Cut Off (19 page)

When he got up, the floor was vibrating. They were in motion. He found Sprite and Sebastian in the galley seated around a counter. The alien stared at one of its smaller pincers, which delicately held a sheaf of playing cards.

"What are you doing?" Ness said out loud.

"Playing hearts," Sprite said. "I tried to teach him to gamble, but Hold 'Em was way too hard to explain. Anyway, I didn't feel like playing for seaweed."

"Where are we going?" he signed to Sebastian. "I thought we were on stake out."

"Stake out is a waste out," the creature replied, scowling at its hand. "We marked old spot. Will search by day and wait by night."

Ness had to admit that made sense. He watched them play for a minute, then, deciding it was too early in his day to absorb such a sight, headed down to the control room. As always, Five monitored the screens and pads, motionless except the occasional flick of a tentacle or sense-pod in response to a change in the readouts. The aliens did need sleep and Ness wondered if Five was so obsessive about its work that it snoozed in the orange cup of his chair, waking whenever the pads pulsed an electric signal. The only alternative was that Ness was worse at telling them apart than he thought.

According to the monitors, they were cruising past a sizable bay bitten out of the western flank of the main northern island. Coral reefs surrounded the shores, their waters pale blue. A small island popped from the shallow sea a mile from the big island, the coast of which was spangled with houses and less densely vegetated than most of what he'd seen so far: former farms in the process of being swallowed back up by the jungle.

The coastline turned due south and the sub paralleled it from half a mile out. Ness wished the ship had a glass bottom. Had to be some amazing stuff passing below them, seahorses and turtles and crazy shit like those crabs that carried anemones around as marine stun guns.

The sub hooked around a peninsula into a much smaller bay than the one they'd passed earlier. Islets peppered the waters, some hardly big enough to stand on. They cruised along one of the larger islands, a low shield matted with jungle.

"Hang on." Ness tapped the screen. "See that?"

Five waved a tentacle. "WHAT SEE"

"Beats me. But I'll tell you what it's not: green."

Five eyed the screen, then made a series of smooth, intricate gestures. The sub slowed, turning to face the island head on. As they neared, the orange blob Ness had spotted clarified: the tip of one of the conical alien towers, all but hidden within the canopy of the jungle.

Five did some waggling. Sebastian rattled into the room a minute later, limbs waving in excitement. A new image appeared on one of the screens, an abstract field of green enveloped by blue and sporting an arrangement of three orange dots. Five had sent out a single-use miniature scout drone, which they'd been trying to hold in reserve, but given the circumstances, Ness couldn't blame Five for expending one.

Sebastian leaned closer to the display, then whirled on Ness. "Fool!"

Ness' jaw dropped in affront. "What'd
I
do?"

"Not you. You are non-fool. It is they that are the fool. You see?" He jabbed his tentacle at one of the orange circles, then at the two others set in an orderly triangle. "You see? You see?"

"The towers? What about them?"

"Not towers.
Arrangement
of the towers. When you are to grow a building, you are to coax it, or to force it. Coaxing is the Way but it takes much longer. So they have forced it. When you force, it is to a standard. A..." He cast about for the sign. "Model."

"Meaning?"

Sebastian clicked his claws in high amusement. "They have not allowed the dirt to do as the dirt will. Now, their choice has betrayed them."

"Those bastards," Ness signed back. "Should we go pull down their pants?"

"You joke at our advantage. You see? They have used a standard. I
know
the standards."

He drew back, comprehending. "So you'll know your way around."

Sebastian nodded exaggeratedly. "I will know."

"What's the plan, then? Sneak up on one in bed, snatch it up, and interrogate it?"

"Swimmers will know we are not brothers and they will lie. Thus we will not ask them. We will ask their computers."

"You are one smart sea monster," Ness said. "Can you get inside?"

"This depends on the depth of their fool."

He considered pausing for a brief grammar lesson, but it wasn't the time. "How so?"

"Much as exist standards for buildings and the arrangement of buildings, there exist standards for doors. If they use a standard standard, I can open it."

"And if it's a non-standard standard?"

Sebastian squirmed a tentacle in a shrug. "Then this is why lasers."

