Interesting.
Ana shrugs off her pack and lays it flat on the ground. The pack has a wide buckle on the front, and when she unlatches it, the whole thing unfolds into a T-shape, the heavy nylon frame bulging with pockets. Each compartment is labeled: CLIMBING GEAR. BEDROLL. INFLATABLE RAFT. FIRST AID. VITALS.
She opens VITALS to find packets upon packets of food: macaroni-and-cheese; butter wafers; desiccated goat cheese; dried tropical fruit mix. There’s a large squishy tube that must be a collapsed water bottle. But where will she find water to fill it?
The thought makes her throat burn. Then she sees a pocket labeled WATER. Inside are hundreds of pill packets. She pulls out a handful. The packaging is plain silver, unlabeled except for a small ID number in the corner of each packet. She juggles the packets in her hand for a moment and then thinks, Why not? If she doesn’t have water, she’s dead anyway. It’s worth a try.
She punches out a tablet no bigger than her thumbnail and pops it into her mouth.
At first there’s nothing. Then she feels a fizzing on her tongue, then—ooooh, it’s like a fountain opens inside her mouth … a fountain of stale, artificial water, true, but for this second it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted. And it’s just enough; it fills her mouth but doesn’t overflow. She puffs her cheeks a little to hold it all in, swirls it around inside her mouth, and then swallows.
Dried water, she muses. Maybe the Ana she can’t remember would see this as an everyday occurrence. Maybe that Ana turned on a faucet and little white pills came tumbling out into her cup. Somehow, she doesn’t think so. But right now they are just what she needs, and that’s more than good enough.
She sits and leans back against the crater wall, thinking it’s probably a good idea to rest a moment, countdown or not. She could use some time to really study the map, figure out how she’s going to travel all that distance, think through a better plan than the slapdash thrown-together one she has now, which is nothing more than: Don’t think. Keep moving!
Make a plan, then follow it through. In some deep core of herself, Ana knows that’s how she works best. She can even see the quick flash of a ballpoint pen scribbling Things to Do on a fresh sheet of lined paper, another non-memory gusting around in her sinkhole of a mind. So, planning. And recharging.
Then she hears it.
The sound is faint at first, like something on the edge of her imagination, but that MRRROOOOAR is not something that can be mistaken for anything else. In a second Ana is on her feet, hand over her eyes to block the glare.
If the sound is real, then the mouth was real, and the whole brown monster-body-creature along with it.
This time, the noise doesn’t dissipate when she stops to listen. It gets louder. At first she can’t tell where it’s coming from, but then she sees a cloud of dust in the distance, puffing and rolling along the ground.
It’s headed in her direction.
Reassembling her pack and hoisting it onto her back, Ana spins around to face the crater wall. There’s a crack in the rock face just out of reach, and farther up she can see a few workable handholds. It will have to be good enough.
A quick glance over her shoulder shows that the thing is nearer already, like a storm cloud closing in, loud and growing louder. How does it cover ground so fast? At this rate, it’ll be on her in fifteen or twenty minutes. Maybe less.
Ana turns back to the wall. With some kind of practiced motion she gives a little jump and just reaches the crack, jamming her fingers into place and bracing her toes against the rock face. She pulls up hard, stretches her right leg up to reach the next crevice, shifts, and climbs again. The rock is solid for the most part, but little cascades of pebbles skitter down in her wake, and the higher she goes, the more precarious her position feels. Any exhilaration she might have felt at the climb is canceled out by the beast behind her. The minutes slip away to the pounding beat of her heart as she scales the sheer rock face, another leg up, another too-small hole to stuff her fingers into. Just barely making it. Just barely is enough. Until finally, she’s nearly to the top.
Behind her, the roar is now deafening. How close is that thing? How long since she started her climb? She doesn’t want to look, but she can’t help it. Just a quick glance over her shoulder—
Long white teeth raging out of a cloud of reddish-brown dust.
