On Whetsday (16 page)

37

They filed out of the building an hour later. Because it was Dimsday, not only the quarter but all of Jukal seemed to be deserted. Most of the cithians in the plex would be in the sleeping stadiums, resting until the next day.

Cousin Kettle argued that they should go into the quarter. They could get food. Find other things they would need. It took Auntie Talla to talk him out of it. “Your mother did what she did for your sake,” she said. “Don't throw it away.”

They shuffled out of the building, staying close to the grimy walls. There was no motion in the quarter. No motion ahead of them. There were a pair of road ferries near the end of the small road leading into the quarter, but there were no cithians or dasiks in sight. It seemed just possible that they could take a transport all the way around the city, to where the great bulk of the Cataclysm waited.

There was a small shelter at the stop. They crowded under and around it as Auntie Talla pressed the button to summon the transport. “When it gets here, I'll set it to go around the outside of the plex, past the market. That way we'll avoid the heart of the cithian areas.” It seemed like a good idea.

As they waited, clouds began to pile up in the west, making the dark day even darker. It rarely rained in Jukal, but when it did water often came in great, greasy downpours. Within a few minutes, the first heavy drops began to fall, splashing down like cups emptied overhead.

Kettle leaned out into the gathering storm and turned toward the heart of the plex. “Where are the pods?” he said. “They should have been here by now.”

Auntie Talla, one of the few humans who regularly traveled outside the quarter, quickly agreed. “You're right. Especially on Dimsday.”

Denny looked around. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He thought he heard a sound in the distance, a noise that was like a whole mass of cithians clanging an alarm against their shells. “They're coming,” he said. “They know we're here.” He stepped away from the shelter. Fat drops of rain splashed over his head and shoulders. The air rumbled with distant thunder, but over that sound he could still hear the alarm. It was coming closer.

“Come on!” he shouted, then he began to run back toward the quarter.

“Where are you going?” Sirah called after him.

“The ferries!”

Denny reached the first road ferry. The control to open it was in the same place as the one he had ridden in with the skynx, and one touch was enough to flip back the curved top. The rain made popping sounds as it struck the seats.

The other humans arrived a second later. “Do you know how to make this move?” asked Talla.

“I think so. Get in.”

The ferry was larger than most, big enough to hold two adult cithians comfortably, but fitting six humans inside was still difficult. Denny found himself sharing the front seat with Kettle in the middle and Sirah on the other side. Talla and Yulia squeezed into the back with Cousin Haw. When everyone was in, Denny touched the entry panel again and the top swung back into position. Now the rain drummed on the top of the ferry. The approaching alarm was much louder, and from close at hand Denny could hear the voices of cithians.

He looked across the front of the ferry. There were two short rods at each side of the space, and a flat pad in the center. Denny stretched to touch the pad. Nothing happened. “Yulia!”

“Already doing it,” she said from the back. The whole ferry shook as Yulia jerked from touching the maton. “Athena, get us going,” she said. Then after a moment. “The Cataclysm.” The ferry started to move.

Denny craned his neck. He could see figures coming toward them from out of the quarter, and from the direction of the nearest sleeping dome, but the ferry was rapidly picking up speed. In a few seconds, the entrance to the quarter was left behind, invisible through the increasing rain. Denny drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. In a road ferry it should take only a few minutes to get to the huge spaceship.

The ferry rounded the curve past the transport stop. It turned left at the next inbound spoke, then turned right again at the first opportunity. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

Yulia nodded. “Athena says she’s picking the fastest way. We should be there ...uh oh.” The sound of the ferry changed and they glided to a stop in the rain.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sirah.

Yulia held up a hand for silence. “Yes... Yes... There has to be something.”

Denny wondered where in the crowded ferry Yulia was seeing Athena. “What's wrong?”

“It's the maton that runs the traffic for the plex. It's shut down the ferry. Athena is trying to get it running again.”

Denny twisted round in his seat. There were shapes back there in the rain. Shapes that were coming fast. He looked back at the front of the ferry. “Can she turn it off?”

