I sit back like I’ve been smacked. Where did that come from? She knows Jill can’t find out I told her about the glasses. Jill’s brows are already up, her face one big accusation, and there’s no guessing needed with Samara’s expression right now. The facade is down and she is boiling mad.
I don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve been patient to the point of sainthood, holding in my own questions, answering hers. Breaking protocol, letting her set the rules, all to gain her trust. And the one time I give in and ask what any sane person might after being told there are people whose brains never forget, she threatens me with Jill. Who is jealous, and feeling vindictive about it. Who’s just getting the idea that maybe I’m not willing to play her game. If Jill found out I’d deliberately broken protocol to an outrageous extent—like I have—would she tell the Commander? She might. And Samara is mad. At me. And Jill is acting like a child. I’m sick of both of them.
I get up, grab the glasses and my pack and the dry jumpsuit, and go behind the boulder that seems to be the unofficial dressing room. And by the time I’ve changed my clothes, in true Beckett style, I’ve also changed my temper.
This girl is in trouble. She is traumatized, from a culture I know almost nothing about. Who knows what sensitivities I was just trampling all over? I broke protocol to follow my own instincts, and that is my risk, a risk she couldn’t know anything about, a risk that Jill couldn’t help but be upset by. And it’s not Jill’s fault, either, for that matter, if I’ve outgrown her. How could she have seen that coming? And if she doesn’t know I’m moving on, then that has to be my fault, too, for not actually saying so.
What would Dad have done, in my shoes? His job, probably, professionally, and managed to expand the breadth of human knowledge while he was at it. What would Mom have done? Maybe something a little closer to what I’m doing.
But I have a feeling she would’ve done it better.
I zip the suit, put the glasses on, and just when I get the earpiece back in place I catch something. A hint of static. I freeze. Listen. Wait. But there’s nothing. It doesn’t come again.
I look around the cavern through the glasses, at the roots on the other side of the lake, the one we jumped from sticking out pale gray from the others. We must be just beneath the surface.
I run my hand over the boulder. Black rock, but marbled with the glittering blue I saw so much of in the mountains around Old Canaan. Like the door I blew up, that Samara said was made of mountain rock. Metallic hydrogen. Naturally occurring. The resource that had the original New World Space Exploration company so excited when they started the Canaan Project. We can make it now, much easier than hauling it across space, but I wonder if there’s a difference between the metallic hydrogen we make and what is actually here. Something that’s messing with our communications.
But the signal did come. For a second. And when we leave these caves, I think there’s a good chance I’m going to get communication. And when I do, I’ll be hearing from Commander Faye. Guaranteed.
Suddenly, I’m not exactly sure just how bad I want that signal.
They don’t understand Knowing.
I take my pack and my light to the opposite side of the flat stone space from Jillian, and sit with my back against a natural column. I’m mad. At myself. I lost my temper in a way the Knowing are never allowed. But he made me feel strange. Abnormal. The specimen under glass. What does he think has been happening to me, when I go to my memories? He must think I’m insane. They both must.
Maybe I am.
I knew Jillian and Beckett were without memory. That was obvious. But I assumed Earth would be something like Canaan, with the privileged and the not. Those who had Knowing, and those who didn’t. But they’ve never even heard of it.
I think of Grandpapa Cyrus, telling me that fading memories were good, normal. That we of the Underneath were the ones who were different. Have we not always been like this? The idea is incredible, as monumental as the concept of technology that can heal. Maybe the Forgetting really is a cure, because Knowing is an actual sickness.
I wish I could write this in my book. In case it’s the truth. But right now I’d soak it.
Beckett comes out from behind the boulder, back to being the alien with his technology and baggy cloth. He doesn’t look at me, or at Jillian. He just wrings out his wet clothes, slapping them out to dry on a rock, hair slicked back, showing the healing cut on one side of his forehead.
I scared him when I hinted in front of Jillian that I Knew he could see his way through the caves. As usual, the emotion was clear on his face. I haven’t really considered what kind of rules Beckett might be breaking until now, or what might happen to him if he’s caught. Something as bad as Outside? As bad as Judgment? Earth is supposed to be cruel. More cruel than we are. I wonder what I’ve done.
And then I jump. Beckett is standing right in front of me, holding out his blanket.
“Here,” he says. “You’re cold.”
I am cold. I’m shivering.
“Take off your wet clothes, and you can wrap up in this until they’re dry.”
I’m not certain I should.
“Take it, Samara. I don’t need it.”
The allure of being dry is too much, and to refuse makes it seem as if I’m still angry. I take the blanket and go behind the boulder without making eye contact, yank off my wet things—I’m not sure they deserve to be called clothes anymore—lay them out, and wrap the blanket around my body like a dress without sleeves, holding it together with one hand. It’s thin, red, and very warm, and there’s a lot of it. I can’t imagine what kind of plant would make the material. It trails the ground as I go and sit again next to my pack, back against the blue-black stone.
Beckett doesn’t look up. He’s on his side, head propped on one hand near the light jar. Jillian is asleep, or at least still, a meter or two behind his back. There’s a waterbug crawling up his finger, the skates it uses on the surface of the water splayed delicately across Beckett’s tan skin. He lets it walk off onto the ground, then puts his finger back in its path and peers at it, perched tiny and black on his knuckle, before setting it down again. The waterbug keeps coming to the light, keeps climbing back onto his hand.
And for the first time, I really comprehend that Beckett has lived on Earth. Seen moons up close and the stars from their other side. How brave do you have to be to let yourself fall off the ground and into the sky? To leave your own planet? I don’t understand why he would come all this way, and break his rules for me. Pull me out of the street when the Council was coming.
“I saw a map once,” I say. Beckett blinks, but he doesn’t look up from the waterbug. “In the Archives, with my uncle Towlend. In an old book. It showed the way through the caves. I looked at it in my memory, and that’s how I Knew.”
When his voice comes, it’s low and resonant. Avoiding the echo. “Can you remember the whole map?”
“Yes.”
“You can see it, in your head?”
“Yes.”
Then he asks, “How old were you when you saw it?”