The team on the surface moved quickly — Kieran watching through a camera on one of their armoured suits—scooping up the ones who could no longer walk. Then they were on the transport, the rescued Augments’ eyes wide as they stared at the magical walls, too weak to question or protest it.
Thomas sat with them, holding, touching as many as he could, while he spoke continuously.
Then they were in the infirmary, and there was a flurry of activity. The healthy Augments ran back and forth, following directions from the two tall doctors, their hawk-like stares seeing everything, every problem.
He should be down there, should be helping. He wasn’t a medic, but he was good at fixing things. Cordelia didn’t need things to be fixed. But surely he could be a spare set of hands.
He shut his eyes and looked away, splashing in the goo so that some of it spilled out the side. It hovered in mid-air before it was returned to the tank. “Cordelia,” he groaned, before submerging himself totally.
When he came up for air, she was standing there.
“Cordelia, run another scan of the surface.”
She frowned. “I’m kind of busy right now.”
He grunted. “I need to be useful.”
“Uh, fine. I don’t know what you’re expecting to find.”
“Maybe a reason. Maybe a clue why they would suddenly abandon a twenty year project and all these people.”
Cordelia shrugged, her corporeal form fading away. But the view screen in front of Kieran shifted, readouts from the planet scrolling past. The planet was another dust-bowl, only a few scrubby plants had taken hold.
He turned away from the data, staring instead at the forlorn image of the planet itself, spinning slowly on its axis. Grey grey grey grey grey. He was beginning to understand what Gal had been muttering about all those months in space.
And then — movement, in the northern hemisphere.
He sloshed forward, peering at the image.
“Cordelia!”
She arrived again, looking harried and covered in blood. “What, Kieran?”
“Zoom in,” he said. “There.”
“This group really isn’t doing well, Kieran.”
But there was something there. “Zoom in.”
The image did.
“Again.”
She gasped behind him as the image changed. “Are those…?”
“People,” he said. “Settlers.”
“I didn’t even sense them.”
“Call Hoepe.”
The comm system let out a ping.
Silence.
Cordelia tried again.
“Hoepe?” Kieran shouted into the air.
No response.
“I’ll go,” said Cordelia, already fading.
No, he couldn’t just sit in his pathetic tub. He had to get down there.
He stood, his skin aching with the sudden movement. He put his hands on the edge of the tank, and lifted a leg to climb over the side. But his skin, his body after lying still so long, wouldn’t move that way. Instead, he half-heaved, half-flopped himself out of the tank like a fish.
He started running. His body screamed at him, but it didn’t matter. He made it to the infirmary in under a minute. The doors opened to chaos. He stood, dripping blue gel on the floor, looking for Hoepe in all the confusion.
Finally, the doctor looked up at him from where he was bent over an Augment, a long syringe coming from the man’s chest.
Kieran rushed forward. “There’s settlers out there.”
“This man’s heart is failing. His chest is filled with fluid.” He turned back, his hands working deftly.
“People. Out there. In the desert.”
“Push epi,” he shouted at an assistant.
Isuma rushed forward with a syringe, driving it into an IV line.
Kieran did a double take to make sure he was talking to the doctor he thought he was, but it was Hoepe after all.
“They need help.”
Finally Cordelia dried him and covered him in clothes.
“I’m a little busy right now. I don’t know if I can save him with what I have here.” Hoepe frowned and pushed on the man’s chest. “It’s their choice to be down there.”
Kieran stepped back as Leove ran in to help with the patient.
Hoepe drew clear fluid from the man’s chest cavity.
“Hypoalbuminemia,” said Leove, starting chest compressions. “Pure effusion in the lungs. Starvation.”
Kieran blanched. “If they stopped feeding the Augments, they’ve stopped feeding the settlers.”
Hoepe ignored him, looking up to the EKG monitor that had started to pulse again.
“If we leave them, they’re all going to be dead.”
“They have what they need,” shouted Hoepe.
“They don’t. For a year, I delivered supplies to colonies in the deep black. We left colonists to their death, dropped them off and never saw them again. The fact that there’s people down there still alive is a miracle. You remember how hard it was on Contyna. You told us you had to steal extra supplies to keep the folk there alive.”
Hoepe glanced up at him for the first time since he’d arrived.
“He’s stable,” said Leove, "for now."
Hoepe stepped back from the patient, looking at Kieran down his long, hawkish nose. “So what do you want us to do?”
“Send a team down, bring them back if they want to come.”
Glancing warily across the infirmary, Hoepe pressed his lips. But Cordelia had already moved away to prepare. A grim group of Augments wearing the light armour suits started to gather, gritting themselves for the excursion.
Kieran breathed a sigh of relief.
Isuma pulled away to join the others who had started to collect.
“Not you,” said Leove, pointing to a nearby stool. “I need your blood.”
She gulped and rolled up her sleeve while Leove connected a line from her to the unconscious man.
“You shouldn’t be out of your tank,” said Hoepe.
Kieran nodded once. The pain had disappeared in all the excitement. “I’m okay.”
