Beneath the Gated Sky Read online

  She had always doubted her aunt’s story. That kind of “knowing” smelled too easy.

  But Cornell, bless him, proved her wrong.

  Of course she didn’t mention her past at dinner, or her aunts, and she managed to hide her feelings from Cornell, and to a lesser degree, from herself.

  Later, when they were stationed together on High Desert, she tried to protect Cornell, giving him plum assignments and overseeing his rapid education. He was a quick learner, and he was clever. Following a hunch, he had hired Timothy Kleck during a vacation. Porsche’s background was examined and found wanting. Then when the agency’s mismanaged mission collapsed, and when it looked as if neither would survive, he confessed what he knew and what he suspected.

  For only the second time in her life, Porsche confessed, adding that she had infiltrated the CEA in order to keep tabs on the agency’s progress, and its less than noble goals.

  Later they escaped High Desert. Barely.

  Ms. Smith and the agency congratulated them on their success, and in the same breath warned them to never tell what had happened.

  But Cornell had different plans. The agency was a sloppy, self-serving machine. He had learned that people had been hurt when they tried to go public. Some of them may have been killed. He was too much of the idealist—too much like his father—to walk away. And for a slew of good reasons, Porsche had vowed to help, their strange little family existing for no other purpose than to yank the CEA out of hiding, letting the world see it and its crimes.

  Finally, she was becoming drowsy.

  It was three in the morning. The not-so Big Dipper on the ceiling was pointing in an unfamiliar angle, pulling the rest of the constellations with it. Porsche closed her eyes and fell immediately into a half-dream, lying on Jarrtee again, in a stand of graceful and soft felt grass, her lover close to her. She assumed she was dreaming about Jey-im, but then Cornell rose up on his elbow, his human face utterly out of place. Touching her slitlike nostrils, he said, “So.” He said, “Tell me the rest. How did you escape from that planet?”

  Porsche’s eyes flew open.

  “Did I wake you, Po-lee-een?”

  Cornell was lying beside her in bed, smiling.

  “No.” It was a lover’s lie. “No, I was awake.”

  Po-lee-een had never been awake in full daylight.

  She was wearing an airy black robe to protect her pale flesh, the hood raised and tied tight, and fitted over her eyes were thick obsidian goggles. She was first to climb through the back window, dropping into a narrow alleyway behind the compound. Despite goggles and the early morning shadows, the brightness of stones and mortar and the hazy sky were physically painful. The girl took a breath, then another, quelling that one pain long enough to stand beneath the window, offering both hands when a second fugitive emerged.

  Trinidad slipped down the polished wall.

  “Thank you,” he offered, even though he had evaded her grasp.

  Together, they helped their siblings and cousins, then the adults; and in turn, the adults helped ease their own frail parents to the ground, using elastic slings prepared for just this occasion.

  Only Uncle Ka-ceen was missing.

  The window was sealed behind them, the compound secured for the day. The house AI and security robots, and the police eavesdroppers, were being fed false data. This was an ordinary dawn, said the lie. The tenants were estivating, and as always, they were utterly harmless people.

  Po-lee-een hadn’t eaten.

  A packet of hormones had been implanted under her silky skin, making her blood taste of dusk, not dawn.

  Yet her body knew better. She was exhausted, fighting the weight of eyelids and legs, forcing herself to shuffle down the alley with the others. The only blessing was that fatigue left little room for sadness or fear, and even her gnawing sense of guilt was blunted.

  The alley curled between neighboring compounds, then ended.

  A long bus blocked their way, its engine humming, the windows silvery-black, and its armored body hovering just above the pavement, wearing the ornate blood-colored emblem of the military.

  Po-lee-een hesitated, ready to run.

  Then Father grabbed her shoulder, saying, “No. Wait.”

  Miracle of miracles, her missing uncle emerged from the bus, dressed in a day-duty uniform. Looking official in pantaloons and a loose shirt, he warned everyone, “Stay quiet.” Then he stared at Po-lee-een—she could feel the eyes behind the military goggles—and he added, “Whatever happens, not another damned word.”

