Athel (7 page)

Chapter Five

Athel

Day Number: 1,584

Event: Akaela found a cylinder that dates
back to Astraca

Number of Mayakes left: 430

Goal for today: Find out the purpose of
the cylinder.

We all hide inside the stables and
shut the doors. The building is hot and laden with the smell of hay and manure.
Blades of light push through the wooden slats and draw jagged lines on the
dusty floor. Taeh pokes her head out of her stall, waiting to be taken out, but
all she gets is a quick pat on the nose before we settle in a corner by the
bales of hay. Akaela takes the object she found in the forest out of her pocket
and wipes dirt and debris off its surface with a rag.

It looks
like a tube, about three inches long and half an inch wide. It’s made of some
kind of blackened metal, maybe steel, but I’m not sure, and it has a number of
tick marks etched on the side, as if for measuring. The Astraca symbol is
carved on one of the two flat ends, the grooves black with grime. It’s tiny,
but you can still see the five keys carved inside the five triangles, their
vertices joined to form a pentagon.

Lukas
picks it up and weighs it in his hand. “Feels light, hollow inside.”

“Open it,”
Akaela says.

There are
little copper bolts screwed along the side and what looks like an iris shutter
on one of the flat ends. But some quick handling reveals no obvious way to pry
it open, not by pushing or tapping, not by pulling or by prodding.

Wes
shrugs. “Maybe that’s what it is. A hollow tube of some sort.”

I put on a
skeptical face. “With no purpose?”

Lukas
documents everything on his data feeder then turns to Akaela and frowns. “How
did you find it?”

Dottie
squints, as though annoyed by the question. “It was hidden in the hollow root
of a tree.”

“Then it
can’t be from 2065,” Wes interjects, “the year of the fire. There wasn’t a
forest back then, and all the trees within the city burned down.”

Dottie is
unusually quiet, so I turn to her and ask, “What do you think, Sis? Maybe the
new tree grew around it?”

She wrings
her hands and frowns. “It’s weird. It’s as though I knew it was there and I had
to find it.”

“You went looking
for it even though you didn’t know what it was?” Wes asks.

Akaela
rubs her forehead. “No. It was more like—I remembered it.”

Lukas
stares at her with renewed interest. “You remembered what?”

“The path.
The egg-shaped rock.”

“You’ve
been there before?” I ask.

She shakes
her head and cups her face in her hands. “No. I’ve never been to that part of
the forest, and I’ve never seen this object before. I can’t explain it. I just
knew it was there. Look. It was as though I recognized the path and the trees.
Somehow I remembered. I don’t know how that’s possible, ok?”

We all
fall silent. Taeh snorts from her stall. Dottie shakes her head and gets to her
feet. “I don’t care what you guys think. I’m taking Taeh out to the paddock.”

“No,
wait,” Lukas says, putting away his data feeder. He picks up the cylinder again
and hands it back to my sister. “I want you to look at it very carefully. Does
it look familiar to you?”

Akaela
gives the hollow tube another good look and then returns it. “No,” she says,
shaking her head.

“Why would
it?” I ask. “She just said she’s never seen it before.”

Taeh
stomps her hooves and pushes at the stall gate. Akaela strides over and opens
it. “I’m tired of this. I’m going for a ride. You guys have fun with that
thing, whatever it is.” She walks Taeh over to the dressing corner and starts
brushing her.

“Really?”
I say. “You have to leave now just because we asked a few questions?” I look at
the guys, hoping they’ll say something, but Wes just stares vacantly ahead
while Lukas can’t keep his eyes away from the metal cylinder, a deep frown
etched in the middle of his forehead. He retrieves his data feeder and takes
pictures.

 
“Come on, Dottie, why do you have to go
for a ride right now?” I ask. “We’re just trying to figure out what the cylinder
thingy is.”

