The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  Oh. Shit. I just called Jay Lim my boyfriend.

  That ridiculous grin explodes over his face again.

  “I knew I was the man of your dreams.”

  After that, there’s more kissing.

  A series of melodramatic gagging noises breaks up the mood. Leela hurls herself onto the empty scanner bed next to Jay’s. “You guys are the worst,” she says, propping her boots up on the bed and folding her arms behind her head.

  “I think it’s sweet,” Chris says, sitting up in his bed to make a face at me. “Gross, but in a romantic way.”

  I feel the heat of a blush washing over my face. I totally forgot that we were in a public place. With doctors and nurses in it. Oh no. “Please tell me your dad isn’t here.”

  Leela bursts out laughing. “You’re in luck. Dr. Kruppa is on duty, and she’s debriding the wound on Chief Ganeshalingam’s arm at the moment.” She leans over to eye the readout on Jay’s bed and smirks. “But Dad always supports a little cardiovascular exercise during recovery. I’m sure he wouldn’t object.”

  “Nothing but comedians in here,” Jay mutters. He’s blushing, too.

  Leela snorts. “As much as I enjoy mocking you two, I promised the commander I’d let her know as soon as you woke up, Jo. So . . .”

  “Is she okay?” I say, realizing abruptly that I don’t know.

  “Yeah,” Leela says. “She and your dad and Beth are all fine.”

  “What about Dr. Brown?” I say. “Ord shot her, I think. Is she dead?”

  “We don’t know,” Leela says. “We haven’t found any sign of a body, but it’s possible she was brought to a triage station and she got mixed in with the other casualties.”

  “How many did we lose?” I ask, my stomach churning.

  “Eighty-four,” Chris says quietly.

  “What? That’s . . .” That’s nearly half our team. Friends. People I’ve known since I was a child. Gone. “How?”

  “A bunch of people were hiding in the 3D shop,” Jay says. “Some phytoraptors got in and . . .” He shakes his head.

  “That’s awful,” I say. The words feel shallow, compared to the sucking black hole of terribleness at the pit of my stomach. How is it even possible that so many people died last night? How can we go on without them?

  We’re quiet after that. Guess nobody else has words big enough for the grief either.

  “I should text the commander,” Leela says, deflating the suffocating silence. “You ready, Jo?”

  Am I ready to tell Mom that I just promised our new home away? I’ll never be ready for that. I nod anyway.

  I take my time walking to Ground Control. Pioneer’s Landing feels different today. Frayed, like the dead are threads yanked from the fabric of this place. The teams working to repair the damaged structures are full of injured people who look like they should still be in medical. The central square is empty, except for a few colorful insect analogs, fluttering around the fido trees we transplanted from the river.

  I pull open the door to Ground Control, but before I can walk inside, Beth says, behind me, “I thought you were dead.” I turn to see her sitting under one of the fido trees in the garden. “When you disappeared, and Mom figured out that the flyer was gone, I knew you’d gone after them.”

  “How?”

  “You’re my sister,” she says. “I’ve known you since you were fourteen minutes old. I knew you’d try. I was afraid that they would kill you.”

  “I was pretty sure they were going to, for a while there,” I say.

  “This is the third time I’ve thought you were dead in the last week, Joanna,” she says. “Don’t do it again. Please. It’s very distracting.”

  A week ago, that would have hurt my feelings. But I didn’t know her at all then. Not really. That’s one thing this planet has given me.

  “I love you, Beth.”

  “I love you, too,” she says. “Obviously. Which is why I need you to aspire to a less exciting lifestyle.”

  “We’re pioneers,” I say. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “You’re good at impossible,” she says. “Mom’s expecting you. You shouldn’t be late.”

  With that, she walks back up the street that leads to the greenhouse.

  I watch her go.

  When Teddy was alive, the three of us felt like a set. The Watson kids. Maybe Beth and I are finally finding a way to fit together without him between us.

  I push through the door to Ground Control and walk back to Mom’s office. My parents are both there, waiting.

