Alien--Echo, page 15
The expense explains a lot about why we’re always running so close to the wire, why things get “upgraded” without any sign of actually improving. Uneasily, I wonder what’s going to happen the next time I have a growth spurt. Will I have the funds to get her the new body she’s going to need? Or am I going to grow up while she doesn’t get to?
I’m still thinking of her like she’s out there for me to save. That’s good. That means I haven’t given up hope. Not yet, anyway.
“Michel found out Viola was an android,” I say. My voice is hard. I don’t care that much. “He said she didn’t get to come into the colony. He pushed her. So I stopped him, and he punched me, and he kept punching me until he couldn’t anymore.”
For the first time since she realized Kora wasn’t hurt, there’s a flicker of fear in Delia’s eyes. “What happened? Why did he find out about Vi—about your sister?”
“Where did you find that survey ship?” I ask.
Kora has a question of her own, and it’s somehow more damning than mine, for all that it’s more gently asked. “Mama, when did you lose contact with the shuttle?”
Delia actually staggers backward, only half a step, but enough to broadcast her guilt loud and clear through the room. “I don’t—you girls are asking about things that don’t concern you. Kora, take your friend to clean herself up. She’s going to stain that shirt past recovery.”
“Did you lose contact with the shuttle before or after it crashed into the mountains?” Kora asks. “I mean, it sort of caught fire, so I guess you must have lost contact after that happened, but before that. Did they manage to signal the planet before they went down?”
Delia’s silence is more than answer enough.
“Mama, what did you do?” Kora whispers.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” says Delia. “I followed all protocols, I did everything correctly, I didn’t—”
“There was something alive on that ship,” I say. Delia goes perfectly still, watching me. I look at her, aware that the blood on my face has to be making it difficult to meet my eyes, and not particularly concerned about her comfort. Not after everything she’s cost me.
Because see, here’s a thing about people in general, and adults in specific: they only say they didn’t do anything wrong when they absolutely, positively did. Maybe not by the letter of the law, but by any reasonable, moral standard. The guilt is in every word she says, and every word she doesn’t say.
“Something alive, and vicious, and fast, and strong enough to survive in partial vacuum, and smart enough to stow away on the shuttle,” I say. I take a step forward, and I don’t take my eyes off of Delia. “It killed my father. It killed them all. Did you know?”
“No,” she whispers, and I believe her, and it doesn’t matter.
“Where did you get the ship? Where did it come from?”
She glances away, back toward the island in the kitchen where her work waits for her, offering the sweet embrace of distraction. She must have known when the shuttle lost contact. None of this is a surprise to her. The only question now is whether she knew the survey ship was potentially dangerous.
She’s an adult and I’m not. Every colony has its own rules for the interactions between teenagers and adults, but they all agree that the one is more important than the other. Don’t argue, don’t talk back, don’t act like you understand anything about the way life works, because you don’t; you’re just getting started, and people with more experience than you have it all figured out.
I’ve known that was bullshit since I was twelve, when one of my teachers tried to convince his class that humanity was alone in the universe because we were inherently biologically superior to everything else evolution had ever managed to produce. I had already seen my parents wrestle with predators large and small, with tiny, insect-like creatures whose stings could burn out the human nervous system in a matter of seconds, with seemingly fragile winged things that could survive under pressures that would smash my human skeleton into dust. Humans may be the only intelligent life in the universe, or at least the only intelligent life we’ve been able to find so far, but biological superiority? That’s not something we get to claim.
Still. This is Kora’s mother, and she’s the planetary governor. Even if I’m willing to risk alienating Kora—which I’m not; I’ve lost too much today to lose the hope that she’ll kiss me again, stroke my hair and tell me it’s all going to be all right—I can’t risk getting seized and handed off to some strange family as an unaccompanied minor. Not before I get Viola back, and not even then, because Viola isn’t a person in the eyes of the law, she’s property, and if I get given to strangers, so does she. If I want my sister to have her freedom, I have to hold on to my own.
I take a deep breath. “Governor Burton, please,” I say. “Please. Those creatures that were on the ship, they’re here now. They’re on Zagreus. They’ve killed people here, on the planet. Not in space. Where did they come from?”
“Killed people?” Her gaze suddenly sharpens, like this is something it’s easier for her to understand. I don’t want to think too hard about that. “Who? Where?”
“Paul Gladney, Michel Petrov, and Katherine Shipp have all died on Zagreus soil,” I say. My voice barely even shakes until I get to the last name. Oh, Mom. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I can’t handle this by myself. “Paul and Katherine were killed in the wilds; Michel was taken at the gate.”
Delia’s eyes widen so far it would be almost comical, if she didn’t also look like she was about to vomit down the front of her starched and pressed blouse. “What? Paul? And Michel? But they’re just—they’re just children.”
I notice that she doesn’t object to the idea of my mother dying. We don’t belong here. We never have and we never will.
“Apex predators don’t care about the age of their prey; they just care about whether they can catch it,” I say. The blood drying on my neck itches. “The biological survey ship. Where did it come from? What are those things?”
