Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  He admired the native’s courage and strength. If he was lying about Lo, he was good at it. He made friends with the native, knowing he was a friend of Lo’s. His silence was the only thing keeping her alive.

  It took them three or four days, marked by three or four beatings, for the two prisoners to begin conversing. Captain’s English was good enough, though his accent was deep and heavy, like that of a chain-smoking Russian. Beneath the echoing pipes, the two spoke in brief bursts back and forth, with lengthy time in between to recover both physically and mentally from the conversation.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ned asked.

  ‘I am ze captain.’

  ‘But what’s your name?’

  Captain said a slur of words, none of which could be written with the current alphabet. He returned to introducing himself as Captain.

  Ned nodded. He gave a moan and rubbed his stomach.

  Captain asked, ‘Vhat makes you sick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vhat makes us sick must be different to vhat makes you sick, yes? Are you sad?’

  ‘Sad? I’m a lot of things right now, but I don’t think ‘sad’ is the right word.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Captain sat there with his lanky legs outstretched. He arched his four toes, curled them, then relaxed again. ‘You need Vet.’

  ‘I’m not an animal,’ Ned barked.

  ‘Zhen, vhat are you?’

  Ned couldn’t answer; the pain in his stomach was too much.

  They didn’t see Psycho for what Captain suggested was about a week. They were visited routinely by guards in silver chemical suits who threw them food, a little water, then left again rather hastily to disinfect themselves. Ned asked about the Hazmat suits and the gas masks, which had been his only interaction with Skyquakers until now. Captain said they were scared of microscopic bugs and diseases. The first anatomical observations of natives found they were more bacteria than flesh, and it terrified them. Other animals were even worse. Viruses, parasites, things they couldn’t even classify: they had never seen such a germ-infected ecosystem before. They were hypochondriacs, in other words, and rightly too. As for the masks, they had to be worn continuously when exposed to the Planet’s atmosphere or else his kind would begin to suffocate. Ned had witnessed this before, and Captain confirmed his belief that the gases on Earth were too disparate for them to breathe unaided. The proportion of one gas was too high, and others too low. Ned asked which gas they needed more of. Captain didn’t know the English word for it, but he drew the chemical symbol for it in the dust on the floor, represented by six dots in two vertical rows. Ned still couldn’t pick it, so they gave up on that.

  ‘Why did you come to a planet if you knew you couldn’t breathe on it?’ he asked.

  Captain shrugged. ‘No other choices.’

  ‘There are no other choices in the whole universe?’

  ‘No other good choices.’

  Ned watched him for a while. ‘You came a long way, didn’t you?’

  Captain nodded.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  He gestured to the floating machine around him. ‘Ze cloud.’

  Ned pointed up. ‘We went to the Moon once.’

  Captain chuckled and slapped his knee, as though he had just heard a brilliant joke. His neck frills made croaking sounds like a frog when he laughed.

  Ned asked what was going to happen next.

  Next, Captain explained, Engineer would begin building colonies on the Planet. At first, they would all have to be in securely air-locked environments, like domes. Generation by generation, they could introduce more of Earth’s gases, forcing them to acclimatise, until eventually their species could survive outside in the New World independently. The farms would continue breeding hybrids until gradually the genetic material of Earth’s plants and animals were replaced entirely with the genetics of their own, although it may all take centuries for the New World to represent something similar to their former planet. Captain and his crew would certainly not be around to see the final product of their endeavours.

  Then, Ned said, the cloud would go back to get the rest of the Quakers and bring them here, right?

  No, said Captain, in a dark and stern tone. The cloud would never make the trip there and back again. His species, stuck on a dying planet, were all doomed. They didn’t know it, of course. The poor and the starving were all told they would one day be rescued and taken to a new paradise, but it was unfeasible, both financially and because of the limited nuclear material available to fuel the cloud. If they knew they were being abandoned (and one day it would become known), riots would break out and globally there would be anarchy. His superior officers upheld the lie in order to prolong the inevitable, so for now it was only hope which kept them at peace. Captain dreaded the day the truth was revealed.

