The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis 2 (7 page)

“Yeah, not the Keepers,” Switzer’s sidekick, Dalton, said.

“Then who should I contact?” she asked.

“We need to tell the Keepers,” I said. “The rules . . .”

“Enough with the rules, JT,” one of the kids said.

“Was Weegin following the rules when he tried to sell us?” Switzer snapped. “Freakocina, or whatever your name is, do not tell the Keepers where we are. I have plans of my own.”

“No Keepers,” someone else murmured.

“I’m afraid you will not survive on Orbis on your own,” Vairocina protested.

“Contact Charlie,” Ketheria said.

“OK. Charlie would be good. He helped me before,” I agreed.

“I now have a code address for him, but I have no way of telling him your location. Do you know where you are?”

I looked around. “We’re near Core City,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

“I don’t think we are too far from the spaceway,” Max added.

“There are many spaceway stations, and Core City covers over twenty-four square kilometers,” Vairocina said. “Give me a moment. I will make a digital representation of where you are and download that to the terminal where Charlie purchases his passage to Orbis 2.”

“What if you get the wrong terminal?” Theodore asked.

“I won’t. I’ll monitor for his chit scan and present it then.” Her image distorted, sending shapes and colors back into the air. Then Vairocina was gone.

“That’s incredible,” Max said.

“She does look like me a little,” Ketheria said. “I like her.”

“Stupid computer tricks,” Switzer scoffed.

“Why do you always have to be so negative, Switzer?” Max asked.

“Why do you always have to defend your boyfriend, Maxine? He wanted to call the Keepers.”

“He’s not . . . oh, forget it.”

Before the argument was over, Vairocina was back. Ketheria stepped toward her.

“Hi, I’m Ketheria,” my sister said.

“Hi, I’m Ketheria,”
Switzer mimicked.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ketheria,” Vairocina said, holding her hands together in a formal fashion. “Charlie Norton has been contacted. It will be the better part of a spoke before he can arrive. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Can you tell us what happened on Orbis 2, in Core City?” I asked.

“Everyone is going nuts around here,” Max said.

“And I’m not sticking around to find out,” Switzer said, “C’mon Dalton, let’s leave these malfs here. Anyone else want to join us?”

I remembered when Switzer tried to rally his friends to take over the
Renaissance,
and lots had joined him. But this time only one other kid besides Dalton joined his side: a small boy who always looked up to him.

“That’s it? Then you’re all malfs. Good riddance,” Switzer said, and stepped out from under the concrete shelter.

“Where you going to go?” Max asked him.

“Anywhere but here,” he said, and left with Dalton and the small boy.

“They’ll be back,” Ketheria said, but I wondered. Was this the last time I would see Switzer?

“He will not get far. The Samiran has breached his crystal-cooling tank,” Vairocina said.

“What’s a Samiran?” Max asked.

“Samirans are amphibious mammals from the planet Samira, a water planet ravaged by poachers. Samirans are massive. If my calculations are correct, one Samiran would not be able to fit inside your rec room at Weegin’s World.”

“That’s huge!” Theodore exclaimed.

“What do they look like?” Max asked Vairocina.

“On Earth, they could be considered similar to an elephant or a whale but much larger.”

“We’ve never been to Earth. We don’t know what an elephant or a whale looks like,” Ketheria reminded her.

“Samirans are extremely powerful and very dangerous. The only known Samirans in captivity are on Orbis 2.”

“Why did he break the tank?” I asked.

“I do not know,” she replied. “But I’m sure it doesn’t concern you.”

I wasn’t too sure about that. Something told me that what I saw inside that strange computer had something to do with the Samiran breaching its tank. I just couldn’t figure out what.

“I’m tired,” Ketheria said.

“Yeah, and I’m hungry,” Grace added.

I looked around for something Ketheria could sit on. Some plastic piping ran along one of the building’s walls, and four metallic cylinders sat by themselves as if waiting for someone. I made a space behind them.

“We’ll wait here, Ketheria — until Charlie arrives. C’mon, you can lean against me.”