Swallowing a shriek, Ana turns back to the wall and sees a root hanging over the top of the cliff face. With no time to test its strength, she grabs hold of it, shifting all her weight onto the growth in one desperate tug.
In a shower of dirt and pebbles, the root slowly loosens, pulling away from the rock wall. No! The dust cloud gusts behind her, buffeting her and coating her like sea spray—like a giant’s breath.
Her feet are still jammed into the wall, but both hands are around the unstable root and she’s tilting backward, rapidly losing her balance.
Ana feels herself begin to slip.
FOUR
00:23:22:59
Then a sharp sound cuts through the roar: “Here! Grab this!”
What? Ana looks up, squinting straight into the overhead sun. There’s something right above her head. A hand?
“Come on!”
With a desperate lunge, Ana grabs the outstretched hand—and is pulled over the lip of the crater.
She scrambles to her feet to find a boy standing in front of her. She’s so shocked to find herself facing another person that at first, all she can do is stare. He’s tall, with light shaggy hair, maybe in his late teens or a little older. Around my age, she thinks, then wonders how old she is.
“Thank you,” she gasps, almost a reflex, and yet it feels like a vast understatement.
The boy nods, but all his attention is down in the crater. The ground shakes as the creature pounds itself against the cliff wall. Standing well back from the edge and leaning forward, Ana gets her first good look. It appears to be some kind of giant monstrous worm. It has a huge lumpy head and a long dirt-colored body that disappears into a cloud of dust.
“But what is it doing here?” the boy mutters.
Ana turns to look at him more closely. He’s wearing a gray jumpsuit with a black vest, sturdy hiking boots, a towering backpack. Ana’s heartbeat quickens.
“The rocket,” she says, suddenly getting it. “The open door. You were in that other compartment!”
He turns and looks at her, an odd expression on his face.
“I’m Ana,” she says quickly.
“Ana,” he says, his smile tentative, as if she’s a strange puzzle he’s trying to figure out. “I’m Todd.”
The earth trembles under them again, and Ana steps farther back from the edge. The boy—Todd—shudders. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That creature freaks me out. I can’t figure out what it’s doing here.”
“But you did come on the rocket?” she insists.
Todd nods. She doesn’t remember him, of course, no more than she does anything else in her life, but something about the way his hair hangs across his forehead has the unexpected ping of familiarity.
Ana smiles awkwardly. “Sorry. I’m—well, I’ve got some memory issues. Surgical retrograde amnesia. That’s what my letter said. I have no personal memories at all. Just basic knowledge and some muscle memory, though I don’t seem to have any trouble with keeping new memories. I can remember everything since I woke up on the rocket.”
Todd is silent for a second, then says, “I guess I have the same condition. My first memory is waking up in the rocket.” He raises his left arm, pulls down his sleeve, and flashes his own circlet at her. Ana can see the numbers on his band moving. “I know we’re here from Earth. We’re supposed to follow the map and reach the colony on the shores of Maraqa. That’s about it.”
“Maybe the memory wipe is standard procedure,” Ana says, but she can’t suppress a stab of disappointment. There was a moment when she’d thought this might be her chance at getting some insight into who she is and why she’s here. On the other h
and, things are no worse than they were an hour ago—in fact, they’re quite a bit better. She has a companion, and two broken minds have to be better than one.
“We ought to keep moving,” she says, glancing down at her circlet. “Twenty-three hours sounds like ages, but I have a feeling—”
There’s a crack like thunder, and the edge of the crater wall collapses, the ground dropping away beneath Ana’s feet. For a second she’s part of a cascading rockslide; then Todd grabs her backpack and pulls her free.
“We need to put some distance between us and that thing,” Todd says.
“No kidding,” Ana says. “Let’s go!”
Todd sets a brisk, steady pace, his boots kicking up puffs of dusty soil. His purposeful strides make it clear he knows where he’s going, but he hasn’t activated his map. “You know the way from here?” Ana asks.
He nods. “I pulled it up just a few minutes ago. There aren’t a lot of different path options at this point.”
