by J. J. Green
Trees similar to the ones that surrounded the settlement covered the surface in a wide forest. Ethan wondered what might live among them. As his eyes became accustomed to the steadily flowing sea of green, he noticed tiny flashes of brilliant red moving among the trees. Could they be some kind of birds? Ethan grew excited. He angled the flitter downward for a closer look.
They were birds! Or if not birds, some kind of flying creature. The wings of the animals moved so fast they were a blur. Ethan angled the flitter lower, wondering if he might be able to catch one. When the underside of the flitter was brushing the tops of the trees, he opened a window. However, before reaching out to attempt to catch one of the airborne creatures, he had second thoughts. What if they were poisonous or wanted to bite him? He retrieved a pair of long, thick gloves from his pack.
His hand encased in a glove, Ethan reached out of the window. The flitter’s presence seemed to have sparked an explosion of the scarlet creatures. They were flying up in huge numbers from the trees. Yet though his hand swept through the fluttering clouds many times he couldn’t seem to catch any. He didn’t want to grab too roughly and hurt one of them.
The red fliers had begun to land on the flitter, though none approached the window. Ethan turned on his recorder to capture a vid and also described what he saw. He was delighted with his find. Concordia wasn’t only home to creatures that wanted to kill.
The scarlet aerial animals were settling on the flitter’s hood and the closed windows, and they clung to the doors. As soon as they landed, their wings stopped beating and Ethan could see them better. As well as their four roughly triangular wings, which were thin as plaspaper and translucent, the animals had eight legs in four pairs along bodies a little thinner than Ethan’s pinky finger. Their wings were four or five times the size of their little bodies. The creatures didn’t seem to have eyes or mouth parts, and he couldn’t tell which was the front or back as the creatures didn’t seem to have heads. He wondered how they ate.
More and more of the flying animals landed. Ethan could no longer see out of the windshield so he peered out the window. The flitter was entirely obscured by a great mass of scarlet beating wings. They were piled so thickly the shape of the flitter was entirely lost. It was a giant homogeneous lump of red wings.
A rustling came from beneath the flitter, and as green vegetation rose in the window, Ethan realized the flitter was sinking down into the trees. The weight of the creatures clinging to it was so great, it was overwhelming the a-grav. Not knowing what lay beneath him and alarmed at the idea of being buried alive in a heaving red mass of life, Ethan set the flitter to maximum lift. It didn’t rise, but it did stop sinking. Ethan had to find a way to lighten the load. He reached out and brushed the hood of the flitter as widely as he could reach, wiping off a swathe of flying creatures. But as soon as they’d lifted up, the fliers settled down once more.
Ethan wasn’t sure what to do. If he turned off the flitter’s drive it would drop into the vegetation, and who knew what unknown creatures might lie below? Yet he couldn’t force more lift out of the a-grav. And if he waited much longer, more scarlet fliers would land and make the flitter so heavy even the maximum lift couldn’t keep it up.
The only thing he knew about the flying animals was that they wouldn’t enter the window. What if he lowered the cover? Maybe enough of them might fly off to give him a chance to get out of there. Alternatively, they might get over their reluctance and land inside the vehicle. Ethan had no other option than to try.
He lowered the hood. Immediately, the sky was obscured by a rising red cloud. Relieved of the weight of the aerial animals, the flitter zoomed upward, and it traveled so fast the acceleration forced off the other red creatures too. Within less than a minute, the jungle was far below. All that remained of the flying animals was a couple that were stuck to the flitter’s hood. They’d been crushed by the weight of the others. Ethan slowed down the vehicle and reached out to peel off the dead creatures. He brought them inside and put them on the seat next to him.
Maintaining the safe elevation, Ethan resumed the course to the mountains and resolved not to take any more detours. Though the creatures had been pretty, his investigation of them could have been his downfall. He’d had enough of new Concordian life forms for that day. As the flitter carried him onto the next place he planned to explore, Ethan recorded a vid of the two dead fliers along with an account of his encounter.