“Turn off the ferry?”

“Turn off the maton's control. Make the ferry drive on its own.” He pushed the short bar on his side of the car back and forth. “I mean, make it so we can make the ferry go.”

“I don't... okay. Yes,” said Yulia. “She can do that.”

Talla spoke up from the rear. “Then do it now. There's another ferry just a block away, and it's coming toward us.”

“Done,” said Yulia. “Go!”

Denny bit his lip and reached for the bar in front of him. Kettle reached for it at the same time. The bar moved with surprising ease, and together they slammed it hard forward. The ferry spun sickeningly around quickly to the right. In moments they were facing completely back the way they had come–directly at the approaching ferry. Denny tried pulling on the bar. Kettle was still pushing.

“Let go!”

Kettle let go. The ferry spun back to its original position, but didn't move forward.

“Let me try the other one.” Sirah grabbed for the bar on her side and pushed. The ferry spun left.

A dark shape loomed up behind them. The other ferry was right next to them. From the corner of his eye Denny saw the shape of a dasik no more than a step away.

“Keep pushing!” He shoved at his bar again. With both bars shoved forward the ferry lurched ahead. As Denny and Sirah struggled with the controls, the ferry gathered speed as it swerved left, right, left again. The ferry bounced up from the street, hurtled over the sidewalk, brushed against the side of a building, and banked back into the street. There was a heavy thud and a bump as the ferry rolled over something. Lightning cracked directly overhead, and for a moment the street ahead was lit in stark light, then the light was gone and the ferry plunged ahead in darkness.

“What are you doing?” Talla shouted from the rear seat.

“It's harder than it looks,” said Denny.

“Slow down, or we're not going to need the cithians to kill us.”

“Left!” Yulia shouted suddenly from the back seat. “Turn left,”

Denny, still dazzled by the lightning, couldn't see the road, or the buildings or anything. He pressed forward, then thought again and pulled back. He couldn't see what Sirah did on her controls, but suddenly the ferry spun in place so quickly that Denny's head cracked against the side. He saw shadows through the glass beside his face, enough to see that they were passing close to a sleeping stadium. Then they were moving forward again, speeding not across a street, but in the rough ground between the stadium and a storage dome. A work block loomed up on the left, and Denny pressed forward just in time to avoid its mass. Another storage dome appeared on the right. Denny tugged back on the stick. The right side of the ferry actually swerved part way up the wall of the dome before crashing back to the ground. Denny glanced over just long enough to see Sirah furiously working the bar on her side back and forth. And to see that Kettle was looking sort of green.

“Which way?” Sirah called.

“No idea,” said Denny.

“Right,” said Yulia. “Right....now. Turn right now!”

Denny shoved forward. Sirah pulled back. The ferry pivoted in a moment. When they straightened, Denny was surprised to see that they were actually hurtling straight down the center of a rain-slick street. The ferry was moving fast, much faster than he had ever seen one move when he was out in the plex. Buildings whipped by on both left and right. Another flash of lightning showed a single cithian traveling along the wet sidewalk. “Which way now?”

“This way,” said Yulia. “Just keep going.”

Denny wanted to turn his head to see how close the other ferry was to them, but he didn't dare look away from the road. In the next flash of lightning, he saw something ahead of them. Something that loomed pale and huge across the entire road.

“Stop,” said Yulia.

Sirah responded right away. Denny a moment later. It was enough of a difference to launch the ferry hard to the right. It bounded up a slope, smashed through a tall fence, rolled up onto one side, came down again, and spun to a halt against a wall of pale metal.

“We're here,” said Yulia.

Denny slapped at the plate beside him and the top of the ferry opened. Lightning still flickered above them and the ground vibrated with thunder, but the rain had slowed to a few widely spaced drops. Denny climbed weakly out of the ferry. Looking back, he saw nothing in the street behind them but bits of broken stone and a metal panel knocked loose from the side of the ferry.