Hoepe nodded grimly in return. “You’ll have to look after the settlers. I have too many unstable patients to deal with.”
Kieran smiled. “Happy to help.”
* * *
Kieran paced in the shuttle bay. His tight skin pulled as he walked, and he took some joy in the discomfort, knowing that with each tweak, his range of motion stretched.
“You’ll wear a hole through my floor,” said Cordelia. The woman, in her odd colonial garb, appeared behind him.
“Have things calmed down in the infirmary?”
She nodded once. “A little. Enough I could be here to help you. They might find you —,” she gestured at his face, “a little alarming.”
He grinned sheepishly. He knew from brief glances in the mirror that the expression would make his face even more gruesome. Hoepe had done a good job, but he still had burns over most of his body.
“It’s taking a long time,” Kieran said.
Cordelia nodded.
“You know, I don’t understand the settlers. I get that they wanted to leave to start a new life, get away from this crazy Speakers and Gods thing they believe in.”
“You don’t believe it?” Cordelia interrupted.
Kieran caught himself and frowned at the floor.
“It’s okay. You know I can read your thoughts. I know you’re not from here.”
“Then no, I don’t.” He rubbed his palms on his pants, then fought the urge to scratch everywhere. “So these people leave to start a new life, but on Gal’s ship I watched them all die. And it was called the Will of the Gods. And people still wanted to keep going.”
“Is that better, do you think? Being free and dying, or living in this falseness — what you think is falseness?”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
Suddenly, Cordelia frowned and stared out across the ba
y. “Something’s wrong,” she said. She squeezed her hands together and scrunched her face.
A shuttle crashed into the hangar, tumbling sideways.
“Ugh! It's chaos,” Cordelia grunted.
“What?”
The door to the shuttle sprung open. From it leaped a woman, eyes as wild as her untamed hair. She lurched forward. Other savages followed quickly. The look in their eyes wasn’t right. The woman fixated on him. With a growl, she started running.
Thomas pulled himself out of the sideways shuttle, blood dripping from a long cut on his forehead.
“Cordelia!” Kieran screamed. He started to run backwards, but his legs weren’t used to it and he nearly tripped over his feet.
Cordelia flew backwards. The end of the shuttle bay warped, its physical form wobbling, the wall blanking out so they could see the stars beyond.
“Cordelia!” he shouted again. He turned to run, the settler woman moving fast, metres from him.
Cordelia rolled over on the ground. She reached a hand out as the deranged woman lunged. A clear barrier exploded behind him, the savage woman smashing into it, her head thumping sickeningly against the glass as she bounced back.
Kieran fell, panting. “What’s happening?”
Cordelia shook her head. “I’ve never felt anyone like that.”
The other settlers — savages — ran up to the wall, thumping against it, clawing.
Thomas joined them with his small team of Augments, rips and cuts and bruises covering them. “We went down and they just attacked.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I don’t know.”
The savages beat at the barrier, the window wavering against the pressure. They snarled and shouted, foamy saliva collecting at the corners of their mouths and rolling down their chins.
One turned, frustrated with his current pursuit, and launched at the man nearest him. He latched on to the other’s arm with his teeth. He came away with a chunk of flesh in his mouth, and spit it on the ground.
“Jesus,” Kieran shouted, covering his mouth. “Can you separate them Cordelia?”
She nodded, waving her hands as though parting the sea, and the savages flew apart. They tried to run back to each other but were stopped by new barriers.
Kieran made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Call Hoepe. Tell him the savages are in worse shape that we thought.”
* * *
Kieran rubbed his hand over his mouth but he refused to look away.
Hoepe drew blood from the heavily restrained arm of one of the savages, then injected a dose of antibiotic into the muscle of the same arm. The savage growled continuously, but she was pinned in place, only the flesh of the arm not covered by one of Cordelia’s barriers.
Hoepe stepped away, and the barrier reformed.
The savage sprung up, scratching at the translucent wall, trying to make her way to them, spittle frothing wildly.
“What a mess,” said Hoepe.
Kieran nodded. He leaned against the wall.
“Your skin okay?”
“Yeah, manageable anyway. I need to move around.”
Hoepe nodded. “I’m going to go run this blood, try to figure out what’s happened to these people.”
“Do you think there’s more out there?” said Kieran.
Hoepe frowned. “We’re on our way to the next outpost, should be there tomorrow. We’ll look. Thomas is going over the scans of the other planets we visited to be sure we didn’t miss them. Only three more planets on Gal’s list.”
Kieran nodded. “No information found on the last outpost either?”"
“No. Nothing. The database was wiped clean.”
“Darn.”
“Yeah.” Hoepe leaned against the wall, closing his eyes.
Through the barrier, the savage woman paced, watching them.
“How’s Leove?”
Hoepe sighed, then allowed a small smile. “He’s my brother, I guess.” He pushed off the wall. “I’d better go.”
