by Gary Gibson
All of them turned to look at Sam and Sun as they approached, and the conversation gave way to silence.
‘Hey!’ A broad-shouldered boy with light bronze skin and a panicked expression stood up quickly, his face full of desperate hope. ‘Do they know anything?’
‘Not a thing,’ Joshua replied with a wry shake of the head. The boy—if boy he was—sat back down with a defeated look on his face.
They came to a halt. ‘Who are you people?’ asked Sun, her voice quivering. ‘Did you bring us here?’
A thin-faced blond kid with deep-set eyes laughed sourly.
‘All I can tell you is my commanding officer’s gonna kill me when he finds out I’m AWOL,’ said another boy, tall and muscled with dark hair, squatting on the ground and pulling up the not-grass with his fingers.
‘So you’re military?’ Sam asked the boy. ‘US?’
The kid nodded. ‘I was driving back to base in Wichita and stopped at a motel for the night. Next thing I know I’m in one of those fucking boxes back there.’ He squinted at Sam. ‘You?’
‘Civilian,’ said Sam. ‘But I worked with the US Army from time to time, mostly in Korea after the war.’ Some of the tension in his chest loosened: it was good to talk about something real and familiar, like the words were anchors in a sea of unreality.
‘Korea?’ asked one of Wichita’s companions. ‘You fought in the war?’
Sam shook his head. ‘Civilian. Admin stuff, after the North surrendered.’
‘Admin stuff?’ the same kid asked. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘The UN put me in charge of North Pyongyang province following the surrender,’ Sam replied.
‘Seriously?’ said Joshua, looking back at him. ‘How did you wind up doing that?’
‘I used to work as an advisor in conflict resolution,’ Sam explained, once again relieved to talk about something real. ‘I helped set up refugee camps in Malaysia and elsewhere, and that led to them giving me the job after the war ended. It was temporary, until the new government was in place.’
‘I have a more important question,’ said a gangly-limbed Asian boy who had stood at Sam’s approach. ‘What’s the last thing you remember before you woke in your pod?’ The boy nodded to Sun. ‘I’d like to ask you the same question, Miss.’
‘I was on a plane to Canada,’ said Sun.
‘I was in…’ At last, the memory floated up from the depths of Sam’s memory. ‘Taipei.’
‘Taipei? As in Taiwan?’ said the kid with deep-set eyes. ‘That’s where I was, too. Last I remember, anyway.’
Sam regarded him with curiosity. Maybe there was a connection there, something that might explain how the two of them had wound up in this place. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
The kid’s expression grew suddenly wary. ’Who wants to know?’
‘Sam Newman.’
The kid shrugged in acknowledgement. ‘Vic Traynor.’
Vic Traynor.
Like a sluice gate opening, the rest of Sam’s memories came flooding back, including the fact he’d taken a sabbatical from work just when they needed him the most—and all so he could find a man with that very name.
But this couldn’t possibly be the same Vic Traynor who’d been behind Jahaar’s murder. This was some kid barely out of his teens, if even—
Sam looked down again at his smooth and unblemished hands.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Traynor scowled.
’Sorry,’ said Sam, dropping his hands back to his sides. ‘I’m…a little disoriented.’
Traynor eyeballed him, then turned to the girl on his left, muttering something Sam didn’t catch.
‘As are we all,’ said the Asian boy.
Sam turned to him. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Disoriented,’ he explained, extending one hand with a nervous smile. ‘It’s hardly surprising given our circumstances.’
Sam reached out tentatively and shook his hand. Probably he wasn’t really a kid, after all, but how could he be sure?
‘Kim Hanh Banh.’ The Asian maybe-kid took his hand back and pressed it against his chest. ‘I’ve been speaking to everyone as soon as they wake up. I’m hoping I can find some causative correlation to explain how we all came to be here.’
He talked, thought Sam, as if the fact of them being stranded in the middle of nowhere next to a burning wreck constituted little more than an intellectual puzzle to be solved. ‘So you’re looking for some connection between us all?’
