The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  The cave is getting lower as we approach the center of the city. The multicolored points of light that were just distant glimmers at the outer walls are closer together here, and easier to see. They drip down from the ceiling like glowing stalactites, but they don’t look like rock. What are they?

  Boom! A sharp rumble rolls through the air.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Just as the last echoes die away, the Givers carry me between a pair of soaring white pillars carved to catch the shadows and make them dance. The cave is only a couple of stories high here, and the sprays of color and light that drip from the ceiling almost reach the floor.

  They’re roots, I realize, as the Givers carry me on through the clusters of light. These are Chorulux neon roots, like the ones we saw in Dr. Brown’s abandoned cave campsite in Jannah, but much, much bigger. The trees growing over this spot must be ancient.

  The enormous root clusters are trained into ornate designs. Narrow paths wander among the bioluminescent root sculptures, widening into little clearings near particularly striking displays.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The hollow booming sound fills the cavern again as I’m carried between another set of carved pillars that support a soaring trellis. The root clusters at the center of the grove are woven through it, creating a luminescent dome.

  The Givers carry me to the center of the living cathedral up what feels like a set of steps. They lay me down on a cold, hard surface and step back, forming a circle around me. They are absolutely still, like living statutes.

  My eyes are starting to adjust to the Givers’ light. I can see past them now. What must be hundreds of Sorrow twinkle in the twilight dimness of the root garden. A silent cacophony of sonar spins over my skin, accompanying the melodic murmur of their voices. I can hear the sharper, thinner voices of my friends, too, poking through the thick hum. At least I’m not alone.

  Without warning, the Givers pivot to their left.

  The crowd goes quiet.

  The abrupt silence is tight and tense, like the cavern itself is holding its breath.

  Then the Givers start to move. They circle me. Each step is perfectly synchronized, as though they are a string of echoes stretching out behind a single figure.

  After the third circuit, the Givers begin to sing. Their voices swell, filling the huge space with sound. Then the single tone shifts and multiplies, weaving together into . . . I don’t know exactly what to call it. The word melody feels like an understatement. The Sorrow’s multifaceted voices form harmonies that are beautiful but sound, I don’t know, incomplete. I wonder if there are more layers of sound there, notes that go beyond the range of human hearing.

  The sonar under the sound buzzes against my skin like an electric shock, except it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel good, either. It just is.

  The Givers stop walking. Still singing, they turn back to face me. The buzzing sensation of their voices gets stronger, flowing over, around, and through me.

  I float in the sound.

  Empty.

  Full.

  Here.

  Gone.

  I don’t know how much time passes.

  My brain snaps back into focus as something cold and wet winds around my left ankle. I try to lift my head to see what’s happening, but fingertips press on my temples, holding me down. Seconds later, another Giver whips a thin, wet cloth over my face and shoulders.

  I reflexively suck in a breath, and the moist wrappings suction into my mouth. I gasp for air, but that just makes it worse. My body gets tighter and tighter, like my skin is shrinking. I think I might implode.

  There’s a sound like bubble gum popping inside my brain, and pain crashes through me. It’s loud, like every cell in my body is screaming.

  And then everything goes quiet.

  The Givers silently remove the wet cloths from my leg, face, and shoulders. Then they turn their backs on me and walk straight out, into the crowd.

  I lie there for what feels like a long time, waiting to see what happens next. But the Givers don’t come back. Finally, I move my head just enough to look around. I’m lying on a long white slab at the center of a raised platform. My friends are standing at the foot of the stairs with Dr. Brown. Miguel has an arm around Chris’s shoulders. Jay’s hands are clenched at his sides, like he’s braced for a fight. His eyes find mine. I nod, trying to reassure him. I’m okay. I think. I still have no idea what they did to me, but nothing hurts.

  Wait. Nothing hurts.

  Whoa.

  The pain from my injuries is gone.

