Wami threw her legs over the low wall, then reached for the sack and dragged it over to her. That was the last of the things she could find that could be useful to her. She ignored the ache in her joints and the sore spots in her soles as she scuffed the dust on the cement, half-dragging, half-walking the sack of provisions to her fort.
She sat for a few minutes, sipping water from a ships’ sachet as she looked down on the silent colony. She was the last one, all the others were lying cold and still in their homes or in the church where some had gathered in their last days.
She didn’t know why she was still alive; perhaps the blessings the Deacon had so fervently dispensed while they had huddled in the church had clung to Wami, had insulated her from the fear and the dying. The prayers didn’t help her parents though, or anyone else for that matter. She had woken up this morning, and none of the others had; not even the Deacon.
Wami had thought about what to do while she had smoothed her mother’s hair and draped a fine cloth over where her father lay still holding her mother’s hand, on the floor of the church. She knew she didn’t want to stay here with them. They might have looked like they were sleeping; but she was a mindful girl at her ten years and she already knew what death looked like. They were never coming back; they had joined the Sky-spirit and now they could only watch her from above.
The time for sadness would be later, now was the only time that was important; her last promise to her mother that she would watch for the ship when it came. Their last days were spent talking about what to do, and who would come to help them. The Deacon was on the channel to the Sky-spirit almost constantly as the remaining villagers trickled in at the last day; but Wami didn’t know how to use the uplink machine or what codes to use.
When it was obvious that she needed to, all the adults were too sick to show her. She did know that if help came, it would arrive at the Star-Port. If she moved there and waited for them it would be better than waiting at the church. Besides which, the church building was starting to feel like dust and silence, and loneliness… and Wami didn’t like that at all.
This morning she had checked in at the infirmary, the Mess Hall and the Library – they were either deserted, or packed with the still forms of the people who used to be vital members of the Colony. She had not wanted to linger in those places, either. Wami was old enough to take care of herself; Mother had already taught her how to boil water and make porridge, cut fruit and cook meat.
Wami was unique her whole life, so far the only child on the planet, the only infant at planet fall. Mother had said she had been made on the ancestor home and she had been carried with her in the long sleep between the Old World and this new one. The Ship-spirit had woken mother up five years early from her deep sleep so she could birth Wami in the safety of the ship’s artificial gravity and radiation shields, rather than take any chances so close to her term on their new home.
Naturally conceived children were precious to the Sol Senate no matter where they were, over the whole reach of humanities’ struggling grasp. Since their arrival here, everyone else had been too busy setting up domes and water plants, selecting tasks from a roster the Sky-spirit presented; to properly court and marry. Wami’s mother and father were the only couple when they had landed, and five years after planet-fall, they still were, more or less. One of the Deacon’s persistent sermons was that the young men and women should stop playing with themselves and start playing with each other.
Wami didn’t know what that meant, and when she asked mother what that meant she only smiled and said “We’re building something here, Wami. There will be plenty of time to please the Deacon later. Other children will come when we are ready.”
Wami checked her screen-reader, it was full from her library downloads. She could sit here and read while she waited out the rescue ship, and she had at least four weeks of the last of the old supplies before she needed to go down to the well and fetch water, or forage from hydroponics for fresh leaves. She had just opened the animal pens and loosed the creatures to the wild.
The water pool and feed troughs were mostly automated and there was nothing else on the dusty Planet that could harm them. It seemed kinder that way, considering there was no-one to tend them. They could roam and forage wherever they wanted, whatever was affecting the people wasn’t affecting them. They knew what they needed better than Wami did.
Wami settled down for the night, watching the stars wink on as the sun set. The brightest star was the Sky-spirit, where mother and father most probably were. She waved at them to show she was doing what they told her to do. It should be enough for them to know she was all right and had enough to eat and drink – she actually preferred the left-over ship concentrates, anyway.
No one else liked the concentrates – once they landed they pushed them to the back of the granary, but Wami had been eating them since her back gums got sore; she found them more convenient as they didn’t require chewing, and she didn’t mind the taste. She was a frugal girl, a single sachet was enough for a meal, and the sticky paste would not irritate her mouth in the long weeks until the scheduled med-ship would dock with the dentist aboard. They also didn’t go bad; their shelf life was hundreds of years.
Wami’s mouth had begun to ache only after the med-ship’s last visit, but she bore this inconvenient irony with a stoic stubbornness. She didn’t want to visit the settlement again unless she had to, what with all the bodies in the Infirmary and the Church. The concentrates and water were pre-packaged in a sack and loaded on a dolly, and presented the opportunity to avoid the village as long as they lasted.
