* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I don’t mention it to Santos the next morning. No need to unsettle her.
Not that she’s paying me the slightest attention.
“Santos,” I say, taking a break from making my bed to knock against the metal frame of hers. “Where are you?”
“Sorry, I’m . . . I’m fine.” But she looks shaken. Plus she’s shoving into her mouth the second Fruitbomb in three minutes.
“Tell me.”
Santos motions for us to leave, and doesn’t speak again until we’re just outside the barracks, alone. “They’ve figured it out. Why we lost contact with Earth.”
“So they’ve regained contact?” Maybe I can get a message to Uncle June.
Santos shakes her head, her eyes reddening. “And they’re not going to.”
She takes several seconds to eat another piece of candy, swallow, and breathe. Whatever it is, she really, really doesn’t want to say it.
“They’re not going to because . . .” She stares down at the scarlet grass. “Because there’s no one there.”
“What do you mean there’s no one there? The transmission center’s been abandoned? Did they set up somewhere else? Was it attacked?”
“There’s no one there. On Earth.”
Now I’m the one who needs to breathe. Uncle June, Santos’ family . . . the whole damned planet? “They’re . . .” It isn’t possible that they’ve killed billions of people. Is it? “They’re dead?”
“No.” Santos wraps her arms around herself. “No one’s on Earth because no one’s been born yet.”
I frown in my attempt to understand.
“No one’s been born. Not a single human being. No homo sapien, anyway.”
I laugh, my voice shrill and brimming with hysteria. “The hell are you saying?”
“We traveled through time, Mitchell. The wormhole was some kind of rip in space-time. Or maybe it caused the rip. Either way, Earth is thousands of years in the past.”
“But . . . no . . . Wait.” I shake my head. “If Earth is thousands of years in the past and these monsters invaded us, then where—I mean when—are we?”
“They don’t know.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Just over twenty-four hours later, I’m staring at the orc. It looks at me differently than before; something else has replaced its previous simmering hostility.
It studies me, but all I can think about is Uncle June. Part of me feels like my uncle is dead. The other part thinks of him as being alive but extremely far away, as if Present Day isn’t a time but a location, like the Hawaiian Isles of China.
Finally, I manage to speak. “Santos. You’ve heard the name before.”
“You’re young,” it replies.
“So what?”
“I am young, too.”
“How old are you?”
“I have eleven years.”
Damn. What’re they feeding these things?
But the incredulity lasts only a few seconds and then I’m lost again in what Santos said about Earth, about humanity not existing because Earth is so far back in the past; meanwhile, we’re on this alien planet, a mission of four hundred fifty UDL soldiers and two hundred prisoner orcs and a handful of weapons of mass destruction.
I feel alone.
“Santos,” I say again. “You recognized the name.”
“I will speak of it. But first, whom do you call upon? From whom do you request favor? Guidance?”
“Like God?” I shake my head. It’s difficult to believe in something I can’t see. Besides, nobody’s Good Book mentioned a thing about orcs in space. Who spiked God’s sweet tea on the day He created them?
“You are,” it says, “certain your friend is Santos?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
It clasps its grey hands and begins to cry, and I can’t tell if it’s happy or sad or both.
“What is it?” I say, the hairs at the nape of my neck rising.
“It is true,” it whispers to itself. “It was written.”
“What was written?”
It looks at me. “We do not return.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Santos and I have shared double-shift perimeter duty the last couple of days, but all I’ve been able to think about is getting the orc to talk. After the last session, the interrogator, his expression hard and unforgiving, asked me, Where are you going with your line of questioning? Names, chain of command, coordinates—that’s what we require. If you want your ticket to Sanctum, you’d best focus on that. But the orc’s opening up, and I know it won’t be long before it gives up the important stuff.
When I finally return, just after dark, it sits with less tension, almost like I came for tea instead of answers.
I set up the speaker, but before I ask it anything, it speaks.
“I was a weapons maker. Before.”
I glance upward at the camera on the ceiling, knowing the interrogator’s watching. Eat it.
I don’t say anything, sensing it might go on.
“I did not want to make weapons, but I excelled and my family was compensated well and my people needed them.”
“To attack us. To kill us all.” I can’t help it.
“We don’t want to kill you all.”
“Just enough of us.”
“Just enough of you for peace.”
“Because murdering us will bring peace.”
“Does it not? From war comes peace. After peace comes war. And so on.”
“Maybe that’s how it works around here.” But when I actually think about the cycle of wars throughout humanity, the orc’s worldview—worldsview—isn’t so far off.
“Learning to share a planet,” it says, “will prove difficult.”
“Humans aren’t always the best at sharing.” I can’t say much about the orcs, but the fact that they crossed the galaxy to not play nice doesn’t speak well for them, either.
“The Great Leaping,” the orc says, “was foretold when Goddess descended from the Dreaming Place with her retinue.”