Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (47 page)

“Can you tell the difference in the way the gravity feels now?” she asked him. Buck rose up and down on his toes. He felt lighter, stronger. He nodded. “The disk’s gravity fields have been replaced by the natural gravity of the planet we’re descending to. That means it won’t be long until we’ve landed.”

In his fear Buck squeezed the Overseer’s hand.

“You have nothing to worry about, Finiksa. You’re a brave Watcher, and we all have faith in you.”

Buck tensed. It sounded like a farewell.

“You must leave us now,” D’wayn said. “We will all split up for the landing because it will be safer. But we’ll be together again soon. I promise.”

“How will I find you?” Buck asked. It was important that he be able to find someone. Who knew if he would ever see his parents again? Vornho was dead. And Moodri might not have survived the violence of the disk’s separation. But D’wayn had saved Buck. D’wayn could help Buck survive.

D’wayn lightly touched her head to Buck’s, then placed a finger in the center of his spotline and counted over three spots. Quickly she nicked the left edge of the spot with her thumbnail. Buck gasped at the sharp pain. “We will find you,” the Overseer said. “Now go! Run as fast as you can down to the cargo bays. And when you get outside, keep running. The disk can’t keep fighting the planet’s natural gravity for long.” She patted his backside. “Scoot, Finiksa! You will be free again! I promise!”

And Buck ran. He didn’t know what D’wayn had meant about being free again. He didn’t know what it meant to be “outside.” At last he realized that he
had
used the circuitry key properly, but what exactly had the act accomplished? Especially if the Overseers could call for other ships to come and get them at any time?

Everything had been a waste, he decided. Vornho’s death. Melgil’s death. Buck knew if he had just thrown away the key, everyone would still have been safely in space. He and Vornho would have their new scarves, and everything would be fine again.

It was an impossible burden for a ten-year-old of any species, and Buck wept as he ran. He fled down corridors knowing that all the shouting he heard, all the crying, the confusion and the pain, was his fault. He hadn’t done what was right. Moodri had confused him with his old crystals and his made-up stories. None of what Buck had done had been right.

In time he forgot how long he had been running, but in that time the howl of the wind had faded and the decks stopped shaking. It was almost as if he were in space again—safe and secure with the Overseers.

Buck stumbled down a long, crowded ramp to the final deck. There was a different smell in the air here, almost as if there weren’t as many people around him. The scent of his own kind seemed lighter somehow, the way the gravity felt.

He moved with the screaming, shouting, jostling crowd, pushing his way past Elders and smaller children. Everyone had the same idea. Run. As far and as fast as possible.

There was something wrong with the light now, too, Buck noticed. It was too harsh, too bright, even stronger than the ceiling banks in the infirmary. He came to the top of another ramp, and since he knew he was on the bottom level, he realized it was the ramp that led down, out of the disk, to the . . . outside.

Buck looked up and saw the source of the light. Straight ahead a large red light bank hung against a distant wall. The light seemed to waver, blindingly bright. Only when the crowd behind him pushed him forward did he realize that the light bank was actually the course-correction star. But why its color was different he didn’t know. Maybe because of the transparent wall it shone through in the distance. He wondered if there were other walls on this world.

Buck ran down the ramp. There was dust or grit in the air that made him cough and sneeze. Everyone around him did the same. He felt strong breezes from some enormous air-circulating pump. He heard a high-pitched thrumming of straining machinery but didn’t know what kind of machinery it was.

There was a huge dark ceiling above him, and vaguely he realized it was the bottom surface of the disk. He didn’t know what was keeping it up.

The ramp ended, but the crowd was moving forward so quickly that Buck had taken twenty steps upon the surface of the new world before he actually knew what he was doing.

Run,
said a thousand voices in the crowd.
Run and keep running.

So Buck ran. The deck beneath his feet was covered in dirt and small broken pieces of rounded metal that pushed painfully through the soles of his thin shoes. But he ran and he kept running.

And he had no idea where it was he was running to.