Wami had simply dragged the dolly over the still dusty roads to set her bunker on the roof of the control tower to keep the Sky-spirit company. It could look down and see her, and know she kept her faith. Mother and father could also watch over her and know she was doing as best she could.
She had brought her toys with her, so she wouldn’t be any lonelier while she waited for help to come.
She dusted the concrete in front of her shade-cloth and set her friends down on the ground. They were from her mother’s-mother back in the time they had all lived around the Ancestor-star, on old Earth. Grandmother had lived in the Kenyan highlands as a girl at the time the rains had stopped coming. Wami loved to hear her mother tell her stories about how they had moved with the toys over the cold distances to their new home, here, where their new life would begin.
The memory of meeting the toys for the first time comforted her now. Mother had brought the toys in a little carry-case from ship storage as the beige marble in the ship’s viewer became fixed and grew bigger and bigger, then she introduced them to Wami. She was delighted from the moment Mother switched them on.
Mother had said: “This is Waja with the lights and the dancing-stick and the speaker and this is his friend Kimi with lights and the cymbals. They shine at each other while Kimi plays. This is Wami with the wheels and she dances between them, while Biti here is the drummer and keeps time for her. I’m too old for them now, but I wanted you to have them before you were born, before I even knew you were coming.”
Her five-year old self had asked: “My name is Wami too, did you name me after her?”
Mother had answered: “Wami means ‘pretty’ in our old language. You’re both very pretty, so you’re both called Wami. One day when you’re old enough I’ll teach you more of how we used to talk before we began to speak only Panglish. There are so few of us now who remember the old tongue, but this is why everyone is coming here; to start again and fix that.
Now listen very carefully to what Waja asks you, and then answer with all your heart.”
And Waja had blinked his lights and said: “[I Love you] [Do you love me?]” Perhaps it wasn’t just the words that crackled from the tiny speaker above his heart, or the flash of the different colored light that seeped from points in his face or along his uniform or the way he tilted his head when he spoke; Wami understood him clearly with the special wonder that any child has for her world.
Wami had answered immediately: “I Love you!” and she knew she did from that moment on, with all her heart…
Wami suddenly felt very sad as her toy friends lined up on the concrete before her. Now that she was settled and safe, all the things that she had seen began to weigh on her.
Waja cocked his little head, “[Is anything wrong Wami?]”
“I’m all alone now, Waja.” Wami dabbed at the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Play for me.”
Waja waved his stick at the others, “[Don’t be sad Wami. We’ll play for you until you’re not lonely anymore.]”
“I’m very lonely now, Waja.” Wami sobbed, “Play for me with all your heart.”
“[We will, Wami],” Waja said, and Kami and Biti and little Wami agreed, “[We will dance while you are awake; and we will play while you are asleep. We will play will all our hearts until you are not alone.]”
And so they began…
***
Captain Sancha Cortosa held the steering steady as she swung the jets onto the baffles. “Locked and loaded guys!” she announced over the intercoms, “You know what to do, spread out and report back to me every half-hour. Call me immediately if you find something.”
“Aye-aye” and “Roger-roger” and “Ten-four” fed over her coms-bead as the various teams set their call-signs and scooted out of the opening bay.
“Nothing looks wrong, Captain.” Gunnery Sergeant Diego Baptista looked up from his feeds, “I don’t get it. The Satellite AI Star-mind is traumatized, sure… but nothing is wrong with it. No stellar radiation or cosmic waves, no physical damage to the colony to speak of.”
“We’ll know when we get reports in, Diego,” Sancha snapped the buckles to lift out of the command chair, “In the meantime let’s just get used to this gravity, and search for survivors. We have trained our Multi-National Colony Response Team for years; that is us and this is not a drill.”
“I’ll suit up.” Diego nodded, “Although I’m not sure there’s anything to target.”
“Just run through our roles, Diego. I need my munitions marine ready for anything,” Sancha rubbed her shins, aching against the extra weight, “This is the first colony distress we’ve ever had, and we’ll go by the book on this run. We don’t know what we’ll find. Aside from the slightly heavier gravity, this place is supposed to be quite tame. Everyone has their job. Just do yours and I’ll do mine.”
*
Hours later Diego found her on top of the Star-Port staring at a makeshift shelter. He thought he heard a ting-ting-ting-tat-tat-tat sound as he rounded the roof-door, but it stopped as he approached the crouching woman.
“Report.” She stood as her marine neared.