  I tell them what happened in the nest. I tell them about my promise to Tarn. They aren’t happy. I didn’t think they would be. But they aren’t as furious as I expected.

  “It kept you alive and saved a planet from environmental catastrophe,” Mom says. “Ideal or not, that’s a success.”

  “But was it a lie? Will we leave?”

  Asking the question out loud rips a gaping, terrified hole through my resolve. I desperately hope, just for a few seconds, that she says no. We’ve given up so much to get here. I don’t want to eke out an existence on the polar ice of Proxima Centauri b. I want to stay on Tau.

  But if she says no, then Tarn killed his brother for a lie. My lie. And I don’t want that, either.

  I can hear the echoes of my internal dilemma in my mother’s sigh. “I wish I could say yes.”

  “We need to consider it, Alice,” Dad says. “I understand the urgency of the situation back home, but we have fifty years. There’s a whole galaxy full of planets out there. We don’t need to steal our place in the stars.”

  Their eyes meet for a long moment. Mom sighs. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean I can convince Central Command.”

  Dad’s lips twitch. If his eyes didn’t look so sad, I’d call it a little grin. “I’ve always put my money on you. Haven’t lost a bet yet.”

  Mom sucks in a shaky breath and nods. “You know, I wanted ballet lessons for my tenth birthday. My father talked me into learning to fly instead. I regret that sometimes.”

  Dad pulls her close. She rests her head on his chest.

  Watching them, I feel my eyes get tight and hot. Tears prickle. I just put the future of this world and three species of intelligent beings on my mother’s shoulders. I expected it to be a relief, knowing that she’s finally going to stand up and take charge of this mess. But it makes me ache for her. I can imagine all too well how overwhelming it must be.

  Dad catches the look on my face. He reaches out and tugs the end of my braid. “Think of it this way, Al,” he says to Mom. “If you’d grown up to be a ballerina instead of a pilot commander, you’d probably have married someone else, and you’d have normal kids. That would be boring.”

  Mom snorts a laugh. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Nick.”

  “You married me,” he says, smirking.

  She rolls her eyes. “I know. I did it on purpose, too. Imagine.”

  She steps away from him, gathering herself once more.

  “All right, no more feeling sorry for ourselves,” she says. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Of course, we can’t even report what’s happened to Central Command with the Pioneer’s superluminal transponder down. We have to wait until the new shuttle is finished, so we can get up to the ship and see what’s wrong.

  In the meantime, Mom and Dad decide not to tell the others that we might have to bail. Mom keeps everyone busy building the new shuttle. Even the little kids are helping. It’s a big, complicated job. And it keeps anyone from asking why we’ve stopped construction on the Landing.

  Weeks pass.

  We see the occasional phytoraptor lurking around the shields, but no one has seen the Sorrow since Tarn became Followed.

  We hold memorial services for the people who died in the shuttle crash and the phytoraptor attack. Mom has Doc seal the bodies in inso crates instead of burying them, but we erect a memorial stone on the riverbank. I sit by it some
times, after I finish recycling the dinner dishes. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes Chris meets me there and we sit together.

  I split my time between working on the new shuttle and helping Jay deal with the nanosurgical therapy on his back. In the evenings, he and I hang out with Beth and Leela and Chris in the greenhouse. Chris doesn’t say much. He doesn’t say much to anyone these days. I hope he told his dad and Dr. Kao everything he told me about what happened in the nest, but I don’t feel like I can ask. Chris will tell me more if he wants to.

  One morning, when the new shuttle is almost finished, Dad wakes Beth and me before dawn. He wants us to show him the nest.

  “I have to see it at least once.”

  I expect Mom to be waiting at the flyer, but she isn’t.

  “Who’s flying?” I ask.

  “You are,” Dad says.

  The thought catches my breath.

  “But I’m still not cleared,” I say. My cardiovascular system is as good as new. Doc ran the scans twice. But nobody’s had time to check me out on the flyer and reinstate my clearances.

