by Nancy Kress
“Robbie’s gone,” Sharon whispered.
“Come again?”
“He’s gone,” she hissed. “I just finished my guard shift, and I was checking everybody before I woke Jofrid for her turn. And Robbie’s not here. He must have sneaked away without me even knowing it!”
“Yeah, he’s good at that.” Jason sat up and looked around. The sky was much brighter than when he’d gone to sleep. The cloud cover had cleared, and there were five moons up, one full and low and very bright.
“What should we do?” Sharon said.
“Nothing,” Jason answered. “No point in looking for him. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. Besides, seems to me he’s pretty good at taking care of himself.”
“Well, yes,” Sharon said, “but―” She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Screaming started coming through the night. Not pigbird screaming this time, human screaming.
“From that way!” Jason said. “By the other spring!” He was on his feet in a minute, running toward the spring. In the bright star- and moonlight, he didn’t stumble. After a minute, he heard the others running after him.
At the spring, he stopped dead. Robbie stood with his back to the hill and...
...and his left arm choking the neck of a little girl!
She couldn’t be more than seven or eight years old. Facing him were three other kids, two boys about ten and an older female, a young woman who looked at least eighteen. In his right hand, Robbie held his knife, still bloody from the pigbird.
“―don’t want to hurt nobody, miss,” Robbie was saying in a reasonable voice. “And I won’t, neither. All’s I want is for you to listen―”
“Robbie!” Jason cried. “Let that little girl go!’
“Certainly, guv’nor. Soon as the gentry mort here says she’ll listen to me. Or to you.”
“Of course we’ll listen!” the older girl cried. “We’ll do whatever you say! Just don’t hurt Betta!”
“Nobody’s going to hurt anyone,” Jason said. Suddenly he felt calm, in control. He walked over to Robbie and took the trembling little girl from him, holding her firmly by the hand. Then Jason smiled at the older girl
“Hi, how you doin’? I’m Jason Ramsay from Earth, and this is Robbie. Don’t mind him, he gets carried away sometimes. You’re from the Discovery, right? We been trying to get you to come out to talk to us for a whole day now. Did you know we were here? From Earth?”
“Earth? No! How...give me Betta first!”
Jason considered. Even if the four kids ran, he could easily overtake them and get at least the littlest one back. He let go of Betta’s hand, and she ran over to the boys who, Jason now saw, were twins. All four kids wore what looked like different versions of s-suits—terribly stained and worn.
“We’re sorry Betta got scared,” Jason said, smiling at the older girl. “We’re on your side, gang. We just got here day before yesterday from Earth, and we been―”
“From Earth!” the girl cried. “You’ve come to rescue us!”
“Well, no. I mean, yes. We can take you back through the t-port… No, wait, the t-port isn’t there. Listen, I better tell you the whole story from the beginning. It’s kind of complicated.”
Sor stepped forward. “You are the only survivors of Expedition Delta, 2331, is that correct? Are you Annit Janna Wethel?”
“Yes!” the girl cried. “You have come to rescue us! We thought we were here forever!”
Maybe you are, Jason thought, if we don’t get the t-port back. And we might be here forever, too. But it didn’t seem a good idea to say this aloud. Instead, he said, “Let’s go inside, okay? Then we can explain everything.”
But Annit was eyeing Robbie nervously. “He, too?”
“Yes,” Jason said firmly. “He’s a member of my mission. But he’ll behave, I give you my word. Won’t you, Robbie? You won’t go upsetting anybody else?”
“Never would, guv’nor,” Robbie said with his broadest smile. Jason didn’t believe him for a minute. Still, Robbie had been the only one to realize that the Discovery kids would probably come out for water eventually. Although, come to think of it, why had they come out for water? Didn’t they have water-making stuff inside that wonderful future starship?
All at once, Jason got a cold feeling in his stomach.
He said, “Uh, Annit, let me ask you something real quick. Have there been any aliens called Panurish around here recently?”
Annit cried, “How did you know? That’s the reason the ship was on maximum security. They attacked four days ago.”
Sor said quickly, “Were any of you injured?”
“No. They ignored us entirely, but the attack is why we had to get water from outside. They took everything!”
“Everything?” Jason said, with a deep, sinking feeling of failure threatening to rise up and take over. He fought it down, like pushing for a come-from-behind game. “Like what?”
“Everything even a little technological,” one of the twin ten-year-old boys said. “They even took furniture!”
“Looking for the communication cube,” Sor said. “Furniture is programmable. They don’t know what human communication cubes look like, so they took everything that might contain Captain Kenara’s message about the Third Step.”
“The what?” Annit said.
“Let’s go inside,” Jason said. “We got a lot of explaining to do.”
The inside of the ship looked like a store that had just held the biggest going-out-of-business sale of all time. The place was huge, and it was empty. Holes in the walls, floors, and ceilings showed where things had been ripped out. All that was left was a bunch of blankets, a few pieces of simple furniture, dishes and glasses and cups and some simple toys for kids, and a lot of decorative objects―what Jason’s mother called “knick-knacks”―for the vanished adults. No machines left except the lights, which seemed to be the same thing as the walls. The walls glowed with soft light, which only showed clearly how trashed everything was.