  She willed herself to become invisible.

  Climbing on board, Po-lee-een took the first empty seat, then watched her brothers claim their own seat, as did her parents. The space beside her remained empty. Then Trinidad appeared, and he would have none of that nonsense. Not only did he sit, he patted her on the thigh, saying the delicious words:

  “A new world for us. Finally.”

  She said nothing, but the hidden eyes smiled.

  The overhead doors were sealed, and the bus accelerated. Only odd or desperate jarrtees would risk making a daylight journey, the girl knew, and they were sure to draw an official gaze. But if their vehicle was military, and if an officer accompanied them—and if he could show documentation and the proper boldness—then they wouldn’t have any trouble. That’s what her cousin assured her, in whispers, sketching out the general plan.

  In the brilliance of day, the City became a different place. Textures and colors were transformed. Distances were stretched. Every stark building and empty crossroads seemed rich with menace. Po-lee-een held her cousin’s hands, gazing out the window. People were extinct. Nothing moved, save for the rare robot. Studying the passing bus, each robot asked the central AI for guidance. And somewhere deep in the AIs, Few-made machines were doctoring the usual protocols, canceling the appropriate paranoia.

  Living jarrtees would be much less predictable, unfortunately.

  Using obscure avenues and modest speeds, Uncle Ka-ceen took them inland, slipping past the spaceport and finally reaching the first swatches of open country. Bad luck placed a pair of low-ranking officers at a crossroads. They wore silvered helmets and body armor, and with rip-guns in easy reach, they ordered the bus to stop, then demanded explanations.

  Her uncle played his role perfectly, brittle politeness mixed with impatience. He opened his door, letting in a scorching light, then showed off his medallion of rank and their official pass, reading the pass aloud, in case the idiots were illiterates, too.

  “These are Fire pilgrims,” he claimed.

  A strange, strict faith, the Order of Fire believed that great truths lay deep in the sun’s evil, and by using the latest hormonal tricks, its priests remained awake for fat portions of the day. But what made the Order even more bizarre was that it had converts in many different clans, up and down the coastline and halfway across the world.

  “They’ve been called by their god,” Uncle Ka-ceen assured. “She’s called them to her temple up on Grand Mountain, and I’m their escort.”

  The ranking officer seemed unimpressed.

  “I obey my orders,” he growled, “and then the gods. Maybe.”

  No one spoke.

  The officer thrust his head down into the bus, more than thirty goggled faces reflected in his helmet. “Shit, you’ve got children in here!”

  “I know that,” her uncle replied.

  “Children!” The man seemed volatile, short-tempered. Even with hormones and ample training, daylight was playing hell with his nerves. “This is fucking dangerous enough, even for adults!”

  Uncle Ka-ceen agreed, adding, “You can appreciate why we’re in such a hurry, can’t you?”

  The officer ignored him. Shouting at the adult pilgrims, he said, “Your god should have called you a little earlier in the night…the bitch…!”

  No one agreed, or disagreed.

  “You have to make sure these babies feast before you finally estivate. And if they don’t feel hung
ry, stuff them full anyway.”

  “Of course,” sang Mama-ma, and others.

  Thinking he had won, Uncle Ka-ceen asked for his pass and permission to move.

  But the officer hesitated. “If you’re going toward the Grand Mountain,” he muttered, “this isn’t your quickest route.”

  “Because you’re trying to block our way,” her uncle replied, the scorn reflexive, and wrong.

  There was a pause, then the officer growled, “Step out for a moment, please.”

  Uncle Ka-ceen said a soft, nonsensical word.

  “What was that?”

  A Few-built device emitted a hard, focused pulse, and both officers collapsed onto the hot pavement. And an instant later, the bus was accelerating, the force field beneath it shoving the limp bodies out of the way.

  Exhausted or not, Po-lee-een was suddenly scared.

  But her cousin chose a different attitude. Eyes smiled behind the impenetrable goggles, and he squeezed her hand, saying her full jarrtee name for the last time, then assuring her, “This is fun. A thousand times better than climbing some old roof!”