Kim nodded. ‘If one exists, I haven’t found it yet.’ He flashed another nervous smile, as if afraid Sam might somehow blame him for their predicament.
‘And what about that thing?’ Sam gestured towards the lander. With the robots crawling all over the gash in its hull like so many mechanized scavengers, it resembled the gutted corpse of some forest behemoth. ‘Did we come here aboard that?’
‘Presumably,’ said Kim.
Sam looked at him. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘We all woke up in those pods, same as you did. We know as much as you do.’
‘What about inside the lander?’ Sam asked in a rush of agitation. ‘Maybe there’s information on its flight deck we can use.’
‘We haven’t been able to get very far inside it,’ said a girl sitting next to the kid who might, or might not, be the same Vic Traynor he’d been looking for. ‘If there’s a crew in there, they haven’t shown their faces.’
‘I still don’t think there is a crew,’ said someone else. ‘A bird like that can probably fly on automatic.’
‘There’s a lowered ramp that leads inside a cargo bay,’ Kim explained, ‘but that’s as far inside as anyone’s been able to get. There’s a door leading further in, but nobody’s been able to find a way through it.’
‘Yeah, but where are we?’ someone else shouted. ‘How about that for the biggest fucking question of the day?’
Kim ignored the question. ‘Can you tell me the date?’ he asked Sam.
Sam stared at him, puzzled. ‘28th of August. Why?’
‘And the year?’
‘Oh, come on—!’
‘Please,’ said Kim. ‘Humour me.’
‘2050. Happy?’
Kim nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, thank you.’
Something about the question unnerved Sam. ‘How about the rest of you?’ he asked, looking around at them all. ‘How long has it been since you woke up?’
‘I was the first,’ replied a tall, fragile-looking Indian man who sat cross-legged next to a rock. His accent was American, with a slight Californian lilt. ‘I’d estimate that was half a day ago, judging by the sun’s movement. The day as it’s locally measured, of course.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Sam.
‘Amit.’
Half a day. Had they really all been sitting around that long without doing anything? ‘How about getting something organized,’ Sam asked, ‘so we can at least figure out some answers?’
‘We’re taking care of that,’ said Traynor, indicating the half-dozen men and women clustered around him.
Sam regarded him with unease. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but nobody looks like they’re doing a great deal of anything.’
‘You only just woke up,’ Traynor replied. ‘You don’t know what we’ve been doing.’
‘Fine,’ said Sam, ‘then what about shelter, water and food? If we don’t know where we are, those are going to be our main priorities, in that order. I used to run refugee camps, so believe me when I say I’ve got a pretty good idea how to—’
‘I already told you not to worry about it,’ said Traynor, cutting him off.
A skinny black kid, with a wary, unsettled expression and grey, piercing eyes, listened to all of this with an angry scowl. ‘You know what,’ he said, stepping closer to Traynor, ‘I am sick and tired of hearing you say how you’ll take care of everything like someone put you in charge!’
‘I didn’t see you doing much,’ Traynor shot bac
k.
‘I agree with Ethan,’ said the broad-shouldered boy. ‘You’ve been shooting your mouth off from the moment you climbed out of your damn pod, Vic, but I’m not seeing much happening.’
The black kid stepped closer to Traynor, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Sam quickly moved towards him and extended a hand. ‘Ethan, right?’
Ethan blinked, taken aback. ‘Uh…yeah.’
‘Good to meet you, Ethan.’
Ethan glared past Sam’s shoulder at Traynor, then shook his head, the fight clearly gone out of him. ‘Same,’ he replied, grasping Sam’s hand.
‘Look,’ Traynor groused, ‘somebody has to figure out what the hell’s going on with the rest of you running around like headless chickens. And that’s what I’ve been doing.’
Sam turned to look back at him. ‘So what have you figured out?’
