Shades of Earth (16 page)

26:
ELDER

I can't sneak past the military
to see the lake for myself, not while it's still light outside. And even if I wanted to inspect the tunnel, I wouldn't be able to. Colonel Martin's installed heavy metal panels on the collapsed ground, and his men have already erected the latrines over it. Colonel Martin acted quickly to cover up our discovery—just like he's trying to hide the lake from us.

But I think I know how I can uncover at least some of his secrets.

My first instinct is to get Amy—I haven't even told her about the crystal scale I found yet—but I'm trying to figure out what Colonel Martin is hiding, and he'll definitely have suspicions if I drag her away from her mother.

I pass Kit on my way up the paved path that runs through the center of the colony. “Don't forget to take care of yourself,” I tell her as she obsessively checks over the handwritten list of passengers we made after Lorin disappeared.

“I could say the same of you. How are you feeling after the tunnel collapse? And I saw you keep working after that, on the pipes. You didn't need to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” I say. I cannot ask my people to do work that I won't.

Kit adjusts the white lab coat she's gotten from the Earthborn scientists, and I notice her pockets are overflowing with med patches, most of them pale green. “We need to wean them off Phydus,” I say darkly, and even though Kit nods in agreement, she adds, “But not yet,” in a soft voice.

I leave her to her work, feeling guilty that I'm not helping more. Finding out what Colonel Martin won't tell me is more important—I can't afford to let lies and deception rule the colony the same way they ruled
Godspeed
.

I climb past the second level of houses built into the mountainside and am glad to see that my people have spread out a little more, daring to space themselves farther apart. No one's on the third level, though, except me. I pause, looking at the few empty buildings, wondering what it was that made the original builders leave their homes. Did they die out—did the pteros kill them off—or did they move on? And how is it that they made buildings that are so perfect for
us?
That's the real mystery, the nagging thought that no one's really willing to address.

Without realizing it, I've reached the edge of the ruins. The last few buildings, the ones closest to the top of the mountain, are nothing but rubble. They look as if they've been blown apart by some force. The thought does not give me comfort.

I wonder what Amy would make of this discovery. Probably try to find a connection to it in
The Little Prince
.

I start climbing over the rubble. The suns are about to set—the sky is growing darker, the air cooler. If I'm going to find what I'm looking for, I need to do it while it's still light outside.

I find a trail that leads me farther up the small mountain. Or maybe I'm tricking my mind into thinking it's a trail—at best, this is just a path used by animals. I have to hold on to chalky, yellowish rocks and scraggly tree branches as I ascend higher and higher, grappling with the side of the small mountain.

And then I reach the top of the rocky plateau.

It feels more like a mountain now than before; I'm panting, completely out of breath, and my leg muscles
ache
. I don't know how Amy can frexing
enjoy
running.

I look up and out. This is the highest point on the planet I've been to. For one moment, terror seizes my heart. I'm so close to the sky and so exposed on the rocky bluff that a ptero could easily swoop down and carry me off. But then my eyes drift across the landscape spread out before me, and I forget about my fear. I can see now more clearly than ever.

Which is exactly the reason I wanted to come up here.

The air grows colder as something passes overhead, casting me in shadow. My stomach plummets. When I dare to look overhead, though, all I see are clouds, not pteros.

From where I'm standing, to my left is the colony, and past it, in the darkening forest that sticks out like a pointing finger, is the shuttle. I can see the scar our landing created, the burnt-out spot that seems to glitter and almost glow in the dying light. My eyes trail along the edge of the forest, moving right, looking for what I know is there.

The lake.

I don't see why Colonel Martin wants it hidden. The lake looks like any lake I've seen in pics from Sol-Earth, nothing more. It's a perfect circle, maybe a mile in diameter. One edge borders the mountain, the other edge is pale yellow, the same sort of sandy soil that makes up the surface of this planet. The shallow water all around the shoreline is pale aqua, but the lake grows deeper and darker farther in, until the center is nearly black. It looks almost like an eye, staring up at me. I wonder how deep the water is there. The suns' light glitters across the surface, making it seem as if the lake winks at me.

A scattering of pale pink dots wafts through the water. Fish of some sort, but not the quick, darting flashes of color like the koi from the pond on
Godspeed
. These fish are small from my viewpoint, but I'd guess in reality they are a half a meter or more wide, with even longer tendrils—or tentacles?—drifting behind them. They expand and collapse, expand and collapse as they float under the surface, but then the entire group of them darts sharply to the right, more suddenly than I would think possible.

I strain my eyes, moving closer to the edge of the cliff-like top of the mountain. What is so dangerous about the lake that Colonel Martin feels it needs to be kept secret?

