by Amie Kaufman
Whose salvation? he had written underneath in black marker on the faded chevron wallpaper. Whose doom?
It’s easy for the International Alliance to say they’ll be careful on Gaia. It’s easy for them to dismiss the warnings from the Undying, the stories of their own civilization’s downfall. But the human race has been dismissing the decline of our planet and the destruction of its resources for centuries now. We’ve gotten pretty good at it.
I don’t know what I want to find here. I’ll follow the Nautilus, try to understand why that strange, inelegant warning was crammed into the broadcast. A part of me wants my father to be right. I don’t want him to have thrown our lives away for nothing.
Another part of me, of course, wants him to be wrong. Because if he’s not, that’s the end. Not this generation, probably not the next, but it’ll happen pretty soon. Our world will fall apart. And Mia is one of the billions who need this tech, whose lives will be changed if we can find enough of it, or better yet, find a way to replicate it. If I told her he wants to withhold it for her own good, she’d punch me, and I wouldn’t blame her.
I’ve left it far too late to tell her what I’m really chasing here—to tell her about the mystery of the Nautilus spiral, and the one glyph of warning. But if I’d told her any earlier, she wouldn’t have come, she wouldn’t have helped me.
So? says a tiny voice in my head. That would have been her choice. You made it for her.
Another voice pushes back. And if I did? It was for the good of everyone on Earth, everyone she cares about. She was here to steal—she is here to steal. To desecrate this place before we can learn from it.
I’m still searching for the right words when I realize I’m only a half a meter from the ground, and I can lower my feet until my boots hit the gravelly surface and shift my weight so I’m standing once more. We’re standing amid the ruins, and near the entrance to another chamber.
My hands are still trembling from the descent as I start to unbuckle my harness. And though I still haven’t found the right words, Amelia’s the one to break the silence.
“It explains a lot, actually. If he’s your father.”
Familiar frustration surges up in me, though it’s a little hard to tell it apart from the adrenaline. “Deus, you think he brainwashed me? That’s the usual assumption. My age means that nobody credits me with the ability to form my own opinions. This, despite the fact that I finished my schooling at thirteen, have been auditing university courses ever since, and if you’ll forgive the lack of modesty, can go toe-to-toe with any academic in the field, at any level. I formed my own opinions, including deciding how to weight his expertise, and I believe him.”
“Actually,” she says, and stepping forward to help me with removing the last of the harness—an intimacy I try unsuccessfully to ignore—“I just meant that what you’re doing makes more sense now. Risking your life for a bunch of rocks, that I don’t get. It’s different when you’re doing it for someone you love.”
“Oh,” I say, in one of my more eloquent moments.
“You’re going to keep up your end of our bargain?” she asks quietly.
“Yes.” I mean it. Somehow, I will.
She nods, some of the tension going out of her frame. “For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I’m more or less the same age as you, and I think we can make our own decisions just fine.”
“We may be the only ones who think that braving a series of crumbling deathtraps is proof of good decision-making,” I joke weakly, the strength starting to come back to my limbs, though when she flashes me a grin, I find my knees aren’t quite as recovered as I thought.
I like this girl.
And I’ve lied to her.
“Also,” Mia says, interrupting my scattered thoughts, “it explains why you’re such a freak. I mean, your dad was a freak, he decoded the broadcast when he was…well, our age. Makes sense you’re some crazy genius too.”
That’s always been a sticking point, for me. The people around me who treat me like a genius—which, perversely, generally involves assuming I can’t tie my own shoelaces, so lost am I in brilliant thoughts. And the ones who don’t think I can be, not at my age.
For my part, I’ve always known that I have in me what my father has in him. It’s not arrogance. It’s just truth. I didn’t earn it—I was born with it, gifted it.
The part that’s on me is the challenge—the pressure—to make something of it.
My father’s always told me that my integrity matters more than any other part of me, and he’s shown his over and over, in the face of unbearable pressure, to protect even those who don’t want his protection.
