The Exo Project

by Andrew DeYoung

  Could they … no. No. It was impossible. It had been far too long for them to be—

  Matthew blinked.

  “The Ancestors,” he said, then paused. He gulped.

  Kiva looked up into his eyes. “Yes?”

  “Yesterday, you said they show you things, right?”

  Kiva nodded. “They show us things we must see,” she recited. “Visions.”

  “Right. And these visions. They’re, what? The past? The future?”

  “Things that have been, things that will be,” Kiva said. “Also things that might be—if you don’t stop them from happening.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why? What have the Ancestors shown you?”

  Matthew shook his head and pulled his hand away. The smooth warmth of Kiva’s fingertips against his skin as she dressed his wound was pleasurable—but at the moment, he didn’t want to be distracted by her touch. He needed to think.

  Could his mother and Sophie still be alive? Were they in danger?

  “I don’t know,” he said, turning his back to Kiva. “I just don’t know.”

  55

  kiva

  Matthew walked a few steps away from Kiva, drifting into his own thoughts. Kiva withdrew her power from him, giving him some privacy in his own mind. She turned back to the fire, which still burned green at the roots: the sign of the Ancestors’ strong presence in Matthew’s blood.

  She glanced at Matthew, still facing away from her, and fell to wondering about him. From the beginning, Matthew had appeared in her visions of the Strangers—the Ancestors wanted her to know that there was something important about him. Now, the Ancestors were emphasizing that importance by favoring him with their power, by giving him visions that no Vagri man had ever experienced. Clearly, Matthew had some part to play in what was to come.

  And yet.

  Was Matthew really on her side? Wasn’t he still a Stranger? He’d admitted that his people would destroy the Vagri if they came to live on Gle’ah—but when the time came to make a decision, would Matthew side with her people, or with his?

  Kiva had to be sure. She had to be certain that he was on her side. And if he wasn’t, then she had to convince him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kiva said suddenly.

  Matthew turned. “What?”

  “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  He nodded. For a moment they just stood there, looking at each other, each waiting for the other to move. Then, Kiva seized Matthew’s hand in hers and pulled him toward the door. Outside, she quickly dropped his hand, fearful to let the Sisters see them touching. But as she led Matthew through the encampment, the feeling of Matthew’s hand in hers lingered in her mind, the warmth and weight of it, the feeling of his fingers laced together with hers.

  She smiled down at the ground, her cheeks burning, wondering what was coming over her.

  At her heels, Matthew said nothing. They walked on in silence.

  Their steps slowed as they reached the main village and they meandered their way to the border. Kiva hiked up the rise, Matthew close behind her.

  “Where are we going?” Matthew asked.

  “Stop here,” Kiva said when they’d reached the top.

  Matthew stood, perched on the lip of rock that separated the village from the plain. “This is what you wanted to show me? But I’ve already seen it. We stood at this exact spot yesterday, when we first came to the village.”

  “Just look,” she said, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning his body until he faced the village once more. “Really look. And while you do, I’m going to tell you a story.”

  “A story?” Matthew’s lips curved into a teasing smile.

  Kiva ignored him. “My father told me this story when I was a little girl,” she said. “I must’ve begged him to tell it a thousand times. It’s about the beginning of the Vagri, and about where the Ancestors came from.”

  Matthew grew silent. He drew a long breath through his lips. His gaze sharpened.

  “In the beginning of time,” Kiva began, “when Gle’ah was first created, everything was engulfed in Chaos, and Death floated in the air. People lived during those times, but they didn’t yet understand how to work together and survive. Everyone was alone, and when people came upon each other on the plain, they were so afraid that they fought and killed each other on sight.

  “But in that time there also lived a man and a woman who came together and lived in peace with each other, and each cared for the other. He was First Father; she was First Mother—though her womb was barren because of the Death that hung in the air.”

  Kiva closed her eyes as she remembered what came next, the words she’d heard countless times as a girl coming back to her lips now as if the story were speaking through her.

  “One day, First Mother said to First Father, ‘Come, let us make a family, a tribe like this world has never seen: a people who live together in peace and harmony rather than Chaos.’

  “But First Father replied, ‘How can we do this, since your womb is barren? Let’s go to this cave instead, where we can lie down together and wait to die—for we are no match for the Chaos that covers Gle’ah, or the Death that floats in the air.’

  “But First Mother refused. ‘No,’ she said, then cast her eyes into the sky, and pointed, and said, ‘Look.’”

  Kiva paused and remembered the way Grath always told this part of the story—his voice hushed, a whisper so soft that Kiva would have to lean forward to hear. He’d point with his finger toward the roof of the hut, the firelight throwing his shadow on the wall, and Kiva would look up as if the thing he was pointing at were real, as if she could see it if she looked hard enough.

  “And in the sky, a star came down and blazed through the air to land at the spot where you are standing.”

  She pointed down at the village below, at the massive, cratered depression that the Vagri huts sat in, the lip of rock encircling it on every side. She studied Matthew’s face. His mouth had come open a crack.