Kettle and Sirah came out after him. Both of them seemed to be okay. From the back seat, Yulia and Talla climbed out quickly, but Cousin Haw took several seconds to appear. Even in the poor light, Denny could see that the big man was shaking.

“Did we get away from the other ferry?” asked Denny.

“Ten minutes ago,” said Auntie Talla. “I don't think they thought about driving on things that weren't streets.”

“How far are we from the Cataclysm?”

“What do you mean?” asked Yulia. She put a hand on the wall of metal near the nose of the ferry. “This is it.”

38

Denny stared in surprise. He'd seen the Cataclysm from across the city all his life, but he'd never appreciated how enormous it really was. The side of the thing was so large that from close up it was hard to tell it was even curved. Overhead it rose into the darkness, the top actually lost in clouds. The sheer size made Denny feel like coming here had been a mistake. The idea that they might actually move something so enormous was ridiculous.

“Which way do we go?” asked Sirah.

Yulia was still clutching the maton. She waved it to Denny's right. “This way.”

The ground around the gigantic ship turned out to be actual ground. Soaked through by the heavy rain, it was spongy and slick underfoot. Denny slipped and staggered forward, resting one hand on the side of the ship for support.

“Wait,” Talla's voice said from behind him.

Denny turned to see that Talla was holding something. It took him a moment to realize the something was Yulia. She was limp in Talla's arms, her head tilted forward and her curls dripping from the rain. Denny knelt down beside her, his knee sinking into the soggy ground. “Yulia. You have to put it down now.”

She shook her head weakly. “Can't. We need her.”

“We need you,” said Talla.

Yulia raised herself slowly. “I'm okay. Let's just keep moving.”

They started forward again. There was a small rise in the ground, but getting over it seemed to Denny like climbing a mountain. Sirah was right behind him. Kettle had moved back to help Talla with Yulia. Haw was far back, his feet sinking deep into the mud at every step.

Denny slipped, fell and slid down the slope on the other side. Another crack of lightning, and in the rumble that followed he made out a flat space ahead covered in plates of what seemed to be stone. There was a gap in the wall of the ship on the left. Some kind of opening. And there was something in the center of the stone plates. He took another step, then froze. It was a cithian. A cithian and... a human? The light flickered again. The way it glinted off the figures ahead let Denny know what he was actually seeing.

He came forward, his muddy shoes leaving streaks on the wet stones. The two shapes ahead of him came clearer at every step. It was a human. A human made of metal. A statue of a human, like the ones that his father had made, only this statue wasn't just as big as a person, it was bigger. The human in the statue was a giant, two heads taller than any person Denny had ever seen. He was wearing a suit with funny creases at elbow and knee. His face was set in an expression that Denny could not quite read. Happy. No, not happy. Something more than that.

The metal man held out one gloved hand to the figure in front of him. That figure was a cithian, taller even than the man, with the deep notches and groves along its metal shell that showed it was a leader among leaders. The cithian held out a mid-limb to the man. The man's fingers and the cithian's spiky manipulators were just touching.

Denny realized after a moment that Sirah had joined him. She trailed her hand across the metal back of the man. “I wonder who he was,” she said.

Talla and Kettle struggled down the hill, holding Yulia between them.

“Earth,” Kettle said softly.

Denny circled the two figures. There was something set into the stones beside them. It was a large yellowish metal sign, with words raised up in letters the size of Denny's hand. Despite the size of the words, the darkness made it hard to make out what it said. He had to wait till the next flicker from above before the first part was clear.

HERE HUMANS FROM EARTH... read the top of the sign. Another quick bolt of lightning. “...FIRST SET FOOT...”

Then lights were shining in Denny's face. Not the quick stab of lightning, but light that was steady and bright and coming from all sides. He raised his face to see three dasiks standing around the stone area with bright lights in one hand and stunstiks in the other. From the shadows Overcontroller Hiser appeared.

“Stop where you are.” The cithian raised a forelimb, showing a blunt gun with a wide black barrel. “Your escape is over.”