Five turned the sub to make a quick sweep around the inhabited side of the island, then withdrew them to the open ocean to hide until nightfall. Sebastian had a conversation with the Collective before retiring to the galley to study maps on his pad and compile a plan. Knowing little of the aliens' structures, let alone the growth-patterns they adhered to, Ness had little to offer. He was always eager to learn more about them, though, so he talked it through with Sebastian anyway, doing his best to provide a sounding board.

The plan that emerged was not that complex. Swim up to the island, tiptoe to one of the towers, head straight for the information/control/ops room, steal their data, and swim back to the sub to read the contents. The one foreseeable wrinkle was that the ops room might be in use—the Swimmers appeared to run flights nearly every night, after all—but their business seemed to conclude no later than two AM, leaving Ness and Sebastian with a four-hour window to do their thing before dawn. Worst case scenario, Sebastian could make use of one of his prized possessions: an alien security device built to KO his own people.

They decided to move at four AM. Ness headed to his bunk to try to catch a quick nap. Once night showed up, so did a jet. A few minutes later, it took off from the island, climbing straight up to a height of fifty feet. There, it boomed north, skimming above the water.

As expected, it was the last flight of the night. Ness, Sebastian, and Five watched the feeds all night and saw no other movement. Not that that meant much. The jungle started after about six feet of sand and didn't quit until it hit the opposite shore. You could hide a Super Bowl in there and no one would notice.

To keep their profile as low as possible, they intended to exit the sub's airlock rather than its tower. Ness and Sebastian geared up, which in Ness' case meant stripping down to nothing but his pack, his water shoes, and a pair of black briefs, and entered the chamber. It flooded with warm sea water. Outer doors whirred, disgorging them into the ocean. This always disoriented Ness, but all he had to do was follow the trail of bubbles spewed by Sebastian's spinning tentacles.

Ness surfaced. The air was the same temperature as the water. Salt dribbled down the back of his throat. Sebastian propelled himself forward, submerged except for a single tentacle to help Ness follow. They were hundreds of yards from the island and Ness settled into a medium-paced crawl, careful not to kick too deep and bang his shin on an arm of the reef.

He had to fight his way through a few unusual currents stirred up by the arrangement of the bay and the islands within it, yet soon found his feet striking sand. Ahead, Sebastian slouched through the shallow water, waited for Ness, then scuttled along the thin band of sand beside the forest. Ness jogged after him, sand clumping on his wet shoes. The air smelled like damp leaves, foreign pollen, and drying marine life. As they came nearer to the compound, Sebastian swerved into the trees. Ness didn't see how Sebastian intended to get through the undergrowth when his own body, a-jumble with limbs, so closely resembled the forest itself, but Sebastian found a trail and followed it along the up-and-down ground. Ness kept such a close watch for upthrust rocks and roots that he nearly plowed right into the base of the tower.

The building's skin was pebbly and orange and smelled like the inside of a snail shell. Sebastian held up his sensory tentacles for several seconds, then went to work on the pad beside the door. Ness kept an eye on the forest. Not that he could see a damn thing. He turned to his ears for help instead. A heck of a lot of bugs were announcing their desire to have sex with each other, but other than that, it was fairly quiet, as jungles went.

The door slurped open. Ness whirled. Sebastian was already moving inside, brandishing his laser and stunner. He beckoned Ness after him. Ness had been inside such buildings on multiple occasions, and every one of them reminded him of one thing: the afternoon Shawn had gotten drunk, which wasn't noteworthy in itself, and had then gone to the pond to catch frogs, which was more unusual. Shawn had brought home a creel full of them, then insisted on cooking them on the spot.

To Ness' taste, the result wasn't exactly haute cuisine. More like if you stapled a chicken to a salmon and left them behind the fridge for a few days. Worse yet, the trailer's kitchen lingered with the smell for
days
. Ultimately, their mom had had to fry a mess of onions, garlic, shrimp, and peanuts just to be rid of the smell. It had been ten years since then, maybe twelve, but every time Ness walked into one of these structures, he smelled Shawn's frog casserole.

The bottom of the tower was an open lobby. A ramp spiraled up the outside wall, leading to any number of nooks, alcoves, and rooms. Ness followed Sebastian up it, his damp soles squeaking on the rubbery surface. He almost bent to pull them off, then remembered they had no way to hear him.

