Fourth World

by Lyssa Chiavari

  I hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, other than a bland, Huh, that’s interesting. But now it seemed like the worst disaster imaginable. I didn’t know when that impact was slated to happen—but I did know that it would punch a big hole in the geroi’s “evacuate to Hamos” plan. And if the whole population of Iamos had already evacuated to Venus when the impact hit…

  I couldn’t tell Nadin. Not after the way she flipped out when she found out I wasn’t actually some far-distant descendant of the Iamoi. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d misunderstood something.

  But still. Ceilos’ parents were up there, and who knew how many other people. Yeah, the geroi were creepy, but I didn’t want anyone to die.

  I sighed, looking at Nadin curled up asleep on the boulder. Her eyebrows were scrunched up like she was having a nightmare. I should never have made her take her earpiece off.

  The cave was growing darker—and colder. Tuupa nudged me, staring unblinkingly with her yellow lizard-eyes. I should probably try to start a fire, I realized. Not that I really had the first idea as to how to go about that, but I wasn’t particularly interested in freezing to death tonight.

  I started rummaging around the cave, picking up the most dried-out, woody-looking pieces of spider weed that I could find—and trying to drown out that thought that had been creeping into my mind almost constantly since I’d arrived here.

  He’d used the same door as me. But no one I’d met here had ever heard of him. So if my dad had really come here… what had happened to him?

  I pushed the thought out of my mind, dumping the kindling onto the burned-out patch on the floor. But as the yellow circle of Venus blinked down at me, I couldn’t help remembering that freezing, airless desert outside the citidome, and the ancient skeleton in the hills.

  My head hurt worse than it had ever hurt in my life.

  Immediately after that thought, it occurred to me that I couldn’t really remember if that were true. Had my head hurt like this before? Had my head ever hurt before? Had my head ever not hurt like this? Was my life ever anything but this headache?

  I managed to pry my eyes open, blinking up at a dark, unfamiliar ceiling. It was rough, marred with shadows that seemed to grow and shrink in size in the dim, flickering light. Wind howled through crevices in the rock, whistling noisily.

  Where was I?

  …Who was I?

  I sat up in a panic, drowning in disorientation. Slowly, as the world stopped spinning, memories started trickling back to me, little by little. They felt fuzzier than usual, gray at the edges. But they were there.

  And so was the headache.

  “Nadin?”

  Nadin. Yes, that was my name. I turned my head, following the sound of the voice. He was crouching beside a small, poorly-burning fire. My mind struggled for a moment, trying to remember what that face was called.

  He smiled, half-encouraging, half-worried. “How are you feeling?” he asked, handing me a waterskin.

  I drank while I thought. As the water coursed down my throat, a few more memories volunteered themselves. Finally, I managed, “Everything hurts. But I don’t think I’m going to die.”

  Isaak laughed. “I’m glad. I’m really sorry, Nadin. I had no idea… I didn’t realize going off the System would hurt you like that.”

  “Neither did I.” I studied the pouch between my fingers, turning it this way and that. “It’s so quiet without it. My thoughts are so hard to find. I didn’t realize how little of what went on in my head was my own.”

  Isaak flopped down on the hard rock beside me. “It seemed like such a nuisance to me. Like when you talked, I’d get feedback in my ear because the System would try to translate what I already understood. It drove me crazy. I should have realized it wouldn’t feel the same to someone who’d been hooked up to it her whole life.” He smiled halfheartedly. “And I guess it was handy when I didn’t quite understand everything you were saying.”

  I drew my knees up into my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around them. I didn’t want to say it, but I was more afraid of saying nothing. So I whispered, “I’m scared.”

  Isaak furrowed his brow. “Why?”

  “Everything feels so fuzzy without the System. What if I start forgetting, more and more? What if someday I don’t remember how to speak?”

  Isaak nudged me gently in the ribs. “Come on. I’ve gone my whole life without the System, and I manage to get by.”

  “But I don’t know how.” My voice cracked, just slightly, but I felt like a failure all the same.

  Isaak was quiet for a while. Then he said, “I could teach you.”