Moodri had taken up the position he knew had been assigned to Vondmac—standing watch over cargo ramp twenty-seven. He worked with a crew of twenty young workers chosen for their strength and their speed—
binnaum,
female, and male—scanning the departing crowds with him.

Another command had been issued by the rebellion leaders as the Tenctonese had gathered in the lower levels during the descent—no baggage could be taken from the disk.

Whatever waited for them on the surface of this new world, they would face it without the Overseers’ prods or cutting beams, without canisters of the holy gas, without
jabroka
or any of the other cruel implements and foul drugs with which the Overseers had ruled.

More than that, the council of Elders had also known that the Overseers had caches of survival equipment stowed away in secret places in the disk. It would have been useful to have shelters and solar stills and blades and ropes and fire igniters, the Elders had known. But each cache might also have a locator beacon, and because of that fear the council would not risk any of those leaving the disk, no matter what other equipment was lost.

So Moodri and the others scanned the departing Tenctonese. Every moment, it seemed, one of the crew would have to run into the crowd to see if the object wrapped in a podling’s blanket was really a child and not contraband, but the effort appeared to be working. Since few slaves had any possessions to begin with, the desire to leave with something was minimal, especially considering the urgent orders to run as quickly and as far as possible.

Moodri also looked out over the crowd for spots he might recognize. There were eight times eight exit ramps on the disk, though, so he thought it unlikely he would see anyone he knew. Still he tried. The goddess could be funny that way.

Three hours after the disk had finally settled, it gave a sudden lurch, and the few stragglers that still moved down the ramp shouted in alarm and began running faster. One of the crew who had searched the crowd with Moodri took the Elder’s arm and led him to the top of the ramp. “The stabilizers can’t last much longer, Moodri. You should leave now.”

Moodri knew the young male was right. He and his youthful compatriots could run away from the disk, but Moodri would have to walk—though his knees already felt better in the planet’s low gravity.

Moodri clenched the youth’s hand in his. “We have done good work this
crayg,”
he said.

“We have followed a good plan.”

Moodri peered down the ramp at the oddly colored soil that lay beneath them. Obviously the disk’s automatics had successfully chosen a suitable hot desert environment in which to land, far from any of this world’s caustic saltwater oceans and where a suitable level of ultraviolet radiation would reach the ground. But he was surprised that no aliens had yet appeared. The disk had been on the planet’s surface for considerable time. “Has there been any sign of the indigenous species?” Moodri asked.

“Flying machines fill the sky,” the youth said. “We are clearly being observed from a distance.”

“Good,” Moodri said. “Under such circumstances a long introduction is preferable to a short one. It reduces the chances for hasty mistakes.”

The young male gently pushed Moodri along the ramp. “Please, Moodri. It would be such a shame to come so far and miss by only a footstep.”

Moodri doubted that even Ionia would be so capricious but dutifully set off down the ramp.

As more of the new world came into view beyond the immense overhanging lip of the disk, he noted with satisfaction that the sky was blue. It was one of his favorite colors, as far as skies went, and he hadn’t seen it too often.

There was a pleasant warmth to the atmosphere as well, and little sign of vegetation. More good signs, as they reduced the probability that they had set down on valuable farmland or that they had disturbed local fauna. With an oxygen atmosphere and intelligent tool-users about, Moodri felt quite confident in assuming that the new planet would have plentiful vegetation and fauna. But he was willing to be surprised.

At last he came to the end of the ramp, and because he was more than a century old and had a deep and abiding sense of history, he paused for a moment at its edge, where the metal forged from one world touched the surface of another.

The air smelled dry. It was a good smell. All across the horizon he saw the small dark silhouettes of Tenctonese spreading out from the disk. They would be safe enough when the time came.

Beyond the disk’s overhang Moodri saw a vapor trail cut across the blue sky ahead and knew it was made by a flying machine. He waved hello to it, not knowing how advanced this planet’s optic systems might be.

