Fourth World

by Lyssa Chiavari

  “That’s ridiculous. Everyone on Iamos has had exposure to—” I stopped short. His strange appearance and behavior, no knowledge of the System…

  Glancing at the medic, I said under my breath, “Simos?”

  “It’s possible,” she said. “We’ll have to run more tests to be sure.”

  I exhaled shakily. “Right. Someone should alert the geroi, then.” And Ceilos. I’d have to tell Ceilos. Where had he disappeared to, anyway?

  I started to turn toward the door when the boy spoke again. I froze for a moment, staring down at my feet. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want to face those unsettling dark eyes.

  He said the word once more, and then there it was in my earpiece, in my mind:

  “Wait.”

  I looked at the medic in surprise. She smiled. For the first time, it seemed genuine. “Excellent. The System is beginning to decode his thought patterns. If we can keep him talking, the lexicon will build more quickly.”

  She looked at me expectantly, her head quirked to the side. I knew what she was thinking. The boy wanted to talk to me. I could tell by his persistent stare.

  But just now, I didn’t want to talk to him.

  I could feel his eyes boring into my back, but I kept my own trained on the door. “Good luck, then,” I said to the medic. “I have things I need to attend to.”

  “Kyrin Nadin, wait!” the medic protested. “We need to check your vitals again before we can release you—”

  But I was already out the door.

  My fingers trailed across the cool hewn stone of the passageway. Millions of multicolored phosphates, embedded in the walls, twinkled as my skin brushed past. The upper subterranean levels of the city, where the hospital was located and the esotoi lived, relied primarily on the more common green and blue stones for lighting; but the deepest part of the cave system, winding below the mountains, where the geroi’s villa was located on the Vi’in Exelishin—these were lit with vibrant golds, brilliant magentas. They were laid carefully into the floor in mosaic patterns, in the ceiling like long-forgotten constellations. They arced across the walls just as fragmented light through a prism.

  I’d walked the long route from the hospital level through the tunnels, largely deserted now, at midmorning. Most of the patroi would be in the upper levels of the citidome by this time, working. I could have used the elevator, but I wanted the privacy, the time apart, to clear my head. I felt overwhelmed to the point of nausea. Everything that had happened the last few days—the disastrous evaluation, my annual, the doomed visit to the Outside—the boy—it was all too much.

  I stopped before the fountain on the vi’in. The passageway widened here to accommodate a large postern, which brought warm water from the hot springs near Bright Horizon. It cascaded down in the center of the passageway like an ancient waterfall, collecting in a basin at the bottom before trickling its way on through the caverns.

  I scooped a handful of warm water out from the basin, splashed it onto my face. We’d had so few communications from the party of settlers who had gone to Simos, the second world, hoping to establish an evacuation colony. The planet’s magnetic field disrupted the System to the point of near unusability. Before we lost contact, they’d told us that there were other inhabitants on the planet. Seemingly human, the report had said, but I hadn’t realized how much like us they’d be. Alien, but not quite alien enough.

  How had one gotten here?

  At the end of the vi’in, the passage opened out into a large cavern. Three wide steps led up to the arched entrance of the geroi’s villa. Even though it was deep under the ground, it had been designed to look like the aboveground manor that had once stood beside the sea. Six columns held aloft a tile roof inlaid with glistening stones, each a different color. A woven-copper gate, the entranceway to the villa’s front courtyard, swung open as I approached. Where once beautiful green bushes and fruiting trees would have formed a garden, we were left with nothing but decorative stone statuary and the few scraggly vines that had adapted to life without the sun.

  I glanced into the polished bronze stela in the courtyard’s center as I passed. The medics had wiped my face off, but there was still rusty grime caked along my hairline. I sighed and began pulling my disheveled hair loose from its wraparound braid. My coarse white curls were stained reddish-brown. That awful tangy metallic smell wafted around me as I ran my fingers through, trying to loosen the knots.

