by Amie Kaufman
I take a step back, caught off-guard. “Hey, I was just offering to tell you how to slim down on your supplies. I’m not taking you anywhere. I’ve got somewhere to be, and you’re just going to slow me down. You’re not the only one trying to beat the other raiding parties to the temple—for all I know they’re already there.”
“They’re definitely already there.” Jules lifts his head, sounding anything but concerned. In fact, some of his anger is retreating and leaving something a lot like smugness in its wake. “But fine, go ahead. Run around the place and grab what scraps you can. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and stumble across a solar cell everyone else miraculously, inexplicably missed, and make your fortune in a billion-to-one fairy-tale ending. Now, if you’d tell me what to leave out of my pack, I’d appreciate it.”
For all his words are polite, the know-it-all attitude—so charming just a few minutes ago—makes me want to scream. “Those scraps are going to—” Save me. Save my sister. Be the difference between life and wishing I were dead. But my voice tangles in my throat. “You know what, never mind. I’ve lost too much time as it is. Screw you.” I grab my pack, shoving its straps into place and reaching for my helmet and goggles.
“There’s nothing there, you know,” says Jules, not bothering to get up. I ignore him, buckling the straps of my helmet to my pack and slinging the goggles around my neck. “The original astronauts and survey teams brought back everything they could. All you’ll find there is an empty tomb full of angry scavengers.”
I kick my empty can of beans aside and scan the canyon ahead, mapping out my route, trying to figure out if there’s any way to make up this lost time and get an edge over the others. His words are ringing in my head, though, with the horrible sting of truth to them: an empty tomb full of angry scavengers. If that’s true, it’s the end for me. No ticket back to Earth, no payday, no hope for…I swallow. Then Jules adds, as calmly as if he were bidding me a good morning, “Amelia, every single one of those groups is looking in the wrong place.”
The words freeze me, in spite of myself—and after a split second of hesitation, and of kicking myself, I turn back toward him. “What did you say?”
“Which part?” The question is polite, so polite I could punch him in his smug little…But he doesn’t wait for me to answer and goes on. “I said that they’re all looking in the wrong place. At the risk of being a little forward with a girl I just met, bigger isn’t always better.”
A little while ago, his innuendo would have made me laugh. But I can’t care about any of that right now. The big temple complex to the east is the one the astronauts started exploring, the one where the Los Angeles solar cell came from, the one Mink and every other scavenger operation is aiming for. But if there aren’t any artifacts left in there, or if I’m robbed or captured by another operation, I’ll have nothing.
I’ll be too far in debt with Mink to pay my way off the planet and back through the portal to Earth, much less have enough left over to get to my sister and—I gulp for a breath. “How would you know?” My voice shakes. “The International Alliance has had it under guard for months, that’s the whole reason we all had to get dropped off way out here, to avoid IA satellite detection.”
Jules seems to hear the shake in my voice, and some of the arrogance leaches out of his face. “It’s a red herring,” he says quietly, and there’s a bitter note there now without that smugness to hide it. “I know the Undying Broadcast by heart, the words and equations that brought us all here, in its original language. It said the race who found Gaia would be tested. You really think the test is ‘go in this fancy building and pick up our leftovers’? Amelia, Oxford’s xenoarchaeology department is world-renowned, and I grew up falling asleep under the table as the world’s top experts debated these very subjects. The big temple to the east is, yes, very big, and shiny, and attractive. And there might still be a few scraps in there worth some cash. But while humans are hardwired to think ‘bigger is better,’ there’s no reason whatsoever an alien race would think that way as well. And I’m betting my own life on the fact that it’s a decoy, because I’ve studied the data in that broadcast and I know which one of the smaller outlying temples holds the real treasure trove. And I can take you there.” Now he does get to his feet, his amusement gone, face grave.
