Alien Me (25 page)

Judah’s face arranged itself into sympathetic lines. “For Sworn Assets this is difficult to hear, but understand that enough humans will live to repopulate the species. I am sorry that you are incapable of understanding the ways of the known universe. I am sorry but I don’t blame you that deficiency. You are what we made you.”

“You should probably quit trying to apologize.”

Judah changed the subject. On the inside I smiled. He didn’t know about the images that I had collected from the missusan before he died. He didn’t know the huge tactical mistake that Naomi had made when she set the missusan on me. He had no idea about how big a hole that missusan had blasted in my ignorance, the ignorance that had previously made me easy to control.

In the missusan’s last seconds he had let me see into his mind. The memories of those he had killed were lodged in my brain like a collection of video files that I could open at will. They weren’t labeled, but they had a rough sort of subject heading, and I had seen the memories of a First Mechanic that this missusan had drained. I had seen what the Original People do to the indigenous when they leave a planet. I saw their plan for the Earth on their way out. Its cold-blooded specificity staggered me.

As I sat at the top of the waterfall in the beach area, I went through the memories. Most of them were hazy around the edges, like a dream a few minutes after awakening or a badly focused video. Most were images, but occasionally I could hear the voices of the people speaking. I stared into the water as I pulled memory upon memory from the former First Mechanic. Using this man’s knowledge, I mentally toured the Mechanics’ building. In my mind I walked down the shiny floors of the hallways and peered into doors that were cut into the granite walls. A central atrium that opened to the sky was filled with plants and a fountain decorated with images of creatures I didn’t recognize. I found the labs and control rooms for the environmental systems of Geminay and the saw unchanging schedules of the Mechanics.

“What are you doing up here?” Sean asked, startling me. He had already taken off his tunic and was clearly surprised to find me. “I came up here to do some cliff diving and I didn’t expect to find anyone.”

I shrugged, forcing my eyes off of his bare chest and onto the pink horizon. “I don’t know. There’s something about this place. I felt it the first time I came up here.”

“Me too. It’s like I feel more alive.” He sat down next to me and put his feet into the water. “Are you still mad at me for making that crack about enjoying killing? I could have bitten my tongue off the second those words were out of my mouth.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“Is there something on your mind?”

I thought he might think me ghoulish if he knew that I was going through the late missusan’s memories, so I deflected. “I think Judah is mad at me for requesting that you stay here. Did I make a mistake in asking that?”

Sean watched me carefully. “Do you think you did?”

“I think that your staying here will make it much more difficult for you and Leonie.” I didn’t look at him, afraid of seeing condemnation in his eyes. “After what happened with the missusan, I’m afraid I’ve become someone you can’t like.”

“Because you’re now an even more powerful missusan?” Sean said quietly. “To me you’re still the girl I saw at the ball. I think your days of hiding in the staff closets are over though.”

I began to tremble. “Even to these people I’m a freak.”

“Don’t use that word because whatever you call yourself you have to call me too. If you can kill it’s because they made you that way. But they also made you so you can choose not to kill. And in the whole time I’ve known you, you’ve never killed because you wanted to. It was always to save me or yourself. You’re not the girl in the closet, but you’re also not a homicidal maniac.”

“What I am is Cinderella running away from the ball because the magic wore off. Underneath my ball gown and glass slippers all I am is a girl who is supposed to steal the life energy from human beings.”

Sean put hands to his lips and kissed them. “To me you’re all magic and mystery.”

My entire body tingled at his touch, but I knew I couldn’t keep kidding myself. He belonged to Leonie. It was time to get real. “Under this waterfall there’s a passage that leads to the Mechanics’ building.”

“How do you know?” he asked, surprised by the abrupt change of subject.

“That missusan I drained had the ability to take people’s memories, and he drained the former First Mechanic at Naomi’s request. I saw in his memory that there’s a virus ready to be released on human beings when the Original People leave Earth. The First Mechanic thought it would leave just enough humans to keep the species alive. All human technology would be wiped out, and he thought the Original People would be able colonize again in about ten thousand years. He really liked being on Earth. He thought it was the most comfortable, safest planet they had ever been on.”