They are following a narrow, dusty path that winds through the rugged landscape for a mile or two before disappearing into a dark bank of trees: the Dead Forest, which dominates the near horizon. Beyond the forest, the Timor Mountains stand like a row of sentinels blocking their view of the sea. Ana thinks back to her own bird’s-eye view of the route. Todd is right. There’s just one way to go forward.
“Something else, though,” he says. He glances at her sideways. “This amnesia? I’m not sure how it is for you, but I do seem to know certain things about this planet—the terrain, the landscape, facts. You know?” He looks anxious, as if he’s begging her to tell him his condition makes some kind of sense.
“It sounds a little like my muscle memory,” Ana says. “My body does its own thing sometimes, before my mind even catches on.”
“Who knows how this stuff works?” he says.
Ana feels a grin pulling at the sides of her mouth. A word comes to her: schadenfreude, and her mind fills in the blank: feeling joy at someone else’s suffering. That’s not exactly what this is, but knowing that her new companion is just as broken as she is makes the uncertainty and emptiness of their situation somehow easier to bear.
The path is little more than a faint trail in the rocky soil, with sparse, coarse vegetation that looks nothing like Earth grass. It’s wild and untamed, but just the fact that it’s bona fide plant life, here on this alien planet, is pretty amazing. As they walk, the worm’s grinding and pounding grows fainter until eventually it fades altogether. Then it’s just silence and rough terrain and a bright pink sky overhead. Just a boy and a girl out for a casual afternoon stroll.
Or so Ana tries to tell herself.
“I’m sorry for taking off on you back at the rocket,” Todd says after a few minutes.
“Don’t be,” Ana says. “How could you even know I was there? I wasn’t expecting you, either.”
He tilts his head and studies her, seeming to come to a decision. “Still. It’s a rough world out here. We’ll be better off sticking together.”
Together. Now there’s an interesting word. She’d resigned herself to being fully alone for this journey, and while she’s thrilled to be proven wrong, that core of self-reliance remains. Another behavioral muscle memory, perhaps? Still, if they’re going to be companions, they should try to find some way to connect. But can two people really get to know each other when neither of them properly know themselves? “Tell me everything you remember,” she says. “Whatever’s there, start to finish.”
The story Todd tells is nearly identical to her own: circlet, letter, mission, map-with-dotted-direction-line, and all. The only difference in their stories lies in her early introduction to the worm. Ana grimaces. They can’t build a shared past, that’s clear. But maybe, going forward together, they can jointly make some sense of right now. “So here we are,” she says. “Twin amnesiacs off exploring an alien world.”
Todd grins and it’s like a sunrise breaking over his pale face, triggering again that indefinable quickening inside her chest, that reaching for … something. Ana finds herself suddenly needing to look away. “So back to the memory-loss thing,” she says.
“What about it?”
“Don’t you wonder what the deal is?” she asks. “Why would whoever’s in charge of this expedition send us to an alien planet with no memories? What possible advantage could there be?”
Todd’s eyebrows come together as he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll have to figure it out as we go along.” He clears his throat.
Ana keeps her expression steady, but inwardly she wishes she had half the chilled-out temperament Todd seems to possess. He looks so much more comfortable with his condition than she is.
On the other hand, why should she be comfortable with this? Having a blank, empty mind is not natural, it’s not right, and—sure, for now all she can do is take things as they are. But one thing’s certain: If there are any answers to be had anywhere on this planet, she’s going to find them.
Whatever it takes.
The scenery stays stubbornly the same as the trail winds on—an endless display of flat, barren earth with scattered and struggling vegetation. It’s like a world that used to have life and is clinging desperately to what little is left. Overhead and to their rear, the twin suns smolder in the bright sky.
As they walk, Ana catches herself more than once following the curve of Todd’s shoulder, gaze lingering at the hollow of his throat before she jerks her attention away. What is going on with her? She wishes she could blame this on muscle memory, like her eyes are used to lingering on Todd. But she’s pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Still …
“I think we knew each other before,” she says suddenly.
