Destination Unknown (11 page)
Read Destination Unknown Online
Authors: Katherine Applegate
Tags: #Fantasy & Magic, #Science Fiction, #End of the world, #Juvenile Fiction, #Science Fiction; Fantasy; Magic, #Space travelers, #General, #Space flight
Violet sensed a desperation in Jobs’s voice. Of course: He was a techie, leaving the only technology in sight to head out into the wild.
“Forget them,” Yago snapped. “Or else you go back, Jobs. You want to be Joe Responsible, you go. But leave the sword with us.”
Olga put her hand on Jobs’s shoulder. “They’re right: We have to get out of this area. We know nothing about these worms. We don’t know how they move, how they reproduce. They could be on the ship. They could be all around us soon. We don’t know if these are even true parasites: They could be predators. They could hunt us.”
Violet let loose a small sob that went unnoticed. There was a battle in her mind between pain and fear, and in that battle fellow-feeling, compassion, concern were all just minor players. She wanted to run away. And more, she wanted to be somewhere else. Back in the world, back on Earth, back in a place where there were doctors and the smell of disinfectant and bright, clean stainless steel gleaming under fluorescent lights.
Suddenly she felt weak. Her knees buckled. She caught herself, terrified of letting any part of her touch the dark ground that in her imagination teemed with the killer worms.
Mo’Steel was at her side in a flash. He caught her around the waist, very chastely, and held her up.
“Strap it up, Miss B., I know it hurts. With pain and all you have to kind of ride right into it. Don’t fight it, don’t try and look away. You go right straight into the pain. Eat it up, make it yours.”
Violet blinked, not understanding the words, but appreciating the tone and the sense that someone was helping her.
Mo’Steel stood close, put his face right into her field of vision. “Don’t run from pain. You have to be like,‘Bring it on. Show me what you got.’ ”
Violet nodded.
Defiance, is that what he meant?
She felt a little stronger and Mo’Steel, evidently sensing this, let her go.
Defiance, is that what he meant?
She felt a little stronger and Mo’Steel, evidently sensing this, let her go.
Jobs yelled across the distance to his little brother, telling him to be good and careful and listen to 2Face and do whatever she said.
It was an interesting note,
Violet thought. Jobs trusted 2Face to watch over his brother. Not one of the adults.
Violet thought. Jobs trusted 2Face to watch over his brother. Not one of the adults.
The group, two groups, actually, were moving now. The bulk of Wakers carrying whatever branches they could rescue from the fire. A shifting mass of fireflies in the darkness.
Violet’s group followed at a distance. She noticed that Jobs had retained the alien weapon. And they had their own burning brands that cast almost no meaningful light and indeed seemed only to deepen the impenetrable blackness.
They marched through the knee-high grass, fugitives again, running again. Leaving behind the shuttle, their only physical connection with the world, with their world.
Jobs and Mo’Steel were carrying Billy Weir by his hands and legs, like a sack of grain.
Violet wondered whether it had been a dream, an illusion. The sight of the boy floating in the air,
rising above his doomed father, a black energy flowing from the boy to the man. Big Bill’s sudden silence. Billy Weir’s anguished cry.
rising above his doomed father, a black energy flowing from the boy to the man. Big Bill’s sudden silence. Billy Weir’s anguished cry.
“The nights could be twenty hours long,” Jobs was saying. “We don’t know when the sun will come up. Or if it will come up. Or if there is a sun.”
The main group was pulling ahead. They were unencumbered by the need to carry anyone. They had more light.
“What are we doing?” Violet wondered. She was surprised to hear her own voice. She hadn’t meant to speak.
“We’re running away,” Mo’Steel said cheerfully. “We are hightailing it. We are preboarding. Click on the X.”
“No. I mean, what are we doing?” Violet repeated. “What are we going to do? In this place, this planet? Those Riders, the worms, someone taking the bodies, someone taking the eight people who might have been alive. All we do is react.”
“Your mother seems to have a plan,” Olga muttered.
Violet doubted that but didn’t say anything. She doubted anyone had a real idea of what they were doing. And her entire hand hurt. And she was in no mood to just run and be terrified and be shoved this way and that.