  I looked at him. “Do you think you could?”

  “I can try.” He smiled. “And you can teach me. Everything you know about Iamos. I think you’re underestimating your own mind, Nadin. It’s pretty powerful on its own, even without the System.”

  I tucked a hair behind my ear. “Even though the geroi think I’m a simpleton?”

  Isaak rolled his eyes. “You know that’s a lie. You’re smarter than all of them put together.”

  I grinned in spite of myself. “All right, then. Maybe I will.” I stretched my legs out, my feet just brushing the floor. “But first, pass me my pack, will you? I’m famished.”

  Over the next several days, Nadin and I talked until our throats were raw and sore—to say nothing of our backsides from all the riding. I’d never truly understood the concept of saddle sores until now. It was almost enough to make me wish we could hurry up and get to Elytherios already. But who even knew what was waiting for us when we got there? I hoped this trip wouldn’t wind up being for nothing.

  While we rode, Nadin told me everything she could remember about growing up on Iamos—living in the geroi’s shadows—which turned out to be more than she’d thought she could do without the System. She seemed to be feeling better every day, which was a huge relief. And in turn, I told her as much as I dared about Mars and Tierra Nueva. When we got too tired for long conversations, we’d just play vocab games: she’d tell me a word in her language, and I’d tell her the English equivalent. If I couldn’t think of something in English, there was almost always something in Spanish, or Greek, or even Olmec. It was really weird how much like Earth languages Iamoan was—way more than it should be if there were no connection. Root words from one language, sentence structure from another… It got me thinking about what Emil had said about “Atlanteans.” Whether people from Iamos had colonized Earth or vice-versa, there was an indisputable connection.

  I’d lost track of how long we’d been riding the morning we reached the wide, yawning mouth of the caves, opening out to the surface. We must have been slowly ascending for quite some time, but I’d never noticed. The labyrinth of tunnels had turned me around so much, I didn’t know right from left or up from down.

  “We’re going to need oxygen,” Nadin said, peering out over the landscape before us. We’d emerged at the bottom of a deep canyon. Spindly hoodoos rose from the ground around us, rocky fingers soaring high above our heads to touch the thinning sky. Water had worn the shapes into the rock—it must have carved the tunnels, too—but there wasn’t a drop to be seen now.

  Nadin watched me steadily as I fished the breathing apparatus out of my pack and fiddled with it, trying to figure out which tube went where. “I hope we won’t have to be outside for too long,” she said. “I worry about you getting exposure poisoning.”

  I snorted. “I doubt it could be worse than the sunburn I got in Veracruz when I was eleven.”

  She came over, turning the tube contraption rightside-up in my hands. “I just—your skin is so pale, Isaak.” She had that tone in her voice, the one she always used whenever she talked about my appearance. Like she felt sorry for me for being so weird-looking. As if it didn’t occur to her that the Iamoi looked as strange to me as I did to them. Every time she did it, I felt smaller, more self-conscious—more like I didn’t belong here. Like I didn’t already know that.

  “Cristo,
Nadin,” I snapped, fumbling with the tubes in frustration, “what would you do if you saw Mama D, have an aneurysm? This is ridiculous. All my life, people are telling me I’m too brown. Now you’re on my back that I’m too white.” My fingers tripped over each other, and I groaned and flung the breathing apparatus onto the ground.

  A frown crept over Nadin’s face like a cloud. “I didn’t understand what you just said”—her voice sounded hurt—“but I didn’t mean to make you angry. I only wanted to help.” She pulled her own breathing apparatus on, then picked mine up off the ground, gesturing to me where to place the tubes over my nose and mouth.

  I sighed. “It’s okay,” I said, positioning the plastic tube and taking in a deep whiff of the sharp, clinical-tasting oxygen. “It’s just… people where I come from have fought for a really long time to not be judged by the color of their skin.”

  Nadin didn’t meet my gaze for a long moment; she just stared at the drawstring bags on the side of Thork’s saddle, as if thinking. Finally, she nodded her head. “All right,” she said. “I am sorry. I won’t do that anymore.”

