Paul Collins - Earthborn The

"Colony people haven't killed anyone!" Welkin blurted. "Just now was the first contact we've—"

"Save it, kid. Your guys have been on a killing spree for days. The old 'We come in peace' palaver was broadcast for at least a day. Reckon the whole of Melbourne town heard it."

"It doesn't matter," Welkin snapped, fear making him angry. "All Earthborn are degenerate scum.

Genetic throwbacks!"

"Scheduled for extermination, no doubt."

Welkin tried to hide his reaction. He looked away guiltily, though why he should feel guilt puzzled him.

Sarah chewed on her lower lip. "We had a word for that once. Genocide."

Welkin met her gaze for a brief instant, then looked away again.

"You'd be surprised how much old history we remember. Of course, we're still degenerate savages.

You Skyborn tricked a whole swag of locals. We lost an indispensable friend. Gimp by the name of Mundine—a true-blue friend of mine."

"What's a gimp?" Welkin asked, despite himself.

"A liability for the most part. Someone no one wants in his or her family. Gimps like their own independence too much."

She shrugged. "But they're handy to have around. They're sort of like, I don't know, hoboes in Old Earthspeak. Anyway, this gimp was a black fella who knew everything about living off the land. A gimp might be physically or mentally crippled. They tread their own path. It's no good trying to make them walk somebody else's."

Welkin rounded on her aggressively. "Then why kidnap me? Maybe I have my own path!"

"Maybe you do. And maybe our paths lie together for a time. The universe works in mysterious ways, my young friend." She touched the laserlite slung over her shoulder. "Right now, most of our time is taken up with food and weapons. But I figure there's got to be more. And that means finding a mekanic."

"A mechanic? You mean a technician?"

"Names don't matter."

He laughed. "Then you kidnapped the wrong person. You need my sister. Lucida's a top-rank techie.

There's nothing she can't fix or improvise."

Sarah eyed him thoughtfully. "You got a ship full of Einsteins, yeah?"

"Stuff you Earthborn couldn't even imagine," Welkin boasted. He felt himself swell with pride. Here was something that he had: knowledge. Compared to him, these people were like children.

Sarah snorted. "We know a lot, kid. But right now life's too short and hard. Surviving takes up most

of our time." She swatted a mosquito that landed on her shoulder. "If your sister can make surviving any easier, maybe we can use her."

Welkin stared at her like she was crazy. "You think she'd help you—you—?"

"Degenerate scum?"

"You don't know as much as you think. Not about Colony people. They'd rather die than come out here. And believe me, they don't want to save you."

Sarah actually laughed, a loud full-throated laughter that rocked her whole body. Welkin became even more puzzled. What if they were all insane? What chance did he have?

"Now you're wondering if we're crazy, right?"

Welkin flinched. Could she read his mind?

"No, I can't read your mind. But you're pretty transparent, Sky-born. We Earth scum are a bit more guarded. We don't wear our thoughts on our faces. Anyway, we better move. It's getting cold."

The mere mention of cold made Welkin shiver. Earth's harsh climate was another thing the elders hadn't taken into account. Or had they? he wondered.

She moved out and he reluctantly followed, stumbling over the uneven ground.

"So your sister's the smart one, huh?"

"Lucida once built a dynamic memory allocation unit out of old spares and cannibalized parts."

Sarah mulled this information over. "I guess if you're impressed, then I should be."

"Even the elders commended her," Welkin said. He noticed that Sarah chewed her lower lip when she was thinking; other times, the tip of her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth.

"So who are these elders? They're the bosses? Or just the advisers?"

At this simple question Welkin tensed up as a flood of memories unspooled. Their mother, Magda, had died from a recurrence of the Age Plague. He didn't know how his father died, but the elders hadalways dissuaded him from prying. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't have worried most Colony children. But Welkin and his sister weren't normal kids. They had had more contact than was usual with their biological parents, whereas most children were raised in subdi-visional nurseries and came to see the twenty or thirty subdivision parents as their own. Welkin hadn't ever really thought about the ways he and Lucida were different, except that they seemed to get into more trouble than other kids.

Their father's death had been a terrible blow to them. They grieved openly, which was politically and socially incorrect, even dangerous. "We've become nothing but uncaring animals," Lucida had screamed at her unit. The elders hospitalized her for that one—and warned that further outbreaks would require swift remedial attention. Both Welkin and Lucida quieted down after that warning. Freethinking radicals were either thrown downside, lobotomized, or simply vanished. Spending the rest of your life with parts of your brain missing didn't appeal to either of them. In fact, their change of attitude had been so marked that it had stirred further interest in them from the elders.

Their subdivision playmates shunned them, and they were officially reprimanded, a black mark being entered in their life files.

Black marks accumulated. None was forgotten. None was forgiven. His innocent friendship with Harry had been the final unforgivable black mark. And here he was, consorting with barbarians and freezing his butt off.

"Hello? Earth to Welkin? Tell me about the elders."

Welkin blinked. "They're the leaders on Colony. A long time ago, there was a plague. It killed almost everybody over the age of twenty. The elders were those who were genetically pure, who resisted the disease. It was natural that their children also became elders."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "You've brought a space virus back with you?"

"Nothing like that. It was brought under control ninety Earth years ago, though there have been recurrences. The first time was the worst. It devastated Colony, wiped out seventy percent of the crew and almost all the astrogators. If it weren't for the few elders who knew the secrets of navigating the stars, Colony would have been lost foreverin the void. After that, social structure changed. Young people had to learn to run the ship, just in case the plague ever mutated and came back stronger than before. But the plague hasn't been seen in years. The elders say it's been wiped out for good."

"So why'd you people come back here? We got our own problems—we don't need more trouble."

"We're not here—"

"Cut it. You're causing problems. What happened when you reached Tau Ceti III?"

"It was found to have a highly elliptical orbit. At its perihelion—"

"Closest to the sun?"

"Sorry. When it was closest to the sun it was too hot. At its aphelion—farthest from the sun—it was just too cold. The other planets were just as uninhabitable. Tau Ceti itself was smaller than Earth's sun and cooler. The ship couldn't last forever. Besides, war had broken out here. The elders met for a special meeting and in that meeting a miracle happened. Our true destiny was revealed."

"Your destiny?"

Welkin nodded eagerly. "Yes. They realized that it was no accident that Colony was sent to a dead star system. There was a great purpose hidden in this journey! Don't you see? We are the seeders! We are the new Noah's Ark. We were sent away into darkness so that Earth might one day live again and see the light of reason and civilization!"