The softwire : Virus on Orbis 1 (11 page)

“Start here.” Weegin shouted over the booming noise of the factory floor. He stabbed a large red button on the wall.

The bins began dropping their contents onto the conveyor belts. Up close, I could see that the belts were nothing more than a thin blue mist that suspended the junk just high enough for us to pluck out any scrap Weegin thought valuable.

“The robots can’t separate or identify the small stuff. Most of it’s garbage that’s only good for recycling. Drop it on the floor and the scavengers will grab it. Anything of value drop down here.” Weegin pointed to more small bins positioned beneath the conveyor.

“How do we know what’s valuable?” Switzer asked.

“Everything you need to know is right here.” Weegin held up a neural link. “But go slow. Don’t end up like Theodore on the first day or I’ll deduct half a chit. Skills first, speed later.”

“Weegin?” I asked. “Can’t robots do this better?”

“Yes, but humans are cheaper. Now get to work,” Weegin said. “And don’t get any ideas about finding illegal materials that you can sell in some back alley. The computer has already destroyed anything forbidden.”

I helped Ketheria to a stool.

“Not the little human,” Weegin said. “She’s useless to me. She’s too small. I would have gotten rid of her if they had let me.”

“What’s she supposed to do, then?” I asked.

Weegin rubbed his knobby chin. “Let her do chute runs,” he said.

“Chute runs?”

“Lower her down the pipes for any pieces that get stuck, anything holding up the work flow.”

Weegin marched to an opening in the wall where the conveyor belts exited. He touched a ring on one of his three fingers. A light shot out from the ring and he pointed it down the chute.

“If you don’t clear the belts quick enough, the stuff goes down here and jams it up. Lower the little one down the chute so she can dislodge whatever’s stuck.”

I thought he was kidding.

“Don’t forget to give her a light — they’re in your lockers. And use a rope,” he added. “I don’t want to lose anyone.”

“Weegin, you want us to risk her life for this junk?” I said.

“Are you questioning my authority?” Weegin moved directly in front of me. We were almost eye to eye, but the alien was a little taller. “Do you dare to disobey your Guarantor,
Softwire
?” Weegin said with a snarl, and slowly leaned forward. His brown lips curled, exposing a row of sharp, grotesque fangs.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Much better,” Weegin said, stepping back and placing his stubby-fingered hands on his hips.

Ketheria sat on the stool, and I turned to sort Weegin’s trash.

“What are you doing?” Weegin shouted, running up to me again.

Now I was thoroughly confused. “You told us to get to work,” I said.

“I paid for useless knudniks,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Did you not get any training?”

“Training for what?” I said.

“I should have bought robots,” he grumbled under his breath. “You must learn safety. Come here.”

Behind the blue misty air belts, Weegin tapped another keypad and a long rack floated out from the wall. He pulled off a sheet of lead rubber attached to a face shield. “Tunics. Put them on,” he said. “Then dunk your arms in here,” Weegin continued, opening a hefty trough of gray-green jelly. “Right up past your elbows. Don’t worry about the smell; you’ll get used to it.”

That was a lie.

“This will protect that weak skin of yours from radiation or anything else attached to my valuable property. Nothing gets through that jelly, and I mean nothing.”

I put the tunic on and thrust my arms straight into the thick snotty glop. My eyes burned and I almost fell over from the horrific stench.

“Don’t be in there very long or the gel will get too thick,” he warned.

When I pulled my arms out, the radiation gel had formed a tough seal around my skin, almost like big rubber gloves, but I could still feel things with my fingertips. It dried as soon as my arms hit the air, but the stench never went away.

“Now you can get to work!”

I started first. I would not let Weegin get inside my head.
Make it work,
I told myself, and I took my place at the conveyor belt.

