Freefall Page 9

  “That is a classified protocol—”

  “ ‘—and, needless to say, prohibiting absolutely any applicant from the Lowerworld proper, as determined by genotype, corponation of origin, and/or linguistic, sociocultural, or any other marker of Lowerworld sub-humanity.’ ”

  The room buzzed, most of the audience probably not understanding completely what they’d heard but knowing it was important. The moderator covered his microphone and leaned over to whisper a few words to the reps from ExCon and MediTerri, both of whose eyes bugged with rage. Then he addressed the girl.

  “Miss Patel, the information you’ve illegally obtained—”

  “Contamination, Mr. Moderator,” she interjected. “Lowerworld sub-humanity.”

  “You will surrender any and all data—”

  “I will not!” she shouted, rising to her feet. The audience jerked back as if her small figure filled the cavernous room. “You may believe that we of the Lowerworld will sit by passively while your machinations to rob us of yet another planet proceed in secret. You may believe, because we have never been privy to your executive councils and shareholder meetings, because we have never schemed to deprive the great majority of the world’s people of their God-given rights to clean air and food and water, to shelter and decent living and the opportunity to realize their hopes and dreams, that we are mere animals to be kicked and kenneled, petted at your own whim and pleasure then thrown onto the scrap heap when your desires are sated. But we will not be so treated. Not today, and not one moment more!”

  The moderator sat frozen at the vehemence in her voice. But she wasn’t talking to him, if she ever had been.

  “We are many billions strong!” she shouted, the mike sitting forgotten, unneeded, on the table. “We are the world’s people! We have come to you not as beggars pleading for a handout, but as children of the Almighty, demanding at long last the rights we have been denied. You may hide behind your walls of wealth, walls built by the blood and suffering of our people, but those walls will not hold forever. They will fall, as do all walls founded on injustice, and may God then judge who among us is in the wrong and who in the right!”

  The crowd thundered its applause. The room shook as if the Otherworld starships had launched in our midst. Griff and I were jostled by moving bodies, stamping feet. The girl stood in her purple robe under the flickering lights with her arms raised the way I’d seen her in that first video, and I was almost afraid of her, afraid and amazed and struck speechless by her fiery beauty. The only person in the room who seemed unmoved by her speech, whether to anger or jubilation, was Sumati, who remained motionless, staring dully at the cracked water pitcher on the table by her hand.

  I looked at Griff. His eyes were fixed on the girl, his freckled face glowing. I felt a pang of jealousy, but I knew what I had to do.

  I took a step through the cheering, rocking bodies, toward the stage.

  Then I saw blood spatter the girl’s robe and, a split second later, I heard the shot.

  Otherworld

  Earth Year 3151

  Night

  When I left Earth, the last place I expected to find myself was the ship’s brig. I’m not even sure I knew the Executor had one.

  But it does. And I’m in it.

  I can’t for the life of me figure out how I got here. My head throbs like it’s been squashed between I-beams, and I mean that literally: It feels misshapen, bulging unnaturally around my temples. Dried blood crusts my mouth, hardens the front of my jumpsuit. My left shoulder aches, making it hard to raise my arm above head level. My thoughts swim, and the pool they’re swimming in is full of mud. I remember going out on patrol with Adrian, remember sighting the Freefall, remember our fight . . .

  Adrian.

  He’s gone. I saw the creatures coming out of the mist, saw them reach for him. Why they didn’t attack me, how I made it back to the ship, I have no idea.

  But he’s gone. The fact that he was trying to kill me when they took him makes it hard for me to summon much sorrow over my former best friend’s death. But it doesn’t ease the remorse I feel, the train of useless what-ifs that crowd my mind.

  Woozily I stand to investigate my prison. It’s obviously been rigged up on the spot. No bars, no guards, no slot in the door for them to feed me. Just a boxy room without vents or lights, maybe a meter and a half square. Enough light squeezes under the door for me to conclude it’s probably a closet. For cleaning supplies, if the antiseptic smell is any indication. No latrine, though. What I’ll do when I need to use the bathroom seems not to have concerned my jailers.

