The Girl Who Wasn't There

by G Scott Huggins

  “Um, yes I can. We established that. I showed you my access card, didn’t I?”

  “It’s not legal for you to break into these people’s house!”

  “Oh, it’s not legal.” Jael flourished the universal access card. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Hey, maybe you’d better call the police.”

  “I am the police!”

  “Wow, that was fast work.”

  Her brother sputtered and audibly brought himself back under control. “Jael Wardhey, I am informing you as a deputy of Thunderhead colony that you are committing felony trespass.”

  “Go breathe vacuum,” Jael said easily as she inserted her card. “If nothing’s wrong in here, then nothing’s wrong. If something’s wrong in here…”

  “Then we won’t be able to use anything you find as evidence!” said Paul. “The United States Bill of Rights still applies up here, you know. It’s in the colony charter!”

  The airlock’s outer door opened silently, revealing the standard, dimly-lit chamber.

  “If something is as wrong in here as we’re afraid it is, then we’ll be able to get Cynthia to tell us and come back with a warrant. But if you’re really determined to press this, call Mom and have me arrested. Because you haven’t been part of or encouraged this in any way.” She paused. “Oh, wait. That’s wrong, you’re in it up to your neck.”

  “The people who live here are going to see you’ve been here.”

  “Well, not unless I’m an idiot. Or their airlock is malfunctioning pretty badly.” The outer door closed, and she sensed the electromagnetic pulse that static-charged the moon dust she had tracked in. It leapt to the filters lining the walls and was gone without a trace.

  “You’ve left tracks outside,” her brother growled. “And your tracks are pretty distinctive.”

  “Sure are,” said Jael. “I can just imagine someone trying to figure them out. I wonder how long it will take them to come up with ‘crippled girl on crutches?’ How many advanced tripod-propelled drones will they imagine before getting to that one?”

  The airlock had pressurized. Carefully, she removed her helmet from its locking collar. Leaving it connected to her sonic sensors, she placed their pads in contact with the floor and turned the sensitivity to maximum gain. She explained this to Paul and commanded it to relay its information through their link.

  “You’ll have to filter out my footsteps,” she said. “But hopefully, we’ll get a warning if they come back.” She hit the panel for the inner door. No need for two locks on a minestead, after all. It hissed open. Jael stepped inside. The lights came on in response to a human presence.

  “Douse those!” whispered Paul.

  “Why?” asked Jael. “How will I see?”

  “You figured these people weren’t home because no lights were showing,” Paul said, speaking quickly. “What will they think if they come home and see the lights are on? Now use your convirscer’s lowlights!”

  Jael swallowed, understanding immediately. “Lights out,” she said. Immediately, it went dark. Jael put her convirscer to her face and felt the earphones and blinders extend. The lowlight function projected her surroundings in VR, in slightly faded color. Although she would already be in a lot of trouble if anyone came home while she was in the minestead, there was no point in tipping off its owners that they had an intruder and yielding even the dubious value of the element of surprise.

  “What do you see?” whispered Paul.

  “Do you think the whispering makes it less likely that the people who aren’t here will hear you through several kilometers of vacuum?” asked Jael acidly, fighting the urge to whisper herself. It seemed wrong to talk in a normal voice while trespassing.

  “I think hurrying the hell up makes it less likely you’ll be found,” Paul said, now in a normal voice. “So look around and get out of there.”

  “Right.” Jael looked. It was an ordinary main room, nothing markedly out of place. There was something odd about it, though. Almost remarkable in its ordinariness, if that made any sense. Familiar in an unfamiliar way.

  “Weird,” muttered Paul.

  “What’s weird?”

  “I don’t know, just felt a little deja vu,” Paul said.

  Him, too. But Jael had stood there long enough already. It was the standard minestead layout. Jael moved carefully. If she knocked something over with her crutches, she’d never hear the end of it.