  “Thanks,” I said, my annoyance dissipating, a smile twitching involuntarily at the corner of my mouth. She’d been doing that a lot over the past several days—nodding instead of pulling on her earlobe like she used to. I don’t think she’d noticed. I wondered how much she’d been rubbing off on me, too, without me realizing.

  Wind whistled between the hoodoos as we rode into the canyon, but we were relatively shielded here on the ground. The rocky trail was narrow, just wide enough in parts for one gurza to squeeze through. Thork led the way, Nadin perched on his back. A gust of wind whipped overhead, and the hood of her cloak slipped off before she could catch it. Her hair had fallen out of its braid days ago, and she’d finally given up on trying to tame it. Now it fell loosely around her shoulders in coarse, bushy ringlets, once-pristine white streaked with red dust and dirt. She shrugged, letting it fly free in the breeze.

  I patted Tuupa’s flank—she grumbled back at me, a gravelly croak in the back of her throat that sounded almost friendly—and looked up to the sky.

  ◦ • ◦

  A few hours later, the canyon floor sloped up and the rock spire formations began to recede. A huge plain opened up before us, smooth and black. A not-so-ancient lava flow. Without the hoodoos obscuring my view, I could see that we had almost reached the foot of Elysium Mons—the central volcano, and the tallest of the three. I hadn’t realized how close we were to where I’d lived as a kid. But everything looked so different. The canyon with the hoodoos wasn’t there in my time—thousands of years of wind and the briny Martian water must have worn it completely away.

  “How much farther do you think it is?” I called to Nadin.

  “I don’t know.” She looked down at the oxygen tank at her hip. “Eliin said this would be enough. We mustn’t be far now.” She shielded her eyes, looking up at the towering peak. “Do you see any signs of life up there?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  Her hood slipped again, and she pulled it back up. “What if this was a trick? What if the Liberator sent us out here just to get rid of us?”

  “Of course not,” I said, my voice more confident than I felt. “Come on. Tuupa and Thork know where they’re going. We’ll be there in no time.”

  Without the buffer of the rock spires, the wind was harsh and freezing. I pulled my burlap cloak tighter around myself, but it still nipped at my ears and dried out my eyes. Every so often, Tuupa would glance over her shoulder at me, growling reassuringly as if to say, “We’re almost there.” But the mountainside looked as barren and dead as ever.

  Another hour passed when Nadin slowed Thork’s pace, looking up at the red-tinged skies.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She pointed. “Do you see those clouds?”

  I nodded. A thick bank of red-gray clouds was creeping toward us from the south. “Do you think a storm is coming?”

  “I hope not.” She patted Thork anxiously. “Let’s try to reach the mountain before then.”

  Thork and Tuupa hurried forward, their muscular legs pummeling against the ground, their spines a sharp horizontal line from their heads to the tips of their thick, powerful tails. I watched the storm clouds warily—they seemed to be bearing down on us fast. I hoped it was just an optical illusion.

  We were at the foot of the mountain now. The peak was high, but it was far wider than it was tall. The slope was gradual but seemed to stretch on forever. Once we’d reached it, it seemed that the mountain was all there was to the world.

  A high-pitched screech rang out through the air over our heads. Tuupa skidded to a stop, looking up and whining. I followed her gaze. The storm was almost on top of us—and there was something else. Black dots, swirling around on the wind, darting in and out of the thick clouds.

  “What are those?” I shouted over the roar of the storm. “They look like big buzzards.”

  “Gamadas,” Nadin yelled back. “We need to get to cover, quickly!”

  Thork and Tuupa seemed to understand the urgency. They plunged ahead, up the slope of the mountain, moving so fast my teeth rattled.

  “That’s not just any storm,” Nadin called to me, her voice shaking—whether from Thork’s movements or her own nerves, I couldn’t say. “Gamadas travel ahead of sandstorms. If we can’t find shelter, we could get smothered.”

  A huge bird streaked over my head, trilling. It was enormous, almost as big as the gurzas, and looked like a cross between a vulture and a pterodactyl. I clutched Tuupa’s reins even tighter.