  I wiggle my toes. There’s no stiffness. No pain. I cautiously rotate my ankle as far as I can in the cast. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t even feel like it’s broken anymore.

  “Rise, Joanna Watson!” Ord’s harmonic voice sings through the unnatural silence. I twist to watch as his glowing figure sweeps through the crowd. “You have fought bravely. And now, thanks to the generosity of our Givers, you have strength to face the light once more.”

  He jogs up the steps to the platform and grabs my left hand to pull me to my feet. I brace myself, but the pain I expect in my burned shoulder never comes. My eyes dart to the wound, but it’s gone. I can see unbroken skin under the layer of dermaglue.

  “What . . . how . . .” I’m so stunned I can hardly put the words together. “How is this possible?”

  A pulse of white light burns through Ord’s glowing veins. I think he’s enjoying my reaction.

  “Your people have built powerful machines to do your bidding,” he says. “But the Sorrow find our power within. Givers spend their lives learning to shape sound and mend flesh with their voices. In times of need, they can be called upon to heal the brave and the deserving.”

  Shape sound. I’d never have thought of it, but that’s exactly what it felt like—the Givers kneading and molding their voices around me like clay. Given their bio-echolocation, it makes sense that they have more control over sound than humans do. But it’s still astounding to think that they can heal broken bones and third-degree burns just by manipulating sound waves. Even with nanosurgical bots and bone-growth stimulation, it would have taken Doc weeks to get me back on my feet. They did it in minutes.

  Ord takes my hand and walks me down the steps.

  “You have been given a great honor, juvenile,” he tells me as he escorts me to Dr. Brown. “It is usually reserved for our greatest Takers. But today, we are happy to share it with our new friends.”

  “I, ah, thank you,” I stammer. “I’m very grateful.”

  Ord bounds up the steps again. When he reaches the center of the dais, he hoots a bright, coppery sound, raising his hands as though to embrace the crowd. The Sorrow return the greeting in perfect harmony, their choral voices raised as one.

  Ord begins to speak in the layered tones and harmonies of Sorrow language. He’s giving a rousing speech to the assembled crowd. I can’t understand it but I can feel it. The sound feels like jumping on a huge trampoline—tingly and exciting and just a little terrifying. I wish I could understand the words.

  That’s when I see Ord’s brother, Tarn, slipping through the crowd. He stops at my side. “Allow me to translate.”

  He continues in English, speaking a few seconds after his brother. “Our friends from the stars have come to us needing haven and help. And we, the Sorrow, have demonstrated our graciousness by welcoming them in their hour of need. Our new friends have suffered . . .”

  Dr. Brown throws a be quiet look at Tarn. He meets her eyes in acknowledgment and raises his hands to cover his face, palms out. But he doesn’t stop.

  “Now that our pain allows us to understand each other,” he translates, picking up Ord’s speech again, “and the Givers have healed the physical wounds of Joanna Watson, daughter of the human leader, they will offer a Mourning, that our new friends’ emotional suffering may be healed as well.”

  There’s a rumbling sound. It’s faint, like thunder that’s really far away. But it’s getting louder
. For a moment, I think the cave is collapsing. Then I see the lantern robes of at least a dozen Givers cutting through the crowd. They’re walking toward the dais, moving so slowly it looks like they’re out of sync with the rest of the world.

  Pressure builds in my chest as their woven voices crescendo. My body throbs, every muscle shuddering. Clenching. Then the tension explodes into a cascade of emotions I can’t begin to name. The outpouring feels like water running over my skin inside and out. It’s exhilarating and peaceful at the same time. I feel like I could run for kilometers or lie down to sleep and never even think about bad dreams.

  The Givers fall silent as they reach the steps of the raised platform where Ord stands. They turn to face the crowd, creating a rainbow of light around his brighter form.

  It’s so quiet that I can hear myself trying to catch my breath.

