by Mel Corbett
“How is *Gri?” !Omas asked.
!Estraith shrugged. “He barely said hi to Nith. He’s just not the same, since…”
“Do you want us to get reported?” !Omas asked. “We have liberties because *Malon’s our father, but we still have to serve the Queen same as anyone.”
“But why?” !Estraith asked. “The earthens didn’t serve the Queen for millennia. Didn’t even know about her—”
“Shut up!” !Omas hissed. “How can you even say these things?”
!Estraith was silent for a moment. She smiled as her daughter tagged one of the other children, causing him to freeze, waiting for the touch of one of his teammates to free him. The girl was smart. She used the other frozen children for cover as she ran.
“Father’s taught Nith to want to earn the Queen’s honor,” !Estraith said. “She’s young, but in a few months, she… and the boy Calvin, are supposed to be dedicated.”
“That doesn’t mean the Queen will choose either of them,” !Omas said. “We were both dedicated.”
“And the Queen only chose *Gri,” !Estraith said, stunning both herself and her sister into silence.
!Gri had been so sweet and affectionate before he became *Gri. The Queen’s honor had changed her brother, making him distant and withdrawn. Not cruel, but cold. She’d seen the battle of wills as the bond grew. The second red-face was not a passive connection to the Queen, but a new voice in their lives. !Estraith did not want that for her daughter or this sad little boy she was raising.
EIGHTEEN
RACHEL
Rachel paced the length of her chambers. There had to have been another way to handle the little revolt. She understood that was why she was granted two guards and was grateful their weapons weren’t lethal, but there had to have been a better way. The other discontents had easily been threatened into silence.
“Rachel!” Nate said, jerking her out of her train of thought. “There wasn’t anything else you could have done.”
“There had to be. The other cells obeyed my commands.”
“Come here,” Nate said. He patted the cushion beside him.
Rachel shook her head. He might be her companion, but that didn’t mean she would obey him.
He sighed and walked over to her. He put his hands on her shoulders.
“These people are angry. They blame the Honored Ones.” He didn’t say that distasteful word, redskull. “You were a convenient target. Nothing more.”
“This is the second time I’ve failed in serving the Queen.” Rachel shook her head. “I’m supposed to help forge the union between our people and the Queen, and instead they fight me.”
Instead of answering, Nate pulled her into a hug.
“The Rachel I know doesn’t fail,” Nate said. His wording was a bit odd, but she took the compliment. “But angry people will riot. You can’t expect all of them to comply.”
“I’m not a traitor,” Rachel said.
“I know,” Nate said.
“I chose to turn us in…”
“That doesn’t make you a traitor. That saved me from starving. You told me already. I remember how sick I was.”
“The Queen is keeping my parents safe, too. In exchange for my service to her, but I just keep failing.”
“You’re not a failure, and if the Queen can’t see that—”
“If the Queen thinks I’m a failure, I’ll lose my privileges. I’ll lose you, and my parents will be returned to the mines. I’ll be put into the barracks with the guards and have to earn her respect before I can have you with me again.”
“Rachel, don’t be silly. The Queen has to understand how angry everyone is. If she doesn’t, then—” A knock at the door cut Nate off.
“Don’t say it,” Rachel whispered. “Never disrespect the Queen.”
She answered the door to find the same courtesan who had returned Nate to her.
“Honored Mistress, I thank you allowing me to serve you,” the courtesan said, folding herself into a deep bow.
“Please stand, Mmm?” Rachel extended the honorific, waiting for the courtesan to introduce herself.
“I am Mbnath, Honored Mistress,” the tiny blue woman said in English, bowing as she spoke. “Honored Mistress, here is your invitation to the presentation of the new earthen courtesans.”
“Thank you, Mbnath.” Rachel took the folded paper.
“We are most pleased that all of the earthen Honored Ones will be present to select a companion at the gala.”
“I already have a companion.”