By the time Ethan reached the foothills of the mountain range it was dark. He didn’t want to explore the new terrain at night, not knowing if the sluglimpets lived there too. Instead, he set the flitter at a safe elevation above a mountain slope and ate his dinner.
It was his third night away from the settlement. Though he wasn’t ready to return there and didn’t think he would be for a long while yet, Ethan was beginning to feel the absence of company. He thought about Cariad. If she’d been able to come on the trip with him he wouldn’t have minded, but she was busy replenishing the colony population. In two or three years, the place would be overrun with children she would create to replace the many lives that had been lost.
For the time being, Ethan would be forced to undertake his journey alone. He wrapped his blanket around himself tightly and fell asleep.
Chapter Five
The young man’s face was intense, angry even. He glared into the camera, and Cariad saw despair mixed with fury in his eyes.
His jaw rigid, he said, “If I’d had my way—”
“Steen… ” A woman walked into the camera’s view and went to the young man’s side. She didn’t look much older than him and was similarly dressed in worn-out clothes. She grasped Steen’s arm softly, trying to calm him.
“No,” he said, wrenching his arm from her grip. “Leave me alone. I’m doing the message. That was the agreement. This was the only reason I helped you. If you weren’t going to let me go on the ship, I get to tell the bastards what I gave up for them. What we all gave up.”
“I’m not saying you can’t do it… ” She looked toward the camera. “Is that still recording? Turn it off.”
“No, don’t,” Steen said. “I want them to see everything. I want them to see every detail.”
“All right, all right,” said the woman. “Just remember, this was our decision—”
“It wasn’t my decision.”
“It was the majority decision. But that isn’t important. It wasn’t their decision. The Nova Fortuna colonists didn’t choose this. They aren’t responsible for what’s happened here or what we’ve decided to do. You don’t need to be so harsh. It isn’t fair.”
“What is fair, huh?”
For a moment, the woman’s chin trembled. “Nothing’s fair. Nothing.” She clenched her hands into fists. “But you don’t have to take it out on them. What’s the point?”
“It might make me hate them and all of you just a smidgen less.”
The woman tilted her head and gazed into Steen’s eyes, not speaking.
After a pause, Steen’s body relaxed. “Okay. I hear you. I’ll be nicer.”
The woman gave him a look of warning and stepped out of sight.
“So,” Steen said, returning his attention to the camera, “dear future person, if you’re seeing this it’s probably because our little secret has been revealed. You know that the friends we sent to visit aren’t all they seem. But they’re pretty convincing, right?” He smiled smugly. “Did you like their skin? Mina did that—the lovely Mina who was here a minute ago to tell me to tone it down because none of this is your fault.” He scowled. “Well, it might not be your fault, but it isn’t my fault either. And you’re the ones who get to live while we die in this poisoned, diseased dump once known as the beautiful planet Earth. Allow me a little anger on that account, okay? I think I deserve it.”
“Anyway,” he went on, as if he was telling a friend an anecdote, “I don’t know how much our friends told you, so you’ll forgive me if I repeat things you already know, won’t you? A
good story’s worth telling twice. I promise I won’t leave out the best parts.”
Steen put his hands in his pockets and began to stroll to and fro. “To summarize, nearly everyone is dead. The flu that killed them was nasty, but at least it was quick.” He stopped and waved a finger at the camera. “Pretty painful though from what I heard. I don’t really know. I never caught it. A little quirk of nature, a strand of protein on a chromosome, made me immune.”
He leaned toward the camera and cupped his mouth with his hand as if telling a secret. “If you really want to know what the symptoms were like, ask Mina. She’s even rarer than me. She got sick but recovered. It was a crying shame the same couldn’t be said for the rest of her family. Now there’s a sight you don’t want to wake up to.”
