by Nancy Kress
“No, he just fainted,” Jason said, kneeling beside Robbie. “We have to―Sor, not now!” Sor had gone into his usual wimp act at the sight of violence, turning pale and looking like he might throw up. Annit and Cor were doing it too. What a team!
Carefully Jason picked Robbie up. The nineteenth-century kid was so small and light. Didn’t they have any bones back then? He was still breathing.
“Let’s get him to the ship,” Jason said. “Come on!”
Deel said, “But the Panurish took all the medical equipment!”
Jason almost groaned aloud. Instead, he said, “Jofrid. She knows a lot of pre-tech stuff. Maybe she’ll know what to do! Unless you do, da Vinci?”
“Put cold water on the burn,” da Vinci said, which was no help because they didn’t have any cold water. Jason started off at a run. The others trailed behind more slowly.
Jason looked back only once. The Panurish were still scanning and taking apart the stolen equipment, just as if nothing had happened. Just as if the humans had never been there.
Jofrid did know what to do for Robbie. She made a paste from water combined with some herbs from a pocket of her green wool dress and spread it on the burned hand. Then she bandaged the hand with strips from an old blanket. She also gave Robbie something from her pockets to make him sleep.
Jason couldn’t sleep, not even after all the others had dozed off inside the locked-up Discovery. Jason lay awake, tossing and turning. The day had pretty much been a disaster. They’d found the Panurish, sure, but they didn’t have the communication cube. They didn’t have the t-port back. They didn’t have a clue how to negotiate with the Panurish.
And Jason didn’t have any more ideas about what to do next.
Chapter Twelve
Sharon wanted to see the Panurish for herself.
She sat on a big rock beside the spring. It was early afternoon of a soft sunny day, with a light lemony-smelling wind. At her feet, Tara played with a soft toy from the Discovery. Sharon watched the baby and thought about aliens.
Six days had gone by, and everybody in the Discovery had seen the Panurish except her. First, the older kids had gone to try to negotiate. That hadn’t worked. The Panurish never once even seemed to notice that the humans were there.
But they didn’t attack again, either. As long as the humans stayed at least forty feet away from Panurish, robots, ship, and piles of stolen stuff, it was perfectly safe to watch then. So then the younger kids got to go have a look, even seven-year-old Betta. Jason had watches on the aliens all day and all night, in shifts in case they did anything different, which so far they hadn’t.
Everybody was on the watch list except Sharon. She had to babysit Tara. Jason wouldn’t spare da Vinci for babysitting, because, “if something big breaks, we’ll need da Vinci.”
Well, that made sense, but still, Sharon really wanted to see the aliens. Why shouldn’t she? She could take Tara with her. It was perfectly safe; that had been proven over and over during the last six days. She wouldn’t get very close. And so many feet had trekked over the hills to the alien ship that a path was worn in the groundcover. She wouldn’t get lost.
“What are you doing?” Mant asked, walking toward her.
“Thinking,” Sharon said.
“That’s nice,” Mant said politely. “May I ask what you’re thinking about?”
He sounded so grown up that Sharon had to smile. She liked the twenty-fourth-century kids. They were all so gentle and polite.
“I’m thinking about the Panurish,” she told Mant.
He nodded. “Jason sent me to get you.”
“Jason’s back?” He had gone to see if the t-port site had changed in any way. He looked every day. It never changed.
“Yes, he’s back,” Mant said. “And so is Jofrid’s expedition.”
“Did they find anything new to eat?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
Mant grinned; he loved the meals Jofrid prepared. A routine had developed about food. Sor tested everything in his edibility machine, then Jason sent people to gather more of whatever was edible so they wouldn’t have to use up too many of the Discovery’s stores.
Jason was turning into a good leader. He had efficient teams for watching the Panurish, for gathering and cooking food, for staking out the t-port, for brainstorming ideas on what to do next. When all the work was done, he even built what he called “team spirit.”
“Oh, no,” Sharon said. “Not more football.”
“I get to be quarterback,” Mant said importantly. “Come on, Sharon.”