Mbnath smiled knowingly and bowed. Switching to the blue tongue, she said, “Yet, you are still invited to choose a second. The Queen must value you greatly.”
NINETEEN
MARY
Mary woke with a start as the door to the holding cell slammed open. Two blue redskulls walked in, waving guns and shouting. Mary climbed to her feet and pushed her way to the back of the crowd that formed around them. They wanted something. A tall brown-skinned redskull woman walked into the room. Mary’s heart caught in her throat. It was that Indian girl who she’d helped find her boyfriend before the bluemen came and took her away. The one who’d turned herself in to the aliens to save his life. Now, the girl was a redskull.
The girl licked her lips and wiped her hands on her black jumpsuit. She glanced to the guards, and they nodded.
“I’m here to sort you into professions, so that your skills can be used to benefit the Queen,” the girl, Rachel, said. “I know you would much rather do skilled labor than dig for eggs in the mines.”
No one spoke. Mary stared at the girl, but she seemed to be looking for some kind of reaction, some kind of sign of relief from the crowd. They’d already taken most of the teens away, and Mary hadn’t seen a kid under twelve since she’d gotten here. She’d known they had to sort people somehow, but this… She couldn’t wrap her head around the girl in front of her who had been a normal human and was now something else.
“Mechanics and people who build and work with machines, please form a line over here,” Rachel said.
She and her guards stood in the far corner of the room. A few people shuffled forward and obeyed, forming a neat line. The relief on Rachel’s face was palpable as she marked down something on what appeared to be a chalkboard. Mary wondered if anyone else recognized the girl. She hadn’t even been with them a full day before the redskulls had taken her away to make her into one of them.
“Doctors, nurses, EMTs, and midwives,” Rachel said. She stood at the end of the mechanic’s line. More people moved to form a line.
“Elementary school teachers and daycare providers.”
Mary shuffled over to Rachel. She stood right behind the last medical professional. The girl smiled when she saw Mary.
“Mary, it’s good to see you again,” Rachel said. The second skull on top of her head unnerved Mary. “I didn’t realize this was the room I was in. Is Kailey here?”
Mary shook her head. “They took her and other young people a few weeks ago.”
Rachel’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of surprise. The girl looked like she genuinely cared, but the red skull on top of her head didn’t move, and its hollow eyes seemed to bore into Mary’s soul. Rachel nodded and moved over a foot. She kept naming types of professions.
With each profession, the nerves seemed to fade. When she reached the far wall, she asked the remaining few people to get into the line. Then she asked each of them their profession and made notes on her chalkboard.
“Thank you for your cooperation. We will now escort you to your respective training centers. You will be taught the blue tongue, and your skills will be repurposed to serve the Queen. The Queen will reward you for your service.” Rachel licked her lips yet again and led them out into the hall.
After so many twists and turns through the strange rounded halls, Mary and the other daycare providers and teachers were left in a room with two older blue women and a large chalkboard. Gibberish phrases were written on the board. One wor
e a brown jumpsuit, the other a green dress.
“Sit!” barked the woman in the green dress.
Mary sat on a plump cushion in the front row.
The one in the brown dress spoke in the same deep guttural language that she’d heard the bluemen use. The woman in the green dress translated her words into a broken English.
“You care for and teach childs here. First, you learn talk. Then you learn what teach. Some work with babies. Some with young childs. All learn.”
The woman in the brown jumpsuit handed out pads of paper and pencils.
“I am M’Kazz.” She used a pointer stick to trace under the gibberish phrase on the board as she said a few syllables in the blueman’s language and repeated her name.
“She is Illis.” She ran the pointer stick under a different row of gibberish and spoke in the blueman’s language and repeated the name at the end. The gibberish more or less matched the sounds she made.
“Your name?” M’Kazz asked Mary. When Mary answered, she told her to repeat her. She spoke the gibberish phrase and said “Mary” at the end.
