The Lying Planet

by Carol Riggs

  All because of the banishment of a blond jerk with a crew cut.

  I wish she’d communicate with me, like Harrel and I are doing, and work through these snags about Blake and our parents. She’s in denial. I’d show her the imprintus for proof, but I’m not sure it would make a difference, since she seems stuck on grieving for Blake. So much for me thinking our relationship was a good one. It’s like she doesn’t even care, or isn’t trying anymore. And I have to admit, my own enthusiasm is fizzling down to zero pretty fast, too.

  Aubrie disappears into the preschool. The heat of the noon sun makes my head feel tight. Oppressed.

  Are you and Aubrie still together?

  Peyton’s words haunt me as I walk.

  Reaching the gardens, I prepare myself for alien contact. Somehow, I have to act normal and get through my required work hours today.

  Dad hails me from a newly tilled stretch of ground a hundred meters away. “Over here, son. We’re ready to plant.”

  He speaks as though nothing is wrong. I join him and Mom by the mounded rows, setting to work in silence. The stink of worrel manure fills my nose as I slip on gloves and sink wedges of tuber-squash into the soil. As Dad works in the dirt, an ache settles in my chest. Those hands are the same ones that showed Chad and me how to snatch a floating helioball out of mid-air when I was eight. Those hands showed me how to drive a tiller, change the lud-cells on our oven unit, and shoot ground rodents that infiltrated the gardens. But those hands are all a lie. In reality, they’re sharp pincers on the end of spiny appendages.

  I look away, my memories raw and blistered.

  More workers join us. An hour passes. When I go to collect more tuber-squash starters, I find Peyton weeding in the carrot rows. Steering my wheelbarrow, I rumble up to her. My load of tuber chunks bounce as though they’re alive, their “eye” roots looking like ugly worms.

  As Peyton glances up, I nod hello. “Where’s Leonard?”

  She leans on her hoe, looking unsteady. “He went home. Got sick and hurled.”

  “He’s that upset?”

  “Yes and no.” Peyton walks closer, using the hoe as a walking stick. An odd aroma clings to her, sharp as vinegar but with a murkier tang. “We hung out for a while with some brew, and he drank a teensy-weensy bit too much.”

  I frown and look over my shoulder. “The brew must be what I’m smelling. I hope Mom or Dad doesn’t get a whiff of your new perfume, or you’ll be in big trouble.”

  “No worries,” she says, a little too cheerily. Her words are bumpy, slurred.

  “Seriously, you should leave. You shouldn’t be working when you’re like this. You’ll get caught. And I can’t see how drinking brew until you heave helps anything.”

  Peyton pulls herself up straight. “I’m sure you don’t. Leonard’s really messed up by this creature stuff, ya know. That’s why he drank too much.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.” And she’s been drinking, too, which means it’s hitting her just as hard. I fight a sudden urge to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders and bustle her from the gardens.

  “We did figure something out,” she says. “Leonard and I know what to do about our little discovery.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t make any difference. We’re fine here, taken care of really well.”

  A vague panic rises inside me. “We can’t just ignore it.”

  “Sure we can. Your ceremony’s in two weeks, mine’s in four. Later this summer it’ll be Leonard’s turn. Once we get on that airship in Fort Hope, the safe zones and their nightmare weirdness will fade into a bad memory.”

  That plan is disturbing, even though I came close to thinking the same thing. The brew must be affecting her judgment. She’s also assuming Promise City isn’t alien-infested.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

  A no-nonsense voice slices into our conversation from my far right. Mom’s voice.

  “All right, you two. This is work time, not chat time. Standing around talking doesn’t count toward your required hours. Besides that, Miss Rainey, I heard you weren’t in your sessions this morning.”

  “That’s true, Mrs. Lawton,” Peyton says, clinging to her wobbling hoe. “My buddy Leonard got sick, so I had to get him home okay.”

  Mom’s eyes narrow a fraction. “I see. Next time, tell an adult and we’ll see that he gets cared for.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be sure to do that.” Peyton turns with a flourish, but her feet don’t follow her body. With a shrieking whoop, she falls to the dirt in a sprawl, and the hoe bounces with a clang next to her. Rolling onto her back, she breaks out into peals of laughter. Her eyes crinkle. Her shirt’s pink fringe shakes on her toned stomach.