“Well,” I say. “You think I’m a genius—you’ve never met him. Now I’m the only one my father has left in his corner, freak or not. And that’s why I’m here.”
“That, and you get all hot and bothered about walking where no human foot has trod before,” she teases.
You get me hot and bothered, Mia.
“Um,” I say, shoving that thought aside. “Well, true. Have you heard of Walt Whitman? He was one of your American poets. He said, ‘I am large, I contain multitudes.’ ” I shrug. “I can be here for more than one reason. I am here for more than one reason.”
“Can I ask you a question?” she says quietly.
“I’ve heard the worst of it from every possible angle,” I say, though my mind is already bracing itself against whatever blow is coming. “Ask, I won’t mind.”
“Helping your father, finding something to prove the tech is dangerous, finding something that will get him out of jail, that I get. But learning about the Undying…why does it matter?” She pauses, to see if I’m offended, and I nod that she should go on. “I understand archaeology. I understand looking at our past to figure ourselves out, that makes sense to me. But these…beings…were completely different from us, not connected at all. They’ve left tech we can use, sure, and it’s worth learning about that and how to use it. But why does it matter who they were and why they died? Aren’t there better things we could spend our effort on?”
I consider the question, as a trickle of rock falls gently down the cliff face above me. “Well, who says learning those things isn’t the same as ensuring our own survival and well-being?” I say eventually. “For a start, we don’t know how different they really were. You said yourself, this place reminds you of Angkor Wat, of the Pyramids. They set us puzzles with musical harmonies that sound good to our ears, they built doorways the right size for us to go through.”
“Say you’re right,” she counters. “My question still stands. I understand wanting to learn about the tech, prove your father right or wrong. But their stories? What good does that do?”
“The Undying went extinct,” I say. “And while the broadcast didn’t get specific, it does say that they did it to themselves. How many times have we, as a species, tried to annihilate one another? How long will the IA’s authority hold, as things get worse and worse on Earth? The Undying had the tech we think we need so badly, and they still destroyed themselves. I think we ought to know why and how.”
She’s quiet for a time. “You think the puzzles, the set-up of this place means they might think like us,” she says eventually. “So we might fall into the same mistakes they made. We know humans are capable of violence, deception. You think the Undying were the same?”
I wish I could answer that honestly. I know there was a warning hidden deep in their broadcast, and someone, or something, had to put it there. “I…I don’t know,” I say. “They mentioned war, in the broadcast. But they’re the only other intelligent species we’ve ever discovered. Given the distances between Earth and even the next closest star to our sun, they’re probably the only intelligent species we’ll ever encounter, even long extinct. We should know who they were. They’re gone now, but somebody should know their story.”
“Is it worth dying for?” she asks.
“Maybe.” The word is out before I’ve had the chance to consider m
y answer—though really, I decided that long ago, as I took the first steps on my path to Gaia. “Though I’m not volunteering to be another Explorer IV team, if I can help it.” Everybody remembers the fates of the astronauts who died discovering that the temples on Gaia were full of traps and pitfalls. It was messy. And publicly broadcast, thanks to a live relay feeding through the portal to Earth.
We both stand in silence when I’ve finished my impromptu lecture, and she’s gazing at me in a way I can’t make sense of, though I want to. Like she’s adding together all the things she knows about me, and perhaps the answer she’s getting doesn’t completely displease her. Eventually, she nods. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Jules.”
The sincerity in her voice shakes me, and all I can do is nod in return.
The next moment she’s clearing her throat and turning businesslike. “Let’s make camp here. It’s been a…a busy day.” Her voice is wry, and I don’t blame her. Tuning ancient temples, falling off bridges, drilling holes, and rappelling down cliffs…Busy is an understatement. “We’ll just do something stupid, if we try for the next puzzle tonight.” She pauses, then quirks a smile. “Well, stupider than coming here in the first place.”
