by Kate MacLeod
Scout nodded and sat quietly, hands folded on her lap. Bo closed his eyes. A soft light within the plastic of the device started to pulsate, slowly at first but then brighter and faster.
Then Bo opened his eyes and took the thing off his head.
“What did it do?” Scout asked, but he didn’t answer. He just took another object from his sleeve, an egg-shaped piece of crystal, and touched the end of the thing’s spine to the egg. The crystal egg pulsated and glowed for a moment, and then the lights faded out.
“Here,” Bo said, placing the crystal egg in her hands. “Now, look into it.”
Scout hesitated, but it seemed harmless enough. She raised it to her eye and peered into it.
She could see a series of low, rolling hills covered with grasses bending and swirling in a gusty wind. The sky over the hills was a deep, dark blue like nothing she had ever seen.
Then, from behind a distant hill, a blur of brown motion appeared, quickly disappearing between that hill and the next. It appeared again, closer this time, then dropped away again. The third time, she could finally tell that it was a horse running towards her. A horse, just like they had on Old Earth.
Then it reached her, standing before her and tossing its head, making the rich brown of its mane dance and spin in the breeze. It looked at her with intelligent eyes and bent its head to nose at her. Scout was so startled she dropped the crystal egg.
But, of course, it couldn’t really touch her. And yet it had seemed so real.
“You see?” Bo asked.
“That was your horse?” Scout asked.
“One of them,” Bo said. “My favorite. I miss him terribly. But we’ll be returning soon, and I can introduce him to you. Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?” Scout repeated. “What am I supposed to remember?”
Bo, who had started to lift the thing to place it on her head, set it back down on his lap and gave her a look of profound sadness. “Scout. You lost your whole family. Not just your family, but your home. Every keepsake, every recording, every image. I thought you’d like to have something of them you could carry with you always.”
Scout looked down at his crystal egg in her hands. “I don’t really remember them,” she said. “I try, but . . .” She couldn’t go on. She wiped a drop of moisture that had fallen to mar the surface of the egg, but then there was another and another.
“Scout,” Bo said, his voice infinitely gentle. “This will help. It can pull out things you don’t even know you remember. I certainly didn’t specifically recall every blade of grass on my steppe, and yet you saw it. Give it a try.”
Scout wiped at her face but then nodded. Bo put the device gently over her head. Scout waited for it to tingle or something, but it didn’t feel like anything.
“All right,” Bo said. “Close your eyes and pick your memory. The last time you saw them, or your happiest memory—whatever feels strongest to you. Ready?”
“Ready,” Scout said, closing her eyes. She tried to summon the image from the last time she had seen her family: her brother pulling at her father’s beard, her mother waving at her as she pedaled her bike away.
But the image wouldn’t come. Instead, she saw herself the moment the asteroid had hit the city, the moment she and Shadow had been thrown from the bike and cut with a thousand tiny shards—all that remained of the dome that couldn’t protect the city from such an attack.
She kept her head down and her eyes closed, trying to summon the other memory. She didn’t even realize Bo had taken the device from her head until she heard him sigh softly and looked up to see him looking in another crystal egg.
“I messed it up,” Scout said.
“No, no,” Bo said, slipping the egg away in a pocket. “I said to find your strongest memory, and I’m afraid you did. But we can try again, if you’re ready?”
“Yes,” Scout said. “I can do it now.”
“Very well.” Bo draped the device over her head again, and Scout closed her eyes, willing that other memory away and focusing on the scent of bread. Her parents had been bakers. The smell of fresh bread always made her homesick. Always.
This time when she opened her eyes, Bo was smiling. He handed the egg to her, and she held it in her hands, almost afraid to look.
But she was more afraid not to look. She lifted it up to her face and peered inside.