  I stare. She looks like she’s out of her mind. Adorable, but out of her bleating mind. Isn’t she worried she might get busted or is she too far gone to care?

  Mom exchanges a questioning glance with me and steps toward Peyton. “Here, don’t be ridiculous. I assume with all that laughing you’re not hurt. Let me help you up—”

  I try to intercept, but I’m too slow.

  Mom sniffs. “What’s that smell? Have you been drinking something other than water or milk, young lady?”

  This sends Peyton into further cascades of laughter. She wipes tears from her eyes.

  “Get up.” The tone of Mom’s voice is severe enough to cut off Peyton’s laugh. “Tell me this instant where you obtained that alcohol or you’ll be penalized with a loss of privileges.”

  I move to help Peyton to her feet. Mom shoots out one arm to block me. “Go finish the tuber-squash, Jay. I don’t want you in this girl’s company ever again.”

  Keeping my words of protest inside, I obey. I throw one last look at Peyton, who now sits in the dirt with a stubborn look on her face and her arms crossed.

  She’ll be punished whether she tells about her booze source or not. Rebellion like that doesn’t go unaddressed.

  Chapter Nine

  The database room hums like winged insects, with fresh air circulating around each study pod. Bright lights shine down from recessed grooves in the ceiling. This time of evening, a handful of classmates are researching or reading here among the leafy potted plants. Harrel and I choose a portal screen far from the others, keeping an eye on the adult supervisor who strolls around the oblong room. I drag a chair up next to Harrel’s.

  “We’ll start with the history of Liberty,” Harrel says with a determined air. He navigates to a summary page. “Let’s go over what we know chronologically.”

  Yeah. I don’t know what good it will do, but I’ll humor him.

  Harrel speaks in a quiet voice, even though the clear wraparound partition of our pod muffles our voices. “First, humans leave Earth ninety years ago. They colonize Liberty, making it like their home planet by terraforming it. Well, except for having twenty-six-hour days, an eight-day week, and ground-swells every night instead of rain. Then, twenty-five years ago, some people on the coast get mad because the inland colonies won’t pay high taxes and trade with them, and they all start lobbing genomide dust around and bombing the heck out of each other. The colonies end up looking like this.” He stabs a finger onto the screen, which shows destroyed streets, piles of irathon rubble, and high-rise buildings burning like torches in a night sky.

  “The last part is the aliens’ version,” I say. “Leonard overheard that the beasts came here twenty-five years ago. Right when the Genomide War broke out. Coincidence?”

  “Probably not. I bet they launched an alien invasion and it backfired.”

  I shake my head. “They take great care of us in the safe zones. What if they arrived in peace and the humans shot at them? Mom saw some wreckage and heard screams. Alien screams from their species.” I flick the screen to the next page. “The colonies had protectors that did most of the fighting, a military group with awesome battle airships like this.”

  Harrel grimaces. “I doubt the aliens arrived p
eacefully. Thousands and thousands of our people died in some kind of skirmish. Maybe the aliens wanted to enslave humans, and the protectors said no way and put up a fight. Yeah, the aliens take good care of us. But as soon as we turn eighteen and get more independent and maybe want families of our own, they send us off to Promise City for our mandatory trial year supposedly so we can give other places a chance before we settle down. Then no one ever comes back. For all we know, maybe the aliens won’t let them.”

  “You have a point there.” I drum my fingers on the table. “Leonard also said they can’t have offspring of their own. We’re slaves and baby substitutes, all wrapped into one. Maybe the aliens did come from their planet to turn us into slaves and got blasted out of the sky. Eight hundred and fourteen aliens must’ve escaped the protectors to settle here and hide out, pretending to be human.”

  “There are even more of them if Refuge and Fort Hope are infested.”

  I do a quick search of the safe zone populations and give a low whistle. “Counting the aliens here in Sanctuary, there are almost thirteen hundred total in the safe zones. Makes you wonder how many they had in the first place.”

