately white and trimmed with resplendent Tenctonese sine script worked in shimmering gold threads. They rustled softly in the constant wind that blew up through the open floors of the hull access zone, part of the ship’s ceaseless circulation of its atmosphere.

The Overseers encouraged such shows of religion as Moodri’s robes, believing that they kept the cargo controlled, mindlessly focused on a better day. Elders who were unable to take on heavy labor but who were otherwise healthy were permitted to carry out the services of their various traditions, provided the food stores were adequate. Nonworkers were usually the first to be recycled on the deep ranges, where port worlds could be years apart.

Normally George found some comfort in his worship with his wife and infant daughter, but he found nothing comforting in Moodri’s robes. They were those of
Celenitipra,
a pre-Celinist religion dedicated to the goddess Ionia, for which George had no patience.

Moodri obviously saw the look of displeasure in George’s eyes. “Do these robes offend you?” he asked. As always, he spoke with a smile hidden in his voice, another reason George disliked the old one, who always acted as if he knew more than he would say.

George glanced up and down the corridor, instinctively looking for Overseers, and was surprised that he saw none. Family contact was strongly discouraged on board the ship, except between mated
gannaum-ta
and
linnaum-ta
and any of their children younger than age ten. Overseers who happened along the corridor right now and saw the similarities between George’s spots and Moodri’s would know instantly that the two were related, and the punishment would be immediate.

“Your religion is one of acceptance,” George said. He said the last word like a curse.

“What religion isn’t?” Moodri asked, unperturbed. Even before the ships, Tenctonese culture had given birth to at least fifteen major religions and hundreds of smaller ones. Most lived in perfect harmony with one another. Indeed, many Elders had suggested that the Tenctonese traditions of peaceful coexistence were what had permitted the ships to so easily conquer their world.

“Andarko and Celine struggled against their adversity,” George said, proud to be a Celinist. “They did not accept their fate.”

“But is there not more to life than struggle? Once our people certainly thought so.”

George felt all his frustration compress into a single burning point of anger focused on Moodri. “I am tired of your tales of the home world, Uncle. I don’t care what life was like there or how many things you could choose to do in a single
crayg. Here
and
now
there is only struggle, and that’s
all
that matters.”

But the vehemence of George’s words appeared to have no effect on the Elder. Instead Moodri gazed at George as if the younger Tenctonese had just preferred his eternal pledge of friendship. His smile was infuriating George.

“Here and now is but a single point in the vast continuum of existence,” the Elder said serenely. “Time moves forward, Stangya. Space is mutable. Situations change. What is a struggle one day is meaningless the next.”

George turned his back on Moodri, glaring out at the stars, unable to take the sight of the Elder’s smile another instant. “If you came looking for me to tell me how meaningless my life is, I already know.”

In the reflection in the portal George saw Moodri raise his hairless eyebrows. “Stangya, no life is meaningless.”

But George recklessly pounded a fist against the portal. “You can look out at that infinity of stars and tell me that my life on this ship
isn’t
meaningless?”

“You don’t need me to tell you that,” the Elder said. “You are your father’s son. You already know the truth.”

Now George wanted to pound his fist against the old one’s spots. Always Moodri made mention of his brother—George’s father—but he would never say anything more about him. Almost all George could remember of his father was the look of torment on his face as the Overseers took George away at age ten. Where his parents were now—another section of the ship, laboring deep in the caves of a port world mine, or recycled a thousand shifts ago—George did not know, and Moodri had never said.

“Why
are
you here?” George asked. He wanted Moodri to leave, to stop reminding him of what he had lost. Without memories there was nothing, and most times he preferred it that way.

“I have come to give you an important message.”

George turned back to the old one. Coming from Moodri, a important message could be anything from an urgent plea from George’s wife to return to their quarters to an admonition to refrain from eating meatgrowth for the duration of an obscure pre-Celinist festival honoring rocks and pebbles.

George narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What message?”

“Turn off your probe and step back from the portal.”

George checked to see if Moodri’s spots were fading—a clear sign of the confusion brought by oversleeping, common among the old. “Why?” he asked, risking the convoluted answer he might get.

Moodri knew where George looked. “My spots are whole, Stangya.” He glanced out at the stars. “Please do what I ask now.”

George would be
karr-da
before he’d go along with any of Moodri’s superstitions about the proper time for work. “Give me one good reason.”

Moodri pursed his lips. “Stangya, the ship is about to translate back into normal space.”

George leapt back from the portal and fumbled with the activator switch on his probe. No wonder there are no Overseers in the hull corridors, he thought frantically. And just as the ship shuddered around him he saw Moodri smile his inscrutable smile again.

What happened next was something George had experienced hundreds of times before and hated more with each occurrence. The sensation was similar to what he thought it must be like to be stretched into an endless flattened strand of vegrowth, as if being extruded by the rollers in a food dispenser. Deep within the ship, closer to the living quarters, the sensations accompanying translation were much milder. On the bridge the crew was somehow shielded entirely from their effects. But out by the hull they were agony.

Fortunately, Moodri had given him enough warning that he had been able to avoid a feedback shock from his probe. But from the sounds of electrical sparking and the cries of pain that echoed through the corridor, the other hull workers had not been so lucky.

Outside the portal the racing stars smeared into rainbow blurs of light, then coalesced into unmoving pinpoints of brilliance, so different from their appearance in what the Elders called the ship’s superluminal mode. Slowly George felt his body return to its own shape again. He knew he had not actually changed configuration, but his muscles ached as if he had. His vision flickered with black sparks. He reached out a shaking hand to steady himself against the corridor’s blank wall. He felt a thin trickle of blood escape from his nose.

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.