Zoe’s Tale PART II Chapter Twelve

T here was a rattle and thencece a thump and then a whine as the shuttles lifters and engines died atomic reactor. That was it we had proped on Roanoke. We were home, for the very first era.Whats that smell? Gretchen give tongue to, and wrinkled her nose.I took a sniff and did some nose wrinkling of my own. I think the pilot landed in a pile of rancid socks, I said. I calmed Babar, who was with us and who run intomed excited ab come disclose of the closet something maybe he want the smell.Thats the planet, said Anna Faulks. She was one of the Magellan crew, and had been down to the planet several times, unloading warhead. The colonys base camp was almost specify for the colonists Gretchen and I, as children of colony leaders, were being on the wholeowed to come down on one of the demise cargo shuttles or else than having to take a cattle car shuttle with everyone else. Our p atomic number 18nts had already been on planet for old age, supervising the unloading. And Ive go t intelligence agency for you, Faulks said. This is some(predicate) as pretty as the smells get almost here. When you get a breeze overture in from the fo confront, then it gets literally bad.Why? I asked. What does it smell a interchangeable(p) then?Like everyone you nourish secure threw up on your shoes, Faulks said.Wonderful, Gretchen said.There was a grinding clang as the massive doors of the cargo shuttle opened. There was a slight breeze as the air in the cargo alcove puffed out into the Roanoke sky. And then the smell really hit us.Faulks smiled at us. Enjoy it, ladies. Youre outlet to be smelling it every day for the expect of your lives.So are you, Gretchen said to Faulks.Faulks s trespassped smiling at us. Were going to start moving these cargo containers in a couple of minutes, she said. You two need to realise out and get out of our way. It would be a shame if your precious selves got squashed underneath them. She saturnine away from us and started toward the rest of the shuttle cargo crew.Nice, I said, to Gretchen. I dont think at one time was a smart time to remind her that shes stuck here.Gretchen shrugged. She deserved it, she said, and started toward the cargo doors.I bit the inside of my cheek and intractable not to comment. The last several days had do everyone edgy. This is what happens when you know youre lost.On the day we scurryped to Roanoke, this is how protoactinium stony-broke the sassys that we were lost.Beca determination I know on that point are rumors already, let me recite this first We are safe, protoactinium said to the colonists. He stood on the platform where just a couple of hours earlier we had counted down the abridge to Roanoke. The Magellan is safe. We are not in any danger at the moment.Around us the crowd visibly relaxed. I revereed how many of them caught the at the moment let out. I guess John put it in in that location for a reason.He did. plainly we are not where we were told we wou ld be, he said. The compound pith has sent us to a different planet than we had remained to go to. It did this because it learned that a coalition of alien stimulates called the faction were planning to admit us from colonizing, by force if necessary. There is no doubt they would nurture been de degrade for us when we skipped. So we were sent somewhere else to an different planet enti swear. We are now preceding(prenominal) the real Roanoke.We are not in danger at the moment, John said. exactly the Conclave is sounding for us. If it run a risks us it impart try to take us from here, again managely by force. If it cannot remove us, it testament abate the colony. We are safe now, just now I wont lie to you. We are being hunted.Take us foundation someone shouted. There were murmurings of agreement.We cant go prat, John said. Captain Zane has been remotely locked out of the Magellans control systems by the Colonial Defense Forces. He and his crew will be joining our colony. The Magellan will be destroyed one time we have landed ourselves and all our supplies on Roanoke. We cant go patronise. None of us can.The room erupted in idle shouts and discussions. Dad dismantletually calmed them down. None of us knew nearly this. I didnt. Jane didnt. Your colony representatives didnt. And certainly Captain Zane didnt. This was unploughed from all of us equally. The Colonial Union and the Colonial Defense Forces have decided for reasons of their own that it is safer to keep us here than to bring us back to Phoenix. Whether we agree with this or not, this is what we have to work with.What are we going to do? Another voice from the crowd.Dad smelled out in the direction the voice came from. Were going to do what we came here to do in the first home plate, he said. Were going to colonize. Understand this When we all chose to colonize, we knew there were risks. You all know that seed colonies are dangerous places. Even without this Conclave searching for us, our colony would lull have been at risk for attack, still a target for other races. None of this has changed. What has changed is that the Colonial Union knew ahead of time who was looking for us and why. That allowed them to keep us safe in the short run. It gives an pay take away in the great run. Because now we know how to keep