He exhaled the last of the disk’s air from his lungs, then drew in as deeply as he could the oddly scented air of this new world.

“We thank the goddess for this day.”

Moodri set foot on the new world.

“And for each day ever after.”

George had wanted to find Ruhtra’s body, but the recycling room near the Game chamber was flooded with salt water from the momentary loss of gravity, and Zicree would not let him go in.

Instead they had stayed in the prisoner cage in the holding chamber, where there had been a bench to sit on. Zicree jammed open the cage’s sliding door so it would stay open. But he said nothing. George felt each shudder of the disk and prayed it would be the one that would sunder the hull and spew him forth to empty space. But by the time the mad rush of the atmosphere began to howl outside the hull, he knew that option had been forever lost to him.

“How many planets have you been on?” Zicree asked as the gravity lessened, indicating how close they were to the end of the descent.

“I don’t know,” George said. The thought filled him with sadness. He had set foot on other worlds and did not remember, did not care. “They are all the same.”

“This one might be different,” Zicree said.

The disk stopped. There was no sound of wind, no sense of motion.

“How?” George asked.

Zicree stood. “This is the first time I have landed on a planet in which it has become my choice whether to leave or stay.” He nodded his head as if he had answered a difficult puzzle. “Have you made your choice yet?”

George stared at his friend. He had chosen to die.

“I am going to leave now,” Zicree said calmly. He brushed his knuckles against George’s temple. “I hope we will meet again.”

Zicree stepped through the open door of the cage. Coolock had stepped through that door. Ruhtra had stepped through that door. But only George and Zicree had returned.

Long after Zicree’s clanking footsteps had faded away George remained staring at the cage’s open door. He knew a little bit about the ship’s operation. The cargo disk could not remain near the surface of a planet for long, not without its stabilizers giving out or blowing up or some such thing. But there was nowhere else for the disk to go. Any plan for freedom would
have
to include provisions for destroying the main section of the ship.

George wondered how they did it.

He could find out, he knew, just by stepping through the cage door. He could go to the cargo bay, go down a ramp, and step onto yet another world, and there would be someone else there he could ask.

How
did
they do it?

How did anyone else step through the cage door?

There was no Overseer to lock it. There was no threat of punishment for disobeying. It was up to George and George alone.

He got up and stepped to the edge of the open door. He put his hand through it, part of him free, part of him a slave.

What would it take to step all the way through? George asked.

He didn’t know the answer.

He thought of everyone he might ask. He knew they would be outside. He wondered who would be most likely to tell him what he needed to know.

Then it was as if Susan stood before him on the other side of the door, and in her arms was Dareveen.

They were out there, George knew, in a sudden rush. And whether they had the answers he needed to the troubled mysteries of his life or whether they were just as confused as he was, they were waiting for him.

It wasn’t an answer, but at least it was a direction. Perhaps, in the end, that was all there could ever be.

No end to a journey. Only the beginning of the next.

George stepped through the door.

He walked slowly toward the cargo bays and the ramps. And he knew he carried the weight of the prisoner cage with him. And he knew that there would be a open door in front of him for a long time to come, with part of him free, part of him a slave, and no one he could ask what he should do until he knew what the question was.

George stood on the bottom of the ramp and stared out at the surface of the new world. He chose to step out onto it. As he did so he swore this would be the one world he would always remember.

He began to walk. And when he was about a mile away, one of the last to have left the disk, even as the desert floor suddenly lit up all around him, and even as a second later an angry roar cracked the air, and even as five seconds later a giant hand threw him into the soil of this world as the disk exploded at his back, George knew there was no going back.

His new journey had begun.

And there was still another door to step through.

S
OMEONE WAS KNOCKING
on Sikes’s door.

He ignored it. He drained the dregs from the can of Bud on the arm of his easy chair, then dropped it to clatter in the pile of other cans on the floor beside him. He squinted at the vertical blinds that covered the window that gave such a nice view of the apartment building across the road. He guessed it was morning again. But he couldn’t be certain.