Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  And yet, sleep must have taken me. Because at some point I opened my eyes and the magfly was gone and Edison sat alone by a fire. The weight of night had settled itself on the valley. Had Edison slept at all? Do Curadores sleep?

  The cold had deepened too and I walked over, letting the flames warm my stiff muscles. “We should get going. It’s sandstorm season and the desert’s already got three days’ head start.”

  But there was another reason I wanted to get moving. As soon as the sun rose, we risked running into another crew. More than likely, they’d leave a Curador alone, but I didn’t want to chance it. I had enough strength left to get back to the shuttle. But not enough to fight anyone else off.

  Edison pulled a bowl from the edge of the fire and sat it steaming on a nearby rock. “Then taking another few moments for you to eat something won’t matter.”

  It smelled like beeph. Something—aside from the jerky—I’d only ever had at Festivals. My stomach groaned. Then Edison brought out a jar of kimchi and started heaping it onto the meat. My hands moved without my permission. I was lucky I didn’t burn my fingers as I snatched the bowl from the rock and pulled my whittled chopsticks from my pack.

  The beeph was rich and tender. But after more than a year and a half in exile, it was the kimchi that I craved. The sting of vinegar and peppery heat hit my nose, waking me up. Crunchy and soft at the same time, fire exploded on my tongue, playing against the sourness as I chewed.

  “Where did you get this?” I couldn’t help the awed tone that crept into my voice.

  “From the Abuelos. We trade for it along with the scrap. We have to decontaminate it before it comes into the Dome, of course . . . but it’s worth it. I figured you could use some to warm you up.”

  It was odd, thinking of the Curadores inside their dome eating our kimchi. It was something so rooted in Pleiades. I took another bite and when I closed my eyes, I could see home. Cabbages growing in the Commons—rows of bright green heads in the dirt. Chiles just ripening—flashes of red hidden among the leaves. My sisters on their knees weeding and singing—their voices weaving a dizzying harmony, each trying to catch the other.

  It wasn’t until I was almost finished that it occurred to me I was eating alone.

  “Do you want some?” I panicked, wondering if maybe it was the custom of Curadores to share from one dish.

  “No thanks.” He laughed at the sad remains in my bowl. “My suit takes care of all that, releasing nutrients as needed, filtering and recycling . . .” He trailed off, almost looking embarrassed. “Suffice it to say, nothing in or out while we’re away from the Dome. It’s safer that way.”

  I shrugged, happily running my finger around the inside of the bowl, savoring the very last bits. Then I scrubbed the bowl out with grit and stood up. Edison was on his feet a second later, throwing sand on the fire and slotting his arms through the slideboard harness. I started to object, but shut my mouth. Right now, I could barely carry myself, let alone my supplies.

  We traveled in silence—keeping our feet and eyes moving. Edison’s headlamp lit up a broad swath in front of us, but I watched the edge of the beam. Wild dogs were calling to each other in the distance. Though not as distant as I would’ve liked. There’s a reason you don’t usually travel at night in Tierra Muerta. Anything the dogs outnumber they considered food.

  Even without the slideboard, my bruised body was painfully slow. I longed to run across the desert—to reassure myself that the shuttle was still there. At first, Edison stuck close, but his impatience won out. His vast, long legs strode out ahead; then he’d have to wait for me to catch up. As the hours wore on, he crept farther and farther ahead—leaving me only a puddle of light. I knew why I wanted to find the shuttle, but what was at stake for him? I always assumed the Curadores were happy in their Dome. But was it possible they also prayed for God’s salvation? And it hit me how little I knew about my companion.

  I kept my eyes on the stars, my only guide in the darkness. Once I had to call Edison back to make a course correction. I crouched in the sand, drinking water while he retraced his route.

  “Sorry,” Edison called as he climbed up the dune again to reach me. He sounded almost embarrassed.

  I shrugged. “Your legs, not mine.” Then I couldn’t help myself. “What exactly are you doing out in Tierra Muerta in the middle of the night?”