“Mama, you have to answer her.” Kora steps up beside me, reaching over to take my hand in hers. I hold on like I’m afraid of falling, and maybe in a way, I am. She’s the only thing holding me here. “Those things, they’re terrifying, and there’s at least three of them.”
“They can’t get through the wall,” says Delia.
“That’s what I thought, too, until they followed us for miles just to grab Michel and Viola,” I say. “If there’s a weak spot, they’ll find it.”
“Are you calling them intelligent?” Delia sounds horrified. It’s a pretty horrifying thought … except that the alternative is worse. So much worse.
I shake my head. “No. If they were intelligent, they’d leave us alone. They’d hunt the hippos, or the meat-deer, or anything that isn’t smart enough to build machines and fight back. There’d be plenty of room on this planet for both our species, if they were intelligent. They’re not. They’re acting on instinct, and their instincts are telling them to follow the prey they already know. They’ve identified us as a solid, reliable source of whatever it is they’re looking for. And if they were intelligent, they’d know how to give up. I don’t think these things understand what giving up means. They’ll keep coming, and coming, and coming, until they find a way through the wall.”
Delia scoffs, actually scoffs, and that’s the moment when I begin to hate Kora’s mother. “We have weapons. We have walls. We’ll be fine.”
“Where did you get the ship?”
She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “You know,” she says, in a thoughtful voice, “I don’t think I have to tell you that. I don’t think it’s any of your concern.”
I draw the volt gun from my belt and have it aimed at her chest before I have time to think about what I’m doing. The safety clicks off with a flick of my thumb, and the barrel hums as it warms up.
“I think it’s absolutely my concern,” I say. “I think if you don’t want to experience what it’s like to be struck by lightning, you’ll tell me.”
Her eyes narrow. “Little girl, you don’t know what you’re doing. If you want to walk away from this—”
There’s a click beside me. Delia’s face falls. I don’t have to be a genius to know what just happened.
“Kora?” she asks, in a small, wounded voice.
“Tell us where the ship came from, Mama,” says Kora. “You have to tell us.”
“You are my daughter,” she says. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“I’m an orphan because of you,” I say. I dial up the strength on the volt gun. It hums in my hand. “Whether it was an accident or whether it was on purpose doesn’t really matter much, because I’m an orphan either way. A monster has my sister because of you.” I know my sister isn’t real to most of the universe because of you. “I think you do have to tell me. Both because it’s the right thing to do, and because if you don’t, I’m going to shoot you.”
“You wouldn’t d—”
Her last word dies as I fire at the window behind her. The tinted glass is strong enough to stand up to the blast, mostly. When the crackle of electricity fades from the air, there’s a starburst scorch in the film, letting the natural light slide through. It’s red compared to the light around it, red as blood, staining the floor where it falls.
Delia looks at me, horrified.
“I’d dare a lot more than people think I would,” I say. “My parents are dead. My sister is gone. It’s your fault, no matter how I look at it. Where did the ship come from?”
Maybe it’s the calm repetition of the situation. Maybe it’s the hole in her window covering. Either way, Delia swallows, closes her eyes, and says, “The ship was stolen. Smugglers seized it en route to some big company’s scrapyard—but here’s the thing: it was fully operational when they took it. There were people on board. Scientists. Why would there be people on a ship that was being scrapped? There’s a research facility out there, a secret one, one they don’t want people to know about. One they’re dedicated enough to concealing that they were willing to write off the loss of the entire ship in order to keep it from being found.”
“What happened to the scientists?” Maybe they’ll know what those creatures are. If the smugglers still have them, if I can get a message through—
Delia opens her eyes. The look she gives me is pure pity, like she can’t believe I’ve managed to get this far while remaining so ignorant.
“The scientists? They met with unfortunate accidents once the people who’d seized their ship realized that they had no further value. If something could be easily stripped and sold, it was. I had no part in that, you understand—Zagreus is not a haven for thieves. But we keep our eyes and ears open, and when we hear of a potential prize, we don’t let little things like where it came from get in our way. That vessel is massive. It contains raw materials sufficient to expand this colony tenfold. We could have extended the borders of this settlement, fortified the seasteads, even established a second settlement on the other side of the forest your parents have been charting for us.”
“You could have brought the corporations down on our heads,” says Kora, sounding softly horrified. “We’re nothing compared to them. They could wipe us away and not even notice. They’d seize everything we have to compensate themselves for a theft they would barely even notice.”
“Ah, but see, that’s what we were gambling on. That the theft would barely even be noticed. It’s a big universe out there, Kora. Things go missing all the time. Things disappear without a trace, and no matter how much the corps might like to be able to blame people for every little thing that goes wrong, there simply isn’t time to go chasing after every misplaced trinket. The people I bought the ship from know their jobs. They wanted it gone, I wanted raw materials at a below-market price, and we were able to come to an arrangement that benefited everyone.”