Sean gave a snort of disgust. “And not one thought about the loss of life on Earth?”

“Not a one. But he didn’t like Naomi.”

“Well, I can’t hate on him for that.”

I walked over to the edge of the water. “I know where the virus is in the Mechanics’ building and I know how to get rid of it. There’s no way I’m letting them kill everyone. I was just working up the courage to jump when you came along.”

He picked up his tunic. “Then let’s go.”

I held out my hand to Sean before my courage failed me. He put his arms around me and flung us over the falls. We splashed down into the pool below and swam under the falls to a small platform and a passage. I pulled myself up on it just as Sean surfaced. He wiped the water from his eyes, swam up to the platform, and put his tunic back on. I pulled out a device shaped like a wand that dried my hair and clothing almost instantly. When I finished, I handed it to Sean.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said even though I wanted him to come more than anything.

He finished with the wand and gave it back. “What? And let you get all the credit for saving every human on the planet? You’re getting to be a glory hound, aren’t you?”

The platform we were standing on was so small that I could feel the heat off his skin. The water hammered on one side of us and on the other, a tiny door blew a draft over our feet. I knelt down and crawled through it on my hands and knees. Sean came after me, his broad shoulders almost too wide to fit through. The hallway on the other side was so narrow and low that I thought it must have been made for the lowborn. When I got on my feet, I couldn’t stand up straight. My skin began tingling. I wondered if that wasn’t from the drying wand.

“I don’t think your hallway is small enough,” Sean said, pulling himself along the passage. “It’s wasting too much space.”

I laughed. “Quit complaining and hurry up.”

Fortunately the next passage was wide and high enough that we could walk side by side and stand up straight. Cold torches illuminated the space with blue light. The walls here were solid stone, smooth as glass. No sound troubled the passage, no drip of water or distant echo, except the tiny scuffling sounds of our velvet shoes.

“I hope we don’t meet anybody,” Sean said.

“Me either. Let’s hurry.”

The two of us increased our speed from a walk to a slow run. Our footfalls echoed in the tunnel. The hems of our tunics and our pant legs flapped against our thighs. We ran for what might have been a couple of minutes when the tunnel ended so abruptly that neither of us could stop in time. Our slippery shoes slid on the smooth floor and we both crashed into the wall. My hands and wrists hurt from the collision.

“How far do you think we’ve gone?” I asked as I rubbed my palms.

“I can’t tell. I haven’t had any sense of time or space since we got here.” He looked back the way we had come into the darkness punctuated by the eerie blue lights. “I wonder if they do that on purpose to make sure no one around here can figure out a place in history. Every day seems just like the last. Hey, look up there. I see a ladder built into the wall.”

I barely heard him because of how close we were in the tunnel. I could smell the masculine scent of his skin and feel its moist warmth from running. I wondered if I smelled like a woman to him. The thought made me shy and I looked down, hiding my face. Sean put his finger under my chin, tipped my face up, and kissed me.

“That’s for luck, you know, so you can find the virus,” he said softly.

My heart almost pounded its way out of my chest. I put my hands on his shoulders and was horrified to see a sparkling bubble of energy around each of them.

“I can’t help that,” I whispered, embarrassed.

Sean tipped his head sideways into one of the bubbles and closed his eyes. The slender tendrils of energy climbed across his face, sending out feelers like little green, blue, and red vines.

“I love them,” he said softly. “They’re like the essence of you.”

“Aren’t we like cheating on Leonie and Judah?” I asked, hating myself for ruining the moment.

“Tardik told me that Leonie and Judah aren’t really capable of being jealous of us because they don’t want to marry us in the first place.”

“Okay,” I whispered. Leonie and Judah might not be jealous, but wouldn’t my being with Sean now make it even harder when we had to part? I hoped the blue light would mask the fact that I was blushing. I started up the ladder and climbed into a small room. “I think I found a linen closet.”

