The boy looked to the girl. The girl met Kiva’s gaze and nodded.
“Yes,” she said.
Kiva reached out her hands and placed them dead center on the children’s chests, palms flat. She closed her eyes.
In a flash, she was inside their minds, seeing what they had seen out on the grasslands.
The sight of the Strangers as they came over the hill.
The boy from her dream—the same one, the one with the deep blue eyes.
Matthew.
Another boy standing and leveling his weapon, fire leaping from the end of it.
The children ducked and turned away, lifting their heads only when they saw the flaming orb of white light hit the ground and vaporize the grass just next to them.
They looked up to see the two figures struggling in the distance, Matthew grabbing at the weapon.
Kiva came out of the vision with a shallow gasp. For a moment the world pitched and she put a hand on her chest to steady herself.
“Thank you,” she said to the children after she’d found her balance. She stood. “Go home to be with your father; he’s probably worried about you. Stay in your hut today. Everything is going to be fine.”
Kiva rose and watched the children as they walked toward the village, then turned to Thruss, Rehal, Quint, Po, and the two Forsaken men. They’d heard everything.
Thruss’s face had gone pale.
“Po was right,” she said. “We have to kill them.”
Kiva shook her head. “No.”
“But Vagra, you heard—”
“I heard exactly what you heard,” Kiva said. “But I also saw something—something that none of you have seen. I saw exactly what those children saw. I saw one of the Strangers fight the one who attacked them. I’ve seen it in my visions as well. We have an ally among them. The Ancestors have shown me this.”
“So what do we do?” Po asked.
“We stick with the plan,” Kiva said. “Come on, let’s go.”
34
matthew
Matthew and Sam stood in the airlock, waiting as the contaminated air was sucked out of the compartment and replaced, once again, with the safe air of the Corvus.
“I’m exhausted,” Sam said, holding his arms out to let jets of warm steam clean the radiation from his clothes. “How long were we out there?”
Matthew glanced at the display over the doorway. “A couple hours.”
The light over their heads turned green once the radiation had been eliminated.
Sam yawned and ground the heel of his hand into his eye as they stepped out of the airlock into the controlled environment of the ship.
“You’d think after a hundred years asleep I wouldn’t be tired, but damned if I’m not beat. I’m going to catch some shut-eye. What about you?”
Matthew shook his head. “I’m going to find Dunne.”
Matthew found Dunne in the laboratory, sitting hunched over a tablet at a long metal table. She raised her head when he walked into the room.
“Find anything?” Matthew asked.
“I found plenty,” she said. “Now if I could only figure out what it means.”
Dunne put the tablet on the table, then pushed it across toward Matthew. Matthew looked at the screen and saw a pattern of shapes and colors that he recognized as cells, laid together like bricks.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“That’s you,” Dunne said. “Well, your tissue sample, anyway. Notice anything?”
Matthew looked closely, absently reaching one hand across his body and massaging the place on his side from which Dunne had taken the sample hours earlier.
“No,” he said finally.
“Exactly. Nothing. No radiation damage.” She reached across the table and swiped a finger across the display. The image zoomed tight into a single cell. “At the cellular level, the mitochondrial level—even when I looked right at the cell nucleus, at the DNA. No damage. No mutations.”
“Nothing.”
Dunne nodded. “Exactly, nothing.”
Matthew looked up. “But that’s good, right? That’s normal?”
“Not exactly. Even without the high level of radiation, I’d have expected to see something—some level of damage to the DNA or the cells just from regular wear and tear. I’d at least expect to see some endogenous damage from normal metabolic—”
Matthew lifted his hands off the table, held them in the air in a gesture of surrender. “I’m going to have to stop you right there. You’re saying that some damage to my DNA is—”
“Normal, yes. Just by eating food and processing the nutrients, your body creates some by-products that cause damage on the cellular level. There are natural biological processes to repair this damage, but still, a normal tissue sample will have some percentage of the cells that aren’t shipshape. Even when radiation isn’t a factor.”
“And you didn’t even see that?”
Dunne shook her head. “No, not even a little bit.”
“So what does it mean?” he asked.
“That’s what I kept knocking my head against. Then I had an idea: why not re-subject the tissues to the outside radiation? The air inside the Corvus is decontaminated. I thought it wouldn’t matter, that whatever radiation we’d all absorbed outside would be enough to see what was going on in the samples, but obviously I was wrong about that. So I put your tissue sample in the containment chamber and filled the chamber with the irradiated air from outside.”
Dunne spun her chair away from the table, toward the containment chamber. Matthew came around and joined her at the control panel. The containment chamber was a compartment about the size and shape of a coffin in the center of the lab surrounded in plate glass. From the top of the chamber, a narrow tube ran to the ceiling and a discharge in the outer hull. Inside the chamber was a small-rimmed plastic dish containing Matthew’s tissue sample.
“Look at the display,” Dunne instructed, and tilted her head toward the control panel.