  The storm clouds were all around us now, and I could see what was coming. A massive wall of red sand, surging toward us at breakneck speed. The wind was thick with dust particles. They seeped between the breathing tube and my skin, crawling into my mouth and making me cough.

  “Cover your face with your cloak!” Nadin shouted.

  The gurzas began to slow their pace. I looked around frantically. I couldn’t see shelter anywhere—like the lava plain, the slope of the mountain was smooth and unmarred, a solid stone mass. The only rocks were far too small to provide any cover. We were sitting ducks.

  Tuupa suddenly skidded to a halt, rearing up and squawking noisily to Thork.

  “What do we do?” I called to Nadin.

  She coughed loudly and yelled back, “I don’t know.”

  Thork bucked so suddenly Nadin nearly lost her hold on him. Grasping wildly at the reins, she said, “What is it?” Thork merely bucked again, and this time she did fall, with a hard thud, onto the ground.

  “Nadin!” I scrambled off Tuupa’s back, trying to get to Nadin’s side, but as soon as my feet hit the ground, Tuupa scuttled forward, herding me with her tail. The two gurzas corralled us between themselves. I crouched beside Nadin, who was already up on her knees. For a horrible moment, I thought the gurzas had gone berserk in the storm and were turning on us. Then they curled themselves around our bodies, Tuupa tucking her head beneath Thork’s massive tail and vice-versa, and I realized what they were doing.

  They were shielding us.

  They tightened the circle of their bodies around us, and just as the light disappeared completely, I felt the impact of the sandstorm hit. The gurzas whined softly as the wind and dust pelted them, but they did not move.

  Nadin gripped my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  I laughed halfheartedly. “I was going to ask you that. You’re the one who fell. I’m fine, what about you?”

  She made a noncommittal noise. “If this storm doesn’t pass soon…” she said softly. “We don’t have much oxygen left.”

  I didn’t say anything in reply. What was there to say?

  We sat in silence, in complete darkness, listening to the sounds of the storm.

  ◦ • ◦

  I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I felt her shaking my shoulder. A soft, warm hand in mine. A girl’s voice whispering, “Isaak.”

  “Tamara
?” I muttered, still half-asleep.

  “I don’t know what that word means,” said Nadin, “but the storm seems to have passed. It’s quiet outside.”

  Sure enough, as I opened my eyes—and wiped the grit from them—the gurzas moved away, standing weakly and shaking themselves off. Midday sun hit me in the face, startlingly bright after the pitch-black of the sandstorm. Red dust coated the previously ash-gray mountainside. The only spot on the slope that wasn’t caked with the dust was the round, crater-like indentation that the gurzas’ bodies had left, almost half a meter deep.

  I grinned, moving forward to stroke Tuupa’s muzzle. Her blue scales were caked in red dust, but she seemed very pleased with herself. “You saved us, girl,” I said, running my thumb up and down her snout. “You and Thork. Thank you.” She cocked her head sideways, staring unblinkingly at me, and made a purr-like noise in the back of her throat.

  “We’re almost out of oxygen,” Nadin broke in. She came up beside me, holding out her oxygen tank, a worried look on her face. “I have no idea how we’re going to make it to the top of this mountain.”

  “You might not need to,” a man’s voice said. I jumped, and Nadin whipped around at the sound. A group of people was approaching us, climbing down the slope through the settling dust—three men and two women.

  Tuupa made the purring sound again and hurried toward them, nuzzling the man who had spoken. I felt a small pang of jealousy, even though I knew it was ridiculous. Tuupa was never mine. But still… I kind of wanted her to be. I wondered what Mom would say if I brought home a Martian dinosaur for a pet.

  “Are you from Elytherios?” Nadin asked.

  The woman to the right of the speaker stepped forward. She was older than the others, with deep lines in her face and patches of paper-white skin all over her spindly hands, like discolored liver spots. “That depends on who you are,” she said, “and what you’re doing here.”

  Nadin squared her shoulders and pulled her medallion out from under her cloak. “I am Kyrin Nadin of Hope Renewed citidome. I’m here to see the Liberator.”