In front of every alcove, Sebastian paused to ensure it was vacant before moving on. The inner wall sported any number of closed doors, but Sebastian showed zero interest in these. Near the top, the ramp led to an upper platform. Sebastian told Ness to wait, then finished the climb alone.

In the room above, pointed feet thumped the spongy ground. There was a brief tussle, a large thump, then silence. Sebastian appeared at the top of the ramp, balled the end of his tentacle, and stuck up the tip.

Ness joined him on the top floor. An alien sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Work stations, displays, pads, and alien computers illuminated the space with a dozen points of soft light. Windows overlooked the night. As Sebastian set to work on the hardware, hooking it up to his personal pad, Ness kept his eyes and ears on the ramp.

Sebastian worked quickly and with no apparent frustration or setbacks. After a few minutes, he became animated; Ness glanced over, but Sebastian was merely wrapping things up, setting equipment back where he'd found it. As Ness turned back to the window, a light outside it caught his eye. He frowned and moved across the room for a better look.

Sebastian tapped up beside him and nudged him on the shoulder. Once he had Ness' attention, he signed, "Okay ready to leave."

"We can't go," Ness said.

Sebastian held up his pad and waggled it for emphasis. "Have data. We go now."

"It's not about that. It's this place—it's a slave camp."

13

Alden eyed the skull on the post. It bore no hair or skin. He shuffled his feet. "Suppose he forgot to declare his foreign fruit?"

Tristan rubbed her eyes. "I'm so tired it's like I'm looking in a mirror. How about we get some sleep and see how things look in the morning?"

"I think daylight's only going to make it look
more
like a human skull." He took a step back. "But I'm beat, too."

They found a patch of level ground between the road and the steep hill. The dirt was damp and Tristan wished she'd thought to pack a tarp. She was soon asleep anyway. Day came far too soon, but at least the mountain blocked the harshness of direct sunlight.

Once they ate and walked some of the stiffness from their muscles, they returned to the broken bridge. The crevasse it spanned wasn't thirty feet wide.

"We can climb across easy enough," Tristan said. "Question is, do we want to?"

"Travel into cannibal territory? Sounds awesome."

She reached up and lifted the skull from the post, turning it in her hand. "No sign of injury. Maybe this guy was just a plague victim."

Alden wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, or they stabbed him in the heart. They took out the bridge. I count that as pretty serious."

"As soon as the Panhandler got bad, I would have knocked out the bridges, too. I say we take a look. The jungle's huge. There's no way all of it's been claimed."

"What about those?" He pointed down the valley to the houses in the meadow overlooking the sea.

"Way too open." She peered down the decline, looking for a path to the bottom. "Not counting the aliens and their dog decoys, we got to this point with zero trouble. I don't want to set up anywhere people can hike to so easily."

They helped each other down the slope, grabbing onto bamboo and outthrust red rocks for support. A stream trickled through the bottom of the gorge and they paused to filter some into their jugs before climbing up the other side. Bamboo grew in thirty-foot curtains from the hills. Orange flowers hung from the trees lining the road. They crested a rise and looked out on the bright blue of the ocean. The road straightened and declined into the jungle. The mass of orange-flowering trees was shunted aside by towering trunks. Alden lifted his nose, then jogged down the road.

"Holy shit," he called, stopping in front of one of the eighty-foot trees. "Are these...alien?"

Tristan broke into a run, unholstering her pistol. Alden tipped back his head, mouth hanging open. She slowed to a walk, gun dangling by her side, and joined him in staring. The tree's smooth bark was striped by vibrant pastel blues, greens, oranges, yellows, and pinks, as if it had been finger-painted by a child at Easter. Others like it thrust from along the road. Past them, the ground fell away at a brutal angle. Tristan approached cautiously, putting away her gun.

"I have no idea," she said. "Which is completely crazy."

They halted for a few minutes, sipping water, gazing up at the multicolored trees. Tristan decided they were Earth-native—they had branches, leaves, roots, and must have taken years and years to grow—yet that made them more wonderful, not less. The last few weeks had been nothing but tension and stress. Discovering the aliens in the caldera. Tangling with the Guardians. Being driven from their home by people, then bombed and hunted by aliens. This was the first time she'd felt peaceful in weeks and she felt compelled to linger among the Alice in Wonderland trees until it faded.