Zoe’s Tale PART II Chapter Twelve

There was a rattle and and so a w alter up and then a whine as the razzings lifters and engines died dispirited. That was it we had lowcoated on Roanoke. We were legal residence, for the actu eachy first time.Whats that olfactory perception? Gretchen defer, and wrinkled her nose.I took a sniff and did or so nose wrinkling of my own. I depend the pi caboodle landed in a pile of rancid socks, I verbalize. I calmed Babar, who was with us and who seemed excited intimately hardly a(prenominal)thing maybe he same(p)d the perfume.Thats the major artificial sa reportite, state Anna Faulks. She was iodin of the Magellan lot, and had been down to the major planet s perpetuallyal times, unloading burden. The villages base camp was almost ready for the settlers Gretchen and I, as children of dependance leaders, were organism completelyowed to cope down on angiotensin converting enzyme of the dwell warhead shuttles rather than having to take a cattle car shuttle with everyone else. Our pargonnts had already been on planet for days, supervising the unloading. And Ive got risings for you, Faulks said. This is rough as pretty as the smells strike close to here. When you get a piece of cake coming in from the forest, then it gets really bad.Why? I asked. What does it smell care then?Like everyone you discern hardly threw up on your shoes, Faulks said.Wonderful, Gretchen said.There was a grinding clang as the massive doors of the freight rate shuttle opened. There was a slight breeze as the aviation in the cargo bay puffed out into the Roanoke sky. And then the smell really hit us.Faulks smiled at us. Enjoy it, ladies. Youre hitout to be olfaction it every day for the rest of your lives.So atomic number 18 you, Gretchen said to Faulks.Faulks s vertex smiling at us. Were going to start moving these cargo containers in a straddle of minutes, she said. You deuce need to frontierinate out and get out of our air. It would be a shame if y our precious selves got squashed underneath them. She turned a path from us and started toward the rest of the shuttle cargo crew.Nice, I said, to Gretchen. I dont think promptly was a last word time to prompt 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 unyielding not to comment. The last several days had made everyone edgy. This is what happens when you have intercourse youre lost.On the day we skipped to Roanoke, this is how pop broke the innovatives that we were lost.Beca use up I know in that respect be rumors already, let me say this first We atomic number 18 natural rubber, pop said to the colonists. He stood on the platform where mediocre a couple of hours in run we had counted down the skip to Roanoke. The Magellan is safe. We are not in both endangerment at the moment.Around us the crowd visibly relaxed. I wondered how m either of them caught the at the moment p art. I suspected John stick it in in that location for a agreement.He did. alone we are not where we were told we would be, he said. The colonial Union has sent us to a different planet than we had expected to go to. It did this because it learned that a coalition of alien subspeciess called the conspiracy were planning to withhold us from colonizing, by force if necessary. There is no doubt they would fox been waiting for us when we skipped. So we were sent roughlyplace else to an otherwise planet entirely. We are now above the real Roanoke.We are not in danger at the moment, John said. scarcely when the faction is opinioning for us. If it find outs us it testament try to take us from here, over again likely by force. If it placenot remove us, it pass on destroy the small town. We are safe now, however I wont lie to you. We are being hunted.Take us screening someone shouted. There were murmurings of agreement.We cant go back, John said. Captain Zane has bee n remotely locked out of the Magellans control systems by the Colonial Defense Forces. He and his crew will be joining our dependance. The Magellan will be destroyed erstwhile we take over landed ourselves and all our supplies on Roanoke. We cant go back. None of us can.The room erupted in angry shouts and discussions. Dad eventually calmed them down. None of us k bleak about this. I didnt. Jane didnt. Your colony rep envyatives didnt. And for genuine Captain Zane didnt. This was unplowed from all of us equally. The Colonial Union and the Colonial Defense Forces buzz reach unflinching 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 articulate from the crowd.Dad looked out in the way the voice came from. Were going to do what we came here to do in the first place, he said. Were going to colonize. Understand this When we all chose to colonize, we knew there were risks. You all know that microbe colonies are dangerous places. withal without this Conclave searching for us, our colony would lull have been at risk for set upon, hush a target for other races. None of this has changed. What has changed is that the Colonial Union knew ahead of time who was tone for us and why. That allowed them to keep us safe in the short run. It gives an advantage in the keen-sighted run. Because now we know how to keep ourselves from being found. We know how to keep ourselves safe.More murmurings from the crowd. ripe to the right of me a woman asked, And just how are we going to keep ourselves safe?Your colonial representatives are going to let off that, John said. Check your arrangers each of you has a location on the Magellan where you and your spring gentlemanmates will meet with your representative. Theyll explain to you what well need to do, and answer the questions you have from there. save there is one thing I insufficiency to be clear about. This is going to require cooperation from everyone. Its going to require sacrifice 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 lot 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 manipulate 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 undercoat of the new world. The grounds get stuck oozed over the top of my boot. Lovely, I said. I started walking. The fuck up sucked at my feet. I tried not to think of the sucking as a larger metaphor. Babar bounded off th e 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 disgorging their cargo other shuttle was coming in for a landing some distance away. The cargo containers, standard-sized, littered the ground. Normally, once the con dwells of the containers were taken out, the containers would be sent back up in the shuttles to be re apply waste not, necessity 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 purpose they did. That purpose was in front of me, a couple century meters away, where a barricade was forming, a barrier made from the containers. Inside the barrier would be our new flitting home a tiny villag e, 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 keep abreast of this new planet to see what we require to do in suppose to live on it.As I watched, some of the Magellan crew were moving one of the containers into place into the barrier, use top lifters to set the container in place and then turning off their great power and letting the container fall a couple of millimeters to the ground with a thump. eve from this distance I felt the vibration in the ground. Whatever was in that container, it was heavy. Probably farming equipment that we werent allowed to use anymore.Gretchen had already gotten far ahead of me. I model about racing to catch up with her but then noticed Jane coming out from goat the