‘Me and Vic and a couple of others scouted out the terrain,’ said another girl with messy blonde hair sitting close by Traynor. Her accent sounded Midwestern, most likely Texas. ‘Did a circular sweep out to a couple of kilometres around the lander, but we didn’t see or find any signs of civilisation. We didn’t even see any contrails or nothing.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve got experience dealing with…well, not exactly things like this, but emergencies, yes. I can help figure some way out of this.’
Somebody laughed, low and derisive.
‘Shit,’ said the round-faced girl. ‘He doesn’t know. He thinks we’re just a bunch of kids.’
‘I know you’re not,’ Sam said quickly. He realised he’d been talking to them like they were kids when they might very well not be. ‘I mean, I assume you’re not kids any more than I am.’ He pushed a trembling hand through his hair. ‘It’s just that—’
‘It’s just that none of this makes sense, you mean,’ said Joshua.
Sam licked suddenly dry lips. ‘So just to be clear,’ he asked, ‘you’re all older than you look…?’
Joshua nodded. ‘Most of us. Did you get to wondering what you look like now?’
Sam reached up to touch his face again. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer to Joshua’s question. ‘Yes.’
‘C’mon,’ said Joshua, nodding to both Sam and Sun and then gesturing towards the lander. ‘You might as well find out and get it over with.’
2
THE POOL
‘What’s the deal with you and that guy Traynor, exactly?’ Joshua asked Sam as they made their way back across the clearing.
Sam gave him a sideways look. ‘What are you talking about?’
Joshua laughed. ‘The way you looked at him when he told you his name. Like he’d grown a pair of fangs or something.’ Joshua studied him frankly, and Sam looked away. ‘You sure you’re not familiar with him?’
‘No,’ Sam lied.
‘It’s just that if you were,’ Joshua continued, ‘it would have been nice to know whether he’s always been such a presumptuous asshole. I figured maybe it was the shock of finding himself here along with the rest of us, but maybe he’s always been that way.’
‘Did I hear you say you used to work in the relief camps?’ Sun asked Sam. ‘The ones in South-East Asia?’
Sam nodded, grateful for the change of subject. ‘I was still running a camp in Indonesia until two years ago.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? I visited several such camps not so long ago.’
‘Yeah?’ Sam looked at her. ‘What took you there?’
‘I was part of a UN delegation,’ she explained. ‘I’m a senior epidemiologist with the Seoul CDPP, heading up a study of toxic shock syndrome.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Joshua.
‘The Indonesians depend heavily on fishing,’ said Sun. ‘The algal blooms off of their coast are poisoning all their fish, so when they eat the fish, they get poisoned too. It’s a serious problem.’
Understatement of the century, thought Sam. He was more than a little familiar with the toxic blooms: they’d turned half of South-East Asia into a disaster zone by the time he’d got involved, building camps to house those fleeing the disaster. Nothing gave you a fresh perspective on life, he had found, like taking delivery of tractors to dig mass graves large enough for all the bodies waiting to be buried.
‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ he asked Sun, ‘how old are you, really?’
She hesitated a moment, then said: ‘Forty-nine.’
Sam blinked and shook his head. ‘How about you?’ he asked Joshua.
‘Don’t even ask. Older than either of you, put it that way.’
Sam looked again at his hands. ‘Are we supposed to be grateful for this?’
‘Mostly,’ said Joshua, ‘I’m just scared.’
They passed under the shadow of one of the lander’s wings before coming to a halt next to a cluster of enormous boulders against which the lander’s rear fuselage had been crushed. The soil underfoot felt muddy, and Sam saw that a thin stream emerged from amongst the boulders before meandering off into the forest.
Joshua stepped towards a small pool adjacent to the stream and hunkered down next to it, a few flecks of fire-retardant foam floating on its still, flat surface. ‘Take a look,’ he said, gesturing at the water.
The strength seemed to have gone out of Sam’s legs, but he forced himself to walk up beside Joshua. A cramp seemed to be building in his stomach, like some great black insect was trapped under his skin, probing at the soft tissues of his organs.