Akaela
doesn’t reply. It’s as though she’s fallen into one of her “moods.” I shrug it
off and barely take notice when, once she’s done bridling and saddling Taeh,
the two of them walk out of the stable.

“What’s up
with her?” Wes asks. “It’s not like we didn’t believe her.”

I shrug.
“Forget it. She’s just moody. What did you find out, Lukas?”

Lukas sets
down his data feeder, his thin brows knitted in deep thought. “It could’ve been
an engram.”

“Is that
what the cylinder is?” Wes asks.

“No, not
the cylinder. What Akaela saw. The engram could explain the fake memory, the
fact that she remembered without having been there.”

“What’s an
engram?” I ask.

“An
implanted memory,” Lukas replies. “Not an
actual
memory, but one encoded in our nanobots. To the person who has it, it feels
like a true memory even though they never actually experienced it.”

“Wicked,”
Wes says.

Lukas
retrieves his data feeder. “There are many of those, randomly distributed among
the nanobots each Mayake gets at birth, but nobody knows who gets them.”

“Why do we
even have them?” I wonder. “What’s the point of having a fake memory?”

“Preserving
information,” Lukas replies. “It’s been used since Astraca burned to the ground
in 2065. Our great-grandparents’ memories are all we have left of its original
splendor.”

“Akaela’s
memory can’t be as old as Astraca,” Wes objects. “Like I said, the forest
didn’t exist when the city burned down.”

“No,”
Lukas replies. “But the object she found is. The outside isn’t shiny, like
metal usually is, but blackened instead. And while this could be caused by
oxidation”—he taps his data feeder—”that grime Akaela just wiped
off?”

“Dirt from
the hollow root,” I say.

“It could
be soot from the fire, too,” Lukas replies.

Wes scratches
his head. “Even if the tree wasn’t there during the fire?”

A sparkle
flashes in Lukas’s eyes. “Suppose somebody saved it from the fire and kept it
for many years. When he died, his children had it and then his children’s
children.” He grins, completely enthralled by his theory.

“Then
what?” I say.

“Then one
day something terrible happens, something that threatens the lives of many
people. So they grab the most valuable things they own and run.”

“The 2189
attack,” Wes says.

Lukas
nods. “That’s what I’m thinking, too. If you know your life is in danger, you
want to make sure you not only hide your valuables really well, but you also
find a way to preserve the information about all the hiding spots.”

I pick up
the cylinder and brush a finger along the iris shutter. The blades are sealed
together and don’t yield. “Whoever hid this,” I say, reworking Lukas’s
hypothesis in my head, “recorded the memory and then sent it back through our
wireless network. The collective nanobots recorded the memory and then
redistributed it as our common knowledge.”

“Exactly,”
Lukas confirms.

“Somebody
hid it,” I say, “and then transferred the memory? When?”

Lukas
shrugs. “I don’t know. Sometime before Akaela was born. The engram was placed
in the first available set of nanobots, ready to be shipped. Or maybe it was in
a chip. Did Akaela get any new implants recently?”

I shake my
head, squeezing the cylinder in my fist. Implanted memories.
Of course
. The nanobots that keep us
alive, that enhance our breathing, our movements, the speed of our thoughts…
they also carry our legacy. Just like DNA carries traits from one generation to
the next, the Mayakes use chips and nanowiring to pass on relevant information
that would otherwise get lost.

But if
this is true…

I flip the
cylinder over and stare at the side, etched with thin, concentric grooves.
“What is this, then? It must be something important if it was worth going
through all this trouble. Important and—”

“Dangerous,”
Wes interjects.

I nod.
“Exactly. So dangerous that whoever possessed it had to hide it and make sure
it wouldn’t be found for many years. What do you think, Lukas?”

“That
we’re missing one piece of the puzzle.”

“Huh? What
piece?”

“The piece
that Tahari and the other man took.” He points to the cylinder in my hand.
“Maybe this is what they were looking for but didn’t have the engram like
Akaela did. Whatever they were looking for, they found something and left a
hole in the clearing we were exploring.”