“Mant, I hate football!”
Mant looked shocked. He, along with most of the boys, had taken to Jason’s football lessons like a bird to air. Some of the girls, too, loved to play. Annit did, and Cam. But not Sharon. Mant’s announcement decided for her. She would take Tara and go look at the Panurish.
“Tell Jason I went for a walk.”
She picked up Tara, who was in a good mood, settled the baby on her hip, and followed the path over the low hills to the alien camp. When she arrived, she stayed a safe distance away, squinting through the lemony air at the aliens leaving their ship.
Why, the Panurish were so small! They were kids, after all. She remembered Dr. Cee saying that only Panurish kids could teleport, just like humans, but even for kids, they looked little. How old were they?
Sharon walked closer. On the far side of the camp, sitting on a hill well outside the forty-foot attack range, were the two humans on the watching shift, Wu and Alli. Beside their tiny ship, the Panurish lined up in a very straight row, a robot last in line. They started walking toward her.
Sharon’s heart beat fast. Were they attacking? Then she remembered Jofrid telling her about this. Several times a day, the Panurish went marching around the hills for about half an hour in a different direction each day. Nobody knew if this was exercise, reconnaissance, a religious ritual, or what. But they just marched in a straight line for fifteen minutes, turned around, and marched back. They never stopped, never changed direction, never looked to the left or right. All Sharon had to do was get out of their way.
She scurried to one side, then cautiously turned and looked back.
The Panurish robot at the end of the line didn’t look at all like da Vinci. It looked more like a...a suitcase. Yes, a suitcase with rounded sides and a perfectly flat top, floating along a few inches above the ground.
The aliens marched past her like soldiers on parade. Just as the other humans had all said, they ignored her utterly. Sharon started to breathe normally.
Until suddenly, the line of Panurish stopped and looked at her.
Sharon froze. This wasn’t supposed to happen! Then something even weirder occurred: the Panurish all bent toward her like they were bowing, but it wasn’t a bow. They bent over, and each one fixed its third eye, the ones on the top of their heads, surrounded by a ring of reddish hair, directly on Sharon.
She was so frightened it took her a minute to realize that the Panurish weren’t looking at her.
They were looking at Tara.
The baby was delighted. She clapped her little hands, giggled, and squirmed to get down. She wanted to crawl toward the interesting people who were looking at her.
Sharon clutched the baby hard and ran. She was afraid to look back over her shoulder. If the aliens came after her, they could probably move faster than she. Tara felt heavier and heavier. How could Sharon outrun them? The camp was so far away, and she was panting already.
Something pulled up next to her. The Panurish robot!
Sharon screamed. The robot took no notice. It ran―or rather floated―right beside her, matching her pace effortlessly. And then tentacles snaked out of the robot’s side and reached for Tara.
“No!” Sharon screamed. “No, no!” She stopped running and tried to beat off the robot, but it was too strong for her. Gently and impersonally, it peeled back her arms and took Tara from her. The baby laughed, thinking it was a game.
“Give her back!” Sharon cried. Instead, the robot started to move away slowly, holding Tara as if he wasn’t sure how much she could be jostled.
With tottering steps―her knees felt like water―Sharon kept up with the robot. She grabbed at Tara, but the baby was wrapped in the robot’s flexible tentacles, and Sharon couldn’t get her free. What was this thing going to do with Tara? What if it suddenly fried her?
“Stop! Stop!” Sharon yelled. The robot took no notice. It began to move slightly faster. Frantic now, Sharon did the only thing she could think of―she jumped on top of the robot’s flat upper surface.
Instantly the robot stopped. It untangled one long arm from Tara, balancing her with the other, and reached over to push Sharon off. Immediately Sharon reached forward herself and pulled at Tara, now held by only one tentacle. The robot tightened its grip on the baby, and Tara started to whimper. It didn’t like that; it let Sharon go and returned to holding Tara with two gentle tentacles.
They stayed like that for a moment, the three of them: the robot still, the baby whimpering, and Sharon helplessly riding an alien...thing. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest. What was the robot going to do next? What was she going to do next? Oh God, if it hurt Tara...