He knelt by the pool and stared down at the reflection of a face he hadn’t seen in nearly two decades. But it was, at least, a face he recognised. He remained quite still for several seconds, then sat back, wondering if everything he had experienced from the moment of waking might be nothing more than some kind of psychotic break or mental breakdown. Perhaps he was tucked up in his room in the Taipei Hilton, suffering a stroke, his mind granting him this last, brief fantasy before he slipped into a coma and, finally, death.
But even as he knelt on the not-grass, staring down at the wide-eyed boy looking back up at him, he felt the wind in his hair, and a slight ache from a stubbed toe, and knew that whatever was happening, it was real. Very, very real.
And yet…
‘It’s not possible,’ he said, looking over at Joshua.
‘How old are you, Sam?’ asked Joshua. ‘Or how old do you remember being?’
‘Thirty-seven.’ Sam stood and let Sun take his place. She held her hair out of the way as she peered down at her own reflection in the dank water.
Joshua chuckled. ‘About half my age. Last I remember I had grey hair, I was twenty kilos too heavy, and I got tired walking down a flight of stairs. Now I feel like I could run rings around this whole damn forest and still have energy…hey, are you okay?’
Sam’s heart beat wildly, his throat feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton balls, making it hard to breathe. He stepped past Sun, still kneeling over the pool, and sat on a grey boulder slick with moss.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sam, clutching at his chest.
‘Can you breathe?’ asked Joshua with evident concern.
‘A little. It’s just…’
Past Joshua’s shoulder, Sun looked over at them, her skin turned winter-pale.
‘I can fetch Ethan,’ said Joshua. ‘He’s a doctor, but in my opinion, you’re having a panic attack. Try to take it easy for a minute.’
Sam nodded, and the pounding in his heart gradually abated. ‘I could do with some water,’ he said and looked over at the pool. ‘Think that’s drinkable?’
The other man shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. It’s probably contaminated all to hell from that foam. How are you feeling now?’
‘Better,’ said Sam. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
‘You’re not the first to freak out, you know. Things are a lot calmer now than they were a couple of hours ago.’
Sam glanced over at Sun, who had perched on the edge of another boulder, her h
ands locked tightly on top of her knees. He could see her arms were trembling.
Joshua followed his gaze and took a step towards Sun. ‘You okay?’ Joshua asked her.
‘I…I think so.’ She pushed the heel of one hand against an eye. ‘I just…need a minute.’
Focus, thought Sam, listening to their exchange. He pushed himself back upright, filled with a sudden determination to take action, to take control of this…this situation, or whatever it was.
Everything would be better, he thought, if he could concentrate on doing something.
‘So to be clear,’ asked Sam, ‘we don’t have any drinkable water?’
Joshua looked back over at him and shook his head. ‘Not that anyone’s found yet, no.’
‘What about following the stream back towards its source? That way we could find water that isn’t contaminated.’
Joshua raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds like a good idea.’
‘I’m surprised someone didn’t already think of that,’ said Sam. ‘Especially if a few of them have already done some scouting.’
‘Well,’ said Joshua, ‘maybe someone could have suggested it to them if the ones doing the scouting had bothered to tell anyone where they were going.’
Sam picked up on the note of irritation in Joshua’s voice. ‘Traynor and some of those others seem to be sticking pretty close together,’ he said.
‘I noticed that too,’ said Sun, from where she sat nearby.
Joshua glanced towards the far end of the clearing and back. ‘Those are the ones who all have military backgrounds. Traynor too, or at least that’s the vibe I get from him.’
Sam recalled Ethan’s outburst at Traynor. ‘How many of them are there? Vic Traynor and the others with military backgrounds, I mean?’
‘Seven, according to Kim,’ Joshua replied. ‘He’s been finding out everyone’s names and occupations and where they last remember being before they woke up here.’
Sam made a mental note to talk to Kim as soon as he had the chance. ‘And the rest?’
‘All civilians,’ said Joshua. ‘Ethan’s a doctor, and we’ve got two engineers, a geologist, a biologist, and a shrink—that’s me. Plus you two.’