  Ned couldn’t help but to ask what they were planning to do with the human population. To think that millions of people were kept somewhere on this ship boggled his mind. Among them were his family, his friends, the ranger and his daughter, and all the nice people whose houses he had squatted in or ransacked for supplies from Wyndham to Zebra Rock. Seven billion people, along with several hundred billion other mammals, birds, reptiles and marsupials, were all floating a few kilometres over the planet’s surface. What was going to happen to them?

  Captain told two stories: his version, and Engineer’s version. In his world, there would be sections of the Planet reserved for the colonists and sections closed off for the natives – like sanctuaries, national parks, even along the lines of zoos. He had watched his own planet’s ecosystem collapse due to over-digging, over-polluting, over-logging: he didn’t want to let that happen again. The less they disturbed the natural environment of the Planet, the more it would reward them in return. The humans would not like this, Ned said. He had read several books and watched countless TV shows about Australians losing their land and being separated from one another while under oppression, and it never ended well for either side.

  It was better than Engineer’s vision of the Planet, he remarked. The new captain of the cloud was a day away from exterminating the humans entirely, if it had not been for a combination of Captain’s manic ventures and Vet’s loud protests. He wanted to bulldoze the place and start anew. He wanted to reserve the Planet entirely for them, eliminating all competition. He wouldn’t stand for giving any land or liberties to a species on par with rodents. He couldn’t see any use humans had to the ecosystem; they were in fact the most harmful pollutant the Planet had ever encountered, and so their extinction would be no great loss.

  ‘What about you?’ Ned asked. ‘Do you think we’re animals? Rodents?’

  Captain held his stare. He licked his lips. ‘I came here not expecting to care,’ he said. ‘I used to vatch little lights down zhere, and think, ‘Oh look, just lights. Little, little, lights.’’ He held out his hands, as though he was holding a large ball. ‘And zhen I see Lo. She vas this big.’ Ned watched his eyes. He saw those black spheres gloss over with nostalgia. ‘I had no babies. Lo vas my baby. She vas so…’ He tapped his head. ‘—S… smart!’ He wrapped his arms around his body. ‘She vould hold me, like this.’

  Ned watched him, this old man, this alien being. He could see it in his eyes, the deep, unrelenting sadness he felt once he became alone. It was intensely… human. It was almost uncomfortable to watch.

  After a few moments wrapped in memories of innocence, Captain dropped his arms. He hung his head. ‘Vould you kill an animal you loved? I vas dying of sadness until I saw her. You—’ He pointed at Ned. ‘You helped her. I like you.’

  He smiled. ‘I like you too, I guess.’

  Ned’s eyes then rolled back into his skull. His body collapsed limp onto the floor and began convulsing.

  12

  TOXIC

  Captain leapt to his feet and shouted for help. He screamed until his croaking throat ached. He banged against the pipes with his chains. The guards outside heard, but had to hurry into their sp
ace suits before they could enter.

  The native twitched uncontrollably on the ground, arms stiff by his side. Foam began to seep from his mouth. Captain lunged forward and tried to reach him, but his ankle chain was too short. He called out to him. He shouted for help again, louder, and finally they came storming in. The guards halted when they saw the ill native. They didn’t know what to do. Captain ordered them to get their thick heads together and find the only one who could help: Vet. He roared at them until one finally got the hint of urgency and ran off to locate the ship’s animal expert.

  Captain watched the native boy seize and convulse on the floor. He desperately wanted to comfort him. Stretched out on his stomach, he managed to touch a finger, just a little finger, and when he peeled it back, he noticed the boy had a piece of paper clenched in his fist. He managed to get the page by its crumpled corner and gently tear it from his hand.