I can’t disagree, and together we get to work setting up camp, in what feels like companionable silence. Even with this trap triggered already, we don’t trust it not to yield up some final, nasty surprise. So she clears a space in the rocks at the base of the cliff just large enough for the two of us to lie down to sleep, and I sit at one end of it preparing dinner. We’re amid the debris from whatever trap was here, and once again I’m reminded this couldn’t just be any cave back on Earth. Metallic lines streak the nearest boulder, no thicker than the hairs on my head. They intersect and weave together in endlessly intricate patterns—this rock is unlike anything we have at home.
But staring at the ruins of a broken trap won’t help me now, and I return my attention to our meal. Once I’ve eaten, I can keep translating the glyphs we’ve seen in the first few chambers.
I’ve had my water bottle strapped to the outside of my pack all day, and the idea behind the outrageously expensive fitting on it is that it should condense water from the air, and continually refill itself by way of a slow drip. When I lift it to inspect it by the light of my head torch, it’s only half-full—the air in here is too dry for it to be totally effective.
I show it to Amelia, and she looks up from where she’s gathering a small layer of rocks to stop us rolling into danger in our sleep, and grimaces. We had to use that water or we wouldn’t have gotten this far, but I’d always figured our breathers would be our limiting resource—not water.
I abandon my plan to soak dried noodles and make us something hot to eat, and instead unpack flatbread, covering it with slices of thick yellow cheese, the crumbs of it sharp as I lick them off my fingers. I cut fat slices of salami to layer on top of it, the rich, salty smell setting my mouth watering.
Amelia sets aside our breathers for when we need them at bedtime, and edges along to sit cross-legged beside me, her fingers touching mine as she accepts her slices of flatbread. “Salt and fat and protein,” she says, around a huge mouthful. “Talk about the holy trinity.”
For a time, there’s nothing but the sound of blissful chewing, as we sit together with our backs against the cliff, lit by the light of just one torch to conserve power. We end up licking the grease of the salami off our fingers and picking crumbs of cheese off our clothes, sharing the use of my handkerchief to clean ourselves up.
Her shoulder’s a hair’s breadth from mine, and I’m hyper-aware of her presence. There’s something about being in a place like this—not just another planet, but deep inside a temple, where nobody else could reach us, together in the dark. Something that inspires a closeness, a confidence…an intimacy. A place like this encourages truths, and confessions.
My own confession’s on the tip of my tongue, but as I draw in breath to speak, she breaks the silence instead.
“I learned about your father at school,” she says. “Before I dropped out.”
“You mentioned that.” My curiosity’s killing me, though I don’t want to offend her. But it should be impossible to do what she did. “How did you drop out of school? They didn’t send truancy officers to find you?”
She snorts. “You’ve never heard of attendance drones, I assume. Kids’ll rent out their time, answer questions for you every now and then, along with the twelve other accounts they’re running. You don’t get good grades, not without paying extra, but you pass.”
“I’ve never heard of attendance drones,” I admit, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t surprise her even one iota. “How does one work around the retinal scan? I did most of my classes in person, Oxford tradition and all that, but I took two remotely, and a constant retinal presence was required.”
“The retinal scanners just need an eye,” she replies. “Not specifically my eye, and turns out, not even a human eye.” I’m trying very hard not to think about what that means, when she continues. “What do you mean, your classes were in person?”
This is going to be the water polo pool all over again, and I’m an idiot for bringing it up. “I mean the teacher and the students are all physically in the same room,” I say. “Not virtual.”
She nearly drops her last piece of flatbread, scrambling to catch it, her hand brushing against my leg. “What, like the guy on the screen is a real person for you? You can talk to him?”
“And he can talk to you,” I reply. “Or shout at you for daydreaming. Then tell your father all about it at tea.” Which, now I think about it, doesn’t really stack up against her own list of misfortunes. I try to change direction before I can shove my foot any further into my mouth. “You said maths was the school subject you missed the most,” I venture. And of course, now it just sounds like I’m trying to work out how little education she has, which isn’t what I mean at all—her ingenuity fascinates me. I admire it.