  “First Mother said, ‘We must go together to the place where that star struck Gle’ah.’

  “But First Father was afraid, and he refused.

  “So First Mother went on alone—and when she came to the place where the white light had fallen to Gle’ah, healing entered her body and wiped away the Death, and her womb was no longer barren, and her mind was suddenly full of voices.

  “The voices said, ‘We are the Ancestors. We have come here to give you hope, to make you into a people who live in the midst of Death, and who will wipe the Chaos away from the face of Gle’ah.’

  “First Mother returned to First Father and brought him to that place, and when he came his body was full of healing as well—but because he was afraid and had doubted, the Ancestors chose not to speak to him as they had spoken to First Mother.

  “Together, First Mother and First Father lived in the place where the star had struck Gle’ah, surrounded at all times by the Ancestors, who protected them, and healed them, and gave them many children. And these children became the Vagri. And when First Mother grew old and was near to death, she picked from among her daughters one who heard the voices of the Ancestors more clearly than the others—and she chose this girl to be a mother to all her children, a Vagra to care for the Vagri and keep them from falling once more into Chaos.”

  Kiva let out a long breath and said nothing for a moment to let the story sink in, to give it space to grow and deepen in Matthew’s mind. She hadn’t told it as well as Grath always did, perhaps—but she’d told it, and she’d done her best.

  “And that,” she said now, “is the story of how the Ancestors and the Vagri came to be.”

  Matthew turned to face her. “Is it true?” he asked. “Did it really happen that way?”

  Kiva shrugged. “It’s a story. It doesn’t have to be true to be true.”

  As she spoke them, the words sounded like nonsense—but Matthew nodded as though she’d said something profound and looked back out over the village. Kiva mo
ved closer to him and stood by his side.

  “I told you this story because—”

  “I know why you told me,” Matthew said.

  Kiva glanced at him, surprised. “You do?”

  Matthew nodded. “You wanted me to know that your people came from chaos. That you made a way of life for yourself in the middle of death. And that you’ve got a responsibility to protect that way of life.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Right?”

  “Yes,” Kiva said. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “And I get it,” Matthew said, turning his body to face her fully. “I really do. But it’s not that simple.”

  “Why? Why isn’t it simple? Why can’t it be?”

  “Because,” Matthew said. “I have a responsibility too. I have a mission. The Vagri are your people, but the people back on Earth, they’re my people—even if they’ve screwed everything up. And if I don’t do something, they’ll all die.”

  Kiva didn’t say anything. She just looked at Matthew for a long moment, then turned back to face the village where she’d lived her entire life.

  The village. It looked so small. When she was a girl, it had seemed big, but she could see now that it wasn’t. It was small. Tiny. Cowering underneath the vastness of the sky, surrounded on all sides by prairie that stretched to the horizon. The huts made of mud and grass, the people made of flesh and blood and bone. A single breath could blow it all away—everything she’d ever known.

  Matthew stood so close that the hairs on her arm stood up. And yet, at the same time, he seemed a million miles away—and the space between them seemed impenetrable, absolute.

  “I think you should go now,” Kiva said. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t look at him. She couldn’t.

  “Okay,” he said. “I understand. I’ll go.”

  “Good,” Kiva said, and began walking down the rise back into the village.

  “Do you want me to come back tomorrow?” Matthew called down after her. There was a hoping, pleading tone in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Kiva said, loud enough for him to hear over his shoulder, then again, quieter, just for herself, “I don’t know.”

  56

  matthew

  Matthew stood at the top of the rise and watched Kiva recede into the village. Then he turned and walked into the prairie.

  As he walked, Matthew felt ashamed and angry with himself in a way he couldn’t quite place—it had something to do with his mission, something to do with Kiva, and something to do with the way she went cold when he told her about his responsibility to the humans back on Earth.

  He didn’t want to think about it. So he walked a little faster, moved as quickly as he could without running.

  Halfway between the village and the Corvus, Matthew looked up at the crest of the next hill and saw a figure standing silhouetted against the sunset.

  “Sam?”

  The figure turned and walked down the other side of the hill. Matthew broke into a run, his legs burning as he climbed the swell.

  But when he reached the top of the hill, Sam was gone. Nothing but waving grass in every direction.

  Matthew shook his head. He felt as thought he’d wandered into a dream. Was he starting to see things?

  Back at the Corvus, Matthew found Dunne still in the laboratory, hunched over her handheld display.

  “Hey, has Sam come back?” Matthew asked. “I thought I saw him out on the—”

  Dunne’s head snapped up, and Matthew stopped talking. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, frenzied with excitement.

  “What is it?” Matthew asked.

  “Look at this,” Dunne said. She set the handheld on the table and pushed it across.

  Matthew looked. The display swarmed with tiny black dots against a white background.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Kiva’s blood sample,” Dunne said.

  Matthew arched an eyebrow. “And these dots are what? Blood cells?”

  Dunne shook her head. “This is several orders of magnitude larger than the cellular level. This view is magnified to the molecular level.”

  Dunne paused, then reached over and tapped at the display with her index finger.

