The Last Colony вбиос-3

by John Scalzi

  "It's not that you're wrong," I said. "I just thought you might have a little more awe at being on an entirely new world."

  "I live in a tent and pee in a bucket," Savitri said. "And then I have to carry the bucket across the entire camp to a processing tank so we can extract the urea for fertilizer. Maybe I'd have more awe for the planet if I didn't spend a fair portion of my day hauling my own waste across it."

  "Try not to pee so much," I said.

  "Oh, thanks," Savitri said. "You've just sliced through the Gordian knot with that solution. No wonder you're in charge."

  "The bucket thing is only temporary, anyway," I said.

  "That's what you told me two weeks ago," Savitri said.

  "Well, I apologize, Savitri," I said. "I should have realized that two weeks is more than enough time for an entire colony to go from founding to baroque indolence."

  "Not having to pee in a bucket is not indolence," Savitri said.

  "It's one of the hallmarks of civilization, along with having solid walls. And taking baths, which everyone in this colony has taken too few of recently, I'll tell you that."

  "Now you know why the planet smells like an armpit," I said.

  "It smelled like an armpit to start," Savitri said. "We're just adding to the funk."

  I stood there and inhaled greatly through my nostrils, making a show of enjoying the air. Rather unfortunately for me, however, Savitri was right; Roanoke did, in fact, smell all too much like an armpit, so it was all that I could do not to gag after filling my lungs. That being said, I was enjoying the sour look on Savitri's face too much to admit to swooning from the smell.

  "Aah," I said, exhaling. I managed not to cough.

  "I hope you choke," Savitri said.

  "Speaking of which," I said, and ducked back into the tent to retrieve my own nightpail, "I've got some business of my own to take care of. Walk with me to dump this?"

  "I'd prefer not to," Savitri said.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I made that sound like a question. Come on." Savitri sighed and walked with me down the avenue of our little village of Croatoan, toward the waste digester, Babar tagging along at our heels, except when he broke off to say hello to kids. Babar was the only dog in the colony who was a herding dog; he had the time to make friends. This made him both popular and chunky.

  "Manfred Trujillo told me that our little village is based on a Roman legion camp," Savitri said, as we walked.

  "It's true," I said. "It was his idea, actually." And a good one. The village was rectangular, with three avenues running the length of the camp parallel to each other and a fourth avenue (Dare Avenue) bisecting them. In the center was a communal mess hall (in which our carefully monitored food supply was doled out in shifts), a small square where the kids and teens tried to keep themselves occupied and the administrative tent that doubled as home for me, Jane and Zoe.

  On either side of Dare Avenue were rows of tents, each housing up to ten people, usually a pair of families plus any additional singles or couples we could stick in. Sure, it was inconvenient, but it was also crowded. Savitri had been bunked in a tent with three families of three, all of whom had infant and toddler-aged children; part of the reason for her sour disposition was that she was running on about three hours of sleep a night. Since the days on Roanoke were twenty-five hours, eight minutes long, this wasn't a good thing.

  Savitri pointed to the edge of the village. "I guess the Roman legions didn't use storage containers as a perimeter barrier," she said.

  "Probably not," I said. "But that was their loss." Using the storage containers as a perimeter had been Jane's idea. In the Roman days, the legionnaires' camp would be encircled by a ditch and a palisade, to keep out the Huns and the wolves. We didn't have any Huns, or their equivalent (yet), but there had been some reports of large animals wandering out in the grass, and we also didn't want kids or teens (or certain incautious adults, who had already made their presence known) wandering off into the vegetation a klick away from the village. The storage containers were ideal for this purpose; they were tall and sturdy and there were lots of them—enough to circle the encampment twice, with appropriate spacing between the two layers to allow our angry, marooned cargo hold crew to unload inventory when needed.