“Tell that to my father,” I say. Delia glances at me, expression as much guilt as loathing. “Tell that to Michel’s mother, or to Michel. I didn’t like him very much. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die. You knew there was something wrong with that ship. The smugglers sold it for such a low price that you were suspicious, weren’t you? That’s why you sent a team up to look at it before you started sending your own people to dismantle it. That’s why, even though you say you care more about this colony than anything else, you didn’t go up yourself. You knew there was a chance they wouldn’t come back.”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Her guilt is written across her face, plain for the world to see.
Plain for Kora to see. She looks briefly shocked and saddened. Then she adjusts her grip on her gun, keeping it aimed firmly at her mother, and says, “The washroom is to the left of the kitchen, Olivia. Why don’t you go scrub the blood off your face, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do next? I’ll watch her.”
It’s not fair to ask Kora to keep her own mother under armed guard. Nothing that’s happened today has been fair. I nod, and kiss her cheek, and say, “I’ll be right back.”
Then I walk away. There’s nothing else for me to do.
13
BLOOD AND WATER
Kora’s washroom is smaller than the one in our residence, but that’s the only place where it falls short. There’s a shower and a collapsible bath, a sink with two basins, even a ceiling-high mirror that reflects me back at myself before I can realize that I might want to look away. I stand for a few precious seconds, simply staring.
Who is that girl in the mirror, the girl with the chopped-off hair and the blood all over her face, the girl with the blackened eye and the busted nose and the bruise blooming like a flower on one cheekbone? She looks tough, that girl. She looks beaten without looking broken.
She looks like she could take me in a fight.
I grab a washcloth from the stack between the basins and turn the water on, beginning to scrub the mostly dried blood from my face and neck. It hurts to touch my nose. It hurts even more to touch my cheek, which is almost funny; I hadn’t even realized I was hurt until it started throbbing.
There’s a lot I haven’t realized until now. Like Viola. I’d always assumed I would have warning before I lost her, that I’d have time to prepare. And then my mother—our mother—told me I’d already lost her, lost her so long ago and far away that the memory is completely gone. Trauma can cause people to stop forming memories correctly, letting events slide harmlessly into the abyss.
I sort of wish I could decide to let that happen to everything I’ve seen today. Let me wake up tomorrow in my own bed, with no idea that anything is wrong. Let me flirt with Kora and fight with Michel and love my family and never have to see one of those things again.
The water sliding off my face runs red down the drain. I raise my head and look at myself again. The bruises are still there. Some of the blood is still there, staining my hair almost the color of the Zagreus sky. I look like I’ve been through hell. I have been through hell, and no amount of wishing it weren’t like this is going to change the situation I’m in.
If I want Viola back, I’m going to have to fight for her.
I turn off the water and shrug out of the bag Mom gave me, kneeling on the washroom floor as I unbuckle the flaps. It feels weird and almost shameful to be going through her things here, behind a closed door in someone else’s residence; it feels like I’m trying to hide the last of her away. And maybe I am. Maybe I want just one minute where my mother is mine and mine alone, and not the legacy she’s leaving to xenobiology, and not the screaming, bloodied figure I see every time I close my eyes. Maybe this …
Maybe this is how I mourn. I keep that in mind as I dig into the bag, pulling its contents slowly, carefully out into the light.
I run my fingers along the seams of the flap, and pause when they catch on a name embroidered, green on gray, into the fabric. “K. Shipp.”
Seeing her name helps a little, weirdly enough. My mother survived when she was in the field wearing this bag, and she died after she gave it to me. Maybe this is a good-luck charm, of sorts. I’m not superstitious, not really, but right now I could use all the luck that I can get.
There’s a gun in the bag. A serious gun, a hunter’s gun, with a barrel wide enough to be intimidating and a grip sized for hands only a little bigger than mine. I recognize it from trips to the range with Mom. The recoil won’t be nearly as bad as it should be for something this size, thanks to some cunning engineering and momentum-dampening tricks. I don’t fully understand them. I don’t need to. As long as I can clean and load my own weapons, there’s no reason for me to be able to reengineer them on the fly.
There’s a folder filled with actual paper and plastic flimsies. It seems anachronistic and out of place until I flip through it and realize that the papers, the flimsies … they’re the user’s manual for Viola, including the estimated specs and costs for her next upgrade. This is a roadmap to my sister’s existence, a way for her to keep growing up alongside me, at least until we can figure out what she wants to do. Several data chips have been secured to the inside flap, held down with mag-blocking tape that will keep them from being damaged by things like the volt gun. I’d bet anything that they contain the same information as the paper printout, only in a more machine-readable format.
Tears prickle at my eyelids as I stare at the diagrams, making it difficult to see what’s right in front of me. My parents have been planning for something like today for I can’t even guess how long, preparing themselves for the day when they’d have to let us go out into the universe on our own. I hope they didn’t expect to be eaten by unrecognizable creatures from a stolen corporate survey ship. That would be too much of a coincidence for me to handle.
