Untaken (42 page)

Jake

t was dark inside the ship, but it was a cozy darkness, not a scary one. The silver lights raced along the gently curving walls, converging where Jake stood.

He put a hand on the wall of the corridor. It was slightly warm and yielding, more like flesh than metal. In the seat next to Jake’s, a figure slumped.

At first, Jake thought the pilot was dead, but as he walked closer the pilot stirred.

“The little one. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.” Its voice was a paper-thin whisper. It was taller than a human, its sickly yellow skin gathered in delicate fluted ruffles around its face. It had no eyes that Jake could see, but he could feel it watching him just the same.

“Was it you who called me?” Jake asked. He’d never given much thought to what others like him might look like, but this tall, strange creature was not what he’d expected.

“The ship called you. With the last of my strength, I gave it a voice,” said the creature.

“Why?” asked Jake.

“The herd is leaving. You will be left behind if you do not join them soon.”

“You came back for me?”

The creature’s face crumpled, and although the expression was strange to him, Jake could feel its laughter.

“My vessel was wrecked here. An accident. I wanted to see this planet. It is the last I shall live to see, and it is very beautiful. I do not regret my choice. I am old and my power over the ship is weaker than I had thought. I lost control and have been trapped here since. I have been calling for rescue, but the others are too far away to hear my feeble voice. I felt you and drew you near. It was chance.”

“I will rescue
you
,” said Jake.

“Too late for me now. This shell is spent. I am two generations old. There are few of my genus left. This shell was taken on a world far from here. We can prolong the natural span of a host shell, but sooner or later, all flesh yields to time. That is why we came here, of course. To seed new life in fresh host shells.”

Jake nodded. He didn’t understand all of what the creature said, but the knowledge was there inside his head anyway.

“There are enough of us, and of those, who were the children before you, left to teach you. When you have learned all you can, we will relinquish our shells and your genus will continue.”

“Why don’t I look like you?” asked Jake.

“You can’t think this stolen shell is me, any more than the shell you wear is you. Don’t look with your shell, use your true senses.”

Jake concentrated, but all he could see was the creature’s head lolling back against its chair. Its chest rising and falling fitfully.

“You’re still looking with the Shell,” it chided.

Jake sighed and tried again, and this time, it was so easy he couldn’t understand how he’d missed the trick of it before. He could see the knot of silver light woven into the living cells of the creature’s body quite clearly. The energy throbbed weakly, but it was there. The same as the knot of energy at his own center.

“It’s like the lights in the ship, too,” he said.

“Yes. When a Shell is spent, we join our energies together to give life to new vessels. All energy is the same on a base level; the ships are merely simpler shells, powered by a more diffused spark. Reach out to it. You’ll see what I mean. Communing with a ship is no different than communing with the energies in any living thing. It is merely a matter of patience and understanding.”

Jake threw his energy out and, slowly, the ship reached back to him. It hadn’t a mind like a bird or an animal. It was more like the trees out in the forest, something that lived but didn’t think.

“The ship is sick, too,” he said finally.

“It is weak,” conceded the creature. “You have the energy to help it. But it will take a little time and a great deal of concentration.”

The lights of the ship gamboled and pulsed around them. For the first time Jake could remember, he felt at rest. Inside the ship, he was stronger and more
awake
then he could recall feeling ever before.

And with the ship’s power complementing his own, he could feel the Herd, faint and far away, but there. A great host of entities just like him. He felt for the frail thread of the creature’s call for help and sent his own power coursing through it, trying to touch the minds of his people. Had they heard him? They were so very distant it was impossible for him to tell.

He’d have to make the ship stronger if he was to reach them. The strands of its consciousness were tangled and frayed, but if he could straighten them, nourish them with his own power, then the ship would fly again, and Jake would be strong enough to fly it. The creature was right; the knowledge to do it had been growing in him this whole time.

“Slowly, now. You are still a child.”

He was impatient, but the creature was right. The ship was exhausted, the shell bruised and hurting. He would have to feed it his power shred by shred or he would burn out himself. The creature guided him, melding the last feeble dregs of its own power with Jake’s. The walls seemed to shiver. The familiar silver shapes and patterns unspooled before his eyes until the map of the universe surrounded him, the old migratory paths of his kind glowing most brightly of all. The things he must always remember. All those days trawling the gutters for shiny trash flew through his mind. A bottle cap here, a shard of broken mirror here. A round coin, pressed into his hand.