  “We’re pioneers living on the farthest frontier in human history,” Dad says. “I think that means we can skip some of the paperwork.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’re sure,” Beth says. “And dawn is thirty-four minutes away, so . . .”

  Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to, if you don’t feel like you’re ready.”

  Am I? The last time I flew, it was just my own life on the line. But now, with Beth and Dad on board . . . I’m starting to understand why Leela finds being a pilot so terrifying.

  But I’ve done a lot of scary stuff lately.

  Dad and Beth settle in behind me as I run preflight checks. They’re all green. I press my hands to the nav app. The rotors bite into the air, pulling the flyer off the ground.

  We hover over the Landing, looking down on the neat rows of cabins and labs that pinwheel out from the town square. With no warning at all, tears well in my eyes. How ridiculous of me, to long for something we haven’t even lost yet.

  “Joanna,” Beth says.

  “We’re going, we’re going.”

  With one last look down at the Landing, I swing my hands over the navigation app and push the flyer west toward the mountains.

  I leave the autopilot off, soaring between the jagged peaks of the Diamond Range on manual control. The air currents coil around us, lofting us through the brightening sky. The first tendrils of morning light catch at the prismatic peaks of the mountains below, melting the light like rainbow syrup over the wells of green that twist through them.

  When we reach the nest, the sky is blossoming with a thousand shades of blue. I set the flyer down in the clearing my crash chewed out of the forest after Ord shot me down. From here we can watch the nest without having to risk direct interaction. We’re just in time. The rotors have barely stopped turning when we see the first phytoraptors swing down the cliffs on the other side of the ravine. Soon they’re streaming around us, coming home for the morning light. Their skins molt through green into violet purples and browns and back again as they move.

  Abruptly, a tall, skinny phytoraptor with a sharp ridge protruding from their forehead turns and stalks straight toward us. They smack their huge hands flat against the hull over and over again. Hard enough that the whole flyer shimmies under the impact.

  My hands twitch to the controls, but Dad stops me. “Wait. I want to see what it does.”

  The phytoraptor smacks the flyer a few more times. Then they step back.

  They raise their hand and sign.

  Hello.

  I see you.

  Then they drop back to their knuckles and feet and gallop for the edge of the ridge, throwing themselves over and into the valley.

  “Tell me I didn’t imagine that,” Dad whispers.

  “If you did, so did I,” I breathe.

  “Why are we whispering?” Beth says. “They can’t hear us.”

  Dad bursts into a breathless, awestruck laugh. “I don’t know, Beth. I don’t know.”

  But I do. The moment feels sacred. Terrifying. Wondrous. These creatures are teaching each other to communicate with us, and they’re doing it all on their own. This is something no other human in the galaxy has ever seen. And we’re watching it happen. Together.

  We stay to watch the dawn light hit the nest. I watch Dad instead. He’s practically got his nose pressed against the wall screens, taking it all in. The last few weeks have carved years into his face, but they’re gone now. Scrubbed away by wonder and delight.

  By the time we get back, it’s almost midday. Chris is waiting for Beth and me in the greenhouse. He looks excited. And possibly terrified.

  “Tarn is here,” he says before we even have a chance to greet him. “He’s in the office with your mom.”

  “What?” I say. “When did he—”

  “Just after dawn,” Chris says, answering my question before I finish it. “I was sitting by the memorial stone, and he just walked up to the shields on the other side of the river.”

  “Did he tell you why he’s here?” Beth asks.

  Chris shakes his head. “He asked to speak to the commander, so I took him to her office. Then I came here, but you guys were gone.”

  “Did he bring Takers?” I say.

  Chris shakes his head again. “It was just him.”

  Tarn’s approach is so humble in comparison with Ord’s elaborate procession of armed Takers and glowing Givers. But it’s more than humility. It’s a demonstration of strength. Tarn isn’t afraid of the light. And he isn’t afraid of us.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I have to see him before he leaves.”

