Critical Path

His guts rumbled. Since these people—and aliens—took him out of stasis from within the pod, he’d barely had anything to eat. Days passed and he grew weaker. The sight of those meats taunted him as he thought he could smell barbecued ribs and sausages.

The next place was little more than a glorified tent. Faded red canvas stretched over a circular wooden frame. Inside, a young woman in a basic blue dress worked a loom. A small boy with a dirty face fed her threads.

They both stopped work as Charlie passed. The boy said something, and the woman put her arm around him and tucked his head against her chest. She turned away. Charlie’s head snapped forward after yet another prod from the pole.

Two men sat under a red plastic awning on stools outside a garden shed, drinking from porcelain mugs. Both wore grimy blue jeans, brown woolen shirts and sturdy black boots. One looked at Charlie while casually chatting. He seemed to be acting as if this was an everyday occurrence.

“What the hell is this place?” Charlie said, his sore throat making his words scratchy and barely audible.

The man picked up a small stone and threw at it Charlie. He winced and twisted his head after the stone bounced off his ear. Both men cackled.

“What the hell?” Charlie said, coming to a stop and glaring at the two old geezers. This brought another push from the alien. Charlie thought about trying to twist out of the noose and ramming the pole down the bastard’s throat, but he was just far too weak. Grudgingly, he carried on moving forward.

Loud clanking came from a large open-fronted shack constructed of thick wooden trunks with a pitched slate roof. When Charlie drew level, two croatoans were busily working inside. Sparks fizzed from pieces of glowing metal as the aliens repeatedly hammered them into shape. Neither wore a helmet or uniform. Both dressed in cream-colored, crumpled linen shirts and trousers. Two tubes ran from their backpacks into each nostril of their disgusting tortoiselike heads.

Humans and croatoans working together like this… all this infrastructure. There was no way this had come about since the mother ship came down a month ago. The established settlement had a much older feel. Charlie knew he’d been taken north, but had no idea of his location.

A large lake, he thought. Given the basin and size of this place, it had to have been one of the many lakes that drained during the uprising. This could put him anywhere from north New York, Chicago or even into Canada, Ottawa perhaps.

One of the aliens raised a hammer in acknowledgement to the croatoan who pushed Charlie along before returning to his work. It interested Charlie to see how they had adapted their breathing apparatus. No more bulky visors and backpacks, the ones these wore were smaller and less prohibitive in their movement.

Root vapor still scented the air, though, so that hadn’t changed—they still relied on it in gaseous form.

Ahead, the main building doors started to slowly open with a low creak.

During his previous career, Charlie often dreamed about traveling back in time to observe a functioning medieval town, as a silent witness. But not like this, not in the future.

He thought about Denver and hoped his son believed him dead. Killed in the explosion that downed the mother ship. If Denver knew he was alive, he’d come, all guns blazing, and run into Charlie’s second worst fear after terraforming—integration.

* * *

Two croatoan guards aimed their rifles at Charlie as he was pushed into a large courtyard. He glanced up. Twenty aliens patrolled the ramparts, weapons pointing out. All of them had tubes up their nostrils, just like the blacksmiths. About half dressed in the standard uniform. One wore a hide jacket with body armor stitched in similar places.

The noose loosened around Charlie’s neck and slipped over his head. A hand firmly grasped his shoulder and shoved him across a cobbled surface toward a large pair of wooden doors.

Charlie rubbed his neck and considered his options. Running or fighting would lead to a swift gunning down. But he wondered why he remained alive.

The croatoans were pragmatic, but they must have known he had a hand in the destruction of both the mother ship and the terraforming ship. His last memory before being taken on a long death-march north was diving into a chamber with Augustus and hurtling to Earth.

Perhaps Augustus didn’t survive the landing… That would mean no one would know who Charlie was or what he did. He decided to play stupid during any interrogation.

If they wanted him dead, he’d have been shitted out by an alien a week ago.

A chill ran down his spine after leaving the warmth of the sun into a gloomy stone building. The alien hustled him along a narrow torchlit corridor into a square room illuminated by chunky candles attached to the wall. Charlie dropped to one knee after being kicked in the back of his leg.

He knelt in front of a raised platform. A polished wooden Glastonbury chair sat in the middle, with a purple cushion on the seat.