On Whetsday (15 page)

33

He walked back into the other room and went straight to Yulia. He thought she was asleep, but as Denny got closer, her eyes opened.

“I want to talk to her,” he said.

Yulia didn't ask who Denny meant. She only tugged open the pocket of her big jacket and stretched it out toward Denny. Inside, he could see the glimmer of metal.

Sirah raised her head from the table. “No. Denny, don't.”

Denny reached into the pocket and took the maton firmly in hand. The pain ripped through him. It seemed worse than before, but then it was hard to remember pain. It was just...pain.

Athena was there. Only she was no longer the stone woman Denny had met in the storage dome. She was one of them. Athena had Yulia's weight of heavy dark curls. She had bare arms that looked both slender and strong, like Sirah's. She had deep brown eyes that Denny didn't recognize, but which she had surely stolen from some other human. Even her clothes looked like theirs–raggedy, old, and bleached down to just the ghost of colors.

Denny wasn't fooled. No matter what she looked like, Athena wasn't really a human. She was a thing. A machine. “Tell me why,” he said to her.

Athena cocked her head to the side. That faint smile was on her lips again. “Why?”

“Tell me why they hate us so much.” He shook his fist toward the small window at the far end of the room. “Tell me why they kill us.”

Athena nodded. “I have pertinent information regarding that question,” she said. A light appeared in the middle of the room.

Auntie Talla whipped around. “What's that?”

Sirah scrambled to her feet as the light began to form shapes. “Denny? Are you doing that?”

“She's doing it,” he said. He turned to Athena. “I thought you could only show things to the person holding the maton?”

“I am only visible to the user in interface,” she said. “However, other materials are less limited.”

The light in the middle of the room resolved into images. A voice began to speak.

34

Tranquility

The planet Rask lies in a stable orbit around the gravitation center of the binary star system, Andersen-Ikirii 204. Rask is nearly tidally locked at a position near the white dwarf, though the actual position is offset slightly toward the gravitational center of the system. The result is that one side of the planet enjoys fairly equitable conditions, with the white dwarf star visible continuously for most of the central land mass. The opposite side of the planet is cold, and has very little plant life.

The species commonly referred to as cithian evolved 1.6 million years ago on the second largest of Rask's continents. Over the next million years, they reached all areas of the planet, survived a period of usually high stellar output, and successfully established communities on the colder, less habitable side of the planet as well as establishing large settlements on every part of the star-facing side of the planet.

A strongly structured civilization was established. Large scale architecture developed. A series of wars were fought, which led a gradual consolidation of the planetary government. Significant advancements were made in mathematics. Engineering. Logistics. For 348,000 years, cithians built on this foundation. They learned to predict the weather despite variations in their planet's path through the binary star system. They learned to make wheels. They learned to make both bronze and iron. They developed, and discarded, several philosophies about the nature of existence. They built an elaborate social system, a language rich in both syntax and symbol, and art forms that were both subtle and meaningful.

In the 186,542nd year since the cithians achieved a unified government, the leaders of the government were gathered at a place then called Palakajukal to evaluate the completion of a wide scale irrigation project which would reduce flooding and provide more reliable resources for agriculture. On the day now regarded as the first day of the first year on the cithian calendar, a light appeared in the sky. The light grew brighter until it rivaled the glow of the sun. Of both suns. Finally, the light came to hover over Palakajukal. With great peals of thunder that sent many cithians running in panic, the light descended. It was an alien starship.

The aliens within the starship came out to meet the cithian leaders, bringing with them the fundamentals of electricity, electronics, and the richness of information theory. They brought advanced optics, astronomy, and the history of the universe. They brought a deep understanding of biology, evolution, and a cure for many diseases. They brought the theory of gravitation, of relativity, of quantum states and multiverses. They brought the ability to harness fundamental forces, to transform the planet, and to sail among the stars.

The aliens onboard the ship came in a spirit of friendship. And generosity.

