by Nancy Kress
Everyone looked. The shimmery rectangular door had vanished. Sharon felt a thrill go down her spine. The sky was still full of fading light, but the sun had slipped below the horizon. While they argued and fought, the t-port had closed. It wouldn’t be back until sunset tomorrow.
Jason said quietly, “You guys want a new leader?”
At that moment, Sharon astonished herself. She heard herself saying firmly, “No. You’re our leader, Jason. But Tara and I stay.”
Robbie said, “That’s good enough for Robbie.”
Jofrid said, hanging her head, “Please forgive my boldness. It’s not my place to challenge for leadership.”
Sor said tightly, “The computers chose you, Jason. Their programs have been designed by the solar system’s best minds. You should therefore remain in charge of this mission. But no violence.” He stared at Robbie’s knife with mixed fascination and revulsion.
Sharon saw Jason draw a deep breath. He looked shaken, but his voice was steady when he said, “Okay. Tara and Sharon stay. But from now on, we consult with each other. We tell each other things..." A sharp look at Sharon. "And if we can't agree quickly by consensus, then I make the decisions for this group. Everybody cool with that?”
He looked hard at each face. Slowly everyone nodded. Jason held out his hand. “Robbie, give me that knife.”
Robbie handed him the weapon at once. He said cheerfully, “Anything you say, guv’nor.”
“Then let’s get going. Da Vinci. Sor, what’s wrong with da Vinci?”
The robot stood by the sally port, slumping forward on its tin-can-like body, motionless. It looked dead. Sor made an annoyed clicking sound.
“It’s this advanced model, Jason. Da Vinci’s a UT6005. His smart programming is wonderful, but all the 6000-series ‘bots have been unnerved by the coming of aliens to Earth. It wasn’t in their initial programming, you see. Every so often something they perceive is so alien it makes a sort of loop in their circuits, and they just shut down everything else to contemplate it.”
“Contemplate?” Jason said. “You mean, like, think about it?”
“Yes, basically.”
“And da Vinci’s just shut down for good? Gone?”
“Oh, no,” Sor said. “I can jog him off the logic loop.”
“Well, do it, then.”
Sor stepped up to da Vinci and fiddled with something in the robot’s neck. After a moment, da Vinci straightened up and said, “Thank you.”
Jason said, “He working again?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s just going to cut out and ‘contemplate’ like that any time something looks too new? And we don’t know when he might do it?”
“I’m afraid so,” Sor said.
“Great,” Jason muttered. “Just what we need. A robot that goes splat.”
“I am fully functional now,” da Vinci said pleasantly, “and can advise you on any topic.”
“Fine,” Jason said. “Advise away. Dr. Cee said this t-port isn’t typical. What did she mean?”
Da Vinci answered immediately. “T-ports exist all over the galaxy. They’re like bus stops in your time―once you know where they are, you can travel wherever they go. Some t-ports are hubs, and from them, you can go to many different places. Others only lead in one direction. This t-port is a terminal stop because we’re very far out on the galaxy rim. In fact, humans had no idea this t-port even existed until a few days ago, when the computer detected activity through it. Probably it was the Gift Givers; they’re the only ones who know where all the t-ports are. If we had discovered this t-port six years ago, maybe a robot could have gone through it to get the kids from the Discovery. But we didn’t know it existed. We only knew about the sally port, out beyond Jump’s moons.”
“Okay, so now Jump is on the bus map,” Jason said. “What else?”
Da Vinci continued. “Most t-ports are open all the time. But we’re in a section of the rim called the Torvil Anfract. Here, local space-time structure is contorted and folded and generally convoluted, resulting in unusual dislocations and multiple connectivities, further resulting in intermittent-only worm-holing.”
“Come again?” Jason said. “In English.”
Sor said, “He means we’re in a sector of space so strange that it takes too much power to keep a t-port open all the time. It happens more often than da Vinci implies, and it worries some of our scientists. The crux of the matter? This t-port is only open ten minutes each sunset.”
“Why sunset?” Sharon said, interested despite herself. She shifted Tara to her other hip.
