A Memory of Earth Page 8

  Ayumi huddled deeper into the shadows of the attic.

  They took the others, she thought. All the humans. The scorpions took them into their ships, flew them into the sky.

  She trembled. Jade's ghostly white face haunted her dreams. Her voice wouldn't stop echoing.

  I want their skin!

  The baby bird started cheeping again.

  "Quiet!" Ayumi whispered. "Please. The scorpions are everywhere. They'll hear you."

  The animal kept mewling—a pitiful, hungry sound. Ayumi rose to her feet and padded across the attic. She moved slowly, step by step, fearful of cracking the wooden boards.

  The house had suffered damage in the attack. Half the place was charred and filled with holes. And yet a family of native Paevins still lived below. They did not know Ayumi was hiding in their attic. If they knew, would they shelter her, bring her food? Or would they turn her over to the scorpions?

  Ayumi did not know. Her father had warned her about the Paevins. The bipedal felines were perhaps graceful, what with their golden fur and gleaming eyes, but their claws were sharp, their fangs deadly. In many ways, the Paevins were like humans from ancient Earth. Certainly they were more humanoid than the scorpions. The Paevins built homes, wove fabric, and had begun to use steam engines before the war.

  Yet despite their similarity, they hated humans. Ayumi knew this.

  They imprisoned us in the enclave, she thought. They called us pests. Perhaps the cats hate the scorpions. But not enough to protect me from them.

  She took another careful step forward, wincing when a floorboard creaked. She froze. From the house below, she heard Paevin cubs squealing and laughing. They were playing a rowdy game despite the scorpion invaders in their streets. The family had not heard her footfalls.

  "But they will hear you!" Ayumi whispered, reaching the nest in the attic.

  The nest was wedged between two rafters. The mother bird had fled the house, or perhaps she had died in the invasion. Lizards had claimed most of the hatchlings, but one baby bird still remained in the nest.

  He was naked and pink, mewling pathetically. His beak was like the soft skin under one's fingernails, opening in search of food that would not come. The bird's bulbous eyes were still closed, the eyelids downy. But the animal seemed to sense Ayumi. He chirped with more fervor. For a creature so small, he was damn loud, like a living squeak toy.

  The voices downstairs died.

  Then one of the children spoke up.

  "Momma, I hear something upstairs."

  Ayumi's heart burst into a gallop.

  Down the street, she heard scrapes and clatters—scorpions on patrol.

  Ayumi closed her hand around the baby bird.

  Her tears were hot and salty, pouring down to her lips as the bird struggled in her fist, as she kept his cries contained, as the children resumed playing below, as the scorpions clattered on.

  Be quiet. Please. Please be quiet.

  And the bird kept struggling. And she kept him wrapped in her fist, and her tears flowed.

  When she finally opened her hand, the bird was silent. She placed the little animal on the floor, where he lay still, lifeless. The lizards would return for the morsel.

  We are all links in a chain of death, Ayumi thought, shrinking back into her shadowy corner. Scorpions. Cats. Girls and birds. At least I'm not on the very bottom.

  The beams of light moved through the attic, crossing the floor, climbing a wall, then fading. The night was hot and humid, and the sounds of scorpions rose louder outside—the screeching, scuttling, grunting as the creatures rutted and killed and feasted. A few times, Ayumi had dared peek through a hole in the wall. She had seen the city, once fair and forbidden, smoldering in ruin. Hierarchy banners hung from temples, palaces, and city squares. A few blocks away, the human enclave lay barren and burnt.

  Paev had fallen. From a fair, bustling Concord world it had become a planet of the Hierarchy. A world of scorpions and cats, masters and servants, fear and barely any hope.

  I'm the last human here, Ayumi thought. Maybe the last in the universe.

  She curled up and closed her eyes, and she found herself jumping over rooftops, moving through the enclave, trying to find her way home. But she was lost. How could she be lost? She had been traveling these rooftops all her life, but the labyrinth was shifting now, and the rooftops sloped down toward a distant shore. Ayumi had never seen the ocean, yet it spread below her, gray and foaming, and a great wave was rising in the distance.

  "Do you know the way home?" she asked a bird.