  I push against the door. It’s locked, and banging on it does nothing except make my knuckles hurt. Kicking it doesn’t accomplish much more. Neither does yelling.

  I yell anyway. “Hey!” I yell to no one. “Let me out of here!” My voice bounces back at me, but that’s the only sound I hear.

  There’s a gap between door and floor, too tight to accommodate my fingers. I try. The door’s solid metal, the walls the same. No doorknob or handle. The ceiling might be made of tiles I could loosen to get at the ductwork, but it’s too high for me to reach. When Conroy’s goons come for me, to feed me or escort me to a bathroom or put me in front of a firing squad, they’ll come armed. I’m sure they blame me for Adrian’s death. Probably his dad will be the one to signal the marksmen to shoot.

  I sink to the floor, wrap my arms around my ungainly head, and succumb to despair. In case you were wondering, it feels exactly the same as the emptiness of space.

  Sofie’s here. On this planet. But she might as well be back on Earth, or floating through the endless reaches of the galaxy. My former best friend’s final words of wisdom were right. I’ll never see her again.

  When we parted on Earth, I told myself I’d never see her again. For all the empty days I’ve spent on this godforsaken planet, that’s what I kept telling myself, as if that could lessen the pain.

  But the truth, I realize now, is that I always hoped. Even if I knew my hope was a lie, I held on to it. For the eternity I drifted through the universe aboard the ship that now holds me prisoner, I didn’t dream. In deepsleep, you don’t dream. But if I had, I would have dreamed of finding her again.

  Now I have found her. Found her, and lost her. This time forever.

  How long I stay down I don’t know. Time has no meaning in my cell. But footsteps sound in the corridor outside, and the door swings open, admitting light that blinds me after however long I spent in semidarkness.

  “On your feet,” a voice says, not one I recognize. Hands grab me and yank me upright.

  There are two guards, both armed. Teens I’ve never seen before, a guy and a girl. Jumpsuits, helmets, the usual costume. Whether they know what I’m in here for, whether they care, doesn’t seem relevant. They treat me like a prisoner, which is what I am.

  “Move,” the one who talked before says, jabbing me in the back with his gun.

  I figure there’s no harm in asking. “Where are you taking me?”

  He grabs my injured arm and spins me around. “I said move.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Chairman Conroy said to shoot you if you talk.”

  “You’re taking me to see him?”

  “You want to get shot?”

  “What about the bathroom?” I say. “I need to use it.”

  “Then take a dump in your pants,” he says. “Orders are we don’t let you out of our sight.”

  There’s a lot I could say about their orders, but I don’t push it. For the moment, I’m out of my cage, which might put me one step closer to freedom, which might put me one step closer to Sofie. So I keep my mouth shut, and hold on to the little bit of hope I’ve been given.

  We walk. Our feet echo on the metal floor. The ship’s no labyrinth—the parts of it I’m familiar with are straight, the floors lined with multicolored pathways to direct you where to go—but I don’t recognize this hallway, which means we must be in a restricted area. No windows
to the outside, like there are in the public sectors. Captain’s quarters, maybe. We reach a set of double doors decorated with the JIPOC crest, and unlike all the rest of the doors we’ve walked through, they’re sealed shut. The weak throb of machinery sounds behind them, making me reassess. Could we be near the ship’s gravitational drive? What would be the point of bringing me here?

  But then, what was the point of bringing me back to the ship in the first place? If these clowns are taking me to see Chairman Conroy, he must need me for something. Information about his son. A public example. Whatever, I’m alive, and while I’m alive, I’m greedy enough to wish for another miracle.

  “Hands behind your back,” the guard says, and with the other guard’s gun to my head, I have no choice but to obey. He cuffs me. The cold metal cuts into my wrists, and the twisting makes my shoulder ache all over again.

  The doors slide open automatically. I’m pushed inside. The throbbing sound intensifies, and I take a look around the room.