My heart’s thrashing so hard it hurts, blood rushing in my ears and threatening to deafen me. I have only one shot at this. His distaste is obvious—he’s no happier about offering his help to a scavenger and a raider than I am about having to put all my faith in this stranger, whose goals definitely aren’t mine. If I trust him and leave the big temple to the others, and it turns out he’s lying, I’ll have nothing. Even if I survive the next few weeks, I’ll come to wish I hadn’t when I can’t pay my way off and Mink leaves me here marooned millions of light-years from Earth without enough air to last more than a few days. And if I ignore him, and get to the complex even a day or two after the other parties, I’ll be sifting through the dust they leave behind, trying to cobble together a fortune from broken tablets and scraps of stone.
My mouth is dry when my voice returns, and I blurt, “You know I’m one of dozens, right? Plenty of teams figured out how to get here, after the Addison interview.” I swallow hard, trying to clear the rasp from my throat. “Misleading me won’t do anything to preserve your precious artifacts, because someone else will be there anyway to take them. All you’d be doing is destroying me.” Fear floods my voice with that last sentence, my eyes burning. I wish I were wearing my goggles, my breather mask. Maybe then he wouldn’t see me fighting not to cry.
Jules’s expression changes, the tight mouth softening, the brows lifting a little. He takes half a step toward me, but then thinks better of it and stops. “I’m not trying to do that,” he says quietly. “I’m saying you’re right. My only hope is to reach what I’m looking for as quickly as I can.” He takes a breath. “You’re going to get a lot farther out here than I will alone, I think we can both agree on that. But there’s a bigger payout, Mia. The technology the Undying have left behind…it’s not in a few solar cells. There’s something bigger at play, and to get to it we have to go deeper, get to the heart of the temple.”
My heart is pounding. Now I know this boy’s crazy. “What, past the kinds of traps and pitfalls that took out half the Explorer IV mission before they gave up?”
Jules looks away, one hand coming up to tug through his curls. He’s staring at the cliff again. “I’m offering you a partnership. You help me get there, and…” He breaks off, and I wait. I can see what the words cost him, the way they’re nearly dragged from him. “I’ll help us get inside the temple. From there—I’ll make sure you get your money.”
I can hear the disgust behind his voice by the time he finishes speaking.
For a wild second I want to blurt out the truth, that I couldn’t care less about money, that money’s a means to an end, and that my end is something I’d die for a dozen times over if I thought it’d help—but there’s no profit in my death, so I’m risking my life here instead. I take a deep breath, focusing on the air filling my lungs instead of the tears filling my eyes.
I was only ever going to be sneaking through the entrances to these temples, picking up what I could, never venturing far enough to trigger the Undying defenses they set up to guard their precious legacy, whatever it is. The International Alliance has been trying to put together a proper team to penetrate the temples for years, but when their top expert on the Undying lost his shit on live TV, it kind of put their plans on hold. In a weird way, I have Addison’s meltdown—Elliott Addison, the guy who first cracked the Undying broadcast code, the guy who turned a sudden 180 and started claiming that Gaia was dangerous—to thank for being here at all. If he hadn’t had that public breakdown and let slip all those top-secret codes, none of the illegal scavengers would’ve known how to get here to Gaia. He must be writhing in his jail cell, knowing that his attempt to prevent exploration of Gaia is what flooded the surfac
e with people like me.
Not that we can get very far. Without Addison and his expertise, neither IA-led expeditions or scavver operations can get past the temples’ myriad defenses. I was only ever supposed to lift artifacts from the entrances. I was only ever supposed to slip in, slip out, and hope I made enough money to satisfy Mink.
And now I’m standing here breathing alien air with alien suns beating down on my head and there’s a boy not much older than me claiming he can do what the whole global scientific community hasn’t managed yet and solve a zillion-year-old alien mystery if I help keep him alive long enough to do it. And whether he’s right or not, I’ve lost too much time now to get to the bigger temple before others strip it.
