On Whetsday (17 page)

39

Tollsday

On Tollsday, Denny surrendered. The clouds moved aside long enough to reveal a faint red glow in the sky that marked the start of Tollsday. Around them, the plex would be waking from its Dimsday sleep. The market would be opening. The streets would soon fill with cithians on their way to work.

In the increased light, Denny could see the tall fence that separated the base of the human starship from the buildings around it. It was tall enough that even a cithian wouldn't have been able to see over the top. Denny realized that it might not be just the humans who didn't understand the truth. How many generations of cithians had grown up thinking they had rescued the poor, helpless humans? How many of them knew what had really happened?

In the little stone square, everyone seemed to be frozen. Sirah leaned back against the tall statue of a human. Kettle stood protectively next to Yulia, one arm around her back. The silver orb was still in Yulia's hand, but her head was down, her face hidden. Auntie Talla stood in the center of the space. Her long cloak was wet and streaked with mud at the bottom, but her arms were folded over her chest. Her chin high. Behind them all the door into the ship was a circle of darkness–a mystery they would never reach.

From behind the bulk of the Overcontroller, a new figure appeared. Denny thought he was too tired to be surprised by anything, but he jumped to see that it was the old chug, the same chug who he had seen at the spaceport. The chug who had put the memory cube into his box.

The chug moved around to stand beside the Overcontroller. “I said I wanted to see a human thing,” he said in his whispery voice, “and now I have.” A dozen eyes, brown, blue, and orange, pivoted toward Denny. “I gave the least of you the tiniest chance, I dropped a bit of debris into the box of a beggar, and now here you are.”

The chug glided toward Denny, its hidden limbs clicking softly. “That's a human thing. Curiosity. Restlessness. Jump, jump, jump. That is what you do.”

It paused near the edge of the sign. Denny looked down, reading the golden words at the chug’s feet. “We came in peace,” he said.

“Peace.” It was dangerous to read expression into the voices of other races, but there was little doubt the chug viewed the word as poison. “For half a million years, my people lived in the same way. In fullness and contentment. Then humans came, and in a single generation we wanted more. Progress. Change. Hope.” He said the last three words with the same venom he had used for the word “Peace.”

“So you killed us,” said Talla.

The chug raised a quartet of eyes to look her way. “Not all of you, though that was not my choice.” The eyes pointing toward Denny and Talla settled back into the mass, and a new cluster of blue and orange directed their focus toward the Overcontroller. “Your people are the ones who insisted on keeping these humans alive for so long. Will you at last acknowledge that they are too dangerous to allow even the slightest trace to survive?”

Hiser Grismalamacata Omicradiscrad, Overcontroller Human Assistance Authority, seemed to have a hard time answering this question. His jaws made a series of clicks, and his clangers thumped softly against his shell, once, then a second time. “I have...delayed this moment for many years,” he said. He raised the big gun in his forelimb and pointed it toward Denny. “But this–”

Whatever he was going to say next, he didn't get the chance to finish. A red-black shape ran into the square so quickly that it was only after the Overcontroller was on the ground that Denny realized it was the slender, sharp form of Omi. The young cithian caught the heavy gun with one mid-limb and sent it flipping away. “Run, Denny,” he said. “Quick.”

Omi threw out a quick forelimb blow that grazed the chug, and a second blow just missed striking the chug in the middle of its curtain of eyes. The chug ran away with surprising speed.

The two dasiks standing behind Omi seemed frozen at first, but then they rushed in, stunstiks swinging. Denny turned to shout something to the others. He was turned just the right way to see another of the dasiks suddenly snap its long head back at the end of its long neck, and crumple to the muddy ground. Cousin Haw stepped out from behind the fallen dasik, his big fists raised.

“Get in the ship,” shouted Talla. “Everyone.”

Kettle dragged Yulia through the dark opening. Sirah hesitated at the entrance. “Come on!” she called to Denny.

Haw stepped over the fallen dasik and struggled down the last of the slope into the square. His boots were so caked with mud that it looked as if each leg was carrying a good portion of the hill. With a quick glance toward the place where Omi was struggling with the dasiks, Haw started for the opening.

Omi was lashing out with the sharp edges of his heavy forelimbs, but the armored skin of the dasiks turned back his blows. One of them reached in quickly, striking Omi with a stunstik. Both Omi’s legs on that side collapsed. The cithian tipped over, and fell to the side, but he kept fighting, striking out with both his forelimbs and his hindlimbs.

Denny dashed forward and picked up the stunstik dropped by the dasik Cousin Haw had hit. Then he ran back across the square and swung the stik toward the nearest of the remaining dasiks. The tall dasik saw him coming, and started to turn, but Denny's blow caught it solidly in the side. The stunstik emitted a buzzing noise and the dasik's yellow eyes went wide. It started to fall. Denny hit it again, just to be sure.

Omi had the next dasik pinned between two of his limbs. Denny leaped toward it, putting one foot on the downed Overcontroller's shell in passing, and managed to clip the dasik on one high shoulder. The blow wasn't enough to knock the dasik down, but its arm dangled limply and the stik fell from its hand. It looked at them for a moment, opened its long mouth, and made a very high, squeaky sound. Then it turned and dashed from the courtyard in the same direction the chug had taken, long feet slapping against stone.

Denny crouched down beside Omi. “Are you okay?”

The young cithian turned its eyepads toward him. “Denny. I didn't know. I didn't.”