  Savitri and I made it to the western border of Croatoan, beyond which lay a small and fast stream. For that reason this edge of the village held its only plumbing so far. In the northwest corner a pipe carried in water to a filtration cistern, which churned out potable water for drinking and cooking; it also fed into two shower stalls at which a one-minute time limit for individuals (and three minutes for families) was strictly enforced by everyone else waiting in line. At the southwest corner was a septic digester— a small one, not the one Chief Ferro pointed out to me—into which every colonist dumped their nightpails. During the day they availed themselves of the portable toilets that surrounded the digester. There was almost always a line at these, too.

  I walked over to the digester and poured the contents down a chute, holding my breath as I did so; the digester did not smell of roses. The digester took our waste and processed it into sterile fertilizer that was being collected and stored, and also into clean water, most of which was dumped into the stream. There was some discussion about whether to reroute the processed water back into the camp's supply; the general feeling was that clean or not, the colonists were under enough stress without having to drink or bathe in their own processed pee. It was a fair point. A small amount of the water, however, was held back to rinse and clean the nightpails. It's life in the big city.

  Savitri jerked her thumb down the west wall as I walked back to her. "Planning to shower anytime soon?" she asked. "I mean, no offense, but for you smelling like an armpit would be a step up."

  "How long are you planning to be like this?" I asked.

  "Until the very day I get indoor plumbing," Savitri said. "Which, in itself, would imply I had an indoor in which to put it."

  "It's the Roanoke dream," I said.

  "Which isn't going to be able to start until we get all these colonists out of this tent city and into their homesteads," Savitri said.

  "You're not the first person to mention this to me," I said. I was about to say more but was interrupted as Zoe' crossed our path.

  "There you are," she said, and then thrust her hand at me, which was filled with something. "Look. I found a pet," she said.

  I looked at the something in her hand. It stared back. It looked a little like a rat that got caught in a taffy puller. Its most distinguishing characteristics were its four oval eyes, two on either side of its head, and the fact that it, like every other vertebrate creature we'd seen on Roanoke so far, had opposable thumbs on its three-fingered hands. It was using them to balance on Zoe's hand.

  "Isn't he cute?" Zoe asked. The thing appeared to belch, which Zoe took as a sign to feed it a cracker she had stored in a pocket. It grabbed it with one hand and started chomping away.

  "If you say so," I said. "Where did you find it?"

  "There's a bunch of them outside the mess hall," Zoe said, showing it to Babar. He sniffed at the thing; it hissed back. "They've been watching us as we eat." This rang a bell with me; suddenly I was aware I had been seeing them too over the last week. "I think they were hungry," Zoe continued. "Gretchen and I went out to feed them, but they all ran away. Except for this guy. He came right up and took a cracker from me. I think I'll keep him."

  "I'd prefer you didn't," I said. "You don't know where it's been."

  "Sure I do," Zoe said. "He's been around the mess hall."

  "You're missing my point," I said.

  "I got your point, ninety-year-old dad," Zoe said. "But come on. If it were going to inject me with poison and try to eat me, it probably would have done it by now." The thing in her hand finished its cracker and burped again, and then suddenly leapt out of Zoe's hand and scurried off in the direction of the storage container barricade. "Hey!" Zoe cried.

  "Loyal like a
puppy, that thing is," I said.

  "When he comes back, I'm going to tell him all the horrible things you've said," Zoe' said. "And then I'm going to let him poo on your head."

  I tapped the nightpail. "No, no," I said. "That's what this is for."

  Zoe curled her lip at the sight of the nightpail; she was not a big fan. "Yuck. Thanks for the image."

  "Don't mention it," I said. Out of the blue, it struck me that Zoe was missing a couple of shadows. "Where are Hickory and Dickory?" I asked.

  "Mom asked them to come with her to look at something," Zoe said. "Which is actually why I came looking for you. She wanted you to come lock at something. She's on the other side of the barricade. By the north entrance."

  "All right," I said. "Where will you be?"

  "I'll be in the square, of course," Zoe said. "Where else is there to be?"

  "Sorry, honey," I said. "I know you and your friends are bored."