  Ord’s voice booms into the reverent silence. Tarn’s quiet translation follows: “People of the Sorrow, sacrifice is never without purpose. This is not just a day to grieve with our new friends. This is a day of destiny. Today, we begin again. We step forward into a new world. A safer, stronger world. A world we now share. Every single loss we have suffered has led us to this day. And the brave dead have made every step possible.”

  The brave dead.

  Teddy’s last, bittersweet smile floats to the surface of my memory. I can still see every detail—from the soot in his hair to the constellation of tiny burns across his face to the fear and determination in his eyes. But for the first time, the memory isn’t painful.

  “The brave dead have given of themselves so that we can build a new future,” Tarn translates. “So that we can reclaim this world, above and below, once and for all.”

  With that, Ord raises his staff in the air, triumphant. The Sorrow around us cry out in response. The explosion of sound ricochets off the cave walls, building into a pulsing roar that sweeps me up in a tumbling current of loss and joy and sorrow and triumph.

  Beth stands up and walks away.

  The sudden movement jars me out of my reverie. I’m not the only one. I can see little clusters of nearby Sorrow peering after her as she shoulders her way out of the crowd.

  I bolt to my feet and hurry after her, into the glowing garden. The root sculptures flex and spin around me as I hurry past them. I catch up with Beth beside a root topiary waterfall that glows a pale green-blue. It undulates gently, reaching out to us as I grab Beth’s arm and pull her around to face me.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I snap. “We’re representing the whole human race right now, and storming out in the middle of a religious ceremony is just . . . just . . . rude!”

  Beth blows out a frustrated sigh. “I know.”

  “If you know, then why—”

  “I found Ord’s hyperbolic rhetoric about sacrifice offensive and manipulative,” she says without looking back at me. “The Givers’ ritualistic stimulation of our emotions was bad enough. But that speech . . .” She shakes her head. “I just . . . couldn’t.”

  “What’s wrong with honoring the people who died to get us here?”

  Beth spins to glower at me. “People lived to get us here,” she snaps. “Our family has lived and breathed for the Galactic Frontier Project every single day for as long as I can remember. So have hundreds of other scientists and engineers and ship designers. They’ve spent their lives making this happen. People don’t die for a reason or some greater purpose. They just die.”

  “You are unbelievable!” I hiss the words through clenched teeth. Then I walk away before I say something I really regret.

  “I sat in your hospital room watching your skin grow back for twelve days,” Beth calls after me. “Did you know that?”

  I stop. I don’t turn around.

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t.” But I can picture it. The image makes the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “I could have saved you from that,” she continues. “I could have convinced Teddy to make you get back on the Wagon with us and fly away. But I didn’t, because you were both correct. It was worth risking your lives to save the Pioneer and her crew. But that didn’t make it easier. It still doesn’t. And I dislike being told that it ought to.”

  I turn around.

  We stare at each other.

  “I didn’t . . .” The words catch, tangling around themselves before I can get them out. I try again. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I know,” she says.

  How is it that in all this time I’ve never stopped to think about what it was like for Beth after the accident? She didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask. I should have asked. I should have said . . . something.

  I should say something now.

  Instead, I say, “Let’s go back. We don’t want to get separated from the others.”

  “Agreed.” Beth turns and walks toward the root cathedral without a backward glance.

  I follow her slowly, allowing the winding paths of the root garden to take me where they will. I’m feeling so many different things that I’m not sure I can pick out the separate thoughts and emotions. Why is it that nothing about life ever seems to get less confusing?

  As I walk past a series of pure-white root sculptures, I hear a human voice murmuring nearby. I follow the sound to a cluster of roots that have been woven into a hollow rainbow of light. There’s a small gap in the weaving, just big enough to step through. Inside, I find Dr. Brown sitting cross-legged, holding a flex up to record herself as she talks.

  “You know, as I do, that this will have consequences,” she says. “Let us just hope the price is worth paying.” With that, she calmly ends the recording and wraps the flex around her wrist.

