We look back at the enclosure only once. Only a few hundred yards behind when we look it already seems to have receded in time as well as space; now the enormous height is seen to have been worked out through a series of ridges and the cunning use of space, for the enclosure is not tall at all; partially sunken into the ground and tilted in an angular fashion at the corners, it seems to conform to no geometry which I think I understand. The outside seems to have been coated with the same dull, phosphorescent material which provides the lighting; now it glints blue against the night, now white and dark as clouds play against the stars and their single woeful moon hangs stationary above us. It seems to be an interruption of the plain on which we walk, rather than a construction; blending in with the scarred brown terrain on which we stumble, it appears to be distinguished in no way. It could be a desolate building or even a natural formation. Yet this was where we lived for many years and this is where our brothers and shipmates still dwell. At this moment alarms may be pealing, therapists and senior staff running frantically to the rooms to check on our whereabouts, young guards and old loading weaponry for our search and seizure. Yet, lying flat against the night, it seems from this distance that nothing whatsoever can be going on inside it. “It isn’t that large,” Nala whispers to me when she sees that I am looking. “It doesn’t mean anything at all. Forget it now. There is the ship. Let’s go to the ship.”
We stagger toward the ship. Unused to physical exertion, unused to atmosphere, certain of my shipmates begin to weave, lose their sense of direction, recede gasping. I urge them on as best I can. One hundred ninety-nine reappears from the darkness, his face cut into crevices of exhaustion and says, “The ship. We have no way of knowing that the ship is open. We never thought of that.”
“It will be open,” I say. “They have no way of sealing it. They do not know the codes.”
“If they have sealed it we will never get on. The ship is impermeable.”
“We will get into the ship,” I say. I gesture toward it, now as close to us as the enclosure itself, perhaps even nearer. “If we have gotten this far we will not be denied. Go ahead and take the others together. I see some stragglers.”
“Yes,” one hundred ninety-nine says. My authority now seems unquestioned. He stiffens with obeisance, then sprints ahead. I can hear him murmuring to the others something about the ship.
“He’s right you know,” Nala says, lurching in my armpit where I am holding her. “If the ship is sealed we’ll never get in.”
“I told you; they don’t know how to seal it. They do not know the codes.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because only we know the codes.”
“And haven’t we told them everything they wanted to know? Why would they not have that information as well?”
I am staggered but try to maintain my composure. “Because they would not think of that,” I say. “And anyway, it is fated that we will be able to board the ship.”
“Why is it fated?”
“Because we have come this far. If we have come this far with the plan, we will not be denied.”
“Haven’t your years in the enclosure taught you what fate is worth?” Nala says. But she is silenced and moves along. I try to take as much of her weight as I can; half-carry her. Now, I feel possessed by urgency. For the first time since I confronted the guards, time begins to function again and time is directing small lancets of pain through me. I try not to convey this urgency to Nala but quicken my pace.
It is strange, strange to be on this alien terrain, to be in the atmosphere after so long in the enclosure. In exertion the air here burns my lungs; but it feels no worse than the stale vapors of the enclosure often felt at the end of long days and there is much to divert us, much to look at on this planet if we only had the time and the circumstances. The planet is filled with vegetation; there is not a square foot of the surface which does not seem to possess flora of some kind and if we extend our senses beyond our feet we can hear the dull boom and rhythm of machinery somewhere in the far distance, well beyond the ship. This must be the form of their technology; the technology that we have helped them develop. I can see, suggested behind the horizon, the play of lights and now and then the distant rumble of machinery that can only be transportation, moving across the range of hearing. There are birds on this planet similar to ours; we can sense, if not see, their rustle in the atmosphere and now and then something passes quickly through our range of vision, humming; perhaps an insect. If I were not so tired, if it were not for the circumstances, it would be rewarding, possibly, to stand in one place and appreciate this terrain after our years in confinement. But in obligation to my shipmates and my own fear, in need for Nala, I keep on moving. I wonder if our absence has already been detected. I wonder if pursuit parties are being organized. “No,” Nala says and I realized that I have phrased these as questions to her, “they are not.”
“No?”
“No,” she says. “Not now.”
“In the morning then?”
“No,” she says, “not in the morning.”
“When, then?”
“Never,” Nala says. “Don’t ask any more. Keep moving. We are almost at the ship.”
“Why never? Why will they not discover we have escaped?”
“They will discover,” she says. “They know already; not just the guards, but all of them. But it does not matter. Ask me no more. I have already said too much.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“I know that Quir,”she says and somehow, no matter her position, manages to caress me. “I know that you do not understand. It is all right. It is the way it should be. I do not think less of you for it.”
“I tried,” I say, “I tried to do—”
“I know,” she says, “I know,” and will say no more; there is no time for her to say anything, the ship looms above us. The ship is as tall as the average height of the enclosure, a hundred yards or more straight up into the night, so enormous that we slow even as we approach it and cannot move from without a radius of a hundred feet without pondering the ship. Few of us have had the opportunity to see it from the outside for any length of time; when we awoke we were already inside for the voyage out and when we were taken from the ship to the enclosure we were either sedated or moved at such a rapid pace that we were unable to consider it. Nevertheless, it looks like the charts and photographs which we have memorized. For all the time that it has been immobile at this spot, it retains a dull sheen of power. “Look at that,” one of the males says. “Look at that.”
“Yes,” I say, understanding what he is trying to say. “It is still there.”
“We must be a fearsome race to have created a ship like this. No wonder they are so frightened of us.”
“We have given them larger ships,” Nala says quietly. “I know that they have done this. That is one of the first things they demanded; the knowledge to build larger ships.”
“The ramps are down,” one hundred and ninety-nine says solemnly, pointing. “Look, the ramps are down.”
We follow his gesture. From the open doors of the ship, doors we have not noticed before, extend the ramps; in spiral forms they wind their way down to the surface. There is no problem of entry. The ship is ready for us.
“It is almost as if they knew we were coming,” one hundred and ninety-nine says. “As if they prepared a way.”
“Or,” I say, “as if they were so sure of our captivity that they could leave the ship open.”
“Both of you are right,” Nala says. She extends her hands. One hundred and ninety-nine and I instinctively grasp one of each. There is no rivalry in our possession. We look at one another and up and down the range the others fall into line. One of the females is sobbing although we are a race that does not cry.
“Come,” Nala says. “Come, let us go into our ship now.” We follow her toward the ramp. At the bottom of the ramp she hesitates, breaks her hands free and then delicately, with enormous grace, moves up the stairs. She seems to hang in air for an instant and then she is perched securely before one of the open hatches, holding the sides of the door, beckoning to us with her head.
“Come,” she says, “come,” and it is Nala, not waiting for us then, who becomes the first to go into the ship, disappearing into one of the doors as the rest of us struggle to find handholds on the ramps.
We up, one by one, and follow her in.