  Every object adrift in space possessed its own intrusions.

  Jarrtee was sprinkled with them, but the crushing majority lead to dead places—comets, moons, and nameless pebbles. There were plenty of living worlds, but relatively few had evolved the proper intelligence. Souls couldn’t cross an intrusion unless some comparable intelligence lived on the other side. Plus the refugees needed an intrusion near the City, and the new world had to have been settled by the Few, and there had to be ample room for a large family to blend into the general population, and everything had to be accomplished in a bare-bones minimum of time.

  Po-lee-een couldn’t calculate the odds against such a paradise.

  Yet they had a destination. She’d overheard enough to know they were making for an intrusion somewhere past the coastal mountains. Then as they were skating along a serpentine road, nothing around them but the sun-starved blue-black forest, her cousin bent close and said a single odd word:

  “EE-arth.”

  “What’s that?” she muttered.

  “Guess.” Then he squeezed her hands, saying, “My father told me about it.”

  She tried to say the world’s name, twice.

  “EE-arth is very much like Jarrtee,” he joked. “Except for the differences.”

  “What differences?”

  “A cold, thin atmosphere. More water than land. And a big yellow sun that could feast on our little orange friend.”

  Suddenly the bus crossed an exposed ridge. Through goggles and the tinted glass, people looked back over the ground just covered, the mountain slopes softened by the shaggy trees, the City reduced to a simple gray plain, and over the distant ocean, piled high by wind and the sun’s heat, were the day’s first storm clouds. An incandescent wafer lay behind the heaviest clouds, and the irony was rich enough for a child to find: Po-lee-een had never before seen Jarrtee’s sun, and now she would never see it again.

  “EE-arth has half our gravity,” her cousin continued. “It dances with a giant moon, and wheels crazy-fast on its axis.”

  “How fast?”

  “Nights and days come in a blur.”

  “It doesn’t sound anything like Jarrtee.” The girl was confident that she could adapt to anything, but what about Aunt Me-meel and the others not Few-born? “Tell me something familiar, please.”

  “Its people resemble us.” In crisp detail, he described the human species. “In most technologies, they’re more primitive. Their sky hasn’t everted, but it will soon. And they’re social animals, like us. With cities. With clanlike states. With a history of wars, but lately, like jarrtees, they’re mostly at peace.”

  “Do they estivate?”

  “They’re diurnal,” he warned. “But they can stay awake all night, if they want.”

  She tried to say Earth a third time.

  Then she was quiet, gazing out the window, trying to commit details to memory. Again, as if for the first time, she realized what was happening, what she was about to lose. Events were too large to embrace in just moments, or in a morning. And suddenly even this strange country seemed precious, and she wanted desperately to take it with her, in her mind.

  The road plunged back into forest, welcome shadows pulling over them. Then the shadows fattened as clouds poured over them, a light drizzle seeping through branches and epiphytes. At an unmarked crossroads, their bus pulled to a stop. Uncle Ka-ceen rose, speaking with urgency. “A patrol is waiting up ahead.” He paused, listening to the voice of his eavesdroppers. “They want us,” he reported. “We can’t drive around them, and we won’t fight.”

  Adults muttered among themselves, trying to agree.

  “So,” her uncle announced, “we’re walking. It’s not far, if we help each other.”

  Still wearing the black robes, they abandoned their vehicle, then watched it continue down a secondary road, steered by its AI. Snacks were handed out, and the children were cautioned to eat slowly. A game trail was found and followed, people climbing up into the wild mountains, keeping a disciplined line until the trail bled away. Then the parents found their children, and in smaller groups, with the help of more Few-made machines, they picked their way toward a golden destination.

  Po-lee-een held her little brother’s arm. Her older brother and Father helped with his mother, the woman strong but tiring, her confident voice telling everyone, “If it comes to it, leave me.”

  “You’re not being left anywhere,” Father replied, his voice scrubbed of doubt and hesitation.