“It makes sense to me,” she replies. “It’s beautiful. When you really get math right, it’s perfectly streamlined. Everything has a job, everything has a purpose, and all the elements work together in harmony. You know exactly where you are, with math, and what’s required to make it right. It’s not much use in my current line of work, though.” Her voice has dropped low, and as we sit shoulder to shoulder, she’s turned her head, and I’ve turned mine, so we’re whispering to each other in the near dark.
The small light illuminates one half of her face—the freckles, the tug of her lips to a wistful smile, the graceful swoop of her lashes. The other half is cast entirely in darkness, unknowable.
“I hate it sometimes,” she continues. “Picking through the remains of people’s lives, like vultures, taking anything that can be sold or stripped down for parts or recycled. But early on I started a collection, you know? Things that didn’t have any value, wouldn’t help Evie, but still held something. Like little snapshots. Stories about the people who used to be there. Most of the personal stuff is gone, but you can put a lot of it together from the pieces you do find. I love that part.”
My own lips curve to match her smile, though mine’s more warm than wistful. “That’s archaeology, you know,” I say, just as quietly. “Putting together stories from what’s left behind. That’s what I do.”
And it turns out she does understand it after all, and as our eyes meet, we both share that knowledge for a few seconds: that in each other we can see the same love of uncovering a hidden story. I wish we shared more than that—I wish I truly knew her mind. We’re from two different worlds in every possible sense. I ought to hate her just for being here. I ought to resent everything she’s done, and everything she’ll do, if we escape this place. But just like the left-behind histories we uncover—hers in ruined buildings, mine in vanished civilizations—our own story is more complicated than one simple truth.
Here’s a very simple truth, though: I could tip forward just a fraction, and if she did too
, our lips would meet. Her gaze flickers down to my mouth and lights a spark inside me—a moment’s hope that she’s thinking the same thing as me.
She clears her throat and turns away, head dipping so she can open her pack and rummage through it, like she’s taking inventory. “It must be killing you not being able to take your time and study everything we’re finding here.”
You’re killing me.
But I let my breath out in a rush and tip my head back against the wall. “Pretty much,” I agree. “But we’re here for something more important.” Above us yawns the black emptiness of the pit walls we scaled earlier, the darkness heavy with all the knowledge, all the stories, haste has forced me to leave behind. I’m struck with a sudden sense of vertigo, as if our little pool of lantern light is clinging to the rock and I’d fall up into the dark if it weren’t for Mia tethering me to the ground.
“What about those pictures?”
Her voice makes me jump. “What pictures?”
She frowns at me, then jerks her chin toward my arm. “The ones you took when we came in, of the walls and stuff. The ones you were going over when we stopped after the bridge.”
“Mehercule, I for—” I stop, blinking. I do. I have brand-new pictures, new glyphs to study. Forgotten because of this baffling, pink-and-blue-haired criminal at my side. I jerk my eyes downward and bring my wrist display to life with a shaking twist of my hand. Some of the pictures are blurry from my rush to record the glyphs in that first room, but others are clearer, and as the Mia-fog recedes from my brain, they start to click into focus. I grope around with my other hand until I find my journal in my pack and pull it onto my lap, eyes still on the pictures.
Mia snorts beside me. “Aaaaand he’s gone.”
I could tell her she’s as fascinating a puzzle as the coded messages the Undying left behind. That if she wanted it, she could have my full attention. But she broke that moment earlier, she looked away first—and I know when not to push my luck. It wouldn’t be honest, anyway. I’ve lied to her, and she believes I’m something I’m not. So I try to put her—and the sound of her humming, the flicker of shadows as she fiddles with one of the carabiners, the scent of her in the still air—out of my mind and focus on my translation.