Wormhole Pirates on Orbis (3 page)

“We’re going to live
inside
the Citizen’s home?” Max said.

“We’re not going to live in a factory or something?” Theodore asked.

I didn’t know what this meant. Was it better or worse? Did this mean we were going to clean up after a Citizen, or would they take us to our workplace later? I wished that Theylor would give us more information.

The shuttle passed three more dwellings before it circled over a sprawling, palatial estate. The building flowed between the shrubbery, winding its dark stone walls in and around the tiny forest of oddly shaped trees. Behind the main structure was a huge glass dome, which evaporated as our shuttle approached.

“Who is it, Theylor? Who lives here?” Max badgered him, but the Keeper simply watched the glass sparkle and dissolve as we descended into the interior.

The shuttle set down on a large circular pad of rough stone that was surrounded by towering bushes with thick leaves of red and purple and blue. The dome re-formed over our heads, and Theylor stepped off first. Ketheria took my hand, and we followed the Keeper out of the shuttle and up one of six paths that led from the landing area. Around every bend, a new kind of plant lined the pathway. A few brandished long spikes while others flowed in the wind so gracefully that they looked like they were floating in water.

Theylor caught Grace reaching out for one of the plants and stopped her. “Be careful,” he warned. “They may look pretty, but some are very deadly, especially when they are hungry.”

Grace snatched her hand back, and we all huddled a little closer. The garden didn’t seem so beautiful anymore. As the path widened, we found ourselves at the bottom of a small rise that led to the Citizen’s home. All of the walls were curved, and it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. A glass wall, or maybe it was a door, began to shimmer at the top of the broad steps. It disappeared the same way the dome had when we landed.

“Who lives here, Theylor?” I said.

“You do,” someone replied from the shadows of the darkened interior.

When the figure stepped into the light, I couldn’t believe my eyes; in fact, I even blinked once and shook my head.

“Charlie?”

I thought we would never see him again when we were forced to leave him on Orbis 2. But standing proudly in front of us, wearing a long cream-colored robe and a huge smile on his rugged face, was Charlie. Draped around his waist was the ornate belt of a Citizen, flashing the emblem of Orbis.

“Well,” he said, his arms outstretched, “what do you think?”

“Nugget!” my sister yelled as the muscular little alien emerged from behind Charlie and leaped toward her on his big-clawed feet. While his thick clumsy hands waved around, my sister scooped him up, and they both fell to the ground laughing.

I didn’t know what to think.
Is it true?
I looked at Theylor. Both of his heads smiled and nodded, and we rushed our big friend. The excitement was infectious as each of us hugged Charlie. What a great feeling this was. I stood and watched. I was smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said. “How’s the arm?”

I held up my right arm, the robotic one the Rings of Orbis had given me after Switzer died. “It’s good,” I said. “I hardly notice the difference anymore.”

“That’s good. You guys deserve a little fun.”

“But how?” I said as he thumped me on the back with his big hand.

“Does it really matter?” he replied.

“Are we gonna live with you?” Max asked.

“If you want,” he said, looking at me.

“And Nugget, too?” Ketheria shouted.

Charlie smiled and said, “And Nugget, too.”

“Come, Ketheria. Let me show you everything,” Nugget said, and pulled Ketheria into the house. The alien was as tall as she was now, and his useless bony wings were beginning to dry up.

“I can take it from here, Theylor,” Charlie said. Before the Keeper reached the shuttle, Charlie stopped him. “Theylor?”

“Yes?” the alien replied.

“Thanks. They won’t regret this.”

But the Keeper only smiled and turned away.

“Regret what?” I asked.

Charlie laughed. “You and your questions. You’re as bad as Max.”

“You still have a
ton
of things to tell me,” I reminded him.

Charlie laughed as Max and Grace dragged him into the house. Most of the others had already followed Nugget and Ketheria inside. There was shouting from every room as we poured through Charlie’s house, exploring each curved wall, each new room.

Max grabbed me by my skin and pointed out the wave-like designs on the walls.

“They all have it,” she said, and rubbed her hand along the thin channels carved into the polished stone.

“What are they?” I asked.

“They represent the cosmic streams of OIO. I think it’s to remind whoever lives here that we are constantly affected by the cosmic energy that flows through the universe.”

“You think Charlie did this?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “He doesn’t talk about OIO much. I think someone else owned this place before him. Why wouldn’t he have mentioned it before?”

“She’s right,” Charlie said, standing behind us.

“Whose house is this?” Max asked.

“It’s our home now,” he said.

“But why?” I asked. “What are we going to do here? What about the Trading Council and the debt we owe?”

“Whoa!” Charlie raised his hands to deflect my barrage of questions.

“He gets that from me,” Max said matter-of-factly. “But I am curious about where we are going to work,” she added.

“Will you be at our workplace?” I said.

Three other kids joined in our assault.

“Where do we sleep?”

“This is a strange factory.”

“What do we have to do?”

Charlie closed his eyes and held up his hands again. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Stop. It’s really simple. All you have to do . . . is be kids. Play. Have fun. Grow up like other children. Just be
kids.
”

I must admit that Charlie’s words were sweeter than any toonbas I’d ever tasted, but what was he saying? Just be
kids
? We were knudniks. Our job was to pay off our parents’ debt. As simple as that. And if we didn’t like it . . . well, I had been reminded of the consequences many, many times on the Rings of Orbis.

I had to ask, “But
how,
Charlie?”

Charlie put his hand on my shoulder. He looked at me, but said nothing. His jaw slackened, followed by his shoulders, and his lips tightened, trying to keep a smile. To me the expression said,
Why can’t you just accept it?
But I couldn’t. I didn’t trust very many people on the Rings of Orbis. Everyone had an agenda, and I mean
everyone
— even Charlie. “Soon enough, Johnny,” he said. “Don’t rush this. Please.” The last word was a whisper, and I think it was meant just for me. For a parsec, I wondered if this was how my father would have spoken to me.