Sor smiled at her. “We don’t know. Maybe the Gift Givers set it up that way so it would be easy to remember.”
“Whatever,” Jason said. “Now, let’s get going. Which way is the Discovery? It’s getting dark.”
Da Vinci said, “The Discovery is one-half mile in that direction.”
The Yanks started walking. Immediately, Sharon realized that it felt slightly weird. When she took a step, she seemed to go farther than she should. She felt light, and Tara felt lighter than usual in her arms. The others seemed to feel it, too―little Jofrid almost seemed to float along.
Sor grinned. “Great, isn’t it? Jump is point-eight-eight Earth gravity. That means you weigh less here and can leap higher.”
Jofrid said, “Powerful magic! What other magics be here?”
Da Vinci said, “Air composition is similar to Earth’s. Jump has no axial tilt, so there are no seasons. Land-to-mass ratio is―”
“Later, da Vinci,” Jason said. “Right now, everybody stay alert. The thing to do is get to the Discovery before dark.”
The five Yanks and one robot walked up and down the gentle hills, Jason in the lead. Sor walked next. Sharon figured that Sor was second-in-command, the Yank with the tools and the answers, providing whatever the captain needed done. So what did that make her and Jofrid, walking together next, with Robbie and da Vinci somewhere behind them? But Sharon didn’t mind; Jofrid was nice. Sharon shifted Tara in her arms to talk to the Icelandic girl.
“Thank you for sticking up for me, Jofrid, in front of Jason.”
“I should not have done it.”
Sharon felt hurt. “Why not? Do you think I’m wrong to keep Tara here?”
“No,” Jofrid said. “A family must care for its own. It’s a shame to leave kin in the care of strangers. But I should not challenge the men. I have been reprimanded at the Allthing for this unmaidenly fault.”
Sharon struggled to understand. “You mean, where you come from, girls can’t contradict boys? That’s silly!”
Now Jofrid looked shocked. “It’s the law.”
“Not here, it isn’t. Why, Jofrid, girls are just as―” Before Sharon could finish her sentence, a pair of blurs erupted from the corner of her field of vision. Flinching, she spied two wild animals as they jumped out of a clump of bushes and dashed toward the Yanks.
Tara screamed. The animals ran on all fours, hurtling dark-purple shapes with skinny bodies and big, earless heads. In those heads gleamed a mouthful of sharp white teeth between two white tusks. As they ran, the animals made a shrill grinding noise like car brakes just before a crash. Sharon had never seen anything so terrifying. They came straight at her and Tara, running and running and running until just before they were on top of her. Then they turned slightly aside and ran past, one on each side of her. She heard them crash into another clump of bushes, then through it, and keep running.
“Keep calm, people, don’t panic!” Jason was calling.
Sharon clutched Tara tighter. The baby was crying hysterically and trying to climb up Sharon’s head. Sor looked pale, pointing some instrument in the direction the animals had run past. Jofrid was murmuring prayers, or spells, or something. And Robbie stood there with his knife in his hand.
“How’d you get that knife back?” Jason roared.
“Forked it off your boot, guv’nor,” Robbie said with his sunniest smile. “Just thought I could use it bette
r’n you if needs be. Maybe Robbie should keep the cleaver, then?”
“Oh, all right, keep it!” Jason said. He looked really harassed. “But if you pull it on a person again, I’ll take you apart, you little runt, and don’t you forget it!”
“Never will, guv’nor,” Robbie said, still smiling. “You can trust Robbie. Keeping my fambles clean.”
Sharon doubted that, but she had her hands full, trying to calm Tara. While she patted the baby and walked her around, Sor said, “I have a reading on that creature, Jason. It’s warm-blooded, with a three-chambered heart. Fairly primitive brain and nervous system. High heartbeat for its size, speed greater than expected, and mostly hollow bones. It’s almost certainly carnivorous, with those teeth, but it will probably eat anything at all, to maintain that high metabolism. Sort of a cross between a bird and pig.”
“Great,” Jason said crossly. “Pigbirds. And what’s wrong with da Vinci?”
“Contemplating again,” Sor said. “I’ll jog his circuits.”
