Wandering Soul

by Steven Anderson

“Now, that’s enough!” Dad took the display pad out of Hannah’s hands and turned it off. He didn’t give it back to me after he rolled it up. “We are going home. We’re leaving Tuesday. I’ve lost too much to Bodens Gate. I won’t risk anything more, do you understand? All of you,” he looked hard at Hannah, “do you understand? Sam, you get on your ship when it comes. The rest of us, including Mala Dusa, will be back on Earth by then, where we belong.”

  I could feel Hannah wanting to argue. She looked at Dad and her head tipped ever so slightly and she sighed. “Your father is right. We need to get you home. This isn’t our fight.”

  “But it is,” I pleaded. “When we were in the market I could see it on their faces, the hope that would flare up in them when they said your name. There’s a girl there that wants to be an architect and a man that just wants to be able to make these,” I tapped my cup, “and sell them to people that want to buy them. I played with some of the kids, I talked to a crowd of people.”

  “I saw that part.” There was pride in her voice.

  “I can’t walk away. How many will die each day while I’m safe at home, sitting in class? How many could I have saved?”

  She closed her eyes. “That’s the path I followed and my friends died one by one, and our followers died by the hundreds and then by the thousands. I watched your mother bleed to death and I came within seconds of losing Ted and you. They say that you’re not really part of the Warrens until your blood has joined with its dirt, and I did that too.” She touched her abdomen where I knew there were scars. “I scarified my own children and it still wasn’t enough. It will never be enough. I won’t give them you and Winona. You watched your father kill a man today. That’s the Warrens. That’s Bodens Gate. It’s death, and pain, and torture, and… and…” She couldn’t finish and I could feel the anguish pouring back into her.

  When she opened her eyes, there were no tears in them. “We’re going home. Don’t argue, don’t plan, and don’t scheme. Just know that it’s the right thing to do.”

  I glanced at Winona. She had her eyes half closed, lost somewhere in her own thoughts. Sam squeezed my hand, letting me know that he was still there with me.

  I stood, pushing my chair back loudly. “Sam and I are going to sit by the pool. Winn, why don’t you come with us? I have some planning and scheming to do.”

  Sam stood and kissed me gently because he knew that I needed kissing.

  “How can they keep doing that?” Hannah asked.

  Winn answered for me because my mouth was busy. “Vista says she has a record exempting the two of them from the Romantic Entanglements clause. It was established at incep eighteen months ago. I believe Mala Dusa feels it would be wrong not to take advantage of it.”

  “Shit. I need to talk to Ted privately. Winona, get them out of here, but don’t leave them alone, not for a moment. The way she’s feeling right now, God knows what she’ll do next. Remember who you work for, Ms. Killdeer.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You should also know that there is at least one Tarakana on board. It came up on the shuttle with us and Mala Dusa is particularly vulnerable to its influence. I think she’s safe for now, and I’ll stay with her tonight, but I’d like to get on your calendar to discuss the situation.”

  Hannah nodded. “After breakfast. 0700 at the latest. I can’t do any more today, it’s too much.” She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it up out of her eyes. “I need a shower. A long shower.”

  I could feel Winn tapping on my shoulder. “Let’s go Duse. Let him breathe for a few minutes.”

  There was no water in the pool, so the three of us took lounge chairs and moved them to the bottom of the deep end and sat looking up at the display screens. Bodens Gate floated above us, visible between the latticework of the space dock.

  “What are we going to do, Winona?”

  “We’re going home. We’ll apply for admission to the Academy together and then we’ll finish our senior year.” She turned to Sam. “I want the first dance with you when you get back in the spring and take Mala Dusa to the prom, OK?”

  He gave her a shy smile.

  “I can’t go, Winn. Those people there,” I pointed, “they need my help.”

  “Then pray for them. Send money to Father Ryczek and Cuza.”

