Kiva and Kyne had played together as children, but they had never been friends. Kyne was unpredictable, volatile—Kiva and her friends had been afraid of her. Even as a young girl, Kyne had ruled over the other children with her quick wit and sharp tongue. Warm and friendly one moment, she’d turn cruel the next, picking a victim seemingly at random and assailing her with biting insults until the girl ran, weeping, back to her hut.
Then, when Kiva and Kyne were eleven seasons old, Kyne had disappeared one day. When they asked Po where she’d gone, he told them that she’d left their hut in the middle of the night and hadn’t come back. He didn’t know why. A week later, Kyne reappeared, walking through the village with a group of Sisters. Kiva and her friends dared each other to talk to Kyne and find out what happened, but in the end the only one with the courage to approach Kyne had been Kiva.
She’d felt the eyes of the Sisters on her as she walked up to Kyne.
“Kyne,” she’d begun, suddenly too timid to ask Kyne outright what had happened to her. “Do you … do you want to play with us?”
Kyne had turned up her nose at that.
“I don’t have time to play,” she said. “I’m one of the Sisters now.”
Rumors in the village confirmed that what Kyne claimed was true. She’d seen a vision and was now the youngest girl to ever join the leaders of the Vagri in the center of the village. Some whispered that Kyne was going to be the next Vagra, as soon as the current Vagra died—and by the way Kyne carried herself through the village, her back straight and her nose lifted in the air, Kiva could tell that she believed it.
Now, looking at her, Kiva could see that Kyne hadn’t changed. She had the same sharp nose and cheekbones, the same thin mouth pulled into a perpetual sneer. The same black eyes, which now fixed Kiva with a poisonous look.
“What are you doing here?” Kyne asked.
“She’s had a vision,” Liana said. “The Ancestors have spoken to her.”
“We’ll see about that,” Kyne said, looking at Kiva, sizing her up.
Kiva’s stomach burbled with an instant rage that she could barely understand. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so angry. All she knew was that she wanted to wipe that smug look off Kyne’s face.
Kyne smirked. “You’re sure it was a vision? Maybe you just fell and hit your head. I’d hate to see you embarrass yourself in front of all the Sisters. In front of the Vagra.”
“It was real,” Kiva said. “It was a vision.”
Kyne stepped closer and spoke so near to Kiva’s face that she could feel the warmth of Kyne’s breath on her cheeks. “Prove it,” she said. “Tell me about this vision.”
At Kiva’s back, Liana cut in. “She doesn’t have to explain herself to you. We came here to see the Vagra.”
Kyne directed her smirk at Liana. “But I’ll be Vagra soon enough.”
Liana made a noncommittal motion with her shoulders, as if she didn’t quite believe that Kyne would be Vagra but didn’t care enough to argue, either.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But you’re not Vagra yet, are you?”
Kyne’s gaze turned back to Kiva with a look of hauteur merging into anger, and Kiva understood at once that Kyne felt threatened by her—that the presence of another girl her own age among the Sisters would be a challenge to the status she’d gained among them. She could see all this in Kyne’s eyes, but it was more than that: she could feel it as well, could hear it in echoes from Kyne’s mind.
Enough! came a booming voice from the center of the camp—though whether it was a real voice or the sound of one of the Sisters’ thoughts, Kiva couldn’t be sure.
The chatter stopped and the Sisters turned to face the spot from which the voice had come.
Seeing the old woman standing there, Kiva felt certain that the booming shout couldn’t have come from her. She was too small, too stooped to make such a sound. She stood outside the door to the mud hut in the center of the village.
The Vagra.
“Liana is right, Kyne,” the Vagra said. “I’m not dead yet—so stop acting as though I am, as though the Ancestors have already named you to replace me.”
The Vagra’s lips moved with the words, but it was clear that it was not her voice alone that made the sounds Kiva was hearing—the sound echoed on two registers: the small, cracked voice of an old woman, and the reverberating boom of the woman’s thoughts, beamed to all of the Sisters over the air through the power of her mind.