“Fine,” I say, firming up my voice. “But I can’t guarantee you a ride off the ground. I can get you to someone who can do it, but you’ll have to pay your own way, make your own deal with her.”
“Understood,” he agrees, businesslike again, smoothing away his distaste at working with a scavenger. “When does she come for you?”
“Three weeks.” Assuming I have the money, of course, to pay her. If I don’t, she won’t bother sending a shuttle down for me at all. But I don’t share that with Jules.
He must know I’m not telling him everything, but for now, he doesn’t press for more information. He studies my face until I feel it start to warm, making me long to pull my goggles and kerchief into place. Then he nods. “In that case, we should get moving.”
I WATCH HELPLESSLY AS SHE discards more than half my belongings. The organization that recruited me supplied my breather, and a few other necessities, but I spent more than I’d care to admit on the rest of it, this equipment she’s tossing aside like it’s worthless. I had to buy it all new, because I couldn’t access most of my belongings at home.
She’s obsessed with the idea that everything must serve more than one function—she brandishes her own tool, like one of those old Swiss Army knives people used to carry, as if it’s worth more than my wave-stove. I want to tell her that you can order one exactly like it for twenty quid online, but when she mentions having made a number of alterations to it herself, and demonstrates its spring-loaded settings, I have to admit it’s clever.
And this is why I need her. Without the relative luxury of a whole expedition to back me, I don’t know how I’m going to make it to the temple intact when I know next to nothing about this underworld that she’s a part of, this network of raiders and thieves. Back home, these are the kinds of people who start looting stores and hospitals the second a city’s people are forced to abandon it. It’s worst in the U.S., according to the news—they’re seeing the most drastic climate changes, with deserts sweeping across the continent and sandstorms violent enough to claim lives. Families get packed up and carted elsewhere once the city shuts down, and their sofas aren’t even cold before these scavenger gangs move in and start divvying up what’s left. The thought of working with one of them makes me sick to my stomach, but at least she’s only one, and not a whole gang, and at least she’s…not really what I expected, I suppose.
She seems to particularly relish in lecturing me on the ways my gear is redundant—any item of mine that can’t justify its existence in half a dozen ways is stashed in a shallow cave, there to stay until the end of time, I suppose. Or until the next spacefaring civilization comes through, following the same trail we did.
Still, once we start walking, I’m grateful for the lighter load. We have several hours of daylight left, and we ought to dispose of quite some distance before we camp for the night. The two suns bear down overhead, and without trees for shade, it’s hot. It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that I’m genuinely walking on another planet, and I occasionally push at the idea, worrying at it like a loose tooth, trying to provoke a response.
We thought we were done with our chance at this when the Alpha Centauri colony mission failed, calling out to Earth for help that they knew couldn’t come, then vanishing forever into the blackness of space. But here I am, Jules Thomas Addison, literally going where no one has gone before.
And I’m lying to the one ally I have.
It’s not bragging or exaggeration to say that right now, I’m the most important person on this planet. I have to reach that temple. Not just for me, not just for my father, but for all of us, every person on Earth. Including Amelia. That’s justification enough for the lie. And odds are there will be something of value there she can take, so it probably isn’t even a lie.
It’s justification enough for teaming up with a scavver—and I’ve promised myself that I will find her a way to earn her money, however distasteful looting is. I was prepared to do it to a small degree for Global Energy to earn my ride here—helping her is no different.
But it’s hard to reconcile this girl with what she’s here to do. It’s easier to hate vultures and carrion scavengers when they’re not standing in front of you with freckles and dye-streaked hair and a razor-sharp wit. But then again, I’d like to think I’m a fundamentally honest person, and I’m in the middle of lying to her about what we’ll find when we reach our destination.
She’s made it clear she’s here to make money, and I need to remember she’d walk away from me in a heartbeat if she thought there was a better profit in it. Which means that I need to be prepared to tell her whatever will keep her by my side.