“You think
the two objects are related?” I ask.

Lukas drums
his fingers. “I don’t know, but it would kind of make sense. It’s—”

I raise a
hand and hush him.

Wes jumps.
“What?”

“That
sound,” I say. “You hear it?”

The rushed
galloping of a horse. I sprint to the door and push it open. Taeh’s running
back toward the stables, followed by our falcon Kael. Akaela lets go of the
reins and frantically waves her arms at me.

What happened
? I
message.

The trap
, I read along the bottom
corner of my retina.
You’ve got to come
see
.

*
 
*
 
*

Wes runs, the rest of us ride on Taeh’s
back. The sky is overcast and the wind blows in a light tapering of ashes from
the Gaijins’ factory on the other side of the mesa. Our falcon Kael swoops
ahead of us, riding the currents.

The first
thing I notice as we approach the mouth of the gorge is that the sapling I tied
the snare to has snapped. The splintered trunk lies across the big boulder,
pieces of torn wire coiled around it. The bare soil slanting off the crevasse
is ridged and blackened, with fresh tracks that dig into the ground all the way
to the first row of trees on the opposite side. Two of the smaller aspens have
been upturned, their exposed roots clawing at the sky.

To the
left, sprawled against the rocks coming off the wall of the gorge, lies a long
piece of black metal, about five to six feet long, a web of torn wires still
sizzling with smoke.

“We got
it!” I shout, recognizing the claw leg from one of the scavenger droids.

“Not
quite,” Dottie mutters, putting a short end to my spur of excitement. I scan
the place, quickly realizing that there’s nothing else to see besides the claw
leg straddled against the rock. The droid escaped my trap.

I lead
Taeh to the small birch grove, where we all dismount. Wes sprints ahead and
screeches to a halt by the crushed trunk of the sapling.

“Wow,
Athel,” he shouts. “You did it. You built the trap without telling us.”

“And you
ruined it, too,” Lukas adds, as I help him off the horse.

I drop him
to the ground and snarl, “Shut up, both of you.”

The scene
before our eyes looks apocalyptic: torn trees, blackened soil as though
something exploded, and deep tracks that go all the way back to the mouth of
the gorge. Pieces of wire—the one I used to set my trap—hang loose
here and there, tracing back to the leg the droid lost at the foot of the cliff.

Kael flies
in circles above our heads, then settles on a high ledge.

“I was
riding by the waterfalls,” Akaela explains, as we all scatter around the
crime scene
, “when I heard this huge
rumbling sound. By the time I got here it was all over.”

“The droid
was already gone?” I ask.

She nods.

I look at
the visual clues before me and try to reconstruct what happened. Droid comes,
probably hooked on the metal spoon I left in the middle of the noose. Droid
sets off the trap and the noose snatches around its legs. Droid runs, pulling
the wire all the way to the trees until the sapling snaps. Droid recoils and
slams forward, losing one leg.

Droid
escapes on its remaining five limbs.

Darn
Gaijins, they had to make droids with so many legs.

Lukas
raises his data feeder and takes a panoramic shot. “I told you to wait, Athel.
You didn’t listen.”

“He never
does,” Dottie chimes in.

“Will you
all shut up?” I snap. “It was the first experiment. The trap will be better
next time.”

Wes scuffs
one of the tracks with the tip of his blade. “The droids will get better too,
though. Once the Gaijins realize their scavenger bots are under attack, they’ll
send the sniper droids.”

I exhale
in frustration. Wes is right, but I refuse to acknowledge it. I walk over to
the snapped sapling, step over it, and climb up to check the claw leg the droid
left behind. The metal frame has crinkled at the edge as though it were made of
fabric. It’s still warm to the touch and reeks of burnt plastic wires. A torn
piece of the cable I used to make the trap hangs stuck between the plates of
one of the joints. I pull it off and stare at the loose threads.