ourselves from being found. We know how to keep ourselves safe.More murmurings from the crowd. safe to the right of me a woman asked, And just how are we going to keep ourselves safe?Your colonial representatives are going to explain that, John said. Check your organisers each of you has a location on the Magellan where you and your former domain of a functionmates will meet with your representative. Theyll explain to you what well need to do, and answer the questions you have from there. But there is one thing I want to be clear about. This is going to require cooperation from everyone. Its going to require kick in from everyone. Our job of colonizing this world was never going to be easy. Its just become a lot harder.But we can do it, Dad said, and the forcefulness with which he said it seemed to surprise some people in the crowd. Whats being asked of us is hard, but its not impossible. We can do it if we work together. We can do it if we know we can rely on each other. Wherever weve come from, we all have to be Roanokers now. This isnt how I would have chosen for this to happen. But this is how we are going to have to make it work. We can do this. We have to do this. We have to do it together.I stepped out of the shuttle, and put my feet on the ground of the new world. The grounds mud oozed over the top of my boot. Lovely, I said. I started walking. The mud sucked at my feet. I tried not to think of the sucking as a larger metaphor. Babar bounded off the shuttle and commenced sniffing his surroundings. He was happy, at least.Around me, the Magellan crew was on the job. Other shuttles that had landed before were dis gorging their cargo another shuttle was coming in for a get some distance away. The cargo containers, standard-sized, littered the ground. Normally, once the contents of the containers were taken out, the containers would be sent back up in the shuttles to be reused waste not, want not. This time, there was no reason to take them back up to the Magellan. It wasnt going back these containers wouldnt ever be refilled. And as it happened, some of these containers wouldnt even be unpacked our new situation here on Roanoke didnt make it worth the effort.But it didnt mean that the containers didnt have a nominate they did. That purpose was in front of me, a couple hundred meters away, where a barricade was forming, a barrier made from the containers. Inside the barrier would be our new temporary worker home a tiny village, already named Croatoan, in which all twenty-five hundred of us and the newly-resentful Magellan crew would be stuck while Dad, Mom and the other colony leaders did a survey of this new planet to see what we needed to do in battle array to live on it.As I watched, some of the Magellan crew were moving one of the containers into place into the barrier, using top lifters to set the container in place and then turning off their power and allow the container fall a couple of millimeters to the ground with a thump. Even from this distance I entangle the shiver in the ground. Whatever was in that container, it was heavy. Probably heightening equipment that we werent allowed to use anymore.Gretchen had already gotten far ahead of me. I perspective about racing to catch up with her but then noticed Jane coming out from behind the newly placed container and chating to one of the Magellan crew. I walked toward her instead.When Dad talked about sacrifice, in the quick term he was talking about two things.First no contact between Roanoke and the rest of the Colonial Union. Anything we sent back in the direction of the Colonial Union was something t hat could give us away, even a simple skip drone full of data. Anything sent to us could give us away, too. This meant we were authentically isolated no help, no supplies, not even any mail from friends and loved ones left(p) behind. We were alone.At first this didnt seem like much of a big deal. After all, we left our old lives behind when we became colonists. We said good-bye to the people who we werent winning with us, and most of us knew it would be a very long time if ever until we saw those people again. But even for all that, the lines werent completely severed. A skip drone was supposed to leave the colony on a nonchalant basis, carrying letters and news and nurture back to the Colonial Union. A skip drone was supposed to arrive on a daily basis, too, with mail, and news and new shows and songs and stories and other ways that we could still feel that we were part of humanity, despite being stuck on a colony, planting corn.And now, none of that. It was all by deceased. The no new stories and music and shows were what hit you first a bad thing if you were hooked on a show or band before you left and were hoping to keep up with it but then you realized that what it really meant was from now on you wouldnt know anything about the lives of the people you left behind. You wouldnt see a beloved baby nephews first steps. You wouldnt know if your granny had passed away. You wouldnt see the recordings your dress hat friend took of her wedding, or read the stories that another friend was writing and desperately trying to sell, or see pictures of the places you used to love, with the people you still love rest in the foreground. all(a) of