Matthew looked at the screen and saw the familiar view of biological cells squeezed up next to each other.
Dunne pushed both arms into a pair of rubber gloves that came up to her elbows and allowed her to reach inside the containment chamber. She adjusted the placement of the dish; on the screen, the arrangement of cells wobbled, then came into focus again.
“Watch that one,” she said, extracting her arms and moving back to the control panel. She tapped the screen. “That one in the middle.”
She turned a knob, and as she did the picture zoomed in even further, until only the single cell was visible. Matthew watched for a few seconds, then glanced at Dunne.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
“Just watch,” Dunne said, not taking her eyes off the display. “It comes and goes in a split second. You’ll miss it if you’re not looking carefully.”
Matthew looked back at the screen. For a few long moments, nothing happened. No change, no movement.
Then, something happened—so subtle that at first Matthew thought it was a trick of his eyes.
At the edge of the screen, the cell was breaking down. The membrane tearing open.
And then, just as abruptly as the cell broke open, it zipped shut again in a flash.
It was all so fast that at the end of it Matthew wondered if he had imagined the whole thing, if it was just a glitch in the display.
He looked to Dunne. “What did I just see?”
“It’s fast, right? At first I thought I was seeing things too. But then it kept happening. I recorded it, slowed it down, and sure enough …” Her fingers flicked over the panel, then she pointed back at the screen. “There.”
In slow motion, one microscopic frame at a time, the cell burst open and then, just as quickly, closed up again.
“But what’s happening?”
“The biological cells are breaking down, just like we’d expect them to under high radiation. They’re literally cooking. Popping open.”
“A
nd then repairing themselves.”
“Right! But not repairing themselves, exactly—that’s impossible. The body just doesn’t have the resources to do that, to regenerate cells that quickly.”
“What, then?”
Dunne shook her head, reached a hand up to her face and ran the fingers idly over her cheek as she thought. “That’s what I don’t know. Yet. But one thing’s for sure. The radiation on this planet is enough to kill us by itself. But there’s something else in the environment. Something that’s keeping us alive. I’ll find it. I just need more time.”
“We might not have that much time,” Matthew said.
Dunne raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“We’re not alone. There’s something else here. Someone else.”
Dunne’s mouth dropped open.
35
For a few seconds, Dunne was unable to speak. Then she put a hand to her chest and felt behind her with the other, grasping in the air for a chair. Fearing that she was going to faint, Matthew helped her get settled in a tall metal stool.
“I want you to tell me everything,” Dunne said.
“We saw them maybe five miles away, to the northeast.”
“How many?” Dunne asked.
“Two of them. Children.”
“Children,” Dunne said to herself in a kind of marveled whisper. “They were humanoid, then? Like us, basically?”
Matthew nodded. “Yes. Two arms, two legs.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t get very close.”
“Why not?” Dunne asked.
Matthew cringed. “Sam. He … he had a gun, from the airlock, and I guess he must have panicked or something, because—” A horrified look came over Dunne’s face. “He didn’t.”
“He did.”
“Did he hurt them? Kill them?”
Matthew shook his head. “No. He missed. They ran away.”
Dunne set an elbow on the table and put her hand over her mouth. Her breath came sharp but shallow from her chest, streaming through her splayed fingers. She gazed off to the side, staring with glassy eyes at a spot on the wall.
“Were they wearing clothes?” she asked, turning toward him again with renewed urgency. “Were they talking to each other? Did they have tools of any kind?”
“No tools that I could see,” Matthew said. “But they were wearing clothes, and it looked like they were talking to each other until they saw us. Why? Is that important?”
“Of course it’s important! It changes everything! Clothes and language—that’s not just life. The grass outside, that’s life. But what you’re describing is more than that. What you’re describing is culture. And culture means sentience, consciousness. It means that we might be the first people in the history of the human race to make contact with intelligent life on another planet. You understand that?”
“Does this mean that the planet might be habitable after all?”
Dunne shook her head. “Not necessarily. Not for us, anyway. I still don’t understand what effect this place has on humans. Those kids you saw out there—if that’s really what you saw—their species has had millions of years to evolve in this environment. Things that wouldn’t bother them might kill us over time.”
“So what do we do now?”
Dunne’s back slowly pulled straight and she rested her hands on her legs. Her eyes still had a far-off look, but the shock had worn off her face. The expression she wore now was one of determination.
“We have to find them,” she said. “The creatures you saw. We have to make contact. We have to study them. If I can understand their biology, then maybe I can figure out what’s going on there.” She nodded her head back toward the containment chamber with Matthew’s tissue sample inside, toward the screen where the recording of his cells tearing open and regenerating ran on a continuous loop.
“Okay,” Matthew said. “Let’s do it.”
Dunne nodded and stood up. “Where’s Sam?”
“I’m right here,” came a gruff voice from the corridor.
Matthew’s head snapped around. Sam stepped into the room.
