Earthseed

them.” He shouted orders to the people nearby. There were about twenty of them now; others had apparently been revived. They hurried down the hall and scattered. One man remained, a tall man with curly black hair. He stared blankly at Zoheret; she gestured with one hand and realized with a shock that the man was blind.
    “Get everything you can,” Zoheret shouted after the running people. “They’re willing to kill.”
    “Are you sure?” Aleksandr asked.
    “One tried to kill me.”
    “Wait.” Yusef turned toward her. “Do these people know about us?”
    Zoheret frowned. “I don’t think they do. But I don’t know.” She thought of Manuel. “They might have forced the information from someone by now.”
    “Then they might have cut off the corridors leading to Ship’s cortex.”
    Zoheret folded her arms. “The caves.” She closed her eyes, trying to summon up an image of the convoluted passageways in Ship’s rocky shell. She had gone there as a child to get away from Ship’s ever-present sensors; she and Anoki had played hide-and-seek among the girders and idle machines. Once she had almost gotten lost looking for him, and Ship had warned her about going too far into the caverns, where it could not have helped her find her way out. But she had at last found Anoki by a door leading to one of the few unfinished corridors. She opened her eyes. That door had led to the area outside Ship’s cortex.
    “The caves,” she said again. “They won’t expect anyone from that direction. There’s a place near Ship’s centers where we can come out. I think I can lead you there.”
    Yusef shook his head. “Don’t think. You have to be sure. We could get lost in there.”
    “I can lead you.” She had to take the chance.
    The others were returning; Kieu threw a gun to Aleksandr. “Listen,” Aleksandr said to his comrades. “Some of you will have to stay—we only have weapons for about a dozen. If we don’t come back—well, you’ll have to decide what to do.” He rested a hand on the blind man’s shoulder. “Luis, you’d better stay.”

    They were in Ship’s shell, having entered from the end of the corridor near the bedrooms. “Help me,” Ship called as Aleksandr closed the door.
    “We should have taken the tubeway,” a man said. “It’d be quicker.”
    “It might not be working,” Yusef said. “We could be trapped there. We can’t take the chance.”
    “Who are they, anyway?” another voice asked.
    “They’re from Earth,” Zoheret said. “They had themselves suspended. They have their own ideas about what the Project is, and they don’t mind beating and killing to have their way.”
    Aleksandr sighed. “We still have friends in suspension. I hope that system is still working.”
    Zoheret turned on her light. Girders spanned the rock above them; tools were scattered over the ground. Drill bits lay in clusters on the rocky surface, and she thought of the pine needles in the Hollow. An inactive robot stared out from under a tarpaulin; other machines were hidden under faded cloths. The air smelled dusty and stale. She had thought of this part of Ship as only a storage area, useless for anything else. Now she saw what it really was—a place where Ship could build more corridors, expanding the regions in which people could live. Caleb had been right; Ship would not have stopped at seeding one world. Ship would grow; she and Aleksandr and the others were only its first children. Perhaps they were not even the first; Ship might have abandoned others before them.
    She soon came to a narrow passageway, sure this was the route they had to take. She led them through it, trying not to strain at remembering; she had to feel her way. The tunnel seemed familiar. She clenched her fists, suddenly frightened; if she made a mistake, they might never find their way out, or else would reenter the corridors to find the Earthpeople in control.
    They walked silently for a while until they came to a fork. The passage to her right widened; the one on the left was lower, not much higher than her head. “This one,” she said, pointing to the left.
    “Are you sure?” Yusef asked.
    “I’m sure.” She had taken the one on the right while looking for Anoki, and had come to a dead end; that memory was clear.
    The low passageway soon brought them to another cave with more abandoned robots. “I wonder how they shut off Ship’s sensors,” Kieu murmured.
    “They built it,” Zoheret answered.