  The creature stood on a rooftop before her, taller than her, pink and moist and wet, its beak like soft cartilage.

  "Feed." It stared at her with small, pink, rheumy eyes with downy lids. "Feed."

  They were standing in her father's shop. Rolls of fabric hung everywhere, embroidered with dragons and stars and flowers. When Ayumi touched the fabrics, she recoiled. These were not fabrics after all, but human skins. These were not embroideries but tattoos. Weaver tattoos.

  "Father!" she shouted. "What are you doing? Why are you weaving human skin?"

  She raced downstairs and found him working at his loom, weaving a rug made from skin. From her skin. Her face was still attached. He looked up at her, and he was the naked bird, pink and staring.

  Ayumi blinked and sat up. She was back in the attic, and it was still dark.

  She dared not sleep again, fearing the dream should return. She huddled in the corner until dawn spilled through the holes in the roof. The dead bird was gone. The lizards had fed.

  Ayumi sat in the corner, watching the sunbeams move across the floor.

  She caught the lizard, but its tail broke off, and the rest of it fled. Ayumi shoved the wriggling tail into her mouth, winced, and chewed until it stopped moving. She swallowed.

  The light faded. She closed her eyes.

  She leaped over the roofs, and this time she leaped in the darkness, and the sea was a distant frozen sheet like black glass. The bird stood on a rooftop, watching her from the shadows, ten feet tall and eyeless but still staring. Its stare bored into her.

  She woke.

  She watched the beams trail across the floor, and she listened to the scorpions outside. She caught a fly. She chewed.

  "All dead, I tell you!" The voice rose from downstairs—one of the Paevin children who lived in the house. "Scorpions took 'em to skin 'em, boil 'em, and eat 'em. Mama, Papa, can I have some humans to eat too?"

  Ayumi was so weak with hunger she could barely move. But she flattened herself on the floor, pressed her ear against the dusty wood, and listened.

  The feline family was eating at the dinner table. The delicious smells wafted into the attic, intoxicating, spinning her head, searing her body. Cooking meats. Stewed vegetables. Conversation. She had to listen. She had to hear the words.

  "Nonsense," said the family father, his voice deep and buttery. "They took humans to enslave them. To work them for the war effort. Why kill good slaves?"

  The mother of the family laughed—a trilling sound. "I think it's positively delightful what the scorpions are doing. Cleaning this city of pests. Best thing that ever happened to us."

  Papa Cat harrumphed. Newspapers rustled. "Good point, darling. It's been nice to live without the stench of the creatures. The enclave was too good for them."

  "I told you!" rose the first voice—the eldest son. "They took 'em to boil 'em and skin 'em." Lips smacked. "Yum yum."

  "Well, it's more than they deserve," said Mama Cat. "But must those scorpions scuttle about so much? Their claws raise a bloody racket."

  The newspaper rustled again. "Yes, well, that's life in the Hierarchy, dear," Papa said. "If you want peace and quiet, you can return to the Concord, and you'll have human pests up to your eyeballs. I say bring on the claws!"

  Ayumi kept lying on the attic floor, insects crawling around her, until the family slept.

  That night, for the first time, Ayumi dared creep downstairs into the
house. The family was sleeping, and she tiptoed down the corridor. She rummaged through the trash and pulled out some fish bones. She ate in silence and shadows, hunched over, feeding on bits of flesh and skin, a carrion bird. She returned to the attic.

  The sunbeams moved across the floor and along the walls, and the days came and went, and she wasted away. Her limbs were like the limbs of birds, stick-thin. Sometimes at dusk, when the shadows were deep, Ayumi climbed to a hole in the wall and peered outside. The scorpions were always there, hundreds of them in the city, maybe thousands. Many scorpions had built hives upon roofs, and Ayumi lived in constant fear that they would choose this house.

  She kept waiting to see another human. Maybe somebody she knew. Sometimes, in her hunger and delirium, she thought that her family still lived, that she might see them again. She sought them in the alleyways outside, but the scorpions crawled everywhere, and she pulled herself away from the window. Again she curled up in the corner.

  When the smells of food rose below, Ayumi placed her ear against the floorboard, and she listened. The newspaper rustled, and the children bickered, and Papa Cat reported news of the war.

