by Nancy Kress
“Go, Jason,” Sharon urged. “Go right away! They could fry you the way they did Robbie. That shock was probably just a warning!”
“Well, maybe…”
“Go on! You’re no good to us if you’re dead!”
Jason nodded. He got to his feet. “I guess you’re right.”
The door to the ship opened. Jason walked through it, and it instantly closed.
Sharon and Tara and an alien robot were alone in a windowless, doorless blue room, probably watched by the Panurish.
This didn’t seem to bother Tara. She’d gotten her socks off her feet and was happily chewing on one of them. Sharon felt tense all over. What would happen now?
For a few long minutes, nothing did. Then the robot said, “Talk, Shar-on.”
“T-talk? About what?”
“About anything. Talk human words.” Why? Sharon thought. Then she knew.
The Panurish wanted to learn as much human language as possible. What was it somebody had said last night? Enemies always tried to learn as much about each other as they could, in order to look for weaknesses. So anything Sharon said about human beings might be used against them by the Panurish.
Well, she wasn’t going along with that! No way! Stubbornly Sharon closed her lips.
“Talk, Shar-on,” the robot said.
Sharon said nothing.
Then she gasped. A painful electric shock ran over her left arm. It hurt, but only for a minute. A warning, like Jason’s. The Panurish were saying, Do what we want―or else.
All right, she’d have to talk, but nothing the aliens could use against human beings of this century! Sharon would see to that! They wanted words, they’d get words...but not Sharon’s. And not new words. Old words that would not give away any twenty-fourth-century weaknesses.
“This is Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats,” she said.
“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time...”
Sharon was pretty sure she could remember the whole poem. If she forgot parts, she’d make up nonsense words. How would the Panurish know the difference? And after the Keats poem, there were bits of other poetry they’d done in English class, plus all the theorems from geometry. And the cheers for the Spencerville football team. And nursery rhymes! Let the Panurish try to figure out human weaknesses from Hickory Dickory Dock.
But first came the Keats poem about the lovely Grecian vase. Sharon groped for the words, reciting them clearly. Tara seemed to like it, too. She stopped chewing her sock and listened, smiling.
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter...”
Still, reciting old-time information couldn’t go on forever.
Jason better be out there thinking up a plan.
Chapter Fifteen
“Okay, everybody, big meeting just before dinner in the main chamber,” Jason said when he and Jofrid returned to the Discovery. “I want every single last one of us there, ready to brainstorm.”
Senta and Max, two of the Discovery kids, said they would tell everyone. In the meantime, Jason had another matter to take care of. “Robbie,” he said, “I want to talk to you in my room. Right now, okay?”
Robbie hesitated, nodded, and followed Jason to his room. The leader closed the door. He sat on the edge of his bunk and motioned for Robbie to sit in the one chair.
Robbie stayed standing. He looked awful. One eye was black where Sor had punched him. His hair was matted and uncombed, and the clothes he wore over his s-suit looked even more ragged and dirty than when he’d come to Jump.
“First off,” Jason said, “I want to say I got no hard feelings that you knifed me, Robbie. I know you were trying for Sor, not me, and that it was self-defense. We clear on that?”
Robbie nodded warily.
“What you did with Tara is a whole ‘nother matter. But it’s done now, and the thing we have to do is figure out a way to get her back. Right?”
Again Robbie nodded.
“So I want to start by you telling me everything―and I mean everything―about those pigbird fights you were running out there. Because there was a fight. I saw the dead pigbird in that circle you drew. You already know how I feel about that. What I want to know now is, who was at that pigbird fight?”
Robbie looked warier than ever. Jason leaned forward. It made his bandaged side hurt, but he did it anyway.
“Look, Robbie, I know you weren’t running a pigbird fight just so you could bet with yourself. You were running a fight to bet with somebody else and make some money, or whatever kind of loot you hoped to get. Nobody on the Discovery would bet on two animals fighting to the death: they’re way too kind for that. Sor hates violence, too, and so does Sharon. Jofrid can stand it, but she’s not interested. I sure wasn’t there, and don’t think da Vinci is programmed to bet on fighting. So who were you running that fight for?”
