by J. J. Green
“Voting for a new Leader starts tomorrow,” said Ethan. “Like I said, I’m not standing. There are plenty among you who can do a better job than me. But there’s another vote I want to hold. We need to name this planet! It’s our home. Let’s give it a name that shows it belongs to all of us. We need a name to unite us. Input your suggestions to your screens. In five minutes, we vote. Then it’s done. The past will be over, our new lives begun.”
Cariad had sat down while Ethan spoke. As she watched him talk to the crowd, she didn’t think she’d ever seen a more natural leader. If only he would realize it.
“That’s a good idea,” she said as he sat down beside her. “We need something to unite us. Oh, I’ve thought of a name.” She quickly typed her idea for a name for the planet into her interface.
When Ethan read what she’d written, he said, “What does it mean?”
“It’s a play on a word that means agreement.”
“I like it. You’ve got my vote.”
More suggestions appeared on Cariad’s screen along with the option to vote for them in order of preference. The countdown began and they both waited while the system collected the votes. The winner would appear on the stadium screen when the time was up.
While she waited, Cariad looked at the back of the box. Anahi had gone, but Strongquist and Faina remained, sitting impassively while the voting took place. Cariad could still hardly believe that the Guardians weren’t human. The tech that had created them and their ship was so advanced, it didn’t seem credible that the remaining Earth-dwelling humans had devoted all their skill and energy to trying to save the colony rather than themselves.
If the Guardians carried out their promise and deactivated themselves, Cariad would try to find out the whole truth about them.
“Voting’s up,” said Ethan, nudging her.
Cariad looked up at the screen to see the result. The name she’d suggested had won. The crowd was cheering. For the first time in a long while, Cariad laughed.
“Welcome to Concordia, your new home,” she said to Ethan. Then as she gazed out at the crowd of mixed Gens and Woken, Concordia’s colonists, a realization hit her. Through the painful days of struggle and conflict, she’d come to see them not as two separate groups, but as one group of people—a group of people to whom she belonged. The family she’d left behind on Earth, the sorrow and sense of loss at parting from them had been real, but it was in the past. If what the Guardians said about what had happened on Earth was true, it was likely that even her family’s descendants were long gone. The people of Concordia were her people now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Two Gen farmers, after hearing Ethan’s suspicions about Garwin and Twyla, had volunteered to guard Garwin’s home and prevent his or Twyla’s escape. As soon as the applause and general celebration at the stadium over the naming of the planet had begun to die down and the crowd began to break up, Ethan left to head straight for the house. He wasn’t sure what he would do when he arrived. He didn’t have any authority to take the two suspected Natural Movement followers into custody—that would be the decision of whoever was elected Leader the next day—but he could keep them under supervision until then.
Cariad had come along with him, as had Strongquist. Faina had excused herself, saying she would return to the Mistral to begin organizing the hand over. Evening was falling as they walked through the streets.
“Anything happen?” Ethan asked Misha and Phy when they arrived. The farmers were standing outside the gate that led to the small home.
“Not heard a peep from them,” Phy replied. “We aren’t even sure they’re home. No one has come out while we’ve been standing here and we haven’t heard a sound from the place.”
Damn. Had Garwin and Twyla already left? Ethan wondered if they’d fled to the home of another Natural Movement follower who would hide them. He should have asked for someone to guard them as soon as he left the place.
He pushed open the gate and walked up to the door of the dark-windowed, silent house. The couple had almost certainly left. It was unlike Garwin to sit passively at home when his wife had been accused of a horrendous crime. The man had to have heard everything that had happened and what Ethan had said at the stadium via his ear comm. He would know that Ethan was about to draw a net around them and that they were at risk of meeting the same fate as the First Night Attack saboteur.
Ethan shivered at his recollection of that fateful moment when the saboteur had been executed. He’d felt as though the long daydream of Arrival was over and he’d been jolted into the harsh reality of life in the new colony.
The door was locked. He shouted Garwin’s name. “Open up. I have some more questions for you and Twyla.” Silence was the only answer. The bad feeling in the pit of Ethan’s stomach grew. He didn’t waste any more time on exhorting Garwin to let them in. The house had to be empty, but he wanted to know for sure.
“Stand back,” he told Cariad and Strongquist. Bracing himself by pushing his hands against both sides of the narrow porch, Ethan kicked the door with his heel two or three times until the lock broke. The door banged against the wall and bounced back. Ethan caught it and went into the hall.
“Be careful,” said Cariad, who was behind him.
No voice or sound of any movement came from the unlit home. Ethan turned on the hall light and went into the living room. It was empty, but a sound was coming from the open doorway that led to the kitchen. Someone was home after all. The sound was a human voice, moaning softly, full of despair. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck and the knot in Ethan’s stomach tightened. He went toward the noise, dreading what he might be about to see.
“Maybe you should stay back,” he said to Cariad, but she came with him anyway. Strongquist heeded his advice.
Ethan stepped into the kitchen.