Lit with cold blue torches, it had shelves that seemed to be made of some kind of poured stone, and each shelf was loaded with linens.

“If we ever absolutely need to make a bed, we’ll know where to come,” Sean said when he got off the ladder.

He opened the door and quietly we stepped out into the hallway. Unlike the palace, this building had no windows. All the light was provided by the blue torches and a center atrium several stories high that was open to the red sky. The atrium was to our left, and to our right was the first of many, many rooms that were beautifully furnished and empty of people. It reminded me of a museum full of dioramas, frozen moments of the past. We moved along in a silence disrupted only by our breathing and our slippers slapping the floor. Finally I stopped and pressed a panel in the wall. A door opened to another linen closet.

Sean gave me a quizzical look. “Is this place a barracks or something? Who needs this many sheets?”

“Maybe a lot of people live here.”

Sean pointed to the stacks of sheets. “But they don’t sleep. Why are there so many sets of sheets? What do they use them for? And do you see any beds? I thought only the Sworn Assets got beds because we sleep.”

My skin became cold. “Humans sleep.”

Sean’s face darkened like a thundercloud. “I wonder if they keep humans in here somewhere to test their virus on. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Neither would I,” I said and shut the door. “But that’s a question for a different day.”

Sean and I looked over the side into the atrium and saw a well-tended and still garden, more like a terrarium with a fountain. I led Sean to a set of stairs at the end of the hallway and we went up.

This floor was completely different and had many, many doors. Though none was labeled, there was one set of double doors down a short hallway. I knew that was where the virus was housed. The doors had no sort of lockset or hinges, just a glowing blue orb hovering where the two doors met.

“How’s that for a high-tech doorknob?” Sean asked. “Do you have the memory of how to open it?”

I searched my mind. “I’ve got nothing. It’s like trying to remember something I learned in school four or five years ago. This lock is familiar, but I don’t really know how to work it.”

Sean stared at the door for a moment. “Give me your hand. If you have that First Mechanic’s memories, maybe you have his energy and the lock will recognize it.”

Sean entwined his fingers in mine. Sparks crackled and snapped. An energy bubble formed. Then Sean moved the energy bubble into the blue orb. It slowly became white and the doors swung open on silent hinges. We entered a narrow room that ran the entire length of the building. There was nothing inside except blue torches and a bank of dark cabinets. As Sean got close to them, they came to life and something like holograms leapt up. The displays were so detailed they seemed almost solid. Sean and I moved closer and tried to read them.

“What do these do?” Sean asked.

I explored the transferred memories and found a match. “They’re readouts from the climate system in Geminay. This one is for the wind. This one is for the desalinization of the ocean water. This one controls how the planets and sun move across the sky.”

“Then these are the environmental controls. Let’s try another room.”

We went down the hall and found the next door. The interior of this room was exactly the same as the one before. The displays popped out of black counters as we approached. Sean and I walked down the length of the room reading screen after screen.

“Hey, look at this,” Sean whispered. “These are maps showing the springs we could use to fall through into Spain or China or Buenos Aires. Wherever we wanted.”

“It would save a lot on airfare.”

“And having to go through customs. Who needs a passport?” He pointed to the screen. “I just realized that none of this is written in English. And yet we understand it.”

“Maybe we can get some types of knowledge when we drain someone.”

“Could be. Let’s move on.”

The next room we checked had the cold, sterile look of a hospital laboratory. Machines hummed along one wall and none had displays that popped up. Sean and I walked slowly down the long room, listening to the little fans and feeling the slight wind they made. At the far end of the long room, we found a bank of cabinets. Sean opened one.

The inside was full of bottles containing one shining light in each. As Sean and I stood there, the little lights moved toward us. They fluttered, like butterflies. Sean moved his hand in front of the bottles, and the little lights followed his movement. He suddenly shut the door and shuddered.