“Look, guv’nor ―” Robbie said, then stopped.
Jason said, “You had Panurish at that fight, didn’t you? Betting on it.”
Robbie looked at the door, at Jason, and at the door again, and decided. “Yes, guv’nor. Panurish was there, but Robbie wasn’t trying to hoodwink you, Jason! I was betting with them for the cube you been glimming your daylights for! I was trying to win it from them!”
“And what happened?” Jason said.
Robbie hung his head. “My bird lost, guv’nor. Dipped badly, Robbie was.”
“Robbie,” Jason said, “do you think that even if you’d won the bet, the Panurish would have paid up with the communication cube? Do you really think that?”
Robbie looked more shocked than Jason thought possible. ‘Course they’d of paid, guv’nor! The one debt a man can’t pike on is a gambling debt!”
Jason shook his head. Where Robbie came from, that might be true. Nineteenth-century London, Jason was beginning to realize, was almost as alien to him as the Panurish were. “Tell me everything, Robbie, from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out. How did you get the Panurish to talk to you?”
“Didn’t never talk,” Robbie said. He sat down in Jason’s chair. “They found Robbie, they did. Few days ago, while they was out taking the air, marching along like they do. I caught two pigbirds to roast for dinner. Was going to roast ‘em, guv’nor. Swear it on my eyes.”
“And then...” Jason prompted.
“And then the Panurish come marching along, and I thinks to myself, ‘Maybe they’re fighting men.’ Stands to reason they might be, guv’nor. Made that raid on the Discovery, they did. Took even her mainsails.”
“’ Mainsails’? But the Discovery isn’t…never mind. So you set up a pigbird fight, and the Panurish stopped marching to watch it,” Jason guessed.
“Right you are. And Robbie put a small wager on the ground, explained what they should wager back.”
“Well, they probably understood you since we now know they’ve been eavesdropping on everybody, learning English off us for free,” Jason said. Suddenly he caught his breath. “Do you mean... Robbie, did they put the communication cube on the ground to match your bet?”
“Nah,” Robbie said scornfully. “Not on the first bet. Start small, guv’nor, when you got a mark. I bet a small silver salt cellar I happened to have on me, and―”
“A what?” Jason said.
“A salt cellar. You know, for a gentry mort’s table, to hold salt. Real silver it was.”
“Whatever. So you bet a salt shaker you stole five hundred years ago? What did the Panurish bet?”
“Couldn’t tell you, guv’nor. Something small and strange-looking, but it was made of gold worth forking. Worth winning.”
“Only you lost,” Jason said. “Then what?”
“Then nothing. The Panurish go on marching away, and Robbie’s left with catching another pigbird if I want a chance to get my own back again.”
Instead, Robbie had tried to trade Tara to the aliens. The betting hadn’t worked to get the communicati
ons cube, so Robbie went on to the next idea—which had also been a bust.
“Okay, Robbie,” Jason said. “Now, I want to be sure I really understand. Tell me one more time. Everything that happened, from the top.’
“Whatever you say, guv’nor.” His sunny smile was back. He was Robbie again: cheerful, confident, untrustworthy, unpredictable, and dangerous to everybody else on Jump even when he was trying to help.
Jason sighed and concentrated on Robbie’s story.
Just when Jason thought things couldn’t get any more stressed out, they did.
At Jason’s meeting, fourteen kids and one robot sat in the main chamber of the Discovery, waiting for Jason to say something brilliant. The only ones missing were Corio and Wu, left on watch outside the Panurish ship, and Isor and Annit, on watch at the t-port site. Plus, of course, Sharon and Tara. Even Robbie was present, sitting in a corner far away from Sor. Robbie looked subdued. Maybe he really did regret losing Tara to the aliens. You could never really tell what Robbie thought.