Far, far past the lake is another forest made of darker, taller trees. And beyond that: mountains. The mountain I stand on is no more than a tiny hill compared to these jagged behemoths rising from the ground. They form a horizon that I cannot see past.

This world is so
vast
. And real. And I'm a part of it now.

Something glimmers—something between the lake and the forest. I can't make it out—it's too far out, and the trees are in the way—but something reflects from the light of the sinking suns at the perfect angle for me to see from my vantage point.

And then I realize: it wasn't the
lake
Colonel Martin didn't want me—or anyone—to find. It was the thing past the lake. The thing he found on the very first day but has been careful to hardly mention again.

The probe.

27:
AMY

The gun is still warm in my hand
as I stare, open-mouthed, at Chris.

“I had to,” he says, his strange eyes pleading for me to understand.

And I do. Maybe if it hadn't been for the three months I lived on
Godspeed
, I wouldn't sympathize, but I know Dr. Gupta was living through the worst possible nightmare, and there was no way he could recover from such a maiming. What Chris did was merciful, and it was right . . . and it was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do.

I holster my gun and step forward. The muscles in Chris's arms are bunched up and tight, but his hands are shaking as I take his gun.

“Thank you,” I tell him, hoping he can see the sincerity behind my words.

For the first time since the bullets left our guns, I think his eyes really focus on something other than Dr. Gupta's mangled body. Chris throws his massive arms around me and crushes me in a hug that leaves me breathless, clutching me as if I am his judge and savior all in one.

Mom steps forward, and Chris releases me reluctantly. She wears the calm, measured mask of a scientist over the panicked terror in her eyes. This is how she's always been; if she can't handle something that's happened to her as a person, she hides behind her role as a detached academic. Mom takes the lead back to the shuttle, sending more military and workers out to where we were, directing them to bring both bodies back to the gen lab before going inside herself. She breaks the news of Dr. Gupta's death to the scientists in an even, reserved tone, then starts clearing aside space in the gen lab for an autopsy of Dr. Gupta and a dissection of the ptero.

She avoids my gaze for all of this.

Inside the gen lab, she allows herself one deep, shaky breath.

From the other side of the door, we can hear the noises of the bodies being brought inside the shuttle. There are gasps of horror at the ptero—
and it was a small one,
I think—and wails of sorrow at Dr. Gupta's mangled body. Most people hadn't seen Lorin's or Juliana Robertson's remains.

Mom looks up at me, and in her eyes I see
Mom,
with all the fear that lies inside her.

I realize: she needs the mask of science, she needs the shell of Dr. Maria Martin, to separate herself from the horror of what she's seen.

We all have to find a way to separate ourselves from that.

I turn to Chris. He wears the guilt of his kill like a mantle. He doesn't hide it. Maybe he can't. My heart swells as I watch the way he straightens his shoulders as he puts one foot in front of the other.

Mom stands up and walks to the gen lab door, staring as Dr. Gupta's body is carried across the cryo room to her. “The first thing we're doing is a toxicology screen. Dr. Gupta
was
alive, but he had no reaction to the ptero . . . the ptero
eating
him.” Her voice cracks over the word. “We have to find out why.”

“One of the purple flowers that knocked me out?” I ask.

Mom shakes her head. “The flowers weren't open, and they don't emit the neurotoxin unless blossoming. Besides, Dr. Gupta was
awake
and even mobile, to a certain extent. When you were knocked out, Amy, it was like you were in a coma.”

Finally the helpers lay Dr. Gupta's body on one of the metal table gurneys, possibly the same one Orion lay on as he was dying. The ptero is too big for a single table—we have to shove four tables together to hold it, and even then its wings and legs hang down over the side.

“We have to report this to Colonel Martin,” one of the military men says. “He needs to know.”

Mom nods silently as the man radios Dad.

“I'm beginning the autopsy immediately,” Mom says.

The man looks up at Mom in surprise. “Bit obvious what killed him, isn't it?”

Mom gives him a thin-lipped grin. “Nevertheless, I will perform an autopsy. Please leave.”

The man's eyebrows rise even more at Mom's dismissal, but he turns to go. Chris starts to follow. “You may stay,” Mom says. She glances at me, and in her look is a question. I nod. I'm staying too. Seeing
that
together—it doesn't feel right that anyone but the three of us helps with the autopsy.

The gen lab door zips shut, leaving us alone with the two bodies—one the remains of a human man, the other the stinking corpse of the monster that devoured him.

Mom sighs again, but this time her breath doesn't shake. “Bring me that tray,” she says, jerking her head to the tray she'd prepared on the table against the wall. I pick it up and head over to her.