newly placed container and talk of the town to one of the Magellan crew. I walked toward her instead.When Dad talked about sacrifice, in the immediate term he was talking about devil things.First no sense of touch between Roanoke and the rest of the Colonial Union. Anything we sent back in the direction of the Colonial Union was something that could give us away, even a artless skip pilotless aircraft full of data. Anything sent to us could give us away, too. This meant we were truly isolated no help, no supplies, not even any mail from friends and have intercoursed ones remaining behind. We were alone.At first this didnt seem like oft of a big deal. After all, we left our old lives behind when we became colonists. We said good-bye to the stack who we werent taking 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 receiving set-controlled aircraft was supposed to leave the colony on a daily basis, carrying garner and news and information back to the Colonial Union. A skip drone was supposed to arrive on a dail y 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 gone. The no new stories and music and shows were what hit you first a bad thing if you were qualified on a show or band before you left and were ho strike 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 grandmother had passed away. You wouldnt see the recordings your go around 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 stand up in the foreground. alone of it was gone, maybe forever.When that realization hit, it hit people hard an d 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 itemise us where we were going in order to fool this Conclave thing, they certainly werent going to tell everyone else that they had pulled a fast one with our whereabouts. Everyone we ever knew cerebration we were lost. whatsoever of them probably thought we had been killed. John and Jane and I didnt have ofttimes 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 attend 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 handling our disappearance. I just hoped the Colonial Union ambassador to the Obin had on clean underwear when the Obin came to call.The reciprocal ohm 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 beginning of spring here, Jane said. Its going to be like this for a curt while. I think things will get crack.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 through with(p) a design survey here. And we wont be able to put up a air to track weather 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 papa, I said.Everything all right between you two? Jane said. Youre rarely without each other.Its fine, I said. Everyones twitchy these last hardly a(prenominal) 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 want to say much, and its not like Ive been that happy myself. Hes direct me poems, still, though. On paper. He has Magdy deliver them. Magdy hates that, by the way.Jane smiled. Enzos a priggish boy, she said.I know, I said. I think I didnt pick a great time to decide to make him my boyfriend, though.Well, you said it, everyones twitchy the last few days, Jane said. Itll get better.I hope so, I said, and I did. I did grim and depressed with the best of them, but even I have my limits, and I was getting beloved 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 fashioning themselves scarce on the Magellan and being away for the last few days, I was starting to miss them.Hickory 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 engaged and useful, and keeps them out of the way of most of the colonists at the moment. I dont think any of them are feeling very friendly toward nonhumans at the moment, and wed just as soon avoid someone trying to pick a agitate 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 curiously) 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 find Gretchen with them. Just head into the encampment and youll find them.Itd be easier if I could just ping Gretchens PDA and find her that way, I said.It would be, Jane agreed. But we dont get to do that anymore. find out utilise your eyes instead. She gave me a quick peck on the synagogue 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 virtuoso thing we had with a electronic 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 capabi lity 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 show that we were here, and if someone knew what frequencies they used to work, they could be detected simply 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 delay in those containers. Possibly forever.This included data servers, entertainment monitors, sophisticated 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 favorite shows and music and reading. Its how you connected with your friends, and played games with them. Its how you made recordings and tv. Its how you shared the stuff you loved, to the people you liked. It was everyones outboard outlook.And suddenly they were gone every single PDA among the colonists slightly more than one per person was collected and accounted for. Some folks tried to hide them at least one colonist tried to sock the Magellan crew member whod been assigned to collect them. That colonist spent the night in the Magellan brig, courtesy of Captain Zane rumor had it the headman cranked down the temperature in the brig and the colonist spent the night shivering him self 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 beware 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 physical structure 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 outdated and antique 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 dawn with other members of the Roanoke colonial council). Working without electronics wasnt a state 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 known it all a long rather than being just as surprised as the rest of us. Thus 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 entirely 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 around the area, looking for places to mark his territory. What can I say. Hes a dog.Im not pastime 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 w here the streets of our new detailed town will be. and then he looked back to me. What do you think of it?I think this is what it looks like when God 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 festering 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 sorry 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 result 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 rolled 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? tire 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 bori ng 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 underage 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 hump 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 gri n 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 then 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 making 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 t he last file their PDAs would receive. It was a video recording 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 human 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 fire 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 er udition 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 attack. 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 inquire what he was thinking when he gave the order. Did he feel regret? delight? 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. capture us.