  The villa was silent apart from the echo of my footsteps across the tile. I detoured into the east wing, where Ceilos’ suite was located, but no light shone under his door. Antos and Melusin were not here, either. They must be at the capitol. I wondered if they’d gotten any sleep the night before.

  In my suite, I tried once more to comm Ceilos, but he did not answer. My stomach knotted with worry as I wondered if the geroi had taken him aside for an interrogation of his own. But even if they’d noticed that I’d gone off the grid temporarily, they wouldn’t necessarily have linked it to him.

  I resolved not to worry about it. Ceilos was good at disappearing. He’d come back around when he felt like it.

  The hot spring had been channeled to run below the floors of the villa, and it warmed the tiles under my feet, transforming the otherwise cold cavern into a comfortable space. The floor of the bathroom opened into a large square pool, with elegantly carved steps leading down into the hot, gently flowing waters. I sank into the water, grateful for the soothing warmth on my sore muscles.

  I’d barely finished scrubbing off all the grime when the chime rang in my ear, the familiar buzz that meant I had an incoming comm. Ceilos, finally, I thought. But when I pressed my fingers to the earpiece, it was Melusin’s soft voice that answered.

  “Nadin,” she said, “when you’re dressed, I’d like to speak with you in the atrium.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing my forehead with the heel of my hand. What had I done now?

  “Yes, Gerouin,” I said, dropping my hand from my ear.

  I changed into fresh clothing, a silver long-sleeved tunic and trousers which fit snug, like a second skin, trapping warmth. I pulled my thick damp hair back, forcing my fingers to move slowly as I braided, despite my impatience—if I hurried, the braid would drift sideways and I’d have to start over. The bronze medallion came last—my unofficial pass to the city, signifying me as a patroin. One side was engraved with a postern, the symbol of Iamos, and the other with a diagram of the solar system. I rubbed it between my fingers. You were born to this, I thought resolutely. Even if most of the time it feels otherwise.

  I pulled the long chain over my head and tucked the medallion under my collar. Then I gave myself one last cursory glance in the looking glass. Not perfect—I never was—but I would have to do.

  Melusin was waiting when I arrived in the atrium. She was perched, back perfectly straight, on her favorite chair, an antique piece made of woven copper strands. Above her head, the roof of the villa opened to reveal the high cavern ceiling above us, glittering with phosphorescence like the stars in the night sky—a distant memory of what once was. Water trickled off the roof, dripping and pattering, slowly feeding the planters of black fraouloi that somehow grew here in the near-darkness. In the atrium’s center, a heat lamp glowed amber-yellow, radiating warmth.

  I stopped before Melusin, placing three fingers on my brow respectfully. She inclined her head and did the same. Then she gestured to the seat beside her.

  “Are you feeling well, Nadin?” she asked as I sank into the chair.

  “Yes, Gerouin.”

  “I am glad.” She drummed her fingers absently on the chair arm, the glow of the heat lamp making her silvery eyes reflect gold. “Nadin, I have been doing some thinking.” Her eye caught mine. “I know you wish to prove yourself to the geroi.”

  I shifted forward in my seat. “Yes, Gerouin. More than anything.”

  She touched her earlobe. “And you are correct that we are running out of time for protocol. The time has come for more
… unconventional methods.”

  My skin felt cold despite the heat lamp’s warmth. “What do you mean?”

  “That boy. The one from outside the dome. Did you speak to him at all when he first awakened?”

  “Gerouin, I didn’t—” I protested, but she waved her hand dismissively, cutting me off.

  “I know you don’t know him, Nadin. I do trust you, even if you seem convinced that I don’t.”

  My jaw hung open for a moment. I snapped it shut and sat back in my chair.

  “It is important that this boy’s thought patterns be decoded as quickly as possible. We need to know where he came from. Why, and how. Someone needs to get this information for us—preferably someone close to the geroi.” She smiled again. “You are our best option.”

  “So… you want me to spy on him?” I asked.

  She winced. “Honestly, Nadin, must you always use such negative language? Merely observe him. Speak with him. Try and learn his background. We need to know everything we can about him.”