Sor fiddled with the robot. After a moment, da Vinci said, “Thank you.” Tara stopped crying and settled sleepily into Sharon’s neck. Sharon heard Jason sigh.
"Sor, we were lucky that time, but now I have to ask. What do we have in the way of weapons, other than Robbie's sticker?"
Sor took out from his pack a globe-like device that soon extended a pole, so it resembled a wizard's staff. "I was supposed to deploy this upon arrival. I am sorry. Amid the arguments and unfamiliar scenes, I forgot."
"The fault is mine," Jason assured. "I should've thought of it. What's it do?"
"It is not a 'weapon' in the sense that you all might mean—a device for meting out death on command." He frowned at the thought. "But it should create a deterrent of unpleasant electric fields that repel anything approaching too fast, or that we declare to be unfriendly."
Jason frowned. Clearly, rushing to meet the t-port's deadline-window had its drawbacks. If he had known this to be their sole protection, he would have demanded more, like some blaster-lasers.
“All right, Yanks, let’s move it.”
The five teens, one sleeping baby, and one robot set out again across the purple ground-cover. The stars were brightening, silent shining lights of white, blue, and faint red in the black sky. The fragrant lemon/pine-needle smell grew stronger. Six moons shone in the sky, two of them crossing very fast. The hilly alien landscape looked just as beautiful as before, but Sharon shuddered.
Things weren’t the same. Almost certainly carnivorous, with those teeth, Sor had said about the pigbirds. And he also said they probably eat anything.
Sharon had screamed at Jason that Jump was safe for Tara. And now the t-port was closed, at least until sunset tomorrow. There was no way to take Tara back until then. Although once again, in the moonlight and brightening starlight, Jump certainly looked safe: a beautiful place of “silence and slow time.” But what if it really wasn’t? What if the pigbirds attacked, or the Panurish did, or something even worse the Yanks hadn’t heard of yet?
What if Sharon had been completely wrong?
Chapter Seven
Jason, in the lead, was the first to see the Discovery. Despite himself, he stopped dead to stare for a moment. Not cool. A leader should take everything in stride, like he was prepared for anything. Well, tough on that. He, Jason, wasn’t ready for the Discovery. No way. They didn’t have stuff like this in Manhattan.
The ship was huge. As big as two city blocks, maybe three. Only one story, but still a monster. The outside was blackened and pitted. Jason couldn’t see any doors.
“Wellington class,” Sor said, beside him. “Almost intact. Captain Kenara said the Gift Givers landed her for the colonists, and it looks like they did a good job.”
Jason said, “Why is it all black and scarred-up like that?”
“From entry into the atmosphere. Perfectly normal. But I’m surprised there aren’t any open ramps. These big colony ships were designed to convert into buildings for the settlers to live in, with open courtyards and windows and everything. But this one is all locked up. Da Vinci, what do you think?”
“It’s possible the ship was once converted to living space and then reconverted to ship security.”
“You mean,” Jason said, “the kids still alive opened it up, lived in it a while, then locked it tight all over again? Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know yet,” da Vinci said.
Robbie said, “Only good sense, guv’nor. Keep everything under lock and key. Safer.”
“From what?” Jason said, exasperated. “The colony kids are the only people on the whole planet!”
“Maybe it’s protection against those animals. The pigbirds,” Sharon said. Jason could tell she was afraid. He could see it in the way she stood, the way she clutched that dumb baby. Well, good. Let her be scared. It might keep her off his back.
Jofrid said, “Perhaps the house is locked for protection against trolls. Or against sleeping spirits.”
“Yeah, right,” Jason said. “Well, if so, we’re gonna wake ‘em up.”
"I have been trying the various hailing bands," Sor said as he fiddled with a watch-like instrument on his arm. “Normal comm channels get no response."
"Okay, then. Let's do it the old fashioned way," Jason said.
He strode to the Discovery. Up close, he could see the outline of a huge door where the metal hull was supposed to fold down to make a ramp twenty feet across. Jason knocked on it hard.
“Hey, lost colony kids, let us in! We’re human like you, and we just got here on the planet! We got your ride home! Let us in!”