Kieran nodded as the doctor turned and disappeared from the darkened shuttle bay. He allowed himself a small scratch of his incessantly itchy skin. Immediately he regretted it, the skin welling up with angry red lines, the nerve endings lighting on fire.
At least he had nerve endings. Hoepe had said burns as severe as his usually just burned the nerve right off, leaving the skin senseless.
He frowned, thinking of Sarrin and the stripped nerves in her hands, the silver skeletons inside.
Sarrin, the Augments, the settlers — it truly was a mess. And he had landed smack in the middle of it.
One of the savages stirred in their cell, and the others suddenly arose in a frenzy, throwing themselves at the glass between.
He watched them, uselessly. At least he'd have something to report when he went home to the Observer ship.
Cordelia appeared.
It barely fazed him, so accustomed to her unnatural coming and going, and the tank and the clothing, and everything else just appearing and dissolving as he needed it to.
“What are you thinking about?” She leaned beside him.
“How are the engines running?”
She smiled. “They’re just fine, you know that. What are you really thinking about?"
He watched the savages as they started to settle down again. “I just, what would have happened to them?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Would they have eaten each other? Is that how the settlers die? They starve until they start eating each other, and then the last one starves to death.”
“That’s an unpleasant thought for you, Kieran.”
He shrugged. “Would the Augments have done the same if they weren’t locked in their cells? What would I do if I had to survive?”
“They’re lucky you found them.”
He looked again, at their wild eyes and ruined faces. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
She frowned. “I don’t pretend to understand how humans think, but that’s not how you think, Kieran.” She turned towards him, a smile spreading on her inhuman face. “I think I have something to cheer you up.” A data-tablet materialized in her hands.
He took it.
“I picked up a transmission today. It’s addressed to you. A strange signal, but I sent it through your scrubbing program, and voila!”
Curiously, he opened the message. It was from his mother.
“She says the ship will be flying through this part of the galaxy soon and they’re stopping to pick you up. She sent rendezvous coordinates for a week from now.” Cordelia beamed.
“You read my mail?”
“Yep.”
"Of course you did."
He had been in Earth-time for nearly five years. His mission was coming to an end, he’d already had one extension. But the Observer ship’s course wouldn’t take them through this area again for another hundred-and-fifty years.
“Can we even make it there? No one else can know.”
Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it’s surprisingly close to one of the outposts on Gal’s list.”
“Oh.”
“They could be collecting Augments at the rendezvous time. They’d be too busy to notice you leaving.”
“But I couldn’t get there. We don’t have a shuttle.”
Cordelia shrugged. “I could extend an arm that far, for a short time. You couldn’t take anything with you.”
He nodded. “I know that.”
He’d always known he would go back. Not for a second had he forgotten it. But it seemed so soon. They hadn’t finished rescuing the Augments.
But it was time.
He was an Observer. It was getting harder and harder to remember that. He needed to get back to the safety of the ship before he forget it altogether.
And he needed the time to recuperate. The burns would heal. He just needed rest.
“You don’t have to go,” Cordelia said quietly.
Kieran frowned. “You know I’m not from here.
I don’t belong here.”
“Those two things aren’t the same.”
He shut his eyes. It was time to go back. “I wasn’t supposed to get involved — don’t change the course of events, that’s the rule.”
“You saved the settlers.”
“Did I? Is this saved?”
“Hoepe will help them. And you’ve saved everyone else — what would have happened if they’d not had your knowledge along. They talk about you, you know. The miracle engineer. Sometimes the Augments wonder if you’re a God sent to help them.”
Kieran paled. “That’s exactly the problem. They’re not supposed to have this knowledge, I’m not supposed to share it with them. Observation only. I can’t leave a mark.” The last time an Observer had over stepped their bounds, it had changed the course of everything, leaving dangerous and unpredictable consequences.
“You’ve already left a mark.”
He grimaced. “That’s why I have to go.”
“What about Sarrin?”
He stopped. Sarrin. She was supposed to come with him. She needed to escape, would be hunted the rest of her life. “She’s tough,” he said, nodding forcefully to himself. “She can take care of herself. She’s not as helpless as everyone seems to think.”
Cordelia frowned again. “Okay, Kieran. If this is what you want, I’ll help you.”
FOURTEEN
THE AIR BURNED SARRIN’S THROAT, filling tired lungs. Her bare feet pounded across the warm earth. This running was good, this running was freedom.
She reached her hands down, brushing finger tips against the fluffy, green leaves that fell across the worn pathway outside the Uruhu village. The same leaves left nicks on her bare legs, energizing her, a kind of burning reminder that she was still alive. The pain dripped out of her hands, drop by drop, each step leaving her lighter.
Through the trees, she caught sight of an animal. A large ungulate creature. They ran side by side, Sarrin pushing to keep up with its graceful stride. It was an animal she had never seen before, something she didn’t have a name for. Not the creature from her dreams, but close.
She let herself get lost, absorbed entirely in the feeling of matching the powerful creature stride for stride. It seemed to sense her, to race with her, until all at once it veered away. She tried to follow, but it was too fast, even for her.
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