I tried to imagine that the containers held alien artifacts from some lost civilization or maybe forbidden gadgetry seized from a wormhole pirate. I actually managed to get myself interested. I waited as the sorting bins dropped the junk in front of me. Junk is exactly what it was — so much for mysterious cargo from alien civilizations. The only things I found looked like little bits of plastic, some metal, and a lot of dirt. I kept glancing at the chute to make sure nothing was getting past me, but none of it looked at all interesting, much less valuable. I linked to a sorting file just in case I was missing some rare object.

Before the spoke ended, I found three shoes (I think they were shoes), a laser trigger, and one broken diode crystal — Ketheria actually found that.

And then I saw it. First it was a familiar instruction notice, then a digi of someone I recognized, and finally the doorplate from my own bedroom on the seed-ship. The Trading Council had dismantled the
Renaissance
for parts.

I quickly scanned the computer for verification. I had no idea what to ask for. The central computer was massive. In my mind I began shouting: Renaissance!
Earth! Human seed-ship!
Anything that might tell me what was happening.

Several files containing the name of the seed-ship instantly came rushing forward. I quickly scanned the latest. The seed-ship
was
junked in a deal between the Keepers and the Trading Council. Apparently the human cargo was not enough. The Citizens wanted more. Since he had the Softwire, Weegin got whatever was left over after the others had culled what they wanted. No wonder he was in such a bad mood when we arrived. Knowing Weegin, he would have preferred first pick at the
Renaissance.

I looked at the other kids. They realized what had happened, too, and were quietly slipping little souvenirs into their pockets. Then it struck me.

“MOTHER!” I yelled.

“What’s the matter, Softwire?” Weegin said.

“Nothing, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Then get back to work,” he ordered.

The disc of my parents’ restricted files was no good without access to the main computer on the
Renaissance.
It only mirrored the file paths to the original information, information stored on Mother’s system. If they destroyed Mother, the files would be lost to me forever. I searched the central computer for data stored from the seed-ship. I wanted those files.

The central computer on Orbis 1 was completely foreign to me. I didn’t even know if I was accessing the central computer or just a network that Weegin used. I also noticed that my translation codec left some things in their original alien languages: weird symbols that I could not recognize.

“That’s strange.” I made a mental note to figure that out later.

I searched and searched. Then I went over everything again. Many times I came upon restricted files that disappeared in front of me as they approached or changed file names whenever I tried to open them. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get around the security codes.

I gave up. I couldn’t find anything on the central computer related to my parents’ restricted files. I was furious. The only thing that I thought might hold some answers was now gone. They had dismantled the
Renaissance,
right down to the bolts. The ship’s computer and its storage devices must have been destroyed.

I looked up to find my conveyor belt nearly overflowing with pieces from the
Renaissance.
Ketheria was plugged in, trying to help, but she couldn’t get rid of the stuff fast enough. I dove in and chucked everything onto the floor.

“I didn’t want it then and I don’t want it now,” I said.

By the time we returned to our living quarters, I felt like an astronaut cut from his lifeline and left to drift through outer space with no hope of returning home. The
Renaissance
was gone. So, too, were my parents’ files.

Orbis is what you waited for; it’s what you wished for,
I tried to reason with myself. But it didn’t help. I slumped onto one of the lounging pads in the common room. The room had changed once again. I watched Ketheria fiddle with a few alien games before she headed toward the open doors and the forest outside. But the outside was nothing more than a projection created by the central computer. It extended only a few feet from the common room. Ketheria quickly returned and linked to one of the O-dat displays.

I think the worst part for me was not knowing. I thought I knew everything about my parents: where they were born, what they worked on in the labs, even what they wrote in their notes to each other. To think that there were over three hundred files I would never see made me crazy. Secretly, I hoped to find some
reason
on those files. Some clue as to what this was all about. Why did my parents want to come here? Did they think Ketheria and I would have a better life here than on Earth? If so, why?

The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. My parents should have prepared better for this. Did they know about my softwire ability? Was it possible they knew Ketheria might not talk? My parents performed tests on the embryos for years. Surely, they must have thought of something. I was mad at them for not telling us. I was mad at them for not preparing us. Worse, I was mad at them for not being here.