Still, Jason recognized the large room where Annit led the Yanks. It was the same room he’d seen on Captain Kenara’s communication cube. Then the room had been filled with dying colonists, the parents of the fifteen kids who now clustered wonderingly around the Yanks.
Jason looked at a jagged gash in a wall where some machine had been taken out. “How’d they do that?”
“Cut it out with a tunable laser saw,” Sor said. “What have you been eating since they took the food machines?”
Robbie looked suddenly alert.
“Well,” Annit said, “the Panurish―is that what you called them? They never spoke a single word when they came, so we didn’t know what they were. Or why they were taking everything.”
Sor said, “I’ve seen pictures of them. They’re smaller than we are, right, with sort of pushed-forward faces, thick necks, and reddish hair only on the tops of their heads?”
“That’s right,” said one of the twins, Mant or Billin; Jason couldn’t tell them apart. “They acted like we weren’t even here, even when we tried to physically stop them.”
“Really? You did?” Sharon said. “What did they do?”
“Just pushed us to the floor. Or rather, their robots did. They came with a lot of robots, and the robots did all the work, cutting everything off the ship and carrying it away and protecting the Panurish. The Panurish just walked around and ignored us.”
“Very bad manners,” said little Betta. "They even trampled all over the cemetery, poking at...at our parents." Clearly, though very young, she was capable of deeply resenting that final insult.
The fifteen Jump kids all seemed healthy. They were all good-looking, like everyone else Jason had seen in 2336. The youngest, Betta, had been a baby when the Gift Givers landed the Discovery; now she was seven. The oldest two, Annit and a boy called Deel, were nineteen. At home in New York, Jason thought, they would be considered adults. But here, both Annit and Deel didn’t seem any older than him. Maybe because they’d been isola
ted so long.
Robbie said, “You was talking about food. What do you eat now that the Panurish coves forked your bread-bakes?”
“Oh,” Deel said, sounding distracted, “we’re using an emergency supply of micro-dried foodstuffs you just mix with water and…I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but what does it matter what we eat now? You’ve come to take us back home!”
Come again? Jason looked at Deel’s face. Then at Annit’s, and Mant’s, and Billin’s, and all the others. Their faces shone with joy.
They thought they were going home. Back to Earth, back to whatever family they had left.
And Jason was going to have to tell them differently.
“Look, uh, Deel,” he said. It was hard to get the words out. “Two things you gotta understand. First, we didn’t bring the t-port with us. It was here all the time, about a half-mile away, but it’s hard to see if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Not even the computer on Earth knew it was there until somebody used it a few days ago. The people who sent us here thought the users were Gift Givers, but I guess it was the Panurish instead.”
“The reason for the error is clear,” da Vinci said. “Wormhole trace radiation wavelengths can―”
“Not now, da Vinci,” Jason said quickly. “’Cause I still have to tell them the other thing. This t-port only opens for ten minutes at sunset, but last night it didn’t open at all. It’s gone. Vanished.”
“Gone?” Annit asked. She turned pale.
“Afraid so.”
Betta cried, “The Panurish took it! Like they took everything else!” She started to cry.
Jason thought about that. “What do you think, da Vinci? Is that possible―that the P-dudes just took the t-port?”
“No,” da Vinci said. “It’s not an object, it’s a field. You can’t move it.”
“Oh,” Jason said. “Well, that’s a relief, anyway.”
“But you could jam the field,” da Vinci said, “if you had the right equipment. Then the t-port is still there, but it won’t open.”
Sor said, “That’s probably what happened!”
Jason tried to stay calm. “Da Vinci, how do we unjam it?”
“We can’t,” da Vinci said. “We don’t have the equipment. Not with us.”
Everyone looked at the robot. Twenty-one pairs of human eyes: fifteen Discovery kids and six Yanks, counting Tara. All stuck here on Jump without a t-port.
Forever?
Maybe forever.
Unless one of them could come up with some plan or idea. Or unless da Vinci could.
“Da Vinci,” Jason said, and the words came thick out of his tight throat, “what do you suggest to get us out of here? Think hard, my man.”
“I don’t know,” da Vinci said. “I don’t know of any way we can leave Jump without a t-port.”
After that, nobody said anything for a long time.
Chapter Ten
Jason was good. Sharon had to admit that. He didn’t let anybody sit around and cry or mope or take out their anger on anybody else. He insisted they all get busy and stay busy.
“Okay, people, we got a lot to do here,” Jason said. “We’re going to start by bedding down in here for the rest of the night and getting some sleep. Then, in the morning, we got to have teams. Five teams of four each, maybe. One team to watch the t-port site all the time, in shifts, in case it appears again. One team to search every crack of this ship for the communication cube, just in case those Panurish did miss it somehow. One team to keep things going here, fires and cooking and kid-watching and making stuff we need, and teaching these kids how to do some of those basic survival things, like making ropes and snares. Jason had a reason to do that, besides keeping the castaways busy. “Jofrid, I want you to head up that group. And two teams to go look for the Panurish.”
Deel said, startled, “Look for the Panurish? We’ve been avoiding the Panurish!”