  “No kidding.” Harrel flicks through early safe zone images. He finds one showing a pair of Machines, fierce and octopus-looking. Eleven smiling technicians stand in front of the contraptions. “Huh. Check out the date stamp on this. These things have been around for twenty-five years, the whole time the safe zones have existed.”

  “But…we didn’t start using our Machine in Sanctuary and the other Machine in Refuge and Fort Hope until six years ago. We’ve heard about being Tested and how we have to be good to earn a high score all our lives, so why did the aliens wait to Test everyone? Were they fine-tuning the Machines or what?”

  “Commander Farrow said once that the Machines work best when we’re eighteen. Any sooner than that might not be long enough to pile up enough deeds to weigh.”

  I frown. “Could be. You know…the aliens must’ve added that file about the Machines after the War. These files can’t be changed because of absolute-value security, but can data and images be deleted?”

  Harrel glances over his shoulder at the hub supervisor across the room, and then matches my frown. “Maybe. Or else encrypted so we can’t see them. I wonder what they’re hiding.”

  I flick back to the pre-War newsfeed about the colonies and the tax squabbles. “You know, it doesn’t say straight-out that this conflict started the War. Only that there were ‘heated disagreements.’ Chances are Farrow and the lieutenants gave us their own version about what started it.”

  “Sneaky. I wonder how they explain the date they started looking human, if they suddenly added themselves to the database or something.” Harrel types in a name, and as an image flashes onto the screen, his eyes bug out. “Look, it’s Mom,” he whispers. “Thirty years ago. She was a UHV mechanic in the colony of Wild Range.”

  “How could she exist before the aliens even came to this planet?” I bump his arm away from the flexible keyboard and type in “Tim Lawton.” Dad’s familiar face and easy smile spring up. He looks eerily the same as he does now. The site lists him as a fabric manufacturer in a colony north of here called New Paradise, blending wool and viyya threads to make a more durable product. Twenty-eight years ago. “What on Liberty! Did they pick real people from the database and shape-shift themselves to look like them? Or did they meet them in person first and steal their identities?”

  Harrel shakes his head. “Scorch if I know.”

  “Man, that’s really creepy.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get out of here and go home.” Harrel shoves his fingers through his short hair. “My brain is way too hammered with weirdness right now.”

  I don’t argue. He’s nailed exactly how I feel myself.

  …

  Later that evening, I palm my pill again. I lie on my bed and wait in the semi-darkness. A stinkin’ lot of good it did to share my discovery with Peyton and Leonard. Them and their worthless brew. When I got home, Dad told me they were both banned from the gardens so they won’t “influence” me while I’m working, plus their hoverbikes have been confiscated for their remaining weeks in Sanctuary. Those two are as useful as milking machines in a herd of steers.

  To make matters worse, Aubrie didn’t show up at the Nebula. Again. As much as I want to give her the breathing room she asked for, this silent treatment is getting old. Fast.

  And I can’t figure out what’s going on with these aliens. I rub my forehead, trying to scrub some logic into my brain. I really need to find out whether they inhabit Promise City. If the creatures are everywhere, it’s not going to make any difference where we go after our ceremonies. Peyton and Leonard’s plan to leave the aliens behind will be a major fail.

  My doorknob turns and scrapes, scattering my thoughts.

  I close my eyes fast. From the slight change of light through my eyelids, I can tell the door is open. I try to breathe in an even rhythm.

  “He’s asleep,” comes Dad’s voice. “All clear to relax.”

  The door closes again.

  It takes less than a minute for the gravelly slushings to begin, slithering under my door and raising goose bumps on my skin. I wait a short while and slip out from my room. This is risky, but I need more information. Both creatures sound like they’re in the lounge room again. I stop a meter short of the end wall at the instant I can make out words in the static-like slush. The shorter distance I have to retreat, the better.

  “…need to keep him away from that Rainey girl,” Mom is saying. “I doubt she’ll even make it to fifty. Same with Leonard Wright. I’m not having eighteen years of hard work destroyed in two short weeks.”