When I went to my room that night, I was not keen on using the dream-enhancement capabilities of the sleeper. Theodore was feeling much better by then, but he didn’t remember a thing. We said good night, and I placed the equipment far away from me and waited for sleep to come.

The next morning Switzer skipped breakfast. I figured he would skip the pink tablets for quite some time. We found the Wisdom, Culture, and Comprehension building by ourselves and loaded into the social studies class.

“You don’t look so good,” Max said when she saw me.

“They junked the
Renaissance.
”

“I know. Grace told me. But I thought you were glad to get off that . . . tin farm. Isn’t that what you called it?” Max said.

“But now there’s no way to use the disc you made me to get to my parents’ files.”

“You’re right. I forgot about that, JT. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure it was only boring protocol sent back to Earth, anyway.”

“Yeah, but it kills me that I’ll never know for sure.”

“Do you remember when Mother hatched the last of the embryos? When your sister was born and all the other little ones?” she asked me.

“Yeah, why?”

“Remember how crazy it was on the ship? Do you remember how the little ones got into everything and all that crying?”

“I know. I loved it when they would crawl back to the nurture pods,” I said.

“And then everything seemed to settle down. Everything sort of found a rhythm. Before we knew it, it was like they had always been there.”

“I remember.”

“Well, that’s what’s going to happen here. Everything seems crazy right now, but it’s all gonna settle down. We’re all gonna find our place, and it’s going to be like we always lived here.”

I looked at Max. She was smart. “Thanks, Max,” I told her. “That helps.”

Max smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said, and linked to her O-dat. “I think we’re learning about Keeper decrees today.”

Max was so right. Orbis was my home now. Problems or not, this was my life. It was up to me to make it work. I uplinked the files Keetle set aside for us while I tried to forget about my parents’ files once and for all.

On the
Renaissance,
Mother taught us about Earth and its customs through the games and having us watch entertainment files. Now we just plugged in, uplinked, and digested the hundreds of rules the Keepers created, all to keep the populace on Orbis under control. Greeplings were not allowed to genetically alter their broods past two hundred offspring (apparently once Greeplings started populating an area, they quickly overtook it, despite their short life cycle). Zzxyx arrivals, as well as anyone arriving through the wormhole from the Theta system, must be quarantined for three phases. All telepaths must report for registration at their first port of arrival or risk being incarcerated, and all Trefaldoorian clones must each be identified by a different name. My new home had a lot of rules, and most of them made no sense to me. I tucked them away neatly in my cortex, said good-bye to Max, and headed off for my work spoke.

Dressed in snotty radiation gel and rubber padding, I stood at the sorting bays and watched as new junk replaced any signs of the
Renaissance.
I recovered an ancient O-dat keyboard, seven platinum screws, and one Khoolan field generator. Weegin rewarded me with half a chit.

This is what they do with a softwire?
I thought. So much for all the fuss. On the
Renaissance,
Mother had taught us things like theoretical mathematics, organic chemistry, and even a little about dimensional supergravity. All of that was wasted on Weegin. To him we were nothing more than drones assigned to a task to increase profitability.

During one spoke at the center for Culture, Wisdom, and Comprehension, I attempted to talk to one of the child Citizens. I overheard them on the tram talking about another central-computer malfunction. I hoped to get more details, but the green-eyed alien only called me a knudnik and slid away the moment I opened my mouth.

As phases passed, and one set became three, I settled into my new routine without resistance, but my life felt boring, even pointless. I learned to sidestep Weegin and avoid any penalty from the knobby little worm by dealing quickly with any glitches in the central computer. If the central computer was so great, why did it mess up so many times?

The chits we earned were useless, since there was no place to spend them, and the absence of the contest tank was a big deal for some. Switzer’s contempt turned to anger, and I, for one, could not blame him this time. The sleepers became a way of escape, and most kids went to bed early and napped during their rec cycles. I went to bed early, too, but I avoided the dream-enhancement equipment. I only spent my dreams chasing Ketheria when I used it.