If we’re not moving at the speed I’d hoped for in a larger group, equipped with vehicles, it’s better than nothing. We should be at the temple I’m after in under a week, traveling on foot. We’re heading for a long, winding canyon, a landmark I memorized from the endless swaths of satellite images that used to litter my father’s study back at Oxford. If we’re lucky, it should provide us with a highway that will take us most of the way to our destination. It has a stream running the better part of its length, which will take care of our water needs as well.
The only problem is that for a while, at least, it’s the same path all the other groups will be following. The canyon branches in a number of places, and eventually we’ll be taking a different branch, but until we do, we’ve got to keep our profile as low and quiet as we can to avoid attracting attention from scavengers who’d be just as happy to raid our packs as the temples themselves, and perhaps remove a little competition at the same time.
My father would be horrified.
Dr. Elliott Addison used to be the last word on the Undying. There was no one more dedicated to unraveling their secrets, no one more passionate about learning from them. But the International Alliance, haunted by their decades-old promise to find a solution to Earth’s decline, accused him of wasting time.
And the harder they pushed, the more my father began to resist. When the Explorer IV crew entered that main temple—without my father’s guidance—he raged for a week. And that was when he began fighting, trying to make them understand, making passionate pleas to the IA authorities and the public alike that some of mankind’s most important, practical discoveries came out of pure research. That the time spent to truly explore Gaia would be anything but wasted. That more power cells would certainly help now—but only until we outgrew those like we outgrew our oil reserves.
He desperately believed that the key to our salvation lay in understanding the Undying—in understanding why they destroyed themselves, after reaching such heights in their civilization. Their warnings, my father said, were to stop us doing exactly what the International Alliance would have us do: rush in, take as much profitable and useful technology as we could carry, and start shoving it anywhere it’d fit in Earth’s infrastructure.
He wanted us to take our time, to focus on the science, to let ourselves be drawn on by exploration, curiosity, and discovery instead of driven by greed. He was ridiculed for his insistence that we needed to open our minds, to explore this place with the thoughtfulness and reverence—and caution—it deserved, not run so hungrily for the one benefit we could see that we missed others…or missed dangers.
They
used to come to our flat in Oxford, the suits from the International Alliance, and I’d put my ear to the door of his office while they argued with my father for hours. My father wanted to learn about Gaia and the Undying as badly as they did—wanted to help those who needed it as badly as they did—and he tried longer than most scientists would have to find alternate explanations for the dangers and inconsistencies he was finding in the broadcast. First they came to debate him—then to argue with him—then to plead with him to change his position. Pleading turned to cajoling turned to peer exile turned to threats, but he never seemed to falter.
I didn’t realize he’d stopped trying to convince the world until after he snapped on live television. I’m not sure he even knew he was going to commit treason that night until it was happening. But halfway through the program, the interviewer abandoned the usual, courteous dance and pushed and baited him, started accusing him of sacrificing the welfare of others—people like Mia, who desperately need the IA to solve Earth’s energy problems—merely to satisfy his own academic curiosity.
And I saw the moment he broke. A few security clearance codes blurted in frustration and anger—he already knew at that point they were going to drag him away, I’m sure of it—and in seconds hundreds of log-ins around the world had downloaded every document the IA had kept classified about Gaia, the temples, and the Undying tech.
He meant to give the world transparency. Instead he handed them the keys to pillaging this planet.
I remember the moment he met my eyes, as they held me back and dragged him out of the studio after shutting down his interview. I haven’t met his eyes since, except through a vidscreen once a week.
He’s sacrificed everything, from his reputation to his happiness to his future, to my future, for his cause. And I have, too, because I believe he’s right. I trust him.
My father is certain that we need to enter Gaia slowly, carefully, recognizing that the true wealth of these ruins lies in scientific study and understanding. And yet here we all are, charging on in like shoppers at a holiday sale looking for the shiniest baubles to bring home.