Mary repeated what she said, carefully reading the gibberish on the board. When Mary said her name, M’Kazz slapped her. Mary’s eyes stung, and she raised a hand to rub her cheek.
“Not Mary. Ih Mary.” She made a short ‘i’ sound like in the word ‘ick’ then Mary’s name. “Ih mean teach childs. Always Ih Mary. Is new name. All you, always say Ih name. Ih part of identity.”
After hours of drilling on the blue tongue, Illis led the women into a room full of bunk beds. M’Kazz took the men somewhere else. Five sets of bunk beds stacked three high filled the room. There was a narrow walkway on one end, and the beds had maybe two feet of space in between them. The room was narrow and cramped.
The beds, Mary realized, were labeled with what she could only assume was the blue word for bed. On each bed was a set of brown jumpsuits just like Illis’s. These were labeled, as were the walls and the ladders. On the far end of the room was a small door that opened to a toilet and what appeared to be a shower.
“Sleep here. Study in morning,” Illis snapped.
She left the room and slammed the door behind her. One of the women tried the door, but it was locked from the outside. Exhausted, Mary knelt next to the nearest bunk. She hadn’t been much for prayer before the abduction, but now she needed all the help she could get.
“God, I know I haven’t been much for prayer lately, but I wanted to thank you for bringing me to work with children here and giving me a safer place to be. I know it’s greedy for me to ask more of you, but please, please Lord, keep my sons safe. And Will. Keep them all safe. And… And let them stay free.” She didn’t dare ask for her real wish, that was even more greedy. She wanted to see her boys again as a free woman.
TWENTY
MIKEY
In the dim, red light, Mikey adjusted the scarf covering his mouth and nose to try to avoid the horrible smell. Sweat trickled down into his eyes, but he didn’t dare wipe it away. He slipped his work gloves back on and shoved the pitchfork end back into the pile of humanure and compost to turn it again. All of everyone’s shit wound up here, to compost and rot, to go to the gardens. He flipped the load of waste and compost, gagging at the smell. He repeated, turning the pile until it was all flipped and the shape of the poop was broken enough that he could imagine it was some other animal’s poop.
He stumbled out of the composting chamber—a tiny room—and slammed the door shut behind him. The smells could stay in there—even if his coveralls were splattered with the muck. He kicked off the boots, pulled off the gloves and threw them in the hamper, then wriggled out of the coveralls right there.
He didn’t want to be covered in shit any more than he had to be. At least after garden duty, you received an extra-long shower ration. Finally, Mikey braced himself against the wall, his back aching from the hard work, a chill taking him over as he realized the foolishness of standing in his socks and underwear outside.
“Don’t like the poop room, huh?” a guy said from somewhere behind him.
“Does anyone?” Mikey turned, stumbling over the work boots he’d kicked off.
The kid couldn’t have been any older than him, but he knelt in the official gardens—planting tiny seedlings under the frail mix of light from outside and the UV lamps.
“I thought us kids couldn’t do real garden work,” Mikey said.
The kid shrugged and Mikey struggled to place him. He should have recognized the kid from the few classes they had. If he really was Mikey’s age, then they should have seen each other before now.
“Seriously, how’d you get the cake planting job instead of having to flip shit like the rest of us?” Mikey knelt across from the kid, watching him plant the little tiny seedlings.
“I did my share of flipping shit,” the kid said. “But then Al chased you refugees here to take over the job for me. Meant I got a promotion.”
The kid had been here before Al showed up? That meant… “Your parents work here?”
“This whole lowlight garden was my dad’s experiment. Supposedly, investigating the possibility of growing in closed-off, lowlight areas for space travel.” The kid shrugged. “Anyway, we lived off base until we heard about Al down in Los Angeles. He snuck me in that morning on his break.”
“So… you only had to work in the compost room a couple of days before the rest of us started showing up?”
The kid shrugged. “I still get to sling poop, just now I get to play in the cleaner results, too.” He pushed his fingers into the soft dirt, making room for a seedling.
