Well, here it is Whetsday again.
In the story, that is. We’ve finished off a full cycle from Whetsday to Whetsday. Speaking of which...
The planet Rask, where the story takes place, is tidally locked, like our moon, so that its orbit and rotation happen at the same rate. One side of the planet always faces the sun. Suns. Which you might think would make days on Rask last forever—nights, too, should you be on the less fortunate part of the planet. Rask is sort of like that. Jukal Plex, where Denny lives, rarely sees real darkness.
But it’s not as consistent, or as boring, as you might think. Rask is aimed at the gravitational center of a closely bound pair of stars. It’s a binary star system; one where the stars are so close they whip around each other in a matter of days.
One of those stars is a red dwarf. No, not like the British sci-fi show. A red dwarf star, an M type for those in the know on star naming. It’s a real, honest to Sagan star, no question about it, unlike your brown dwarf, only it’s small and rather cool, as stars go. In this case, the red dwarf star in the Rask system is about one-tenth the size of Earth’s sun. Red dwarfs are very common out there. Twenty of the thirty stars nearest our sun are red dwarfs.
The other star in the system is something completely different. It’s a white dwarf. It’s also tiny, but it wasn’t always that way. The white dwarf in the Rask system was once a yellow star, very much like (though slightly larger) than our sun. Several billion years ago, that star expanded to become a great red giant star, a star so big that it swallowed some of the inner planets of the system. Then it blew off it’s outer layers until the core of the star was all that remained. Now it’s an intense little ball of helium burning blue-white pressed down so that it’s about 100,000,000 times more dense than anything on Earth. It’s not really burning any more, not making with the fusion, so it’s gradually cooling down. Only it’ll take a few billion years before you notice.
Blowing off all that gas helped the whole Rask system to sort of “tighten up,” with planets spiraling down and the two stars spinning closer together. Just over ten billion years ago, most of the debris had been swept up, and things settled down. So… a binary star system, one red dwarf, one white dwarf. And just a single planet. The planet Rask. Which happens to fall in a livable zone for this odd couple. There are a few comets out there. A couple of lumps of rock or ice that orbited far enough out to miss the big show, and Rask wobbles enough on its axis that combined with the movement of the two stars you get some recognizable seasons. Still, it’s a neat little system. Very simple. Very… clean.
Not like our system. Our system is a helluva mess, let me tell you.
Better yet, let me tell you what happened next to Denny. Come on inside...
WHETSDAY
20
On Whetsday, Denny learned the truth about the cithians, about the humans, and about his father.
It was only after he had reached the outside of the tunnel that Denny realized that the eyepad shields were still somewhere back inside. Not only that, but the rest of his disguise was tattered and stained. There seemed little chance it would fool a cithian now at any distance.
Denny rolled over, leaning against the outside of the dome-shaped building, and began to unwind the long roll of heavy cloth. It took him some time to get most of his costume removed, and all the while he expected to see a cithian or dasik come around the building, but finally he stood up and brushed away as much of the dust and grime that was clinging to him as possible. He thought about carrying away his disguise, but a human going through the city with a moltling shell in one hand seemed like a bad idea. Instead he gathered all the extra clothing into a heap and placed the shell over it. He shoved the whole mess back into the short tunnel. The dark color of the shell was a good match for the dim light in the tunnel, and it was a long way to either door, so Denny could only hope that it would be some time before someone looked inside. A longer time before someone found the disguise. A really long time before anyone thought that it might have actually been a human inside the building.
With the silver maton carefully wrapped in an old shirt, Denny walked away from the building and angled back to the street. A few cithians saw him as he was rejoining the main road, and one of them drummed out a warning, but Denny didn't think it was anything more than the way he was usually treated as a human out in the city. He lowered his head, gave the cithians plenty of room, and kept walking.
He was so tired, he barely had room for worry. Anyway, he still felt all kinds of awful. Like he’d been hit by a road ferry. Or two.
By the time he passed by the old gate and stepped into the human quarter, the blue and red suns had finished their spiraling path through Pairsday and begun moving toward the same point in the bleached white sky. It was Whetsday again.
Denny felt more than a little hungry, but it didn't matter much because he was so thirsty he didn't feel like he could eat. He dragged back down the street to the compartment building, ignoring the glare from Cousin Haw who was standing in the open door of the Porium and exchanging a nod with Auntie Talla who was passing up the street in the other direction in her long going-to-market robe.
The cooling was out in the compartment building–again–but at least the lift was working. Denny leaned against the dented metal wall as the little cube rose upward past all the empty floors to the place where the last humans in the building lived.
