Hearts of Oak

by Eddie Robson

  “Look, we are smarter than them,” said Saori. She leaned back in her chair and rested her feet on the aluminum table they’d been given to use at mealtimes. Her shoes made a dull ringing sound as they made contact with the surface. After centuries of only using wooden furniture they all found the noise jarring—except Saori, who seemed to revel in such noises and made them quite deliberately. “I refuse to accept we can’t argue our way past them.”

  “We need them to give us a ship,” Iona said. “That’s the bottom line.”

  “We need more than just a ship,” said Steve. “We can’t use the wormhole, obviously, and I worked out the journey time. The kind of propulsion their ships use, you’re looking at eighty-seven years.”

  “Okay, so we also need a suspension system to get us there alive. Considering the technology we’ve already seen, they must have something like that.”

  “But they won’t give us any of it,” said Victor. “They’re wedded to their protocols and giving us a ship acts against the interests of their operation.”

  “It’s so stupid,” said Steve. “It’s so obvious these deciders are all dead. This disease that killed off their boss probably carried off the others too.”

  “That’s all supposition—” Iona began.

  “But for the purposes of argument,” Saori interrupted, “it is overwhelmingly likely they’re all dead. Those guys have sent multiple reports saying things aren’t right here—and in return, no visit, not even any guidance on how to deal with it. And these deciders seem like they love giving out instructions, so yeah, I’m going with ‘they’re all fucking dead.’”

  Iona wondered if Saori had always been this abrasive or if life in the city had made her this way.

  “But if they are all dead,” Iona said, “what difference does that make to us?”

  “If we can make the figures see what they’re doing here is pointless—”

  “So you want to undermine the entire underpinnings of their existence.”

  “Well, their existence is—”

  “I think that’s an incredibly risky thing to do.”

  “It might be the kindest thing to do,” said Victor. “They’re working their arses off, tearing this planet to pieces for nothing. Everything they’ve mined is probably just piling up back on their homeworld.”

  “But we’ve no idea how they might react,” said Iona. “It could be like proving to someone their god doesn’t exist. They might treat it like blasphemy and put us to death.”

  “Or they might go totally nihilistic, and I dunno, kill us and go on a rampage across the galaxy,” said Steve.

  “Exactly,” said Iona, grateful for the support. “I don’t think it helps us at all.”

  “Confronting someone with the truth,” said Saori, “is never the wrong thing to do.”

  “That just isn’t true.”

  “So you’d rather Alyssa hadn’t told you the truth, back in the city?” asked Victor.

  This argument was still going on (and Iona was worried she was losing it) when a group of figures urgently entered the facility. Iona’s first thought was this was it, the figures had made their decision and were putting them back in their cage. But it quickly became clear the humans were not the focus of this activity. In fact it seemed as if the humans had been forgotten entirely.

  * * *

  The figures had gathered in one of the rooms of the medical facility: rather a lot of them, in fact. The room was heaving as the figures jostled for a view of what was happening at the other side of it, where the bed was. They chattered urgently and some at the front seemed to be admonishing the others, demanding to be given space. Iona had never seen them act like this: they were neither calm nor cautious.

  All four of the humans managed to squeeze in at the back of the room but none of them could see much. Iona found a storage crate in the corner that looked like it would take her weight, stepped on it, and peered over the figures’ heads.

  The creature in the bed looked a lot like the decider up in the glass sphere on the plain. Its clothes were different but it was evidently the same species. Iona was about to relate this information to the others when the decider’s eyes opened.

  Every figure in the room kneeled and inclined their heads toward the new arrival. This supplicant pose rippled through the crowd, leaving just Iona, Saori, Victor, and Steve standing.

  The decider stared back at the humans blankly.

  Iona stepped down off the crate.

  * * *

  When the figures had finished bowing down to the decider they noticed the humans were there. One of the figures—Iona thought it was the one who’d released them from their cage—suggested they return to the medical facility’s communal area. It suggested this quite matter-of-factly, without a hint of threat, but when the humans asked it where the decider had come from and what was going on, it did not answer the questions. This was the first time it had ever declined to answer their questions. Instead it repeated its suggestion.

  Saori, Victor, and Steve returned to the communal area. Iona said she was going to use the toilet, but instead she slipped out of the medical facility, walked up the steps out of the canyon and onto the plain. She just wanted to check something.

  At the top of the steps she saw the transparent sphere. The dead decider was still inside, its position unchanged from the last time she’d been here. It hadn’t returned to life. So the one at the facility was new.

  Iona walked up to the sphere and rapped her knuckle against it. Instead of a satisfying ring it made an odd, dull glob. It wasn’t glass or anything like it. She wasn’t sure what it was made of.

  She walked back down the steps to the facility.

  * * *

  The humans discussed the newcomer in low voices, ensuring the figures in the other room couldn’t hear, even though the figures didn’t seem to be paying them any attention.

  “Bloody hell, they’re alive,” said Steve.

