Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (24 page)

“Whatever you say,” I finally told Theylor.

It was getting easier for me to lie.

No one could get to sleep that spoke. Grace spread a rumor that the wormhole pirates were going to attack again. She said that if they could sneak up on a space shuttle, then the security posted by the Keepers was useless to protect us. I tried to convince her that the idea was preposterous, since Cala had had a zillion opportunities to get to me in the past. The logic didn’t sway her conclusion one bit.

I found Ketheria balled up in a corner, rocking back and forth.

“No one’s coming,” I tried to comfort her.

“I know.”

“Nugget will be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” she croaked, her eyes filled with tears.

“Yes, I do. That’s what brothers are for. We know things like that.”

Ketheria lifted her head to show me a smile, and I covered her with my blanket. Every time someone walked past the room, I glanced up to see if it was Max. I wanted to find Max, but I couldn’t leave Ketheria, not like this. We all slept there, together, that night on the floor. No one wanted to be alone in their sleepers. I dreamed of Charlie and Nugget. I even dreamed about the wormhole pirates and Quest-Nest. But all I really wanted to dream about was Max.

The next spoke, everyone shuffled around the house like robots. There were no smells from the kitchen since Charlie wasn’t cooking, and the sound of Nugget’s big feet stomping on the stone floor was noticeably absent. I found Max fussing with the chow synth, and I grabbed an apple. Standing next to her, waiting for everyone to get ready, made me feel that everything was going to be all right.

“I don’t think Theodore slept last night,” Max whispered as she searched for something to poke at the chow synth.

“You’re not taking that apart, are you?”

Max held up a magnetic driver and said, “No. Something is stuck in there.”

“Leave it. We’ll get something to eat at the Illuminate.”

“We’re going?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I thought we’d just go see Charlie,” she said. “And then, you know . . .”

I didn’t know what
you know
meant. There were two possible explanations. One meant we’d go looking for trouble; the other was very new. My heart rebooted, imagining the latter.

“Uh . . . It’s better if we do everything like we always do. We can see Charlie and Nugget after studies. Besides, if Charlie’s conscious, he will be upset that we’re not at school.”

“That’s your plan? Last cycle you said you wanted to check something out.”

I did want to check something out.

“Spill it, Johnny Turnbull. I want to know what you’re up to.”

“Spill what?” Theodore yawned, stumbling into the kitchen.

“You don’t look too good,” Max told him.

Theodore used his hand to force a lump of hair to lie down, but it only sprang up again. “Thanks,” he replied. He slunk onto one of the stools. “Are you guys still mad at me?”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Max said, but Theodore was looking at me for an answer.

“I wouldn’t want to be you when Charlie gets back,” I told him. “But I am glad you’re off the tetrascope.”

Theodore slumped over the counter and nodded slowly.

“We’re going to look for Cala,” he said. “Aren’t we?”

I nodded as I watched Max smile.

To be honest, I didn’t have a plan yet. I only had an idea. Really it was just a suspicion, a bunch of images that didn’t reveal much, but every one of them included Ceesar. Cala was just the messenger, I had convinced myself, a pawn used by someone with far greater ambition.

I needed more information from Ceesar. The only time I ever saw him was at the Labyrinth, and he was usually with that gambler, Athooyi. I needed to get Ceesar alone. I needed to get into the Labyrinth and challenge Ceesar to another match.

Riis was not at the Illuminate that cycle, either. I didn’t think anything of it because she had been missing school a lot lately. At the lockers, Max asked me if I wanted to sit with her in studies, but I reluctantly declined. I had a few questions for Theodore. We found a pod and I waited for the device to slide toward the enormous screen.

“Did Cala say anything to you that seemed unusual?” I asked him.

“Nothing. We were talking about the scope and the Chancellor’s Challenge. He said he could get me a ride. I used the pob to hold my place. He was being very nice to me. He was acting like a friend.”

“Did he say anything about Ceesar?”

“He never mentioned him. He was always alone when I talked to him. Ceesar only came to the shed once, and Sul-sah wouldn’t let him scope.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Sul-sah yelled at him, saying he was a liar or something.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone yelling at Ceesar. “But Cala stayed?”

“Yeah, Sul-sah never had a problem with him.”

“Ow!” I yelled. The pod had sent an electric shock, zapping us for not linking up. Theodore reached for the hardwire while I interfaced with the computer.

“Stupid machine,” Theodore mumbled.

“But why did he come to the house?”

“It was weird. We were just talking, walking back to the chute, and he just followed me through.”

“But he needed a code,” I said.

“He must have watched me punch it in.”

“Didn’t that seem strange to you?”

“Maybe, but I had been on the scope for a long time. I was tired, and we were having a really interesting conversation about Earth.”

“Earth? How does Cala know about Earth?”

“I don’t know, but he knew a lot,” Theodore said.

It seemed obvious to me that Cala had planned this. Why else would he learn about Earth if not to distract Theodore or gain his confidence? But why did Cala want to hurt Charlie? That’s the part I couldn’t figure out.

I was still trying to figure it out when the spoke ended and we gathered in front of the Illuminate. Everyone wanted to see Charlie and Nugget. Even Dalton was eager to see our Guarantor.

“Theylor mentioned he would arrange clearance,” I told everyone. “But I think we should stay close together anyway. The chute will take us just outside the quarantine building. Once you’re through the chute, wait for me and we’ll all go in together.”

I stood by the light chute and punched the code for each person. I was the last person through.

I arrived at a part of Orbis I had never seen before. It was already in shadow.

“We’re on the other side of the ring,” Max whispered.