  "No kidding," Zoe said. "We all knew colonization was supposed to be difficult, but no one told us it was going to be boring."

  "If you're looking for something to do, we could start up a school," I said.

  "We're bored, so you suggest school?" Zoe said. "Who are you? Also, not likely, since you've confiscated all our PDAs. It's going to be hard to teach us anything when we don't have lessons."

  "The Mennonites have books," I said. "Old-fashioned ones. With pages and everything."

  "I know," Zoe said. "They're the only ones not going completely insane with boredom, too. God, I miss my PDA."

  "The irony must be crushing," I said.

  "I'm going to leave you now," Zoe said. "Before I throw a rock at you." Despite the threat, she gave me and Savitri a quick hug before she left. Babar walked off with her; she was more fun.

  "I know how she feels," Savitri said, as we resumed walking.

  "You want to throw a rock at me, too?" I said.

  "Sometimes," Savitri said. "Not right now. No, about missing her PDA. I miss mine, too. Look at this." Savitri reached into her back pants pocket and pulled out a spiral notebook, a small stack of which had been made a gift to her by Hiram Yoder and the Mennonites. "This is what I'm reduced to."

  "Savage," I said.

  "Joke all you want," Savitri said, and she put the notebook back. "Going from a PDA to a notepad is hard."

  I didn't argue with this. Instead, we walked out the north gate of the village, where we found Jane with Hickory and Dickory, and two members of the Magellan's security complement whom she had deputized. "Come look at this," she said, and walked over to one of the storage containers on the perimeter.

  "What am I looking for?" I asked.

  "These," Jane said, and pointed at the container, near the top, about three meters up.

  I squinted. "Those are scratches," I said.

  "Yes. We've found them on other containers, too. And there's more," Jane said, and walked over to two other containers. "Something's been digging here," she said. "It looks like something's been trying to dig under these containers."

  "Good luck with that," I said. The containers were more than two meters in width.

  "We found one hole on the other side of the perimeter that was nearly a meter in length," Jane said. "Something's trying to get in at night. It can't jump over the containers, so it's trying to go under instead. And it's not just one. We've got lots of vegetation tramped down around here, and lots of different-sized paw prints on the containers. Whatever they are, they're in a pack."

  "Are these the big animals folks have seen in the brush?" I asked

  Jane shrugged. "No one's seen any of them close up, and nothing comes around here during the day. Normally, we'd post infrared cameras up at the top of the containers, but we can't here." Jane didn't have to explain why; the sentry cameras, like almost every other piece of technology we owned, communicated wirelessly, and wireless was a security risk. "And whatever they are, they're avoiding being seen by the night sentry. But the night sentry isn't using nightscopes, either."

  "Whatever they are, you think they're dangerous," I said.

  Jane nodded. "I don't see herbivores being this dedicated to getting inside. Whatever's out here sees us and smells us and wants to get in to see what we're like. We need to find out what they are and how many of them there are."

  "If they're predators, their numbers are limited," I said. "Too many predators will deplete the stock of prey."

  "Yes," Jane said. "But that still doesn't tell us how many there are or what sort of threat they are. All we know is that they're out here at night, and they're big enough to almost be able to jump the containers, and smart enough to try tunneling under. We can't let people begin to homestead until we know what sort of threat they represent."

  "Our people are armed," I said. Among the supplies was a store of ancient, simple rifles and non-nanobotic ammunition.

  "Our people have firearms," Jane said. "But most of them haven't the slightest idea how to use them. They're going to end up shooting themselves before they shoot anything else. And it's not only humans at risk. I'm more concerned about our livestock. We can't really afford to lose many of them to predators. Not this early."

  I looked out toward the brush. Between me and the tree line, one of the Mennonite men was instructing a group of other colonists on the finer points of driving an old-fashioned tractor.

  Farther out a couple of colonists were collecting soil so we could check its compatibility with our crops. "That's not going to be a very popular position," I said to Jane. "People are already complaining about being cooped up in town."

