Paradox

by A. J. Paquette

  She glances at her circlet. Almost two hours have passed since she woke up alone in the cave. She can’t help wondering whether Todd and Ysa and Chen are all right.

  She stops to catch her breath and wipe some of the sweat from her forehead. And then—just up ahead, she sees a dark glint in the pale sunlight. The stream! Ana gets moving again with renewed energy. But when she reaches the bank, a cloud of fumes sweeps over her and she has to cover her mouth and nose against the smell.

  “That’s not water at all,” she whispers. “It’s—”

  It’s a river of lava, issuing from the summit of the volcano and coursing down the slope in a wide, lazy flow. It’s over six feet across and moves soundlessly, coal black with a tinge of red and little curlicues of steam rising from it. Heat waves ripple on the surface.

  Unpleasant as it may be, it’s a surefire ticket to the top of the slope. Holding her breath in ten-to fifteen-second intervals, she turns and starts walking along the bank.

  Hold. Count, gulp, hold.

  And like this the time slips away.

  She’s walking some, climbing more, sometimes resorting to grabbing at rocks and lugging herself up steep inclines. In these places, the lava pours down from the sheer rock face in a macabre cascade. It flows so slowly that it almost appears static, each fold and ripple like the photographic negative of a waterfall. It’s eerie and magical and horrible all at once.

  Ana’s so transfixed by the stream that she nearly misses the sparkle. But then she looks up, and—could it be? Yes, there it is, just up ahead … a twisting strand of glinting light.

  It all comes back in a rush: the irresistible pull, the quick slip into another world, the fullness of being even for just a few minutes someone who knows herself inside and out. Another strand means another memory, hers for the keeping.

  The craving is like a dull ache in her core, shocking her with how quickly it takes over every aspect of her awareness.

  Ana shrugs off her backpack, lets it fall behind her,

  and runs.

  A gust of wind catches the memory strand as Ana approaches, tugging it just out of reach. She stretches her arms above her head. She has to catch that strand. Has to has to has to.

  In a pocket of stillness the glittering thread drops down toward her. It glides over her hands, coating her in its mirror-light spray … and she is gone.

  “—have to go! He’s dead, damn it, don’t you understand?” I feel myself crumple inside. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Wasn’t it just hours ago that I was thinking about that playoff game? When did everything go so hellishly wrong?

  Jackson’s yelling now, his voice rough. I don’t want to hear what he says, and I pull the receiver away from my ear. I don’t want to hear that Brian’s as good as dead now that he’s infected and that my being there won’t bring him back, that I’ll just get sick too if I go back home, that my place is here in the lab. Where there’s still a chance.

  I slam the phone back onto the receiver and jump up. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m halfway across the office before I even finish forming the thought. But then Pat’s in front of me, head sticking out of his cube, eyebrows creased in worry.

  “Hey,” he says. “I heard about Brian. I’m so sorry.”

  I’m crying so hard I trip over that stupid fold in the carpet that nobody ever bothers to fix, and I crumple to the floor. What does it matter? What does anything matter? Right in front of me there’s a paper stuck to the wall, a paper I taped up less than twenty-four hours ago, this week’s company lunch sign-up. The day after tomorrow. Will anyone still be alive to make that pizza order?

  “We’re going to make it through this,” Pat says, though I can hardly hear him above my sobbing. “You’ll see—things will get better. What about the new theory?”

  “The whole world,” I snap. “The whole world’s gone to hell. What does our research matter if everyone’s dead? So there’s some kind of core interlinked entity, so it’s theoretically reversible—so what? We still don’t know how to stop it in the first place, how to keep away the—”

  I won’t say it. I won’t say the word. If I don’t say it, maybe it’s not real.

  I struggle to my feet. Jackson was right. There’s nothing for me to go home to, not anymore. Not that things are any better here, of course—

  the place is all but deserted, just the empty cubicles and the screened-in trial area.

  Pat has ducked back down behind his divider. I sigh as I make my way back to my own cube. I know he didn’t deserve my outburst, but all I want to do is feel sorry for myself. It’s all I can manage right now.

  My wedding ring catches my eye again. And, oh! Brian! And I want to cry all over again for everything we’ve lost, everything I and we and this whole damn world will never have.

  I drop to my seat just as the phone begins to ring. “Yeah?”

  “Bailey.” It’s Jackson again, and his voice sounds worse than it did just minutes ago. “Bailey—”

  And then he coughs, loud and long. A chill runs through me.

