Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences (10 page)

My science officer compared it to what happened on Rayden 2, where a similar change occurred. Apparently contact with us stimulated a part of the product’s mind that they couldn’t access before. What is most important is that the product on Rayden 2 advanced only to the level of a child. Many of them even lost hearing skill after that, but none, not one, advanced further. My science officer anticipates the same will happen here.

Nevertheless, we both know there will be an outcry across the Republic from species rights and religious groups who will claim the product is aware and cannot, by law, be treated as product. The company would suffer significant losses, unacceptable losses.

Here is my proposition: I will destroy all hearing product on this planet. The other heads of houses have already been contacted and all have agreed to my plan. We will claim that the product that could initially hear lost the ability. You will send me a small number of hearing product from our holdings to compensate for my loss. We’ll begin a campaign immediately to undermine the inevitable accusations. With quick, decisive action, we can still make this a profitable acquisition. The company will, no doubt, be very grateful.

We practice talking with our minds, and though we can’t hear each other perfectly — it’s a little like a cell phone with a faulty signal — we can all do it. I try to hear the Handlers talking to one another. Occasionally I hear bits of thoughts.

That night in the library, we all talk to each other with our minds. I can hear everyone pretty clearly except for Lauren. Her voice is lost in static every few seconds. She has to ask what’s been said, too, and it frustrates her. She’s used to being the quickest at everything.

We’re all freaks,
Michael thinks.
What is happening to us? We’re all turning into freaks. Nothing as freaky as dream boy here, but still
.

Maybe we’ll turn back into ourselves when we get away from them,
Lindsey thinks.

It won’t be like that,
I think.
We’re all hearing m
ore. I he
ar other people sometimes now. I bet you
do, too
.

Lindsey thinks,
The other day I heard a girl thinking about her mother and aunt. It was like a memory
.

So it’s maybe like an evolutionary change,
Lauren thinks.

Both Michael and Lindsey groan.

I’m just saying, maybe it’s permanent. Evolutionary changes have always caused discomfort
.

I think,
Like when apes went one way and what would become humans went another, there were proba
bly hard feelings
.
There were probably some apes yelling at the ones becoming humans, “You guys are total freaks!”

Shut up,
Michael thinks.

We’re preoccupied, and that’s why we don’t hear Anchise.

You’re reading each other
.

“What?” I say. “No. Reading? No.”

Everyone else denies it.

You’re lying
.

We start denying it again.

Go to your rooms,
he thinks, though we still have time before we normally have to go to our rooms.

A geeky guy named Ted uses my line about Anchise’s biological clock being off. I want to tell him to shut up, but I don’t get the chance. Anchise doesn’t even look at him. Ted falls to the floor. Ted is dead.

Sorry for your loss,
Anchise thinks, not sounding sorry at all.

Anchise tells everyone to go to their rooms, and they all do. They practically run for the stairs. I can feel how he likes this. But something is wrong. They’ve been careful with us since those first few weeks. We’re property. We’re valuable. Even Handlers like Anchise have kept themselves from damaging us. Until now. Something has changed.

I try to go to sleep early that night. Of course it takes me a while. I have to count sheepdogs again. I get into the thousands this time.

I dream. I’m beside myself, which strikes me as funny because it was one of my mom’s sayings. She would say, “I was beside myself with worry.” That’s me now, literally. I don’t look at myself, though, because it’s just too strange.

I go into Michael’s dream. How predictable. He’s on a football field. He’s wearing his football uniform.

A referee sees me and throws a flag. “Delay of game!” he shouts.

I leave. I was going to see if I could take Michael with me to Catlin’s, but I change my mind. I go alone. Catlin is standing by her window.

“They’re coming,” she says.

PERSONAL LOG:

Anchise reported that the slaves were reading each other in the library. They were having a conversation. Couldn’t this be a good thing, though? Product that evolves because of us and can do advanced work. We could have a new class of slave. A better one. We could breed them.

But those in power have no vision.

We have our plan. We will create a net, each of us taking a point, and we will close around them, extinguishing their faint flames. It will be quick and painless, but what a waste. I am truly sorry.

“Who’s coming?” I say. But even as I say it, I hear them. I hear them gathering. It’s not exactly gathering, though, because they’re in different places. I’m confused. They’re together but not together.

“They’re joining,” she says.

“They’re what?”

“They’re going to kill us.”

“I’ll be back,” I say.

“Don’t leave me,” she cries. But I do.

I go back to my room, but then I can’t wake myself. I stand there beside myself, the fear pounding in me, and I can’t wake up. Then my mother comes to me. She’s standing over me like she did so many times when she woke me for school. “Time to wake up, Jess.” It’s like it’s really her, like she’s back. I am so happy for a second. Then I wake up. The sorrow and fear hit me at the same moment. I jump up from the floor.

