Chapter 8

Onder pushed himself up from a prone position, sand falling from his body in clumps. He kneeled, closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. Sand flew all around him. He was hungry and he was thirsty but there would be no game for hundreds of kilometers due to the sandstorm.

The scooter gave up at least ten kilometers ago. Sand clogged the intake vents or it ran out of power. Onder didn’t know which. The machine was foreign to him.

When he couldn’t take the storm anymore, when his eyes and his nose and his mouth and his ears were full of sand, he threw himself to the ground and fell dead asleep. Now that it’d passed he had just one priority. Eat. Drinking would be impossible he knew that. He had no tools with which to dig. The scooter carried no water. There were no wells here. And the storm covered everything in parched sand.

A line of termites crossed the loamy turf ahead of him. He quickly scooped up five or six of the tiny beasts, stuffed them into his mouth and chewed until they ceased struggling.

The taste didn’t bother him. He’d had much worse, like the raw rats in Cape Town and the spoiled meat they’d found in Durban. Even Philani accepted that.

The termites changed direction away from him. But a grasshopper crossed his path - fresh, bright green, stroking its own legs and very much alive. Onder wanted to reach for it. He wanted to make a fire and roast It. He wanted to roast a dozen, dozen fine grasshoppers just like him, over a small crackling fire made of twigs and dry grass.

But the robots would be looking for him. They can sense heat. In fact, when night fell, they would detect him, unless he did something about it.

But he couldn’t worry about that now. He grabbed a grasshopper, its legs fighting, its mouth spitting, and shoved it whole into his mouth. He gulped down the sour, meaty mass but it didn’t satisfy.

A figure moved in the distance, atop a dune. Onder hugged the ground, sand blowing into his mouth and down his throat. He narrowed his eyes and blinked. That figure was familiar.

That’s Philani!

Onder scanned a hundred and eighty degrees. He rolled over and scanned the other direction. No sign of robots. Philani disappeared behind the dune. Onder scampered to his feet and chased after her.

He crossed a flat section almost falling as he went. He started to climb the dune and fell flat on his face. He picked himself up and began to climb again, this time on all fours. But he slipped once more.

“Philani! Children!” Onder paddled up the dune. It was tall and he seemed to not make progress. But he was convinced. Just beyond the peak were Philani and the twenty-eight children. They were waiting for him. They needed him. They wouldn’t survive without him.

And he loved them.

But still he couldn’t climb the dune.

Robots appeared around him. They zipped in from every direction on their scooters, their dead eyes, their pounding, slow walk.

“Philani, watch out! Run! Save the children!” Onder made one last attempt to climb the dune. He got to his feet. He stepped, drunkenly, fell sideways and rolled down to the bottom, stopping with one leg on top of a cactus.

The spines dug into his calf. The stench of rotten meat sickened him, but his stomach jumped. Flies rose in a swarm and harassed his eyes and ears.

A faint memory came back to him. His father told him of this plant. Remove the spines. It has water. It will sustain you. So many miles still to walk. Find Philani and the children he must. Of his duty there was no question.

Onder pulled a broken chunk from his leg. He slipped his knife from its sheath on his waist and expertly sliced off the skin of the cactus, including the spines. He stuffed one chunk in his mouth, stripped another and chewed as fast as he could.

It stuck in his esophagus. Not enough liquid. But strength was returning.

He looked behind him. The robots would come over the dune any moment now. He had to be ready. His father struggled before him to keep their people alive. Onder could do no less.

He closed his eyes, steadied his breath and readied the knife. He gripped it, blade-down, and flexed his fingers on the handle, feeling, loving the familiar striations. Convinced his grip was firm, he sprang up the dune, knife raised above his head and ready to strike.

But there was no one. The rolling sand dunes stretched for miles. No lights, no movement.

Onder was losing his mind.

He collapsed to the ground. If he couldn’t trust his senses, how could he be sure he was even moving in the right direction? He knew that the Gaian city lay to the northeast of him, beyond the river-like Lake Malawi but far south of the great Lake Victoria. Beyond that his course could be off by hundreds of kilometers.

He pulled the compass from his back pocket and checked his location. The sun was down now. It’d fallen behind the horizon, its orange rays reaching out from so far away, struggling to guide Onder despite the late hour.

But it wasn’t enough.

Onder would have to spend the night here. In the morning, he’d start again, this time with a full supply of his father’s cactus. What did he call it again?

The air cooled and a peace came over him. He knew he was severely dehydrated, but all he could do now was sleep.

Onder bolted awake. Searchlights surrounded him, each brighter than a morning sun. Voices spoke to him but through the daze he understood none of them.

He got to his feet, his knife at the ready. The lights fluttered then moved to his right. The chattering stopped and was replaced by the sound of a dozen robot scooters.