“I’m Mikey.” Mikey didn’t offer his filthy hand.
“Andrew.” The kid winked. “I’ll see if I can get you to help with the planting, if you don’t mind playing in the fully composted version.”
TWENTY-ONE
KEN
Ken grunted. The chair he was tied to didn’t move at all. It seemed to be bolted to the floor. The blue thug stepped back, shaking his head. The human redskull stepped forward, so he filled Ken’s field of vision. The lean man smiled faintly, the second set of red eyes boring into Ken’s soul. He swallowed.
“You know, this isn’t what we want for you. The Queen has great plans for you and all of the earthens she has collected.”
“Fuck you!” Ken spat.
The redskull stepped back and nodded. The squat blueman punched Ken in the stomach again. Ken gasped. That one knocked the wind out of him, and it took more and more for him to get his breath back.
“The Queen has a much less violent repurposing process if you would just agree to allow us to use more civilized measures.”
“Like what? Drugging me? Brainwashing me?”
“Brainwashing is not effective. You must truly accept that the Queen has a purpose for you. She wants you flying her ships, Ken. She really does.”
“Why? So, I can go back to Earth and hurt whoever’s left?” Ken gasped. He flexed his abs, and as the hit came, he sucked in, hoping that it would lessen the blow. The wall behind him reduced the effectiveness of the feint, though.
“Now, Ken,” the redskull said. “I was military on Earth as well. I know you flew in the air force then worked for the airlines. We’ve gotten you to admit that.”
Ken nodded.
“The Queen believes that a man of your skills would be an asset. She will heap rewards on you for your obedience.”
“Rewards for betraying my species!”
“Now, Ken. It’s no betrayal. The bluemen are as human as we are. They found our planet millions of years ago, and they’ve been watching us for a long time, waiting for us to get to the right population density for harvest. The Queen orchestrated all of this.”
“Right.”
“The Queen wiped out the dinosaurs and seeded the planet with life from this world.”
“The Queen is sixty-five million years old? Bluemen have been around that long?” Ken asked.
The redskull grinned. Ken frowned. Whateve
r the Queen was, she wasn’t human.
“Everyone wants to know who God is. God is our Queen. She’s been arranging for Earth to reach its population density so we can populate the stars. I have a direct line to an all-knowing, nearly all-powerful Goddess, and she has a plan for you.”
“For me.” Ken shook his head. “Yeah, right.”
The blueman thug stepped forward at Ken’s sarcastic tone, but the redskull shook his head.
“For you. For me. For every single soul liberated from Earth.”
Ken did not like the redskull’s zealot attitude.
“She’s waited eons, and She’d rather not have to kill you when She can use you instead. We’ve built a massive fleet, and no. The Queen doesn’t want you to go to Earth and conquer that world further. Once you prove she can trust you, she will send you to be a sort of Captain Kirk. You will travel from planet to planet, bringing the good news that the Queen is sending her missionaries to spread our human life amongst the stars. You will be part of a fleet of seed ships, traveling ever farther, converting new worlds.”
Ken spat on the floor. The blue thug punched him in the stomach.
“I’m afraid that we will need to try different techniques to get you on board with assisting the Queen.” The redskull pulled a syringe out of his pocket. “Your life would be much simpler if you would just agree to serve Her.”
TWENTY-TWO
CONNIE
Connie grinned and snatched up the seven of diamonds Jordan had just discarded.
“Oh, no,” Mikey sighed. He plunked his cards face down on the table.
“Why are you giving up?” Andrew asked, glancing back and forth between his new friends.
“Here she goes again, just watch,” Mikey said.
“I don’t know why I bother to spend my down time with you if she’s just going to win every time,” Jordan said.
“I don’t win every time,” Connie said, but she opened a new run with three of the four cards she’d had in her hand. Six, seven, and eight of diamonds. The fourth, the ten, she put face down at the end of the pile.