by Ann Aguirre
Bea bounced a little on her feet. “That’s not grass. This isn’t air.”
I sucked in one processed breath, two, and took an experimental step. This was light gravity compared to Earth, so even with my weighted boots, I bounced like the dirt was half trampoline. A shriek escaped me as I came down, and then I heard Nadim laughing. Though I couldn’t sense his joy, just hearing it felt like eating an ice cream cone.
“This is amazing.” I shout-sang it.
For a while, we played, but eventually we got down to business and took our readings. Bea dictated detailed holos and notes on flora into her mini-H2 while I handled the mineral samples. We were supposed to collect these and log them, compare to stuff that had been hauled in before, with the goal of seeing how long it would take for the planet to return to the state they’d recorded before the war. Sounded boring, but I found some real interest in it; being an alien geologist pretty much rocked. Pun intended.
Now and then Nadim offered commentary on things that puzzled us, and our progress took us across an open field toward the ruins that rose like jagged teeth in the distance. With my eyes half-closed, I could almost, almost imagine the disaster that had shattered what might have been a temple or a coliseum.
We were nearly there when I heard it—the sound of footsteps behind us. I didn’t hesitate. In an instant, I had a weapon in my hand. Whirling, I took aim at the blur of motion.
“Don’t!” Nadim called out.
And I froze, caught between his urgency and my fight instincts. I’d never backed down in my life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Breaking Silence
THERE WAS NOBODY behind me. Nothing at all.
“Please don’t discharge your weapon. You might disturb the native fauna.” Nadim’s tone all wrong, too anxious, too urgent.
But I knew damn well I hadn’t imagined somebody behind me.
The wind whispered through my skinsuit mask, tanged with the alien mix of gases. I scanned twice, once with my eyes and next with my equipment. No signs of life popped on the screen and I lowered the weapon. I didn’t put it away.
Beatriz patted my shoulder as she set off toward the ruins. “I never expected you to be jumping at shadows, Z.”
“You’re hilarious,” I mumbled.
In my mind’s eye, I tried to process what I’d seen, but it had happened so fast. Nadim said there was no intelligent life, but Earth-wise, the lines got blurry around whale and chimpanzee. Could be that Firstworld had some native creatures, big enough to shake me. Whatever it was, it didn’t want to get close to us, which did suggest wildlife. Yet—
“Nadim,” I said, low. “Come on, tell me the truth.”
“It was nothing.” Clearly he didn’t want to have this conversation dirtside. Damn, but I was getting tired of secrets. I wanted to trust him, but it was getting harder. Our connection couldn’t change the fact that I’d seen something, and he wasn’t going to talk me out of it.
My skin crawled the whole time we trekked through the golden grass; the suits we wore shifted to a lazy whisper of colors that blended perfectly, but I could still feel someone watching, and it wasn’t Nadim. I kept turning and scanning behind me, searching for any sign of trouble.
I didn’t see anything. Just the alien plants bending in the breeze.
I’d had this exact feeling in the Zone when somebody was trying to decide whether to start some shit or not. No matter which way I looked, I saw only alien landscape, painted in unnatural colors. And then it occurred to me . . . What if what’s watching us blends in too? Like our skinsuits? The thought pulled my muscles tight and my nerves even tighter. If there was something out here, I needed to be ready. I couldn’t let anything happen to Beatriz.
She pointed things out, and I kept nodding, but my attention was on the perimeter, scanning like a bot on patrol. Every so often, she paused to collect samples of plants. I did the same with minerals, but only because Nadim kept murmuring that I had a job to do. The dirt was an interesting mix of colors that probably told a fascinating story to somebody who knew more. I’d analyze it back aboard and let our equipment do the heavy lifting for some professor in Paradise to delight over once the digital information reached his desk.
It occurred to me that where humanity had, back in its late golden days, sent out machines to other planets to drill core samples and wander the landscape of another world . . . that was us now. We were humanity’s arms and legs and eyes, but only partly its brain.
I didn’t much enjoy the comparison.
Since the ruins were the only landmark, it was impossible to get lost. As we approached, the jagged stone teeth resolved into broken pillars, cut from some mineral that shimmered blue-black against the smooth surface of what might have been a raised platform. Red and brown earth filmed the steps leading up to the monument, but I didn’t miss the fact that there were lines in that dust. Not footprints like a human would leave, but some strange thing had moved through here, not long ago. That put me on guard, again, and I faced back out, watching for anything that wanted to come at us.
“Look at the carvings, the bas relief, and the . . . what is this? Is it writing?” Bea peppered Nadim with questions, breaking the uneasy silence. I glanced back at the pillar she was scrutinizing. It did look like writing, all swirls and dots, but it could just as easily be decorative.
As usual, Bea was right, because Nadim said, “Yes. I have translations if you’re interested.”
“Of course!” I couldn’t see her face under the mask, but the tone left no room for doubt that she had lit up like New Year’s Eve.