“Yeah, well, that was probably good sense,” Jason said. “Nasty dudes. But now we know they might have the communication cube, and they probably are jamming the t-port, too. We’ve got to find them and negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Sharon whispered. Negotiate with people―beings, aliens, whoever they were―who wouldn’t talk, and who fried starships that got in their way? How did you negotiate with aliens like that?
She looked at the Discovery kids. Deel and Annit were nineteen years old, and that other girl, the dark-haired beauty—Sharon couldn’t remember her name―was seventeen. How would they take to being bossed around by Jason, who was about fifteen and had only been on Jump since yesterday?
Deel and Annit and the dark-haired girl all nodded. Evidently, they accepted Jason’s leadership. It must be something about him. Either that or the older kids didn’t have any ideas of their own and were feeling desperate enough to accept whatever else came along.
Sharon could understand that. She was feeling pretty desperate herself.
Now Jason was putting everybody in teams for tomorrow, with Annit and Deel’s help. Sharon made herself speak up. “I’d like to be the team that looks for the communication cube.”
Jason looked at her in surprise. “Not the team that cooks and stuff like that? What about Tara?”
“I can carry her around with me in the ship while I look,” Sharon said.
“Okay, if that’s what you want,” Jason said. “You take the twins and Betta, then, and look for the communications cube.”
“But―” Sharon began, but Jason was already talking about who was on the other teams, and he didn’t hear her.
How long will you wait, Jason, before telling them the harshest news? That even if we win, there's going to be tragedy here?
The twins and Betta. Plus Tara, of course. Sharon would be babysitting!
Oh, well, she told herself as she settled down to sleep on a bunk that was nothing more than a thin metal shelf protruding from the ship’s wall. At least it wasn’t only baby-sitting. At least she’d be looking for the communications cube as well.
And she was determined to find it.
The next morning, after a breakfast from ship’s stores that tasted wonderful to Sharon, she took her team and started to search the ship. Right away, she discovered two things.
First, the Discovery had even more compartments than she thought. There had been a couple hundred colonists aboard, but the ship looked as if it could hold many more than that. She asked the twins why.
“I don’t remember the landing too well,” Mant said, “but Deel told us that people planned to live in the Discovery for a long time while they built other stuff. Power plants and things like that. The Discovery was going to be home for maybe a hundred years.”
“A hundred years?” Sharon said.
“I think that’s what Deel said,” Mant answered. “Why not?”
“Well, what if their kids, or their kids’ kids, wanted to do something different? Build things in a different order, say?”
Mant looked puzzled. “Why would they want to do that?”
Sharon floundered. “Just...just because younger generations sometimes want to do things different.”
“But if the first plan is the best way, they’d do that,” Billin said.
Sharon pondered. In her experience, people didn’t choose actions because they were “the best way.” People did whatever they pleased, and they didn’t trust their parents to make important choices for them. Certainly Sharon wouldn’t trust her mother to make choices about her future.
2336 was a stranger place than she’d imagined.
“But,” Billin said, sounding very grown up, “you could be right, Sharon.”
That was the second thing she’d learned so far this morning; the twins were polite, like everybody else in 2336, apparently. The ten-year-old boys Sharon was used to were not usually polite, and she found Mant and Billin a little unnerving. They looked like any boys who had just crawled out from under a dirty bunk, with dust curls on their clothes and smudges of dirt on their faces an
d their hair standing straight up, but they weren’t like the kids she’d known. Mant and Billin―and all the others on Jump―had lost their parents and all other adults, and for six years, they’d lived on an isolated planet with other children. Did the twins remember their parents? Did they still miss them? Sharon didn’t want to ask, in case it made them sad.
Instead, she said, “Well, we’ve finished this section. Let’s try the next one.”
“Can I carry Tara?” Betta asked eagerly.
Betta loved having the baby around, Sharon could see. Suddenly Betta wasn’t the youngest, the “baby” herself.
“Sure,” Sharon said. Betta picked up Tara and staggered with her to the next section of the ship.
The twins crawled under more bunks while Sharon searched through the tangle of objects on the floor, knocked there by the Panurish in their thieving raid.
A hairbrush. It looked just like Sharon’s brush at home. Weird to think that some things didn’t change even in three hundred and fifty years.
A long green ribbon.
A stuffed bunny, not made of cloth but still very soft, for a baby to play with.
A vase made of painted metal. A few dead flowers dropped out of it.
A plate made of plastic. Or something like plastic.
A blanket.
“Nothing here,” Billin said. “Let’s go on to the cargo hold. There’s tons of things there.”
“Okay,” Sharon said. “But first, look at this vase. It’s got flowers in it, and they’ve only been dead for a few days. Who put them here?”
Mant said, “Oh, this was Annit’s room until the Panurish came and we all started sleeping together in the big lounge. I guess the flowers were hers. She liked that vase.”
“No wonder,” Sharon said. The vase was beautiful. Made of a heavy metal with a dull gleam, it curved in ways that made her hands want to stroke it. The vase looked...lasting, somehow. Like it would never wear out, never break. It reminded her of something...what?