“It just doesn’t feel right. Having fun when all those people—”
Daddy reached over and squeezed Mama’s hand, his anger receding and the undercurrent of love Katy could always feel welling up. “How’s this, then: we’ll have the carnival, and we’ll all go, just like we planned, but we’ll try really hard not to enjoy ourselves.”
Just for a minute Mama got a little angry, and Katy stopped squishing her peas and looked up. Sometimes when they both got angry together, they argued and she wanted to be ready to run up to her room where she couldn’t feel them quite so much. But then Mama’s anger faded away and amusement replaced it, and Katy relaxed. No fight this time!
“It’s a deal,” Mama said. “But Mike, what if they do come here?”
“We’ve got shelters set up, just like Earth told us. If we get enough warning, they won’t be able to do anything but burn some buildings.”
“And crops, and livestock, and . . . how would we survive the winter?”
“Earth would send relief.” Daddy slid his hand under Mama’s and squeezed it. “It’s not going to happen.”
“I hope not,” Mama said.
Daddy smiled. “You have the Governor’s word on it.”
Mama smiled back, and Katy smiled, too, turned her fork over, and ate her squashed peas.
Landing Day, four days later, dawned bright and clear, and Katy bounced out of bed the minute the sunshine touched her face, put on her best play-dress and sun-hat, and was downstairs for breakfast almost before Mama started making it. Mama wore blue shorts and a sleeveless white top and Katy thought how pretty she looked with her sun-freckled skin and long red hair. She turned and smiled at Katy and said, “Happy Landing Day, Katy!”
Katy bounced up onto the green-topped stool behind the breakfast counter. “Happy Landing Day, Mama!”
Mama frowned. “You know, seeing you makes me think I’m forgetting something important. But I can’t think what . . .”
Katy giggled.
“I know!”
Katy waited expectantly.
“I forgot to salt the eggs!” Mama turned around and sprinkled a little salt onto the scrambled eggs in her skillet, and Katy laughed out loud. “But you know,” Mama said, putting the salt away in the cupboard, “I’m sure there’s something else . . .”
Daddy came in from the dining room and scooped Katy out of the chair and swung her around. “Happy Birthday, kittenkid!”
Katy squealed with pure joy, and then laughed again when Mama said, “Birthday? No, I don’t think that was it . . .” But then she turned around, too, as Daddy set Katy down, and gave her a big hug. “Happy Birthday, Katy.”
Katy jumped back up on the stool and bounced up and down, barely able to contain her excitement. Six years old, and Landing Day, too, and that meant they were going to the carnival, and somewhere there had to be a present for her, she couldn’t know exactly what, of course, but the only thing she really, really wanted was a synthibear. Misty Pendergrass had a synthidog, but a synthibear was better because it could walk on two legs and use its front paws to hold things. You could have a tea party with a synthibear and all you could do with a dumb old synthidog was play fetch, but every time Katy played with Misty she could feel how Misty thought she was so special because she had a synthidog and Katy didn’t. Katy thought she’d really enjoy the new feeling she’d get from Misty the next time they played together if she had a synthibear.
But that made her feel a little bad, because she didn’t really like unhappy feelings from anyone, even Misty. And maybe it wasn’t really fair, because Misty never said anything out loud about her being special because she had a synthidog, and Katy had recently realized that because most people couldn’t feel what other people were feeling, they figured she couldn’t, either, so if Misty hadn’t actually said anything out loud, then maybe . . . maybe . . .
Mama set a plate of steaming eggs in front of her, and a slice of toast smothered in big, sticky, gooey, blue gobs of muffleberry jam, and Katy quit trying to figure out Misty and started eating.
“Weather should be clear all day, SatCom says,” Daddy said, coming back to the table from the comm unit. “And the carnival people arrived in orbit right on schedule yesterday and landed before nightfall. Everything’s set.” He winked at Mama, and Katy knew he was keeping a secret of some kind, not from Mama but from her, but that was all right. Birthday secrets were almost always good secrets.