I plopped on the ground, and the other kids followed after Ketheria sat down. It wasn’t cold, but everyone huddled close anyway.

“I will monitor Charlie’s progress,” Vairocina said.

“Thank you,” I said as the particles of light dispersed, taking Vairocina with them.

The larger of Orbis’s two crystal moons pushed a dark blue shadow across the ring and over Core City. I leaned against the cylinder and wondered about Weegin. Was he dead? Did I care? I felt I should, but he tried to
sell
us. How many other knudniks were sold like that? Maybe I should have gone with Switzer. What was I expecting from Charlie? For that matter, what was I expecting from Orbis 2? I followed the curve of the ring up and over my head. The Rings of Orbis 2 looked different to me somehow. I felt different. I didn’t like it.

“Wake up, split-screen,” I heard Switzer say, but when I opened my eyes I saw Charlie.

“Well, don’t you bunch look like a bucket of fish outta water,” Charlie said.

“Thanks for coming, Charlie,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

“Don’t thank me. Thank these guys,” he said, grabbing Dalton and Switzer by their vests and holding them up for inspection. “I found them trying to sneak on a starship in the spaceport. But they decided they would rather show me where their friends were stranded. At first I thought they might be trying to escape, but I’d like to believe they’re smarter than that.” Charlie glared at Switzer.

“Traitor,” Switzer mumbled at Charlie.

“Just be thankful some
Citizen
didn’t find you and have you both put down for farts and giggles,” Charlie said.

Ketheria laughed, and the little boy who had left with Switzer and Dalton quietly snuck back in with the rest us.

“What should we do now, Charlie?” I asked.

“Yeah, Weegin tried to sell us,” Theodore said.

“And now we think he’s dead,” Max added.

“Well, let’s go, then. Gather up your things. Theylor is waiting,” he said.

“Theylor!” Switzer scoffed. “And you call yourself a human?”

That made Charlie frown.

“Why did you contact the Keepers, Charlie?” I asked.

“Look,” he said. “You didn’t belong to Weegin any more than you belong to me. As far as they’re concerned, you belong to Orbis. Who looks after you is merely a formality. Workers are traded between Citizens all the time on the rings.”

“Some of those aliens we saw weren’t Citizens,” Max told him.

“Understand that you have to do it their way, and it might make it a little easier. You don’t have that long before your first review.”

“Three rotations!” Dalton complained.

“There is no choice, guys,” Charlie said while looking directly at Switzer and Dalton. “You may think there is, but if they catch you, I promise you they will kill you just as easy as they would squash a bug. There are a zillion others who would eagerly take your place.”

“Pfft,” Switzer scoffed. “Let them have my place.”

“Is that what you did?” I said. “Just looked the other way? Did you just wait it out?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is that the Keepers have requested the presence of young Mr. Turnbull here,” Charlie said to everyone. “Don’t get too excited, but I smell a very important job in your future, JT. C’mon, we have to hurry. I wasted too much time dragging these bolt-heads back here.”

“I told you to just leave us,” Switzer said.

“Shhh. What important job, Charlie?” I asked. “Where are you taking us?”

“To the Samiran Caretaker,” he said.

Charlie led us to a couple of trams and piled us in. Without a word, the driver sped along a shallow channel carved through rows and rows of buildings. Tiny lights glimmered through the grimy exteriors and blended in with the stars on the sloped horizon.

I was anxious to put Core City and the events of the last cycle behind me. I was also very curious about this Samiran Caretaker and the job Charlie mentioned. I sat behind Charlie with Ketheria. I was glad I had called him now and had not listened to Switzer.
What was the job?
I wondered as the blackened buildings blurred against the ring. And why me? Would I get to use my softwire abilities? How important was it? Charlie turned and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

He looked down at my foot and smiled. I guess I was hitting the back of the chair a little too hard.

“Relax, we’re almost there,” he said.

