by Amie Kaufman
Nobody is supposed to be on the surface at present—the space station in orbit is tasked with enforcing that ban, and conducting satellite surveillance to continue building the maps and surveys the IA’s expedition will use when trying to solve the riddle of the Undying temples. Of course, as I discovered through my contact at Global Energy, for the right price, the staff on the station won’t just look the other way, they’ll even get you down to the surface. Thanks to what my father said on a live broadcast, it’s not just the International Alliance that knows how to reach Gaia now.
It must have been quite an investment for Amelia to get down here on her own. I’m about to ask her whether she raised the money herself, or has backers, when she stops at the crest of a hill, dropping to a crouch with a low curse. I thump down beside her, easing forward to prop up on my elbows and peer over the ridge to see what stopped her in her tracks.
The creek we were aiming for is a silvery line stretching along the red valley, looking strangely barren without plants taking advantage of the water. My eyes are used to Earth in ways I didn’t even realize until I landed here. But it’s not the lack of plant life that makes Mia groan at my side.
Camped all along one side of the river is a sizable expedition that’s paused for their evening meal, crates and grav-lifters visible, and a row of skimmer bikes. For a brief moment I think maybe it’s the expedition I was meant to join, and my heart lifts—but then I recognize the woman from our little encounter by the spring. Raiders. I count at least four people moving back and forth between their possessions. They’ll have visibility for the length of the canyon. Perfututi. There goes our plan.
“So,” I say, gazing down at them. “Head on down and introduce ourselves, yes?”
Amelia lets out a snort, then taps her goggles to activate their zoom setting. “Wait here, Oxford, okay? I got this.” Apparently that’s all the warning I’m getting before she starts to clamber down into the canyon without further consultation. I grab hold of her pack, and after a couple of tugs she realizes she’s not going anywhere until I let go. “What?”
“Well, I suppose most pressingly, where are you going?” I venture, still holding on.
She eyeballs me, disapproving of this new streak of curiosity. “I’m going to steal one of those bikes,” she says, in the same nonchalant tone with which she might say, I’m going to go for a nice stroll.
I tighten my grip as I turn that one over in my mind. How am I meant to work with this kind of impulsiveness? I was kidding when I said it, but was she really just going to saunter on down there and hope it all unfolded according to plan? Assuming she even has a plan.
When she tugs against my grip, I return to the question of the bike. On one hand, it would be enormously risky to try to steal one. On the other, a skimmer bike could cut our travel from a whole week to less than a day. And, a tiny voice says in my mind, if they catch her, she’s one of them anyway, isn’t she? What’s the worst that could happen to her?
The fact that I just asked myself that makes me a little bit sick, but I have to remember that what I’m here to do is more important than me, than her, or than any individual. And I have to remember that she’s a scavver, and I have no way of knowing if she’s even interested in returning loyalty, let alone capable of it.
The skimmer would get us there in less than a day.
Also, if there’s one thing I’ve worked out about Amelia already, it’s that there’s very little point arguing with her once she’s made up her mind. “Then let me help,” I say, instead. “Your safety is my safety, now.”
She eyeballs me again, and I wait out her disapproval until she adjusts her goggles with a muttered opinion that she chooses to keep under her breath. “Stay close. If they spot us, make for the ridge to the east. It’s too rocky for skimmer bikes, so at least it’ll be a footrace.”
“Yes ma’am,” I say, just to provoke that little line between her eyes that shows up when she glares at me. I need to stop noticing that.
Though we’ve got to move slowly to avoid triggering any major rockslides down the canyon walls, the breeze running through the valley masks our smaller movements. So really, it’s just a case of patience. Sweat runs into the small cuts on my hands and face, and my back aches steadily—but Amelia moves without complaint, and I’m not going to give her another reason to think twice about agreeing to partner up. This skimmer bike idea alone has proved that I was right to recruit her help—I’d have carefully avoided this group, and spent another week making my way to the temple.
Presumably because there are only a few dozen people on the planet, the camp doesn’t have any guards posted. I see a lean man with dark hair sprawled on the grass, eating, talking to the woman Mia decked with her helmet by the spring where we met. That means our other friend must be somewhere nearby too, with or without his trousers.
It’s not a huge coincidence that it’s the same group, given how difficult it is just to get to Gaia’s surface, but my stomach tightens.
Until we peel away from the main route along the canyon, heading to my smaller target, we’re going to be up close and personal with these other groups—groups that clearly have no qualms about shooting the competition. I think about the scavenger’s gun tucked into my bag, one of the few pieces of equipment Amelia put into the “keep” pile without discussion. Even if I’d thought to make it accessible before crawling into danger, though, I’m not sure I could really point it at someone with the intent to pull the trigger.
I’m rather regretting my impulsive order to that big guy to leave his trousers behind. Perhaps under other circumstances they might have held off on shooting, afraid of ruining their skimmer—but I have a feeling he won’t hesitate to aim straight at us. A couple of the other raiders are filling their canteens at the spring, and one’s standing some distance away, face lit by the screen of his phone or tablet as he hunches over it.
Most important for us, nobody’s paying attention to the row of skimmers.