  I run all the way to the square. Mom’s office door is still closed. Tarn must still be in there.

  I sit under the fido trees by the doors into Ground Control and wait, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say to Tarn. I don’t even know if he’ll talk to me. He killed his own brother to keep our deal, a deal Mom may not be able to keep. I wouldn’t blame him if he hated me.

  Tarn emerges from Mom’s office.

  “Hello, Joanna,” he says.

  “It wasn’t a lie.” The words just pop out of their own volition.

  Tarn pushes back his hood. In the midday light, I can see every detail of him through his skin. Bone. Muscle. The pale yellow light of the blood in his veins.

  “I do not question that,” he says. “I know you meant your words.”

  “I hope my people will honor our deal.”

  “So do I,” he says. “I wish that circumstances were different. More than I can say. But the Sorrow are not ready to share our world, and they now follow me. Their needs are my needs.”

  “I understand that,” I say.

  “I believe your mother does as well,” Tarn says. “But she tells me that the final decision is not hers.”

  “It isn’t,” I say. “She reports to other people back home, and it’s . . .” I don’t know how much Mom told him, or how much I should. Finally, I settle on “The situation is very complicated for us.”

  “For me, it is simple,” Tarn says. “I have given the commander ten days to confirm that humanity will leave this world in peace. If she can’t do that, I will be forced to take action.”

  Action. Stomach acid lurches into the back of my mouth at the word. When Ord decided to take action, he used the phytoraptors to kill eighty-four of our people. Tarn is smarter than Ord. What will he do if we don’t live up to my promise?

  “I hope . . .” Tarn trails off into a melodic Sorrow hum, like he can’t find the words in English. The sonar whispers over my skin like a cool mist. “It has been a pleasure to know you, Joanna Watson. I wish I could continue to do so.”

  “Me too,” I say. I have to force the words to grow larger than a whisper. “Me too.”

  He leaves without another word.

  Twenty

  I can’t sleep.

 
; I get up when the sky starts to lighten and go to the mess hall. Jay is already there, helping Dr. Kao set up. He hasn’t been sleeping well since he started wearing cybernetic braces on his legs. He hasn’t said anything, but I think it hurts when he takes them off.

  After I eat, Jay and I walk along the river. He’s getting better at walking in the braces, but every step is still awkward and unsteady.

  The morning is chilly. The fluorescent blossoms of the fido trees are fading. Going white. The seasons are changing.

  “I wonder what winter is like here,” I say.

  Jay nods, his eyes wandering over the shining mountains. “You think we’re going to be here to find out?”

  I told him about my promise to Tarn and the ticking clock to relocate billions of humans before Earth’s ecosystem collapses. I tell him everything these days.

  “I guess I hope not,” I say. “I wish . . .” I start to say that I wish things were different. But if things were different, I might not be standing here in the crisp chill next to him. And I can’t bring myself to regret that.

  He doesn’t ask me to finish the thought. He just pulls me close. It isn’t the first time, but it never fails to amaze me how well our bodies fit. I rest my head on his chest and watch the sunrise.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Mom’s voice jars me out of the moment. She’s less than a meter away, but I didn’t hear her coming.

  “Oh, ah, no,” I stammer. I haven’t told her what’s happening between Jay and me, but she doesn’t look surprised.

  Jay, of course, isn’t even flustered. “Morning, Commander.”

  “Good morning, Corporal,” she says. “Mind if I steal my daughter?”

  Mom promoted Jay last week. He tried to argue against it, because of his legs. She listened politely, and then promoted him anyway. I swear he’s been walking easier since then. Like the fact that she believes in him makes him stronger.

  “You’re the boss,” he says. “Catch you later, Hotshot.”

  I follow Mom back through the Landing. I’m surprised when she walks right past Ground Control, through the square, and keeps going.

  “Are we going to engineering?” I ask. It’s the only public building on this side of the settlement. Everything else over here is houses. Ours is just behind Ground Control, but we’ve already passed it.