“You startled me,” Matthew said. “I thought you were getting some shut-eye.”
Sam leaned against the doorframe, crossed his arms over his chest, and shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Were you listening to us long?” Matthew asked.
“Long enough,” Sam said.
“Then you know that we’re going to go find those creatures you and Matthew saw,” Dunne said.
“You won’t have to go far,” Sam said. “That’s why I was coming to find you.”
“What do you mean?” Matthew asked.
“I mean they’re here.”
There were three of them, standing some hundred paces beyond the door to the airlock, far enough away that Matthew couldn’t quite make out their features. They were female, each wearing a dull-colored knee-length dress. A wind whipped up, and the grass swished around their knees, whipped their hair sideways.
Matthew stepped away from the window to give Dunne a chance to look.
“Women,” she said, then squinted. “Girls, by the look of it, though it’s hard to tell from this distance. Hardly the scouting party that I’d expect.”
Sam knelt and opened the chest of guns. He took out the shotgun he’d had before, then glanced up to Matthew.
“Want one?”
“No,” Matthew said, “and you don’t need one either. There’s no reason to go out there with guns. Not after what happened last time. It’s just three girls. They don’t have any weapons. They’re not a threat.”
“You don’t know that,” Sam said. “We haven’t really made contact yet. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”
Dunne stepped back from the window and addressed Matthew.
“I agree with Sam,” she said. “They look familiar, like something we recognize and interpret as safe and unthreatening. But we don’t know anything about them. For all we know they might breathe fire or shoot death rays from their eyes.”
Matthew scoffed.
“I’m exaggerating to make a point,” Dunne said. “What I’m saying is, we need to be cautious. There’s no reason we shouldn’t take precautions against danger when we make first contact.”
“There is if he can’t keep his finger off the trigger!” Matthew said, his voice rising.
Sam stood, gun in hand. “I’ll be more careful this time.”
Matthew shook his head. “No. This time, we’re doing it my way.”
Dunne’s brow knotted. “What do you suggest?”
“I’ll go out there. Alone. You two can hang back if you’re so afraid of them. Watch from the doorway to see how it goes. If they attack me, then you can come out with guns blazing.”
Dunne raked a hand through her hair, then rubbed at the back of her neck as she considered. “It’s a risk.”
“Yes, but it’s my risk,” Matthew said. “And it’s a risk worth taking. We’ve seen five of them so far—the two kids, now these three. There are bound to be more of them out there. Hundreds, thousands. Millions, even. You want to kill every one of them? The three of us, against the whole planet?”
Dunne was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it. But one change.”
“What?”
She looked him square in the eyes. “I’m coming with you.”
36
po
Blades of grass scratched at Po’s face. He lifted his head and chest from the ground and peered over the swell of the hill. Below, the Sisters stood in a tight knot—Thruss, Rehal, and Kiva. Their lips moved, but Po was too far away to make out what they were saying, couldn’t even hear their voices as a murmur carried on the wind.
Off to the left, some distance away from where Kiva and her friends clumped on the grass, stood what looked to Po like a huge bird made of gleaming black stone. Kiva said it carried the Strangers in its belly.
“Nothing’s happening
,” Quint said, crouched a few paces behind Po.
“I can see that,” Po muttered.
“Then get back down,” Quint said. “Wait for the signal.”
Po lowered himself back to the ground and looked to his right and left, where the other Forsaken men lay on the ground as well, poised to react to Kiva’s signal as it was relayed to Quint. Kiva had told them what to look for before she’d gone down with Thruss and Rehal: when she understood the situation, understood whether the Strangers meant them harm or not, she’d raise her arm in the air. Then, if she dropped it back to her side, that meant all was safe; raising a single finger meant that Po should fire a harmless warning shot; and a clenched fist meant that the Forsaken should use their weapons to kill every last one of the Strangers.
Po rolled onto his side, reached over his shoulder to take an arrow from the quiver on his back, then eyed the point of the arrowhead as he notched the fletched end in the taut string of his bow.
“Hold on,” Quint said suddenly.
“What is it?” Po glanced back.
Quint was craning her neck from her crouch, eyes narrowed as she tried to get a better look.
“Something’s happening,” Quint said.
kiva
A low-pitched whirring sound sliced through the air, a thrum of mechanical parts moving and scraping against each other. Part of the bird’s black shell was peeling away from its body and lowering on a hinge toward the ground. Kiva’s pulse quickened. She could feel the fear of Thruss and Rehal rising, and she reached out to grab each of her friends by the hand. She looked first to Thruss, then to Rehal, forcing a smile she was pleased to see each girl return.
She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind into the empty space where the Ancestors dwelled, hoping for some final echo to confirm that she was doing the right thing. She saw and heard nothing—but she felt a sense of peace wash over her, a feeling of resignation, a feeling that whatever happened next was unstoppable and had been ordained long ago, a feeling that was almost hopeful as it came from the Ancestors and coursed through her body.
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