He had his thoughts set on getting to his compartment, drinking about a gallon of water, then sleeping until Skimsday, but no sooner had he taken a step down the hall than the door of Cousin Yulia's compartment opened. "Did you get it?" she asked. The thick, loose curls of her hair were bouncing around her head, and for once she looked more excited than afraid.
Denny nodded. He started to say something, but he couldn't get past the dust that was clogging his throat. Then he saw Cousin Sirah coming out of Yulia's compartment to join her in the hallway.
Cousin Yulia turned toward her. "He found one. He has it."
"You have a..." Cousin Sirah glanced at Yulia. "What did you say it was?"
"A maton," said Yulia. “It’s a device for accessing... it can do lots of things." She hurried up to Denny, looking him up and down. "Where is it?"
Denny reached into his shirt and pulled out the wrapped ball. Even through the cloth, it felt sort of warm. Like a sleeping animal. "Here," he said, his voice coming out in a croak.
Yulia leaned over the ball, looking at it with her head tilted to the side. "It's smaller than I thought." She looked up at Denny. "Are you sure it’s a maton? Does it work?"
"Yeah." Denny nodded. "Sure."
Cousin Sirah came closer. She glanced at the maton for a second, but quickly turned her attention to Denny. "Are you okay?" She pressed her hand against his forehead. "You don't look good."
Denny cleared his throat, trying to speak more clearly. "I'm fi... fine." He swayed a little on his feet. "Just tired. And thirsty."
Yulia was still staring at the wrapped form of the silver ball. "How does this work?" she asked. "Did you put the memory inside? Does it talk?"
It was Cousin Sirah who answered. "Why don't we let Denny go to his compartment, get some water, take a shower, and change clothes? Then we can all talk."
Yulia frowned, she raised one hand, as if she were going to reach for the maton, but her hand stopped short. "Well..."
Denny nodded in relief. "Thanks," he said, pulling back the maton.
"You look like you need it," said Sirah. She wrinkled her nose. "Besides, you stink." She put her hands on Denny's shoulders and turned him toward his own door. "We'll see you when you're clean."
Denny was too tired to even laugh. He, palmed open the door, stumbled into his compartment, and dropped the maton to the floor with a thud.
Several times in the last year, water service to the human quarter had been interrupted. Thankfully, this wasn't one of those days. The water that flowed from the tap was warm, and it had an all too familiar rusty taste. It was absolutely delicious. Denny drank down two big glasses and started on a third before a grumble in his stomach warned him to slow down. Then he stripped the dirty remains of his clothing and literally fell into the douser. He lay there on the floor, letting the hot water pound him, until the ration allowance alarm sounded and the douser slowed to a trickle.
Even then, he had trouble getting on his feet. His right hand, the one that had been holding the maton in the warehouse, ached as if it had been pounded by a hammer, his legs shook. He had clutched the maton several times getting home from the domed building, so he could ask Athena which way to go, or what to do, without drawing the attention of the cithians. Every time there had been that burst of pain, and every time he let go of the maton, he had felt more drained. Denny thought about what the green woman had said, about the possibility of long term damage. He thought maybe he had already touched the thing for too long.
Still, by the time he had climbed out of the douser and gotten into some clothes that had only a few holes in them, Denny felt better. He fished around in the front storage bin, found a half block of chez, and carried it into the front room. He had not stood in the line for food that morning. Or the morning before. The old chez had turned a darker shade of orange, and was a little leathery, but it tasted more or less the same as always.
In the old days, before so many people had been consigned, the cithians might have noticed when a human failed to show up for food two days in a row, they might have even sent someone around to check on him, but now they didn't really seem to care. Still, if the cithians found the discarded shell and the human clothing, wouldn't they come looking for the person who had been inside the shell? And if they did, might one of them remember that there was one human who had not turned up for his food on that day?
Denny sat down on the floor next to the maton and leaned back against the wall. He touched the silver ball with the toe of his shoe, moving it slowly across the thin rug. When Loma had told him about the maton, it had seemed very important that he find one, but now that he had it, he wasn't sure what to do next. Loma had said there was a lot more in the memory than the pictures of the sick people. He supposed Athena was part of that “lot more.” Maybe she was all of it. To Denny, it seemed impossible that something like Athena cold fit into the little cube of memory, much less leave room for other things.
He gave the little ball another soft kick and watched it wobble over the floor. He could pick it up, and maybe ask Athena what else was in there with her, but it would hurt again. And he would be tired. And... and... and...
Denny struggled up out of darkness and confusion. It took him a moment to realize that he had fallen asleep and the lights had turned themselves off. He raised up on one elbow and waved his other arm to make the light wake up. The yellowish glow sputtered into life. For a moment, he couldn't think what had pulled him out of sleep, then there was a rap at the door.