“Negative human life-signs, all six hundred and four lost,” Diego sighed, “They’re taking them for autopsy now. We’ll know in a few hours. What’s this?”
“She is the missing girl. Star-mind managed to track her life-sign until a week ago. She was the last of them. I think the Star-mind only stayed sane because of her toys.”
“What… Oh meu Deus!” Diego gasped in surprise as he saw the little form huddled in the back of her play-fort.
“You have children of your own, I recall.” Sancha stepped away from the pathetic sight. All the empty ship-rations and sachet packets had been carefully rolled and stacked in a neat pile. A bucket half-full with well-water rested under shade-cloth in the back of the shelter.
“Two; a boy and a girl, they’re both still very young – ten years and eight. About the same age as this little girl.”
“Children are always the hardest to find like this.” Sancha pressed her bead, “Ten-Four: Containment on Star-Port roof, it’s the missing girl; acknowledge.”
“Ten-four, Star-Port roof.” the medic team buzzed back. “On our way.”
“What are those?” Diego pointed as he dialed down his suit-alert to stand-by.
“They’re Out-System designer toys.” Sancha looked down at the line of mechanical dolls watching her. “Solar-powered and built to last. They’re educational. They blend light, sound and motion, and are capable of an emotional connection with children. No real computational power to speak of, not even Type 1 intelligence… more like a 0.7… They’re just toys based on universal human tropes.”
“But you said they were communicating with the Star-mind …?” Diego slipped off his face-plate to better see beyond his AR screens.
“The LED’s of the ringmaster toy and the percussion toy are an ancient Morse-code communication; Star-mind has been eavesdropping on the instruction between these two. These toys have prevented the Star-mind from looping into a catatonic state, kept it in the present with minor variations of rhythm; and they’ve entertained it. They’re the actual heroes in this tragedy, go figure.”
“Sancha…” Diego’s voice trembled. “She looks asleep, poor little thing all alone for those five weeks. How did we help her? What have we changed? We arrived a week too late.”
“Don’t …!” Sancha snapped, “We keep to our jobs, Sergeant! Yours is the protection against physical threat and mine is the protection of the Senate Intelligent and Robotic assets. Just because we fuck between flights doesn’t mean you know me! I don’t care as much for these people as you do! That’s not my job, save all your compassion for someone who needs it!”
Diego didn’t pay attention to her outburst; he just closed the distance between them, then folded her into his arms and held her as she resolved to stay steady. “Just because you work with machines doesn’t mean you are one.” He whispered into her ear as he held her.
She was rescued from his comforting as a burst from the infrastructure team to her micro-bead allowed her the opportunity to gently push Diego away. “Engineering has something.” Sancha smiled gratefully at the big man. “Roger-roger: Report please, Poul.”
“Roger-roger.Captain, we’ve found something on the potable water supply ducts in the settlement font.”
“Explain, please. This is your specialty.”
“The deep-drill water filters trap the minerals that the colonists reuse in the hydroponics and on the fallow fields, typically sodium and brine salts. They take the filtered powder-residue and just spread it in hydroponics if it’s from the Sulphur trap; or dump it on the salt-lick if it is from the brine filters.
“The other water from the surface aquifers and other drill-sites they just drain into grey-water pools without ever drinking it. It’s naturally brackish so it’s fine for the plants and farm-stock animals. This is a desert-type planet for the most part, so there’s no fresh rainwater.”
“So?” Sancha shrugged, she wasn’t making any connection.
“The drinking water filters, Captain, specifically for the humans.” Poul’s voice sounded tense. “This starlight is slightly darker than Solar, with more orange light. Things look the same color under this light, but they’re not the same. Even on Earth they look very similar… Somewhere in the last three months, they’ve hit another mineral in the deep drill that looks like pure Sulphur; but isn’t.”
“Well, what?” Sancha lost her patience with the young geologist.
“I don’t think I should speculate…” Poul sounded flustered.
“Just you fucking guess!” Sancha snapped, “That’s why you’re here.”
“Orpiment, Captain.” Poul sighed, “Not just Sulphur. It’s an arsenic mineral. I’ll have to check with medical for the autopsy results when they’re ready, but I’m sure about one thing. If it is what I think it is in these quantities; then these guys were dead months ago and didn’t know it. The stuff builds up in human tissue until it reaches a critical mass, then it’s all over. Organ failure; typically, while one is asleep. Medical will have to confirm this.”