  “Well,” said Victor, “one of them is.”

  “This changes everything,” said Iona.

  “Yes, for the worse,” grumbled Saori.

  “I disagree.”

  “Oh, sorry, I hadn’t realized that the arrival of the people who’re responsible for locking us up was a cause for celebration.”

  “Don’t go all sour grapes just because you were convinced they were extinct.”

  “That’s not it at all—with the figures we were dealing with people less intelligent than ourselves who worked on strictly rational terms. Given time we’d have found a loophole in their protocols and convinced them—”

  “I’m not sure we had time and I’m not sure there is a loophole.”

  “There’s always a loophole. But now we’re dealing with an acquisitive species, we’ve thrown a wrench in their plans and if they react emotively then—”

  “I agree, we have to play this carefully but we do have a chance we didn’t have before.”

  “Who put you in charge?” Saori said, then glared at Victor and Steve as if they might admit they had.

  “I don’t see you putting forward any solutions,” said Iona, “you’re just complaining everything’s more difficult now.”

  “What I’m saying is”—and here Saori lowered her voice even more—“the decider is going to make a decision about us. And if it’s not good . . . we might have to take action.”

  Steve nodded. “So do we wait for it to make the decision, or—”

  “Attack it first?” said Iona.

  “It’s weak at the moment,” said Saori. The decider was receiving medical attention, though the humans didn’t yet know why.

  “But the figures aren’t and you saw how they reacted to it—they’d tear us to bloody pieces.”

  “We might not get a choice—”

  “Wait wait wait,” said Victor. “Alyssa told me this is what the Poramutantur did on all those other colonies. Got in people’s heads and made them see threats and told them get them first before they get you. If we
escape from it and then do the same thing, what was the point of it all?”

  Nobody said much for a while. Saori glared at Victor occasionally and Iona thought she was going to take him to task for drawing the comparison. But she didn’t.

  When the decider finally came to see them it was a relief, even if Iona hadn’t been looking forward to it.

  It came to the doorway of the communal area, flanked by three figures. Iona couldn’t be sure but she thought it likely they were the three who had been monitoring their dome when they’d been released. Certainly one of them held the same recording/display device and pointed it at the humans.

  In the moments before the decider’s arrival, Saori and Steve had been pacing the room anxiously; Iona and Victor had been sitting at the table. Victor stood reflexively, defensively perhaps. Iona stayed where she was.

  The decider looked back at Iona. Was it expecting her to stand? Iona stuck to her guns—before the decider came in she had concluded that a nonconfrontational attitude would be the best approach and sitting down struck her as nonconfrontational. Unless it was expecting her to stand. In that case it might well seem confrontational. But she couldn’t help how the decider interpreted her actions.

  After a while the decider spoke, using the same language they had heard the figures use. But it didn’t speak to the figures. It addressed the humans, who couldn’t understand what it was saying.

  Once the decider had finished speaking the figure with the recording device addressed them in English: “Have you been treated well?”

  This was unexpected. It was the first time any of the figures had asked them a question, for instance. That alone told them the words had not originated with the figure: these were the decider’s words, translated.

  Iona was about to answer but, for the sake of harmony, decided to consult with her colleagues first. She turned to them.

  They looked back at her. Saori shrugged.

  Iona turned back to the decider. “Do you mean the whole time we’ve spent on the planet, or just the time since we got out of the dome?”

  This question was relayed to the decider in its own language: it replied via the figure. “Both.”

  “Well,” said Iona, “since we got out of the dome your people there saved our lives, fed us, and gave us somewhere to live, so no complaints there. Inside the dome . . .” She weighed this. She didn’t want to be aggressive but she wanted to make clear what had happened to them and ideally imply a sense of obligation to do something about it. “We weren’t harmed . . . but we have been kept there against our will for several centuries.”

  The decider listened and thought for a while. Eventually it made a statement that the figure translated.

  “I am deeply sorry for the incarceration you have suffered at the hands of our drones. Please do not blame them. They were following the protocols set down for this operation.”

  Iona had expected to work a lot harder for this apology. She’d expected to have to make it understand that they were intelligent creatures worthy of consideration. Saori was nodding dumbly, looking a little stunned. Steve was blinking, close to tears. Sometimes you bore an ordeal without flinching and then crumpled at a minor act of kindness or even just an acknowledgment of what you’d been through.

  “Where’ve you been all this time?” said Victor.

  This was relayed to the decider, who replied via the figure: “I have only just arrived. My ship crashed. The drones found me in the wreckage and brought me here.”

  “But why have you only just arrived?” Victor continued in a terse, though level voice. Having just cautioned them all against antagonism he seemed to be struggling to keep his anger in check. “They sent reports. Loads of reports. They say you never replied until now.”

  “We have experienced difficulties.”

  Victor laughed when he heard this. The figures flinched. (The decider, Iona noted, did not flinch.) Victor covered his mouth with his hand, a little hysterical, but he collected himself. “Difficulties?” he said, nodding. “Is that right?”