"Denny?" said a muffled voice. "Are you all right?"
He struggled to his feet, still feeling a deep ache in both his hands and his legs. He meant to open the door and step out, but he'd barely palmed the lock before the door swung open and Sirah stepped inside. Her lips were pressed together firmly, and she had and expression on her face that reminded Denny of Auntie Talla. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Nothing happened." Denny rubbed at his eyes. "I just fell asleep."
Cousin Yulia appeared at the door and looked past Sirah's shoulder. "Is he all right?" she asked, as if Denny had never spoken at all.
Sirah still had her eyes fixed on Denny's face. "He says he's fine," she said, "but he doesn't look fine." She stepped aside to let Yulia in. Now they were both standing in Denny's front room, staring at Denny.
Denny suddenly felt both a little angry and a lot embarrassed. Angry, because neither of the two girls seemed to be listening to him. Embarrassed, because no one had been in his compartment in a long time, not since all the way back to when his father had been consigned. It wasn't that Denny was embarrassed because the room was so messy. Really it wasn't. He was embarrassed because the room, the whole compartment, was so empty. Everything Denny owned, everything but rest of his father's statues, were gone.
Still, neither Yulia or Sirah said a thing about the compartment as they came inside. Yulia spotted the maton on the floor and immediately walked over to look down at it. Sirah only kept looking at Denny so hard that it made Denny feel uncomfortable.
"What's wrong?" he said.
Sirah tilted her head to the side and continued to study him. "That's what I want to know. You look sick."
"Well, I'm not sick. I'm okay. Really."
Yulia reached down to pick up the maton. "How does this..."
Denny jumped quickly to get between her and the silver ball. "You have to be careful," he said.
"I'm not going to break it," Yulia said.
"It's not that. It's..." Denny shrugged. "When you touch it, it kind of hurts."
"Hurts?" She looked past Denny at the small device. "Like tingles?"
"Like hurts," said Denny. "Really hurts." He leaned over and picked up the maton, being careful to keep the scrap of cloth wrapped around it. He tried to remember what the voice had said the first time he touched the maton. "It's a... noodle interest?" He shrugged again. "Something like that."
Yulia's forehead creased in puzzlement. "Noodle?" She shook her head. "I don't know what that means."
Sirah finally stopped looking at Denny long enough to look at the little ball in his hand. The look she gave the silver thing was no nicer than the one she had been giving Denny. "If it hurts, are you sure you're using it right?"
"Yes," said Denny. "I mean... I think so."
Yulia bit her lip. "Maybe I should try it."
Denny nodded slowly. There was no reason he could think of to keep Yulia from using the maton, but something made him feel like he shouldn't. "Maybe I should ask," he said.
"Ask who?"
"Athena."
Both Yulia and Sirah looked at him with puzzled expressions. "Who?"
"Athena. She's..." Denny searched for the right words, and realized he didn't know or couldn't remember the right words to tell them what Athena was. He took a deep breath. "Wait a minute."
Slowly, he started to retell the events of the previous day, starting with putting on the disguise and walking through the city to the domed building. Sirah seemed to be shocked at what he had done, and even Yulia's eyes were wide as Denny talked about going into the building and talking to the unseen voice. As he talked Denny first leaned against the wall, then slowly lowered himself to the floor. By the time he finished telling them about using Athena's directions to escape the building, all three of them were sitting on the thin rug.
Sirah had her hands locked tightly together and a horrified expression on her face. "Denny! I can't... I mean, you... What if you'd been caught?"
Denny shrugged. "They would probably have just consigned me. And we're all about to be consigned anyway."
"You don't know that," said Sirah. She scooted toward him, her knees wrinkling the surface of the rug. "They could have done anything."
"Well, I didn't get caught."
The answer didn't seem to make Sirah any happier. "Yet," was all she said.
Cousin Yulia had moved to lean against the opposite wall, but her eyes were still fixed on the little sphere in Denny's hand. "Every time you use the maton, it hurts," she said.
Denny looked away from Sirah and nodded. "A lot."
"And if you keep using it?"
"The big pain stops, but after awhile you start getting tired. Athena says that it can cause..." Denny stopped, both because he couldn't remember the green woman's exact words, and because using the maton to get home didn't really seem to have made him sick. Not so sick that a little rest couldn’t handle it. ”Well, it makes you really tired. You're not supposed to use it too much."
Yulia nodded. "That sounds like a really good reason that more than one person should use it."
"I don't..."
She held out her hand. "You need to share the burden. Take turns. Let me try it."