The cithians found that, while the alien technology was radically advanced compared to their own, it was nothing they could not learn with study. So they studied. They found that the alien art and the alien philosophies had aspects that they had never considered. They considered them. The many alien breakthroughs were puzzling when you didn't understand the basics, but if you applied yourself to a few fundamental points, they became obvious. The cithians applied themselves.

Within a generation, the cithians had incorporated almost all the knowledge that the aliens had brought them. And within a generation, almost nothing remained of the cithian civilization. The achievements of their greatest minds were revealed as primitive. The most important events of their past were cataloged and recorded in one, rather slim, volume. Their artworks were digitized. Their philosophies duly noted. The thoughts and lives and the stories that had sustained their people since the beginning, became quaint.

The aliens–the humans–who came in the starship and brought this change to the cithians, were part of a culture that was a bit less than 13,000 years old.

35

Denny watched the last images of the story Athena showed them fade into darkness. He had watched it three times, though holding onto the maton so long had made him ache with tiredness that went down to his bones. During the second showing, he had to sit down. During the third, Sirah put an arm around him to keep him from slumping over on the bench. Denny found it hard to stop even then. Long after the images had disappeared from the air, they were still playing in his mind. The long ramp descending. The humans in their bulky white suits coming down to greet the baffled cithians.

“We found them,” said Sirah. Then again, her voice thick with sad wonder. “We found them.”

On the other side of Denny, across from Sirah, sat Athena. She seemed to be watching the images along with everyone else, though her smile never faltered.

Denny turned toward her. His neck felt hot and stiff. “How did things go so wrong after that?” he asked the artificial woman. “How did Earth end up so polluted we could never go home?”

“It didn't,” Athena said.

Denny felt like he should not be surprised. Everything he thought he knew about the past was turning out to be wrong. “Then, if we could get a shuttle, we could go to Earth?”

Athena nodded. “You could. However, Earth's biosphere was badly damaged by bombing in the thirteenth year of the war. Though recent records are not available to me, it is unlikely that current conditions on that planet are favorable for complex life.”

“Earth...is dead?” It shouldn't hurt to lose a home he'd never visited, a planet he'd always thought was lost anyway. It hurt. “In a war?”

“The war to destroy Earth and all human colonies,” said Athena. “I'm sorry. I do not have presentation materials on this subject.”

Denny guessed that meant there would be no more moving pictures. Or at least, none about this war. He knew the word. There was war in some of his picture books, with missiles and bombs and rays of fire lashing out at evil space ships. “How could they? If the cithians were so far behind humans, how could they beat us?”

Athena stood and appeared to slowly pace around the room. It was a movement Denny had seen before. He wondered if it was built into the memory—designed to make her seem more like a real person. “They didn't,” she said. “Not alone. It was a coalition of several races, working together, that was successful in defeating humanity.”

Denny found that he was actually crying, And he found that he was right back to the question he had asked before. “But why? Why did they do it?”

“Because you were too quick,” said Athena. “Because you were too unpredictable. Because you spread so far, so fast. Because you would not stop looking in the next system, and the next, to see what was there. Because you could not stop confusing kindness and interference. Because you always thought you were right.” She stopped her pacing and turned to face him. “Because you destroyed them first, by trying to make them like you. And because you expected them to be grateful.”

Denny let go of the maton, and Athena disappeared in a blink.

36

Dimsday

On Dimsday, Denny watched the world end. He woke suddenly up out of confused dreams. Dreams about his father and a great jagged sculpture that was as tall as a building. At the other end of the long room, Cousin Haw lay face down on a long bench, his heavy arms dragged on the floor, and grinding snores escaped his mouth as his thick body went up and down in time with his breathing. Cousin Kettle was nearby, sitting with his back to a corner and his arms around his knees. Yulia had taken her jacket off to act as a pillow. Auntie Talla had done the same with her cloak.