  A harrumph. "Scorpions took over another star system this morning."

  A wicked laugh. "The Corvid Empire surrendered. Well, that's a blow to the damn Concord, isn't it?"

  A deeper belly laugh. "Entire human community on Corvidia Ceti liquidated. A hundred thousand of the pests burned, it says."

  "Not burned!" said the higher voice. "I told you, Papa. Boiled and skinned and eaten, yum yum."

  "Be quiet, Junior, and eat your damn rat. You think meat comes cheap with the war on?"

  "My friend's papa says the humans are to blame for the war," the son said.

  "Your friend's papa is wise." Papa Cat rustled his newspapers.

  "Must you two talk about the war every mealtime?" Mama Cat said, voice close to snapping.

  "Well, it's not every day a big war like this rolls through," said Papa Cat. "Whole new Galactic Order, they're calling it. Damn Concord is falling like a house of cards, galaxy cleaned of humans, finally some law and order."

  Mama Cat was nearly whining now. "Butter costs ten times what it used to."

  A paw slapped the table. "Well, that's the cost of war, isn't it? Paying more for butter sure beats going out to fight. Now, if I were a young cat, I would—"

  "Yes, yes, we've heard all about it before."

  Papa Cat harrumphed. "It's not my fault I've got a gammy paw and am too old."

  "And too fat!" said Junior, and Papa Cat laughed.

  Ayumi had heard enough. She huddled in her corner, digesting the news. Every mealtime—more snippets from below. Another Concord civilization fallen to the scorpions. Another human community liquidated.

  When she peered out the window, Ayumi no longer saw young male Paevins. The Hierarchy had drafted them all, sent them out to fight in the war. It wasn't only the scorpions fighting now. On every world they conquered, it seemed, they captured the humans and drafted the natives.

  Am I the last human? Ayumi thought, sitting by the hole in the wall, watching the rain.

  Night fell, and she stared out at the stars, and she prayed to see Earth. Prayed that someday a spaceship would arrive, would carry her to that distant homeworld.

  "I promise you, Father," she whispered, tears falling. "I will see Earth. For you."

  She pulled the scrap of fabric from her pocket. A piece of the rug he had woven her. A rug featuring the mountains and rivers of Earth. A bird was embroidered on her scrap with white thread, and she held it close.

  That night she rode on a great bird, an animal the size of a whale, its feathers dyed with the indigo blood of mollusks, the same dye her father used for his blue fabrics. The bird's eyes were pale and small and covered with a pink, downy membrane, but it flew confidently through the night. As Ayumi rode on this animal, she felt no fear, no pain, no hunger. The scorpions scattered before them, and he carried her to Earth, her painted blue bird, and she fed upon his feathers.

  The days went by. The newspapers rustled. The war went on and the Hierarchy kept winning, and the cold winds and snow of winter came. She sat in the corner under the rafters, her knees pulled to her chest, frost in her hair. She thought of nights in her family home, sitting by the fireplace, snug between her parents, a blanket wrapped around her. She could almost taste Mister Hiroji's steaming rolls again, warm cider, and her mother's ginger soup.

  The wind shrieked.

  The snow fell.

  Ayumi shivered, and she moved across the attic, desperate to keep her body warm. She finally found the other hatchlings from the nest. They had fallen behind the rafters where even the lizards did not reach, and they were frozen and pink, and Ayumi thawed them in her hands but they were hard and rotten and inedible.

  At night, she still sneaked into the kitchen below, but the fish bones were picked dry most nights. All of Paev, the whole planet, was hungry.

  "Once the war is over, the harvest will be rich again," Mama Cat said one evening.

  "Blame the damn humans," said Papa Cat. "They're the ones who started this whole damn mess of a war."

  There was no more butter, no more turnips, and the fish were smaller, and Ayumi shriveled away. She was so thin, always so cold. The scorpions still patrolled outside, more of them every day, their military bases rising in the city, their strikers forever in the sky. And the snow kept falling, and Ayumi could no longer see the stars.

  "Come to me, painted blue bird," she whispered, reaching toward the window, her fingers numb. "Fly with me . . . Fly . . ."