There was her family, standing in the sunlight under an indigo sky so deeply blue not even the dome overhead could dilute it. Her father’s beard was as thick and curly as she remembered it, and her mother’s hair was the deep honey-gold shade that was also Scout’s natural hair color. Her baby brother in her father’s arms was plumper than she remembered, with a thick patch of dark curls centered on the very back of his skull as if it were a hat he had pushed back so he could scratch the top of his head.
Scout gazed into the egg for what felt like an eternity, but she just couldn’t get enough of the details. Her mother’s eyes had been green? Had she ever noticed that? And her father had a scar across his forearm. Was that real?
Scout felt a dog’s wet nose pressed to her knee and lowered the egg to see them both there, looking up at her.
“Thank you,” Scout said, holding the egg tight in her hands.
“I want to do one more, if I may,” Bo said.
“I don’t know, this is already so much,” Scout protested.
“Just one more,” Bo promised, putting the device back on her head.
“But which memory?” Scout asked. Most of her other memories were not so good, things better left to be forgotten.
“This is a bit of an experiment, but it’s something I’ve been honing for a while,” Bo said. “I want you to think of everyone you knew as a kid. Your family, but also your neighbors and classmates and friends. Don’t worry about holding on to any one memory, just let them all wash over you. Ready?”
Scout nodded, closing her eyes again.
At first, she didn’t think she could do it. All of that stuff was so far back in the past she didn’t even remember what any of those people had looked like. She had barely remembered her own family.
But then images started coming to her. The woman who lived next to her parents’ bakery who had kept bees in her yard and sold the honey as well as jam and would let Scout have little tastes. Just to be sure it was still good, the woman had said.
And her teacher at school. Scout didn’t remember her name, but she remembered the way she had worn her hair in a bun on the back of her head. Scout had never understood why, since she always had to dig underneath to scratch at her head. Who piled their hair against the itchiest spot on their scalp? It made no sense.
Then there were the kids in her neighborhood who would gather after school. There was one boy in particular who was good at making up the most fun games they could all play.
Scout pressed her hands to her face, but there was no stopping the tears. “I can’t do more,” she said from behind her hands.
“I think we have enough,” Bo said, taking the device off her head.
“What was the point of that?” Scout demanded, angrily swiping the tears from her face. “They’re all dead and gone. What’s the point in remembering them all now?”
“Because they knew you,” Bo said, putting another egg in her hands.
“I don’t think I want to see this,” Scout said.
“Please,” Bo said, folding her hands over the egg. “I would scarcely want to show you something that would make you turn against me, now would I?”
“I guess not,” Scout said. She still didn’t want to look.
Bo bent to pick up Shadow and hold him on his lap as he scratched at his ears. Clearly, he was willing to wait all day for Scout to work up the nerve to look into the final egg.
Scout bit her lip, then lifted the egg to her face.
She had expected to see some sort of collage of faces, all the forgotten friends and people who had cared for her once upon a time, but that wasn’t what the egg con
tained.
It was mostly white space, as if the device hadn’t known what background to fill in and so had left it blank. But in the center was a girl, a little girl of about ten. She was wearing a shirt far too big for her and a snap-brim bush hat that nearly dwarfed her head.
Then the girl swept the hat away, spinning on the toe of one foot, trying for as many turns as she could before having to put the other foot down. Her honey-blonde curls were caught up in little pigtails, tied low behind her ears so they wouldn’t interfere with the hat that she always, always wore.
“Me,” Scout said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “That’s me.”
“That’s you,” Bo said, “through the eyes of everyone who loved you. That’s you still, if you can remember her.”
Then he put Shadow in her lap, Shadow who was the only thing she still had from those happier days. Scout buried her face in the soft fur of his neck and let the tears fall.
She had often thought of all she had lost that day when the asteroid fell, but until this very moment, she had never thought that one of those things had been herself. Herself as a happy little girl surrounded by love. Someone she could never be again.
Bo reached out to squeeze her hand but didn’t try to talk to her. He must have sensed there was nothing he could say. But holding her hand, his grip both strong and comforting, said enough.