“They’re going to kill us!” I shout. “Run!”

Everyone wakes up pretty quickly. No one needs an explanation of who “they” are. No one doubts that they will kill us, either. We all run out into the hall, and things get chaotic.

“They’re close,” I say to Michael. “You get Lindsey and Lauren. I’ve got to get Catlin.”

We both run up the stairs. I know Catlin’s room is up high. I know that much. But when we get to the girls’ floor, I’m confused. There’s nowhere else to go, no fourth floor, no attic that I can see.

Catlin,
I shout with my mind.
Catlin
.

I hear something. It’s a faint voice. A lot of people are waking now and there’s fear everywhere, like something sharp and cold in the air, like a stinging rain, but I hear Catlin calling my name. I know she’s shouting, but to me it’s barely a whisper.

She’s on this floor. I meet Lauren and Lindsey and Michael coming out of the girls’ room.

“You go get the supplies,” I say. “I’ll meet you outside the kitchen door.”

Lauren hesitates.

“Go,” I say.

And she does. They all do. I listen. Everything is chaos around me. People screaming, pushing, shoving. I stand still. I make my mind find silence and I hear her more clearly, and then it appears at the end of the hall: a door.

“Jesse,” she shouts. “Jesse.”

“I’m here,” I say.

“Where?”

“Outside. There’s a door.”

“Of course,” she says. “The tower is an illusion. He made it all up. It’s just a room, isn’t it?”

“It’s just a room. What should I do?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Do something. Try something.”

So I try opening the door and it opens right up. I try walking through it, but as soon as I get in the doorway, it feels like this one time that I was stupid enough to touch an electric fence, but worse. I’m thrown back on my butt, and my whole body is shaking.

I can see the room. I can see Catlin. But she’s on the other side of the force field, or whatever it is.

“What did you do?” she says.

“I opened the door. Something stopped me from getting in.”

“I told you it’s like some kind of spell.”

“I can see you,” I say.

“Do something.”

I stand up. It hurts. My feet feel numb. I force myself to move.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe see if you can make the spell look like something you know,” she says. “Like a curtain maybe. Then try to tear it.”

I hear something that sounds like water rushing toward me. It’s loud. It sounds like a killer wave. I suddenly slip back into a memory, only it seems more real than a memory: I’m a kid and we’re white-water-rafting in Colorado and I fall out of the raft. I get caught on a rock and I’m pounded by rushing water and then pulled under. I can’t do anything. I know I’m going to die. Then I’m out of the water. My dad has me somehow. He’s saying my name over and over.

No
.

“It’s not real,” I say out loud. I know my dad isn’t here to save me.

I concentrate on seeing a curtain in front of me.

“Are you doing it?” she says.

“I’m trying.”

“Me too,” she says. “I’m trying, too.”

“I’m pulling at it.”

“Wait, look at the bottom.”

I see it. A tear. I yank it. I hear the rushing water behind me. I feel the memory of being pulled under the water, being held there, and being sure I’d never get back to the surface. “But you did get back to the surface,” my father’s voice says. “You got back.”

I yank a big piece off the curtain.

“We’re getting it,” she says.

We’re pulling and yanking and finally it unravels and Catlin runs out of the room. She runs right past me.

“Come on,” she says. “There’s no time.”

It’s hard getting down the stairs. They’re jammed with people. About halfway down, we jump over the rail. It’s about an eight-foot drop, but it would take too long to shove our way through the crowd. I lead Catlin to the kitchen. It’s easy to get there. Everyone else is going the other way, trying to get out the doors in the den and front. We step out the back door. I hear a few voices at the front of the house, but I also hear people screaming inside that the doors are locked.

Lauren, Michael, Lindsey!
I shout with my mind.

They shout back. They’re close. I see them down past the pool. No one else is there.

“Come on,” I say to Catlin.

The three of them are staring at something. Then I see it. A wall. Not the stone wall that surrounds the grounds but something much taller and wider. At first it looks like some kind of metal. Then it becomes a mirror and I can see our reflections in it. I can see the house, and because the lights are on, I can see faces up against the windows in the den. I can hear windows break but no one gets out. Something is holding them in. I hear them screaming.

“This is why there weren’t any traps,” Catlin says. “They’ve put everything into this wall. They’re going to destroy everyone inside it.”

“But we’re valuable,” Lauren says.

“They don’t care anymore.”

The wall is enormous. I see in my mind that it stretches to the sky and into the earth, that it is as deep as a city block. To me it now becomes steel. It’s the worst thing I could imagine. Am I imagining it? How else is it possible for it to keep changing?