Steven-kal came down the curving steps from the house, mounted a bicycle, and glimpsed Austin. He said in English, “I greet you, Austin. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I greet you, Steven-kal. I was just going.”
Steven-kal looked pointedly at his watch. “You are supposed to be there.”
“I’m just going now.”
“See that you do.” He mounted his bicycle and pedaled off.
Fuck! Austin thought, borrowing a forbidden word from his mother’s vocabulary. Steven-kal and his twin, Joshua-kal, were members of Austin’s lahk. His mother didn’t have any brothers, so Steven-kal and Joshua-kal had primary male responsibility for Austin, under the supervision of the lahk mother, who was Isabelle. Steven and Joshua McGuire—defiantly, he gave them their Earth names without the title of respect—weren’t even here at the lahk very much, so why did they have to visit now? Austin hated all of them—not because they were unkind to him but because they had responsibility for him for another three years and nobody recognized that he, Austin, was already an adult and able to make his own decisions.
Well, they would learn that soon enough!
He smacked one fist into the opposite palm, which felt good so he did it again. Graa^lok ducked under the hanging leaves. “I greet you, Austin. What are you doing?”
“I greet you, Graa^lok. Nothing,” Austin said. Graa^lok was learning English, which was one of the things Austin liked about him, even though Austin’s Worldese was perfect. “You got here before the window for language closed,” Isabelle-kal said, which Austin resented because that made it sound like the only reason he spoke so well was timing and not his own intelligence. The other thing he liked about Graa^lok was this: Graa^lok was the only kid on Kindred who had ever shown any curiosity about Earth.
Graa^lok said, “Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready for a long time,” Austin said. It was something he’d overheard Tony Schrupp say. Graa^lok looked puzzled for a moment but then grabbed Austin’s hand. “Let us go!”
Austin pulled away; he didn’t like being touched. It was another thing that set him apart from Worlders, who were all over each other all the time. But Austin wasn’t a Worlder, as his mother kept telling him. He wasn’t a Terran, either. He wasn’t anything, and only Tony Schrupp seemed to understand that.
The boys darted from tree to tree, making a game of it, avoiding the road where people were bicycling around just as if they weren’t going to die in a few months. But then Austin and Graa^lok doubled back because Graa^lok needed to use the bathroom, of all the stupid times, and Austin’s mother caught them as they scampered down the stairs from the terrace to the garden.
“Austin!” she shrilled. “Come back here!”
“Going to school, Mom!” he called in English.
“No, come back, you and Graylock both, something horrible has happened!”
“Bye! School!” He ran as fast as he could with Graa^lok, who was shorter and fatter, puffing behind him. Whatever had happened would be his mother’s usual exaggerated crisis. She would cry because she’d burned the vegetable stew or ruined the pillow she was sewing, and then Austin would feel like crying because he couldn’t help her, and then he’d get mad because he didn’t want to cry. Over and over. The real problem, Austin knew because he wasn’t stupid even if he didn’t belong anywhere, was that his mother hated World. Austin, who loved World, was thrilled that finally he and Graa^lok and Tony Schrupp and the others were going to do something about that.
The boys kept away from the roads, where people had stopped their bicycles and stood in little groups, talking and waving their arms. Austin and Graa^lok ran through the gardens till they reached fields. Through the fields where people weeded crops or sprinkled them with foul-smelling fertilizer from carts drawn by pel^aks, the patient and stupid beasts moving as slowly as if the warm air were thick as water. Through the grazing land beyond the village, where skaleth¡ grazed, their furry purple bodies splashed with different color dyes on different parts of their bodies to show who they belonged to. Shearing season hadn’t come yet, and the skaleth¡ looked furry and content.
Well, they weren’t going to die! Animals didn’t get spore disease. Or… did they? Austin wasn’t sure.
The boys slowed, Graa^lok flopping down on a patch of soft moss to pant. Austin offered him water from the canteen at his belt and Graa^lok drank greedily, water dribbling down the front of his wrap. “Don’t waste it,” Austin said, heard the echo of Isabelle’s scolding words, and scowled. “We have a long way to go.”
“Speak the English. I want to create practice. This is our third-last trip,” Graa^lok said, unnecessarily. “Then, we did be away forever.”
“Not forever. We’ll come back to get my mother and your sisters. When everything’s ready.”
“Yes. Of course. But the other of Terrans in your lahk—”
“I told you, no.” Austin deepened his scowl so that Graa^lok wouldn’t ask any more questions about his lahk, which fascinated Graa^lok. Graa^lok’s lahk was normal, living in a bunch of close houses with Great-Grandmother Kee^la as lahk mother, her son and daughter and their children and all the young cousins like Graa^lok, with everybody’s father visiting instead of being thousands of light-years away on Terra. Austin would never be normal.
We’ll make a new normal, Tony Schrupp said.
At the thought of Tony, waiting for them in the amazing new thing they were creating, Austin’s scowl disappeared. “Get up,” he said to Graa^lok in English. “We still have a long way to go.”
Leo had rearguard in the transport, which was an open flatbed truck with benches and a sun canopy, like those things that tourists rode around on in Florida. “Electric,” Noah Jenner said. “Slow, but we don’t have far to go.”
Leo hadn’t heard where they were going. Owen had them all on alert, although the only thing they passed were an old man on a bicycle and some of the paint-splashed animals blocking the road. The other Kindred man got out and smacked them on their rumps until they moved. The big orange sun rose higher; the dark plants in the fields turned their broad leaves to follow it; Leo sweated in his armor and ignored the parched tingle of his throat.
At the front of the transport a radio spoke continuously in Kindese, the newscaster’s voice sounding choked with tears. Noah, up front, seemed to be translating in a low voice for his mother and Owen, but Leo couldn’t hear what they were saying. Dr. Bourgiba, near Leo, sat leaning forward, hands on his knees, straining to hear.
Dr. Patel said to him, “What’s happening, Salah?”
He spoke quickly during a pause in the broadcast, clearly not wanting to miss anything, “Their three major cities destroyed, the major cultural and scientific centers and their starship. About twenty percent of the population dead.”
Twenty percent? Leo had a hazy idea that in America, more than 20 percent of the people lived in cities. What he really wanted was evidence that the Russian ship had left the star system, but Dr. Bourgiba said nothing about that.
He added, “Decentralization of manufacturing and government, so….” Leo didn’t catch the rest.
More fields with either plants or paint-splashed animals, a big pond—and then they came to a settlement and Leo caught his breath.
He knew that he wasn’t usually sensitive to beauty (except in women). Scenic views, important buildings, gardens—none of it stirred him. But he’d never seen anything like these houses. They were made of something like bamboo, all curving walls and swooping roofs, with decks and woven bits. Big ones, smaller ones, all surrounded by trees and connected by curving stone paths. It looked like he imagined the estate of some high muckety-muck in some Asian country Leo would never see, but not exactly like that. He didn’t know what it looked like.