by Cross, Amy
“No you don't!” Thomas says, grabbing one of the branches and holding it out.
“Don't make it angry!” I hiss.
“I won't make it angry so long as it leaves us alone.”
“There are hundreds of them,” I reply, looking up toward the mountain and seeing that these creatures all seem to be coming down to take a closer look at us. There's something creepy about the sight of them emerging from cracks in the ground and padding their way closer. “I really don't think we want to get surrounded by these things.”
As one of the creatures comes closer, it opens its mouth and lets out a hiss, and Thomas instinctively waves the stick in its face. The creature half turns away, but at the same time it hisses again, and this seems to draw the attention of all the others. Some of them are still focused on the fruit, but the rest are starting to come closer, and finally I grab a branch so that I can at least try to scare them off.
“We shouldn't show fear,” I tell Thomas.
“I'm not doing it on purpose!” he replies.
“Let's not let them get used to our scent,” I continue. “Assuming they pick up on scent at all. Let's just back away and hope they get bored.”
We start walking along the edge of the mud, away from the creatures, but some of them are definitely still following us. They're only really keeping pace with us so far, although I wouldn't be surprised to find that they can move a lot faster. I guess our best bet is to just keep moving, and to hope that sooner or later they decide that we're not worth following.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thomas
“They're still there,” Elizabeth says after we've been walking for a couple of hours. “I don't like this. What will they do when we sleep?”
“Let's not sleep while they're still around,” I reply, glancing over my shoulder and seeing that about twenty or thirty of the damn things are still following us away from the area around the mountains.
“I'm getting burned,” she adds, touching her forehead. “I don't know if the sun here is hotter, or what, but I feel like I'm really burning up.”
“This must be the middle of the day,” I point out, using a hand to shield my eyes as I look up and see that the sun is pretty much right above us. “I'm sure it'll get cooler soon.”
“You don't know that.”
“It was pretty cold when we landed,” I continue. “My clothes have barely had time to dry out, and I was freezing last night when we came out of the water. Just try to stay calm and I'm sure it'll be fine.”
“And then what?” she asks. “Thomas, we need to come up with some kind of plan.”
“We had a plan,” I reply. “We were going to go up into the mountains, but then those things showed up. I don't think we're going to find a section that's free of them.”
“So we're stuck down here?”
“I don't know.”
“What if we -”
“I said I don't know!” I yell, turning to her angrily. “How do you think I could possibly know any more than you do? We're on an alien world, light years from home, with no back-up and no information, and I don't know about you but I'm not convinced we can live forever off those yellow things!” Sighing, I realize that I'm being unfair. “I'm sorry,” I continue, “but I just don't know.”
I wait for her to reply, but after a moment I realize that she's staring past me. I turn and look back across the vast rocky landscape, and at first I don't see anything, but then I notice a faint glint of light in the distance.
“Do you see that?” Elizabeth asks.
“I see some kind of reflection,” I tell her.
“It's not just a reflection,” she continues. “I thought I might be imagining it, that I might just be burning up, but I think... Thomas, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think somehow the ship has come back up to the surface.”
***
At first, I assume that Elizabeth's wrong, that she's deluded. I still agree to head back the way we came, mainly because I can't really think of anywhere else for us to go, but after a while I begin to realize that she might have been right all along. Something large and metallic is glistening in the afternoon light, and as we get closer I start to realize that it actually is the ship.
Finally we get to the shore, and we stop as we see the rocket on its side, floating on the surface of the water. I have no idea how it could have raised itself, and I can't quite shake the feeling that this might be some kind of joint hallucination, but then I realize that the rocket isn't alone. One of the panels on its side has opened somehow, and hundreds – maybe even thousands – of little white pods are bobbing up and down in the water like little robotic jellyfish.
“It must have had some kind of emergency system designed for this kind of situation,” I suggest. “I guess it just took time to kick in.”
“Those things,” Elizabeth replies, “are... are they the samples?”
“Samples?”
“The seeds. I don't know the right words, but back at Project Atherius they were always talking about sending new humans out into space. I really don't understand how any of it works, but what if those things are supposed to grow and become... like us?”
“How is that even possible?” I ask.
“I don't know,” she replies, “but I think we've already witnessed a whole load of impossible things, so why not accept one more?”
For the next few minutes, we simply stand in stunned silence and watch as more and more of the pods float out from the ship. I know I'm probably grasping at straws, but it sure looks as if the ship was always supposed to work this way, with the pods being released into water. When we landed in the ocean, I assumed that something had gone catastrophically wrong, but now I'm starting to think that this might be how it was supposed to go all along.
“Damn,” I mutter finally, “I wish there'd been some kind of instruction manual in the ship.”
“Carver thought he'd be here for this,” Elizabeth points out. “I guess he would have known exactly what to do.”