Denny frowned, but after a moment he handed over the maton, still being careful to keep it wrapped in the bit of old shirt. "It really hurts. You might want to--"
Before he could finish the sentence, Yulia flipped back the cloth, reached down, and grabbed the silver ball firmly in her left hand. At once, her eyes flew open wide and her back arched. Her lips peeled back from her teeth. Her nostrils flared. Then it was over, and she relaxed, breathing hard.
Cousin Sirah slid around on the rug until she was sitting beside Denny, both of them facing toward Yulia. "Are you all right?"
Yulia took a moment to respond, but eventually she nodded. "I don't... No, wait." Her mouth turned up in a sudden smile. "Hello, Athena!"
Denny looked around the room for the green woman, but without the maton in hand, there was nothing to see. "Is she talking to you?"
Yulia nodded. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the center of the room. "Yes, hold on... She's telling me..." Yulia's head slowly turned from left to right, as if she was watching someone walk across the room. "Yes," she said. Then after a pause, "yes," again.
“What’s she doing?” asked Sirah.
“She can see Athena. We can’t.” Denny leaned forward. It was strange to watch Yulia talk to someone that was invisible to the rest of them. He found himself wishing he was the one talking to Athena. "Can you ask her if the cithians found the things I left by the dome?"
Yulia nodded without looking his way. "Athena, did the cithians... Wait." Her eyes flicked down toward Denny. "She can hear you, you just can't hear her. She says yes, the cithians found the stuff.”
Now Denny really did feel sick. He hadn’t expected the remains of his disguise to be found so quickly. "Do they know a human left them?"
There was a short delay before Yulia answered. "She's not sure." Another pause. "Athena only knows the things that the cithians have put into their central, um, central store. Somebody may know it was a human, but they haven't recorded it."
Sirah rocked forward, sitting on her knees. "You can really see someone?"
Yulia nodded. "A woman, just like Denny said, only she's not made of stone."
"She's not?"
"It's more like, like skin. Like she's real."
Denny wondered if Yulia was seeing the same thing he had. Maybe Athena had changed her appearance. Maybe she was different for everybody.
Yulia suddenly broke into a wide smile. "She knows my name."
Denny remembered when Athena had first spoken to him. "She knew mine too."
Sirah scooted forward again. "What about me? Does she know my name?"
Yulia looked at the center of the room, frowned, then turned to Sirah. "She says she does, but she has it wrong. She says your name is Ani... Anisyretta."
Cousin Sirah's mouth flew open. "It is!" she said. "That's the name my mother gave me. The name I used before—" She swallowed hard, then turned to look at Denny. "Sirah is just a nickname."
Denny was amazed to hear it. Sirah had always just been Sirah. Athena didn't just know how to find her way out of cithian buildings, she knew other things. Secret things. He grinned. "Athena," he said. "Do you know where to find some powdermilk?" he asked.
"Or crackers!" added Sirah. "Or..."
Yulia held up a finger to signal silence. "She says that human food...stuff? Foodstuff. Anyway, human food is kept in a building called maxillary two-fourteen.'
"Where is--"
"She says it's just outside the gate."
Denny clapped his hands together. "Tomorrow we feast!"
Yulia's usual nervous look returned. "Do you think we should?"
"Why not?" Denny said with a shrug. "Athena got me through the big storage building without getting caught. I'll bet she can tell us how to get away with some stupid crackers."
"Maybe," said Sirah. "But if there's human food missing from storage, won't the cithians know it was taken by humans?"
Denny had to admit that they would. "But what about something else? Athena knows about everything. What would you want if you could have anything?"
Sirah was slow to answer, but Yulia's face suddenly lit up. "I know what we should ask." She pulled in a deep breath and turned to the open space at the center of the room where the woman only she could see was standing. "Athena, do you know where we are going to be consigned? Will it be the same place as my parents?"
Denny found himself looking at the empty air, as if expecting an answer. It was only when he heard a strange sound, a sound not too far from a moan, that he looked back at Yulia. Her mouth was open. Her lip trembling.
"But..." she said. "No, but..."
Then she started to scream.
21
Yulia hurled the maton across the room with enough force to leave a dent in the thin wall of Denny's compartment. The silver ball fell to the floor, bounced, and rolled in a lopsided path to clink loudly into the side of one of Denny's father's metal scuptures.
"No!" Yulia shouted, her voice coming out with a raw force that sounded as if it would tear her throat. "She's lying!"
Sirah scrambled to her feet and rushed toward Yulia, but the other girl turned away from her, facing into the wall and throwing her arms over her head. "No," she said. "No." Her voice was muffled behind her hair and her arms, but it was still painfully ragged. After a moment, her back heaved up and down, and Denny heard her words turn into sobs.