  I tilted my head slightly. “Do you believe he is from Simos?”

  Melusin tugged her earlobe. “In all likelihood. He was carrying this.” She turned in her seat, lifting a rusty object off the table beside her. A posternkey—an extremely old one, from the look of it.

  I turned it over in my hands. “I thought these didn’t work on Simos,” I said, “because of the magnetic field.”

  “It appears Simos is more mysterious than we’d believed,” she replied.

  I took the medallion from around my neck, pressing it into the slot on the posternkey. It opened, albeit with some effort, thanks to the rusted hinges. When I ran my fingers across the diodes, the usual System panel opened, suspended in midair above it. Coordinates were already programmed into it—data the postern would use to open the tesseract to the correct location.

  “System protocol initiated,” a digitized voice said in my ear. I started in alarm. “Biological patterns recognized. Subject: Nadin. Decoy coordinates override. Display true data.”

  The coordinates on the System panel began to change, new numbers shimmering over the top of the old ones. My pulse sped up, and I glanced quickly over at Melusin. Her expression was blank. She hadn’t heard the voice. She couldn’t see this.

  I was the only one who could see it.

  And I recognized these coordinates.

  My hands were shaking as I closed the System panel, set the posternkey aside. Melusin did not seem to notice.

  “It is vital that you learn everything about how he came to be here, Nadin,” she said. “If there is any chance that we can use this information to reestablish our evacuation colony on Simos, we must do so at once. Time is running out.”

  Her words shook me out of my fog. “I thought our evacuation colony was already established on Hamos,” I said. The third planet, Hamos, was far closer than Simos. And, like Iamos, it lacked a magnetic field, which meant there would be no interference with the System, or the posterns.

  “Hamos is proving to be a poor option for colonization. It is too tectonically active.”

  There was another meaning to her words. I could feel it, but I couldn’t discern it. “The System’s early warning protocol—”

  “—is unreliable,” Melusin interrupted.

  I frowned. The System had been developed over a period of centuries. It was infallible. “Gerouin, what are you not telling me?”

  She didn’t answer at first. She picked up the posternkey again, running her fingers over the rusty hinges. “There’s been an accident,” she said at last. “There was an earthquake today. Ascendant Dawn’s citidome was severely damaged.”

  “Ascendant Dawn? But that’s where Ceilos’…” I trailed off, staring at her, stunned.

  “Gerouin Clodin was critically injured. The report came in while you were outside the dome.”

  My chest clenched. “Does Ceilos know?”

  “Antos and I informed him just after we spoke with you on the hospital level. Antos is with him now.”

  No wonder he hadn’t answered his comm. The clenching feeling in my chest sank down to the pit of my stomach. My fingers wrapped around my medallion as I stood. “I will do everything I can, Gerouin.”

  Melusin stood as well. “The people of Iamos are relying on you, Nadin. If you can prove yourself on this occasion… we would be willing to consider offering you another evaluation.”

  My heart stuttered at the words. Another chance. With as much composure as I could muster, I placed my fingers on my brow. “You will not be disappointed.”

  I turned on my heel, somehow managing to keep the grin off my face until I’d left the atrium. This was my chance to prove myself to the geroi—and to Gitrin. If I could just do this one thing, nothing could stop me. I was certain I would pass my evaluation the second time around. The first time had been a fluke, an anomaly. I’d become a gerouin in my own right, and I’d finally be free.

  I hurried out onto the vi’in, propelled forward by my giddy confidence, not looking back, not pausing for a moment’s reflection. I couldn’t slow down, wouldn’t let Gitrin’s sharp words catch up with me. She may have been my tutor for the last six years, but she was wrong. I knew she was. I was enilin today, and nothing could stop me.

  I kept my head held high, even as her voice still echoed through my mind, whispering insidious doubts in my ear.

  “You’re not ready.”