Kyne bowed her head, her face paling. “I’m sorry, Vagra, I merely thought—”
“Enough,” the Vagra interrupted. “Bring the girl to me.”
14
Kiva didn’t move at first. Liana nodded her forward, to where the Vagra stood waiting.
“Go on,” Liana said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Kiva obeyed. She walked ahead, toward the Vagra’s hut, as Liana lingered behind. Kyne moved aside, and the rest of the Sisters parted to let Kiva pass.
When she came close to the Vagra’s hut, the old woman held out her hand. It was wrinkled, warped, knotted.
“Come here, child.”
Slowly, her steps halting, Kiva walked forward and took the Vagra’s hand. The skin was loose and soft.
“Now you must wait,” the Vagra said to the Sisters. “I’ll tell you of my decision soon enough.”
And with that, the two—old woman and teenage girl—turned and walked into the circular hut.
Kiva walked inside and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The hut was sparsely furnished, practically empty. By the door was a bench made from blades of dried prairie grass lashed in a webbed pattern to a rough wooden frame; on the opposite side of the room was a cot of similar construction. In the center of the room, a hole in the roof let in the light of the Twins above.
The Vagra moved to the center of the room, the moonlight glistening on her hair. She crouched near a shallow pit filled with ashes and charred branches. From a small basket she took pieces of wood and placed them in the pit, propped one against the other. With a rock and flint she lit some kindling, then knelt and blew the small flames into a roaring blaze. Some of the smoke billowed up through the hole in the roof, but more of it stayed in the hut and filled the close space with a thick gray haze. Kiva coughed.
The Vagra stood and extended a hand.
“Come here.”
With halting steps Kiva walked to the center of the room, toward the old woman’s outstretched arm. When she reached the radius of the Vagra’s grip, the older woman grabbed her by the shoulders. Kiva nearly tripped as the old woman’s arms pulled her closer to the fire. Kiva’s feet came dangerously close to the glowing embers, and the heat of the flames stung the bare skin of her calf. She sucked in a breath, but the Vagra paid no mind.
When the Vagra had Kiva where she wanted her, she reached into the basket once more and brought out a cut sheaf of grasses. The Vagra knelt and brushed the sheaf over Kiva’s body, flicking her wrist as the dry blades scratched lightly across Kiva’s shoulders, arms, and chest.
Then the old woman picked up a shallow clay bowl and a dull knife with a dark wooden handle. She set the bowl on the ground before her, then crumpled the sheaf of grasses she’d touched Kiva with in her hands, grinding it to dust in the bowl. She gripped the handle of the knife in one hand, the blade in the other. Kiva flinched as the Vagra drew near.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
“Why?”
The Vagra sighed impatiently. “The faster you cooperate, the faster it will be over.”
Kiva slowly extended a quivering hand. The Vagra seized it out of the air and yanked it toward herself. She put the blade against Kiva’s palm and drew the sharp edge across it. Kiva hissed and bit her lip against the pain.
The old woman shaped Kiva’s hand into a fist above the bowl. Blood, black and shiny in the dim hut, dripped from between her fingers and pooled in the dust. The Vagra hunched over, mixed the blood and dust into a dark paste with two fingers, th
en threw some of the paste into the fire.
The flames hissed, roared, pouring even more smoke into the room, then died down again. The fire had changed color—still red at the lapping tips of the flames, at their root the tongues of fire had turned from yellow to pale green.
Kiva trembled, her breaths coming shallow but her heart pounding in her chest. She looked from the fire to the Vagra, who’d begun wiping the bloody paste from her hands with a damp, dirty cloth. Then she took a clean cloth and tied it around the cut on Kiva’s hand.
“Go,” she said, nodding toward the bench at the door. “Bring it here.” She pointed to the spot next to the fire.