  “But the plan–”

  “The plan the Tarakana shoved into our heads? It’s crap. I was looking at it while Hannah was flipping through what we scribbled on the ride up here. Four months to consolidate the clans? It’ll take a year or more, even with everything going our way. I suspect it would collapse into prolonged armed conflict between the clans. Casualties would be in the thousands. You’ll never take the capital, not by force. The Central Government controls the air and has assets on orbit. Your twenty thousand dead would be more like half a million. The Tarakana want death and suffering, not freedom for the human population.”

  “That’s not what I felt from Merrimac. They push people together, they want passion. They want love.”

  “Except he’s not the one that put that plan in our heads, is he? You said it yourself; the colony in the Warrens is bad. They feed on us, Duse, they’re parasites. They want our terror and our lust to kill.”

  I sighed, not wanting her to be right. “It doesn’t matter if the plan is crap. I still need to do something. I know I can help them. How can I leave?”

  “You’re not the only one trying to help. It’s not the only place that needs help.”

  “I touched them. I played with them. I heard their voices and I can still smell the Warrens. You want me to just float away back to Earth after that?”

  “For now. It’s what we have to do. We lost this round, but you know Hannah won’t be able to stay away either. For now, it’s time to go home. Your parents need you, especially your dad. He’s in more pain than he’s letting on. I don’t have to be able to feel emotions like you to know that you’re hurting him.”

  I was too tired to fight anymore and I knew she was right. “I’m a brat.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  We sat in silence for a long time. I was drifting in and out of sleep, still holding hands with Sam, even though I couldn’t feel the fingers wrapped around mine except when he moved.

  “Mala Dusa?” Only a whisper. Winona again.

  “Sleepin’,” I told her.

  “What happened on Cleavus?”

  I couldn’t open my eyes. “Mom and Dad abandoned there. Fell in love.”

  “How many Tarakana were there?”

  Really, Winn? It must have been 0200. It felt like 0200. “Don’t know. Dad said a bunch of them at first.”

  “Then what?”

  “They all went away except for Merrimac. They hid or somethin’.”

  “What about before that?”

  “Before?” I sighed.

  “What happened to the original Union colony?”

  “Abandoned three hundred years ago, I guess. No one knows. Buildings still there. Whole cities. No people.” I felt myself drifting back to sleep, starting to dream about empty buildings.

  “The Tarakana destroyed them.” Her voice was matter of fact. “They did what they’re trying to do in the Warrens. Nation against nation, then group against group, and person against person until no one was left.”

  I felt cold suddenly and very awake, remembering. “I think I saw that! When Merrimac was in my head on Wandering Star he showed me different paths through the future, but it was all jumbled. He was desperate. His colony was down to seven pieces and he was desperate to move out of known space. I think I’m supposed to go with him and get away from what’s about to happen.”

  I looked at Sam snoring gently next to me. “Me and Sam. It was important that we be together, but I still can’t see why.”

  “Because you don’t want to see.” Winn leaned back in her chair and closed her ey
es as though she was going to go back to sleep.

  Now I was uncomfortable and cold and confused. “I want to go to our cabin and sleep. I need to brush my teeth and I want a pillow.”

  “Sure. What about Sam? Should we just leave him here?”

  I leaned over him and gently kissed his forehead. He sighed, a sound that ended in a guttural moan as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me down hard on top him, kissing my neck and shoulder. My body’s response was instant and completely beyond control of rational thought.

  “Not a good idea, Duse.”

  “Sam,” I managed to gasp. “Sam, wake up.”

  His eyes opened and he let go of me, blushing. I love it when he does that.

  “Sorry, MD. Dreaming, I guess.”

  “We’re going to our cabin for the rest of the night. Come with us unless you want to sleep here.”

  “No.” He stretched. “I’ll walk with you.”

  We left the chairs at the bottom of the pool and had Vista guide us to the cabin Winona and I were to share. We rounded the corner into the passageway and I stopped so quickly that Winn crashed into me. There was a large German Shepherd lying in front of our door. I tried to walk backwards and I was making a sound somewhere between a whimper and a cry.

