He thought about letting Boon Round in on the secret, then decided not to. Boon Round reversed the old saying that misery loves company. Boon Round’s company could easily
be
misery.
So Joel hummed to himself. ‘Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Joel, happy birthday to me.’
When he came out of the shower, he went straight to the medifac and dialled up a couple of stay-awake pills. He wasn’t going to sleep with the XCs on board.
Six
Day Twelve: 14 June 2153
The world was dead, and looked it; an ashen, powdery grey-black like the remains of a fire on a wind-swept hillside. Joel had stood at the windows of spacecraft and gazed upon the Roving and Earth, and he had basked in the warmth of the bright blues and greens reflected back at him. Looking at the approaching drab sphere before him, he shivered.
‘How are our guests?’ he said without looking away.
Boon Round glanced at the display which showed the interior of the airlock.
‘Still asleep,’ he said.
Eventually the two XCs had hunkered down on their haunches at the back of the cabin, rocking very slowly from side to side. Their eyes were open but a cautious hand waved in front of them produced no response. Joel had wondered if this was the long sleep he had heard about or just a kind of resource-saving semi-coma. But the advantage was that the XCs were right next to the airlock. He and Boon Round had been able to pull them in and seal the inner hatch; a frantic, quick-as-possible manoeuvre that seemed to have lasted twice as long as it actually took, both of them convinced that the XCs would wake up at any time and revert to being mobile masses of teeth and claws. But they had done it quickly enough and the two were confined before they could wake up fully.
To curb any possible waking instinct to open the outer hatch, go round the lifeboat and attack the flight deck from the outside, Joel had kept the XCs’ helmets in the cabin.
‘Do we land?’ Boon Round said. The Rustie had come forward and was looking out at the Dead World with interest.
‘No need at the moment,’ said Joel. ‘We’re way ahead of any of their ships. We’ll sit in orbit and wait for rescue.’
‘And these two?’
‘We’ll cross that one when we come to it.’
And who
needs XCs anyway? he added silently, bitterly, as the world came closer and filled his vision. The surface was obscured by roiling, dirty masses of clouds; not the fluffy white things he mentally associated with a sunny summer’s day but masses of debris and dust thrown up from the surface. The planet had been subjected to a concentrated nuclear bombardment that had thrown it into a nuclear winter. Even before the attack, pictures showed it had been nothing to write home about; a cold, barren, rocky place. Yet there had been enough to support life, even a civilization of sorts. But now . . .
For just a moment, Joel felt very ill disposed towards the XC race in general. Then he winced as pain stabbed suddenly into the middle of his head and it felt like there was grit behind his eyeballs. He had been on the stay-awakes too long. The feeling passed after only a second and he could concentrate again.
Then the alarm sounded.
‘
Caution: target lock on. Caution: target lock on.
Caution: target . . .
’
Joel leapt for the nav computer. Locked on? Who was out here to . . .? An option was already flashing on the display.
Evasive manoeuvres recommended
.
‘So do them!’ Joel shouted. Next to the recommendation, the world ‘enable’ flashed in a little box; Joel thumped it and in the viewports the Dead World swung suddenly away as the lifeboat went into its pre-programmed shake-off procedure.
‘Explain,’ he ordered.
‘
Analysing situation
,’ said the voice of the lifeboat. The planet outside swung suddenly past again as the lifeboat went into another spin. ‘
Evading lock-on
,’ it said in a slightly different tone. Then it was back to the first: ‘
Tactical suggests planetary shield of armed
satellites
.’ A schematic appeared on the main display to make the point: the smooth curve of the planet’s surface, speckled with an ever-increasing number of dots showing the location of satellites.
‘What the hell is that doing here?’ Joel shouted. What was the point of guarding a dead world? He could almost believe the XCs had done it purely to spite him, to foil his latest plan, just as things finally seemed to be working.
‘
Evading lock
—’ The lifeboat shuddered. ‘
Direct hit on
power compartment. Redirecting severed power and
command feeds. Defence fields activated, starboard field
nodes severely compromised. Recommend implementation of
combat
. . . (
evading lock-on
) . . .
status. Evading lock-on
.’