  “Those aren’t blood cells,” she said. “Those are the Ancestors.”

  Matthew grabbed the handheld and stared more closely at the screen, at the little black dots that swam in Kiva’s blood sample. Suddenly, he became very aware of the blood coursing through his own veins, of his heart beating in his chest. Whatever he was looking at, it was something that now swam in his bloodstream as well.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “Some type of nanite. You know what those are?”

  Matthew shook his head. “Not really.”

  “Nanites are basically machines,” Dunne said. “But they’re not like regular machines. They’re built at an extremely small scale, just a few nanometers in width, and designed to do work at a molecular level.”

  Matthew held up his hands. “Wait. Machines, built, designed. You mean that someone actually made these things?”

  “I don’t know. You saw as well as I did that the Vagri haven’t progressed nearly far enough to develop sophisticated technology—much less nanotechnology. They didn’t make the Ancestors. But at the same time, there’s no way these things could have evolved naturally. The way they behave, what they do …”

  “What do they do?” Matthew asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Dunne said. She reached across the table for the handheld display, tapped at the screen. Then she set the display back on the table so Matthew could see it.

  “Remember that?”

  Matthew looked at the screen. It was the video that Dunne had shown him a day ago of one of his biological cells, bursting open from the radiation in the air and then miraculously repairing itself.

  Matthew nodded. “Yes. I remember.”

  “Well, the answer was right in front of us all along. We just weren’t looking closely enough.” She tapped at the screen, and the view zoomed in by several orders of magnitude until Matthew could begin to see the individual molecules of his cell wall.

  “I’ve slowed it down so you can see what’s going on,” Dunne said. “Watch closely.”

  Matthew watched as his cell burst open once more, sending clumps of molecules flying.

  Then the Ancestors appeared—vibrating black dots swarming through the white toward the broken biological material. The Ancestors grabbed hold of the clumps of molecules and, so quickly that Matthew could barely keep up, put everything back together again.

  “Holy shit,” Matthew muttered, and looked up at Dunne. “So the Ancestors are what’s keeping us alive in this environment. They’re the ones keeping us from dying in the radiation.”

  Dunne nodded. “They’re everywhere. Flying around in the air. In our lungs, in our cells. In our bloodstream. They’re like a virus.”

  “Except that they don’t make us sick.”

  “No. They keep us alive. And there’s more. They’re communicating.”

  Matthew shook his head and laughed, a single bark of amused astonishment. “Of course they are.”

  “Watch this.” She reached forward and tapped the screen on the handheld once more.

  The display went dark, but by squinting Matthew could see hundreds of tiny, flashing points of light, starting in one corner and spreading across the screen in a wave.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “This is Kiva’s blood sample at the maximum magnification I can manage, in a completely dark chamber. You can see the light?”

  Matthew nodded. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Well, this is pretty speculative—we don’t have any quantum sensors—but I think what we’re seeing is a photon energy transfer between the nanites. Between the Ancestors. One of them releases a small burst of light energy, the next absorbs it and releases another burst in response, and so on.”

  “So, these waves of light,” Matth
ew said. “That’s the Ancestors communicating?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Even some nanites made by Earth scientists are designed to communicate with each other. The ones that cure cancer, for instance. When they find a tumor, they release an amino acid that basically signals to the rest of them, ‘Hey, come over here!’”

  “So, the Ancestors must work the same way,” Matthew offered. “They find something that needs to be fixed—like a busted cell or my injury from that arrow—and they communicate to get it healed.”

  Dunne squinted and shook her head. “No. Well, yes, I suppose. But I think it’s more than that. It’s more than healing. I mean, look at Kiva—she’s a telepath. She can communicate with you, somehow. She can hear people’s thoughts. So maybe the Ancestors are using this photon energy transfer to beam other people’s brain waves through the air, directly into her mind.”

  “But why only the women?” Matthew asked. “If the Ancestors are everywhere, why do they bring visions to the women, but not to the men?”

  “That’s the most fascinating part of all,” Dunne said, smiling, her eyes sparkling. “The body scans I took. Remember how I told you that all the women were barren? No ovaries?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Well, the women don’t need ovaries because their bodies are crawling with Ancestors. In their blood, their lungs, their brains. And yes, in their uteruses.” She tilted her head down at Matthew. “You see what I’m saying?”

  Matthew’s mouth dropped open. “The Ancestors are making their babies.”

  Dunne nodded. “Yes. The Ancestors literally take the genetic material from the male and use it to construct an embryo from the molecular level on up, one cell at a time. No need for an egg. But as a result, the women have higher concentrations of the Ancestors in their bodies than the men. The men have enough to keep them healthy in this high-radiation environment, but not much more than that.”

  “And the women end up being telepaths … what? As a side effect?”

  Dunne shrugged. “Something like that, I guess. Kiva said that girls join the Sisters after they are visited by the Ancestors. It’s a rite of passage, something they have to experience as part of becoming an adult. Their first vision must be a sign that they’ve become biologically capable of bearing children.”