  Sam pushed past me and knelt next to the Tarakana. “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him,” I was whispering over and over, unable to make my voice any louder.

  Sam touched him.

  He rolled the dog over and then looked up at us. “He’s dead.” He held his hand up and it was covered in blue that dripped from his fingers. “And it’s not a dog.”

  CHAPTER 13

  RUMORS OF WAR

  “Vista, did you see what happened here?” Sam didn’t seem upset at all. I was trying not to let myself curl up into a ball on the floor. I don’t really have a ‘fight or flight’ reflex. When I’m scared, I curl up into a ball and wait for death to find me.

  “I have no record of any unusual occurrences at this location.”

  “Do you see a dog lying here dead?”

  “Yes. The dog appeared in that condition at 0124 ship’s time.”

  “Appeared? What killed it?”

  “I have no idea. The dog appeared in its current condition. Due to ongoing construction, I have lapses from time to time.”

  “So your sensors weren’t operating?”

  “Systems in this part of the ship show no interruptions. However, the dog simply appeared at 0124. There’s no record of its existence prior to that event.”

  Sam poked at the dog with his finger, looking in its mouth and touching its paws. He lifted up what looked more like a tentacle than part of a dog.

  “I only half believed you, Winona.” He waved the tentacle around. “This is kind of hard to ignore.”

  “What do you think killed it?” Winn asked. I still had my arms wrapped around myself, but was starting to recover from the initial shock.

  “Well, right off hand, I’d say that having its throat ripped out was probably a contributing factor. I need to dissect it to know more.”

  “I have to let my dad know.” My voice was only shaking a little bit. “I hate to wake them up, but they need to know.”

  “And the Captain.” Sam was looking a little lost. “I’m the only RuComm person on board; everyone else is engineering or construction. I wish we had a couple of more biologists here. Let’s get a blanket or sheet or something from your cabin first so we can wrap it up and move it to lab.”

  “Should we move it at all?” I asked.

  Sam shrugged. “Vista has a full record of what it looks like now that she can see it. There’s nothing we can do with it here.”

  Winn put her hand on the access panel and our door opened. I kept my eyes up and straight ahead as I stepped over the Tarakana into the cabin. She stripped one of the sheets off her bed and offered it to Sam.

  “You and MD lay the sheet out and I’ll roll it on since my hands are already covered in blood.”

  “Blue blood?” I asked.

  “Hemocyanin. Copper based blood, I’m guessing.”

  “Yeah.” My brain really wasn’t working. I had learned about hemocyanin back in third grade. Most of Dulcinea’s native animals ran on hemocyanin. I had a lacerti hyacinthi for a while as a pet until I set it free one afternoon. It was a big blue lizard-like thing with six legs and sad eyes.

  Winn opened the door and squeaked. It takes a lot to make her squeak like that. The passageway was empty. Even the carpet covering the deck plates looked clean.

  “Vista? Sam asked. His voice sounded irritated.

  “Yes, Mr. Coleridge?”

  “The dog that was lying here? The dead dog?”

  “That dog was removed at 0236.”

  I looked at my watch. One minute ago.

  “Who removed it?”

  “I don’t have a record of that event. It simply was removed.”

  Sam looked at his hands, holding them up for us to see. “I still have the blood, at least.”

  “I think we should take you to the biology lab right away,” Winona told him.

  I grabbed him by the elbow and he smiled at me, surprised.

  “I don’t want you to be ‘simply removed’. I’m not done with you yet.” I told him.

  “Not disposable?”

  I squeezed him tighter. “No.”

  We walked that way the whole distance to the biology lab, me stumbling a little bit because I was hanging onto Sam’s right arm with both hands. Winona helped him open sterile swabs and containers and we managed to get four good samples ready. By the time they had been sealed and slid into the AutoAnalyzer it was nearly 0430.