  “We have been at war,” the decider replied. “Our enemies bombarded us with misinformation. We no longer knew what to trust. Anomalous messages and calls for assistance have been the basis of a large number of traps.”

  “But your supply line kept coming. I mean, your guys here say they send off their trucks and they come back empty.”

  “The supply line was intercepted. We believed this outpost was no longer operating.”

  “How long has this war been going on?” said Iona.

  The decider conferred with the figure before answering: “Six hundred and twelve years.”

  “To be fair,” said Steve, “that does sound like difficulties.”

  “So has this just ended now?” said Saori.

  “No,” the decider said, “the war has been over for some time. But reconnecting with all our outposts has been a long and difficult task. Our resources are much depleted by the war. This particular outpost was not considered a priority until—”

  “Until you got the message about Alyssa turning up,” said Iona.

  “When we understood what was happening I was dispatched to investigate and revise protocols accordingly.”

  When none of the humans reacted to this the decider spoke again.

  “I repeat my apology: I am sorry for your incarceration and take full responsibility on behalf of my ancestors who failed in their definition of the protocols. I have revised the protocols. The drones will give you every assistance to return to your own planet. They will convert one of the haulage chain vehicles into a ship capable of making the journey.”

  Iona stared at the tabletop. The decider was giving her exactly what she wanted. She couldn’t have asked for any more.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” asked the decider.

  There were many things Iona wanted the decider to do, but she didn’t think it could do any of them.

  The decider apologized, saying it had a lot of work to do, assessing the various mining and processing operations elsewhere on the planet. It left the humans to absorb the knowledge their lives had been derailed by a mistake, a miscommunication. The entire civilization they’d built was an accident. None of it meant anything.

  14

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER the decider had departed on its tour of the colony, something new appeared on the plain near the spot where the old decider, the dead decider, looked down from its sphere. Iona went up there to look at it.

  None of the figures queried her presence. There had been a marked change in the figures’ attitude toward them following the decider’s intervention. Before, they had tried to pretend the humans didn’t exist, though without neglecting them to the point where they died. They weren’t sure how the humans fit into their framework. But now the decider had established how the humans fit and so everything was different. A group of figures now attended to the humans’ needs to an almost oppressive extent. All the humans really wanted was to get out of here. Which was what the new thing on the plain was for.

  The thing was one of the trucks that made up the figures’ haulage line. It was a plain, gray, boxy object, about twenty meters high and sixty meters long. Four large thrusters were mounted on the rear end. The other three sides of the object were featureless, and although Iona couldn’t see the top she was willing to bet it wasn’t much more interesting. One curious detail was that it had rails on the bottom like a sleigh.

  It was designed to carry nothing but consignments of minerals. It was entirely automated: nothing living had ever traveled in it, or at least nothing larger than a stray insect. It was filthy and had clearly been in service for some considerable time. Iona understood that the figures had the wherewithal to manufacture new vessels when a truck failed to return or broke beyond repair, but at present they did not have the materials in hand and would have to mine them, which would take time. Converting an existing one was much faster, they assured her. Looking at the aged crate that sat on the plain, Iona wonder
ed whether she might prefer to wait.

  Iona pulled up a box to sit on and watched the figures work for a few hours. There was nothing else to do, after all. She watched as they opened the hatch in the roof, which was for filling and emptying the container, and lowered a figure inside. She watched as they cut a rectangular panel out of one side and fashioned a doorway from it. She watched as they thoroughly cleaned the interior, rewired the automated control systems, and installed controls that could be accessed from the inside.

  One of the figures came over to Iona and asked if it could get her anything to eat or drink. Iona asked for some water and fruit. The figure brought her both and she ate them in the sun. She could have done with some sunglasses, actually, but she guessed this was beyond the figures’ capability to supply.

  After a while she started to feel cold and made her way back to the medical facility, where she discovered Saori and Victor weren’t speaking to each other. She didn’t inquire why. If it hadn’t sorted itself out by tomorrow she’d address it. They had a long journey ahead of them on that crate and she had no intention of playing mother to a bunch of squabbling kids.

  * * *

  The next morning Iona returned to the plain to find significant progress had been made overnight. Steve came with her. She wasn’t sure if this was due to interest in the ship or a desire to remove himself from the conflict zone.

  The truck had been fully lined on the inside with rubber-like tiles that could emit light where needed. In each corner a cubicle had been fitted that offered something similar to cryogenic suspension: thoughtfully the figures had placed these cubicles as far away from each other as possible and constructed small rooms around them to give them each some personal space within the tiny confines of the craft. At the front, in the gap between two of these cubicles, a basic two-dimensional screen had been mounted above the control panel. There were four chairs arranged in two rows of two, so if they wished they could all sit and be involved in piloting the craft. But this would largely be unnecessary as the ship’s primary driver would be the automated controls it had originally been fitted with.