  Her eyes closed, and she dreamed again. She was flying on a bird through the night, but this time it wasn't the painted blue bird but the naked hatchling. It had grown to monstrous size. The animal's skin was sticky and cold, and she melted into it, becoming nothing but skin. Skinned. Skin 'em. Boil 'em. Cook 'em. Eat 'em. They flew into darkness, an endless voyage through the eternity of space.

  The bird's claws clattered.

  Her bones clacked together.

  The sounds grew louder, and she opened her eyes.

  Footsteps.

  Her heart thrashed.

  "Damn it, I knew it! Holes in the roof, attic almost certainly filled with snow." Footsteps thumped. Papa Cat harrumphed. "Damn humans probably burrowed holes into the attic."

  Ayumi was lying in the snow, freezing, maybe dying, so weak. But as the attic trapdoor opened, she managed to rise. She scurried like a scorpion, like a small naked bird, and hid behind the rafters in the back.

  She peered around a wooden beam and saw Papa Cat entering the attic. He was a burly Paevin, twice Ayumi's size. His fur was graying and shaggy. The aliens were not true cats, of course. Ayumi didn't know what actual Earth cats looked like, had only heard of them in tales. But she imagined that this was one of those fabled animals, that she was a mouse, hiding, so quiet, daring not peep.

  "Damn it, Mama, I told you!" The Paevin peered back down through the hatch. "Damn holes in the roof. Snow everywhere. That's why it's so damn cold." He turned back toward the attic. "It'll cost a fortune to fix, and—"

  He voice died with a grumble.

  And Ayumi realized: I left a trail in the snow.

  Papa Cat padded forward, breathing heavily, and Ayumi ran.

  She burst out from behind the rafters, making for a hole in the roof.

  A paw reached out and grabbed her.

  Ayumi screamed.

  The beast pulled her back, and she found herself facing him. His fur bristled, gray and rough like cheap wool. His eyes were yellow suns, his fangs like the sharpened bones of dead things left to rot. No, this was no cat. No humans would keep such creatures as pets. This was a demon, a monster, and Ayumi struggled and cried out but could not break his grip.

  "A human!" he rumbled. "A human in the attic!"

  Ayumi kicked him, but his fur was thick and matted, and she was so weak.

  Pain bloomed.

  She realized a paw
had struck her. Another blow hit. Her eyes rolled back, and she felt him carrying her, his fur rank and foul but warm. So warm. For the first time in weeks she was not cold.

  Footsteps creaked the stairs, and he tossed her down, and she hit the floor, banging her hip. The kitchen. She was in the kitchen, the place where she had scrounged for food so many times. She lay on the floor, bloody, head spinning.

  "My God, don't bring that creature into the house!" shrieked Mama Cat.

  "What the hell do you want me to do with her, leave her to freeze in the attic?" said Papa Cat. "Come spring, she'll thaw and stink up the place."

  "Boil her, flay her, cook her!" Junior danced around her, a hideous cat with sharp fangs, mad yellow eyes, and bright orange fur. "Human, human! Good catch, Papa! Yum yum."

  Ayumi tried to rise, but a blow knocked her down. She lay on the floor as the burly, furry creatures stared down at her, eyes yellow and bloodshot, paws large and heavy and callused. How had she once thought the Paevins fair and graceful? They were like the blue painted bird, heavyset and strange and carrying her in shadows, calling out with deep, guttural cries.

  "Please," Ayumi whispered. "Please. Help me. Help me . . ."

  Mama Cat took a step back. "Get that thing out of my house! Call the scorpions! Hand her in! Get her out of—"

  "Calm yourself!" Papa rumbled. "What do you think will happen if the scorpions find out we were harboring a human?"

  "Harboring?" Mama's fur bristled and she hissed. "The damn thing sneaked through the roof. We didn't know—"

  Papa Cat scoffed. "Try telling that to the damn scorpions."

  "I thought you said the scorpions were a splendid race," Junior said.

  Ayumi struggled to her knees. She trembled. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and the room spun around her.

  "Please," she whispered. "I'm scared. Don't hurt me. I'm not bad." Her tears flowed down her cheeks. "I'm not a pest. I don't want to hurt you. Just let me back into the attic, and I won't make a sound, I promise."