“We need to figure it out,” Jobs said.
It took Violet a while to realize he was reacting, belatedly, to what she had said.
“Figure what out?”
“We’re getting jerked around,” Jobs said. “We fly for five-hundred years, end up here, and all that’s happening is we’re getting jerked around.”
“You assume there’s some consciousness behind all of this?” Olga said. “That may be a mistake. People look at nature and assume there is intentionality. They used to think the sun was carried through the sky by a god in a flying chariot. Order does not necessarily imply conscious design.”
“Isn’t that what you used to tell your students?” Mo’Steel teased his mother.
She laughed, a melancholy sound, but welcome in the darkness. “Straight out of my intro to biology class at Cal State Monterey.” Then, in a more somber voice, “All a trillion miles away.”
“You may be right, Ms. Gonzalez,” Jobs said.
“But you don’t think so?” When Jobs didn’t answer, she said, “Me, neither.”
“The eight disappeared,” Jobs said without explanation. “Ten percent of the Eighty.”
“A message?” Olga wondered.
“I need to rest,” Jobs said. He and Mo’Steel knelt to gently deposit Billy Weir on the ground. Jobs shook his arms, trying to get the cramps out.
“It’s a base-ten message,” Mo’Steel said. “I mean, ten percent, right? If someone’s picked ten percent as some magic number, why is that? Ten’s only a magic number if you got ten fingers. Otherwise, why not six or two or twenty-nine?”
“I’m in base nine now,” Violet snapped. Then, the absurdity of it struck her and she laughed.
“Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s partly intentional, partly accidental, coincidence,” Olga mused.
Violet said, “If you’re all right, then someone wants us away from the shuttle. They took the bodies away because they figured out that we were tied to them. They took the eight, the ten percent, that was to say, ‘Follow us.’ Follow us away from the shuttle.”
“And leave the other five Wakers behind?” Mo’Steel wondered.
Violet shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t expect us to leave so soon. Maybe they didn’t know we’d panic and run.”
Jobs grunted and knelt down to pick up Billy Weir’s feet again. “I guess we sent a lousy message, then: Push us and we run away.”
Violet could see that the main group, marked only by the ever-smaller points of light from their torches, was pulling steadily away.
By daybreak, if day ever did break, they might be miles away.
Her finger hurt. Well, what was left of it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN“WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US?”
Billy Weir knew he was being carried. He felt as if he was flying. Skimming low like a jet coming in under the radar. Fast. Moving so fast, no time to even look, no time to really see. Just a blur of darkened colors.
He felt hands wrapped around his ankles, hands around his wrists, he felt the strain of his weight. From time to time he heard the buzz of talk, and when he tried very hard he could pick out a word here or there, no context, just words. And he couldn’t even be sure of those.
The sky was different. He could see the sky. They were carrying him faceup and he could see the sky. Not a sky. No, not a real sky, that was obvious. He could see what were supposed to be stars, what was supposed to be a moon, but of course they were no such thing. And beyond the illusion? Could
he force his mind through the illusion, see what was real?
he force his mind through the illusion, see what was real?
He tried, but gave up quickly. He was tired. Weary. Draining the consciousness from his father had taken enormous energy. Big Bill was a forceful man, he had a great will, and that had made it harder. Billy doubted he could have done it if Big Bill had not been so weakened. And of course he never would have but for his father’s agony.
The pain had been a blinding glow, a green light enveloping Big Bill. As the pain surged, the light shaded toward deep purple, shattered into a rainbow of lurid green and luxuriant purple and night black.
It was a strobe in Billy’s brain, insistent, the rhythm irregular, but stronger and stronger, firing his own nerve endings.
Big Bill had taken him from the orphanage and given him a decent life. He and his wife had given Billy love. Billy owed his father an easy death. He knew how to do it, though it meant spending the energy he had been hoarding.
Do you want to die?
he had asked his father silently.
he had asked his father silently.
But Big Bill never heard or understood the
question. He, like everyone but Billy, was a spark, electric, so fast, too fast to hear his son’s slow voice in his head.
question. He, like everyone but Billy, was a spark, electric, so fast, too fast to hear his son’s slow voice in his head.
