The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis 2 Page 10

  The aliens seemed familiar with Odran’s dining hall as they tapped little pieces of yellowed glass on the floor with their feet. Small individual tables grew out of the floor and clustered together in the center. It seemed as if each alien was waiting for the others to sit first. They paraded about the room, admiring the art but never making eye contact with any of us.

  Odran entered the room as another alien came rushing in.

  “I hope I’m not too late,” the tall alien said, and tapped the floor, taking his seat immediately. The others still lingered, each wanting to be the last Citizen to sit down, I supposed. “You understand,” the late guest added. “Council business.”

  “Yes, Hach. Do share with us. Something exciting, I imagine,” Odran gushed in an overly pleasant tone I’d never heard him use before.

  “Odran, you know better than that,” Hach replied. “Just because you covet a position on the Trading Council doesn’t mean I’m allowed to share details with you.” His tone was teasing but diplomatic.

  Odran concentrated on the small O-dat mounted on his table.

  “Sorry, Hach, I didn’t hear you. The kitchen needed my attention.”

  Hach smiled. This seemed like a game to him. The alien removed his thick brown jacket and handed it to one of the kids. He wore a belt that looked like it was made of stones or maybe glass. I couldn’t tell. The Orbis emblem decorated the clasp.

  “I was just asking you how it was going with the Samirans. I understand there was a bit of trouble,” he said.

  Another alien, a female covered completely in black except where her pale white face poked through, spoke up. “I really don’t understand what all the trouble is. They are still knudniks, aren’t they? Or has something changed that I am not aware of?”

  Grace and another child entered the hall balancing small bowls of something burnt and brown. Grace placed a bowl on the table of the pale alien, who nibbled at the greasy appetizer as she spoke. “And please, do not preach to me about the importance of their work. I do not need to be reminded again that this is the rotation of the Harvest. Can’t they simply be punished and we be done with this nonsense?”

  The alien tossed the carcass of what she was eating on the floor. Odran motioned for Theodore to pick it up, which he did.

  “What do I do with it now?” Theodore whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “Odran needs some of Weegin’s scavenger-bots.”

  “I think that’s what we’re here for.”

  Hach responded to the pale alien’s comments by saying, “Punish them, Pheitt? How do you propose that we punish a Samiran?”

  Pheitt only sniffed the air. “Those are details beyond my concern,” she said.

  “Well, maybe a solution to the problem would be a little more helpful to the Rings of Orbis,” Hach replied. Pheitt sniffed again and dug into the bowl, throwing the smallest pieces to the floor. I think Hach rolled his eyes, but it was a little hard to tell since he didn’t have pupils.

  “What sort of solution have you come up with, Odran?” said another alien with thin shoulders and a very broad nose. Grace reentered the room with more plates of food and placed them on the tables.

  “Well, you do know that it was I who summoned the Softwire. The Keepers were against it, but I insisted.”

  What a liar, I thought.

  “You will find no one on the rings more concerned about the well-being of Orbis than myself,” he continued.

  “Yes,” Hach replied. “You have reminded us many times.”

  “The Samirans know that their work rule is ending. They’re simply holding us hostage,” Odran said. He did not mention Ketheria’s discovery of the unborn Samiran.

  “But certainly you’ve devised an alternative manner in which to cool the crystals? With all the glory of Orbis at your fingertips, you should have come up with something by now,” Hach said, his tone slightly accusatory.

  “I’ve been working on it for a very long time,” Odran said slowly, dipping into his tank’s solution. “It is not that simple. I do not possess the boundless resources of your mining businesses.”

  “What else have you been working on?” Hach asked Odran, almost as if he were baiting him.

  “With the Harvest approaching so rapidly, I’ve had time for nothing else.”

  “I think we should simply extend their work rule,” said another alien, seemingly unaware of the tension between Hach and Odran. “I mean look at the damage Toll caused in his last outburst. Who will pay for that?”

  Without thinking, I interrupted. “You can’t do that,” I said. “They’ve worked here for almost two thousand rotations. It’s not fair.”

  The room fell silent. Pheitt looked at Odran, who glared at me.

  “Knudniks should be seen and not heard,” he said. The edge in his voice cut straight through the slime in his tank.

  “Such an outburst,” Pheitt mumbled to the alien on her right.

  The alien with the thin shoulders shook his head and said, “I feel for you, Odran. I gave my knudnik an Ebolo to play with, and the thing ate it. The knudnik couldn’t work for two phases! Apparently he was allergic to it. How are we supposed to know these things?”

  “It really is a nuisance sometimes,” said Odran, looking at me.

  Did they not know we were standing right behind them? Maybe they just didn’t care. This only made me want to prove them wrong even more.

  “One knudnik had the nerve to refuse the skin I ordered for her. She claimed it was against her religion. And under my own roof. I don’t know why we put up with it sometimes,” Pheitt said, and shuddered. “I avoid the very ground they walk on.”

  Hach took his plate and dumped it at Pheitt’s feet, splashing a little gristle on her black gown. “Pheitt, will you get that for me?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?” she replied.

  “Pick that up for me and throw it in the garbage, will you?”