Nothing happened.
“You are announcing yourself at the cargo bay,” da Vinci said. “It is possible that no one can hear you.”
“Well, where should I knock?” Jason demanded. “I don’t see any welcome mat and front doorbell!”
“It would be better to make your impact-sounds on the crew entrance, which is sensitized for general notification of the living quarters,” da Vinci said.
“Fine,” Jason said. “Where is it?”
“This way,” da Vinci said.
They all trudged the length of the great ship. Jason looked behind him at his team. Robbie, he noted, stuck close to da Vinci. Jason didn’t think that the reason was fear. As far as Jason could see, Robbie wasn’t afraid of anything. It must be that the runty nineteenth-century thief just liked the robot. Although what on earth did Robbie think da Vinci was? But then Jason noticed something else.
“Sor, why are you carrying that baby?”
“I’m sure she gets very heavy for Sharon to carry all the time.”
“Well, that’s her problem! I might need you to fight, man, and there you are with a baby in one arm and leaning on that weapon thing like a walking stick!”
“Fight what?” Sor said reasonably.
“How do I know? Pigbirds, maybe! Give Sharon the baby.”
“All right.”
The next time Jason looked back, Jofrid was carrying the baby and scowling fiercely at Jason’s back. She stopped it as soon as he caught her eye, lowering her head modestly. Jason wasn’t fooled. That Jofrid might have to pretend to be demure and maidenly and all that crap in old Iceland, but she was nobody’s doormat. And now she was mad at Jason for not liking Tara.
What a team.
They reached the crew entrance, and Jason knocked as hard as he could. Nothing happened.
Next they walked around to the vehicle bay and knocked on that. Nothing happened.
Then they tried the passenger entrance. Nothing.
“We’re almost back where we started,” Jason said. “We’ve walked around the whole ship! Why won’t they let us in?”
“Maybe no one is home,” Jofrid said.
Jason pondered that. "It would be the simplest explanation. After all, our only information came from Captain Kenara's last message, and he was dying with a t-port fried brain. An adult who had just taken a fatal, interstellar jump, who
was still only conscious because of those things in his head..."
"Medical implants," Sor elaborated. "They must have intervened, kept him going a while, long enough to help the Gift Givers land the ship." The twenty-fourth-century boy looked sharply at Jason. "Are you implying that Kenara might have been lying? Or delusional? That he hallucinated much of what he reported to us?"
Jason hadn't wanted to believe that. It would make his whole mission here kind of pointless. But he was starting to realize—you have to face all the possibilities, not just the ones that make you feel good.
"You folks should have considered that possibility yourselves. You're so used to people of your own time being reliable witnesses, but how many adults ever survived an interstellar leap before this, for however short a time?"
Sor nodded. "This is the only case of which I am aware."
"So he might've been brain-scrambled for all we know. Dreaming about meeting Gift Givers who helped him out when he really managed to land the ship all by himself. After all, isn't that the kind of thing any of us might make up in our heads? Help from above?"
Sharon spoke up then in a soft voice. "But the ship did land, Jason. Whether Kenara did it alone or not, there should have been children aboard who survived."
"Perhaps at the beginning," Sor murmured unhappily. "But for how long? That would depend upon the ship being operational after landing...providing the children with all the food and water and sanitation and robotic helpers that could keep them alive. I had not contemplated the possibility, but perhaps those systems failed. Or if they worked, the children may have lost hope, surrounded by so many...so many dead adult bodies."
He looked down. The team stood in silent depression for a minute, until Jofrid spoke up.
"I believe... I believe I can see a part of an answer to these questions you raise, brother Sor." The others looked in the direction that she pointed.
"Well, I'll be a Lakers fan," Jason muttered. "It's a graveyard!"
They hurried across the rolling landscape of grass-like vines and up a low hillock, stopping just short of a row of rectangular mounds...dozens and dozens of them. Vines had crawled over them, masking the outlines, but each grave featured a bar of plastic or metal scavenged from packing crates of some kind, with a name etched across it. Most had toppled, but some still stood defiantly. These were what Jofrid had noticed from afar.