"Did it hurt you?" asked Sirah. She pulled one of Yulia's hands away from her face and tugged open her fingers to look at her palm, as if expecting to see painful burns. Yulia only continued to sob.
Denny looked down at the maton. The silver surface still had prints showing on the surface from where Yulia's hand had been wrapped around it. He reached down and picked it up.
At once the pain ripped through him head to toe. If anything, it seemed worse than before. He had just enough time to think that if it went on any longer, it would kill him. Then the pain was gone and Athena was standing beside Yulia.
As Yulia had said, Athena no longer looked like she was made of stone. Or at least, not completely. The woman's robe now looked as if it was made from a pale cloth that bunched and hung against her legs. Her hair, pulled tightly behind her head, was a glossy black. Her skin was, kind of like skin, only she seemed milky pale. A color that Denny had never seen on a real human.
"Athena?"
The woman turned toward him. Despite how real the rest of her looked, her eyes were still as featureless and smooth as stone. Across the room, Yulia was still crying, but Athena's face was touched by the same slight smile that had been there since Denny first saw her. "Hello again, Denning."
"What did you tell Yulia?"
Athena tipped her head to one side. "She was asking about other humans."
Denny looked across the room toward Yulia. Touching the maton hurt, but Yulia had felt that pain like he had, and she hadn't screamed, or cried. Something that Athena had said had hurt her more than the agony that came from the machine. There was something here, a danger that Denny didn't fully understand, but one that he also couldn't avoid. "Yes," he said.
Athena looked at him with her stony eyes and her slight smiled. "I told her there were twelve."
"Twelve?"
"Twelve humans."
Denny took a moment to think, then nodded slowly. "In Jukal."
"Yes," said Athena. "Twelve humans in the Human Containment Facility, Jukal Plex, Rusk."
There was nothing wrong with what she said, but Denny still found that there was a tightness squeezing at his stomach, and a cold feeling in his arms and legs. "But that's just in Jukal. There are other towns."
"Yes," said Athena. "There are eight major complexes on each of the three major continents, each of them arranged to mimic the placement of limbs around the body of a cithian adult," said Athena. From somewhere, a simulated wind seemed to ruffle her simulated hair. "There are 432 smaller communities, chiefly on the southernmost continent."
Denny found he had to clear his throat before asking, "and how many humans?"
"Twelve," said Athena, her smile still the same. "There are twelve humans in the Human Containment Facility, Jukal Plex."
"And in other complexes?"
"There are no humans in other complexes," said the woman who wasn't there. "There are no other humans anywhere. There are only twelve."
22
Denny's tongue felt thick in his mouth. He was about to ask something more when an idea occurred to him. "You're wrong."
Athena didn't change her expression, but there was a quick blink of her center less eyes. "In what way?"
"There are thirteen people in Jukal," he said. With every word, he felt a little better. It was obvious Athena didn't know everything after all. If she could miss a human who was right here in the city, how could she know about people scattered around the world? "You forgot Loma."
"Paloma Azi," said Athena. "Was consigned on Tollsday, cycle 14, 237 PC."
"She was consigned?" The date Athena gave was the same as the last day Denny had seen Loma. They must have come for her right after Denny had left. "Consigned where?"
"The Jukal Plex Human Containment Facility is the terminal node."
Denny had never heard this phrase before, and he wanted to reply that he didn't know what Athena meant. But he did. He really did. "They killed her."
"Yes."
"And my father?"
"Carrel Ellitson was consigned on Passday, cycle 22, 234 PC." Athena never stopped smiling.
“Consigned… where?”
"The Jukal Plex Human Containment Facility is the terminal node."
Denny didn't notice that he was falling until his knees came down hard against the floor. There was pain, but that seemed like a distant thing. Across the room, Yulia was saying something to Sirah, but that might have been something happening in another compartment, in another building, in another plex, on a different planet. Sirah turned toward him and took a step, but slowly... everything was moving so slowly.
On the floor the little metal figure his father had made still sat in its usual place, with its tiny metal fist raised above its head, and its tiny metal body caught in middle of a motion Denny couldn't name. He had always thought that one day he would be able to to give the metal figure back to his father. Then his father would know that Denny remembered him, had waited to be with him, had thought about him. But now the metal things–the little figure, the curved shapes that stood beside the bed, the taller, jangly piece that sat in the far corner–they were all there was. All that was left of his father.
Denny wished that he had never sold one of the pieces to Poppa Jam, never bought the shell and the heavy cloth for his disguise, never taken the maton. Never talked to Old Loma. He wished that the chug had never dropped its awful little purpley cube into his box. If none of that had happened, Denny's father would still be dead, but at least Denny wouldn't know.