  The kitchen was right where it was supposed to be. Flanking it was an office, kept in spartan neatness with a single desk, chair and terminal, and a very sleek, expensive-looking safe. On the other side of the kitchen was a bedroom. Jael looked in.

  This room, also, was kept in spartan neatness. Almost perfect. But the twin bed had been made in haste, and on the plastic dresser was a basic makeup kit and a mirror. Incongruously, a small but precision set of tools was out on the dresser. Jael slid out the drawers. They were almost bare. It was her turn to say, “Weird.”

  “What?” asked Paul.

  “I think I found her bedroom. It looks like it might be a teenager’s. But stark. Just the basics. The clothes are about the right size for her, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well,” said Jael. “There’s underwear here, and bras, but no socks. And pretty much no other clothes but camisoles. Have you ever heard of half-nudists?”

  “So, she wears gloves indoors with her outsuit, but at home she wears panties and girls’ undershirts?” asked Paul.

  “Don’t get too excited, little brother.”

  “Shut up. Okay, come back to the bedroom later. We’ve no idea how much time we have. Look over the rest of the house.”

  “Right.” Jael left the bedroom and went downstairs. As she expected, she found the generator room and an unfinished room. Most minesteads had a fairly large one like it. Most called it the “workroom.” It was where the “work” of the minestead got done, or in the case of surface work like mining, where the tools and equipment were stored.

  “What is this?” she whispered, unconscious of lowering her voice.

  “What?” asked Paul.

  “This one,” said Jael, “you have to see.” She flipped down her convirscer and closed her helmet, activating the light so Paul could see the things on the bench. “Now tell me if that’s not what I think it is.”

  Paul was silent for a moment and said, “Well, do you think those are disassembled Secutor parts?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” said Paul, imitating one of their parents’ favorite old quotes. “So something is going on here.”

  “You can’t think of a legal reason to build copies of Secutors either, huh?” asked Jael.

  “This has something to do with Mom’s problems at Wonka’s, I’d bet fresh fruit to dust,” Paul said. “Check the rest of this place out and get out of there.”

  Jael didn’t need to be told twice. There were only two more rooms likely to be down here. The utility room held no surprises. It was the master bedroom, however, that made Jael stop in her tracks.

  “Paul, I’ve got it!”

  “You’ve figured out what they’re doing here?”

  “Not that; I’ve figured out what was weird about the deja vu room upstairs.”

  “What?”

  “I’m in the master bedroom now, and it looks exactly like Mom and Dad’s room when we first arrived from Earth.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “Yes. Remember that they had to complain for a week to get the colony to give them a king bed instead of those two fulls? Well, this room is just like it. That’s what’s strange. This place is like a hotel suite. It’s like no one lives in it. Or barely lives in it.”

  “Someone sure works in it though,” said Paul.

  “I’m going back upstairs to look through what we think is Cynthia’s bedroom,” said Jael. “There’s nothing here.”

  Jael crawled up the steep stairs and made her way back to the bedroom
. This time she applied herself to a thorough study, looking carefully around the room. There was one spare outsuit hanging in the closet. This one was dead black, though, and there was a strange feel to the fabric. What’s that made of? Jael wondered. As far as she could tell, there was nothing else at all.

  Suddenly, Paul’s voice was in her ear. “Sonic sensors; you’ve got incoming!”

  “What?”

  “They’re coming back! I have a contact. Close!”

  Jael heaved herself to her feet. As fast as she dared without knocking anything over, she threaded her way through the furniture. Squeezing through the opening airlock as soon as the inner door was open, she snatched up her helmet.

  “Paul!” she said, her voice rising in pitch, “I can’t get a seal!” The collar wouldn’t fit back down around the neck of her outsuit.

  “Don’t panic.” Paul’s voice was calm as granite. “You have time. Thirty seconds at least. Slowly.”

  “How do you know?” Her voice quavered. “The display won’t localize.” She could hardly see it as she struggled to fit it into the locks on her suit.

  “They’re coming from the backside of the minestead. Slow. Down.”

