Water gushes from a high black arch in the cavern wall, the River Torrens, rushing down a channel that winds through a mirrored floor of dark and glossy rock. Seven bridges span the channel, water echoing against sporadic columns of blue-black stone, natural features now honed and polished, rising to a ceiling I cannot see. But there are lamps up there, glittering, hanging from terraces and balconies like the stars I’ve seen Outside. In the long stretches of the dark days. When the sun is gone.
I slow my walk to something calm and unconcerned as I cross the first bridge, edging along the fringe of the crowd, cloak held together, trying to blend with the sea of bright fabric and elaborately pinned braids. I want to run. There’s a platform on the far side of the cavern, a high piece of rock hugged on three sides by the Torrens, bare and smooth on its top. Where we will be Judged. And reclining on its carved steps is my father, Sampson Archiva, skin and eyes a rich brown, hair twisted into ropes strung with red. Waiting for someone.
A mural rises beyond my father’s head, meters high and stretching the length of the cavern wall, images shifting as I weave through the columns. The first section is titled “The Legacy of Earth,” green mountains and an impossibly blue sky fading into a smoking, flattened land. Then the color blends to pale, into the circular walls of a city of white stone, a silver-white sunrise sparkling above it. This is “Canaan. The Cursed City.” And to the right of that, reaching to the curve of the wall is “Journey to New Canaan,” showing a long line of beautiful people on a road to a black mountain, the white city in the distance, each with a hand extended to a smaller, stunted figure with a blank and empty face.
The beautiful ones are supposed to be my ancestors, 379 years ago, the Knowing, the people of memory, leading those without it to a refuge safe from the destruction of a coming Earth. Only there is no Earth. Earth is a myth. A story to make us afraid. To make us think we’re special. To keep the Outsiders out and the Knowing Underneath. Adam told me that.
And he was right. Because I Know the real reason we left the Cursed City. And it has nothing to do with a myth …
Memory grabs at my mind, heavy, trying to drag me downward. I struggle. I cannot do this here. I will not. I’ve stopped walking, heads turning to stare as I dam the flow of people like a stone in a stream. The memory pulls. Hard. I pull back. And then it wrenches me down and I plummet …
… into a room of gray pine, herbs drying in bunches from the ceiling, yellow flame from a heating furnace showing me the face of an old man drinking tea from a mug. Cyrus Glassblower. Nita’s grandpapa. I sip from my own mug, hugging my knees, on the floor at his feet. There are sixteen scars on my arms.
“Nita tells me you’re writing the truth in a book,” Grandpapa says. “That’s good. Memories last when they’re written. They can be given to someone else. So here’s a truth I want you to write. I can’t remember being a child. I just opened my eyes one day, and the memories were gone … ”
I hesitate. “So different from … ” I’m looking for words that aren’t “different from the way you usually forget.” Outsiders don’t have memory, and I don’t want to be insulting. I want him to like me. Grandpapa smiles.
“It’s a natural thing, little girl, to let a memory fade. Like chiseling stone. If the carving is shallow, then the picture just wears itself away. And even if it is chiseled in good and deep, the edges still smooth out, soften. Time has a kindness like that. That’s as it should be … ”
Meaning that we of the Underneath are not as we should be. I watch Grandpapa’s forehead fold up like cloth.
“But this wasn’t the same. This was like the mason had never picked up the tools. My life was Forgotten. Nita’s grandmama, she had to tell me my name, tell me hers. I had to pretend I knew my own mother. And we never told, because there have been others. Even a supervisor, once. And they whisked him belowground fast enough. But the Outsiders, now they just disappear. And then we see the smoke, coming out from Underneath … ”
Three moons are rising, shining white light through the windowpanes. How could a supervisor, one of the Knowing, Forget his own name? And how could I not Know about it? I couldn’t Forget a face if I tried. If one of us had gone missing, I would Know. Grandpapa puts a hand on my head.
“But you, little girl,” he says. “You Know. You remember. And you could do something about it … ”
… and I go soaring, up through my mind, and my eyes snap open, blinking at the bodies moving through the Forum. At Thorne Councilman, our Head of Council, now standing next to my father on the steps to the platform. The one who will be Judging me, standing where I will be Judged, his black-eyed gaze making a straight path to mine. Fear stabs inside my chest. There’s a jerk inside my mind, and I plunge, down …
… into the Forum of twelve years ago, full of the Knowing in their finery. It’s dark. Silent. Judgment. And Ava Administrator has just been condemned. My father holds my hand, a rare gesture, and I watch a blank sort of shock steal over the serenity of Ava’s face. Thorne Councilman reads her transgressions: funneling the best of the goods to her own level, numbers that do not rectify, an improper relationship.
And then Thorne condemns Ava’s bloodline, all three of her children, because her oldest, a rebellious thirteen-year-old, has been refusing to cache. My father’s hand slips up to my face, covering my eyes so I will not remember the sight, but I can hear the children cry, and Ava’s soft protest of “No.” And a louder “No.” And then, “No!”
… and I rise through my mind, and this time when I open my eyes both Thorne Councilman and my father are staring at me from across the Forum. As are others. Because I have just shouted the word “No,” the echo still bouncing back and forth between columns. And then someone screams, and it’s not me. I look up.
A body is falling, down through the dark of the Forum, legs and arms outstretched, hair fluttering in the wind. And while my eyes track the descent of a long silver dress, all I can think is that I want to be like Grandpapa Cyrus.
I want to be cursed like the people of Canaan.
I want to Forget.
I am Beckett Rodriguez, and I am flying through the stars.
The ship is big, but I think it feels smaller than it’s supposed to. We spent a year on the fake Centauri III, in the middle of a California desert without ever seeing the sun. They say this ship is the same size, but I’m not sure I believe them. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown. Or maybe it’s because this time I know that there’s no sand, no sun, no air, and no Earth out there. Nothing outside the hull of this ship that could keep me alive. I don’t like to think about the void.
We’ll be on the Centauri III for thirty-one more months if everything goes okay. If the ship doesn’t stop working. If we don’t run out of food. Or air. If we don’t get bored and kill each other before we get to Canaan.
I’ll be eighteen before I stand beneath a sun again. And when I do, it will be a sun in a sky that isn’t mine.
FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ
Day 1, Year 1
The Lost Canaan Project
Two and half years I’ve been dreaming about this sun, and now I’m going to die under it.