  “Those delinquents can’t affect him as much when they’re banned from the gardens,” Dad says. “We have to keep an eye on Jay, keep him close. He hasn’t been himself since Blake got banished.”

  “That wretched Zemik boy,” Mom says with a growl. “Like a rotten tuber-squash, smooth on the outside and foul at the core. I don’t envy Brother Zemik and his mate when Master Farrow questioned them about how they raised that kid. The Master should think twice about letting them be responsible for five offspring, even if their unit is large enough to handle that many.”

  A shiver convulses me. The Master. Yeah, he’s definitely their leader.

  “I hope Jay snaps out of it soon,” Dad says. “He’s never been late for a training session before.”

  “He isn’t getting along well with Aubrie, either. For the sake of the horde, we need to encourage him while boosting his accountability. We can’t let his score drop.”

  “Yes, and I’m still not happy about him working on the perimeter fence. We almost lost him due to Brother Redmond’s carelessness. Redmond should’ve requested extra guards months ago. The fence gives the teens beneficial work to do, but we should’ve set aside time to get it built before the ceremonies began.”

  A guttural snarl sounds from Mom. “I would’ve killed Brother Redmond myself if Jay had died or been injured in that vermal attack. It’s absolute, sheer irresponsibility with someone else’s property.”

  My shoulders press against the wall. Horde. Property. Brother Zemik, Brother Redmond. The words stab my mind. Every human being is a possession to these beasts. That’s all I am to them. I’ve heard enough. I take a quiet step backward as Dad speaks.

  “You know, I’m really fond of Jay. I’ll hate to lose him. He’s extremely kind, intelligent, and hard-working. If we can keep him on track, he should score higher than any human in Sanctuary ever has. Higher than anyone in Refuge and Fort Hope, even.”

  “As the saying goes, don’t count your crop yield before it’s harvested.” Mom’s voice sounds strangely amused alongside the slushing noises.

  So Refuge and Fort Hope are definitely full of aliens. But I don’t see why these creatures care whether I score highly, unless Farrow rewards them somehow.

  “I hope we get a baby boy to fill our quota this time,” Dad says. “
I prefer males. They have exceptional hearts and brains.”

  “Nonsense. Girls are sweeter, tender, and delicate,” Mom says briskly. “There’s nothing lacking in their brains or hearts.”

  “Boys are more robust, stronger.”

  My heart whomps against my ribcage. Their adjectives. Something’s off about this conversation…

  “Frankly, I don’t care.” Mom drops her acidic tone. “It’ll be good enough to have something besides broth powder from leftovers of someone else’s crop yield. Imagine. When Jay ripens to maturity, he’ll score way over one hundred and fifty, maybe even close to two hundred. His heart and brains will be tremendously high quality for us. The rest of his body will fortify hundreds of our brothers and sisters, not just a handful.”

  “Quite tasty and very nourishing,” Dad agrees. The sounds of smacking lips and clicking fangs hit me like sledgehammers to my soul.

  Robust brains. An exceptional heart.

  Tasty.

  These alien monsters are talking about flavors, not personalities. I stagger down the hall, my head reeling so much I barely remember to miss the creaky spot on the floor. These beasts will devour my brains and heart—grind the rest of me into broth powder for their horde—

  I swing into the doorway of my room and gag. With my lungs heaving, I press my door closed and stumble across the floor. My stomach churns. Just in time, I grab my helioball cap off my cubicle and throw up in it. In the dim light, I clutch the cap with shaking hands. Footsteps and voices approach in the hall.

  Oh, no—did they hear me running or hurling?

  My heart racing, my mind spinning, I thrust the cap onto my desk and dive for my bed. I lie facedown, the bed still bouncing as the door opens.

  “He’s on top of his blankets,” Dad says in a low voice. “His shirt’s all twisted. He must’ve thrashed and made those noises in his sleep.”

  “I hope he’s not having nightmares, poor guy.” Mom’s last few words are muted by the closing of the door.

  Their footsteps indicate their retreat to the lounge room. After another few minutes, dull clunks come from their bedroom. My eyes water. I clutch my pillow, smothering my gulps, trying to keep silent. My discovery presses upon me like an unbearable weight.