Todd jumps a little, then says, “Well, we did come in the same rocket.”
“I know. It just …” She can’t express that flare of knowing she gets every time she looks at him. “It seems like something more than that. I don’t know. I’m probably crazy.”
Todd shifts his pack around on his back. “Do you want to take a few minutes’ rest?” he asks. “We’ve been going for an hour straight, maybe more. Whatever that creature was, it’s long gone by now.”
Ana frowns, and her eyes flick to her circlet. “What about the countdown? Don’t we need to keep moving?”
Todd casts an uncertain look at the trail ahead of them. “Yeah, I guess,” he says.
Ana frowns. “Got anything more than that?”
“What?”
“Well, you said you know stuff about this place,” Ana says. “So what happens when the timer hits zero? Do you know?”
He’s already shaking his head. “Not exactly …”
But something’s making him jumpy, and the idea that he might know more than he’s saying is suddenly too much. “Come on,” she snaps. “You obviously know something. This timer, all these seconds ticking away and toward what? Death? Life? Destruction? Dinner?”
Todd grins, then seems to catch himself, and his face goes serious again. “Okay, this is what I do know. You’ve noticed the movement of the suns, right?”
Ana squints at the sky. “Sure. The bright one seems to be doing all the moving so far.”
“Torus,” Todd says. “That’s the brighter sun. Its orbital period takes about a day on-planet. We’re in a binary star system, of course, but Anum, up there”—he motions to the steady overhead orb—“moves much more slowly. You can hardly track it with the naked eye. I think Anum’s orbital period takes about a year.”
“Okay,” Ana says, “thanks for the astronomy bulletin, but—”
“But,” he interrupts, “once each day—the middle of the day, I guess it would be considered—Torus passes directly in Anum’s path. It’s called the sunsmeet, and we don’t want to be outside for it.”
“Wait … that’s it? That’s the big countdown, some kind of eclipse?”
Todd frowns. “It’s more than just an eclipse. The solar response is fierce and dangerous. Trust me, we need to
get to the colony by zero hour, before the sunsmeet.”
Ana nearly stops walking. “Wait, a colony?”
Todd nods, turning to continue down the narrow path. Head spinning, Ana turns to follow him. But as she thinks about it, she realizes there’s an echo of recognition around the word. It fits. They’re headed for a settlement on this planet, where they will find safety.
This bit of knowledge warms her as she follows Todd down the narrow path. The countdown has shifted from a threatening specter to a friendly cheerleader. Keep going! the glowing numbers seem to chant. Just reach your destination and everything will be okay!
And something else: a colony means people, people who will know what’s going on, who maybe can even fix their memories—or who can at least fill in the gaps. Relief ripples through her.
Then they step around a bend and her feeling of relief slips away. About a half mile ahead the path dips down a shallow incline, then leads straight into a bank of trees so dense it looks like an impassable wall.
The Dead Forest.
They’ve been making their way toward it for hours, but now that they’re right here, she can’t believe it looks so … dead. Ana shivers. A name is just a name, right? But its still, silent look, the dark cast of the shadows between the trees, sets her nerves on edge. Something in there isn’t right.
On the path ahead of her, Todd has stopped walking. Ana thinks back to his earlier hesitation, of how he knows the landscape. …
“This is what you’ve been nervous about, isn’t it?” she asks.
When he turns toward her, though, there is a look of purpose in his eyes. “We’ve got to go through it,” he says. “There’s no other way. It’s just a forest.”
She decides to ignore the slight tremor in his voice. “Just a forest,” she repeats, surprising herself by reaching out and giving Todd’s hand a quick squeeze. The touch of his skin makes her suddenly remember Bailey’s hands, her sparkling ring, and she finds herself glancing around, looking for a shimmer. But there are no floating distractions here, just the ever-present suns and the Dead Forest looming ahead.
Paradox Page 3