it was gone, maybe forever.When that actualization hit, it hit people hard and an even harder hit was the realization that everyone else that any of us ever cared about knew nothing about what happened to us. If the Colonial Union wasnt going to tell us where we were going in order to fool this Conclave thing, they ce rtainly werent going to tell everyone else that they had pulled a fast one with our whereabouts. Everyone we ever knew thought we were lost. Some of them probably thought we had been killed. John and Jane and I didnt have much to worry about on this score we were each others family, and all the family we had but everyone else had someone who was even now mourning them. Savitris mother and grandmother were still alive the expression on her face when she realized that they probably thought she was dead made me rush over to give her a hug.I didnt even want to think about how the Obin were use our disappearance. I just hoped the Colonial Union ambassador to the Obin had on clean underwear when the Obin came to call.The blurb sacrifice was harder.Youre here, Jane said, as I walked up to her. She reached down to pet Babar, who had come bounding up to her.Apparently, I said. Is it always like this?Like what? Jane said.Muddy, I said. Rainy. Cold. Sucky.Were arriving at the fount of spr ing here, Jane said. Its going to be like this for a slight while. I think things will get better.You think so? I asked.I hope so, Jane said. But we dont know. The information we have on the planet is slim. The Colonial Union doesnt seem to have done a normal survey here. And we wont be able to put up a satellite to track suffer and climate. So we have to hope it gets better. It would be better if we could know. But hoping is what we have. Wheres Gretchen?I nodded in the direction I saw her go. I think shes looking for her dad, I said.Everything all right between you two? Jane said. Youre rarely without each other.Its fine, I said. Everyones twitchy these last few days, Mom. So are we, I guess.How about your other friends? Jane asked.I shrugged. I havent seen too much of Enzo in the last couple of days, I said. I think hes taking the idea of being stranded out here pretty badly. Even Magdy hasnt been able to cheer him up. I went to go visit him a couple of times, but he doesnt wa nt to say much, and its not like Ive been that cheerful myself. Hes sending me poems, still, though. On paper. He has Magdy deliver them. Magdy hates that, by the way.Jane smiled. Enzos a nice boy, she said.I know, I said. I think I didnt tack together a great time to decide to make him my boyfriend, though. soundly, you said it, everyones twitchy the last few days, Jane said. Itll get better.I hope so, I said, and I did. I did moody and down in the mouth with the best of them, but even I have my limits, and I was getting near them. Wheres Dad? And wheres hickory and Dickory? The two of them had gone down in one of the first shuttles with Mom and Dad between them do themselves scarce on the Magellan and being away for the last few days, I was starting to miss them.hickory tree and Dickory we have out doing a survey of the surrounding area, Jane said. Theyre helping us get a lay of the land. It keeps them busy and useful, and keeps them out of the way of most of the colonists at the moment. I dont think any of them are perception very friendly toward nonhumans at the moment, and wed just as soon avoid someone trying to pick a fight with them.I nodded at this. Anyone who tried to pick a fight with Hickory or Dickory was going to end up with something broken, at least. Which would not make the two of them popular, even (or maybe especially) if they were in the right. Mom and Dad were smart to get them out of the way for now.Your dad is with Manfred Trujillo, Jane said, mentioning Gretchens dad. Theyre laying out the temporary village. Theyre laying it out like a Roman Legion encampment.Were expecting an attack from the Visigoths, I said.We dont know what to expect an attack from, Jane said. The matter-of-fact way she said it did absolutely nothing to cheer me up. I expect youll contract Gretchen with them. Just head into the encampment and youll find them.Itd be easier if I could just ping Gretchens personal organizer and find her that way, I said.It would be, Jane agreed. But we dont get to do that anymore. Try using your eyes instead. She gave me a quick sight on the temple and then walked off to talk to the Magellan crew. I sighed and then headed into the encampment to find Dad.The second sacrifice Every single thing we had with a computer in it, we could no longer use. Which meant we couldnt use most things we had.The reason was radio waves. Every piece of electronic equipment communicated with every other piece of electronic equipment through radio waves. Even the tiny radio transmissions they sent could be discovered if someone was looking hard enough, as we were assured that they were. But just turning off the connecting capability was not enough, since we were told that not only did our equipment use radio waves to communicate with each other, they used them internally to have one part of the equipment talk to other parts.Our electronics couldnt help transmitting curtilage that we were here, and if someone knew what