Something moved in front of him. Denny's eyes seemed to have a hard time focusing.
"Denny?" A voice. Sirah's voice.
"We're all that's left," he said. "Just us."
"I know," said Sirah. Her voice was raw. "Yulia said the same thing. But there's something else we need to worry about."
Denny blinked. He realized that his eyes were full of tears. "How can there be anything else?"
"It's what Omi said. Do you remember? Last week at restaurant."
It was hard to think, but Denny dragged his mind back to Omi–silly Omi and his plastic shell, Omi who had always liked human music and human dancing and human food. Moments before, it had been the world that seemed to run slowly, but now it was Denny's mind. Just thinking of something other than the words Athena had just said to him was like lifting something very heavy. "Omi said... he said." And then he remembered. That tight feeling came back to his guts. "He said we were all going to be consigned."
Sirah nodded. "He said we were all going to be consigned soon."
23
Denny took the ground transport to the spaceport. At first the little stop by the quarter was empty, and when the first transport stopped Denny stepped inside and took a spot near the viewport at the front of the pod. At the last minute, just as the transport was about to leave, a cithian male hurried down the ramp and slipped through the doors. He turned his broad eye pads toward Denny, clearly expecting him to get up and leave.
Denny stayed in his seat.
The cithian thumped one of its clangers against the thick side of its heavy shell. Denny noticed that the shell was notched at several points. If he thought about it, be could probably have figured out the cithian's rank. He didn't try.
The clangers sounded again as the doors of the train slid closed and the little compartment began to move. In the enclosed space, the sound of the cithian's warning rose from a rapid pounding into a buzz that made Denny's ears ache. The cithian stepped toward him. Denny knew that the cithan was much stronger than him. The manipulators on the heavy forelimbs could have thrown him across the car. The razor edges of its mid-limbs could slash at him. Could kill him. Denny stayed in his seat.
The cithian loomed over him, close enough that Denny could see the bright light of Whetsday shining through the translucent red-black edges of its shell. Close enough to smell it's powdery, sweetish smell. Then the big cithian backed away. It moved to the rear half of the pod and settled onto the cithian-sized bench. "Where is your respect?" the cithian asked. There was a tone of disgust in its voice.
Denny didn't reply.
24
By the time Denny reached the spaceport, the two suns were touching. Under his feet the sidewalk was so hot that it burned through the soles of his shoes and his shadow was touched by purplish fringes. As he approached the door of the port, Denny wished that he was not alone. This would have been much easier if Sirah or Yulia had been with him. But Yulia had gone to tell those who were there at the compartment buildings–Auntie Flash, Poppa Gow, Nonni Hanti, Auntie Yue and Auntie Fro. Sirah had gone to the market to find Auntie Talla. If she got back in time, she would also be the one to tell Poppa Jam and Cousin Haw–if they told them at all.
Back at Denny's compartment, when Athena's words were still sinking in, they had argued about who to tell. Sirah had said that they needed to tell everyone, right away. It was only fair to warn people about what was really coming.
Yulia has said they shouldn't tell anyone, because the cithians might learn that they knew. And once they learned that the humans knew, they would start to wonder how they knew. Besides, she said, there was nothing they could do. If they were all about to be consigned, better everyone didn't know what that meant. It would only make everyone upset.
Despite how much Denny might have wished that he didn't know himself, he had eventually agreed with Sirah. If they were all going to be consigned–killed, consigned meant killed–in just a few days, then there was really nothing to be afraid of. If the cithians found out that Denny had gone to their storage facility and taken a maton, if they found out he knew things he shouldn't know... they might take him away sooner, but it would not be all that much sooner. In the end, he just couldn't imagine not telling everyone. If they said nothing, there would be people boxing up their things on consignment day, hoping to see long missing parents, or children, or spouses. Denny didn't think he could stand by and watch them, knowing how it was all going to end.
Denny paused only a moment at the door of the spaceport. Outside it was hot and the light of the two suns seemed ready to set his hair on fire, but at least the air wasn't too bad. He took a deep breath, and plunged inside.
Inside, it was so much cooler that Denny shivered. Even before he took a breath, the sharp tang of ammonia bit at his nose. He knew it was only a tiny amount, just enough to flavor the air for those races that really needed it, but almost immediately Denny's eyes began to water and his nose began to run. He didn't know how Kettle could stand working in this place all day.
He passed a pair of skynx talking together near the door. Like skynx everywhere, they pretty much ignored him. The same could not be said of the dasiks. Denny was only a dozen steps inside the building before a lesser dasik appeared. Its long face had the same no-expression as every other dasik, but the way it held one long clawed hand near a stunstik across its chest, made the creature's mood pretty clear. It tapped a button that said, "State your business."