  It’s not the drive, I’m sure of that. In fact, I can’t tell what’s producing the sound, though it pulses all around me. The room we’ve entered is good sized, easily ten by ten meters, unfurnished except for a single life pod sitting beside a massive metal desk, from which a computer console rears. The screen, though, is blank. Shiny metal walls and floor, ceiling-height windows that show me I was unconscious at least a day, because it’s dark outside again. A catwalk runs the perimeter of the room, stairs leading up to it, though what its purpose is I can’t say. Maybe to offer a better view of the heavens. Or to look down on anyone entering the room.

  Which is what the man on the catwalk is doing to us right now.

  He might be chairman of the board of the Joint Intercorponational Panel on Otherworld Colonization, but Peter Conroy is not an imposing man, which is probably why he prefers the catwalk view of his fellow beings. Adrian was far bigger and broader than his father, who’s no better than average height and painfully thin. Adrian used to joke about kicking his old man’s ass, and I used to laugh along, never imagining whose ass my dead buddy would end up kicking. Chairman Conroy wears the regulation gray jumpsuit, though his uniform carries the crest of his office, a silver-and-black seal on his breast pocket that might be intended to look like a nebula, the place where stars are born. Either that or a supernova, where they go to die.

  He leans over the railing to get a look at us, then descends the stairs. Adrian inherited his dad’s sandy-blond hair, though the older man’s is thinning. He also inherited his dad’s unshakable belief in his own superiority, and one other thing: his dad’s dislike of traitors. I never needed to worry about that before.

  But I sure as hell do now.

  “You can go,” he says to the guards, his voice as bland as everything else about him. The two guards trade a look, but with me beaten and cuffed, they must figure there’s not much I can do to their leader. They pivot on their heels, and the doors close behind them.

  Conroy looks me up and down, the impression that he’s inspecting spoiled meat never leaving his face.

  “What troubles me most,” he says, “is that you used to visit my home.”

  The thought doesn’t exactly fill me with glee either, but I don’t say anything. The throbbing of the room hurts my head, makes it hard for me to think. I’ve gone from the brig to the bridge, and I’m still not sure why I’m here.

  Conroy, however, decides to enlighten me.

  “Lowerworld tendencies aren’t communicable,” he says. “But they’re transmissible. We’ve run a supplemental genetic screen on your parents, discovered some unsettling liaisons on your mother’s side. Disguised, somehow, prior to liftoff. Your father’s part in falsifying her genetic ancestry remains under investigation. Your mother, however . . .”

  He lets the word trail off. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to conclude. That she’s in lockup too, that she’s been shot in the head, that she’s been launched into space. If so, it’s not much of a threat. Last I heard, my parents were telling me never to darken their door again.

  “None of that matters now, though,” he says. “Like it or not, you’ve become necessary to me. And unlike your Lowerworld accomplices, we of the Upperworld do not resort to violence to achieve our objectives.”

  My head hurts too much to laugh. I consider reminding him that his son beat the crap out of me. But much as I despise this man, I can’t throw Adrian’s death in his face.

  “Come with me,” Conroy says, turning to climb the stairs. He grips the metal banister, hunched over, breathing heavily. It occurs to me he’s a pretty old man, older than my parents certainly. At the moment, he actually looks a thousand years old.

  He pauses to catch his breath when we reach the catwalk, which gives me a chance to look out at the night sky. Our vantage lifts us above the mist that clings to the planet’s surface, showing me for the first time the unbelievable congregation of stars that fills the void. Despite my current situation, I can’t help staring at them. I never saw the stars aboard ship. I was asleep. I never saw them on Earth, either. Too much light. And I guess I was asleep there, too.

  “My son,” Conroy says, “is out there.”

  “Out where?” He can’t be talking about the stars.

  “He vanished on the night you—well.”

  On the night I got my ass kicked, he means.

  “When his patrol didn’t return, we sent a search party and found only you,” he says. “There were traces of his blood at the scene, but no further evidence of struggle. It appears he was simply . . . taken.”