  Sam washed the remaining blood from his hands and collapsed into a chair, grinning at me. “Is your life always this interesting, MD? Because I’m not sure I can take much more.”

  “No, it’s really not. I’m usually pretty boring.”

  “Tell him about the cloud of smoke you made in chem lab last year. Or what you did to Brad Jenkins when he called you a–”

  “Winn, why are you talking?”

  Sam chuckled. “I like listening to the two of you talk. I never really had a close friend when I was growing up. I was a lot younger than everyone else because my mom kept pushing me up through the grades. I got lonely sometimes.”

  “Some of my teachers wanted to push me up a grade,” I told him. “My parents refused because they said my social skills were already terrible.”

  “Mala Dusa and her folks saved me from being lonely all the time. I don’t think my parents have ever met any of my teachers. They’re just happy when I’m away at school every day.”

  I smiled at her. “I love my Winona.”

  “And I love my Mala Dusa.”

  Sam tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “I suppose I need to call the Captain now. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this.”

  “Vista has the video,” I reminded him. “The sight of you lifting that tentacle up should convince him.”

  “Vista, can you please display the images from when we first saw the dog until we went into the cabin?”

  “What dog is that, Mr. Coleridge?”

  “The dog. The dead dog that was in the passageway.”

  “I’m not aware of there ever having been a dog on board.”

  Little shivers chased up and down my arms. “Show when the three of us went in to my cabin.”

  We watched ourselves come around the corner, pause a moment and then go in. A few minutes later we came out and walked away. No dog.

  “There wasn’t any blood on me in the video.” Sam put his hands over his eyes, looking like he was in pain. “Vista, how long before the blood analysis is completed?”

  “I’m not showing that any blood analyses are currently in work.”


  “That’s it, then.” He turned to Winn and me. “Anyone want to explain what just happened, because I’ve got nothing.”

  “The Tarakana are very impressive.” Winona sat down next to him. “I’m starting to understand why Hannah hates them so much.”

  I sat down on the floor and leaned back against her knees. She started making little braids in my hair. “I told you Merrimac was my friend. This proves it.”

  “Come again?” Sam asked. “That wasn’t Merrimac?”

  “No, all of the Merrimac colony are darker than that and have really dark faces except for a couple of tan spots above their eyes. The dead one was lighter. He was probably the one from the Warrens that came up with us. Mac killed him and wanted to make sure I knew about it.”

  “Then he made everything disappear so we’d look like idiots if we told anyone about it.”

  I laughed out loud. “Of course. Although I guess it’s not funny. Hannah and my dad chased them for over two years while they were hiding alongside us on the same ship and playing with me every day.” I hummed a bit of the elephant song to myself.

  “Why are they doing this? Are we just pets to them? Do they feed on us? Are there good ones and bad ones fighting each other with us in the middle? It’s like they have more control over our systems than we do.”

  I had never heard Sam scared before. I didn’t like it. It made me feel cold all the way through. “Merrimac is my friend,” I told him again, as much to reassure myself as him. “The bad Tarakana is dead and we’re safe for now.” I looked at my watch; almost 0500. “We need to talk it through, but not now. Too tired now to think any more.” I tipped my head back to look at Winn. “Need to sleep,” I told her.

  She stood up without warning me and I toppled onto my back, staring up at the ceiling. Sam’s face appeared over me and I put my arms around his neck.

  “I like this view,” I told him, giving him a sleepy smile.

  “Do I need to carry you again?”

  “Tempting, but no. Just help me up.”

  Sam walked with us back to our cabin. I found myself shaking again as thoughts of the Tarakana started to fill my head and I worried about what Mac was trying to tell me by leaving a dead one in front of my door. By the time Winona put her hand on the panel, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in. There were shadows under the beds and in the closets plenty big enough to hide a half dozen Tarakana. I hesitated, looking back and forth between Winn and Sam.