Half an hour later they set off down the grass-covered street toward the Landing Field, turned into a carnival ground “For One Day Only!” as the posters that had appeared everywhere in Luckystrike weeks before proclaimed. Katy loved those posters; she ran ahead of her parents to look at the one on the side of the two-story red-brick building where Daddy worked. A big smiling clown juggled Ferris wheels and danglepods and grav-ups and other exciting rides in the center of the poster, while down at the bottom young couples laughed while they threw balls at bottles or ate zipmud or rode into the Tunnel of Love, but the one thing Katy always looked for was the synthibear that sat on the shelf in one of the game booths in the background. She touched her finger to her lips, then reached out and touched the synthibear. “Mine,” she whispered. “I wish, I wish, I wish . . .”
“Really, Mike, letting them put a poster on the capitol!” Just for a minute Katy thought Mama was really mad, but then she felt the laughter underneath the words and knew Mama was joking, and she could tell Daddy knew it too, so she touched the bear one more time for luck and scampered back to her parents.
Daddy ruffled her hair. “Shocking, isn’t it, defacing such a classic structure?” He laughed. “Some day we’ll have a real capitol—and a real governor, too.”
Mama put her arm around his waist and snuggled up to him. “I like the one we’ve got.”
Katy copied her. “So do I, Daddy!”
“Well, we’ll see what the colony thinks at election time. But that’s nothing I’m going to worry about now.” He scooped Katy up and put her on his shoulders. “Now, it’s carnival time!”
“Wheeeeee!” Katy squealed, and clapped her hands as they headed down the street, and then they turned the corner and there was the Landing Field, all the rides the poster had promised and more rising out of the middle of it like a little brightly-colored city all its own. Early as it was, laughter and music and the smell of popcorn spilled out of the carnival, and Katy felt Mama and Daddy’s worry slip even further under the surface and that made her feel even happier. “Fun!” she yelled, and patted Daddy’s head. “Let’s go have fun!”
“Your wish is my command!” said Daddy, and into the magical city they went.
The day passed in a blur of rides and zipmud and hot dogs and cotton candy and smoking iceys and acrobats and clowns, and only once did the worries come back to Mama and Daddy, when a tall, skinny man with a crooked nose and scraggly black beard came up to them while they waited for their turn in the bumper cars. “Governor Bircher. A word with you, if I may.”
Katy instantly felt Daddy go all tight inside, and she pouted. This was her day, her day and her parents’. Why was this stick-man trying to spoil it? She could feel him, all prickles and indignations and puffery, and she folded her arms and pointedly turned her back on him, staring into the dim interior of the bumper-car arena, where the red and green and silver cars floated and bobbed and bounced into and off of each other and the walls and the floor and the ceiling like a box full of balloons. Was that Misty Pendergrass over there in the silver car . . . ?
“We’d like to ask you yet again to—”
“We?” Daddy interrupted.
“The Luckystrike Concerned Citizens’ Coalition, Governor Bircher.” The man radiated disapproval. Katy inched away from him, but it didn’t help. “As you well know.”
“Ah, yes, the L-Triple-C. And which of your many requests are you reiterating this time, Al?”
“The most urgent, Governor Bircher. Surely—”
“They’re all urgent, or so you w
ould have me believe when you bring them up at great length in the Assembly.”
“In view of the news from New Atlanta, Governor, the LCCC has put aside its more parochial concerns for the good of the greater all. We have collected more than two hundred names on a petition insisting that Luckystrike formally declare its neutrality in the Earth conflict with—”
Katy felt her father’s rising disgust, but it was her mother who broke in suddenly, with, “Does this mean you want to secede from the human race, Mr. Bastion?”
Bastion’s confusion momentarily overwhelmed everything else. “I don’t see—”
“What my wife is suggesting, Al,” said Katy’s father, “is that the only way you could remain neutral in this conflict would be to change species, because that seems to be the only thing these aliens have against us—the fact that we’re not them.”