Garwin was sitting on the floor with Twyla in his arms. A wide pool of darkening blood surrounded them. The woman was dead. Her skin was devoid of color and deep gashes marked both her wrists. Garwin was rocking his dead wife like she was a baby while moans escaped his lips.
As the man slowly became aware that two people had arrived, he looked up. He was also ashy pale. “I was too late. She only said she would make some tea. Didn’t utter a sound when she did it. When I came to check on her, she was already gone.”
Ethan didn’t know what to say. Pity stirred his heart. Twyla’s suicide seemed to be an admission of her guilt, but he wasn’t sure that Garwin had known what she’d done. The man seemed to have loved her deeply, in spite of his infidelities.
“She should never have married me,” said Garwin. “I think she thought she’d made a mistake. When things became difficult between us after a while, she rejected me. I don’t think she ever stopped loving me, but she didn’t want me near her. As if to make up for her coldness, she made it clear she’d overlook any dalliances. I don’t believe she was a Natural Movement follower, but if she was I don’t care. I would have stood by her.” He pulled the dead woman closer, burying his face in her hair.
Strongquist came into the kitchen, his gaze cold as he quickly appraised the scene. The Guardian’s face betrayed no sense of disturbance. It was at that moment that the Guardians’ inhumanity struck Ethan the most forcefully. Their desire to help the colony in their misguided fashion was not an emotion. It was a function in their machine minds.
“We may be able to discover some useful information from the suspect’s remains,” Strongquist said. “I would like to retain the body for an autopsy.”
Ethan concurred with the Guardian’s idea. If she had used explosives, perhaps some traces might remain on her skin. Then they would know for sure that they’d caught one of the saboteurs. At some coaxing from himself and Cariad, Garwin finally released his grip on his dead wife’s remains. The man was soaked in her blood but he seemed oblivious.
Ethan called Misha and Phy in to help with Twyla’s body. They were both round-eyed when they stepped into the kitchen but were quick to
help. They carried the corpse out and Strongquist went with them.
Garwin was almost unrecognizable. His confidence and charm had melted away. He stood, caked in dark red and brown stains, looking like an old man, forsaken and lost.
“We should take him to the Mistral too,” said Cariad. “He has to be examined as well as Twyla.”
They led Garwin out of the house. He came with them without resisting. He appeared almost catatonic, moving mechanically like a sleepy child. The blood on his clothes was already stiffening the fabric. As they walked him through the streets, people stopped and stared. They drew aside, giving the strange procession a wide berth.
Garwin’s appearance would have given anyone pause, but the fact that the man had once been well-liked, respected, and often admired, an unofficial leader of the Gens, made the spectacle of his downfall all the more astounding. It was a long walk to the shuttle field.
***
The Mistral’s shuttle had already departed, so they took another, telling the pilot to fly them up to the Guardian’s ship. The Nova Fortuna’s shuttles traveled at half the speed of the Guardians’, so they were still on their way when Strongquist contacted them over the ship’s comm to report on his preliminary examination of Twyla’s body.
“I would like you to look at something,” the Guardian said. The image he sent showed an area of skin bearing a small tattoo.
“This is on Twyla?” Ethan asked. He kept his voice low and glanced at Garwin, but the man didn’t appear to be registering anything in his surroundings.
“It is,” Strongquist replied.
“Do you recognize it?” Cariad asked Ethan.
“Should I?”
“It’s the Natural Movement symbol,” she said. “Can you see? It’s a stylized N and M.”
“Twyla had the Natural Movement symbol tattooed on herself?” said Ethan. “That seems risky. What if someone had seen it and knew what it meant?”
“It is risky,” Cariad replied. “But I wonder if they needed a way to identify each other and this was it.” She leaned closer to the screen. “It would be dangerous to reveal your affiliation unless you were absolutely sure the other person also belonged to the movement. They probably had some kind of ritual when the tattoo was applied. It also explains Twyla’s “coldness” toward Garwin. She must have married him thinking she could convert him to the Natural Movement philosophy, then when that didn’t work, she was worried he might have discovered what the tattoo meant and expose her.”
“He probably wouldn’t have. I didn’t recognize it.”
“Maybe it was still too great a hazard. The Natural Movement wouldn’t have survived this long, passing down the ideas from generation to generation, without being extremely careful.”
“So now all we have to do is examine everyone and discover who’s got the tattoo,” Ethan said. “Then we can capture them all.”
“Maybe,” Cariad replied. “I was thinking, though, by now everyone knows what Twyla did. The Natural Movement members might guess that we would examine her body and find the tattoo. They could remove theirs and pretend the wound is an injury they received when the caves flooded. But I’m still hopeful. It’s a step forward. We have plenty to work with.”
“Yeah.” Ethan had come to a decision. Now was as good a time as any to let Cariad know about it. “But it’s work that’s going to go on without me.”
“What? Why? There’s lots you can do to help with the investigation.”