"I need to talk to Kettle."
The long finger tapped again. "This statement was not understood."
"Cousin Kettle," said Denny. He paused to cough as the bitter air burned in his throat. "The human who works here."
The dasik clicked its teeth together. "Boarding area three," said the little talking button on the dasik's jacket.
Denny slipped around the dasik. Each of the boarding areas was lined with cushioned benches. In the first area, a pair of klickiks were sprawled on the benches, apparently asleep. The second area was empty. In the third area, three skynx were waiting. One of them had a water bottle that he used to spray himself with a mist. The other two looked miserable.
Do they know? Denny wondered. Did every cithian, every skynx, every person of every race, know that there were only a few humans left? Did they have a part in it?
On the other side of the waiting skynx, Denny saw Cousin Kettle. Kettle was pushing a low cart stacked with boxes. From the way Kettle moved, Denny could tell the boxes were heavy.
Kettle pushed the cart up to the three skynx and stopped. For several seconds, he just stood there. Finally, one of the skynx, the one with the water bottle, fished in a small pouch and came out with a green token. It flipped the token toward Kettle, who caught it out of the air.
"Thank you," he said. Kettle had just started to turn away, when he saw Denny. At once, a frown settled over Kettle's face. He folded his arms across his chest. "The day is barely started," he said. "If you want to ride home with me, you've got a long wait."
Denny shook his head. “That’s not why I'm here about."
Kettle turned, looking back up the hall toward the second area where one of the dasiks was standing. "It will have to wait. You're going to get me in trouble."
"We're kind of already in trouble," said Denny. "All of us."
"Earth, Denny." Kettle's frown deepened. "What did you do?"
"It's not me, it's..." Denny glanced at the trio of skynx. One of them had raised it low head. Its big, slitted eyes were looking their way. Maybe the skynx knew they were the last few humans, and that the last few were about to be killed. Maybe they didn't. In either case, it seemed important that the skynx not hear what Denny was about to say. Denny took Kettle by the arm and drew him toward the corner of the loading area. They went only a few steps before Kettle wrenched his arm free.
"What's going on?"
Denny opened his mouth to tell him, then realized that he didn’t know where to start. He couldn't think of anything to say, any place to begin, that didn't sound ridiculous. Finally, he decided that there was nothing to do but charge straight in. "They're going to kill us."
"Who is?"
Denny took a quick look over his shoulder. How could was skynx' hearing? "The cithians," he said quietly.
Kettle rolled his eyes. "What did you do this time? Did you grab extra cheez at line-up?"
"It's nothing like that. Nothing I did." Except, of course, for disguising himself as a moltling, sneaking into a cithian storehouse and sneaking off with a maton, but Denny didn't want to get into that. "I mean they're really, really going to kill us. Actually kill us. Dead. The cithians."
Kettle's angry expression tipped towards confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"It's when we're consigned," said Denny. "They don't actually send us to another place like they've always said. They just... They...." Thoughts of his father rushed in again, and Denny found he had to sniff back tears. Then he realized that he was crying in front of Kettle and he turned away, wiping at his eyes with the back of his arm. "They just kill us. Kill everybody."
"Who told you that?" asked Kettle. “Somebody is lying to you.”
Denny started to answer, then only shrugged. “They’re not. I wish it was a lie, but It’s real. Only it’s kind of a long story."
Kettle stared over his shoulder. "I can't talk any more right now. Go outside. Wait for me."
Looking back, Denny saw that two of the dasiks were approaching. One of them was the one Denny had met near the door. His long, clawed fingers were again lingering near his stunstik.
All of the skynx raised their heads to look at him as Denny went past. One of the dasiks pressed the button that said "leave this area immediately," but Denny was already past him before the button was through. He was almost to the door when a deep, buzzing voice spoke from his right.
"This is the one," it said. "Human!"
Denny stopped and turned. The two klickiks were looking at him. With their hard shiny faces and hard shiny eyes, Denny couldn't read their expressions, but they held their manipulator arms high in a way he knew meant they were interested in something.
"Yes?" said Denny.
"You are the one." The klickik raised and lowered its crest then flicked a red arm toward the door to the sidewalk. "You are the human who dances."
"Yes."
"Do this," said the klickik. "Do the human dancing." One of it's other arms dipped down into a pouch in the side of it's body and came back up immediately. It flipped a small collection of green tokens that landed on the hard floor by Denny's feet.
He was sure then. He was sure that all them, every traveller coming through the spaceport, every cithian in the plex, every skynx or chug or klickik. Everyone everywhere. They knew that they humans were down to a tiny few, and that soon they would be gone. The klickik wanted him to dance, because it didn't want to miss it's last chance to see a human doing a human thing.