‘Do it!’ The lifeboat was swinging all over the heavens and every course it took just seemed to take it into the line of fire of another satellite. ‘Why didn’t you identify the satellites earlier?’
‘
Satellites were identified. Level of threat was not
assessed due to insu ficient pilot information
.’
Joel swore. Earth had a network of satellites in orbit, the Roving likewise. The lifeboat saw nothing intrinsically wrong with a planet being orbited by satellites and expected its pilot to tell it different. Had SkySpy never noticed? Probably not, because it only looked where the XCs went, and they never came here. The XCs said it was a dead world, the explorers from the Roving who had actually landed there had concurred, and so the Dead World was of no interest to anyone.
‘Get us into a higher orbit,’ he said.
‘
Higher orbit
. . . (
evading lock-on
) . . .
not recommended. Tactical analysis suggests this course will put us
in line of fire of a greater number of satellites
.’ A graphical display underlined the advice, showing any of the courses the lifeboat could take to get up and away. Each one showed the lifeboat being targeted by three or four satellites and each one ended with a well-rendered explosion.
‘
Direct hit received on defence fields
,’ the lifeboat added.
Red lights, many more than Joel knew how to deal with, were flashing on the control desk. The Dead World swept past his vision again and the lifeboat reported two more direct hits.
So, if
up
was out . . .
The pain stabbed again and the grit at the back of his eyes felt more like grinding boulders, but again it went as quickly as it had come.
‘Then configure forceplanes for maximum aerodynamic effectiveness and dive,’ he said.
Oomoing dreamt, and that itself was unusual, because dreams rarely came in the Small Sleep. And one part of her mind was fully aware that this
was
the Small Sleep, a measure forced upon her by the lack of food. Dreaming wasn’t unusual at all in normal sleep, which lasted the usual half year, but now?
Still, it was a happy dream, so Oomoing sat back and enjoyed it.
She was with her family, and she was glad. It was her Waking Day and her three sons – she had never bred a daughter to be another mother, but her sons compensated more than adequately – were around her. There was First Son, proudly clutching the breeding contract Oomoing had negotiated on his behalf with her best friend’s eldest daughter. Second Son, the day he joined her in the laboratory as her assistant. And her own Third Son, after gaining his pilot’s licence. Chronologically it made no sense, but that aware part of her mind saw the connection – for each son it was the proudest day of his life.
She had fed in the waking frenzy, and then bathed, and now she reclined on a couch while they tended to her and brought her food and drink. Then they offered their Sharings to her and she took them in and lived the lives they had lived for the last half year. She shared in their joys and their sorrows, and the family was as one.
And someone else was there. Someone not of the family, someone Not Us, and Oomoing felt irritation, then anger that someone should gatecrash the occasion. But there was no-one there and she sprang up from her couch, and she could hear him but not see him, and smell him but not touch him; a presence all around, worming its way into the bonds between them.
And suddenly they were not her sons, they were rivals, they were impostors, they were after her for her name and her memories.
‘It’s not right!’ she cried, but still it pressed down on her and now it was all around her, worming its way into her mind, into her body, into her being, stripping away her identity, her essence.
It’s not real
, said a small part of her mind, but that part of her mind felt itself rapidly receding.
She was
Oomoing
. Not Learned Mother Oomoing the forensic scientist, not My Mother Oomoing the mother of three sons, but
Oomoing
, the hunter, the fighter, the invincible.
You are not!
shouted a small voice in her mind from a long way away, and she recognized it as the pretender Oomoing, the Oomoing of those other titles, the Oomoing that she was in her waking hours.
You are a captive on an extraterrestrial ship. Now is not the
time to give up your mind. You must concentrate
.
Oomoing swatted the other, the impostor, the traitor away with an angry growl and sprang up, eyes open, fully awake. All her senses were confused. She didn’t know where she was – a cave of some sort, but it was strangely light and dry. She breathed in deeply, but instead of the smells she would have expected of frightened food animals and moist earth and rotting plant life underfoot and trees and bushes, all that came in was a dry, alien scent that wasn’t alive or dead. And where her ears should have been full of the rustling of plants, the passage of animals through the undergrowth, the wind through the leaves, all she heard was an annoying hum, a deep vibration through her membranes.