So Billy reached into his brain and found the answer himself. It wasn’t hard. He had long ago learned to fire the neurons of another brain. He had long ago come to understand the architecture of the creased gray matter, the billion billion switches within, the ghosts of memory and ideas.
“Yes,” Big Bill’s brain wanted to say. “Yes, let me die.”
It was like sucking a milk shake through a straw. Big Bill fought for life though he longed for death. Life and mind were separate, and life fought to persist, no matter how much logic argued for surrender.
In the end, though, Big Bill was too weakened by pain, by loss, and by fear. Billy had been able to give him peace.
Billy could feel the fear around him. Some of it was fear
of
him. When he let himself go, when he released, he could open himself to the minds that hovered like bright fireflies, like candlelit jack-o’-lanterns floating in the night.
of
him. When he let himself go, when he released, he could open himself to the minds that hovered like bright fireflies, like candlelit jack-o’-lanterns floating in the night.
The words in their heads were too quick, but Billy could read the deeper meanings, he could
sense the emotions, the basic truths. So much grief, so much fear, so much guilt.
sense the emotions, the basic truths. So much grief, so much fear, so much guilt.
So much they didn’t understand.
But then, there was still so much Billy didn’t understand, either.
Who are you? What do you want with us?
Billy asked, and he reached out, searching for the answer, feeling in the dark for synapses, trying to illuminate the architecture of a mind unlike any he had yet encountered.
Billy asked, and he reached out, searching for the answer, feeling in the dark for synapses, trying to illuminate the architecture of a mind unlike any he had yet encountered.
The mind was out there, but beyond Billy’s reach.
And not that mind alone. There were others.
CHAPTER NINETEEN“YOU DON’T LIKE THE WAY THINGS ARE, YOU CAN GO, TOO.”
They kept moving through the night. 2Face kept Edward close to her. He was a decent-enough kid, and she felt Jobs had placed the burden for his well-being on her.
In any case, it compensated somewhat for her fall from authority.
She fretted as she saw the faint lights of Jobs’s group falling farther and farther behind. Jobs at least was a potential friend, her only potential friend aside, of course, from her father. Now here she was under the thumb of Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake and Yago.
Daniel Burroway was more a pouter than a fighter,
2Face thought. He would make sniping remarks, but after one particularly vehement dispute, Wylson had dismissed him curtly with the remark that he
was “an academic, a book-jockey. This is the real world, not a seminar.”
2Face thought. He would make sniping remarks, but after one particularly vehement dispute, Wylson had dismissed him curtly with the remark that he
was “an academic, a book-jockey. This is the real world, not a seminar.”
Since then Burroway had done little but stew silently as they walked along through the darkened landscape.
Wylson had absorbed the shrink, T.R., into her coterie and Yago had begun to draw D-Caf to him: a toady for the toady-in-chief. 2Face imagined that D-Caf, shunned by everyone else, was glad for any acceptance.
Wylson had dictated the gathering of wood for new torches, the assembling of any sharp stick or edged rock for weapons. She had directed that the line of march stay beside the river. They were wise policies, 2Face couldn’t argue with that.
But she did object to leaving Jobs’s group behind. At a rest stop, as everyone drank deeply, she approached Wylson.
“Ms. Lefkowitz-Blake? It’s been hours now. If Jobs and Ms. Gonzalez or any of them had been infected by the worms, surely they’d show signs by now. We’d be hearing yelling or screams or something.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Wylson answered. “Parasites can lie dormant.” She turned away.
“Your own daughter is with them,” 2Face pressed.
T.R. intervened. “What you’re feeling is healthy. You want to unite everyone, and that’s very understandable. Besides, those are your friends, no?”
2Face suppressed a desire to tell the psychiatrist to take a jump. She’d had to talk to shrinks after she was burned. She had no respect for the profession. But this wasn’t the time for antagonizing anyone. She said, “I don’t think we have the right to just kick people out of the group.”
“Is it about rights?” T.R. asked. He wore a pitying smile. “Perhaps it’s more about an unresolved feeling of guilt? We call it survivor guilt. The feeling that one has sinned merely by the act of surviving when others have died.”
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