“Please understand, this is imprecise, as it has been shifted through many languages. ‘Here we sing to the stars. Deep in the dreaming, we have come and gone for many evers. Until the joining. Until journey’s end. Sing back to us when you come, so that we may know the silence is never eternal. Our sun, your stars, their gods, they have sailed in other skins, far beyond the dark and into the hollow, where all light sleeps.’”
As he spoke, I had an eerie kind of vision. I had no idea what this alien race had looked like, so my imagination put them in robes, all gathered in a circle while they chanted beneath strange and forlorn stars. Firstworld had a sky utterly unlike Earth’s, radiant with colors we got only at sunrise and sunset. A permanent aurora borealis streaking the sky, and a world full of life and color and desolation.
For some reason, a little shiver went through me, as if Nadim had incanted a magic spell. The superstitious kid in me expected a puff of purple smoke and a dragon or a demon to appear. But there was only the disquieting wind, whipping over me in greater gusts, so that the golden fronds in the distance bent nearly double as if performing reluctant obeisance. We stood for a moment in silence, and then Bea dropped to her knees. Normally, I wasn’t the reverent type, but it seemed wrong not to do likewise.
“I don’t know what that means, exactly,” she whispered. “But I feel it. Zara?”
“Me too.” I wasn’t sure what was happening here, and it made me both wary and entranced. But there was something still in this world. A memory, maybe.
She bowed her head first. I followed suit. Then she astonished me by lifting her voice, doing exactly as the writing said. I was no singer, but I tried to follow, offering lower tones to harmonize with her gorgeous soprano. And her voice echoed, swelling in the crystals that remained in the shattered columns. Flickers of light pinged back and forth, trying to send a signal, trying and failing, but dear God, it was exquisite, with streaks of light trembling in the heart of stone. Something in the air changed—charged—and it raised all the hair on the back of my neck, like being trapped in a lightning storm. Even the scent of the breeze changed, that smell of electricity burning up the air.
When our voices fell quiet and the glow died, the silence stretched and stretched, paper thin, then a filament of spider-silk, broken at last by Nadim, in a lovely, shattered tone. “I have never seen this. This has never happened before.”
“Really?�
� I got to my feet and dusted off my knees.
“There have been no lights on Firstworld since . . .” In his silence I sensed uncertainty, a span of time so long that it was impossible to estimate without carbon dating, maybe. “I’ve heard stories. . . . The whole world used to shine, sparking one stone to another. It was one reason why my people came here. For the songs.”
I nudged Bea. “You did this. How incredible are you?”
By her tone, I guessed she must be hot-cheeked beneath her mask. “I only did what they asked. Anybody could do it.”
But if the other Honors hadn’t brought Nadim along, they might not have had the translation. Even if they had read it, I had a hard time imagining hardcore science types singing to a bunch of ruined rock.
Their loss.
The light was dwindling by then, the violent colors fading to pastels that passed for night on Firstworld. Though we had climate control in our skinsuits, I had no desire to test out how good it was under extreme temperatures. Or to be out here in the dark. Now that the awe had faded, my paranoia was creeping back.
“We should wrap it up and get out of here,” I said.
There were no arguments; as gorgeous as that display had been, there’d been something eerie about it too. Like ghosts whispering across time. We didn’t speak on the way back to the Hopper. Beatriz seemed to be thinking about her impromptu performance while Nadim had to be trying to decide how to explain away what I’d seen in the fern meadow. I didn’t intend to give him a chance to bullshit me.
As Bea booted up the ship, I asked, “Do we have enough fuel for one last sweep?” The Hopper could hover like a beast, and I was curious enough to ask.
“Definitely. Cells at eighty-four percent,” she said after checking. “But what are you looking for?”
“Just checking out the view.”
And searching for aliens.
We skimmed over the ground, and I peered hard at the changing landscape. Just before the grassland yielded to what would be considered forest on Earth—though these were weird-ass, almost sentient-seeming trees that looked like mushrooms, fleshy and leafy at once—I saw it. Bea didn’t spot the dark patch hidden by waving fronds, but it was similar to the circle our thrusters had made. I didn’t mention it. But I felt a hot little burn of confirmation.
Native wildlife, my ass. Somebody else was here. If it was another Leviathan crew, I’d almost shot another Honor.
Shouldn’t have been sneaking up on us, then.
I said, “Okay, let’s go. I’m good.”
“Thank you for taking me with you to the surface,” Nadim said, gentle and uncertain. “I have much to consider.”
Like how to handle me.
This time, I didn’t attempt to talk to him about it, which probably made him wonder what was up. When we returned, I was meticulous about putting the samples away and replacing my gear, once I’d cleaned it properly. Then I went to my quarters for a shower. I was hungry too, but this conversation would go better if we had it in private.
It was possible that was the longest I’d gone in a while without talking to Nadim, because he was the one who spoke first when I rapped on the wall. “Zara . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Maybe I was being petty, but it wouldn’t hurt him to say it.
“Lying to you. I said I never would, and I’m sorry. It caught me off guard.”
“Then are you ready to level with me? About what I saw down there.”
When he didn’t reply, I tried to imagine that my brain had an off switch and flipped it. I locked him out, tighter than I’d ever done before. Then I closed my eyes. I see nothing. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. I’m not even here. I don’t even exist.