  "It won't take that long to find them," Jane said. "Hickory and Dickory and I are going to take the watch tonight, up on top of the containers. Their eyesight drops down into the infrared range, so they might see them coming."

  "And you?" I asked. Jane shrugged. After her revelation back on the Magellan about being reengineered, she'd kept mostly quiet about the full range of her abilities. But it wasn't a stretch to assume her visual range had expanded like the rest of her abilities. "What are you going to do when you spot them?" I asked.

  "Tonight, nothing," Jane said. "I want to get an idea of what they are and how many there are. We can decide what we're going to do then. But until then we should make sure everyone is inside the perimeter an hour before sunset and that anyone outside the perimeter during the day has an armed guard." She nodded to her human deputies. "These two have weapons training, and there are several others in the Magellan crew who have as well. That's a start."

  "And no homesteading until we get a grip on these things," I said.

  "Right," Jane said.

  "It'll make for a fun Council meeting," I said.

  "I'll break it to them," Jane said.

  "No," I said. "I should do it. You already have the reputation as the scary one. I don't want you always being the one who bears the bad news."

  "It doesn't bother me," Jane said.

  "I know," I said. "It doesn't mean you should always do it, though."

  "Fine," Jane said. "Yon can tell them that I expect we'll knew quickly enough whether these things represent a threat. That should help."

  "We can hope," I said.

  "Don't we have any information on these creatures?" Manfred Trujillo asked. He and Captain Zane walked beside me now as I headed toward the village's information center.

  "No," I said. "We don't even know what they look like yet. Jane's going to find out tonight. So far the only creatures we know anything about are those tat-things at the mess hall."

  "The fuglies," Zane said.

  "The what?" I asked.

  "The fuglies," Zane said. "That's what the teenagers are calling them. Because they're fucking ugly."

  "Nice name," I said. "Point is, I don't think we can claim to have a full understanding of our biosphere from the fuglies alone."

  "I know you see value in being cautious," Trujillo said. "But people are getting restless. We've brought people to a place they know nothing about, told
them they can't ever talk to their families and friends again, and then given them nothing to do for two entire weeks. We're in limbo. We need to get people going on the next phase of their lives, or they're going to keep dwelling on the fact that their lives as they knew them have been entirely taken away."

  "I know," I said. "But you know as well as I do we've got nothing on this world. You two have seen the same files I have. Whoever did the so-called survey of this planet apparently didn't bother to spend more than ten minutes on it. We've got the basic biochemistry of the planet and that's pretty much it. We've got almost no information on flora and fauna, or even if it breaks down into flora and fauna. We don't know if the soil will grow our crops. We don't know what native life we can eat or use. All information the Department of Colonization usually provides a new colony, we don't have. We have to find all this stuff out for our own before we start, and unfortunately in that we've got a pretty big handicap."

  We arrived at the information center, which was a grand name for the cargo container we'd modified for the purpose. "After you," I said, holding the first set of doors for Trujillo and Zane. Once we were all in, I sealed the door behind me, allowing the nanobotic mesh to completely envelop the outer door, turning it a featureless black, before opening the interior door. The nanobotic mesh had been programmed to absorb and cloak electromagnetic waves of all sorts. It covered the walls, floor and ceiling of the container. It was unsettling if you thought about it; it was like being in the exact center of nothing.

  The man who had designed the mesh waited inside the center's interior door. "Administrator Perry," Jerry Bennett said. "Captain Zane. Mr. Trujillo. Nice to see you back in my little black box."

  "How is the mesh holding up?" I asked.

  "Good," Bennett said, and pointed at the ceiling. "No waves get in, no waves get out. Schrodinger would be jealous. I need more cells, though. The mesh sucks power like you wouldn't believe. Not to mention all the rest of this equipment." Bennett motioned to the rest of the technology in the center. Because of the mesh, it was the only place on Roanoke where there was technology that you wouldn't find past the middle of the twentieth century on Earth, save power technology that did not run on fossil fuels.