18
Scout returned to the hospital room to find Geeta awake and Emilie out of the world of the virtual library. They were standing close together speaking in whispers, and they looked up, startled, as Scout came into the room. Geeta looked relieved to see that is was her and not a hospital worker. Emilie did too, for a flash, but then she scowled at Scout.
“He got to you,” she accused.
“No,” Scout said, turning away to herd both dogs into the room and close the door before unclipping their leashes.
“Yes, he did,” Emilie said, walking closer to her to examine her face. Scout felt her cheeks flush but met Emilie’s eyes unflinchingly. “Yep. You’ve picked a side.”
“I haven’t,” Scout insisted. “I did accept his invitation to see his ship, but that seems only fair.”
“A-ha,” Emilie said, crossing her arms. “How did he get to you? Promise you your own moon, or just gaze at you with those gorgeously dark eyes of his?”
Scout faltered with her answer, momentarily distracted by Emilie’s assessment of Bo’s eyes. Were they attractive? She hadn’t noticed. She wouldn’t have thought Emilie would notice such a thing either.
Then she gave herself a shake. “It wasn’t like that. Believe me, I’ve had that done to me once, and I’m never falling for it again.”
She spoke with a shade more passion than she had intended, but it made Emilie take a step back and hold up her hands in surrender.
“Okay,” Emilie said. “But seriously, Scout. What’s changed?”
Scout thought about keeping what she had a secret, but that seemed like a lousy way to treat the girls who had become her friends. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and held out the two crystal eggs.
“What are these?” Emilie asked.
“Look through them,” Scout said. She hated the way her voice was already choking up, but she swallowed it down and kept her gaze steady on first Emilie and then Geeta as she stepped around her sister’s coffin to take one of the eggs. They both peered into them for a long moment, then traded a glance as they traded eggs.
Finally, they lowered the eggs and placed them back onto Scout’s palm. Scout saw Geeta clutch at the neckline of her jumpsuit and knew she was really touching the little data recorder she wore hanging from her neck, the one that contained every video and image she had of her own dead parents.
“Sorry,” Emilie said.
“He hasn’t won me over,” Scout said, putting the eggs back in her pocket. “But I did agree to go over there. Perhaps we should all go. We can talk to his doctors, tour his medical facility. Pry into whatever we want to. We should know, whatever we choose, that we made as informed a choice as we could.”
Geeta looked back at her sister. “I can’t go. But you two should.”
“Do we want to be split up like that?” Emilie asked.
“It will be safe,” Geeta said, settling back into her customary chair. “The tribunal enforcers won’t let anyone cheat.”
“They won’t let them outright break the law,” Emilie said. “But everyone here is furiously cheating as much as they can get away with.”
Geeta just shrugged, not arguing the point.
“All right, I’ll go with Scout to see the other Tajaki ship,” Emilie agreed. “But only because I don’t think Scout should go alone. But what about the dogs?”
“Perhaps they should stay here,” Geeta suggested. “Bo might try to take them from you under some pretext, turn them into hostages.”
Scout bit her lip hard, looking down at the sleeping face of Seeta under the glass cover, the constant warm breeze the rest of them couldn’t feel dancing through her hair. It was far too late to worry about hostages.
“Room, can you ask Sparrow to join us?” Emilie said.
“She’s on her way,” the disembodied voice replied.
“Do you really think it’s the room itself that listens and talks?” Scout whispered to Emilie.
Emilie grinned back. “Obviously not. It’s a person listening in and answering over a speaker too small to see. We have that kind of tech back home. Still, any opportunity to encourage them to underestimate us is an opportunity not to be missed.”
The door chimed a moment later, and Emilie let Sparrow in. Sparrow smiled up at them all expectantly.
“Listen, Sparrow,” Emilie said. “Scout and I are making a little trip over to the other ship. We won’t stay long, but can you hang here with Geeta? Just in case the dogs need anything.”
