I thrust the memory back so hard it leaves me dizzy. Nita’s body is easing. I cradle her head, use the sleeve of my tunic to wipe away the blood and tears from her face. She’s bitten her tongue.
“Go out … on the terrace now,” she whispers. She’s shuddering so hard the words are difficult to understand. “Shut the … door and don’t … listen. Please … ”
I shake my head. I’m not leaving her.
“I don’t want you … to remember … this. Sam, do not … remember this … ”
The second spasm hits, more violent this time. Nita’s body goes rigid, writhes, and goes rigid again, and with all my Knowing, I cannot fix it. No better than the child crying behind Adam’s door. I hear a snap, a sharp crack, and when Nita’s flailing subsides, her left arm is limp. Her humerus is broken.
There will be more broken bones, many more. But Nita isn’t screaming like Adam did. She only sobs, her right hand stifling her cries. She doesn’t want them to hear, to realize that the wrong person is dying. She’s giving me time to run.
I do leave her then, but only to go to my bed and throw back the coverlet. The dress for Reddix slithers down into a red puddle on the floor as I grab a pillow and hurry back to her. The spreading cold has numbed me inside, a chilly kind of fog, clouding my thinking. Nita stares at the pillow, frightened. And grateful. Tears run down her cheeks.
“Don’t … let them find you,” she whispers. “Take the book … ”
I nod, clutching the pillow. I don’t think I can do this. She grabs my arm with her good hand.
“Go … to the city. Find the Cursed City, and make yourself … Forget … ”
The next spasm is coming. I can see the trembling.
“The Cursed … City. You have … to Forget this. Swear it, Sam!” she yells.
“I swear!”
She lays back her head. “Then do it now. Please, Sam. Hurry … ”
I press the pillow over her face. Hard. The thin scabs on my palms break, soaking the fabric, and when the third spasm hits I have to use my body to keep the pillow in place. Nita struggles beneath me, seizing, both wanting and not wanting to die, and the cold inside me has spread until I am numb with it. I listen to Nita’s voice. Over and over in my memory.
“Go to the city. Find the Cursed City, and make yourself Forget … ”
I loved the desert. Not the one where we trained on the fake Centauri III. The one outside the fences of Austin, Texas, where I grew up. Especially the bomb craters. Mom said I shouldn’t go out there, that the deserts were dangerous, but Dad pretended to be reading every time she brought it up, so I went anyway. There was nothing biological left, not after so many years, and it was a great place to take a bike. Plenty of sun to hold a charge, ten-and twelve-meter holes to jump, no people to avoid running over. And it’s not like a bike will let you fall off or get lost.
Channing used to go with me. We were both ten years old, same housing complex and same school, though I was two grades ahead of him. He didn’t care. His bike was at least three grades ahead of mine, zero to eighty so quick you’d think you left your guts behind you. I was eating his dust when I saw Channing’s shirt flapping, sliding up with the wind, a web of black bruise spreading down from his neck.
I knew what it meant. I knew what I should do. But an hour later, lying with our arms behind our heads on the hot sand, I didn’t want to. Did he even know? Having a parent or grandparent with Lethe’s meant you should, but lots of people don’t know who their families are since the war. Did the tests miss it? Or did he manage to miss the tests?
I did what I was supposed to. I told Mom, and then Channing wasn’t at school the next day, or any day after, and his family moved away from the complex.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about Channing today. Maybe because I still don’t know if I did the right thing. Or because this ship is nothing but metal, and I miss dirt. Maybe because the tutor program gave me this assignment. Or maybe I’m hoping that we will find Canaan, and it will be the world they meant for it to be. One where we haven’t made so many mistakes.
FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ
Day 89, Year 2
The Lost Canaan Project
Jillian!” I yell again. “Move!”
She grabs her pack and scrambles, but not fast enough. The pool explodes with a boom like an audio file of World War IV, erupting in a fountain of white water and spray.
Jill screams. I think I do, too, both of us tripping over the rocks to get away. Water shoots four, then seven, maybe eight meters straight into the air, flying jets arcing across the waterfall, the pool roiling beneath it. I get one quick glimpse of the planet’s most perfect rainbow before water comes down from high in the sky, dousing the two of us like somebody emptied a bucket.
I pick myself up and splutter, shake out my hair, snatch the speckled lenses off my face. Jill is standing statue-still, openmouthed, pack still in her hand, hair flattened to her head and water dripping down the end of her nose. Chaos spews up from the pool behind her.
“That water,” she says, “was hot!”
I laugh, hard, and after a minute, so does she, running a hand to spike up her hair. Whatever turned the pool into a geyser is still happening. The spray isn’t quite as high as before, but everything is wet with falling water drops and mist. I decide to remember this planet is not always as innocent as it looks. And that kills my laugh, because we do not have a signal.
I unzip the suit, clean the lenses with my still-dry T-shirt, and check again. Still no connection. I look at the geyser with the glasses. At the center of the fountain the water is boiling. I guess it’s a good thing it was too hot to think of swimming. It’s not a good thought. “Is the cartographer working?” I ask.
Jill looks up from her pack. The packs are waterproof, like our jumpsuits, just not waterproof if you upend a bucket inside them. She fishes out the cartographer, unlocking the case that hides the screen.
“Yes,” she says slowly, standing up to face back the way we came, and then, “No.” She holds the cartographer up toward one side of the canyon. “I can only see back to what I’ve already mapped. Could something have gone wrong with the satellite?”
I shake my head. The cartographer doesn’t need the satellite. “Something must be messing with our signals … ”
Jill’s brows draw down, and I look with the glasses, trying to see inside the mountain we just climbed. But I can’t scan its subsurface at all. Which is weird. Then I really can’t see anything, because the lenses are wet. I wave a hand.
“Grab your pack,” I yell, shouting over the noise of the geyser. “And let’s climb out the other side.”
“Why the other side?”
Because it was back the way we came that our signal first stuttered. And because I want to stay, not get yanked back to the base camp. “Because it’s half the climb,” I say. “Let’s get out of the canyon as quick as we can, and see if the connection comes back.”