“You have joined your world to ours willingly. And we do not want to harm you. But it must end.”
Reef balled his fist against his forehead, struggling to understand what was going on. It didn’t make sense. The alien was only going in circles. “You want to destroy us, same as China does.”
“We never wanted to harm—”
Reef grunted with impatience. “Why are you telling me any of this?”
“Because it cannot go on. We will separate. We must.” Another long pause. Reef couldn’t tell if it was because of the translation program or something else, but he thought the alien’s voice sounded strained: “And I wanted someone to admit . . . anyone . . . I want you to admit that you would do the same thing if you were in our place.”
“Do what? You’re going to cut us off? It’ll be chaos, worldwide war. Our economies will collapse.”
Silence from the alien.
“You want to know if I would screw you over to save myself?” Reef went on. An image came to mind: Shasta sleeping in her mother’s arms. His throat constricted. “Sorry, I’m not interested in easing your conscience.”
“If you understood how the connection between our worlds is harming both—”
“You want to know what it’ll be like?” Reef cut in. “Stick around and see what happens to Seattle. See what happens when China sends a nuclear warhead to the sprawl. Take a look at the death and smoke and chaos and then tell me you can keep your conscience clear while you screw us over.”
Reef cut the channel. He was shaking.
Smoke and chaos. There was a better way to die. He could go back with the resin to his container and just float away.
His goggles flashed. Olly was hailing him. “Hey, are you coming?”
Reef hesitated, didn’t know how to answer.
“You better hope there are at least a few leeches in Canada,” Olly said, “or I don’t know what you’re going to do with all your time.”
Reef peered down the dark street in the direction of his container. “I don’t think hunting leeches did much good, in the end.”
“It was as effective a way as any to annoy China—and me.”
Reef grinned in spite of himself.
“Hey, we might need some money when we get across the border,” Olly said. “Got anything you want to sell?”
Reef tightened his grip on the bricks of resin in his pockets. He thought about going back to his container, lifting into an electric-blue sky, lost to gravity and to the world forever.
“Reef?” Olly said, a note of concern in his voice.
Reef’s tight grip on the bricks of resin was making his hands sweat. He let go.
“Yeah. I do. I’ll meet you at the station.”
5.
WHEN WE ENDED IT ALL
(more than one hundred years from now)
DYLAN
On the first day, you will tell your story. On the second, I will tell mine. On the third, one of us will die.
You will choose who.
The First Day
QUINN
My name is Quinn, and it’s past time I came of age.
Some of the girls in my band of kin have already married. Even ones younger than me. But I’ve been busy with my Special Work.
I only started a couple years ago, but I was meant for it. Something in my bones makes me forever restless. When I was little, I would turn over every seashell nestled in the rocks along the coast. “Like you forgot what you were looking for,” Truley once told me, “and you’d remember once you found it.”
Now I know what I’m supposed to find. But I’ve no time left for searching. Like the other girls in my band, I must come of age.
Where I live used to be called Canada but isn’t called anything anymore. When a land starts splitting into pieces, one name won’t work. We live on the move between the great crevices to the north and east, and the Ruined City to the south. Setting up tents and tearing them down, traveling to sanctuaries in season.
Coldest times, we live in the White Hall, a big block building with carved columns all around. We burn wood right there on the blackened floor and let the smoke go out through the high windows while our Eldest tells stories of the Other Place and the Girl Queen late into the night. White Hall goes away before the cold ends, just vanishes like it was never there and leaves behind a big sloping hill you could get buried under if you don’t get out in time.