Then his tone changed — it got bigger, louder. He shouted to the other kids, “Come on, everyone. I bet you’re hungry. Let’s eat!”

I couldn’t question that. I was starving.

Our new home (I liked those words) was equipped with a chow synth very similar to the one we’d had on the
Renaissance.
No more food tablets or the protein glop Odran forced us to eat. Instead we feasted on peaches, nuts, and heavy chunks of dark bread with something Charlie called peanut butter. He said it was from Earth, and it took him a long time to get the chow synth to replicate the smooth substance. Ketheria devoured it, but then again, she loved every kind of food. I liked it, too, and piled it on my bread as thick as I could. We each took turns trying to talk with the stuff stuck to the roofs of our mouths.

After lunch Charlie handed out new skins to everyone. They were amber yellow and matched the crystal at the center of his belt. He informed us that the new skins would work for this house and the grounds, and then he showed us where we would sleep.

Apparently, the previous tenants didn’t care much for sleepers. Charlie said that they had rested inside stimulation tanks of vitamin-fortified liquids. The nurture pods we slept in on the
Renaissance
worked in a similar way, but I could never see myself sleeping in a tank of sludge. The former owners, however, did employ knudniks and therefore had installed sleepers for their slaves’ needs. But the Citizens wasted little space on such
luxuries,
and to my disbelief the sleepers were stacked six
inside
the wall. Each sleeper was loaded one at a time and then rotated up and over the next one, disappearing inside the wall. I gave my new sleeping arrangement a try. When the thin sleeper rolled on its side and then tucked back into the wall, it reminded me of the ancient burial rituals humans used on Earth, where they stuck people in the ground after they died. I didn’t think this was going to be very popular with the other kids.

“I use one, too,” Charlie said, noticing my discomfort. “Maybe we can change them later.”

“I doubt it,” Dalton whispered to the kid next to him.

Charlie overheard the remark and frowned. Max gave Dalton a shot in the ribs.

“Ow! He’s your friend, not mine,” Dalton complained.

After examining the sleepers, we followed Charlie out to the garden, where he told us to take seats on the stone benches or on the ground. I sat on a bench under a tall plant that seemed to shy away as I moved closer. Max slipped in front of Grace and sat next to me.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

“About what?” I asked.

“About this.”

“I love it. Who wouldn’t? It’s almost too good to be true. I’m waiting for the catch.”

“What catch? Don’t you think they might be rewarding us a little? Think of the work you did with the central computer and with the Samirans. I think this is how they’re thanking us.”

“I also remember making a lot of Trading Council members very angry. I’m not so sure the Citizens are interested in rewarding a bunch of knudniks. I don’t know. Something’s wrong. I mean this
is
everything I dreamed about. There
has
to be a catch.”

As if on cue, Charlie centered himself in front of us and announced, “There is one small issue we need to discuss.”

I knew it!
A couple of the kids groaned. I didn’t even have to look at Max.

“Now, wait,” Charlie said. “It’s not that bad. Every human needs to go through this. I did. It won’t be hard. You kids are the smartest I’ve ever met, but you still have to go to school.”

“Nooooo!” came a collective groan. Not school!

“There’s nothing we can’t learn with a simple uplink,” Dalton protested.

“Yeah, just give us the files,” shouted another kid.

“Really, Charlie?” Max moaned.

“It’s important for your future,” he said. “If you hope to be a Citizen one cycle, then you have to learn the ways of the Citizens. You must interact with them and, hopefully, discover a way in which you can live here with some sort of purpose.”

“What’s your purpose?” I said.

Charlie looked away.

Finally he turned back to me and replied, “To take care of you.”

I don’t know why I put Charlie on the spot like that. In fact, I don’t know what I was feeling at that moment. Something was off. Maybe I wasn’t too keen on spending my cycles with a bunch of Citizens. But what did I expect, really? That we would hang out with Charlie in the house all cycle? Even I knew that was dumb. I reminded myself that Charlie was a Citizen now and that I liked hanging around
him.
Maybe they weren’t all bad. Maybe it was just the Trading Council that made me dislike the Citizens so much. But then I thought of the Citizens on the shuttle and how they ignored us even after the wormhole pirates attacked. No, they were all bad. School on the Rings of Orbis was not going to be fun.

“Look,” Charlie continued. “Don’t judge it yet. Wait till you see the school. The Illuminate is an amazing facility.”

“Where is it?” one of the other kids asked.

“It’s in Tromaine. You get there by chute,” Charlie replied.

“What’s the city like?” Max asked.

“It’s simply amazing, but you must promise to never go there without an authorized escort or clearance by a Citizen —
by me
— for a particular work rule. Knudniks are not allowed to roam the city freely. The vest you’re wearing can inform any Citizen if you have been cleared or not. There are serious consequences if you break their rules. Do not challenge them.”

Everyone spoke at once, each with a different question.

“See, this is why you have to go to school. To learn all of this and put it into practice.”

Max stood up and shouted over everyone, “When do we start?”

“Next cycle,” Charlie said, and everyone was quiet.

We all waited for Charlie to fall asleep before we piled out of the sleepers and gathered in the farthest corner of the room.

“This feels more like a storage facility than a bedroom,” Theodore complained.

“I hate it,” Grace said, sitting next to Theodore.

“The rest of the place is golden, though,” Max argued, the last to emerge from the wall. In her hands were the workings of the dream enhancement features standard on every sleeper we had ever used on the Rings of Orbis.