“Okay,” Jason said because he had to start by saying something, “let’s start by reviewing the situation we got here.”
Nobody reacted.
“Well, first off,” Jason said, “Tara’s safe.”
“However, the Panurish have her,” da Vinci said.
“Second,” Jason said, “Sharon is safe, too.”
“The Panurish have her, too,” da Vinci said.
“Third, the Panurish haven’t found the communication cube, or they’d have left Jump already.”
“However, we don’t have the cube either.”
Jason glared at da Vinci. Just what he needed, a negative robot. “You know, da Vinci, you’re a real downer.”
“No, I am currently up, running on active.”
“Right. Just keep quiet for a bit, okay?”
“Certainly,” da Vinci said agreeably, and Jason turned back to the worried faces in front of him. “My point is, the game isn’t over yet. We’re barely past halftime. We can still get Sharon and Tara back, find the communication cube, get the t-port open, and all get back home.”
Someone—Daryo, a quiet boy with large brown eyes—said, “How?”
“Well, we don’t have all the details worked out yet,” Jason said as cheerfully as he could. “We know that. But I’m positive that with all this brainpower we got here, in just a little while―”
“Jason! Jason!” a new voice shouted, and Corio burst into the Discovery. Corio had been on watch at the Panurish ship. “Jason, they’re leaving!”
“Who’s leaving?” Jason said sharply.
“The Panurish! They’ve opened the t-port!”
Immediately everyone started talking, shouting questions at Corio and exclaiming aloud. “Quiet!” Jason yelled. “Everybody quiet! Let Corio make his report!”
People quieted. Corio stood panting in the main chamber of the Discovery; he’d run all the way from the Panurish ship.
“The Panurish have started to leave. They’re carrying things to the t-port. They opened the t-port again! Wu and I followed them. I mean, they’re not carrying stuff themselves, their robots are. All the stuff they stole from us!”
Sor said swiftly, “That means they haven’t found the communication cube in all that stuff, and they’re giving up. They’re taking the whole pile home for their adults to sort through.”
Jason frowned. “Why didn’t they do that in the first place?”
Deel said, “Maybe they didn’t want to admit they couldn’t find it alone.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah, makes sense. They wanted to complete the mission. Just like us.”
Corio said, “They have seven robots carrying our stuff to the t-port, as much as the ‘bots can carry. Then, during the ten minutes the port was open, one kid went through with each robot and its load.”
Jason said, “Did all the Panurish and all the robots come back to Jump?”
“Yes,” Corio said.
Jofrid asked, “Did you see Sharon or Tara?”
Corio shook his head. “We waited until all the aliens went back to their ship, then we tried the t-port. But it didn’t work.”
Mikail said desperately, “Jason, what are we going to do? When the last Panurish leaves Jump, they might leave the t-port jammed forever!”
Jofrid said, “They might also take Tara and Sharon with them.”
That hadn’t even occurred to Jason. Nor, from the looks on everyone else’s face, to the other kids either. Little Betta gasped and started to cry. Deel put his arms around the girl.
Another girl, Tel, said, “Jason, you have to make a plan!”
Jason looked them all over slowly. It was his job to get them all home safely. Man, this didn’t feel like being captain of a basketball team. This was real responsibility, big time, and he didn’t have his buds to help him, Clayton and Tyrone and Wayne. He didn’t have big brother Brian to bail him out if he made a mess of the job. He didn’t have Coach Patterson to blame if the play didn’t work.
He only had himself. These future folk had a high opinion of me. Reached back in time to fetch me and put me in charge of an important mission to save a lost colony and grab an item of value to human destiny. And at first, how did I respond? By nodding and going all, "Yeah, sure, this is just what I expected the future to think of me."
Okay, so the later version of me, the middle-aged Jason Ramsay, would maybe turn out to be someone worth that kind of respect. But me?
Jason shook his head. Dr. Orgel and his Project Hourglass team, they were fools! People changed with time; it was called growing up. And I can see now that I've got a lot of growing up to do. I'm just a punk kid, arrogant and way too sure of myself. But still...
