Our mount strides into an empty stall. On either side are metal racks packed with equipment that seems long since dormant. Moss grows on everything.
The spider lowers to its belly. Bishop steps down. He reaches his hand up to help me. I don’t need his help…but maybe I want it.
I take his hand in mine. His skin is so warm.
Stepping over the ridge, I try my best to slide down gracefully, but as soon as my boots land on dirt and dead vines, my legs wobble; I’m weak from the long ride. I take one step, and they give out. I fall fast, but Bishop is faster—his big hands cinch around my waist. I hear my spear clatter to the ground.
Bishop holds me upright like I weigh nothing at all.
“Are you all right?”
I feel dizzy, and not just from blood loss. He’s staring at me, concerned.
His dark-yellow eyes, locked onto mine…
“Yes,” I say. “I think I’m all right now.”
He sets me on my feet, but doesn’t let go right away. He holds on a moment too long. He’s smiling.
I smile back.
Then, as fast as the moment came, it’s gone. Bishop blinks a few times, slowly releases me, takes a step back. He looks like he wants to say something—something I know I long to hear—but instead he calls out to the others, his powerful voice echoing off the rust-eaten walls and ceiling.
“We can’t stay here long! Em needs to get back, so take a quick look and let’s go.”
He picks up the spear, hands it to me. I’m suddenly so tired. Bishop was right—my wound is worse than I thought.
We have to get back to the shuttle, I know this, but I can manage for a little bit more. This place…it’s important. It is the answer to a question, I just don’t know what that question is yet.
Kalle walks over, her little head tilted back. She turns slow circles, taking it all in.
“A factory,” she says. “Amazing. It had to come from Xolotl, just like our shuttle.”
“Hey! Come look at this!” It’s Coyotl, his voice echoing from farther in the building. He’s with Borjigin, who stares upward, mesmerized.
We walk to join them. Once again, my spear is less weapon, more cane.
Coyotl is gawking up at the curving wall, his head tilted so far he has to take a quick step backward to keep from falling on his butt.
He points. I crane my head, look. Nothing but more rust and vine-covered machinery. I start to ask him what he sees, then the image clarifies.
The thing I’m looking at, up high…it’s the top of a machine that stands on the ground. A moss-speckled machine shaped roughly like a person, a giant person made of rusted blue metal. One arm ends in a wide, thick scoop, the other in a huge, three-pincered claw. In some places I can see right through the giant to the rusted-out wall behind it.
Borjigin is nodding, mumbling to himself. I’ve seen this enough times to know what is happening to him—a flashfire.
“A builder,” he says. “It’s…it’s a Besatrix Terraformer. Model C-4. I…” He looks at me, confused. “I’ve seen these before. But I haven’t. I couldn’t. My creator…I think he helped design Uchmal. He knew how to operate these machines, how to maintain them. Maybe even repair them.”
So the halves can do more than whisper in a leader’s ear and count food. As organized and methodical as they are, I suppose it makes sense they would be the ones to design cities. I’m surprised they operated these machines themselves, though—but perhaps something so complicated couldn’t be left to a simple empty.
Borjigin looks down the length of the building, nodding, eyes hovering on more giant machines. Each one he sees makes him mumble gibberish I don’t really understand: what the machine is called, what it is supposed to do. It’s nice that he remembers, but it doesn’t matter—these machines are dead. Some are squat and look more like small buildings than people. Some have scoops. Some have great spikes. Some have saws so big they would neatly slice our shuttle in half. Some have wide, walled, empty areas that could hold a small mountain’s worth of dirt and rock.
Borjigin laughs. His eyes dance with delight and with life, his fatigue forgotten for the moment.
“That’s why we haven’t seen anyone in this city, alive or dead,” he says. “The Grownups didn’t build Uchmal—these machines did.”
Bishop shakes his head. “But the Grownups had to tell the machines what to do, didn’t they? Where to go, what to build?”
“Yes, but they could do that from up there.” Borjigin points a slim finger skyward.
His words overwhelm me. When the Observatory said we were the first people to set foot on Omeyocan, I thought it was wrong. It wasn’t. We’ve searched hundreds of buildings and found nothing. No Grownups, no bones, no sign of anyone ever having been here before us.