“So what should we do?” I ask. “Should we leave them in there? Should we fish them out?”
“I think we should trust the ship,” she replies. “Maybe I'm wrong, but if those things were supposed to start life out of the water, wouldn't the engineers have found a way to make sure that happened? As chaotic as everything might seem, I actually think maybe the entire system is more or less working perfectly.”
“Then what are we here for?”
I wait for her to answer, but a moment later we both turn as we hear a nearby splashing sound. Horrified, I see that several of the dog-lizard creatures have followed us all the way here, and one of them is already entering the water. It wades out to the nearest pod and starts nuzzling it with its snout, so I quickly grab a rock and throw it, hitting the creature on the back of its head and causing it to pull away.
“Get out of here!” I yell, as the creature clambers empty-mouthed out of the water, leaving the pod still floating. “They're not for you! If you go near them again, you'll be sorry!”
The creature turns and snarls at me, baring a set of razor-thin teeth, but then it backs away as I step closer. Several other creatures are watching from nearby, but so far at least they all seem to be holding back, which I guess is a good sign. If they actually became aggressive, these things could easily overwhelm us.
“We need to figure out a proper defensive plan,” Elizabeth points out. “We're going to have to sleep in shifts, that sort of thing. I have no idea how long it'll take for the pods to do whatever they're going to do, but they need to be protected in the meantime. I guess that's our job right now. After all, the team back home could never have predicted that these things would show up.”
“Move!” I shout, throwing another rock as two more creatures dare to edge closer. They instantly pull back, snarling and hissing but ultimately not coming back at us.
“This isn't going to be easy,” Elizabeth says after a moment. “Even if these things are fairly docile, something else mi
ght come along that's a lot more threatening. And that's before we consider the possibility that there might be things living in the water. We're going to have to be really careful.”
“Then that's what we'll do,” I reply, turning and looking at the pods. “The way I see it, these are the last hope for humans to survive, and it's our job to guard them. If we fail, we're letting our whole species down.”
“When you put it like that,” she says, “I guess the pressure's really on.”
“Go!” I yell, throwing a rock at another of the creatures as it gets too close. The creature lets out a pained cry as the rock bounces off its snout, and I watch as it scuttles back to join the others. “You guys had better start learning! There are some new kids in town right now, and we've got thumbs!”
The creatures are starting to act a little more nervous now, and for the next few minutes Elizabeth and I focus on throwing rocks at any that get too close. We're gonna have to come up with a better system soon, but for now we're at least managing to protect the pods, and I'm pretty sure that we'll figure out a decent method of defense before sundown. We've made it all the way out here to a completely new planet, so there's absolutely no way we're going to drop the ball now.
“You want a fight?” I yell at one creature as it strays closer to the edge of the water. I throw a rock, causing the damn thing to immediately scuttle back. “Unless I find some other food soon, I'm gonna figure out how to cut you guys up into steaks!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elizabeth
“No you don't!” Thomas yells in the distance, and I hear another pained cry as one of the creature scurries away. “That's right,” he continues, “you know what's coming to you if you try that again!”
As I reach the door in the side of the ship, I stop and look over my shoulder. Thomas looks to have the situation well under control, and most of the creatures have withdrawn to a spot a little further away. One or two are still venturing closer, but they should learn their lessons soon enough. Thomas and I agreed that one of us should come back into the ship and try to check for any kind of supply stash. Originally I was going to stay ashore and guard the pods, but Thomas insisted that I'd be better hunting inside the ship. That, and I'm pretty sure he's getting some weird kick out of pelting those creatures with rocks.
The main crew area of the ship has almost no water inside anymore, although a few inches remain as I clamber inside. The whole place stinks of salt, to the extent that I'm worried about getting salt poisoning just from breathing in too deep, but I quickly tell myself to stop worrying too much. The red lights have switched off, leaving the cabin seeming pretty gloomy, and all the computer screens have switched off. I don't know whether the A.I. has died, or whether it's simply resting, but right now the entire ship seems dead. I guess, if it's completed its mission, there might no longer be any need for it to stay active.
Making my way past the beds that Thomas and I were using for five hundred years, I head over to a panel in the far corner. I noticed this panel before, but there was never really a chance to explore. Now, I find that I'm easily able to get the panel open, and I look through to see that there's a very narrow passageway running deeper into the ship. I turn sideways, and I manage to squeeze myself along the passageway, until I reach a slightly larger area with various cupboards set into a metal wall.
So far, so good.
The ship creaks again, but I tell myself that there's no need to worry. Instead, I open one of the cupboards and find that it contains a series of boxes, each of which turns out to be filled with silver packets. I take one of the packets and look at the label, and I feel a flicker of relief as I realize that this is some kind of preserved food ration. I start checking the other cupboards, and sure enough I find hundreds and hundreds of these packets, maybe even thousands. At the bare minimum, we seem to have a supply that'll last us an entire year.