I looked up through the thin atmosphere and squinted to see some recognizable landmark.
We just came from there,
I thought, looking at the sun glinting off things on the other side of the ring.

The building in front of me was an enormous hoop floating in the air. There were no windows, at least none I could see, and the building looked like a miniature ring, only plump and smooth.

“Charlie must be in there,” I said, pointing.

We crossed metal walkways, past Citizens who glared at our vests, and reached another chute under the large donut rotating in the sky. Once inside, we were greeted by aliens dressed in brilliant white robes of the same clingy material the emergency crew was wearing when they picked up Charlie. They ushered us into a plain room and closed the door. Before I could ask what we were doing there, a soothing recorded voice informed us that we were being scanned and deloused of parasites, infectious materials, or any other biological microbes that might be along for the ride.

“Don’t we get to wear those weird outfits?” Max asked.

“I guess not,” I said as an opening appeared in the room that led to a small shuttle. With no other option available to us, we piled in. Effortlessly, the machine pulled away but stopped midway through a bright curved tunnel. There were no markings of any sort along the tube, and it simply stopped against a blank wall that suddenly disappeared. I shuffled into the sterile nothingness with everyone else and fanned out along the curved white walls.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I was not prepared for what we saw.

My eyes were glued to the glass container floating at the center of the room. Suspended by thin copper wires in a murky green liquid floated Nugget, inside a square tank. At least a hundred copper wires bore into his skin and every opening of his body. The tiny white creatures that infected him gathered on the wires, crawling in and out of the holes. It was disgusting.

I noticed a sole attendant sitting near a collage of O-dats when he said, “Welcome.” No one responded. “Don’t be disturbed,” he added.

“How long will he be like this?” I croaked weakly.

“Quite some time, I’m afraid. The Sepius parasite is always reluctant to leave such a suitable host, but this one’s a fighter. It also helped that the parasite was native to his home planet of Krig.”

“Why all the wires?” Theodore asked. “Do you really need eighty-eight of them?”

“The more the better, actually,” he said. “Sepius loves copper. It’s the only thing they’ll eat. Other than their host, of course.”

Ketheria let out a cry and nuzzled against me, hiding her face from Nugget.

“I’m sorry,” the attendant said. “I don’t mean to upset you.”

“Can you tell us more?” I asked him.

“As the copper oxidizes, the parasites unknowingly gobble up the by-product. The copper oxide then kills them. It’s just a matter of coaxing all the little guys out and having them start feasting on the wire.”

“That makes me want to throw up,” Ketheria muttered.

“Try not to do that in here, please,” the attendant said.

I had to look away from Nugget’s ghastly skin, all wrinkled from the water. He was a pale, craggy version of himself, not the little guy I knew. Grace screamed when Nugget’s body jerked inside the tank, sloshing the water and straining the copper cables. I admit, I almost screamed, too, but Ketheria moved toward Nugget and put her hands on the tank.

“He’s awake?” she asked.

“Just barely. He’s definitely a fighter.”

“Where’s Charlie?” I asked him.

“Who?” he said.

“The human. A big guy. He would have come in with Nugget.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly, I heard Ketheria scream, “No!”

I turned to my sister as she fell to the ground. Her hands flew up to her telepathy blocker and she yanked down on it with both hands. Little droplets of blood trickled along her temples.

“What’s wrong with her, JT?” Max asked, rushing to her side.

“I’m afraid the human passed away,” the attendant said. “About half a spoke ago.”

Ketheria cried out again.

“I’m sorry, but the parasite was simply too much for the human immune system. No one could have known,” the attendant continued.

Ketheria was now grinding her fists into her ears and screaming.

“Please stop thinking about it!” Grace screamed at the attendant.

I stood there frozen between Ketheria and the attendant.
I’m afraid the human passed away.
My body thickened, and I felt the room pull away. The severity of the moment was pushing me into the floor. Charlie’s death would forever mark a point in my life. I already heard myself saying,
Before Charlie died,
or
That was after my friend died.
The part of me pulling away was already digesting his death, measuring it against moments yet to come, as if wondering how I would deal with it in a million different situations.

I’m afraid the human has passed away.

You can’t go back from a statement like that. The attendant’s not going to say,
Sorry, I was joking. Your friend is fine; he’s in the other room.
I looked at him anyway, as if hoping he would, bad joke or not, but he had his head down. He was shuffling papers, glancing at us out of the corner of his eye. I’m sure he didn’t have a clue what to do with us. Neither did I.

Then the door opened and the room rushed back. Someone was crying. More than one person, I think. Theylor poured into the room, moving swiftly.

“I tried to contact you at the house. I could not get through. I wanted to warn you,” he cried, as if apologizing.

It was true. Charlie was dead.

Theylor moved around the room, scooping us together. No one resisted, but he was forced to carry Ketheria. As we shuffled out the door, I turned to the attendant.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

There was something odd about stepping outside with Theylor. Part of me expected to find the ring no longer spinning. Shouldn’t everything have stopped on Orbis now that Charlie was dead? Yet when I looked up, I found my environment acting perfectly normal, as it had
before Charlie died.

I stopped in the open courtyard and watched more Keepers scramble toward the other kids. I watched two Nagool masters rush toward Ketheria and take her from Theylor’s arms. She was still sobbing. I turned and watched Theodore drift away and sit under the huge building, which gleamed like a piece of jewelry hanging in the sky.

Shouldn’t it fall now? Charlie is dead.

I looked for Max and found her sitting on a concrete ramp. Grace sat next to her and put her arm around Max’s shoulder. I stepped toward them, or at least I tried to. My feet would not move.
Is this normal? Why won’t my feet work?