“It's all right,” said Denny. “I know you didn’t.” He took Omi by the smooth section of a forelimb and tried to help him to his feet, but the cithian's right side was still numbed by the effect of the stunstik.

Voices sounded from the distance. Denny raised his head and saw that more ferries were arriving. The chug was coming back toward the square, and behind him was a crowd of figures that included cithians, dasiks, and even a pair of skynx. Closer to hand, Overcontroller Hiser was beginning to wave his limbs as he recovered from the shock Omi had delivered.

Denny spotted the Overcontroller's gun at the side of the yard. He ran to it. The weapon was large enough and heavy enough that it took both hands to raise it. He wasn't quite sure how it worked, but it seemed simple enough. He turned to face the approaching crowd and sighted down the thick barrel.

“Denny! No!” Omi tried to scramble to his feet, but fell again. “No.”

“But...”

Omi waved a forelimb at the sign on the ground. “You came in peace. Go the same way.”

Denny let the gun fall to the stones. “Come with us.”

“No,” said Omi.

From somewhere back down the path came a series of sharp cracking sounds. Denny heard something go singing through the air. More of the sounds followed. There was a loud ping as something bounced from the metal statue of the man.

With one last look at Omi, Denny turned and ran into the ship.

40

Just inside the door, everyone was huddled together in the center of a short hallway. There was another door not two steps ahead. It was firmly closed.

Talla looked at him. “We can't get this door to open, or the outside door to close.”

“Yulia–” he started, then he noticed that Yulia was at the center of the group. She was lying on her back on the floor eyes closed.

Kettle looked up at him. “We can't get it out of her hand. It's like it’s stuck.”

Denny joined them. He could hear shouts from outside the ship. Another of those cracking noises sounded, and this time the ping of impact came from the ceiling just over his head. He lifted Yulia's hand. As Kettle had said, the silver maton seemed glued to her fingers. No matter how he touched it, Yulia's fingers wouldn't release their grip. The skin of her fingers looked bruised. Almost burnt. The edge of the little purple memory was jutting between her fingers. It was hot to the touch.

More shots sounded. They banged off the walls, the ceiling, the inner door. Cousin Haw gave a grunt and spun up against the wall. Denny saw a line of blood across the metal floor. Talla put herself in front of Sirah, wrapping herself around the younger girl, though Sirah struggled against it.

Denny stood and ran to the inner door. There was a panel to touch, but touching it did nothing. There were no other controls Denny could see. Only a small depression beside the panel. A small, square depression.

He ran back toward Yulia. Something punched him in the left arm, and lights seemed to flash inside his head. Denny tumbled to the floor beside Yulia. He reached for the maton, and turned it over until he found the point where the purple memory cube was visible between Yulia's fingers. Denny grabbed it, pulled it, and popped it free.

Denny got back to his feet. There was more blood on the floor now. It seemed like a lot. The snaps and bangs and pings came from everywhere. His shoe slipped in the blood as he was getting back to the door. The distance to the door seemed to have become almost infinitely long.

Not exactly leaving in peace, he thought. He raised the little cube. A shot banged off the wall beside him. The cube slotted into space. No figure appeared.

He turned toward the open door to the outside. The light of Tollsday seemed as red and bloody as the hallway. “Athena. Close the door. Athena!”

The door began to close.

41

Pairday

On Pairday, Denny left Jukal Plex. They would have liked to wait longer. They would have liked to wait until Yulia was awake, until Denny and Haw were healed. Until they understood more about the massive ship. But they couldn't.

“If the other races defeated all the humans,” said Talla. “You can bet they can handle a single old ship. We need to get away while we can.”

Even so, it took time. Athena, who could appear to all of them now, was able to control the ship, but it took time to start the long cold engines. Time to wake systems that had been still for generations. Time to reconfigure the matons at the heart of the ship to accept the programming that Athena had for them.

There was an amazing amount of space inside the ship. It was far bigger inside than Denny's compartment building. There were rooms for sleeping and rooms for growing food and rooms for studying the stars and planets. It was a whole new plex.

Sirah sewed up Denny's arm and wrapped it in a tight bandage. “There,” she said. “It looked bad, but you should be all right in a few days.”

The room they were in was a room for healing. A “medical bay” according to the sign outside the door. It was still full of bandages and tools for healing. Medicines, too, though most of those they didn't yet understand. There were a number of beds in the room. On one of them was Yulia. She was still unconscious, and had been that way since they climbed into the ship. Athena said that she should recover, but Kettle still sat beside her bed, waiting. On another bed was Haw. Haw had been awake–awake enough to do a lot of shouting and swearing. Now he was asleep again. Among the few medicines Athena had explained to them was one that eased pain and brought on sleep. Considering how loud Haw had been, everyone was glad that Athena had passed on that knowledge.

The air in the middle of the room shimmered for a moment, and Athena appeared. She looked much as she had the last time Denny had seen her back in the house by the gate. A little bit of Yulia, a little bit of Sirah, a little bit of them all. But she looked different, too. Her face was no longer stuck in that half-smile. Her expressions, and the look in her eyes, seemed much more human.

“Talla thought you might want to come up to the viewing area,” she said. “We're about to leave.”

Sirah helped Denny down off the bed. “We'll be right there,” she said. Athena disappeared.

Denny looked over at Kettle. “Are you coming?”

Kettle raised his head for a moment. “No. No, I think I'll stay here.” He nodded toward Yulia. “Just in case.”

Together, Sirah and Denny walked out into a long hallway, filled with clean light.