The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis 2 (13 page)

“This isn’t what we’re here to do,” I said to Odran. “This isn’t right. You’re only doing this because you don’t like me for some reason. What did I do to you?”

Odran wrenched his metal bucket forward, forcing the supporting chains and wires to slide along the ceiling. He was next to me in an instant.

“I will not tolerate this attitude, you worthless mass of carbon. You are under my roof and you will do exactly as I say, whether you like it or not,” he seethed, his teeth clenched. “No rations for you. You can starve for all I care. Now prepare my meal!”

“Johnny?” Ketheria begged. I just stared at Odran. What he was doing was not right. Ketheria tugged on my vest once more. “Leave it,” she whispered. “Come.”

“Odran, you can’t —” I started to say, but he cut me off.

“So you still want to argue? Fine. Then nothing to eat for any of you. How do you like that? Shall we continue with this stupid conversation? I can let your pathetic little friend die, right here. It’s your choice. I love a good debate,” Odran said. “Or you can stand with the others and watch me eat.”

“Johnny, stop!” Theodore pleaded. “Fix Max, Odran. Now, please.”

Ketheria took my hand and dragged me out. Theodore followed us. My feet were heavy. I wanted to stay and fight Odran. I hated him. With everything inside of me I hated him for what he was doing to my friends.

“Do you think that was smart?” Theodore asked as we walked through the building. “You don’t need Odran as an enemy.”

“I don’t care.”

“We’ll you should, JT. You’re starting to sound like . . .” Theodore stopped. His words stung.

“Switzer?” I said.

Theodore did not answer.

“Look at you. Look at Max,” I said. “What if Ketheria gets hurt next time, or worse, one of you gets killed?” It was a possibility. How could he argue? “Maybe that knudnik is right.”

“Who is?” he said.

“Switzer. Maybe we should find a way and get off this ring.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Ketheria said.

We walked in silence toward the dining hall that Odran used to entertain his guests. We reached the round room as several aliens were arriving. I counted four. Some of the other kids were lined against the wall waiting, including Switzer. He stared at me as I entered and took my place. Suddenly, I wanted to tell him I was sorry. He had to realize I didn’t want to hurt him. But I knew an apology wasn’t going to happen. There was too much friction between Switzer and me. I don’t think he would have accepted it anyway.

The aliens seemed familiar with Odran’s dining hall as they tapped little pieces of yellowed glass on the floor with their feet. Small individual tables grew out of the floor and clustered together in the center. It seemed as if each alien was waiting for the others to sit first. They paraded about the room, admiring the art but never making eye contact with any of us.

Odran entered the room as another alien came rushing in.

“I hope I’m not too late,” the tall alien said, and tapped the floor, taking his seat immediately. The others still lingered, each wanting to be the last Citizen to sit down, I supposed. “You understand,” the late guest added. “Council business.”

“Yes, Hach. Do share with us. Something exciting, I imagine,” Odran gushed in an overly pleasant tone I’d never heard him use before.

“Odran, you know better than that,” Hach replied. “Just because you covet a position on the Trading Council doesn’t mean I’m allowed to share details with you.” His tone was teasing but diplomatic.

Odran concentrated on the small O-dat mounted on his table.

“Sorry, Hach, I didn’t hear you. The kitchen needed my attention.”

Hach smiled. This seemed like a game to him. The alien removed his thick brown jacket and handed it to one of the kids. He wore a belt that looked like it was made of stones or maybe glass. I couldn’t tell. The Orbis emblem decorated the clasp.

“I was just asking you how it was going with the Samirans. I understand there was a bit of trouble,” he said.

Another alien, a female covered completely in black except where her pale white face poked through, spoke up. “I really don’t understand what all the trouble is. They are still knudniks, aren’t they? Or has something changed that I am not aware of?”

Grace and another child entered the hall balancing small bowls of something burnt and brown. Grace placed a bowl on the table of the pale alien, who nibbled at the greasy appetizer as she spoke. “And please, do not preach to me about the importance of their work. I do not need to be reminded again that this is the rotation of the Harvest. Can’t they simply be punished and we be done with this nonsense?”

The alien tossed the carcass of what she was eating on the floor. Odran motioned for Theodore to pick it up, which he did.

“What do I do with it now?” Theodore whispered.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Odran needs some of Weegin’s scavenger-bots.”

“I think that’s what we’re here for.”

Hach responded to the pale alien’s comments by saying, “Punish them, Pheitt? How do you propose that we punish a Samiran?”

Pheitt only sniffed the air. “Those are details beyond my concern,” she said.

“Well, maybe a solution to the problem would be a little more helpful to the Rings of Orbis,” Hach replied. Pheitt sniffed again and dug into the bowl, throwing the smallest pieces to the floor. I think Hach rolled his eyes, but it was a little hard to tell since he didn’t have pupils.

“What sort of solution have you come up with, Odran?” said another alien with thin shoulders and a very broad nose. Grace reentered the room with more plates of food and placed them on the tables.

“Well, you do know that it was I who summoned the Softwire. The Keepers were against it, but I insisted.”

What a liar,
I thought.

“You will find no one on the rings more concerned about the well-being of Orbis than myself,” he continued.

“Yes,” Hach replied. “You have reminded us many times.”

“The Samirans know that their work rule is ending. They’re simply holding us hostage,” Odran said. He did not mention Ketheria’s discovery of the unborn Samiran.

“But certainly you’ve devised an alternative manner in which to cool the crystals? With all the glory of Orbis at your fingertips, you should have come up with something by now,” Hach said, his tone slightly accusatory.

“I’ve been working on it for a very long time,” Odran said slowly, dipping into his tank’s solution. “It is not that simple. I do not possess the boundless resources of your mining businesses.”