“Sure,” Sparrow said. “You’re going to the other ship?” There was no disguising the disappointment in her voice.
“Just to see,” Scout said. “We’ll be back in a bit.”
“We want to be fair,” Emilie said.
“Okay,” Sparrow said, but she didn’t sound convinced. Scout remembered what it was like, that first year after her family had gone. It felt like everywhere she went, people kept abandoning her all over again. They had just been going about their normal lives, none of it had actually been about Scout, but at ten it was hard to see that.
Scout gave Sparrow a hug, which caught the girl by surprise. “The dogs were just at the park, so they’ll probably nap now. I hope we didn’t pull you away from engineering?”
“No, I was just wandering the marketplace,” Sparrow said. “I’ll see you when you get back?”
“Of course,” Scout said. Then she and Emilie were out the door.
Scout had no idea where the airlock between the two ships was located, but Emilie had been studying both ships’ schematic—among a thousand other things—when she was accessing the libraries and knew just where to go.
“I’m worried about Geeta,” Scout said, keeping her voice low, although she had no idea if anyone was still listening in. “Bo seems a much more honorable person than the Months, and I think we’d be safer there, as well as it being a better choice for all the descendants of the colony ship Tajaki 47, but I don’t know how we can make her see that.”
“She doesn’t trust the Months,” Emilie told her. “We were just talking about it when you came in. But she does trust Dr. Tajaki. Geeta has a little training and a lot of natural gift when it comes to reading people.”
“So there’s going to be no moving her?” Scout asked.
“Probably not,” Emilie said. “But I’m going to examine every bit of the medical area to be sure they have everything Seeta might need and then persuade the doctors to go over to see Geeta. Their words won’t sway her, but her read of them just might.”
“I suppose that’s the best we can do,” Scout said. They had crossed the marketplace and were back in the labyr
inth of corridors carved out of the metal. Emilie kept them to the large main hallway, walking with determined steps.
“I’m not sure we can trust either side here,” Emilie said. “What Bo told us appears true, but there are lots of little things that aren’t quite right. I think he skirts the laws a bit more adeptly than the Months. He hides what he’s up to better. The Months didn’t even know he was here, and they have access to the same tech he does. I think that makes him more dangerous.”
“To us?” Scout asked.
“Maybe not the three of us,” Emilie said. “But to all of the people of Amatheon? He might not be the best choice.”
“I wish the Torreses had got to us first,” Scout said, dropping her voice even lower.
“We all wish that,” Emilie said. “And yet they didn’t. We have to go on from where we are.”
The airlock meshed perfectly with the end of the hallway; the only sign they were in a different space was the walls going from machined metal to a bright white plasticky material.
Bo’s ship was nothing like the Months’ ship. When they reached the end of the airlock, the corridor became a rich, honey-gold material that Scout just had to touch. It felt warm, like a living thing.
“Wood?” Scout asked.
“A remarkable simulation,” Emilie said. Her tone was trying for sarcastic, but there was no hiding the fact that she did find the material remarkable.
The lights spaced along the walls flickered warmly, like flames dancing over gas spigots, but that too was just illusion.
The corridor ended in a square room where two people were waiting for them, a short man of late middle age with squinty eyes and very pale skin and a woman of about thirty with a cheerful smile and her long, black hair pulled up into a high ponytail, the ends of it still reaching her waist behind her. Both of them were dressed all in royal blue, tight leggings over slipper-like shoes and long tunics. Frank had another sleeveless vest over his tunic. It fell past his knees, but Scout guessed what he wanted it for was the many bulging pockets.
“Greetings, Scout Shannon, Emilie Tonnelier,” the woman said, upping the wattage of her smile a few ticks. “I am Rona, the first mate of this vessel, and this is Frank, the head librarian.” Frank stepped up to Emilie with a little bow.