“Thank you.” Sancha groaned quietly; the tension that had been building all morning started to ebb from her. “I’m sorry…” She accessed her toxicology archive and watched the entry for ‘arsenic’ stream in.
“Captain, I understand.” Poul interrupted in his heavily accented Panglish, “There is very little pain. It is not the worst way you could go.”
“She looks like she’s sleeping.” Diego stood up from the body, “You can hardly tell she’s dead.”
“Apparently Arsenic is something that can do that. There is very little decomposition; medical is confirming this from the first autopsy results.” Sancha looked over the colony, “They confirm ‘heavy metal’ poisoning. This settlement is still viable; we can make sure this never happens again with a few adjustments to the process tech. We can fix this…” Sancha looked back at the little bundle “… but we can’t fix them…”
“We should bury them properly.” Diego crouched to look at the little line of toys staring back at him, “Up on the hill, these dead should always be part of what we’re building here.” Diego must have triggered a proximity sensor on the line of toys, because the troop leader squeaked “[Ninakupenda], [Unanipenda]” from the tiny speaker in its chest.
“What’s that mean?” he squinted up at Sancha. “Why did they stop playing when we got here?”
“That’s their imprinting command. They’ve lost the connection with the girl, and then her last instruction ran its course. Whatever she told them to do, it’s done now.” She stepped to the edge of the tower, below her the bodies were being arranged in rows on the Starport’s geocrete slabs, “It usually only works for children. You and I can’t imprint; we’re past puberty. That’s when adult sex hormones re-wire the brain, and the toys can’t track the complex human emotions after that. I don’t know what condition she placed on them, but you should put them in their sleep-box to hibernate them.”
“How does it work?” Diego carefully picked up the leader; he was convinced the toy was waiting for him to say something.
“The child repeats the first word or phrase and then the toys will settle into the child’s language pattern, whatever it is. The toys learn to love that child and will teach them all sorts of advantageous developmental behavior. In return… they get a child’s unconditional love as feedback.” Sancha sighed, and waved absently near the little corpse, “You have young enough children, and you should take those with you when we leave here. Just use the case over there and take them. They shouldn’t be abandoned here; they are not useful to anybody but a small child. They’re just toys. They will reset and recalibrate language settings when another child is presented to them.”
“Thank you, Sancha.” He stooped and opened the small carry case. Lining the niches for the toys, a nanite repair-gel shimmered in the sun’s light.
“They just need to be loved…” Sancha shrugged. “If I can save nothing else on this planet, at least I can save them. I must put the Star-mind into hibernation and transport it next. The Type 5 is too emotional for this kind of work, I see that now. Losing this colony nearly drove it insane. It had even learned to speak Swahili to better interface with the colonists. Now, the Star-mind is the only thing left that can communicate in that language besides these toys, and it is having an existential crisis. At least his systems logs are still in Panglish. It pains me to consider this, but for the last week the only things speaking Swahili have been a Star-mind and a troupe of toys. The toys will automatically switch language when presented with a new opportunity, unfortunately I will have to expunge the Star-mind and recalibrate it.” She inhaled long, before she spoke again.
“Think of it, the Refugia of an ancient language will end – and by my hand. Here I mean end as in gone from Old Earth, from this world and from the Universe. We can’t have this happen again. My report will insist on Type 3 for future colony Star-minds.” She sighed and stared over the bustle of her team in the buildings below and the shrouded forms lining up on the Star-Port pavement. “They were nearly ready; they were only weeks away from a sustainable, agrarian settlement; so close. Diego when you’re done here, respectfully process the bodies. Bury them on high ground above the water table as they fall out of autopsy. Identify and match them from the colony records by name. More than a people died here; a language, an entire culture… all their hope for a different future. I’ll be in the ship with the clean-up and Transport reports.”
“Captain, nobody ever suspects the water of harm. This could have happened anywhere in human space, even back on Old Earth. We Humans die very easily when we’re isolated, there is always this risk when we set out. You simply can’t take this on yourself.”
“I’m not, Diego.” Sancha headed off the roof. “My lesson from this tragedy is that my machines require contact with more people. I can work on that.”
Diego nodded as he put the toys into their slots, first the drummer then the little dancer, then the percussionist.
“[Ninakupenda], [Unanipenda]” insisted the ring-leader as he placed the others into the case.
“There you go; brinquedinho inteligente.” Diego smiled at the toy and placed him in his slot, “I know another little girl who will love you again.” As Diego followed his Captain back to the ship, he convinced himself that the lost look on the little toy’s face couldn’t have been there; that it was incapable of comprehending what had happened here.
The End