Still, that didn't change a thing about the here and now.
Here and now, I have to get us out of this mess that I made.
“Okay,” Jason said with a sigh. “I have a plan. But it’s gonna take all of us here to carry it out. Especially you, Robbie. Everybody, listen real good.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the afternoon of the next day, Sharon was hoarse. She was also more scared than she’d ever been in her life.
All yesterday, plus all today, she’d been talking to the Panurish robot. Her throat hurt from talking. The one time she’d stopped, the Panurish had hit her with another electric shock, so she kept on talking. She was running out of things to say.
She’d tried to stick to her resolve not to say anything that might give away valuable information about contemporary humans, so she’d recited a mishmash of things. Old poetry. Geometry theorems. The Gettysburg Address. Nursery rhymes. Lyrics to old songs: Happy Birthday and Yellow Rose of Texas and Yankee Doodle. Grocery lists. Characters in old TV shows. Let the Panurish robot try to gain military information from the names of the Brady Bunch!
The only breaks came when Jason was allowed in with more “medicine” for Tara. Each time, she hoped Jason would do something to get them out of there, but it hadn’t happened.
He had been allowed to give Sharon some food and the cup of colored sugar, then he was pushed back out the door. The last time, however, he’d whispered softly to her, “Get outside.”
“Wait,” Sharon finally said to the robot. “Stop. Don’t shock me, please. Look at Tara—she’s full of energy. You have to let us outside for a while so she can crawl around. You know we can’t get through that electronic fence!”
“Okay, Sharon,” the robot answered. “We’ll take our speech lessons outside.”
Fear hit Sharon. The robot was talking English much better than it had before! Was that because of the things she’d been reciting? Could a computer program really improve its sentences by listening to Yankee Doodle and Three Blind Mice?
Evidently, it could.
The door to the ship opened. Sharon picked up a squirming Tara and carried her outside. After twenty-four hours in the tiny blue-metal room, Sharon blinked at the bright afternoon sunlight. Then she blinked at something else.
&
nbsp; The pile of equipment from the Discovery had diminished by at least half.
Had the Panurish given the stuff back to the human colony? No, that didn’t make any sense. The Panurish must have carried it off, or rather, had their robots do it since the aliens were so small and weak. But where? The only place that made sense was the t-port. The Panurish must be planning on taking all the equipment off Jump.
Would they take her and Tara too? Then what?
“Talk, Sharon,” the robot said, and despite her fear, she did. There wasn’t any choice. She put Tara down about ten feet away from the ship on the soft groundcover. The baby crowed and began to crawl around happily. Sharon talked.
“Once upon a time, there were three pigs. They each built a house: one of straw, one of wood, and one of bricks...”
As Sharon talked, her voice hoarser every second, things began to happen around her.
First, eight Panurish and seven robots emerged from the ship. The robots picked up more of the Discovery equipment and balanced it on their smooth, flat surfaces. When the seventh robot had finished, there was no stolen equipment left on the ground.
“Where are they going?” Sharon asked the eighth robot, the one that had been guarding her and listening to her and filling her with fear. “Where are they taking all that equipment?”
“Talk, Sharon,” the robot said.
Sharon talked. The Panurish marched over the top of a hill and out of sight. It seemed to Sharon that they moved faster than they had on their previous marching expeditions. It looked like the aliens were excited about something.
“Talk, Sharon,” the robot said. “Don’t stop talking.”
“My throat is so dry!”
“Drink some water. Then talk.”
Half an hour later, Sharon was in the middle of a plot from The Simpsons. Tara had fallen asleep in her lap. From the direction of the Discovery, a crowd of kids walked toward the Panurish ship.
They stopped about twenty feet outside the electronic fence. Sharon could see them clearly: Mant, Billin, Betta, Deel, Sor, Cam, Jofrid, Annit, Mikail, Isor... Everybody but Jason, Robbie, and da Vinci. Odd.