The robot started to tilt.
Sharon felt herself sliding off, so she threw her arms around the suitcase-like body of the robot and hung on. The robot shook her a bit, but not too hard. Maybe it didn’t want to shake Tara up? What did it want with the baby?
The robot stopped shaking and straightened up. Sharon still hung on. After a moment, it resumed its slow, careful walk back toward the line of waiting aliens.
It was going to give Tara to the aliens!
Sharon groped frantically around the edges of the robot, looking for...what? Something, anything! Her trembling hand found a series of bumps. Sensors, maybe? Da Vinci had sensors for heat, motion, sight... Sight! That was it!
Her groping hand found the optical sensor that let the robot see forward. It protruded out from the suitcase’s front, like a single headlight, just to the right of where Tara was pressed against the metal skin. Maybe, Sharon thought wildly, if she could cover the optical sensor, the robot couldn’t go forward. She put a hand over the sensor.
The robot stopped. It had worked! Then Sharon’s hand started to burn. The sensor was getting hot to burn off whatever was obstructing it.
Sharon yanked her hand away before the heat got too intense. What now? Oh, somebody please help me...
But there was no one except her. What else could she do to cover the optical sensor? She spat into her hand and rubbed the spit all over the sensor. Even before she removed her hand, she could feel the heat start. The robot burned off the spit as easily as a hot frying pan burning off drops of water.
What wouldn’t it burn off? Anything?
The robot was getting closer to the line of waiting aliens.
Frenziedly Sharon put one hand in the pocket of her s-suit. Her fingers touched a pretty stone Jofrid had given her, plus some things for Tara that had been in her coat pocket when she left Earth. A teething ring, a broken string of beads, a tube of Desenex.
Desenex.
Sharon pulled out the tube of white, sticky, pasty stuff intended to be smeared on a baby’s bottom to cure diaper rash. Balancing on the slowly moving robot’s flat top, she squirted a big fistful of the goop into her other hand and smeared it onto the optical sensor. Her hand burned, and she yanked it away.
The robot stopped moving. Whatever chemicals Desenex was made of, they didn’t burn off! The robot started to turn sideways. Quickly Sharon smeared more Desenex on the optical sensors on the other three sides. The robot stopped dead. It was blind.
Sharon slid off and reached for Tara, but the robot still held her firm. Then it loosened one tentacle from the baby and reached back toward itself to wipe off the Desenex.
Sharon didn’t hesitate. She yanked at Tara so hard that the baby screamed. The robot let go of Tara. While the robot wiped the gooey paste from its tentacles, Sharon started running. She knew that in a moment, the robot would be able to see again. Sure enough, the Panurish robot started after her.
Sharon ran clumsily, her heart pounding. Just ahead was one of the fresh-water springs that seemed to be everywhere on Jump. All that underground water must nourish the thick purple groundcover. This spring was bigger than the others; it had formed a pool as big as a small pond.
Without thinking, Sharon jumped into the water.
She waded toward the center and crouched down as low as she could until only her head and Tara’s were above water. Stupid, stupid. Why would a little water stop a robot?
But it did.
The robot stopped at the edge of the pond and reached its tentacles as far as they could go. They fell just short of reaching Tara. The creature walked around the pond, trying every few feet to extend its tentacles out over the water and grab Tara. But each time, Sharon moved in the opposite direction, and the tentacles were just a bit too short.
Why didn’t it go into the water? Sharon wondered wildly. Then an answer came to her. Sor had said the pigbirds had evolved in a lighter gravity than Earth’s, and so that’s why they could run faster than could animals just as heavy-looking on Earth. Maybe the Panurish had evolved on a planet without much water in open, above-ground bodies. So they couldn’t swim, and they didn’t build their robots to swim either. . .
The robot kept circling the pond, but no matter how many times it tried, it couldn’t reach Tara and Sharon. And the Panurish themselves didn’t approach the pond at all. Well, that fit, Sharon thought; they never came near humans or let humans come near them if robots could do the job. Maybe they were cowards?