Cariad flicked the switch to stop the holo, freezing Steen in his close-up. He was so angry and bitter and the story he was telling was so awful, she felt sick. The holo wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. Though Strongquist had warned her she might find it alarming, she’d thought it would a simple message or report, or even some kind of documentary like the ones that had been made about the Nova Fortuna Project. The holo was so raw and full of hatred, Cariad didn’t want to hear any more right then. She turned it off, banishing Steen to her personal files. Maybe she would watch more later. Whatever it was that Steen wanted to say, it wasn’t urgent. It was all history from before the Guardians had departed Earth.
She had more important things to do. She had to speak to Garwin.
Cariad left the Mistral’s viewing room and walked to the cabin where Garwin had been confined ever since his wife’s suicide. Cariad hoped he would have recovered a little from the shock of his wife’s death, and that he might be able to tell her something that would help her root out any remaining saboteurs.
When she arrived she unlocked the door and went inside. Garwin hardly seemed to have changed from his almost catatonic state of two days previously. He was slumped on a chair in the corner of the cabin, his chin on his chest and his hands hanging loosely on his lap, looking like a sail that had no wind to fill it out. He didn’t look up or make any other movement that acknowledged her arrival.
Compared to the Garwin who had confidently addressed the crowd of Gens and Woken at the stadium, and the man who had successfully played a double game that had won him favor on both sides of the Woken/Gen conflict, he was barely recognizable. It was like Twyla’s death had sucked away his life too.
Cariad sat on the bed. Montfort had checked Garwin for a Natural Movement tattoo and found nothing, and Cariad had decided the best course of action was to act as though she believed Garwin wasn’t a follower. If he was, despite having no tattoo, he might think he had everyone fooled and grow over-confident, accidentally letting something slip. If he really wasn’t, her belief in his innocence might encourage him to help her with the investigation. “Garwin, I’m sorry about what’s happened. You must feel terrible.”
Garwin shook his head and put his face in his hands. He took a breath and looked up. “She wasn’t involved with them. I know how it looks. She was there when we found the aquifer, but it wasn’t her who blew it open. She would never have done anything like that. She taught kindy. Do you think she would have killed kids? She loved kids.”
Cariad saw she had no easy task ahead. She hadn’t imagined that Garwin would be so deep in denial about his wife.
“Why do you think Twyla killed herself?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well, yes,” Cariad replied, thinking She feared exposure and execution. “But I’m not sure we’re thinking along the same lines.
“She was the prime suspect, wasn’t she?” Garwin asked. “Just because she knew about the aquifer and Ethan saw her leaving the caves. What could she say to prove her innocence? No one would have believed her. The truth was, anyone could have done it. Anyone could have explored that area and found that aquifer. The bomb could have been planted at any time. But they all would have wanted someone to blame for all those deaths. They would want revenge for what happened. She didn’t stand a chance, and she knew it.”
“If that’s so, how come you’re still here?” Cariad asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You knew about the aquifer too. You were also under house arrest after the disaster. What makes you think you wouldn’t have been scapegoated as well as—or even instead of—Twyla?”
“Because I was liked,” Garwin exclaimed. “I should know. I worked hard enough for it. You Woken all liked me, right? The Gens loved me. Twyla wasn’t like that. She didn’t work at being popular. She didn’t enjoy being around people. That was why she worked with kids.”
Cariad folded her arms. To make him tell her anything about Twyla that might be useful to her investigation, Cariad would have to convince Garwin that his wife was a Natural Movement saboteur. She hated to do it, but she needed to get tough with the man if he was going to give her anything useful. “Are you sure about that? You’re sure the reason she worked with kids was because she was uncomfortable around adults?”
“Yes,” Garwin said. “I am.”