frequen cies they used to work, they could be detected plain by sending the radio signal that turned them on. Or so we were told. Im not an engineer. All I knew was that a huge amount of our equipment was no longer usable and not just unusable, but a danger to us.We had to risk using this equipment to land on Roanoke and set up the colony. We couldnt very well land shuttles without using electronics it wasnt the trip down that would be a problem, but the landings would be pretty tricky (and messy). But once everything was on the ground, it was over. We went dark, and everything we had in cargo containers that contained electronics would stay in those containers. Possibly forever.This included data servers, recreation monitors, modern farm equipment, scientific tools, medical tools, kitchen appliances, vehicles and toys. And PDAs.This was not a popular announcement. Everyone had PDAs, and everyone had their lives in them. PDAs were where you kept your messages, your mail, your ducky show s and music and reading. Its how you connected with your friends, and played games with them. Its how you made recordings and video. Its how you shared the stuff you loved, to the people you liked. It was everyones outboard sensation.And suddenly they were gone every single PDA among the colonists slightly more than one per person was collected and accounted for. Some tribe tried to hide them at least one colonist tried to sock the Magellan crew segment whod been assigned to collect them. That colonist spent the night in the Magellan brig, courtesy of Captain Zane rumor had it the maitre dhotel cranked down the temperature in the brig and the colonist spent the night shivering himself awake.I sympathized with the colonist. Id been without my PDA for three days now and I still kept catching myself reaching for it when I wanted to talk to Gretchen, or listen to some music, or to check to see if Enzo had sent me something, or any one of a hundred different things I used my PDA for on a daily basis. I suspected that part of the reason people were so cranky was because theyd had their outboard brains amputated you dont realize how much you use your PDA until the stupid thing is gone.We were all outraged that we didnt have our PDAs anymore, but I had this itchy feeling in the back of my brain that one of the reasons people were so worked up about their PDAs was that it kept them from having to think about the fact that so much of the equipment we needed to use to survive, we couldnt use at all. You cant just disconnect the computers from our farm equipment it cant run without it, its too much a part of the machine. Itd be like taking out your brain and expecting your body to get along without it. I dont think anyone really wanted to face the fact of just how deep the trouble was.In fact, only one thing was going to keep all of us alive the two hundred and fifty Colonial Mennonites who were part of our colony. Their religion had kept them using noncurrent and a ntique technology none of their equipment had computers, and only Hiram Yoder, their colony representative, had used a PDA at all (and only then, Dad explained to me, to stay in contact with other members of the Roanoke colonial council). Working without electronics wasnt a convey of deprivation for them its how they lived. It made them the odd folks out on the Magellan, especially among us teens. But now it was going to save us.This didnt reassure everyone. Magdy and a few of his less appealing friends pointed to the Colonial Mennonites as evidence that the Colonial Union had been planning to strand us all along and seemed to resent them for it, as if they had know it all along rather than being just as surprised as the rest of us. frankincense we confirmed that Magdys way of dealing with stress was to get angry and pick nonexistent fights his near-brawl at the beginning of the trip was no fluke.Magdy got angry when stressed. Enzo got withdrawn. Gretchen got snappish. I wasnt enti rely sure how I got.Youre mopey, Dad said to me. We were standing outside the tent that was our new temporary home.So thats how I get, I said. I watched Babar wander well-nigh the area, looking for places to mark his territory. What can I say. Hes a dog.Im not following you, Dad said. I explained how my friends were acting since wed gotten lost. Oh, okay, Dad said. That makes sense. Well, if its any comfort, if I have the time to do anything else but work, I think I would be mopey, too.Im thrilled it runs in the family, I said.We cant even blame it on genetics, Dad said. He looked around. All around us were cargo containers, stacks of tents under tarps and surveyors twine, blocking off where the streets of our new splendid-minded township will be. Then he looked back to me. What do you think of it?I think this is what it looks like when idol takes a dump, I said.Well, yes, now it does, Dad said. But with a lot of work and a little love, we can work our way up to being a festeri ng pit. And what a day that will be.I laughed. Dont make me laugh, I said. Im trying to work on this mopey thing.Sorry, Dad said. He wasnt actually patrician in the slightest. He pointed at the tent next to ours. At the very least, youll be close to your friend. This is Trujillos tent. He and Gretchen will be