Tara, cold from the water, started wailing and kicking. Sharon paid her no attention. She kept both of them submerged to their chins while their lips turned blue. She wasn’t leaving until the robot gave up and went away.
Eventually, it did.
Even then, Sharon waited in the pond as long as she could stand it. When she was so cold she thought she’d die, she finally came out and ran on stiff and trembling legs back to the Discovery. Nobody stopped her. The aliens and their robot had apparently marched away.
She panted up to Jofrid and Betta, outside the ship. Betta tended a small fire. Robbie lay on the ground while Jofrid spread some sort of medicinal paste on his burned hand and put fresh bandages over it.
“Sharon! You’re all wet!” Betta said. “What happened?”
“The...the Panurish. They tried to take Tara!”
“Take Tara!” Jofrid cried.
Robbie sat straight up on the grass. “You gammoning us, miss?”
“Yes. They...they stopped marching, bent over to look through that third eye, and looked straight at us. Then they tried to grab her!”
“Sit by the fire,” Jofrid said. “Oh, you’re freezing! Tara, too! Tell what happened.”
Sharon did, gradually warming up as she sat by the fire. Jofrid got Tara out of her sopping clothes and wrapped her in a blanket; the baby stopped crying. When Sharon was done talking, little Betta said, “But why did the aliens want Tara?”
Jofrid looked thoughtful. “Perhaps because they’ve never seen a baby before. The oldest colony child is you, Betta, and you’re already seven. You no longer look like a baby. You walk, talk, show fear. Was Tara afraid of the Panurish, Sharon?”
“No,” Sharon said. “Not at first. She thought they were great. Clapped her hands and gurgled and wanted to get down and go see.”
“Well, perhaps that behavior made them curious,” Jofrid said.
“They haven’t been curious about any of our behavior,” Betta pointed out.
Robbie said, “It bams me what their lay really is. Peculiar coves, them.”
Sharon asked. “They…hey, what’s all that noise on the other side of the ship?” “Basketball,” Robbie answered.
“Jason’s teaching everybody,” Betta said. “Robbie can’t play until his
hand is better. Jason put up a hoot made of vines.”
“A hoop,” Sharon corrected automatically. “What happened to football?”
“Jason said the season’s over. Now it’s basketball season. He made two teams, the Knicks and the Wizards. What’s a knick?”
“I don’t know,” Sharon said. She was still cold and scared. Even so, it registered in one part of her mind that all the furious shouting didn’t sound much like a basketball game.
It wasn’t. Jason came charging around the corner of the huge starship, followed by every other human except Wu and Alli. Everybody shouted at everybody else. Jason ran straight up to Robbie, who sat on the ground next to the fire.
“You mangy little runt! What have you been doing with those pigbirds?”
Robbie stood up slowly. Sharon saw his eyes glitter. He said to Jason, “Why, guv’nor, Robbie’s been snaring the pigbirds for Jofrid to cook. You know that.”
“And what have you been doing with ‘em before you brought them to Jofrid? Answer me that?”
“Why, nothing, guv’nor.”
“Sor says otherwise. Sor, tell him what you found!”
Sor stepped forward. He was pale, with a look his eyes that Sharon had learned to recognize. All the colony kids got it in the presence of violence. It was a sort of squeamish distaste, coupled with outrage that anyone could resort to such uncivilized behavior, much less enjoy it. It was the underlying reason Sor hated Robbie so much, although Sharon sensed that Sor was also sickened by his own hatred. Probably he thought that hatred was a form of violence, too.
Sor said in a controlled voice, “I was on patrol with Billin, searching for more edible plants. We walked two-point-six miles north-northeast from the Discovery, and we found a place beside a spring where somebody made a pen out of long sticks tied with vines. In the pen was a pigbird. It had gashes and pulled-out feathers as if it had been fighting. Beside the pen was a circle of bare dirt with two stakes in it. The stakes had ropes on them, and the ropes were bloody. Inside the circle was another pigbird, still tied, all bloody. It was dead.”