I guess Maxwell Carver didn't want to starve once he reached his brave new world.
Apart from the food, there's not much else in this section of the ship, although I soon find another passageway that leads even further into the middle section.
In the next room, I find lots of books, which turn out to be physical copies of guidelines concerning the use and growth of the pods. As I start flicking through one of the books, I quickly discover that the pods are indeed supposed to start off in water, so I guess everything's going okay so far. The pods are apparently going to start flashing blue when it's time for them to leave the water and go onto land; they can supposedly get ashore without help, although the manual recommends that they're given assistance. There's so much information in here, but I guess Thomas and I are going to have more than enough time to go through it all. After all, we seem to be the guardians of what's left of the human race, and that's a pretty crazy idea.
And then I find the metal plates in another cupboard.
Reaching up, I carefully take them down from where they've been secured, and I find that they contain information about our species, and about our home-world. There are ten plates, and each of them is focused on a different aspect of our old lives, ranging from history and science to geography and politics. It's as if someone wanted the essence of the past to live on, even all the way out here on this strange planet. As I look at the different plates, I feel strangely relieved that we're not completely starting again, that instead we're carrying on.
A moment later, I find that the final plate mentions a series of video files. Sure enough, when I check the cupboard again, I find a box that contains hundreds of little video cards.
***
The monitor flickers a few times before finally coming to life. I wasn't sure that this would work, but I start looking through the various cards, trying to decide which of them I should check out first.
“I thought I told you to go away!” Thomas yells in the distance, sounding more and more frustrated. “If you try that again, Dino, you're gonna get another rock right between the eyes!”
Dino?
I can't help but smile as I realize that he's actually started naming some of the creatures. At this rate, he's going to end up having one of them as a pet.
Each of the video cards has a title, covering subjects as wide-ranging as national histories and languages, food and drink, and anything else that might seem even vaguely important from the old world. I guess somebody was keen to make sure that even if our home was lost, the next generation – out here on this planet – would have a chance to see where they came from. I put one of the cards into the machine, and sure enough I soon see images of a city. There's no dialogue, there are only shots of normal life being lived, and I can't help realizing how much I miss it already.
“This,” a familiar voice suddenly announces on the soundtrack, “is where we come from.”
It's him.
Maxwell Carver.
“This,” he continues, clearly filled with a sense of his own importance, “is what we can build again. As you start your lives, you have the benefit of our wisdom. You have a head-start, and you can avoid all the mistakes that we made. You won't have to endure the stuttering start that condemns so many species. You won't have to live in caves, to discover fire for yourselves, to learn the awesome power of the atom. All of this is laid out for you already, right at the very start of your journey. You can leap forward into the future, without the constraints that dragged your ancestors down.”
I feel a burning rage in the pit of my belly, rising slowly up through my body. Maxwell Carver killed my father, he killed so many people, and now five hundred years after his death he wants to be some kind of great leader for the human race? It's all I can manage to keep from destroying all these videos right now.
“I'm going to show you the way,” Carver's voice continues, over more shots of home. The video is beautiful, I have to admit that, but Carver's narration is driving me crazy. “My name is Maxwell Carver and together we're going to build a new world that fixes the faults of the old. We're going to wipe out
the anger and hatred that brought our civilization down.”
“Like you weren't part of that!” I snap, as the screen shows shots of roads leading away from New York.
“By listening to me,” Carver explains, “you can rise faster and further than any humans have ever managed. Your development and evolution will be accelerated beyond imagination, and it is my belief that you will achieve more in the first hundred years of your existence, than your forebears managed in the last thousand years of their time.”
“A whole race of Maxwell Carvers?” I whisper, with tears in my eyes. “No thanks.”
Reaching out, I tap the screen and bring up the files on the card. To my surprise, I find that they're unprotected, which I guess is understandable given that Carver fully expected to be in charge here. I briefly consider wiping all these video cards, or maybe just throwing them into the sea, but then I notice that the video and audio sections are separate. I tap a few more times, and I find that I'm able to wipe the audio tracks while keeping the images. When I play the video again, I find that my little trick has worked, and that I can now see the same beautiful images without having to listen to Carver's words.
Taking the video card out, I insert another, and I set about silencing Maxwell Carver's voice forever. The new humans might be able to take inspiration from images of our old world, but I figure they can do that without Carver's malign influence extending all the way out here into the future of mankind.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Thomas
“Okay, so this is weird,” I mutter as more and more of the little pods start driving up the shore an onto the land. “I'm really not sure what you guys are doing, but...”
My voice trails off as I watch one pod stop near my feet. I still don't quite understand how these strange little things are supposed to work, but they seem to know what they're doing. I guess I don't really need to understand, at least not at this stage, although I do still have one important job.