She wakes up before me in the morning. I’m still feeling like the living dead, which is what I get for trying a forced march so soon after I’ve been laid up.
We eat a ration bar each in silence. I’m pretty sure giving me a whole one instead of splitting it is her version of looking after me while I’m sick, which perhaps means we’re going to be civilized about what happened last night. It’s not as though we have the luxury of finding someone else to talk to.
I know she’s started hearing the whispers again—she shakes like a leaf whenever they show up. But they’ve declined to let me in on their secrets again, and if they tell her anything, she doesn’t share it with me. I’m not sure I like the idea that they seem to be focusing on her—or targeting her.
I shoulder the pack and we set off in silence, but we do manage to talk a little as the morning wears on. It’s not much, but the content of the conversation isn’t the point. It’s the gesture that matters, on both our parts—our way of telling each other that we’re going to find a way to keep working together.
Seventeen days ago I’d have pulled out my own teeth with pliers before voluntarily seeking her out for conversation. Now I’m just tired with relief that we’re not going to shut each other out completely.
It’s late afternoon when we reach the trees. They’re mostly pole trees again, like the forest where we crashed. This inexplicable landscape, none of the terraforming as it should be, is becoming normal to me.
Lilac’s hand goes out when I stumble over a root. I’m so tired I’m not lifting my feet properly now, a combination of three days of fever and nearly three weeks of rationed meals. At least I started out with some condition on me. I have no idea how Lilac’s still moving, but in some ways she actually seems stronger than she was before.
We emerge from the trees quite suddenly, both of us stumbling to a halt in the same moment.
A boxy, one-story building squats in the middle of the clearing. Hope surges up inside of me.
It’s perfectly intact. This isn’t wreckage, and it isn’t ruined. It’s real. It’s an observation station, like dozens I’ve seen before on newly terraformed planets.
As we stand rooted to the spot, a carpet of purple flowers unfurls beneath our feet, racing away from us to ring the building. The path that led the way from the ship finishes here.
And then, in the next moment, disappointment cuts through me. I look again, and realize the clearing is dotted with young saplings. There are thick vines crawling up the sides of the building.
Nobody’s been here in years.
“Are you reluctant to answer our questions, Major?”
“Of course not. It’s a pleasure to assist you. I can see you’re hanging on my every word.”
“You seem uncooperative, Major. You’re a highly decorated soldier. Your conduct doesn’t match the favorable reports on your file.”
“I suppose appearances can be deceiving.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
LILAC
FOR A WHILE WE FORGET WHAT HAPPENED last night and explore the building, working together again. Seeing an intact structure, something man-made, is electrifying. I try to imagine what my home looks like, my city, the buildings that touch the clouds and the cars on the skyways, and my mind draws a blank. I think if I were to somehow transport myself there now, it’d be overwhelming.
There’ll be a generator inside this building, somewhere, and if we can get that working, I can get everything else working. Tarver insists there will be a communications system inside—though I’ve never been to a planet in any phase earlier than advanced settlement, he tells me that stations like this are common, and all alike.
Communications equipment would mean a way to send a signal. A way to get Tarver back to his family, where he belongs, even if I’m not so sure I want to rejoin the world anymore. And if there’s any justice or decency in the galaxy, he’ll get home in one piece.
I want so badly to tell him why I said the things I said when we first met. Why alienating people is one of my greatest talents. But to tell him would be to betray my father. To show Tarver just how monstrous I am. And so I bite my tongue, and try to ignore the way the truth is building inside me like water under pressure.
Let him hate me, and think I hate him back. It’s safer for both of us.
We don’t talk, but the silence is still easier than it has been. Neither of us asks why this place was abandoned, or what it was originally for. It’s large enough that it can’t just be to house monitoring equipment. It had to hold people at some point.