  “I thought we were looking for the shuttle.”

  “But surely you could’ve sent your lackeys. Why are you here?”

  Edison sat in the sand next to me. “We heard your voice on the radio.”

  “You and Planck and Sagan?” I didn’t understand.

  “Actually, everyone in the Dome heard you. Your signal was picked up by the Curadores’ receivers . . . in fact, it broadcast across all our channels.”

  It was strange, thinking that my voice had traveled into the Dome without me knowing it. That others had been listening to Suji and me that day. Then again, if the signal could travel back and forth from Earth, why wouldn’t it travel across the valley too?

  “And you heard the response from Earth too?” The idea was both reassuring and deflating. If the Curadores had heard the message from Earth, it made it so much more real. But at the same time, somehow it made it less mine.

  “No, actually. A few receivers picked up a second set of transmissions, but it was nothing but a garbled squealing. Still, we guessed where that second signal must be coming from. Though, honestly, it was you that got my attention. There was . . .” And he paused, as if trying to put something into words. “There was triumph in your voice.”

  And I remembered standing in the shuttle, grabbing the radio—as if this was a moment I always knew would come—and shouting “This is Ad Astra! We’re alive!”

  “So you came out to find the radio,” I said.

  “I had to. My whole life, I’ve been stuck under that Dome. Or in this damn suit. I want to know what it’s like to walk under the open sky.”

  “To be in a place that isn’t trying to kill you?”

  “Exactly.” And Edison gave me his wide grin. His amber eyes flared in the light of his suit. “I’m hoping that place is Earth.”

  And it was that spark in his eyes that caught my attention. The men in Pleiades trudged through life, spending their days erasing the past. Praying for a future they didn’t believe would come. And the men in Tierra Muerta were angry, just trying to live for another day. Trying to keep hold of anything they could get their hands on. None of them had anything like that spark.

  I looked up at the thousands of tiny lights glowing above us. Earth was out there somewhere. We would reach it again. But right now, I saw something else too. The line of mountains, black against the less black sky—dawn wasn’t far off.

  “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Let’s go.” I stood, dusting sand off. Not that it helped much.

  “Okay.” Edison kept pace next to me as we headed in the right direction. “It’s your turn now. You’ve been through hell and yet here you are, dragging yourself across a freezing, dark desert. Why?”

  The prophesied return to Earth was such a central tenet of Pleiades, it seemed impossible Edison could even ask that question. Perhaps Citizens were as big a mystery to Curadores as they were to us. “How much do you know about the Rememberings?”

  “A bit. But if your God is calling the Citizens back home, surely he wouldn’t show you the shuttle just to bury it again.”

  I glanced down at my hands, then gave him a bitter smile. “Let’s just say I don’t completely trust God.”

  As dawn came, so did the wind. My book of fairy tales described Earth as having seasons like Summer and Winter, but Gabriel only had Dry, Less Dry, and Windy. It’s why Pleiades had regular Festivals—to mark the passage of the year. If I’d counted right we were still a few months shy of two years since I’d been exiled, and that put us right in the
middle of Windy.

  But today, the sun never properly took to the sky. The desert picked up sand and threw it in my face. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that this was more than just wind—a sandstorm was building. I forced myself to walk faster, but the wind pushed at us so we were moving even slower than before. We were running out of time.

  My eyes—trained to scan for salvage even in the dust—kept catching on right angles jutting out of curved dunes. Rust red against the blue sand. Ancient buildings finding their way to the surface only to be buried again by the next sandstorm. None of them were the shuttle.

  I was so focused on the dunes that I almost ran into Edison and the slideboard when he suddenly stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” I pulled my knife—turning in a slow circle—searching the desert for signs of another crew or dangerous animals.

  “Look at that!” Edison pointed at the sky. A shaft of sun had pierced the murky grey-blue haze. High above, grains of sand caught the light—swirling and dancing—before swallowing the sun again. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  There was gleeful awe in Edison’s voice, clueless to the danger we were in. I, on the other hand, had seen something like it. This was no passing dust devil. It was a Hwangsa—a wall of unforgiving sand rising straight up into the sky.