The thought startled him out of his trance.

“Concentrate,” said the creature, blandly.

Brandon. He’d almost forgotten about them. His friends…Brandon, Gracie, and Dog.

“You’re losing it,” said the creature, and he was right. Jake could hear the fragile connection between himself and the ship fading.

In the ship’s eye, Jake had seen them out there in the forest.

They’d wanted Jake to go to them.

“You don’t have much time,” said the creature.

“They came to look for me, and I hardly noticed them.”

“As it should be. The creatures of this planet are not your friends.”

“Brandon and Gracie are. And Dog, too. They saved me!” His hand crept into his pocket where the Massachusetts quarter lay. His thumb rubbed the rough familiar edge of it.

“I cannot stop you from going to them, but if you go now you will never join the herd. I don’t say this to chide you; I say it as the truth.”

And the creature was right. They didn’t understand. He wished he could tell them all that was inside him. He wished he could make them see. His misery burst out of him, spilling into the ship which trembled and groaned until Jake felt it might tear apart.

“Hold back! You exhaust yourself!”

“I can’t leave them,” he moaned.

“If you mean to save yourself, you must. They already know you are not like them. They do not mean you harm, but staying here will kill you as surely as if they wielded weapons against you.”

Images flashed through Jake’s mind. The quarter rolling away into darkness. The look of terror on Gracie’s face as the Drones parted at Jake’s command. Doc’s cold eyes lit up with greed.

“They will help you as long as they can, but in the end, they must give you up or be destroyed themselves. If you rejoin the Herd, you will be saving them as well as yourself.”

“I could just talk to them,” said Jake.

“And after your talk do you think they will let you come back here? Or would they think they were helping you by preventing it? They fear the ship. In time, they will come to fear you as well.”

Jake’s head drooped and he scrubbed tears from his eyes.

“This is your first lesson, child. It is the lot of our people to exist at the expense of others. It is not an easy burden, but you will learn to bear it. They’ll forget about you so quickly. They are low creatures with weak sparks. You don’t belong with them.”

He wanted to tell the creature that it was wrong, but what good would that do? Was he really going to argue himself off the ship now that he’d finally found it?

“Concentrate with all your will,” said the creature

Jake obeyed him. His body went limp and his head lolled back in his chair. The Massachusetts quarter dropped from his fingers and hit the floor with a thin silvery sound that was lost in the hum of the awakening engines.

Brandon

had a bag of food, the company of Dog, and the vague hope that I was doing things right. We would’ve been bitching back and forth at each other for hours if I’d stayed.

It was way better to leave Gracie to stew on what I’d said by her lonesome.

After all, she’d laid the same trip on me the night when I’d walked out into the snow.

“At least she gets to do it in summer in her own bedroom,” I told Dog, who twitched an ear in my direction. This time Dog hadn’t wanted to go even part of the way inside the spooky green tunnel, and I’d been forced to loop my belt through her collar and drag her dumb ass along behind me. It felt kind of mean, but Jake sure did love that dog, and I figured having her there could help our chances of persuading the little booger to talk to us.

As we got closer to the clearing where the ship lay, I started to hear a low musical humming. There was a breeze, too. Was I imagining it, or did that wind feel too warm even for a summer day? Was the faint smell of burning sugar only there because I was searching for it?

When I reached the clearing, Dog planted all four feet firmly in the soil, and I had to haul her forward as she twisted and squirmed against me.

“Chill out,” I told her. “Jake’s in there. It’s okay.”

The warm breeze was stronger here, the throb of the engines louder, and what’s more, the goddamn ship had moved. Before, it had been kind of tilted to one side, but now it rested upright, and the trees it had been crushed against lay broken to the side, bleeding fresh sap.

Sure, I’d told Gracie we should let the kid go, but was Jake really fixing to leave just like that? No goodbyes or nothing?

“Just me,” I called out to the ship.

“Me and your buddy, Dog, are just going to sit out here a stretch, and if you feel like joining us, you come on out.”

There was no response from the ship.

I waited.

Dog, resigned to her fate, lay down beside me, whining softly under her breath.