It's hard to look at Dr. Gupta's remains, but not as hard as it was before, when he was alive. I try to shake the blank look in his eyes from my mind. His expression was so . . . empty. Devoid. And while he showed no pain, it makes it all the worse to think about what he felt but could not express.

Mom picks up a Vacutainer needle and carefully positions it over Dr. Gupta's heart. I try to watch as she gathers samples from his body, but soon I retreat, burying my face into Chris's shoulder while Mom works.

“I'm going to do an immunoassay,” Mom explains as she leaves the body and crosses the lab with her tray of samples. “It won't tell us much; we can only test against drugs and chemicals from Earth, and I don't know of any drugs that . . . affect a person in the way Dr. Gupta was affected.”

She means, she doesn't know of any drugs that let someone lie motionless yet conscious while he's eaten alive.

“Then why bother with it?” Chris asks. He stands close behind me, and I have to admit that I'm comforted to know he's there.

Mom looks surprised at the question. “Because we have to try.”

She turns to the specimen bag that holds the few samples she'd taken outside before we found Dr. Gupta. I don't know who returned the bag to Mom, but everything's still there.

“Fortunately, we have an analyte generator,” Mom continues as if she were speaking to a class of chemistry students. “So all I need is a sample”—she plucks one of the purple string flowers from the jar—“and then I can make an analyte to test against Dr. Gupta's blood.”

Chris frowns. “I thought you said that you didn't believe the flower could have drugged Dr. Gupta?”

Mom doesn't stop as she sets up the test. “I don't believe anything I can't prove.”

A few minutes later, the immunoassay machine beeps, and I shift out of the way as Mom examines the report on the screen. “No . . . ” she says, frowning.

“What?” I ask as Chris hovers closer to us.

“This doesn't make sense,” she says.

“What?”

Mom pushes a button, and a small paper readout spits out of the machine. She reads it again, disbelief written all over her face.

“Dr. Gupta had been injected with gen mod material,” she mutters. “Just before he died, recently enough that it was still in his blood.”

“Gen mod . . . ?” Chris says, letting his voice trail off into a question.

“Genetic modification material,” Mom says. “Developed on
Earth.
”

28:
ELDER

I wait until dark.

“Elder?” Amy says. I adjust the rucksack on my shoulder—filled with gear I've gathered just for tonight as I stand on my tiptoes, peering through her window.

She's made herself something of a cocoon, using strung-up tents to create walls inside the building. I wonder where the tents came from—probably more supplies from the Earthborns that they're unwilling to share.

“What did you say, Amy?” a voice—Amy's mother—calls through the tent walls.

Amy looks at me, eyes wide with surprise, then calls back, “Nothing, Mom!”

She kicks the sleeping bag off her legs and rushes to the window. “What are you doing here?” she whispers. “It's curfew.”

I know—the patrol Colonel Martin's set up throughout the colony tried to cause me trouble as I snuck down here.

Amy sets down the book she was reading—
The Little Prince
.

“I'm going to the probe,” I whisper back. “Your father's hiding something, and I intend to find out what.”

She grabs my wrist. “Don't,” she says, such worry in her voice that I'm afraid her mother will hear again.

“I have to.”

“It's dangerous.” There's a haunted look in her eyes now, and I'm reminded of the rumors I heard in the colony—that they found another body in the woods, one of the Earthborns.

“I have to,” I repeat. “I don't think your father trusts me, and he's not telling me the whole truth.”

“Dad wouldn't—”

I cut her off. “Did he show you the crystal scale I found?”

Amy frowns. “Scale?”

I describe it for her, explaining about the tunnel. From her wide eyes, I can tell Colonel Martin has kept the discovery from her—from everyone.

“We can't afford to be in the dark,” I say. “We have to know what's going on.”

Amy bites her lip, then nods. “I'm coming with you.”

“I was hoping you'd say that.” I grin up at her. Amy steps away from the window, grabbing her gun and holster from the ground and belting it around her waist before pulling another shirt over her tank top. She uses both arms to push up on the window ledge, then swings her legs over and drops silently on the ground beside me.

“What's the plan?” she whispers as I lead her away from the ruins.

“Follow the water pipe to the lake, then head back to the forest. I think the probe is somewhere around there—or, at least,
something's
there that Colonel Martin doesn't want us to find.”

Amy frowns as we sneak away from the colony. “You know, there could be a perfectly valid reason Dad's made the probe off-limits. He's not Eldest. This isn't
Godspeed
.”

I don't answer her as we duck around the new latrines, following the pipeline in the shadows of the mountain.

