“Let’s go down,” Jill says. Her voice is hushed, excited. She’s thinking this would be a good place to camp. Maybe swim. I know her face well enough to understand as if she’d said the words. I wonder if she knows me well enough to get that I’m mad at her.
I follow her down, hanging on to the trees as we slide through the leaves, dirt sticking to my sweaty skin. Something says chick, chick as we pass, more of them taking up the song. The roar of the waterfall is amplified by the surrounding rock, so that when we reach the bottom, the noise is deafening. I do another sweep for Dad’s benefit, but really it’s for mine. It’s beautiful here. Pristine. A whole empty planet of pristine.
We climb over tumbled rocks, Jill in the lead, heading toward the pool. She drops her pack beside it, then looks back, face pink with sun and heat, waiting for the glasses to analyze the water. For me to tell her if it’s poison, or acid, or full of those dangerous, sap-sucking beetles.
“Go ahead,” I say.
She grins, dips her hand, and instantly pulls it back, mouth turning down in surprise. “It’s hot!”
I raise a brow at her scowl, and she throws a rock at me. Dad probably enjoyed that. Along with everyone on a screen at the base camp. But Jill wasn’t really trying to hit me, that water wasn’t hot enough to burn her, and the result is we’re both feeling a little better about things. Jill gets out her hydrator, unzips the suit, and splashes herself anyway, lifting her chin to catch the cooling breeze, little streams running down her neck, soaking her shirt. Maybe camping isn’t that bad of an idea. Then I remember where I’m looking and give Dad and the base another circular view of the canyon.
“Nothing obvious here,” I say to my father. “Though that break in the cliffs on the other side looks interesting. Very regular. Why don’t Jill and I set up camp so we can take a closer look? This is a sheltered spot, people could have easily been here. We could get some rest, then strike out farther … ”
I pause, surprised not to have heard a protest. Dr. Sean Rodriguez isn’t a man known for keeping opinions to himself.
“Dad?”
The stats are scrolling, but there’s no noise. No muffled conversation from back at base. I turn to Jill.
“We’re out of communication.”
Her eyes snap open and she straightens beside the pool. “Really?” Then her voice goes crafty. “Really?”
“No, I’m not kidding. We’ve got no connection.” I look again at the canyon. What could be blocking our signal? I didn’t actually know anything could. I don’t think anyone did. And it’s gone quiet, silent. No more of the chick, chick. This place doesn’t feel sheltered anymore. It feels dangerous. I turn back to Jill.
And the pool behind her is pulsing. Like a living thing. Like it has a heart. The water trembles, sucking in and out, and there’s a rumble beneath the rocks, a shaking beneath my feet. An explosion, a roar. Like the engines of the Centauri. Like a bomb.
“Jill!” I yell. “Move!”
One of the first recitations we hear in the learning room is the story of Earth. How Earth is a place in the sky (suspicious), so far away the kilometers are too many to count (suspicious), and how we, in ancient times, were once the best of its people, sent flying past moons and stars (unbelievable) with the task of building the perfect city.
Because Earth was not a perfect city. Earth was full of greed, lies, violence, cruelty beyond imagining, and something called technology. Machines, like the water clocks, only these machines were made of poisons (ridiculous), fouling the water and ruining the land. On Earth, our teacher said, no one used their hands or their minds, because technology not only did their work for them, it did their thinking for them, too (silly).
And so we, the best of the best of Earth, accomplished our task, and with our own hands, not technology. We built Canaan, the city of white stone. A place of beauty, peace, justice, all the things that Earth was not (flattery). But Earth had lied to us, sent agents among us, ready to send a signal through the skies when our work was complete, so that Earth could come back and take our city for themselves. Use their technology to enslave us, steal the best of our best, the Knowing (more flattery), and take them away again, so that they would have to make the Earth beautiful again, too.
But the agents were discovered, and Earth waited for a message that never came. And we of the Knowing, the best of Earth and the best of Canaan (even more flattery), left our white city and built another, deep beneath the mountain. New Canaan, the city of black stone. The city Underneath. Where our memories and our Knowing would be safe. Hidden. So that when Earth came looking, they wouldn’t find the perfect city or the best of its people, they would only find ruins, and fly away again (ridiculous). And then the teacher would whisper how Earth was still out there, waiting to come and take the Knowing, never to see New Canaan again (fearmongering).
It was at this part of the story that I raised my hand, interrupting our teacher’s recitation, to ask why, then, we didn’t all live underground? Why did some of us live Outside, where Earth could get them? And the teacher said Earth would not care about the Outside, because Outsiders were not of the Knowing.
There is a sign hung in the learning room, huge white letters on the black of the walls. “The Truth Is What We Know.”
I disagree. I think that much of what we Know is a lie.
FROM THE HIDDEN BOOK OF SAMARA ARCHIVA
IN THE CITY OF NEW CANAAN
There’s a sign above the murals in the Forum, above the platform of Judgment, where my father and Thorne Councilman were standing until the falling body hit the stones just a moment ago. Tall letters, bright white against the black rock walls. OUR TRUTH CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN.
This is wrong. Truth can be forgotten. When it’s hidden. Or when you die.
I feel a hand on my arm, a shake to wake me up. I move my eyes away from the lies painted on New Canaan’s wall. It’s Reddix.
“Go home, Samara,” he says.
There’s a crowd around us, a babble of noise, but I like the blur of sound. It washes away the words, so I don’t have to remember what’s being said. I let my gaze glance over the body, lying bloody and contorted two meters from my feet. I knew who she was when she was falling. I recognized the dress. I helped her choose the cloth. Sonia Tutor.
Reddix nods his head toward the doorway that leads to my level, and I go, threading my way through the throng just as Thorne Councilman and my father cross the bridge closest to Sonia. I can feel Sampson Archiva’s eyes tracking my progress across the Forum. My very public lapse is not forgotten, of course. Sonia has only delayed how it will be dealt with. Seclusion, probably, until I’m fully in control. But since I’m never fully in control, my time in seclusion has tended to be indefinite.