But she knew what was outside the cave. Two food animals, two prey. If she could get at them . . .
Her rival slammed into her, bowling her across the floor. A young male, smaller and weaker than her but just as hungry. Oomoing screeched in anger and swiped him across the face, hunting claws extended.
And yet they were not extended; something covered her hands. He fought back but all they could do was club each other with their fists where their claws should have been, landing heavy blows on the other’s head and body. The same something that covered her hands extended over her entire body, as it did his, and the moment of puzzlement was enough to let that irritating voice back into her mind.
It’s Fleet! He’s a friend. You mustn’t
. . .
The male leapt for her, hissing. He wrapped his four arms around her and brought his teeth down to her neck. Oomoing had to strain her head backwards to keep away from the fangs while she pounded at his body with her feeding arms. She threw herself forward, and a solid-looking outcropping from the side of the cave dug a sharp corner into the male’s back and made him yowl with pain. His grip weakened for just a moment and that was enough for Oomoing to get her feeding arms between the two of them and knock him away from her with a powerful shove. He lay at her feet and writhed in pain.
Oomoing held her hunting hands up in front of her, still covered with that annoying grey fabric, and
willed
. Black points appeared in the fabric at her finger points, and then with a sudden rush her claws were fully out, tearing through the obstruction.
The male cowered. He knew he had lost; he knew the greater fighter. Oomoing reached down with her clawed hands and grasped his head. Blood welled over her claws as she pulled him to his feet, head bowed, and opened her mouth wide . . .
It’s Fleet!
Oomoing paused for just a moment to take the scene in; Fleet, cowed, standing before her ready for the death bite, his blood pouring out through her hands. Oomoing snatched her hands away in horror and Fleet collapsed.
‘Loyal Son!’ she exclaimed. She crouched down before him and cradled his head.
‘Learned Mother,’ he said in a whisper.
‘Loyal Son, I am so sorry! I don’t know what came over me . . .’
‘I do. It was the waking frenzy. I felt it too.’
‘But, the waking frenzy, after the Small Sleep? That’s impossible.’
‘Nevertheless, it happened. Am I bleeding badly?’
Oomoing studied his scalp wound. ‘It may need bandaging. Perhaps the extraterrestrials have something I can bind it with.’
‘Learned Mother, you don’t have to . . .’
‘I did this!’ Oomoing said angrily. She welcomed the anger because if she let it fill her mind it pushed out the nagging doubts.
How
could she have done this? Asleep for no more than an hour or two and her animal self came out of the darkness and took her over? It was disgraceful. And she had hurt Fleet, not just one of her kind but a friend, an ally, a Loyal Son. ‘I attacked you without need, without warning, without even a formal challenge.’ She felt . . . dirty. Soiled. There were
rules
for fighting and she had broken every one of them. ‘Let me make some kind of amends.’
The extraterrestrials had put them in the airlock. She didn’t blame them, but it was inconvenient. She peered through the small window set into the inner hatch; she could see them in the cockpit at the end of the cabin, both looking towards her.
Behind them, the viewports were full of planet, dead and burnt, and suddenly she felt the presence of the stranger again; the one who had been there in her dream, the one who had taken her family from her, and now she knew who it was, because her every sense shrieked its name and it was as if a roar from a million throats blasted into her membranes.
Oomoing and Fleet screamed together.
‘What was that about?’ Boon Round said. He and Joel looked, appalled, at the display showing the scene in the airlock. The XCs had woken from their sleep and attacked each other. And how! They had moved in a blur of speed: hammer and tongs didn’t begin to describe it. Joel had deliberately not let the two get out of their spacesuits, reasoning that they wouldn’t want to extend their claws and puncture holes in the fabric; well, so much for that.
And just as suddenly as they started, they had stopped. Then that sudden blast of noise, and now the two were catatonic again. One was bleeding.