After only about a kilometer, the vehicles slowed and stopped in an open stone court. I got out and stood in front of a building so massive that it blacked out the stars. It must have been at least ten times the size of Weegin’s World. Six different spacecrafts scoured the building with blinding white searchlights. The ground under my feet pulsed red while smoke from sparking construction drones drifted through the searchlights.

“Stay together!” Charlie shouted over the crackling din.

Water trickled down the soaked steps as we climbed up them to the Caretaker’s. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

“I do. It smells like those creepy tunnels where Weegin took us,” Max answered.

We followed Charlie up the wide steps and through an enormous stone archway. The corners of the building were rounded from age and the whole thing felt old to me, really old, like Magna, the city where the Keepers lived on Orbis 1. Yellowish plantlike material sprouted from the cracks that ran along the walls, and everything looked wet. Charlie inserted a crystal ID disc into a metallic device next to a doorway so tall I couldn’t see the top of it. A thin, red beam of light sprang from the doorway and scanned Charlie and then all of us. When the light beam seemed satisfied, the two incredible doors drew apart as if they were floating in space.

Standing on the other side was Theylor. “Welcome,” he said.

“Hi, Theylor,” I said.

“Are we glad to see you,” Max said.

“Speak for yourself, malf,” Switzer whispered under his breath.

“Hello, children,” Theylor said, awkwardly opening his arms to imitate the Earth gesture of a hug. Max and Ketheria rushed the tall, two-headed alien and hugged him. Theylor smiled — both of his faces.

“Theylor?” said another familiar voice. Drapling stepped out from behind Theylor. Although he, too, was a Keeper, Drapling was not one of my favorite aliens. He always seemed to look at me with contempt. “Quite the homecoming, is it not?” he said with his left head.

“Not really,” I replied. “What . . .”

The ground shuddered violently beneath our feet, and the cavernous building echoed with thunder.

“. . . was
that
?” Max said, finishing my sentence.

“That was the Samiran,” Drapling said. “May we proceed?” He looked at Charlie and said, “You’re late.”

Drapling turned, and we all followed him under another archway. I tugged on Theylor’s purple robe.

“What are we doing here, Theylor?” I whispered.

“It appears you may be quite helpful to us once again, Johnny Turnbull, but we will have to see. Follow me, and please stay close together. Do not wander off, for I am afraid it may not be safe.”

We all followed Theylor deeper into the moist labyrinth. Its dampness wrapped around me like a thick, wet blanket that was impossible to get out from under. A silky sort of light rained down upon us and gathered in puddles of blue and silver on the floor. After every ninth or tenth step, the stone foundation would tremble beneath our feet.

“That one was quicker,” Theodore mumbled.

“Quit counting, malf,” Switzer said.

I glanced up and began to make out large cracks where the support columns met the arched, ribbed ceiling. It looked like they were new cracks, too, where the yellow slime had not yet grown.

“We will wait here,” Drapling said, raising his hand.

Everyone filed around Theylor.

“Will we live here now?” Max asked.

“This has yet to be determined,” the Keeper replied.

“I don’t like it here,” Grace said.

“Quiet,” Drapling ordered.

A form shifted in the shadows just beyond Drapling. Then a small bowl-shaped craft emerged from the darkness. At first I thought I was seeing things. The device hovered less than a meter above the ground, floating under its cargo — a glass cylinder with dark metallic trim, filled with a murky yellow fluid. There was someone floating in the liquid.

“Yuck,” Max said, staring wide-eyed as the alien drifted toward us.

The creature’s head poked above the foul liquid, and its long arms reached out the sides of the container straight through the glass that then sealed tight around his arms. The creature’s skin was colorless and wrinkled. Not wrinkled from being old, but wrinkled from being in the water too long. There was a marking on his right temple — some sort of circular symbol, much darker than his ghastly skin. At times, the alien appeared to struggle to keep his head above the liquid, sinking into the container up to his bloodshot eyes. On the top of his bald head, the skin was gathered together and tethered to a cable that connected to the top of the glass enclosure. The whole contraption, alien included, was just taller than Drapling.