Cariad took out an interface screen and brought up the image of the tattoo on Twyla’s thigh. To Cariad, it was unmistakably the logo of the Natural Movement. The stylized N and M was branded on her mind. It had caused her many moments of frustration and irritation on Earth when the group had protested the Nova Fortuna Project or fought hard against rationality and reason in many fields of civilized society. However, as a Gen, it was possible that Garwin might not be so familiar with the logo. She turned the interface screen toward him. “Do you know what this is?”
He studied the image for a moment. “Someone drew something on their skin? I don’t know what it’s supposed to be.” Cariad thought she believed him. In his current state of mind, the man’s carefully constructed outward persona was by the wayside. The Garwin she was seeing seemed to be the real one. She told him the meaning of the sign.
“So?” he asked. “Why are you showing it to me? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Maybe you haven’t.” Cariad inwardly squirmed over what she was about to say. “Garwin, this tattoo was high up on Twyla’s thigh. It was located in a place where only someone who was intimate with her would have seen it.”
The effect of her words on Garwin was instantaneous. His mouth fell open and a flicker of revelation crossed his features, but it was quickly supplanted with rejection. Garwin’s jawline firmed and he looked away. “I don’t believe it.”
“I can take you to see it if you want.”
“I don’t want to see it,” he shouted, rising to his feet. “How dare you come to me with lies about my poor dead wife? Who do you think you are? Get out of here. Get out!”
Garwin’s sudden rage frightened Cariad. She ran out of the cabin and locked the door. From inside the room came the sounds of objects being thrown about. This was a side of Garwin no one had ever seen. Cariad had clearly pressed a sensitive button, and part of her hated to be so blunt with the man, but it had been necessary. Cariad was sure the reason Twyla had been a kindergarten teacher was so that she could indoctrinate a handful of young children and pass on cultish Natural Movement teachings to them.
If Natural Movement followers remained among the settlers, they wouldn’t rest until the entire colony was wiped out. Garwin might know something that would help her prevent that from happening. But right then she would have to give him time to process what he’d seen. While she waited for Garwin to calm down and hopefully accept the truth about his wife, she go planetside to check on the examination of all the colonists for evidence of a tattoo. But first she needed to sleep.
***
Cariad remained aboard the Mistral during the quiet shift. Addleson allocated her one of the spare cabins. The ship contained enough to accommodate all the Guardians. Cariad wasn’t sure why, as the androids probably didn’t have any requirement for sleep or privacy. Perhaps the berths had been added i
n order to maintain the deception of the Guardians’ humanity, or because their creators had thought there might be a need to transport Nova Fortuna colonists somewhere. The cabin Cariad slept in seemed unused. The fact added weight to her suspicion that no Guardian had ever slept in it, though it was also possible that the ship’s invisible nanobot sanitation kept it pristine.
The next day, Cariad went to the Mistral’s shuttle bay. The starship carried two shuttles and each held forty passengers, which had been double the entire ship’s crew. Cariad wondered what had been the rationale behind the Guardians’ creators in providing them with one more shuttle than they needed. Perhaps Steen might explain when she found the time and fortitude to endure another bout of his anger and desperation.
The Gen pilot who had been assigned the role of flying one of the Guardians’ shuttles was happy to take Cariad down to the surface. As she was the only passenger, the pilot invited her to sit in the flight cabin.
All the pilots were Gens, and the one flying the shuttle was called Zhang. Cariad knew her vaguely. There weren’t many pilots among the colonists so they stuck out. There was something Cariad had wanted to ask Zhang. Though some time had passed since the shuttle explosion, the woman might know something useful.
When the shuttle was out of the Mistral’s bay and the dome that was Concordia was spread out beneath them Cariad asked, “Does flying the shuttles worry you now, since the explosion?”
Zhang replied, “I have to admit, it does a little. But they’re thoroughly inspected before each flight now so that helps put my mind at ease. How about you? Does it worry you, traveling as a passenger?”
“I do feel a little nervous sometimes. I was supposed to be aboard the one that went down. It was only a fluke that I wasn’t.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. What a stroke of luck.”