Denny had never felt less like dancing. Under the hard stare of the klickik’s huge silvery eyes, he found that his own eyes were leaking again. Tears were running down his cheek, dripping from the point of his chin. Some of it was the bitter air inside the space port. Most of it wasn't. Denny didn't bother to wipe the tears away.
Slowly, he started to move his feet. Slower still, he started to wave his arms.
"Home," he sang. "Chariot take me home." And he danced. “Grace, how sweet the sound.”
25
It was much later, after the two suns had come apart and Denny once again had a pair of different colored shadows, when Kettle came out of the spaceport. Denny had expected him to be angry. To show up with his arms folded and his face screwed up in that "you're embarrassing me" look. But Kettle came through the foggy doors of the port and walked straight up to him.
"This is real, isn't it?" he asked.
Denny nodded. And then, starting with the chug and his little purple cube, Denny told Cousin Kettle everything that had happened.
When he was done, the two of them sat on the sidewalk, beside the row of dots that led to the ground transport, and starred at the hot ground. Some cithians passed by, and a group of skynx, but no one asked Denny to dance. Which was good.
Finally, after a long silence, Kettle stood up and brushed his hands across the back of his uniform pants. He had said nothing about Denny's story, and he still didn't. But it was obvious he believed it all. "I have to go inside. There's a cargo shuttle to load."
Denny stood and nodded. "I guess I'll go back to the quarter."
Kettle started to turn, then turned back. "You want to come with me?" He shrugged. "I suppose it doesn't really matter if the dasiks are mad at me now."
Together they walked back into the port and Denny winced again at the bite of ammonia in the air. Kettle saw him blinking and gave a quid laugh. "You get used to it."
No I won't, thought Denny. There's not time to get used to anything. But he didn't say that aloud.
They went past the first four waiting areas. This late in the day, all but one of the bays were empty. In that one, a tight group of cithians were sitting together. Denny thought one of them might have been the big official he upset in the transport pod, but if he was, the cithian didn't say anything as they went past.
In the fifth area, there were a dozen of the little carts like the one Kettle had been pushing earlier. "Help me with this, and we'll both leave when it's done."
Denny helped Kettle attach three of the carts together, like a little train, then they pulled them out onto the hot tarmac. A shuttle waited, no more than a hundred steps or so from the doors. As they got closer, Denny realized the ships were much larger than he had thought. The doors at the base of the shuttle were big enough to drive three road ferries through, side by side. The room beyond those doors would have held a whole floor of Denny's compartment building, and had space for another floor above that. There were already many boxes and containers stacked in the big room when they came up the ramp with the short train of carts. Kettle called a halt in the middle of the space and directed Denny in where they should stack the contents.
Above them ramps and walkways extended into the gloom.
"Does the pilot sit up there?" asked Denny.
Kettle shook his head. "There is no pilot." He lifted a heavy box, turned around, and sat it on top of another. "These things aren't like picture book space ships. They're just shuttles."
"But who flies it?"
"There's a kind of maton," said Kettle. "You tell it where you want to go, and it goes." He shrugged. "They're all pretty much the same."
Denny stepped away from the supplies and walked over to the bottom of the nearest ramp. He could see that there were lights up there. Some kind of rooms. "Where does it go?"
"Anywhere. See this is really only half a shuttle. Not even that much." Kettle held his hands up together. "The two parts fly together between planetary systems. Then, when they get close to where they are going." He took one hand and slowly lowered it. "This part drops off and lands, leaving the star drive–which is really the bigger part–in orbit."
Denny had seen a thousand shuttles come and go, and seen people from many worlds walk past. "Kettle, where can this thing go?"
"Anywhere," said Kettle. Then he looked at Denny, and Denny looked back, and for the first time that day, he smiled.
It’s a shame that the size of the images on the screen keeps you from seeing all the details hidden in Amy’s images. See that image up top? That’s just a part of the larger image embedded in an (unfortunately) smaller size below.
Here. I’m going to squeeze in a few partial images so you can get a better sense of the whole thing.
I swear, if I can figure out the best way to do it, I’m going to do an art show of all the stuff Amy and Brian have put together for this project. I’m completely over the moon (and the planet Rask) for this stuff.
Oh, and remember, you’re supposed to be wearing your cithian mask and sending in photos of cithians infesting the world. So get crawling. In case you haven’t been on the ball, here’s another copy of the mask which you can download and fit to your face.
Don’t forget the audio podcast version. It’s running a week behind the text, mostly because of me. But that makes this an excellent chance to catch up.