Kiva walked to the door, lifted the bench, and hefted it to the place where the Vagra pointed.
The old woman lowered herself onto the bench.
“Sit,” she commanded, and Kiva sank to her knees in the dirt.
The Vagra closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose.
“Now, tell me about this vision.”
Kiva told her what she had seen.
The old woman’s eyes remained closed. She breathed slowly in and out. Then, finally, she spoke.
“What you saw was no dream.”
“So Liana was right,” Kiva said. “I’m to be one of the Sisters.”
The old woman’s eyes came open and she shook her head.
“No, child,” she said. “Not one of the Sisters. The Ancestors have chosen you to replace me. You will be the new Vagra.”
PART 3
PREMONITIONS
15
matthew
On the day Matthew had gone into cryostasis the technician told him that he wouldn’t feel anything, that going into the freeze would be painless, and that he wouldn’t dream—that he’d experience the light-years in cryostasis as lost time.
The technician had lied.
Matthew may have been frozen in cryostasis, but his mind was awake—awake and dreaming. While his body slept, images and memories of Earth, of his family, of his past, drifted through his mind like movies he had no choice but to watch, playing on a never-ending loop.
Matthew squinted into the sunlight. Wisps of cloud curled their fingers across the sky, broke, and reformed on the wind. At the edges of his vision, black birds perched on the bare fingers of the trees, squawking tentatively into the bright day, their voices confused and afraid.
“Is it brighter than usual?” Matthew’s mother asked. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t be out here.”
“It’s fine. A little sun never hurt anyone,” Matthew’s father said.
Matthew looked down from the blinding white sky and met his father’s eyes. They all sat together on a blanket in the backyard of their old house, the one they lived in before everything went bad and they had to move into the compound at the edge of the city. His father looked back at Matthew and nodded, as though Matthew had asked him a question.
“We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Go on, eat your sandwich.”
Matthew took a bite, even though he wasn’t hungry. His father had made his turkey sandwich the wrong way, put mayonnaise on it instead of butter, added mustard, which Matthew didn’t like at all, and hadn’t cut off the crusts, as his mother always did. But Matthew knew not to complain. He’d sensed something forced in the way his father had come home from work with a wild smile plastered on his face and announced, his voice buoyant and just a little too loud, that they were going to have a picnic.
Matthew chewed, swallowed, and looked at his mother, who was taking small, nervous bites of her own sandwich. She saw him looking and smiled thinly.
“It’s fine,” she said. “We’re fine.”
But then Matthew’s father stood up and strode to where Sophie, only two years old, was playing in the dirt, and Matthew saw for the first time as he walked away the redness on the back of his neck.
“Mom, why—,” he began, meaning to ask why his father’s skin had turned so red, but something in his mother’s eyes told him to stop. “Why is the grass so brown?” he asked instead.
“I don’t know, honey,” his mother said. “I guess we just haven’t watered it in so long. What with the rationing and all.”
Matthew finished his sandwich while his father crouched and scooped up Sophie by the armpits, threw her squealing into the air and caught her again. He spun her around in a circle, laughing his wild laugh.
Then he collapsed into the dirt, Sophie still cradled in his arms.
Matthew’s mother gasped and ran to his father, put her hands lightly on his body just underneath his neck, patted him to feel for a pulse. She ignored Sophie, who’d had the wind knocked out of her when she fell to the ground and was taking a series of shuddering breaths, preparing to scream. Matthew walked to his sister and touched her shoulder, and at once Sophie cut the air with a wail.
“Dale,” his mother said, still ignoring both of them. “Dale, wake up!”
Matthew began to cry along with Sophie.
His mother’s eyes snapped up. “Stop crying,” she said. “You have to help me move him. You have to help me get him inside.”