  Jael forced herself to take a smooth breath and slow her fingers. There. The helmet twisted and achieved a seal.

  “Remember your sensors,” said Paul. “Now, go!”

  She vented the airlock, and the loud hiss diminished to nothing. The door opened, and she closed it behind her just as the shadows from the approaching headlights sharpened and started to shift. Carefully, Jael hugged the dome of the minestead, scooting around as fast as she dared. Every breath came sharp, and she fought to quiet them, not so that she would not be heard, but in order to hear. She realized that she could feel the vibration of the rover’s passage through her crutches and up her arms.

  Then it stopped. Jael stopped, too, right under a port in the side of the minestead. What should she do? The ridge that had hidden the minestead from her sight on the way in seemed terrifyingly far away. Her instincts screamed at her to sprint as best she could for its cover. And yet…

  “What are you waiting for?” her brother growled.

  “I don’t know that they’re all inside yet,” she said. The instant she said it, she realized that this was no excuse. She had no idea how many of them there were. They might be dropping someone off. If she ran now, and the rover started back up, she would be caught in the open with nowhere to hide. She slid her sonics back out of her outsuit pouch and again pressed them to the minestead’s outer wall.

  Immediately, she heard the pop of the airlock’s inner door. Her HUD showed her three shadowy figures, blurred by intervening walls, shifting in response to the echoes they created. And then, to her astonishment, she heard a voice. A bass growl, speaking accented English.

  “…adjustment?” it was saying. “What can you have been thinking, mixing with humans? Did it not occur to you—have we not made it plain to you—that the more you are seen, the more likely you will be recognized and known?”

  “Jael, what are you doing?” whispered Paul.

  “Shutupshutup!” she snapped.

  “But—” She turned him off. She couldn’t hear. And what had that voice meant, “mixing with humans?” As opposed to what?

  “…occurred to me was that it would draw more attention toward me if I did not act as what I appear to be.” That was Cynthia’s voice, flat and emotionless. “You have seen how humans of my apparent age act. They are extremely social. Acting in any other way would create an anomaly. And they are sensitive to anomalies, which you instructed me to avoid at all costs.”

  “And so you decided to sneak out of this house and expose yourself to an even greater possibility of discovery?” said the bass voice.

  “Yes,” said Cynthia. “You have put me in an untenable position. I cannot avoid detection without more data about those most likely to detect me than you have bothered to provide.”

  “We gave you everything we know about Thunderhead Security. Do not be insolent. Detection will go harder on you than it will go on us.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Cynthia’s voice rose to a breaking pitch. Immediately, she snapped back to an eerie calm. “You relied on my form to ensure that I would pass unnoticed by your fellow adult humans. You never thought I might be noticed by my fellow adolescents.”

  “You are not one of them,” said another voice. This one was a soprano, and more heavily accented than the first, but different. Not European like the man, she thought. The woman continued: “But she may not be wholly wrong. She will act with initiative.”

  Cynthia swallowed. This conversation was taking turns she hadn’t imagined. Who—or should that be what—was Cynthia?

  “If she does not obey instructions, she becomes a danger. I do not have to remind you what I must do if that happens?”

  “No,” said Cynthia, her voice tinged with fear.

  “Galen,” said the woman’s voice, more sharply. “There is no need for threats. We should allow her to repeat her experiments. She is right. Cutting her off now would indeed raise more suspicions than it would allay. And we should probably enroll her in a full curriculum.”

  “It increases our contact profile,” Galen said.

  “And this doesn’t?” the female voice said. “It is the best solution.”

  “Thank you,” said Cynthia, as if responding to an offer of dessert. “Do you have further need of me, or may I retire?”

  “Go,” muttered the man.

  Jael looked at her HUD. It confirmed what she heard. Cynthia’s footsteps were coming to the door. Toward her. The port she was huddled under was beneath Cynthia’s room, where she had just been exploring.

