It knows what I am. And who I am. Or it should. The skimmer hovers, flies a little to the right, to the left, away, and then back to the same place. Which is weird. Then it zips off, fast, sideways along the contours of the cliffs. I zoom the glasses, watching its path, then wince as the mountainside makes a turn and the skimmer doesn’t. It crashes straight into an outcrop of sparkling stone, too far away to hear. But I see pieces glinting as the shards fall.
I don’t think that skimmer could see where it was going. I’m not sure it could see me. But how is that possible? I climb, faster than before, get to the top, and roll onto my back, like I did the first time I scaled a rope on this planet. Only now I’m alone up here, and the sky is red instead of purple, the plants around me tall and dark. Organized. Planted. By humans. And the alarm in my lenses hasn’t stopped going off.
I sit up. The warning isn’t for people. It’s for a power source. I thought it was another skimmer, but now that I’m up, the lenses say the source is underneath me. Inside this mountain. What else has Samara Archiva not thought to mention?
I look down, the lenses still zoomed, and Samara is exactly where I left her, beside the pile of stones that was her aunt, only she’s still, eyes closed. She’s in a memory. Not a bad one this time; she’s smiling, almost shy, a hand on her own cheek. I feel like I’m looking at something I shouldn’t. I think of those lined eyes in that calm face in the cave, watching Samara rise through the air. I wonder if he’s the one giving her that memory, and then I think maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.
She didn’t want the one I gave her.
I am such an idiot.
I reset the rope, and shoot the hook and harness back down, a little way away from Samara and Jill. Samara wakes up, helps Jill into the harness, and Jill lets her, and that alone tells me Jill’s not as well as she was. She comes up with her pack on her lap, and when she lies down on the cliff top I can hear her breathe, a soft wheezing. I move fast, get the rope back down and Samara up with the last two packs.
“Should I dose her again?” I ask.
Samara gets untangled, and comes to look at Jill, but looks at me first. “Will we have warning, if there are people?”
I nod, and watch her feel the pulse at Jill’s neck, then put her ear to Jill’s chest.
“She is reacting, but not badly. How much medicine do you have?”
“One more.” I watch Samara look back through her mind, almost like she’s scanning a file. I wonder if that’s what I look like, reading the glasses.
“We should only use it if she gets worse. She needs to be still and sleep.”
“And will she be able to sleep, where we’re going?” I know I’m sounding hostile right now. It might be because I’m mad. I thought Jill was getting better, not worse, and I’ve put her in a position that is not her fault. Again. And lied to make it happen. She should be on the ship right now, with all the medicine she could need. I don’t think I could make a decent decision anymore if I tried.
Samara says, “I have friends Outside who will hide us.”
I look around at the tall, dark trees. “I thought this was Outside?”
“No, these are the upland parks. No one comes here, usually, but this is part of the city, and we cannot be seen. The Knowing do not forget a face.”
“And why is it better to hide with these friends of yours instead of finding a place to camp while Jill sleeps?”
“Because we don’t have enough food.”
This is an excellent point. I watch her hesitate, like she’s grappling with what to say. “It will be difficult. You cannot tell them who you are. Any of them, Knowing or Outsider. And you’ll have to do what I say. Can you?”
She’s asking if I can trust her enough to follow her lead. I stand up, start reeling in the rope so I can pack it. The answer to her question is both yes and no, and I can’t decide which is more true.
Samara says, “You can’t get back to your … ship. Can you?”
I shake my head.
“Can you … talk to them? From here?”
I get the rappelling gear into the pack. “I’m supposed to be able to, but I can’t.”
“Do they already know about me? And the city?”
“Yes. But they can’t see it for some reason.”
“They can see from a long way away, can’t they?”
“Yes. Usually.”
“But they’re only here to study us? Learn about us?”
I don’t know how to answer that, and her amber eyes dart to the sky. For a second, there is no hard exterior, no mask, and the expression I see is the best argument for protocol I’ve ever been presented with. I decide not to mention the skimmer.
“We should leave here,” she whispers.
I agree. We move quick and quiet through the red shadows, or as much as we can when Samara has three packs and I have a half-conscious girl on my back. We go up another cliff, not near as high, but high enough, then down, through thick and tangled woods. Until we hit trees that are well-spaced, planted in rows, like an orchard, and I stop beside Samara.
A wide valley spreads out in front of us, a table of land ringed by mountains, the sloping edges terraced with empty, harvested fields, the flat space between sprinkled with the peaks of thatched roofs and yellow dots of fire. Outside.
I feel my pulse pick up. I know this is going to be dangerous, maybe stupid. And that blinking light in the lenses tells me that this place is hiding more secrets than just a city Underneath. But I wanted to see history. Living and breathing. I wanted to see what became of Canaan. And here is what they built. Not a theory or a scientist’s speculation. Real. The answer to a lifelong dream. Where Earth is the enemy. Where I am the enemy.
And it doesn’t look like the kind of place you could hide in at all.
We the faithful of the NWSE have never forgotten our original directive: to create a new civilization, to populate the perfect society, to advance the knowledge of the human race. We have dared to build a world superior to the Earth from which we come …
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN
Beckett stares down into the dotted sparkle of the torches and lamps of the Outside, then up at the surrounding mountains, where the glowworm threads are shining, like webs of moonlit string. I wonder what he’s seeing through his technology. I wonder what he’s seeing in his mind. If the Outside looks anything like Earth. Or nothing at all. He sees me watching him, but he avoids my eyes. He doesn’t trust me. Why should he? I wouldn’t trust me. And I’m not sure I can trust him. He couldn’t answer back there when I asked him about Earth.
His anger feels like a knife tip grazing my skin.
“I need to change our clothes,” I tell him.
He lays Jillian down beneath a blacknut tree without a word, cradling her head, and then I want to Know just how many times he’s kissed her the way he kissed me. Which is infuriating. He walks away into the grove in his tight Earth clothes, stretching out on the sloping ground, facing the lights of the Outside.
I think that knife tip is going to make me bleed.