To my surprise, severing that hard link with Nadim rocked me with feedback, so that my head burned with white noise . . . no, dark noise. If silence was a pit that you could fall into, I had one growing in my skull like a black hole.
“Zara! Stop. Please stop!” He sounded frantic.
When I got my head right again, I discovered that I’d bitten my lip hard enough to bleed. “Nadim . . .” I didn’t even know what to say.
“Don’t do that,” he said softly.
“I won’t. But you have to tell me what was down there! I’m not gullible. I know something—someone—was with us on that planet.”
With a faint sigh, he surrendered. “Most likely, it was a pilgrim. They are not supposed to be there during the Tour. I’m not sure what happened, why our paths crossed. But if you had injured one, the consequences would have been—”
“Bad?” I supplied.
“Unthinkable!”
“So what’s a pilgrim, then, when it’s at home?”
“Zara—”
“It’s not from Earth, that’s for damn sure.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then let me say it. These pilgrims . . . they’re not human. That’s obvious. Except for the Tour, there are no humans out here.”
The air was thick with his struggle to be honest with me, and at the same time, to play by the rules he’d been given. I didn’t really expect to win that battle; I’d just gotten here, and Nadim, I knew, had been earnestly following his orders his whole life.
So I was taken aback when he suddenly said, “Yes.”
It caught me cold, and I sat down, very fast. “Uh . . . wait. So there are other aliens out here. Living aliens.”
“You’re on board one, Zara.”
“I mean, other than Leviathan!”
“Of course. I told you that we’ve come in contact with other civilizations—”
“Dead ones!”
“I omitted certain information for the good of your species.” That sounded arrogant. And rehearsed. “Humanity is not ready to interact with other civilizations we have encountered in our travels.”
“Why not?”
Nadim sounded a little impatient with me now. “Zara. You know why. Billions of your people lived in pain and terror. You had eradicated most native species on your own world, and unlike some of the species we encounter, you brought ruin on yourselves.”
“So we’re not fit to meet the neighbors, is that it?” I bristled all over. If I could have grown spikes, I would have. “Punks and criminals, our whole planet?”
“I never said that. But as a species, humans have been thoughtless. Our participation was meant to teach you how to manage your needs more effectively. And the Honors, the Tour . . . that was originally meant to acclimate Earth to the idea that it was one of many civilizations. We thought . . . we thought that we would begin slowly.”
“What happened?”
“There was a death,” he said. “And the other species . . . no longer wanted to interact with humanity. It is regrettable.”
Someone had been quick on the trigger of a weapon. No wonder he’d been so terrified I’d shoot wildly down on Firstworld. “Was—was the human who did that one of your Honors?”
“No,” he said. “That was before I began the Tour. But it doesn’t matter. We all feel a burden for what occurred. We’re hopeful that, as Earth becomes more peaceful, you might be able to try again to become part of the larger universe. Until then . . .”
“Until then, we paddle around in the little puddle you let us have and pretend it’s ocean.”
“Zara, it’s for your safety. . . . What is that?”
“What?”
“Are you happy?”
I was. Not for any reason I could explain at first, until I let myself really feel it. Then I laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Why? I thought you would be angry!”
“I should be,” I said. “I mean, really. You think of us as a bunch of violent, angry fools. But honestly? I’m just kind of excited that little green men exist.”
“They’re not—”
“So. Besides these pilgrims, how many more are there?”
“None.”
“You’re a terrible l
iar.”
“Thank you,” he said. I think he meant it.
Over the next two weeks, I pestered the shit out of Nadim.
We had to finish analyzing all the data before we could go on to the next stop on the Tour, which for me mainly boiled down to prepping samples, making minute logs of the times and places we’d taken them from the surface, and sending on the results. We were far from home, so it would take—according to Nadim—a year for the signal to reach Earth. Everything had to be packaged properly and stored. The physical samples would be transferred once we came back at the end of the Tour.
Added to our routine maintenance, it left surprisingly little time for unrelated tasks, like, say, imploring a sentient ship to spill the remainder of his secrets. Since he’d confirmed that there was one race of aliens thriving enough to conduct galactic pilgrimages, it stood to reason there would be more.
The one thing I didn’t do was cut off contact with him again. Maybe it would’ve gotten me what I wanted, but since I knew it frightened Nadim, that would make me no better than Typhon, whipping him to get my way.
No better than my father. And damned if I’d ever go down that road.
Tired of failure, and just generally tired, I trudged down the corridor to Beatriz’s room. It was late in the evening, or the Icelandic equivalent, so I didn’t know if she’d be up. I rapped twice, and only went in when she keyed open the door. “Can’t sleep?”
I shrugged. “I should probably work out more. What’re you doing?”
“Recording a personal log.” She seemed slightly abashed to admit it.
So far, I’d only done one, and it was like ten seconds long. Mostly I felt like a jackass talking to myself when I could be learning every humanly accessible inch of Nadim. Privately I admitted I might be obsessed. Slightly. Okay, a lot.