Onder’s eyes adjusted to the midnight darkness. The scooters numbered many more than just a dozen. They were here for Onder and there was no escape. He would be taken just like Philani and the children, just like his father was and his mother and his brothers and the sisters and all his people.

But Onder knew at that moment that he would not be taken. He was different. His will was indomitable. They could not take him. Never. He would slash their skins. He would sever their eyes. He would outsmart them.

Or he would die.

But they would not take him.

Onder ran to his right, climbed the sand dunes next to him, and leapt, his knife hand outstretched. He hooked the blade into the soft plastic case of the searchlight drone and levered himself up onto its tiny top.

Kneeling, he barely fit on top of the flying beast. It dipped under his weight, crashing into the sand dune. The other drones circled around him, each with four large propellers that hung, one each, underneath the chassis at every corner.

Onder pulled a panel from under his knees. He crouched on his tiptoes, one hand grasping the edge of the chassis between the buzzing propeller blades. With the other, he found the power settings and turn them up to high.

The drone jumped straight into the sky. A robot flew towards Onder, its abandoned scooter just ten meters away. The robot, the skin under its eye ripped, got its silicon fingers on the edge of the drone and the flying platform tipped forward, throwing Onder into the air, feet flying over his face toward the approaching scooters.

Onder landed on his back on hard rock. He struggled to draw breath. The land shook from the vibration of the approaching scooters. Onder wanted to give up. Something within him said this was a fight he could not win. He lay there, like a fish whose water has been sucked away by greedy invaders, feeling sorry for himself for the life he’d been dealt.

The voice of his father came through to him, as clear as if the man stood above the boy.

“Son, you are given but one life. For the coward, for the man afraid of his own shadow, who dares not venture into the unknown, an infinite number of lives is too little.

“But for the man who knows his principles and his purpose, who finds within himself the courage to fight even the most unwinnable battle one life is more than enough.”

Onder jumped to his feet. Just a few meters away was the attacking robot’s scooter. Onder jumped on it, turned and bolted off into the night.

Onder felt the robots at his back. Their cold, slimy fingers grasped at him. He wanted to look back but dared not. He pushed the scooter as hard as it would go. His mind quieted. Speed was his only thought. He maintained maximum pressure on the pedal.

The sun’s rays reached back around for him. Morning was near. His throat and mouth cried out for liquid. The land was smoother now, flatter. Desert gave way to scrubland. Perhaps ahead there would be water. But not here. He’d lost the cactus chunks in the night somehow. His strength failing, his eyes closing, he caught himself falling asleep.

He dared a glance backwards. Somehow, in the confusion, he’d lost them. He’d eluded a squad of robots.

And searchlight drones.

A rush of pride filled him. It was not a bad substitute for food, not at all.

He looked down at the control panel. A red dot blinked. He was heading straight into the rising sun now. But that’s not where he wanted to go. He grabbed controls and turned southeast. The controls turned but the scooter continued straight on. The undulating orange morning sun peeked above the horizon, momentarily blinding Onder.

He raised his hand to shield his eyes and that’s when he spotted it.

The searchlight drones hung in the sky like tiny flies, floating perhaps a half kilometer ahead of him, their camera eyes surely focusing on him.

The Gaians knew where he was. They controlled the scooter. More robots would be upon him any moment now.

And he was even weaker than before.

Onder pinched the control panel and zoomed out. A few minutes flight time ahead was Lake Malawi. He was so close! He could slow the scooter, jump out and hide in the lake. The robots might not even notice he was gone.

It was insanity. They could just as well fish him out of the lake, or let him drown.

But it was his only chance.

A new blip appeared on the map. It was crossing the lake now. He tapped it. A video feed played. More robots. At least two dozen.

Onder thought of his father. Would he be proud of him? A wife and twenty-eight children. That was something his father never had.

But am I the father? Or just the twenty-ninth child?

Onder had yet to make his father proud. He needed more time. He prayed for it and promised not to squander any further time he was granted.

The lake appeared on the horizon as a shimmering blue apparition. The squad of robots waited for him, his last obstacle. They’d formed a roadblock, between him and the lake. If Onder crashed at this speed, his body would fly a kilometer before crashing to earth, nothing more than a bag of bones left.

Onder grabbed the controls and turned. They didn’t respond. He took his foot off the pedal and hit the brake. The scooter did not respond.

Onder brought a foot up to the seat of the scooter. It shook. He brought up the other and stood up, carefully balancing himself. The roadblock was near now. This was it.

The scooter crashed into the assembled robots and he flew, headfirst over the explosion.

The river was narrow. It was shallow from lack of rains. Onder passed over it. His momentum expended, The air resistance too much, Onder fell into the water, unconscious.