  “Touch the trash? Have you lost your mind, Council Member?”

  “No, but apparently the Citizens of the Rings of Orbis have lost the ability to clean up after themselves. You made these creatures what they are,” he said, pointing at us. “I doubt they stood around waiting for your crap to hit the floor on their home planet.”

  Hach stood up, grabbed his jacket, and flung it over his shoulders.

  “Odran, thank you for your hospitality, but I must leave. I have a knudnik to beat,” he said.

  Odran moved away from his table. “But I was hoping we could discuss —”

  But Hach cut him off. “I am well aware of your desire to sit on the Trading Council, Odran. But as much as you try to avoid them, there are procedures that must be followed. I’m sorry, but it is really out of my hands.”

  Odran glanced at the other guests. I don’t think he wanted Hach to be so public about his intentions.

  “I like that guy,” I whispered to Theodore as Hach left.

  “Clean up his mess,” Odran ordered.

  Two cycles after the dinner party, almost every one of the kids displayed some sort of cut or bruise from their chores, and Max was still not back. Odran’s screen scrolls arrived and I rounded everyone up to announce the cycle’s work.

  “We have to face those creatures again?” Grace said.

  “It says here every other cycle,” I informed her after reading the scroll. “But maybe I can finish early and come by to help.” I quickly scanned the list of chores Odran had ready for me. It was a lot of work.

  “Don’t bother,” Switzer snapped, snatching the screen scroll from me. “You’ve done enough already. Thanks to you, I’m starving now. Go play with the fish.” It was the first thing he had said to me since our incident.

  “Really, Switzer, I want to help,” I said, but I could see something behind Switzer’s eyes, something different, like he just didn’t care anymore.

  “I said don’t bother.”

  I stood there and watched them file out.

  “Be careful, Ketheria,” I said,
and my sister just smiled. Someway, somehow, she simply accepted it. I wished I knew how she did it.

  After they left, I scanned my scroll again to look at my work. There was a map to the location of a supply room and an illustrated list of tools I needed. This was followed by a step-by-step diagram of some first-aid procedure.

  “Uplink,” I whispered to myself, and the contents of the scroll came rushing toward me. Now that every single detail was stored in my brain, I set off to find the tools I needed.

  The building that housed Odran and the Samirans was truly immense. Besides the enormous cooling tank, there seemed to be room after room of nothing. I called up the map in my mind’s eye and followed it to the storage room, passing through many empty rooms. The Ancients had built the building, but whatever they had used it for was beyond me.

  With my work list tucked neatly inside my cortex, I entered the storage room and scanned the rows of glass-doored shelves. With each step, the floor and ceiling between the rows of items glowed pale blue. Behind one door I saw a small glass container of what looked like tiny fingers. I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

  The room reeked of medicines. I located the items on my list, and each time the door opened easily. Must be my skin, I thought. But who programmed that? There were too many items for me to carry, so I ordered one of the cart-bots to transport the items back to the cooling tank. The little robot, loaded with all of my supplies, followed obediently. I looked over my shoulder as it hovered behind me.

  “We have a lot in common, you know,” I said, but the metal machine did not respond. It was too busy doing its work. Is that how the Citizens look at us? I wondered. I wanted to prove them wrong, that we were worth more than that, but I just couldn’t figure out how. Did they even appreciate a job well done, or was that simply expected from us?

  I reached the cooling tank and waited for my cart-bot to use a utility chute to reach the top. How am I going to contact Toll? I wondered. Then I remembered the information I had uplinked earlier. I was to strike the edge of the tank with one long tap and two short ones. That was the strange thing about uploading information before reading it. I often answered my own questions.

  Nestled into a notch in the railing was the metal rod Odran used to contact Toll. On the edge of the tank was a small depression in the metal rim just above the crystal lights. I knelt down and felt it. It was more of a button.

  I stood up and grasped the metal staff in my right hand and struck the button. Where was Toll and how did he receive the signal? Maybe it created a vibration through the water that only Toll could understand. I looked out over the huge body of water for some sign of the Samiran. While I waited, I unloaded the supplies off the cart-bot — four ten-liter pails, a rubber jacket with some sort of metal harness, and several large application brushes. The brushes stood taller than me.

  “Hello, Johnny Turnbull.”

  I spun around and saw Toll floating at the edge of the tank. He must have finished pulling the purple crystal that had arrived the other cycle.

  I immediately noticed a long red gash near the corner of Toll’s huge mouth.

  “You’re hurt,” I said. The cut must have been as deep as my fist and three times as long as my arm.

  “The ropes are too close to the edge of the bit sometimes. It is a hazard I endure.”

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing at two dark-purple platforms on each side of Toll’s body.

  “These are for you. Put that jacket on. The magnetic straps connect to my harness ropes. They use a small charge to move with you. I will hold very still while you get on,” he said.

  “Get on? You mean I’m going to climb onto those things?”

  “Were you not instructed on the procedure?”

  “Yeah,” I said as I accessed the illustrated instructions I had uplinked earlier. I was getting on that thing, and I was taking the pails and the brushes with me. Then I was going to apply the salve in those buckets onto that nasty gash. I could hardly believe my own thoughts.