  There was plenty of evidence of struggle from where I sat, but I don’t tell him that. “He’s gone,” I say. “I saw them attack him.”

  He looks at me sharply. “You watched him die?”

  “No,” I admit. “But you’ve seen what one of those things did to me. He can’t be alive.”

  “My son,” he says in a weak voice, but then he must remember who he is. And who I am. “We’re not as naive as you seem to think. Your own attack has always appeared a trifle convenient to me. Arranged. And with the arrival of the Lowerworld ship, we’ve finally pieced together why.”

  I say nothing. What can you say to someone who thinks you arranged to be gutted like a fish?

  “We know the Freefall didn’t arrive here by accident,” Conroy continues. “And neither did we. There was design behind this from the start. Design we didn’t perceive on the day we left Earth a millennium ago.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And I believe you know what that design was,” he says. “We’ve torn the ship apart looking for what was done to it, and as you can see, we’ve regained a measure of functionality at the executive level. But we’ve been unable to discover what caused our gravitational drive to miscarry, our navigational and other operating systems to fail. In light of the past day’s events, I can only conclude that you and your Lowerworld cohort were behind this massive act of sabotage. You and the girl—Patel—”

  “Sofie.”

  “You and the girl,” he repeats. “Perhaps others. Your association with my son provided you access to information you couldn’t have obtained otherwise. Information that enabled you to cripple this vessel.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” I say. “And neither did she.”

  He ignores me. “Which leads me to believe further that you’ve been playing some sort of game since we arrived, biding your time until your appointed rendezvous with the Lowerworld ship. And now you and your . . . conspirators are holding my son. Seeking to gain additional concessions from me. But there will be no such concessions. We of the Upperworld do not submit to Terrarist threats.”

  He glares at me menacingly, but I’m no longer buying his bluff. I can see the pain in his eyes. And for the sake of the friendship I once shared with his son, I stop myself from saying the first words that come to my mind.

  “If I was in league with those things,” I say, “if they’re somehow connected to the Freefall, don’t you think t
hey’d have taken me along with them?”

  His pale face reddens, and he raises a fist as if to finish what Adrian started. But then he reins it in.

  “I’m not about to bandy words with the likes of you,” he says. “A less civilized man would string you up for what you’ve done. I’m giving you a choice. Find my son and return him to the Executor unharmed. Or remain here and suffer the penalty for piracy and high treason.”

  He’s babbling. But he’s serious. Either that or crazed with grief. Either way, he genuinely believes Sofie and I sabotaged the ship. He thinks I’m in league with the creatures that attacked Adrian. And he thinks I can broker a deal to get him back alive.

  “You leave this ship the minute you say the word,” he continues. “I’ll take those cuffs off your wrists myself and send you on your way.”

  “And how do you know I’ll come back?”

  He smiles for the first time since I entered the room. Maybe for the first time ever. I can’t remember seeing him smile on Earth.

  “You’ll come back,” he says.

  He leads me down the stairs. Even with my hands bound, I’m surprised he’d turn his back on me. But an anxious feeling is growing in my gut, and he must feel it too. Must know I’m not going to try anything until he’s shown me what he plans to.

  We walk to a corner of the room hidden beneath the catwalk, pass through another functioning door, into a room much smaller than the first. The throbbing is so strong here I feel it in my injured shoulder, my neck, the bones of my jaw. At first I think we must be in a machine room, but then Conroy touches a button on the wall, and a panel slides aside to show me the source of the vibration.

  It’s a stasis field, identical to the ones I saw demonstrated on Earth, the ones that hold us in deepsleep. It pulses white, yellow, white, with flickers of red on the edges. It’s generated not by a pod but by an upright metal ring, which encloses a single human figure. She stands, upheld by the field, bathed in its energy. Her eyes remain closed in sleep, her face perfectly calm. Her purple robe glows through the white, and on her pure forehead a spot of red winks like a miniature heart.