The lack of order also means there’s no discernible pattern to their movements, though we watch for a while as Amelia taps her finger softly against a pebble. She’s counting the seconds, I realize, looking for the best gap. She’s not holding her stolen gun either, but I’m betting hers is in a pocket somewhere she can reach it if she has to. I ease my knife out of my own pocket—happily, it has several extra tools built into the handle, so I was permitted to keep it. All hell’s going to break loose when we make off with one of their bikes, but I think I know how to slow down their pursuit.
I’m jolted from my planning when Amelia tilts her head at me and, crouching low, heads toward the bikes.
My height means I’m a liability, but I can at least keep up, even if I can’t crouch as low. Amelia drops to one knee to work on the ignition of her chosen skimmer, and I drop down beside her, crawling along the row to the farthest bike. Time to see if all those hours of putting up with my cousin Neal’s obsession with his bike were worth it—time to see if I can remember how to find the power cables. I check the casing with one finger to make sure it’s not still hot, then reach up inside to grope around blindly, sending up a silent prayer of thanks as my fingers close over the nest of cords. Heart thumping, hands sweating, I yank the knife through them, severing the connections, then crawl down to the next one.
A shower of sand hits the back of my neck as I reach the third, and my heart surges up into my throat. I jerk around, to find Amelia silently shooting me a what-the-hell look. But there’s no way to explain what I’m doing without speaking, so I immobilize the final bike and start crawling back to her side. Once I’m close enough, I drop my head to whisper into her ear, “Nobody’s going to chase us now.”
She’s silent for an instant, then a huff of air hints at the laughter neither of us can risk. I feel myself wanting to laugh, too—some combination of adrenaline and terror and utterly mad abandon. My mind is shrieking that this isn’t me, that I belong back at Oxford, that this girl and her insane ideas are going to g
et me killed, that I’m no daredevil and my best bet would be to stay put and call back up to the station when it’s back overhead.
And yet I feel myself wanting to laugh. Because there’s some part of this that’s…fun.
It turns out she’s using an ancient paperclip to short out the thumbprint scanner, and with a satisfying hiss, it gives up the ghost. She winks, then rises to her feet to swing one leg over the bike. She shifts her pack around to her front to make room for me to slide on behind her. I’m momentarily stuck on where to put my hands—wrapping them around her waist seems overly familiar—when a voice rings out behind us and steps approach.
“Rasa said to leave the skimmers there.” The owner of the voice has clearly mistaken us for members of his gang, and every nerve in my body lights up as adrenaline goes crashing through me. Oh, perfututi, we’re screwed, where did he come from? “She wants to make sure they’re sheltered if the wind—” And then the voice rises abruptly to a shout. “Hey, who—”
I end my debate and throw my arms around Amelia, and she jams her thumb into the ignition. The bike hums to life, lifting up off the sand to about knee height, and as she turns her head to look back at the bike’s old owner, her smile’s pure mischief. “Thanks for the ride!”
Then we’re accelerating away, gathering speed rapidly as she weaves her way through the boulders, making for level ground. I’ve only been on the back of Neal’s bike a couple of times, but I know enough to lean when it turns, and as the wind rushes past us, I’m resisting the urge to tip my head back and shout our victory.
Then the rocks to our right explode into flying bits of gravel that strike my back like shrapnel. I twist my head to see the scavengers lining the edge of their camp, aiming their weapons after us. Explosive ammunition. Amelia’s curse is whipped away by the wind, and she accelerates so fast that she risks a spectacular crash as bullets fly past us.
And abruptly, the world snaps into focus.
What the hell am I doing?
This isn’t a game.
This is my life, and if one of those things so much as grazes us, I won’t live long enough to feel it. I’ll be dead on an alien planet, and nobody at home will ever know what happened to me. My heart surges up through my throat, and every movement, every sound, is turned up high. My whole body is pins and needles, twitching in anticipation of a bullet right between my shoulder blades.
This isn’t a game, and I’m way, way out of my depth. I shouldn’t be here.
The skimmer tips at a crazy angle with no warning, and I tighten my arms around Amelia while desperately trying to make sense of the world as it flies past. We’re careening down the side of a canyon, and for three terrifying heartbeats it seems as though there’s no way we can stop—we’re going to cartwheel end over end, to lie broken at the bottom until they come for us.
Then the bike levels out, and Amelia’s thumping on my forearm with one fist to get me to loosen my grip—when I remember how to make my arms work and do so, she takes a long, shuddering breath. We’re racing along the bottom of the canyon, taking the twists and turns like we have nothing to lose, and though I crane my neck to look behind us, I have no way of knowing if they’re following.
Then the canyon fork looms up as we take another curve, and somehow through my streaming eyes and lurching stomach I realize how much ground we’ve covered. “Take the left fork!” I scream to be heard over the roar of the wind and the engine.
“What?” Mia’s voice is half torn away by the wind. “But the temples—”
“Trust me!” I give her a squeeze, the only way I have to emphasize my words.
She hesitates a moment longer, then says something in reply that I’m glad I can’t decipher over the wind. She throws her weight to the left and the bike goes lurching down the narrower canyon path, away from the soon-to-be-well-traveled path to the central temple.