“Maybe, but there isn’t anything that someone else couldn’t do just as well, or even better than me. Besides, someone needs to search the beaches for survivors of the flooding. Cherry’s young and fit and she wasn’t badly injured. Others could have managed to get to shore but can’t go any further. They could be kilometers down the coast. I want to look for them. Then, after that…” He took a breath. “Cariad, someone needs to check for what other dangers there might be out there. We already know about the sluglimpets, but no one has any idea what other predators might live on this continent. We don’t know what might attack us at any moment.”
Cariad looked troubled, but she nodded. “We’ve been remiss in that. The planet clearly harbors dangerous life forms that the probes didn’t discover. It would be safer if we knew what they were.”
“Also,” Ethan continued, “I have to get away. I have to be by myself for a while. I’ve thought about it a lot. I never really got over the First Night Attack and Lauren’s and Dr. Crowley’s deaths. I pushed myself to carry on as normal because there was so much that had to be done. Then everything that happened between the Gens and Woken… I wanted to help. I tried, and I did some good, I think. But that’s it. I don’t have anything left.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Cariad said. “I didn’t know things were so bad for you. If I’d known—”
“It isn’t your fault,” he interrupted. “It isn’t anyone’s fault. I didn’t know it myself until that moment when I thought Cherry had died. I couldn’t stop the scene replaying in my mind. I thought I’d go mad.”
“We have treatment for how you’re feeling,” Cariad said. “With counseling and—”
“I know what I need, and it isn’t anything a Woken can offer me. I need to leave and just wander. I don’t know for how long, but this planet can heal me. I’m sure of it. I just need some time. I’ll explore the continent.”
Cariad gave a sigh and said quietly, “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I need. Can you take Garwin to the Guardians? I want to return planetside as soon as we arrive and get ready to leave. I want to start searching for survivors as soon as I can.”
She held his gaze with her own. “I’ll miss you.”
Ethan pulled her into a hug. “I’ll miss you too. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“I have plenty to keep me busy,” said Cariad. “The time will pass.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
As Cariad guided the devastated Garwin down the corridors of the Mistral, a bone-deep weariness settled over her. Ahead loomed the task of replenishing the colony’s gene pool. She would have to look up the genetic codes of the surviving Gens and cross reference the information with that held on gametes aboard the Nova Fortuna and the codes of the Woken, revived and in cryo. The genes of every sex cell in storage and every fertile individual would be required to ensure the long-term survival of the colony.
Then she would have to select out the best matches to boost the heterogeneity of the pool while maintaining the optimum physical hardiness, for who knew what trials lay ahead of them? And that was only the beginning. Next would come the task of gestating the fetuses she would create to full term using antiquated equipment.
Strongquist was waiting for her at the entrance to the medical center. Another Guardian who was with him took Garwin away. The man hadn’t spoken a word during the entire trip.
“Preparations for our deactivation are well underway, as well as for handing over possession of our ship,” Strongquist said. “The question is, who are we handing it over to?”
“I don’t know,” Cariad replied, “and to be honest I’m too tired to even think about it right now.”
“It’s been a long and harrowing day. I understand.”
Do you?
They went into the center and to a room where Twyla’s body lay on a metal table, looking entirely inhuman. Cariad had seen plenty of corpses during her early days of medical training, yet the sight of this one made her cold and nauseated. The Guardians had cleaned away all the blood but hadn’t yet begun an autopsy. The skin was light blue and rubbery-looking, and the gashes on the wrists gaped, empty and dry. The body looked like someone’s sick idea of a mannequin.
“The tattoo is here,” said Strongquist, indicating a part of the hip that Cariad couldn’t see. She went around to the other side of the table. The tattoo was about the size of a fingernail and was placed behind the curve of the protruding hip bone. It was a place only a lover would normally see.
“
I regret that we didn’t examine the First Night Attack saboteur before or after her execution,” Strongquist said. “We incinerated the body. If we hadn’t, we might have noticed the incriminating mark and searched for co-conspirators, preventing more deaths.”
Cariad nodded. Regret? It seemed an odd word for a machine to use. On the other hand, Faina had said their minds were human-like, and though Strongquist’s demeanor had always seemed reserved, at times emotions seemed to inflect his speaking tone. “Strongquist, can I ask you something about the Guardians?”
“Of course. Now that you know our true nature, we plan on answering every question you put to us. Until deactivation, that is.”
“Do you feel emotion? And if you do, aren’t you worried or upset about being deactivated?” Cariad was reminded of her own anxiety before being placed in cryonic suspension, not knowing if she would ever wake up.
“We do feel emotion. It is a natural consequence of intellect and consciousness. But I believe we don’t experience extreme emotions as humans do. They would interfere in the execution of our programming. For example, we might be unable to defend a human from a predator if we were terrified of also being attacked and suffering injury or termination.”
“That’s an interesting example,” said Cariad. “You talk about defending us, yet you could also kill a human if it came down to it.”
“If it was essential in order to save the lives of more humans, and the death of the aggressor was the only available choice, we could.”
“It’s odd. We had androids on Earth when I left. They looked fairly human, but they were easy to tell apart from us. Only a small child could have mistaken an android for a person. But they were all fitted with fail safes. None could ever harm a human under any circumstances.”