Outward Borne (19 page)

There were other dogs. Apparently
they had been revived and recovered enough to move off, however
weak. They crawled away to the deepest, darkest holes they could
find, to lay there and heal their wounds or die, as is their
nature. Two more joined us during the night. One was a great dog.
The next day, Freibald took Broga and two young men to try again to
find them. Broga was still weak, but was determined to press on. He
had great courage and was known to stand his ground against wolves
or bears if needs be. He led them to a small opening in the wall, a
small place where the panels did not fit together well. The dogs
had been able to crawl into an area between the walls and huddle
together. Somehow, they had been given food and water while they
were there. Two dogs had died, including a farm dog from our
neighbor. Overall, we had saved sixteen dogs. They were a great
comfort to all, and it greatly helped our spirits to be able to
care for them and see them become strong again.

Looking back, we never questioned
why the ObLaDas took the dogs, perhaps because we would have taken
them ourselves if given a chance. I believe they felt that the dogs
and we were dependent on one another. When they learned that this
was not exactly true, they stopped caring for the dogs. Their
rearing and reproduction was left to us, much to the pleasure of
the many breeders and trainers. In the end, I believe that the
ObLaDas’ notion had been correct, as the presence of our dogs
helped us survive in this extraordinary environment.

Finding the dogs was wonderful,
but finding that there was so little to our place was frightening.
We seemed to be amidst boxes inside of larger boxes, with most
rooms small and empty, although a few had useful features. While we
were shocked to be in such a foreign environment, the dogs wandered
around as if lost. No dirt, no smells to investigate, nothing to
chase, all their life’s habits gone.

We had been on the Outward for
twenty days, perhaps a few more, when we held our first assembly.
There was a room that seemed to have been especially built for such
things, having tiered rows of benches curving around a central
raised area. It was not dissimilar to a council fire, without the
fire of course. We had not yet seen any of our captors, but their
robots were a constant presence. These were small machines that
worked around the habitat to keep it in order and well supplied. We
could tell that we were being watched and maneuvered by the
ObLaDas, though we knew nothing about them at that time, it was
just one more question we had. Many were worried about those who
were left behind, but we encouraged ourselves that they were not
dead. It was we who have gone missing, and we convinced ourselves
to have hope. We knew that a great deal of food had been stolen by
the lander in the last days, most of the grain harvest and whole
herds of cattle, but even that great amount would not last for
long, even though they seemed to have some way of keeping meat from
rotting, perhaps they had an ice room somewhere. There were many
captives, thirty-three all together, and sixteen dogs. It was
doubtful that the food would last beyond the winter. We would be
home by spring, in good time for planting, we all agreed, for the
villages would not survive the year if crops were not planted soon
after the ground thawed. We were very wrong, of course, but it was
a good feeling for a while and gave us strength.

Our new lives took a few turns for
the better over the next days. A small spider bot came into the
hall and made sounds like a tinkling market bell. It was one of the
first that we had seen. They probably chose it because it looked
harmless, though some hated the machines no matter what shape they
took. It stood before a section of wall that we recognized as a
sliding door, and when most of our people had gathered around to
see what was happening, the doors opened. It was a new room with
shelves and large tables stocked with bolts of cloth. It was the
same fine white stuff the tunics were made from. There were some
very fine sewing supplies and excellent scissors. This was very
pleasing to the women, as it gave them much to do, and allowed them
to replace those tunics as quickly as they could.

The next day a similar show took
place. It revealed another room that was even easier to appreciate.
It was a kitchen, fully supplied, though it did not have a
fireplace like we were accustomed to using. The spider bot climbed
onto a box, and with a flourish of its thin shiny arms, turned a
small knob, waited a while, then spritzed water onto a flat area
next to the knob. The water immediately boiled away. The spot could
get very hot even without a fire. It demonstrated baking ovens and
another box that was as cold as ice, this we could understand even
though we could not see the ice itself. With metal pots, griddles,
scoops and good knives, we were set up to cook our own food and
would no longer need to cope with the odd menu selections of our
captors.

Even as these improvements came to
us, the men began to grumble even louder. They had little to do in
this place, without hunting, farms, forests, or fishing. It must
have been annoying to see the women chattering around happy to have
these new and really nice things. Some days later, however, events
began to address their complaints. A small blacksmithing space was
opened. It had a wide stock of different metals, far better than we
had ever imagined, and like the kitchen, there was a small furnace
that seemed to work without fire. The men were eventually supplied
with wood and tools that could be used to make furniture and other
things. Of course, it was not real wood, but some kind of
substitute the ObLaDas had made. It was not very good, the men
said, and it took many years for the Das to make a fake wood that
satisfied the carvers and furniture makers.

The Das had copied some of the
things they saw in our homes and villages. We were to be made
self-sustaining, able to make what we wanted and needed from the
basic raw materials that the ObLaDas could provide. It would keep
us busy, provide some level of satisfaction, and make it easier on
our captors. We were being manipulated to accept of our lot, and to
keep us quiet, contented, and harmless. In this way, we were slowly
made to adapt to this foreign place and our new life.

Our education began soon after
that. One morning, all of the lights in the big meeting room came
on, bright lights flashed, small bells rang, or something that
sounded like the bronze bell on old Sid’s milk cow. When Kunigunde
went to see what was about, she screamed, excited, and called
others to come. The forest, she said, our forest was just outside
the room. Kunigunde and others ran to the trees, branches blowing
in the breeze, but when they reached out to touch the leaves, they
felt only the wall. Even I cried out when my brother Gunthar walked
through the field along the edge of the trees and turned to look
right at me. Ingomar, who had worked those fields much of his life,
said that it was the woods near where the lander had settled, and
indeed it was. The images on the wall changed after a while, after
most everyone had gathered. It showed our village, people we knew,
but things were happening from the past. Livida ran by chasing a
rabbit. Pictures, probably taken from a flybot high in some tree,
showed us walking around our home on a normal day. The images went
all the way to the time when we were captured and taken into the
lander. The lander flew off with us into the very high sky, so high
it became dark. I sat with Mildryth as we hugged one another and
cried. The images were so real, we thought they were real, but we
knew they could not be. It was so confusing, but in the end we
suffered again for what we had lost. The ObLaDas wanted us to know
where we were and what had happened to us.