  “Put the buckets on first. Use the locks provided for them on the platform.”

  “All this technology here and this is how they help you?” I grabbed one of the heavy ten-liter buckets.

  As the instructions said, I put the jacket on last. Toll positioned himself close to the edge, and I reached out to grab the harness.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” I asked Toll. I did not want to touch the tank water.

  “Purrfeckly,” Toll said from under the water.

  “What if I fall in?”

  Toll lifted a little out of the water. “You won’t,” he said.

  And I didn’t. Once on the platform, I attached the safety strap to the harness and secured the buckets.

  “Hold on,” Toll said, and with a great heave he lifted himself to the edge of the tank. His hands grasped the edge of the tank, lifting me at least four meters above the water line. The platform I stood on automatically leveled off.

  “You may begin,” Toll said.

  I cracked the computerized seal on the first bucket, and the lid disappeared. Inside was a pale blue cream, thick and smooth. I dunked the brush into the ointment and moved toward Toll’s wound.

  “Wow. Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I’d seen Toll’s skin before, but never up close like this. It looked like a wet rock, bumpy and crevassed, but where the rope cut in was soft pink tissue just like a human. The deep crack ran from Toll’s mouth, where the bit sat, and extended back for about two meters. The crack was wide enough to stick my head in, and it was bleeding and infected. I took the brush and stuck it in the wound. Toll shook.

  “Sorry,” I said, and proceeded to go more slowly. I sat on the platform with my knees against Toll and painted his wound with the brush. I will have to use all four pails, I thought.

  “Why do you pull the crystals if it causes you so much pain?” I asked.

  “I have no choice. The survival of my species depends on it,” he said. “The planet of Samira is a water planet. At one time we swam our world at the top of the food chain. We built great cities underwater, and our population reached the billions. Then the Arelions came. They hunted us for food, building huge colonies above the water and using technologies we could not hide from. For centuries they ruthlessly pillaged our planet.”

  “Why didn’t you fight back?”

  “It was not our way. We had no capacity to fight. We never needed one. We attacked their structures, but they just built more. We tried to hide, but they found us. There was nothing we could do. We were heading toward extinction.”

  “What did you do?” I asked. My problems suddenly seemed to pale in comparison to Toll’s.

  “The Arelions captured several Samirans alive, which they displayed on their home planet. A softwire, like yourself, saw them and encoded them with an implant. After some work, my fellow Samiran told him everything.”

  “A softwire? You mean a Space Jumper?” I asked.

  “Yes. The Space Jumpers were aware of the damage the Arelions were causing on our planet. He offered us a deal.”

  “A deal? To be a slave on Orbis?”

  “The Space Jumper said they would take two Samirans from the planet and bring them to the oceans on Orbis. In exchange we would work for two thousand rotations on the ring.”

  “Two thousand rotations!”

  “Samirans can live for hundreds of thousand of rotations. It was a small price to pay for such a great gift,” Toll said. I felt his huge body shiver as I went too deep with the brush.

  “Sorry.”

  “We did not have the technology to leave our planet. The Arelions would have slaughtered every last one of us. Our great race would have disappeared.”

  “So you agreed?”

  “The Space Jumpers battled ruthlessly with the Arelions to get myself and Smool off the planet. They did not want to give up even two Samirans. It was brutal, but the Space Jumpers were successful.”

  “And n
ow you are here.”

  “For a thousand rotations we worked in this tank with the Space Jumpers before they were banished. That is how I met your father,” Toll said.

  My father?

  Toll said it as if it was no big deal, as if it was common knowledge.

  I put the brush down and just sat there. The words repeated in my head. My father.

  How? It’s impossible, my mind told me.

  “There is no way you could have known my father,” I said, and suddenly I felt anger. “Why would you say that, Toll? Why would you say you knew my father?”

  “I’m surprised this angers you,” Toll replied. “I will not talk about it any further.”

  I applied the ointment, but I did not speak to Toll. Why was I so angry? Was Toll playing a trick on me? It was not the first time, however, that someone from Orbis had mentioned my father. Madame Lee made similar remarks, but I could only assume that she was lying. That’s what she did.

  There was a chain ladder that ran across the top of Toll’s head and down to the platform on the other side. As I finished with one wound, I crawled across to the other, dragging the bucket with me. I made another trip for the brush.

  My father died on the Renaissance. My father was human. I had told this to myself many times after Madame Lee claimed to know my father, too. She also said he was a Space Jumper. I didn’t believe her either. But what if she was right? Space Jumpers were ruthless enforcers that guarded the Keepers. I had seen one before. How could my father be a Space Jumper? There are no human Space Jumpers. Space Jumpers are aliens.

  I sat in the harness and continued my chore.

  “Your father sat there once doing the exact same thing you’re doing,” Toll said, breaking the silence.

  “You’re talking about it again.”

  “Do you not wish to learn of this?” Toll asked.

  “My father was a human that died on the space flight here. There is no way he could have been on Orbis a thousand rotations ago,” I told him.