  Jael swallowed. The port was small. How often did people look out ports on the Moon, anyway? The scenery was always the same flat gray. But if she looked in…

  If she looked in, she might see Cynthia. See Cynthia when she—or it—wasn’t being careful. Her heart pounded. Was she about to see—she hardly dared think the word—an alien?

  And if Cynthia looked out, Jael would certainly be seen. But she didn’t have to look for long. And she didn’t have to reveal her whole face. All this ran through her head in a split second. Making up her mind and relying on her memory of the room’s layout, Jael popped her head up and froze in place.

  From this position, she could hardly see into the room, but she saw when Cynthia walked in. Her elfin face was perfectly composed; Jael could see it better than she’d been hoping, but she dared not move. All Cynthia had to do was turn her head slightly to see the half-bubble of Jael’s helmet and her eyes looking inward. She would surely follow the slightest motion. The door slid shut behind Cynthia.

  Instantly, the passive face transformed into a snarl of rage that nearly made Jael flinch back. Faster than she could follow, Cynthia whipped her gloves from her hands and threw them into the far corner. Jael froze, her eyes locked on Cynthia’s hands. Multijointed metal and plastic, her nevertheless five-fingered hands extended from the sleeves of her outsuit.

  That’s why she wouldn’t remove her gloves in class, a part of Jael’s mind ran on, stupidly, while the rest stood frozen in shock. She has cybernetic hands. I’d better get out of here.

  But Jael had spent too long staring. Cynthia turned with lightning speed, snatching at the toolkit on her dresser, probably to throw it with the same fury she had shown before, and at that moment, she looked out the window and her eyes locked on Jael.

  For as long as she lived, Jael thought, she would remember the change that came over Cynthia’s face at that moment, though she would never be able to describe it. Perhaps a starved and beaten dog, being told by an angel that it could never attain heaven, would approach that look of hopeless fear and despair.

  Then Jael’s reflexes took over, and she was flying, galloping as fast as she could toward the safety of the ridge, expecting at any moment to see the glare of rover lights behind her, feel the rumble of its a
pproach. Or worse, feel the hot lance of a laser torch or the sharp needles of coilgun flechettes ripping through her. Because Cynthia and her keepers weren’t just hiding who she was. They were hiding what she was at all.

  An untold passage of time later, Jael’s shoulders, legs, and wrists ached like nothing she had never felt before.

  She had not been killed. She had not been caught. She did not know how long she had been running. She did not know how long it had taken before she remembered that she had cut her brother’s voice feed, and when she remembered and turned it on, her helmet filled with his hoarse voice repeating dully, “Come in and report, Jael. Jael, come in. Come in and report, please…”

  “I’m here,” she gasped out. “I’m sorry!” She concentrated on her gait. This was no time to lose her rhythm or to break down crying. Just the next swing-through. And the next. And the next.

  “You. Idiot.” her brother said, and then fell silent. Probably because he at last could.

  “I know. I know!” Jael could feel her voice threaten to burst with fury, not at Paul but at herself. Why haven’t they hunted me down?

  “Why are you following the rover tracks?” he finally asked. “Don’t you know that’s where they’ll look for you?”

  “No choice,” gasped Jael. “Get lost. Otherwise.”

  “Okay,” said Paul. “Just keep coming. I’ll meet you in the airlock. When you get here.”

  “Just don’t go away.”

  “I won’t.”

  The Moon stretched on forever. On she galloped.

  By the time she reached the colony and called Paul, she had been going so hard that she could hardly remember to stop. And before he could cycle the lock, even the Moon’s weak gravity had sucked her down. Jael felt herself being lifted, crutches dangling from her wrists. He sat her down and forced a beer into her hand. She’d downed half of it before asking what it was for.

  “A cover story. We’ve been gone over three hours.” He picked her up again. “Come on.”

  The trip home was a blur. At home, Paul stood her up just long enough to make agreeing noises as he spun a tale about a karaoke contest at Afters that had involved far more beer then either of them was allowed to drink. She heard Mother say something about discussing it in the morning.