Over the months and years that
followed, they taught us to speak a new language, to read and
write, then went on to arithmetic, mathematics, engineering, and
the sciences. Not everyone kept up with all of those subjects, but
I did. I believed that I came to learn more than any person on
Earth ever knew. It did not seem possible that anyone could know
the things we were told, but I believe they were true. Still, there
were other things that we would know about. No mention was made of
literature, music, or art. The ObLaDas did not have these things in
their culture and apparently could not imagine our interest in
them. We had to keep our own history and we did. The ObLaDas also
gave us some opportunities to learn for ourselves. The observatory
was the first of these.

Dagobert came hopping into the
hall. He was so excited, pointing behind him, trying to get
someone’s attention. Ever since Dagobert sighted the lander and
received a bit of notoriety, he has become excessively attentive.
It was his path to fame, I suppose.

“
I found windows,” he called, “at
the end of the corridor. There is a small ladder that leads to a
narrow hall and a tiny room with two windows. It is a new opening
that was never there before,” but no one was interested in the
little room, only what he had seen. “Stars! Great lots of stars in
the dark sky, they are moving, I think, fast.”

We looked around in some doubt, I
suppose. It was the middle of the day in the great room, how could
he see stars outside? Dagobert took Alric and a few others down the
hallway to show off his find. It was hours before they
returned.

“
It is a window to the outside to
be sure,” Alric said, but he appeared to be flustered and unsure of
himself. I do not think he was able to make sense of what he had
seen. Cilar was excited when she returned. “There are so many
stars; I never saw such from Feldland. Did you see that dark area
that showed up from time to time on the smaller window? It blocked
out stars as it moved. I wonder what it is.” Mildryth went to see
the fast moving stars, but found it to be most
confusing.

The observatory was in a corner of
our habitat and had two small windows that were no more than two
hands wide. You had to look out through a tube, so either way you
could see only a very small portion of the sky. One window was at
the side of the module away from the ship and the other peered out
of the forward wall, so we could see in the direction the arm was
moving. Of course, we did not know that then. Not until Dagobert
and Averill spent three days in the tiny observatory room were we
able to sort it out. Averill’s younger sister, Aedelfraed, was kept
busy running back and forth from the great hall bringing them
things to eat or whatever else they needed. One thing we learned
right away from Aedelfraed, was that there was no daylight outside
the windows, it was black as night all the time. There was a very
bright star to the rear of the ship, but nothing as bright as our
sun. Dagobert thought that we were in a small part of a much larger
ship, which was hard to believe at the time. He was as confused as
the rest of us by the strangest part. Stars moved from side to side
when looking out one window, but from top to bottom out the
other.

Averill and Dagobert came back
tired, but excited. They refused to say much, perhaps because they
were suffering such abuse from comments and innuendo regarding
certain activities that were likely to have occurred in small
spaces when close together, boy and girl, over a long period. They
were probably much relieved to spend the next days huddled up with
Alric and Wulfhere, and out of range of general conversation.
Wulfhere had been captain of the Red Brigitae until he broke his
leg. He could read the stars and had traveled more than
most.

“
We believe,” he said, “that we
are in a large ship that is moving slowly among the stars. You can
see a long tube, like a giant tree trunk, that stretches before and
aft of our position. There is a light showing beyond the edge of
this shaft, to the rear, but it is constantly there and does not
change from day to night. There are some flashes of light and color
far the front of us, but we could not make out what that was about.
It was much too far away to see clearly.”

From the way the stars moved past
the windows, Dagobert had figured that we must be on the rim of
this large wheel, or at least a piece of a wheel. We were standing
on the inner rim with our heads toward the axle, if you can imagine
that. We are not falling off so the wheel must be spinning, you
know, the children’s game, swing a bucket of water around on a rope
so that the water does not spill out. Well, it is like that, except
we are standing on the bottom of the bucket.

This was hard to imagine and
Wulfhere had everyone confused. It took fifteen minutes to walk
from one side of our habitat to the other, and it had three tall
floors. It was not such a large space to spend your life, but much
too big to be flying around on a rope. How could we be in a part of
a machine so much larger than this place?

Dagobert had taken some of the
fake wood and used the bits to make a model of what the ship must
look like. This at least was something we could follow. His model
was like a canoe with a two-bladed paddle spinning along its side.
Still, it was hard to imagine how a machine could be so large, or
why it was the way Dagobert showed it to be. Dagobert was nearly
correct, as it turned out. The Outward Voyager had two matching
arms and sets of modules. One was on the opposite side of the hull
and could not be seen from our observatory.

We did not know it at the time,
but we had been captured at a delicate time in the Outward mission,
a time in which the leadership and attitudes aboard the ship were
changing, attitudes about alien species and how they should be
treated. Although many of the changes the ObLaDas wished to make
were just starting to take effect, we already experienced a number
of benefits and were treated better than others before us. We have
been given materials and occupations, taught a new language, and
provided with an education well beyond anything on Earth. Our
habitat was adequate and we were given the freedom to furnish it as
we wished. Nevertheless, this condescension engendered mixed
feelings within our community. They made our lives more bearable,
while the permanence that they portended depressed many who would
be satisfied only by a return to Earth and an end to our
captivity.