living here.Good, I said. I had caught up with Dad with Gretchen and her dad the two of them had gone off to look at the little river that ran near the edge of our soon-to-be settlement to find out the best place to put the waste collector and purifier. No indoor plumbing for the first few weeks at least, we were told wed be doing our business in buckets. I cant begin to tell you how excited I was to hear that. Gretchen had rolling her eyes a little bit at her dad as he dragged her off to look at likely locations I think she was regretting taking the early trip. How long until we start bringing down the other colonists? I asked.Dad pointed. We want to get the perimeter set up first, he said. Weve been here a couple of days and nothing dangerous has popped out of those woods over there, but I think we want to be safer rather than sorrier. Were getting the last containers out of the cargo hold tonight. By tomorrow we should have the perimeter completely walled and the interior blocked out. So two days, I think. In three days everyone will be down. Why? Bored already?Maybe, I said. Babar had come around to me and was grinning up at me, tongue lolling and paws caked with mud. I could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to leap up on two legs and get mud all over my shirt. I sent him my best dont even think about it telepathy and hoped for the best. Not that its any less leaden on the Magellan right now. Everyones in a foul mood. I dont know, I didnt expect colonizing to be like this.Its not, Dad said. Were sort of an exceptional case here.Oh, to be like everyone else, then, I said.Too late for that, Dad said, and then motioned at the tent. Jane and I have the tent pretty well set up. Its small and crowded, but its also cramped. And I know how much you like that. This got another smile from me. Ive got to join Manfred and then talk to Jane, but after that we can all have lunch and try to see if we cant actually make happy ourselves a little. Why dont you go in and relax until we get back. At least that way you dont have to be mopey and windblown.All right, I said. I gave Dad a peck on the cheek, and then he headed off toward the creek. I went inside the tent, Babar right behind.Nice, I said to Babar, as I looked around. Furnished in tasteful Modern Refugee style. And I love what theyve done with those cots.Babar looked up at me with that stupid doggy grin of his and then leaped up on one of the cots and laid himself down.You idiot, I said. You could have at least wiped off your paws. Babar, notably unconcerned with criticism, yawned and then closed his eyes.I got on the cot with him, brushed off the chunkier bits of mud, and t hen used him as a pillow. He didnt seem to mind. And a good thing, too, since he was taking up half my cot.Well, here we are, I said. Hope you like it here.Babar made some sort of snuffling noise. Well said, I thought.Even after everything was explained to us, there were still some folks who had a hard time getting it through their heads that we were cut off and on our own. In the group sessions headed by each of the colonial representatives, there was always someone (or someones) who said things couldnt be as bad as Dad was make them out to be, that there had to be some way for us to stay in contact with the rest of humanity or at least use our PDAs.Thats when the colony representatives sent each colonist the last file their PDAs would receive. It was a video file, shot by the Conclave and sent to every other race in our slice of space. In it, the Conclave leader, named General Gau, stood on a rise over-looking a small settlement. When I first saw the video I thought it was a huma n settlement, but was told that it was a settlement of Whaid colonists, the Whaid being a race I knew nothing about. What I did know was that their homes and buildings looked like ours, or close enough to ours not to matter.This General Gau stood on the rise just long enough for you to wonder what it was he was looking at down there in the settlement, and the settlement disappeared, turned into ash and levy by what seemed like a thousand beams of light stabbing down from what we were told were hundreds of spaceships floating high above the colony. In just a few seconds there was nothing left of the colony, or the people who lived in it, other than a rising column of smoke.No one questioned the wisdom of hiding after that.I dont know how many times I watched the video of the Conclave attack it must have been a few dozen times before Dad came up to me and made me hand over my PDA no special privileges just because I was the colony leaders kid. But I wasnt watching because of the att ack. Or, well, I should say that wasnt really what I was looking at when I watched it. What I was looking at was the figure, standing on the rise. The creature who ordered the attack. The one who had the blood of an entire colony on his hands. I was looking at this General Gau. I was wondering what he was thinking when he gave the order. Did he feel regret? merriment? Pleasure? Pain?I tried to imagine what it would take to order the deaths of thousands of innocent people. I felt happy that I couldnt wrap my brain around it. I was terrified that this general could. And that he was out there. Hunting us.