“They are rational creatures whom we must have offended in some way,” Bastion spluttered. “They will not attack us if we clearly disassociate ourselves from the rapine policies of Earth Planetary Survey and Development, who—”
“Who built this colony and recruited you and your fellow concerned citizens,” Katy’s father said, his anger becoming hot enough that she was glad it wasn’t aimed at her. “If you consider their policies so misguided, perhaps you should ease your conscience completely and return to Earth. I would be glad to sign the necessary transportation orders . . .”
Bastion blinked. “Return to Earth? In the middle of a war? I’ll do no such thing.”
“Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Now if you’ll excuse us, I believe it’s our turn at the bumper cars.” Katy’s father turned his back on Bastion, took his wife’s and Katy’s hands, and marched them into the arena, where the previous crowd of drivers was just disembarking on shaky legs from the cars, which had now all settled to the shiny black floor.
“Doesn’t he care about New Atlanta?” Katy’s mother whispered furiously to her father as they crossed that floor. Katy tugged impatiently at her father’s hand, hoping if she got the two of them into cars and having fun again, the black cloud the stick-man had wrapped them in would lift. “Or the rest of the people who have died? Declare neutrality? It’s us or them! What kind of neutrality can there be in that?”
“The only people Al Bastion cares about are himself and his like-minded friends,” Katy’s father growled. “I imagine he’d much prefer that those of us outside the L-Triple-C simply vacate the premises and leave Luckystrike to them. Then they’d build a nice little insular ant colony and live—if you could call it that—happily ever after.” He took a deep breath, and his mood lightened a little bit. “But come on, forget about him. This is Katy’s day. We’re here to have fun, remember?”
Her mother patted Katy’s head in an absent-minded fashion. Katy stared up at her and frowned. Mama never done that before! She hoped she didn’t do it again, either.
The bumper cars were suitably bumpy, and as they all staggered out of the arena again after their ten minutes were over, Katy’s parents seemed to have forgotten most of their worries. A couple of more rides and a zipmud cone apiece took care of the rest of them.
They stopped at one of the game booths that lined the temporary streets of the magic carnival city, and Katy’s father smiled at her and at her mother, said, “Wait here!” and went to talk to the man running the booth. Katy busied herself with her cone, and just as she finished up the last sweet, crunchy bite, her father came back. “We’re up!” he said to Katy. He boosted her onto a stool behind the counter of the booth, and put a little laser pistol in her hands, then pointed at the holograms of bats and dragons and goblins and dinosaurs flying or walking or marching through the fog-filled darkened space beyond, and said, “Go on, kittenkid! See how many you can hit!”
Katy nodded happily and started firing the laser pistol through the fog, and though it seemed to her she wasn’t hitting very many holograms—maybe none at all—a light kept flashing and bells and sirens kept going off, and when her time ran out the man in the booth shouted, “What shooting! What an eye! We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen! A big, big winner!”
Katy turned around to see that a crowd had gathered outside the booth, and they all laughed and applauded as the booth man ducked behind the hologram chamber, and came out with—
Katy squealed. “Is it really mine?”
“It really is! You won it fair and square, kid! Fair and square!” He set it down in front of her.
Katy stared at it. “A synthibear,” she breathed. “A really, really, truly synthibear. For me!” She hugged the bear hard, and suddenly it wriggled to life in her grasp.
“Hello, what’s your name?” it said cheerfully. “What’s your name?”
“Katy!” Katy said. “My name’s Katy! What’s yours?”
“What would you like it to be, Katy?”
Katy had figured that out a long time ago. “Your first name’s just Bear,” she said, “and your last name is Bircher, just like mine. You’re Bear Bircher!”
“Bear Bircher,” the bear repeated. “Okay, Katy! Do you want to play now, Katy?”
“Time to go home, Katy,” her father said. “Then you can play with Bear until bedtime.”
“All right.” Katy studied Bear doubtfully. “I don’t think I can carry you, Bear.”
“I can follow you, Katy,” Bear said at once. “I can walk!” It stood up on its hind legs, which made it almost as tall as Katy, took two steps forward, and promptly fell off the counter.