Once we're far enough away from the colony, Amy speaks again, her words cutting through the darkness. “I saw a man die today.”

I pause.

“I wish you had been there.” It sounds morbid to hear her say those two sentences so close together, but I know what she means. For the past three months, the walls of
Godspeed
forced us close together. Now I'm wondering if they were the only things that kept Amy near me.

“I'm sorry,” I say, and I mean about more than just today.

“Maybe the only reason Dad is keeping everyone away from the probe is because it's dangerous,” Amy says, her voice still distant. Her fingers touch the hilt of her gun for reassurance, and I can't help but notice that it's the weapon that comforts her, not me.

We don't speak again until we reach the lake, and even then it's in hushed tones.

“Look how exposed we are here,” Amy says. “Do you really wonder why Dad's keeping people away?” She slips the gun out of her holster and carries it at the ready. She's right—there are no trees here, and any ptero circling overhead could easily strike us.

“That's not why he won't let anyone come here.”

Amy's eyes dart to the sky. “Elder . . . those pteros . . . they're
horrible
.”

There is panic in her eyes, something dark and scared I've never seen there before. But while her knuckles are white, the gun is steady in her grip.

“Let's get this over with,” Amy says, narrowing her eyes as she starts up the hill.

I squint in the darkness. I can barely make out the black, rectangular outline against the sky, almost hidden by a small hill. If we hadn't been standing right at the water pump, I'd never have seen it.

I glance at Amy. Her face is paler than usual now, contrasting with the dark night.

We move slowly, careful to keep checking behind us to make sure we don't wander so far away that we get lost, especially as we near the forest edge and the trees obscure our path. The forest itself curves out and then back in. I try to make a mental map of where we are—the shuttle to my left, the lake to my right, the ruins we now live in behind me. And something straight ahead.

“Look at the way the land is so flat there,” Amy says, pointing. Her voice is still quiet, even though we haven't seen anyone this far out.

Long stalks of some sort of grain or grass ripple in the breeze like cloth. But where Amy is pointing, there is no grain. No trees. No nothing. Something black and starless and manmade amid the sea of nature, dotted with low-roofed buildings standing up in straight edges that are in stark contrast to the swishing grass and twisting trees.

“Come on,” Amy says, tugging my hand.

We race across the open meadow, and I keep thinking about how Amy said we were exposed. My muscles are tense, waiting for the outline of a ptero against the too-bright stars.

We stop short of the area where the tall grass ends.

“What is this place?” I say, my voice so quiet that even I barely hear it.

Amy steps forward, her footsteps louder as she walks across asphalt, not sandy soil. I follow after her, staring with wide eyes at a cluster of small buildings dotting the horizon on the other side. “It's some sort of compound,” she whispers, “built around the probe.”

I trip over a thin ridge in the pavement, and Amy and I both crouch to inspect the gleaming band of metal—a large rectangle embedded into the asphalt. There's something under the asphalt, some panel or room that can open up if we could only figure out how to trigger it.

“Look at the lines painted on the ground,” Amy whispers in my ear.

Bright white lines, marking distances, with more markers embedded into the asphalt.

“It's a runway,” Amy gasps. “And underneath it are airplanes. Jets. Something.”

Now that she says it, it makes sense. Jets must be stored in the rectangular areas sunken into the ground so that whoever controls this compound can lift them up to ground level, position them, and use this asphalt as a runway.

“But who put it here?” Amy's voice comes out in a squeak.

I have no answer for her. This is
nothing
like the ruins we discovered earlier. The ruins were dusty buildings, long abandoned and derelict. But this runway smells faintly of oil and burnt rubber; it's been used, and recently.

I motion for Amy to follow me to one of the small buildings—not stony relics, but modern, single-storied glass and steel offices. She hesitates. Whoever made this compound has technology far more advanced than we could have guessed from seeing the ruins.

“Look.” I point through the window of the closest building. “A communication system.”

The room houses a control panel not that much different from the one we used on the bridge when we landed the shuttle—which is to say, it's equally confusing. But I think I can figure it out.

“Locked,” Amy says as she tries the doorknob. I nod to a small square at eye level by the door. It's not unlike the biometric scanners on
Godspeed
, but there's a small thumb pad rather than a roll bar.

“Can't hurt to try,” Amy says, pushing her thumb against the pad. A moment later, the thumb pad flashes a message once—
HUMAN
—and then the door opens.

“This door was built to only let humans enter?” I ask as we step inside the room.

Amy shoots me a worried look. If the scanner detects humanity, then that means there must be something other than humans it's designed to keep out.