  “Let’s hope you live to remember it.”

  Edison heard the fear in my voice and his smile disappeared. His words—amplified by his suit—rose up over the wind. “How much farther?”

  “Just a kilometer or two, I think. But we’d better cover them fast.” I had an extremely good sense of direction, even in Tierra Muerta, where dunes shifted and disappeared every day. But there was nothing of the mountains or sky left to navigate by. Only clouds of sand churning on the horizon.

  I pulled on my sandmask and we fought our way up one dune and then another, and with each aching step, I went over our choices in my head. We had no shelter. No sand anchors. And no tarp to attach them to even if we did.

  There it was—there were no choices. There was only sand.

  And then . . . a tiny bit of not-sand.

  “There!” Edison saw it too. He pointed down at a silver wing sticking out of the ground. The shuttle was already half buried and the Hwangsa was coming to finish the job.

  Edison lunged down the dune toward the shuttle. But I grabbed his arm, stopping him.

  The first rule in Tierra Muerta was: head to high ground. When making camp, it gave you a defensible position. When scavenging, it gave you the best vantage point. In a sandstorm, assuming you could anchor your shelter, it gave you a fighting chance. It only took one mistake for you to learn that rule. And by then you were dead.

  Edison’s voice was low and calm, but there was a cord of urgency running through it. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  “Do you have any way to communicate with the other Curadores? Can they send help?”

  “Yes.” Then Edison was quiet for a second. His lips moved, but no sound came out of the speakers. He shook his head. “The storm’s messing with the signal. I’m not picking up anything.”

  And he switched on the speakers so I could hear the hiss of static coming through them. It matched the hiss of the wind in my ears.

  “In that case, if we stay up here, the sand will blast away your isolation suit and tear off my skin. If we go down there, we’ll be buried.”

  “Well?” Edison flashed me a manic grin. “Which is it?”

  “Well?” The wind lashed and pulled at my hair—raking through the tangles. Its hunger hot on my face. “Well . . . what are you waiting for? Run!”

  And I rushed down the dune. Edison gave a sort of battle cry, sprinting after me. Soon, he was in the lead, his giant legs pulling him and the slideboard across the sand. In spite of everything, it was magnificent to see. Almost like the magfly skimming across the ground—impossibly fast. He reached the shuttle long before me and was on his knees, clearing the door hatch and throwing the contents of the slideboard inside.

  The storm was on us now, scouring my skin. Sand clogging the filters of my sandmask. Sneaking in the edges. I ripped it off. Gasping for breath and getting a mouthful of grit.

  I couldn’t see anymore. I let the sloping ground pull me forward, hoping to God I hadn’t veered off course. Then I saw it, the outline of the shuttle visible only as an absence of sand.

  Edison pulled me in. But the sand easily followed us inside the dark, cramped shuttle. The shuttle was probably fifteen meters long, but we couldn’t move any deeper into its shelter because the narrow aisle was crammed with crates and bags. I dumped everything off the slideboard, and with Edison’s help, shoved it in front of the door.

  “It’s not enough!” I said, coughing as the insidious sand still found its way in. Edison grabbed a crate and started building a makeshift wall, and I joined him, stacking anything I could find, until finally, we’d barricaded ourselves in. I let myself sink to the floor and Edison put the jug of water in my hands—threading my fingers through the handle, like he did before. Making sure I could hold it.

  “We made it.” He smiled again, but this time it was a quiet smile. And he nodded to himself.

  But I didn’t find any comfort in his words. After all, I understood what we’d just done. Barricaded ourselves in. Now all I could hear was the howl of Tierra Muerta as it buried us alive.

  CHAPTER 5

  “OKAY,” EDISON SAID after I’d caught my breath. “Let’s see this radio of yours.”