“Bear, are you all right?” Katy knelt down beside it, but it rolled over and got up and its bear-face whirred open into a grin.
“Oops!” it said. “I’m all right, Katy. Let’s go home and play!”
“Come on, Bear!” she said cheerfully, and she took her mother’s hand and they set off toward the gate through the gathering twilight.
As they left the carnival ground, Bear piped, “Wait for me, Katy!” and Katy looked back and called, “Hurry up, Bear!” then laughed at the way Bear’s little stubby legs churned away as though it were running really fast, though it never got any closer. Behind Bear the magical city of rides and games and tents glittered with lights in every color she could think of, and a dozen different kinds of music drifted out of the fairgrounds in competing snatches, and all she could feel from her parents was love and happiness as they laughed and talked over her head, no worries in them at all, no way, and she looked up at the stars twinkling overhead and thought she must be the hap piest girl in the galaxy.
And then suddenly the sky went all ripply, and ripped open like a piece of cloth, and filled up with big silvery things.
Mama and Daddy stopped, and Mama’s hand tightened on Katy’s so hard she gasped. And then Daddy said a word Katy had never heard before and didn’t like, and scooped her up right off the ground like she was a baby and started running, and all the happiness was gone and all she could feel from her parents was fear, a big, choking kind of fear she’d never felt before, not ever, and it scared her so much she started to cry, and behind her Bear kept squeaking, “Come back, Katy, come back, Katy, come back . . .” and then she couldn’t even hear him any more, and that made her cry even harder.
All around her people shouted and screamed and ran every which way, and a siren wailed from Daddy’s building as they passed it, and Katy heard her mother praying, almost sobbing, and she got so scared she couldn’t even cry anymore.
They ran down their own street, toward their own house, but now other things filled the sky, black, with wings, and one came right over their heads, high up, except suddenly it wasn’t, it got really big really fast, and it had red glittering eyes and big white teeth and it smelled bad and it carried something long and thin in its claws, and now they were on their porch and Katy’s father shoved her through the front door so hard she tumbled over and over and hit her head and started crying again, and she scrambled up to run back to her parents, only something flashed really bright just outside the door and her parents fell d
own funny and she couldn’t feel their love anymore . . .
And when the Earth marines came looking for survivors two days later, they found Katy sitting on the porch between her dead parents, staring blankly into the blank black glass eyes of a run-down synthibear, barely breathing, hardly blinking; and that never changed, not when the medic bundled her up in a blanket and took her to the makeshift hospital, not when the shuttle took her into orbit, not even when the warship Frobisher Bay took her to Earth.
They took the synthibear with them, but halfway to Earth Katy roused herself just long enough to stuff it down a disposal chute.
Chapter 3
For half a year, as the S’sinn struck at human outposts from one side of the Spiral Arm to the other, Jarrikk rejoiced with the rest of the Flock. The humans seemed routed, unable to oppose the lightning-fast attacks of the S’sinn Hunters. The Supreme Flight Leader vowed to drive the naked, four-limbed monstrosities back to their homeworld and keep them penned there forever, freeing the Arm of their foul presence.
But something went wrong. The humans regrouped. They captured a S’sinn ship intact, and from its data banks drew their own list of targets. The return blows were every bit as deadly as the S’sinn strikes had been. Humans proved to be far more effective warriors than the S’sinn had guessed.
Half a year stretched to a year. Fleets on both sides grew larger and better armed. The massive presence on Kikks’sarr, which had been only a tiny, unimportant colony before, doubled, then redoubled. A city took shape, an ugly city designed for only one purpose: to service the ships of war and the Hunters that crewed them. The colony’s own long-range plans for a quiet, graceful city, full of the soaring architecture of peace, were indefinitely shelved. Like it or not, they had become the staging and headquarters center for the S’sinn war effort, far in advance of the homeworld of S’sinndikk, whose location had to be kept secret from the humans at all costs. No ship carried that information in its data banks. The S’sinn did know the location of Earth, but no attack had yet been mounted against its powerful defenses.
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