  “We’re getting close,” Mama-ma began to say. The device in her hand was indistinguishable from a jarrtee pen. “Down this slope now. Here, come this way.”

  A wind rose in the tall trees.

  No, not a wind. It was the wash of compressed air, Po-lee-een realized. Glancing up, she caught sight of an enormous something passing overhead, and she dropped her face by reflex and made her little brother do the same.

  “They’re hunting us,” she said softly, urgently.

  It was a military dirigible, armored aerogels laid over super-strong silks that were buoyed up by vacuum bubbles. Its crew was watching the forest with delicate sensors. But woven into the black robes were electronic camouflage, hiding their body heat, obliterating their tracks, twisting light and sound until the fugitives were indistinguishable from ghosts.

  The dirigible’s engines pulsed, sending the enemy elsewhere.

  But the danger could return any moment, sending down foot patrols, or worse, a random rain of explosives and nerve toxins.

  Suddenly, with a soft, nervous voice, Father said, “Run.”

  Po-lee-een obeyed, pulling her brother behind her. She couldn’t remember ever running out of fear; everything felt like a game, pushing downhill through the tangled brush, thinking of nothing but the finish line.

  “We’re close!” called out Mama-ma, from behind.

  A great old twanya tree stood in her way, and Po-lee-een sidestepped it just as a figure emerged. She saw a man wearing a uniform, his pantaloons stained with plant saps and greasy dirt…and she didn’t hesitate, leaping at the figure, driving the heel of her hand into an astonished, suddenly familiar face.

  Her uncle fell backward. Stunned, limp.

  Po-lee-een stood over him for a moment, consciously doing nothing. Then she offered a hand that he refused to take, picking himself off the ground, no one speaking.

  In the next few moments, little knots of the family converged on the twanya tree. Trinidad waved at her, mouthing his congratulations. The ground between them was relentlessly ordinary, nothing to distinguish it from any other ground; yet everyone pointed their pens and medallions and little coins at the same precise spot.

  They didn’t have any means to open an intrusion.

  It would have been a tremendous risk to bring a key with them. No tool was more valuable to the Few, or more jealously guarded, meaning that at regular, prearranged in
tervals, someone on the new world would have to open the way for them.

  There was a brief, nervous wait. A gust of wind sounded exactly like a dirigible trying to maneuver, but it was just the wind of a coming storm. People prepared to wait a long while. Then, without warning, an electric sensation passed through them, in a wave, feeling both strange and familiar in equal measure.

  “Children first,” said Uncle Ka-ceen.

  Po-lee-een was standing closest. The ground beneath her seemed to shift and flow, and she stepped forward, then took a longer step that covered less distance. Then the ground split wide, revealing a whirlpool, black as tar and spinning with a relentless majesty, nothing left of twanya trees or mountain slopes, or horizons, or Jarrtee.

  Her parents and grandparents had told her what to expect, but emotions outstripped every remembered word.

  She tried to squeal with excitement, with terror, with an unrestrained, inadequate joy. The long robe dissolved in an instant, followed by her body, nothing left but a sturdy self that walked out of simple habit.

  The whirlpool swelled a million times, then abruptly shriveled down to a knotted little vein, and when she pushed into the vein, she shrank to nothing, climbing out into a wide rubbery bowl with her at the bottom, struggling uphill on newborn legs.

  In reflex, she glanced at her hands, their bones too fine and long and the flesh sickly, hanging loose and adorned with a thin golden fuzz that had a name.

  Hair, she thought.

  She looked at her body, astonished. The legs seemed too long and thin to carry their trunk, and she was ugly, composed of senseless parts whose names lay inside her newly fashioned brain. Her chest was swollen, and she thought: Breasts. She groped her sexual organ, names from the proper to the vulgar occurring to her. Then a probing finger found another orifice, and aloud, with a new mouth, she shouted, “Rectum!”

  A new sky emerged.

  Stars sparkled in the clearest, blackest sky that could ever exist. A wild galaxy stretched overhead, pretending to be real, and the girl was thrilled, and impatient, forcing her ridiculous legs to run, carrying her out of the intrusion.