Sirah was awake. Denny slowly got to his feet and walked across the darkened room. It was Dimsday, and even the light of the tiny blue sun was blocked by neighboring buildings. The air inside the low building had cooled while they rested until it was more than a little chilly. The streets of the quarter were in all but complete darkness.

As Denny drew up beside her, Sirah turned to him. “Did you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“That sound.” Sirah shivered. “It was like... I think it was a person.”

Together they stood by the small window. The street outside was empty. A block away, a small light glowed at the door of the compartment building where both Denny and Sirah lived. Had lived. High above the street, he saw lights in other windows, but no movement.

He was just about to say something more when he heard it–a high, thin noise that cut off abruptly. It might not have been a human at all, but Denny didn't think so. He thought it was Nonni Hacci. Or Auntie Fro. Or maybe Auntie Flash. He didn't know what was causing them to make that sound, but he knew it couldn't be good. “Earth,” he said.

Sirah clutched his arm. “Careful,” she whispered. “Don't wake Kettle.” She touched the window. Circles of fog appeared around her fingertips. “'I've been thinking about the the moving pictures you saw.”

“I thought you saw them too.”

“Not the ship,” said Sirah. “The other pictures that you told me about. The ones you saw at Old Loma's.”

Denny had to think for a moment. “About the disease.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think...I think that’s what they did to us.”

“I don’t understand. What?”

“What they did with the disease,” said Sirah. “The people who destroyed it kept some of it around, just in case it turned out it wasn't really gone.”

“And when they thought that it was–”

“They got rid of the last bits.” Sirah nodded. “That's what they did with us.”

There was a motion behind them. Denny turned and saw Auntie Talla rising. She rubbed at her arms, then gathered up her cloak and pulled it around her. “Can you see anything?” she asked softly.

“No, but–”

“I know,” she said. “I heard it.” Shivering, she took a step closer to the window. “We can't stay here. We all needed a rest, but it's only luck that's kept them from finding us so far. Besides, we don't have any food. We have to go.”

Denny wished he had an answer. “Where can we go?”

“I don't know,” said Talla. “We have to find somewhere they won't think of. Somewhere we can take care of ourselves.”

“Where?”

Talla's face was fixed in the same look of determination that Denny had seen on a hundred nights when she had found a way to feed everyone in the quarter. A way to hold them together. “I don't know,” she said. “We have to find somewhere.”

“I know where,” said a voice from across the room. Yulia raised up off her bench, stretching as she unfolded her jacket and slipped it back on. “Didn't you see it?”

“See what?” asked Denny.

“The place. Where we should go.” Yulia looked around the room. “Where's the maton?”

Denny pointed to where the silver ball had rolled when he had dropped it. “Do you think you should be touching it? You used it a long time yesterday.”

“No longer than you.” Yulia reached under the bench and wrapped her hand around the maton. Denny saw her neck snap back and her body tremble as the pain ran through her. She licked her lips. “Athena, I need to see the moving pictures you were showing before.” The images began to hover in the middle of the room, showing the blue-gray sphere of a planet floating in space. “Not from the beginning. Go to the part where the ship lands.”

The image showed a cithian complex. It was tiny compared to the current city, and the buildings were composed of stone and wood. As the brilliant torch of the approaching ship came down from above, Denny could even make out the tiny figures of cithians scurrying away from the point of landing. The image gradually closed in on the base of the starship as it came to rest on a lightning-scarred plane outside the cithian town.

“There,” said Yulia. “Athena, stop it there.” She walked toward the floating image. “Do you see?”

Denny frowned at the shapes. He could see the shadows from the cithian buildings, the frozen lightning at the ship's base, and the gleaming lower third of the ship itself, but he didn't know what Yulia was talking about.

“There,” she said, running her finger through the image of the ship. “Right there.” She looked at them all. “Don't you recognize it? The human ship? It's the Cataclysm.”