There was a hole in Matthew’s memory between the backyard and the house—even in cryosleep, his mind couldn’t recall how he and his mother managed to get both his father and Sophie back inside. The next thing he remembered was sitting on the couch, his sister’s warm body pressed up next to his. All cried out, Sophie was now whimpering quietly. Across the room, the TV was on—their mother had turned it on and put them in front of it to keep them quiet while she attended to their father in the next room. But in her rush, she hadn’t taken the time to find a show Matthew and Sophie might like to watch, so it was the news on the screen, talking heads speaking sentences the two children were too young to understand.
“… reporting that the self-replicating nanites created to combat the effects of global warming backfired instead, eating through the atmosphere’s delicate ozone layer … ”
From the hallway came the sound of water running. Their mother drawing their father a cold bath.
“Goddammit, Dale, what the hell were you thinking?” Their mother was trying to whisper, but in her anger her hiss was loud enough for Matthew to hear in the living room.
“Just got a little lightheaded,” their father mumbled, awake now. “It’s nothing. Nothing to be worried about.”
“… a deadly convergence of rapid global heating and an alarming spike in levels of solar radiation … ”
“We’re moving,” their mother said. “That’s it. We’re moving.”
“What, to one of those … those compounds? You honestly think we can afford to buy our way into one of those?”
Sophie squeezed up closer to Matthew. The place on Matthew’s body where she pressed against him was hot and sweaty, but he put his arm around his sister and pulled her tight anyway.
“I’ve heard of some where you can pay by working,” their mother said. “Corporate-owned.”
“… Government sources advising people to stay inside unless absolutely necessary …”
“Those places are traps,” their father said. “Sign one of those contracts and they own you for life. It’s modern-day slavery.”
“You’d rather keep working construction? You’d rather work outside? You’ll die, Dale.”
“I won’t,” their father said.
Under Matthew’s arm, Sophie turned from the TV. Matthew looked down and met her gaze. Her eyes so big, so brown.
“Daddy okay?” Sophie asked.
“… the death of all life on planet Earth …”
Matthew felt himself beginning to cry again but fought the tears back, tried to be strong for his little sister.
“He’ll be fine,” Matthew said. “We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
But everything wasn’t fine. Their father did die, one of the first victims of a new disease that would come to be known as “sun poisoning.” It was an affliction suffered by those who spent long hours outside, before radiation
suits became commonplace. Their bodies unable to handle the extreme heat and solar radiation, victims of sun poisoning simply dropped dead—severely burned, dehydrated, organs failing.
And Matthew’s mother did, in spite of her husband’s objections, sign a contract with a company called Cheminex, a manufacturer of industrial solvents. The contract allowed her, Sophie, and Matthew to live in a company-owned compound at the edge of the city that was equal parts factory, apartment building, and shopping mall. Inside was a school for Matthew and Sophie, walking trails, stores, and indoor parks with fake grass where people threw balls for their dogs to fetch and pretended that everything was normal.
The only price for all this was that their mother had to work ten hours every day with toxic chemicals—and that Matthew and Sophie had to do their best to pretend they didn’t smell the chemicals on her when she came home at the end of the day and made them dinner.
Now Matthew’s dreaming skipped ahead in time, to the day that their mother revealed to them that she had cancer. She and Sophie sat together on the couch—Sophie crying, their mother sitting silent, rubbing his sister’s back in a small circle—while Matthew paced the room thinking, Not again, not again, not this again.
“It’s those chemicals,” Matthew said finally. “Those goddamn chemicals you work with every day.”
“Watch your language,” his mother said. “And besides, it’s not the chemicals. The bosses told me it’s not. My work is perfectly safe. This is just something that happens.”
“Cancer isn’t just something that happens,” Matthew said.
“Well, getting angry about it won’t help,” their mother said.
Matthew ignored her. “What we need is a plan. Time. If we can’t afford the treatments then maybe we can just slow the cancer down while we save up our money.”
“And how do you propose doing that?” their mother asked.
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “Maybe …”
The Exo Project Page 5