“What else have you been working on?” Hach asked Odran, almost as if he were baiting him.

“With the Harvest approaching so rapidly, I’ve had time for nothing else.”

“I think we should simply extend their work rule,” said another alien, seemingly unaware of the tension between Hach and Odran. “I mean look at the damage Toll caused in his last outburst. Who will pay for that?”

Without thinking, I interrupted. “You can’t do that,” I said. “They’ve worked here for almost two thousand rotations. It’s not fair.”

The room fell silent. Pheitt looked at Odran, who glared at me.

“Knudniks should be seen and not heard,” he said. The edge in his voice cut straight through the slime in his tank.

“Such an outburst,” Pheitt mumbled to the alien on her right.

The alien with the thin shoulders shook his head and said, “I feel for you, Odran. I gave my knudnik an Ebolo to play with, and the thing ate it. The knudnik couldn’t work for two phases! Apparently he was allergic to it. How are we supposed to know these things?”

“It really is a nuisance sometimes,” said Odran, looking at me.

Did they not know we were standing right behind them? Maybe they just didn’t care. This only made me want to prove them wrong even more.

“One knudnik had the nerve to refuse the skin I ordered for her. She claimed it was against her religion. And under my own roof. I don’t know why we put up with it sometimes,” Pheitt said, and shuddered. “I avoid the very ground they walk on.”

Hach took his plate and dumped it at Pheitt’s feet, splashing a little gristle on her black gown. “Pheitt, will you get that for me?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” she replied.

“Pick that up for me and throw it in the garbage, will you?”

“Touch the trash? Have you lost your mind, Council Member?”

“No, but apparently the Citizens of the Rings of Orbis have lost the ability to clean up after themselves. You made these creatures what they are,” he said, pointing at us. “I doubt they stood around waiting for your crap to hit the floor on their home planet.”

Hach stood up, grabbed his jacket, and flung it over his shoulders.

“Odran, thank you for your hospitality, but I must leave. I have a knudnik to beat,” he said.

Odran moved away from his table. “But I was hoping we could discuss —”

But Hach cut him off. “I am well aware of your desire to sit on the Trading Council, Odran. But as much as you try to avoid them, there are procedures that must be followed. I’m sorry, but it is really out of my hands.”

Odran glanced at the other guests. I don’t think he wanted Hach to be so public about his intentions.

“I like that guy,” I whispered to Theodore as Hach left.

“Clean up his mess,” Odran ordered.

Two cycles after the dinner party, almost every one of the kids displayed some sort of cut or bruise from their chores, and Max was still not back. Odran’s screen scrolls arrived and I rounded everyone up to announce the cycle’s work.

“We have to face those creatures again?” Grace said.

“It says here every other cycle,” I informed her after reading the scroll. “But maybe I can finish early and come by to help.” I quickly scanned the list of chores Odran had ready for me. It was a lot of work.

“Don’t bother,” Switzer snapped, snatching the screen scroll from me. “You’ve done enough already. Thanks to you, I’m starving now. Go play with the fish.” It was the first thing he had said to me since our incident.

“Really, Switzer, I want to help,” I said, but I could see something behind Switzer’s eyes, something different, like he just didn’t care anymore.

“I said don’t bother.”

I stood there and watched them file out.

“Be careful, Ketheria,” I said, and my sister just smiled. Someway, somehow, she simply accepted it. I wished I knew how she did it.

After they left, I scanned my scroll again to look at my work. There was a map to the location of a supply room and an illustrated list of tools I needed. This was followed by a step-by-step diagram of some first-aid procedure.

“Uplink,” I whispered to myself, and the contents of the scroll came rushing toward me. Now that every single detail was stored in my brain, I set off to find the tools I needed.

The building that housed Odran and the Samirans was truly immense. Besides the enormous cooling tank, there seemed to be room after room of nothing. I called up the map in my mind’s eye and followed it to the storage room, passing through many empty rooms. The Ancients had built the building, but whatever they had used it for was beyond me.

With my work list tucked neatly inside my cortex, I entered the storage room and scanned the rows of glass-doored shelves. With each step, the floor and ceiling between the rows of items glowed pale blue. Behind one door I saw a small glass container of what looked like tiny fingers. I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

The room reeked of medicines. I located the items on my list, and each time the door opened easily.
Must be my skin,
I thought.
But who programmed that?
There were too many items for me to carry, so I ordered one of the cart-bots to transport the items back to the cooling tank. The little robot, loaded with all of my supplies, followed obediently. I looked over my shoulder as it hovered behind me.

“We have a lot in common, you know,” I said, but the metal machine did not respond. It was too busy doing
its
work.
Is that how the Citizens look at us?
I wondered. I wanted to prove them wrong, that we were worth more than that, but I just couldn’t figure out how. Did they even appreciate a job well done, or was that simply expected from us?

I reached the cooling tank and waited for my cart-bot to use a utility chute to reach the top.
How am I going to contact Toll?
I wondered. Then I remembered the information I had uplinked earlier. I was to strike the edge of the tank with one long tap and two short ones. That was the strange thing about uploading information before reading it. I often answered my own questions.

Nestled into a notch in the railing was the metal rod Odran used to contact Toll. On the edge of the tank was a small depression in the metal rim just above the crystal lights. I knelt down and felt it. It was more of a button.

I stood up and grasped the metal staff in my right hand and struck the button. Where was Toll and how did he receive the signal? Maybe it created a vibration through the water that only Toll could understand. I looked out over the huge body of water for some sign of the Samiran. While I waited, I unloaded the supplies off the cart-bot — four ten-liter pails, a rubber jacket with some sort of metal harness, and several large application brushes. The brushes stood taller than me.