  Moments later, the heavy doors to the cell burst open. Captain immediately retreated to his urine-drenched corner, the paper hidden behind his back. Vet came in, dressed in white garments with a fabric scarf wrapped around his mouth and nose. Vet immediately kneeled before the native and took all his vital signs with swift, nimble movements of his hands and instruments. He would not leave unless the specimen came with him to the clinic; it may die if they did not allow it. The guards protested, but Vet rebelliously took the animal in his arms – his bare arms – and carried him himself out the door.

  One of the guards spun and pointed at Captain, accusing him perhaps of doing this. The captain merely lounged in his urine and started ranting that the world was a sad and horrible place full of death and misery, so they ignored him and left with Vet.

  Once alone, Captain pulled out the leaf of paper and read the brief story inscribed on its crinkled surface. It took a lot of effort to translate the foreign language, but he knew these symbols and he had learnt many of these words. He had to speak the individual letters out loud, fractured and broken up by confused pauses, much like a child learning for the first time. Eventually, the words formed sentences, and those sentences held meanings which carried important weight. His eyes widened with every translation, until at last it ended with a shocking and brilliant conclusion.

  He looked up and gasped, ‘Lo…’

  After two gruelling hours, with six assistants at his side, Vet managed to stabilise the native. They worked tirelessly to find the cause of its sudden decline in health using every medical device at their disposal. A sample of blood, lodged into the computers via a sterile glass tube, revealed many answers, while other devices which measured its temperature, fluid excretions, and organ activity revealed substantial internal failures. Vet, his rubbery skin scrubbed raw after touching the contaminant, stood before a glass wall looking into the intensive care unit of his veterinary clinic. Inside, the animal lay on its back on a flatbed. Multiple tubes were attached to it, draining fluid in and out. An array of machines monitored its every heartbeat and every breath, each connected to the digital screen in Vet’s hands.

  Vet wanted Psycho to see this. The boy in the silver suit stood by him and watched through the glass. Vet wanted to tell him the news in person.

  ‘He’s… dying?’

  Vet said nothing.

  ‘No,’ Psycho spat. ‘No, he can’t! This isn’t fair!’

  There was nothing they could do. It was dying and Vet didn’t know what from. The native was infected, but it was a microbe he had not come across before. It had spread rapidly throughout its body, present in its blood, its brain, and multiple organs. Its systems were failing. Its blood was toxic. The animal did not have long to live and it was sad to watch it suffer.

  Vet wanted to know how the situation got this bad. He knew what Psycho had been doing down in the pipes and he didn’t like it, but he claimed the prisoner was perfectly fine when he last saw him, short of a few superficial injuries. In Psycho’s eyes, his actions were necessary and justified: Engineer wanted that contaminated specimen back, at whatever cost, and Psycho was running out of ideas. For two weeks now he had been desperately searching for Lo, but she disappeared suddenly before his eyes and the world was simply too vast and too wild to seek out one soul. The boy lying in that bed was the last person on this godforsaken planet who knew where she might be. For him to die without giving her up was an injustice and Psycho would not stand for it.

  ‘He can’t die. Not yet. I’m not done with him.’

  Vet said enough was enough. He planned to make the animal comfortable until the end, but he was certainly not going to prolong its life merely for Psycho’s needs.

  After reading Lily’s letter, Captain knew now what had to be done.

  He was not sure if it was a change of heart, a need for vengeance against that back-stabbing Engineer, or if it honestly was an act of insanity. Whatever the cause, it became apparent that this had to end. So when the sentries guarding the small cell beneath the ship returned later that day, they were astounded to find their remaining prisoner had escaped. The former captain’s chain was broken and a ceiling vent somewhere high above the pipes had been pried open by incredible strength. Neither could believe the old coot had the energy to carry out such a stunt, and it only became apparent now that perhaps much of his illness had been a façade.