  He upped the brightness on his headlamp and the shuttle was illuminated around us.

  “What the hell?” Edison’s breath rasped against his microphone as he took in the terrible scene.

  I’d known what to expect, but that didn’t make it any less grisly. The dead were everywhere—their mouths pulled tight in fear. Skin still covered their bones, stretched and molded like leather over the shape of their skulls. The desert had taken all the water from them but nothing more.

  Their matching clothes were still bright. Green jackets still buttoned up and khaki pants still creased. Like any second they would just get out of their seats and walk through the door.

  “May God find you worthy,” I murmured.

  Edison’s light reflected against a necklace on one of the corpses. He gingerly unfastened the clasp, pulling the necklace off so he could see it better.

  A black metal tag dangled from a chain of tiny silver beads. And I didn’t need to get any closer to know what was printed on it. It was a twin of the one in my pack. Lotus’s naming gift.

  “Ad Astra Research Colony.” He read the tiny letters engraved on one side, then flipped it over. There was a simple outline of a flower and more engraving. “LOTUS 900167845003.”

  “They’re all wearing them,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re for identification,” he said.

  “But they all say the same thing. Same words. Same number.”

  “You can read this?” Edison sounded surprised.

  “Not all Citizens believe curiosity to be a sin.” Just most of them. Very few Citizens could read. Writing was considered to be one more relic of the Colonists’ arrogance. The Abuelos preached that illiteracy was a sign of humility. And to be honest, there was very little opportunity to learn. But my mother had taught us in secret. Thinking of the book, heavy in my pack, I didn’t know whether to hate her or love her for it. Either way, the book had brought me here.

  Edison and I moved farther into the claustrophobic space. I tiptoed past the bodies, like I was afraid we’d wake them. I brushed against one of them, knocking off its hat. There was a crunch of glass and Edison looked down to see what he’d stepped on.

  “Don’t touch it.” I knew Edison was wearing an isolation suit, but all I could see was the scene playing itself over again. Edison’s eyes growing bloodshot. The fever raging though him. Blood leaching out
of him until there was nothing left.

  “What is it?” He peered down at the shards.

  “It was a glass tube . . . from that box.” I pointed to the fluorescent orange plastic case lying open on the floor. Thick black foam lined the inside, with a space hollowed out for the now-broken glass tube. There was a second orange case nearby. This one was still closed, but a huge crack ran across the lid. And there was an emblem on the broken case too—three overlapping circles with a fourth in the center. Judging by the passengers in the shuttle, that didn’t mean anything good.

  “I was up front trying the radio when Suji opened the thing.”

  “Tell me everything that happened.”

  I shut my eyes, and as I told him about that day, it replayed in my mind. Like a vivid nightmare before it fades. How I’d spotted the shuttle after a dust storm—silver against the bluish sand. How Suji and I had pried off the door and pushed our way inside while the rest of the crew worked to uncover the body of the shuttle. How we played with the radio, pressing buttons until we found something. At first, it was just a recorded voice playing over and over.

  “Lotus Colony, this is Homebase. You are under temporary quarantine. Enter verification and transmit on priority frequency so emergency evacuations can be coordinated.”

  “Emergency evacuations,” Suji snorted. “Probably been saying that for five centuries.”

  “Then why didn’t anyone ever answer?”

  “Maybe they did. Maybe Earth didn’t give a shit.”

  “Then why keep playing the message?” It didn’t make sense. Everyone always assumed that contact with Earth had been cut off when the plague started. That Earth had abandoned us. And yet, here was this message, traveling through the stars to reach us. “Someone must have heard it.”

  “Well, these folks weren’t in any shape to do anything about it.” She looked over her shoulder at the desiccated corpses.

  “But surely someone else on Gabriel had a radio.”

  Suji shrugged. “Maybe no one had a chance. Imagine it, Leica. There were millions of people in this colony. Not hundreds. Or thousands like Pleiades, but millions. The fact that anyone was spared the first wave of Red Death was a miracle in itself.”