Some time later, she abruptly skids over to the side and cuts the engine, the sound echoing off the canyon walls, then dying away. The skimmer thuds down onto the ground, the jolt traveling all the way up my spine. We both hold perfectly still, her thumb hovering over the ignition, straining our ears for the sound of pursuit. There’s nothing but silence. The walls of the canyon stretch up above us, lips tilting in to obscure most of the afternoon sky, and it seems we’re hidden.
“Are we dead?” I whisper, breath still coming in short, sharp gasps, my body still a bundle of nerves.
“Don’t think so,” she whispers back. “They tried pretty hard, though. You’re sure this is the way?”
“Positive,” I reply, trying to make myself sound certain. Because I am certain I’m going the right way—just not so certain that it’s the way she’d choose, if she had all the facts.
“Then let’s get a little more distance.” She starts up the skimmer again, taking the corners with only a little more caution as we race away down the canyon. My insides are churning, and I’m pretty sure my stomach’s trying to climb up my throat to join my heart there, and the things I’m repeating to myself like a litany aren’t making much difference at all.
They’re not following us, I tell myself. We made it. We’ll get to the temple faster. This was a good idea. I’m clenching and unclenching my fists, as if by sheer physical force I can make these things true despite the one thought that keeps ringing around and around in my head.
I’m not just out of my depth, I’m realizing I don’t even know how to swim.
I can’t imagine my father’s face, if they even bothered to tell him about my death. They might think it would compromise their chance of getting him to start cooperating again. I can’t imagine Neal’s, or my mother’s—though there’s a lot I can’t imagine about her, lately.
I shove all of it out of my mind. We’re closer to the temple than we were before. Closer to its spiral shape and stone curves, and the answers I hope to find there.
Finally Amelia pulls over, parking the skimmer behind a boulder, and turning it off once more. It crunches down to the ground, and we both climb off. My hands are shaking. I clear my throat before I speak, hoping at least my voice will be level. “That was good driving.”
“It’s easy here,” she replies, shrugging away the compliment. “I’m used to much tighter quarters. Skid on some loose gravel here, you’re in trouble. Crash into a skyscraper on Earth, and you’re done. Let’s take a few minutes, stretch, use our breathers, then keep moving. Even if they repair their bikes, they’ve got no way of finding us now, and we’ll hear them coming if they get close.”
I try for normal conversation, stretching my back, willing my arms and legs to start working properly as my system tries to process the shock of what’s happened. “Where did you learn to ride like that?”
“Chicago.” She glances at me, sees that isn’t answer enough, and shakes her head. “You wouldn’t want to know.”
And of course, immediately, I do. It’s a distraction, and I need to do more than stretch my arms and legs to get myself back to rights. “Why not?” I unhook my breather from my belt and take a long drag of oxygen-rich air from its attached tank. The oxygen in the tank goes a long way, just a little added to the air I’m drawing in naturally, but that extra percent or two makes a real difference.
“Because it’ll give you all the more reason to think I’m a terrible person,” she replies, not sounding particularly guilty about it.
“I’ve committed just as much crime today as you have,” I point out.
“True,” she allows. “But look on the bright side. Grand theft skimmer bike isn’t as bad as breaking International Alliance planetary embargoes. You’re clearly on the path back toward the light.”
“You’re right, I’m de-escalating. I’ll be reformed in no time.
You’re a good influence.”
She laughs for that, shaking her head. “You’re unexpected, Oxford.”
“I’m reaching for the last vestiges of composure,” I admit. “Please tell me that terrified you half as much as it terrifie
d me.”
“It did.” She eases off her pack and leans back against the canyon wall, soaking up the heat from the sun-warmed rock, folding her arms around her mid-section to hug herself. “The reason I’ve lived so long is that I avoid people like that. I thought they were going to hit us.”
“I’m glad we stole that guy’s trousers this morning,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I need a new pair.”
That startles a proper laugh out of her, and the noise thaws something inside me a little. We could have been shot. But we weren’t. “If you won’t tell me how you learned to drive, tell me something else about yourself,” I try, just to see if I can keep her talking. Let my nerves settle. And keep her from asking any questions about me, because I’m not sure my poker face is any good right now.
She considers the question for a minute or so before she replies. “When I was little,” she says eventually, “I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up.” Which isn’t quite the same thing as telling me something about herself now, but—actually, I take that back. She’s clearly not an astronomer, so in a way, I do know something about her. How things turned out for her. I want to ask what happened to get in the way of that dream, but I bury the question for the present.
“When I was small, I wanted to be an airplane.” The embarrassment is worth it, for her quick snort of laughter, even if it’s probably half fueled by adrenaline from our heist and ensuing escape. “There was logic behind it,” I protest. “I wanted to fly, but birds seemed very fragile. My father tried to explain it wasn’t feasible, but I kept pointing out every new cybernetic upgrade that came along. I was completely confident they’d have the plane question sorted by the time I grew up, which would of course be far, far into the future. My father said I might see some drawbacks to being a plane by adulthood, though, and turns out he was right.”