A
Journey
Deep
By Beth Reason
Copyright 2013 Beth Reason
Smashwords Edition
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Table Of Contents:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the author
Chapter 1
My life had changed and I was trying to decide how I felt about it.
I'd packed already. I'd gotten the handful of possessions that had crammed my sleeping quarters for the past fifteen years shoved into my dad's old backpack. He said he "dusted it off" for me. I guess that's just another one of those sayings everyone assumed I understood. I didn't. What's dust? I could tell you what my HuTA would say. Probably something like, "Dust is a settled layer of formerly airborne particles, comprised of dirt, pollen, skin flakes..." I understood the concept, I'd just never lived with it. And I didn't understand why you'd actually want all those contaminants to fly back up in the air. If they settle, isn't that the point? I'd much rather walk on bug wings and pieces of skin and hair particles than breathe them in.
Mother's had been going on and on about a million things like that. Sunscreen. Mosquitoes. Humidity. "Wiping your feet, young man," whatever that meant. She'd still be going on, in fact, if I was still with her. I was in the jump seat all geared out and even with her half a ship away, I swear I could hear her. She's just got that kind of voice that carries.
"Don't let her get to you. You'll settle in just fine."
"I don't want to settle in, Dad."
I suppose I did make up my mind after all. Maybe it was when I was packing up. Maybe it was when I was filing my day's work with HuTA for the last time. Maybe that's when it hit me. Maybe it was Mother's nattering that made up my mind about it. Or maybe I hated this all along, whenever Dad would start to talk about Earth and "home". Maybe I've always hated the idea of going there.
"Going back," is how Dad put it.
Back? Home? No way. It might be his home. It's not mine, and it never has been.
"Do you just want me gone?"
Not only did Dad and Mother jump all over that one, the whole crew did, the geeks and squeaks included. It makes me feel a little better about my time with them all, even though I know that some of them were only saying it to save face in front of the others. Jenna would miss me. Stephan, he should, too, since I'd spent a year and a half doing all his work when Mother wasn't looking. Daniel, of course, since I'm the only one who's ever liked his cooking. Dad said it's only because I didn't know any better. Maybe that's true, but so what? Who was going to tell Daniel he was doing a good job and mean it once I left? I hope someone did.
Xavier was glad I was going. He hated me my whole life. I used to let it bother me, but for the last few years I just accepted it, especially when I got old enough to realize he's really just a jerk. It's not personal. I really think he just doesn't like anyone.
"He's got a difficult job, Jakey. He's got to plot and plan every move this ship makes. It's a big responsibility, and a little kid poking around in his business makes it ten times harder."
Mother always calls me Jakey. I gave up trying to correct her. It's simply not worth it. Besides, as Ashnahta pointed out last year, it's the only time she does not sound like a scientist.
Ashnahta. I never even got to say good-bye to her.
Yes, my mind was most definitely made up. I hated going. I hate everything about it. If they cared about their "home" so much, then shouldn't they have been the ones to jump home? Leave me here, in my home, I wanted to scream. I was almost a man. I've had more training than any of them in every aspect of this space ship. Unlike them, I'd lived and breathed it since birth. They always told me it's unnatural, that it's an unnatural life to live. That's crap! It's my nature. It was then, and it still is now. The wires are my trees. The plasma projections are my scenic views. I used to wake up in my apartment and walk the mile and a half loop around my metal ship road, passing by my neighbors and listening to the chirps of the machinery and feel the warmth of the lamps on my face. How is that different from Earth, really?
"The air you breathe is fake."
No. It's just pure.
"And the water you wash with has been generated by machine, not clouds."
It's the same cycle, just on a smaller scale.
"You've never wiggled your toes in the sand."
Of course not! The thought was utterly disgusting to me.
"Or caught a fish for your dinner."
Like...an animal?
"Or just sat under the night sky and looked up at the stars."
It always came down to that with Dad. The same argument over and over. And always, I would say to him, "Aha! I have you on that. I'm surrounded by stars!"
He always got sad. "It's just not the same, Jake."
He wanted me to find out. Mother wanted me to find out. Everyone on deck wanted me to find out, except Stephan. And not one of them could tell me why. Or, more importantly, why then? Why were they all suddenly hellbent on shoving me out the door all of a sudden?
Ashnahta would be dead when I got back. That thought rolled through my head over and over like a wave of air sickness. She would be dead and gone, just a memory, when I got back. If I got back.
If.
The life cycle of the Qitan is short. She was only about seven, by our human years, but already a full adult. Dad likes to talk about the amazement of the species that can only live about twenty years in our times and yet become so advanced. "I'll live to a hundred, and I won't know half as much by the time I die."
"It is because we have learned what is important, and what is stupid," Ashnahta told me when I asked about it. "You waste time. We have none to waste."
I don't waste time. Everything I do has a purpose, and I got highly offended when she claimed otherwise. She just laughed and laughed. "Of course you do not," she said when she was done laughing at me. "You are a space man, not an Earth man. We have them, too."
The Qitan had been space-faring longer than any other "tribe". Species is the term we use, but Ashnahta and her people got very angry when they learned the definition. I remember her mothers and how they raged at my mother about teaching her young "such vile ideas". It was a horrible day for the adults. I was only twelve at the time and was just fascinated that anyone could yell at Mother and get away with it. Not even Xavier does that.
It wasn't until we were back on board that night that Mother sat me down and explained why they were mad, and why it's important I agree with them. "They have two legs, two arms, one head. They look different on the outside, but they have brains and stomachs and kidneys. They are right, and I was wrong. I almost cost this program all we've worked for. You remember that when you are around any of them. You adopt that philosophy and you'll become more valuable to this mission than anyone else on board. We look different, but we are the same."
"Even the Ehkins?"
I love Mother, but sometimes her way of looking at things is not even on the same planet as mine. She never liked the Ehkin tribes, not at all. The whole year we orbited and contacted, she was restless, annoyed. She constantly told Xavier he should pack and move on, go find "intelligent" life. They were intelligent, the Ehkin. Just not in the ways that interested Mother. They had no space travel, because they did not care to mine the ores in their planet. They had no weapons, because they saw no reason to kill anything. Mother called the whole planet a "technological waste". She would insist up and down that our discovery of them was "scientifically intriguing", then beg Xavier to move on in the same breath. HuTA told me the word I was looking for to describe that mindset was "prejudice", but when I got the direct meaning of that, I disagreed with HuTA and it ended up giving me extra homework. Not prejudice. That seems too...mean. Mother wasn't being mean about it. She was...bored? Hoping for more? I don't know. She didn't wish them harm. In their presence, she always treated them with respect. And she allowed me to play with the one they called "Little Blob". That's the best translation HuTA and I came up with. It was a good name. He really wasn't much more than a little blob.