She cannot be real. Tall and lean, with a mass of curling dark hair hanging in loose coils down her back. And the eyes … the lightest brown, a shade or two lighter than her skin, glowing, so that they look … amber, maybe. Her clothes are dirty, embroidered with tiny blue and green stitches, handmade from the cloth to the thread, like the sandals. Like the book she’s wearing tied across her chest.
This girl has walked straight out of a history file on the early civilizations of … Where? The Southern American continent? Pretech Asia? But Samara is not from Earth. Not really. She is of Canaan, and I don’t know what she’s talking about half the time. But when she came out with what I think are ancient Latin medical terms and “physician,” a word I’ve only seen in manuscripts, all I could think is how both my parents might break an ankle to put themselves in my position right now.
Samara has my foot, ready to set the bone, Jill on my chest, bracing me more effectively than I would’ve thought. She’s been incredibly gentle, this girl, and she looks like she knows what she’s doing. I hope she does, because either way, I’m about to let her do it.
“I will begin,” she says.
She’s speaking English, but with the occasional unfamiliar word and an odd cadence, a lilt that goes unexpected places, so that sometimes I’m slow to catch the meaning. It’s pretty, though, fascinating, and then the girl wrenches my leg like she’s wringing the neck of a turkey. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it’s uncomfortable enough to make me flinch, and I thank every deity of every civilization I’ve ever studied that Jillian got that infusion in me. She’s making it hard to breathe, squeezing me with her legs she’s so tense, her head turned and eyes screwed shut. Samara frowns, gives my leg another killing twist, harder, this time with an audible pop. I feel my leg and foot go back together. Which is weird, and a little disgusting.
“That is done,” Samara says. She seems relieved, but she’s got her head to one side, looking at me with those amber eyes. I realize way too late that I should have been in excruciating pain, and that I have no way of explaining why I wasn’t. Why I’m not. Jill lets go of my other leg, scrambles off my chest.
“Are you okay?”
I hadn’t realized until this second how scared she is. I smile at her, and watch Samara watch me do it. She lowers her gaze and goes back to examining my foot, I think feeling for a pulse. Where did this girl come from? Are there parts of the city still inhabited? The way she looks around this room … I don’t think she’s ever been here before.
I have a million questions, and I can’t think of one way of asking any of them that doesn’t show the truth. That I don’t belong here. That Jill doesn’t belong here. That we are from somewhere else. How was initial contact supposed to work? The gist of Mom and Dad’s training was to not overwhelm with knowledge or the unfamiliar, to not show surprise or judgment at pretech cultural norms. Making allowances for a civilization that is less developed. Now that I’m here, all that sounds like a kind of talking down. Assuming that their society would want to be like ours if it could. Samara may not understand technology or the culture of Earth, but she doesn’t seem stupid, and we are going to ruin this, Jill and I. Cause irreparable damage, change the course of a world, just because we—correction, I—can’t follow protocol and turn back when I’m supposed to. Samara looks up.
“There has likely been a fracture as well. Talus, or malleolus.”
It’s both, I think.
“You will have to immobilize the leg until it heals.”
Then Jillian says, “Who trained you? As a … physician?”
I shoot Jill a look of respect. She asked a leading question, gave nothing away, and used the terminology. But Samara doesn’t answer, only stands. She seems agitated. Nervous.
“Do you understand that you are in danger?” she asks. When we don’t answer, because we don’t know what to say, she goes on. “The Council is coming. They will be here soon, perhaps half a bell, and … Beckett,” she stumbles over my name, “will not be able to move well. Perhaps not until sunrising.”
I’ll be moving twenty minutes after Jill gets the medical kit back out, but Samara has no way of knowing that. I say, “Why is the Council coming?”
For some reason, this stops her dead. “Do you remember the Council?”
I don’t. At all. She looks relieved at my expression, though I don’t understand why. She sits on a fallen stone next to us, her hair a cascade, eyes rimmed with dark lash, and now that she’s closer, I see that one side of her face shows a faint, almost faded bruise.
“Let me explain,” she says. “You are from the outside.”
I feel my stomach sink, see Jill’s eyes go round. She knows already. She knows we’re from Earth. And I think that was supposed to be phase nine or ten of contact. She goes on.
“You are out of bounds. The Council will kill you for that.”
Out of bounds, I think. Could that mean beyond a boundary? Out of the atmosphere? Or beyond the wall? But we’re inside the wall. Jill isn’t concerned with an ancient turn of phrase.
She says, “What do you mean, they’ll kill us?” Samara looks at her like she’s an idiot.
“I mean they will end your life, because you have forgotten.”
“Wait. What?” Jill looks to me for help. I’m watching Samara. She has her elbows balanced on her knees, which are also showing bruising, and when she holds out her hands, I see that they are newly healed, a little pink, as if her palms recently lost most of their skin. Culture files move past my memory: self-mutilation, torture, the labs of the Fourth and Fifth World Wars. Something has happened to this girl. But I can’t decide if she knows we’re from Earth or not. So I gamble.
“Are you from the outside?”
Samara frowns. “I said to you before, I am from Underneath. From the city.” She tries again when we don’t seem to get it. “From the city of New Canaan.”
Jill’s hand tightens in mine, and then my brain is racing. There is another city on this planet. New Canaan. They didn’t die out, they just packed up and moved. But why? And why are the Centauri’s scans turning out to be so incredibly, amazingly worthless?
I’ve been trying to watch Samara’s face. Both my parents trained in the psychology of expression and body movements, the silent language that can tell you so much about another person without having to ask. And now I’m drawing my own conclusions. Samara is a facade, like this building, hard on the outside, mysterious inside, with only the occasional glimpse showing through the cracks. Like right now. Sadness. I gamble again.
“Are you out of bounds?” I ask. “Are they going to kill you, too?”