  “Solace tree groves like this one are the Sorrow’s primal habitat,” she says pleasantly, ignoring what I just overheard. “These structures weren’t always decorative. They were nests. The early Sorrow lived in these roots. They only went to the surface to hunt for food. Now the nests are sacred places. Cherished and preserved. Imagine if humanity had such restraint.”

  “There are a lot of sacred places on Earth,” I say.

  “And many more that have been destroyed,” she says. “Many times over.”

  “But we always build new ones.” I pull out the charred flex I took from her campsite in Jannah and offer it to her. “You built one here. At Jannah.”

  “Pasha named that valley,” she says, taking the flex from me and turning it over in her hands. “He was quite devout. I always found that an odd trait for a scientist, but I think I understand him better now. The Sorrow have taught me a great deal about faith.”

  She runs her fingers over the flex, and the picture of her with Dr. Pasha crackles over the charred screen. She drinks it in.

  “Dr. Brown?” I wait for her to look up at me, then ask, “Do you think humanity is going to hurt the Sorrow?”

  She lifts a single eyebrow. “Who suggested that remarkable idea?”

  I don’t answer. I don’t have to.

  “Tarn.” She shakes her head. “Of course. He has always struggled to follow.”

  “Tarn wasn’t disagreeing with Ord or anything,” I say hurriedly. I don’t want to get him in trouble. “He was just telling us how he was glad we’d come, for your sake, and it just slipped out. That’s all.”

  Dr. Brown smiles. “You are so young. Consider the intention as well as the words, Joanna. Why raise the subject at all, if he didn’t want you to question my choices, and thus Ord’s wisdom?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she’s right. Tarn guided that conversation to exactly where he wanted it to go. And Dr. Brown is doing the same thing right now.

  “So Tarn was right?” I say, sidestepping her attempt to change the subject. “You don’t think humans should be on Tau?”

  “What I think does not matter,” she says, her eyes drifting back to the image of Dr. Pasha on her charred flex. “You’re here. My fears are meaningless.”

  Dr. Brown tucks the flex
into her robes and unfolds herself from her seated position, groaning softly as she straightens. She’s leaving. Who knows when I’ll get her alone again? This might be my last chance.

  “Did you approve Tau for E&P?”

  Dr. Brown turns to stare at me with an expression somewhere between shock, anger, and a weird sort of satisfaction. Then she bursts out laughing. “My god, the ISA is even more foolish than I imagined.”

  She reaches into her robe and pulls out the charred flex that I just gave back to her. She presses it into my hand. “I suspect you’ll wish I’d never returned this to you. Understanding is a double-edged blade, and you cannot sheath it once it’s been drawn.”

  She pulls her hood up. “Come, Joanna. We will rest until nightfall. Then I’ll take you home.”

  Nine

  The walk back feels a lot shorter without a broken ankle.

  Pel wanted to escort us, but Dr. Brown told her it was unnecessary. I’m glad. Pel makes me nervous, and not just because she nearly killed Chris for crashing into Ord. She always seems to be watching us. And I might be imagining it, but she seems brighter than the others. If the Sorrow’s internal glow comes from the blood pumping under their transparent skin, does brighter mean her heart is beating faster? Is she afraid? Or angry? Neither would surprise me. Actually, I’m shocked the Sorrow have been so calm about this. I can only imagine the chaos if Mom took Tarn and Ord for a stroll in a major metro back home.

  The others seem happy to take Ord at his word that we’re welcome. They’re whispering together in quiet amazement as we walk back to the cabin. All except for Chris, who is lagging behind us.

  I drop back to walk with him. He doesn’t acknowledge me. I don’t say anything either. There’s a lot I want to say, but when I think about Chief Penny being dead, all the words get wrung out of me like water from a cloth.

  A speck of light flares up ahead. It swells as we approach, until I can pick out the details of the cabin. The door is still standing open. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a couple of hours since we met the Sorrow.