  ◦ • ◦

  The boy was no longer in the hospital bed when I returned. He was up, dressed in plain clothes like my own—long-sleeved and silver. The cranial scanner had been replaced with the smaller, standard earpiece. Dressed like this, he almost looked like he belonged here.

  But not quite.

  I hesitated for a moment outside the glass windows, watching him. Then the door slid open and there was a medic—a man, this time, but with the same unwavering smile as always.

  “Kyrin Nadin,” he said, guiding me through the door, “thank you for coming. I was informed you would be assisting the esotoi with our studies.”

  “You’ve spoken to Gerouin Melusin?”

  “No, the message was given to me by Gitrin. She recommended the assignment as part of your ongoing studies.”

  I stopped short. “Gitrin?”

  “Of course. And, kyrin, we greatly appreciate the offer of your invaluable time, and hope that your experiences here will be helpful in your leadership training. It is wonderful to know that even in such dire times, the geroi can be relied upon to care for even the smallest concerns of the Iamoi.”

  “All lives are one,” I said, smiling automatically. Melusin had said nothing of Gitrin’s involvement. Earlier she’d said that they were going to find me a new tutor. A pang twisted inside me. Most of me never wanted to hear her name again, but an irrational part of me still warmed at the sound of it. She’d been my caretaker for most of my life, more than the geroi had ever been, despite living under the same roof as them. I wanted to hate her, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

  The boy was watching me again. I noticed his gaze and squared my shoulders, meeting his dark eyes defiantly. I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me again. I was here on a mission.

  He lifted his shoulders in an odd manner and looked away.

  “Now, kyrin,” the medic said, gesturing to the boy. “We’re working on prompting responses from the subject. If we can get him to identify commonplace objects, this will help build the lexicon. So far I’ve only managed to elicit one-word responses from him, but we need more than that. Complete sentences will build syntax, allow the System to more quickly recognize his particular thought patterns.”

  The boy was glaring now. I ignored him.

  “So I just use the visual indicator program?” I asked.

  The medic tugged his earlobe. “Just as you would for a child.”

  “Right. I will be happy to help,” I said, forcing my lips into a carefully-practiced, Melusin-like smile.

  “Comm if you require assistance. I
’ll just be across the corridor, tending to our other patients.”

  “Let’s see,” I said when the medic had gone. I pulled open a System panel, loaded the visual indicator program. “Where did you leave off?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He was watching me warily. I sighed.

  “All right. Let’s just start at the beginning. What is your word for this animal?” An image of a gurza hovered between us, its hefty back legs supporting its upper body weight and that of a rider.

  The boy’s eyebrows scrunched together, and he poked the image, his mouth slightly agape. He laughed, a scoffing half-chuckle, but he didn’t speak. I gritted my teeth.

  “All right, forget that one. What about this?”

  The next image was a tree. I paused, staring at the image for a long moment. I had not seen a tree like this one in years. The few that grew in the aboveground portion of the dome were small and scraggly. They bore tiny, bitter fruit. I ran my fingers across the image, but there was nothing but empty air. My eyes stung in spite of myself.

  The boy opened his mouth as if to say something. He hesitated, then snapped his jaw shut, folding his arms and looking away.

  I waved the visual indicator away irritably. “If you won’t cooperate,” I said, “we’re never going to decode your brain waves.”

  His eyes flicked over to mine, and for an instant I thought—I was certain—that he had understood me.

  Then the door behind me slid open.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Ceilos!” He looked exhausted. I hurried to him, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing here? You look like you haven’t slept all night.”

  “I’m fine. After all, I’m not the one who nearly got exposure poisoning. Anyway, I needed to talk to you,” he said.

  I frowned. “I heard about what happened on Hamos. I am so sorry. Are you… all right?”

  “Just tired,” he replied. “You know what speaking with Geros Tibros can be like.”

  “Yes, but Gerouin Clodin…”

  Ceilos snorted. “She’ll live.” When he saw my aghast face, he grinned—a genuine grin, not the false smile we all wore when others were around. “Come now, Nadin. You know there’s no love lost between me and my parents.”