  They hit the alarm and used the cloud’s radio bands to send a warning to Engineer; assumingly he was the Captain’s first target. Secondly they issued a contamination warning to the rest of the cloud, knowing he had been in the company of multiple wild specimens. The lights began to blaze and sections of the ship began to seal off with heavy doors in order to reduce the spread of contamination. Workers were infuriated that this was the second time in mere weeks that a quarantine was being enforced, caused twice by the same old fool. Many hurried to find themselves gas masks and gloves, to protect themselves from germ exposure, while others sealed themselves in their dorms and quarters to wait it out.

  Engineer was on the ship’s bridge when he was informed by radio of the threat. In fury, he ordered every crewman to arm themselves and hunt him down. Shoot if they had to. Teams assembled. They reached for their projectile weapons, some glass, some black and more deadly, and ran off into the bowels of the ship to take care of this mess a second time.

  Engineer remained in his commanding chair and listened to the reports as they came through. Sightings of the captain were occurring all over the ship. He was in the vents, swinging from pipes, and crawling through manholes. There was gunfire, sounds of distress, things collapsing, gas exploding from busted pipes… Engineer tried to make sense of what the crazy bastard was up to, but he was too unpredictable. He was frail, he was ill, and yet he had disarmed and taken down almost a dozen crewmen in mere minutes. Now he was armed, apparently, and shooting wildly at everything and anyone. Some were hesitant to shoot back, knowing he was an officer of prestigious rank whose mental faculties made him an object of pity. Engineer suspected the melancholy was an act all along, but to what end? What was the point of all this chaos?

  One shouted over the radio that the captain was heading to the animal warehouses. This made Engineer sit upright in panic. He had managed to release one specimen; perhaps he was going back to release more. This cloud could be overrun with wild animals in a matter of minutes if he pushed the right buttons. Frantically, Engineer shouted for the warehouses to be sealed off. Do not let him inside.

  Too late.

  Captain managed to outrun them all until almost the very end. Tired, weak, and stained with the blood of his own crew, he was soon surrounded by sixteen armed guards with black-coloured projectile weapons. Glass pellets hurt, but black ones killed. His own glass weapon had run out of bullets, so he threw it to the ground in defeat.

  He managed to make it all the way to the warehouse, but not the human house, as he had planned. Around him, the walls were packed high with glass pods of millions of different mammal species, mostly four-legged creatures of similar taxonomic orders. In the centre of the room, where the an
imals were experimented on, a large feline creature, black and yellow stripes, ivory horns and magnetic green eyes, was locked in a circular cage for observations. The beast stalked impatiently up and down its enclosure, snarling through the steel bars, sparking green bolts of electricity down its spine.

  Captain was ordered to get down on his knees and surrender. In the face of sixteen black barrels, he backed away gently, arms raised. But before succumbing to their deadly fire, he slammed down a lever on the control bench and suddenly the bars of the feline’s cage fell. The hybrid monstrosity, now free, leapt directly onto two crewmen, crushing them beneath its enormous claws and ripping their limbs with its teeth. Shouts, gunfire, and madness ensued, allowing Captain to escape once again.

  When the breach in the animal house was called over the PA system, Vet responded immediately. Psycho overheard what was going on and cursed, ‘Christ, not again!’

  Vet ran off with his fellow medics. He gave out orders over the radio to have the warehouses sealed off, not to keep Captain out, but to keep the escaped creature in.

  Psycho did not go with them. He remained in the clinic, watching the dying boy through the glass window. They were alone now. He observed his prisoner lying there on the table. He was in a critical state, hooked up to machines as they surveyed what may be his last days, his last hours.

  Oh, how he resented him. Death was an easy way out. Far too easy.

  He entered the white, sterile room. It was quiet, cut off from the blazing lights and sounds of panic by thick glass doors and an air-lock system designed to contain germs. It was a similar room as the one Psycho woke up in when he was taken from Earth, lying under stunning white lights, surrounded by the curious heads of giants in ponchos as thy poked him and introduced him to his new life aboard the cloud. Christ, that was a long time ago.