  “Jackson? What are you—”

  Ana comes back to herself with a gasp. She’s facedown on the ground, just like the last time she emerged from the memory strand, but now her hand is hanging over the edge of the lava stream. She yanks it back and slowly sits up. She is dripping with sweat and her heart is racing. This was nothing like the first memory; this was some kind of nightmare. Who is, or was, this Bailey? Was everyone in her world sick? Ana wonders at how she can feel so much sympathy for someone she’s never met, someone who’s probably long since dead, who—let’s be honest here—very possibly doesn’t even exist.

  Hauling herself to her feet, Ana hikes down the hill a ways to get her backpack. She pulls it up with muscles that are tight and stiff and shoulders that scream at resuming their burden. She grits her teeth against the pain and thinks of Bailey. Nothing Ana is feeling now comes close to the gut-wrenching pain she felt during those brief moments living in Bailey’s head.

  She turns to face the mountain, telling herself the tears on her cheeks are just a reaction to thick, noxious fumes. And then a sound reaches her on the sulfuric breeze, ringing faintly up the slope.

  It’s useless, it’s nothing, it’s one more thing she really doesn’t need, but … somehow it’s also the very thing she most wants.

  “Ana!” She can hear the call clearly now. “Is that you? Wait up already!”

  TEN

  00:10:03:07

  Todd is climbing up the slope toward her at a double-quick pace, with Ysa and Chen not far behind.

  “What”—Todd puffs as he gets closer—“on Earth”—puff—“okay, off Earth, but what the hell do you think you’re doing? Where did you go? I got back …”

  Inwardly, Ana grins. She can’t help it. She feels ridiculous and sheepish, but oh, to be missed! Maybe worried about, even. There’s nothing like it.

  Still, she forces herself to arch a cool eyebrow. “You vanished,” she said. “How was I supposed to know when you were coming back? If you were coming back? It’s not like we even know each other all that well.”

  He winces. “Okay, I guess. But really? We’re traveling companions. You should know that much.”

  Despite herself, something inside Ana relaxes. She is glad to be back with the others, in spite of all her power-of-one assertions. But the situation also grates a little. It’s as if it’s teasing out a dependency she thought she’d gotten away from but that has now caught up with her—something she wants but fears, maybe, or wants but doesn’t quite trust.

  “I suppose,” she concedes. “So where did you go?”

  He tips his head toward Ysa and Chen, who are finally catching up. “We talked about this, remember? I went for the others.”

  “Yeah, but two hours?”

  “Anagram!” Chen whoops. Unlike the other two, he doesn’t seem to be breaking a sweat, though he’s not hurrying, either. “You crazy piece of space rocket! Led us on quite a chase, my ga
l. But ain’t that just what you do?”

  Ysa looks sharply at Chen, and suddenly Ana remembers her aborted conversation with Ysa, back when the worm showed up. Ana and Todd had this surgical amnesia procedure, but Ysa and Chen didn’t. They still have their memories intact. And they all came in the same rocket. Of course!

  “We knew each other,” she says to Chen. “Didn’t we? Before my memory got the axe, I mean.”

  Chen opens his mouth and closes it, his goofiness suddenly gone. He takes a step backward.

  Ana looks back and forth between Ysa and Chen. “What’s going on? Did I say something wrong?”

  Ysa steps forward and puts a hand on Ana’s arm. “Look,” she says gently.

  Ana shakes her off. “This is not a tough question! Did. We. Know each other?”

  Chen looks Ana in the eye. “Yes,” he says. “Okay? We knew you. Know you. But—”

  “But we can’t talk about it,” Ysa interrupts.

  “What?” Ana says. “You can’t talk about what?”

  “Anything to do with the, er, past. Yours or ours.” Ysa’s face is red and she looks miserable. Chen is studying the ground with great concentration.

  Ana can’t decide whether to be enraged or utterly confused. “I just don’t understand what the big deal is. Todd’s and my memories are gone, and we want to know why. We want to know what we’re here for. What is the real purpose of this mission? That’s really too much to ask?”

  “It’s really not,” Chen says. “It’s not too much at all. If you ask me, this whole thing totally sucks.” But he doesn’t volunteer anything further, and finally Ysa continues.

  “We’re not allowed to talk about it. Any of those things you said—what and who and why and all that. Really. It’s part of the mission, and it’s important. Really important. We can’t say anything more about it than that, and even that much,” she shoots a glower at Chen, “is more than we should have said.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Trust me,” Ysa says. “It’s all going to make sense. We just have to get to the end.”

  Todd cuts in. “The colony, zero hour, end of the countdown. Right?”

  “Zero hour,” Chen agrees, but his voice sounds strained. “When everything becomes clear. Now can we get back to the forced march, people?”

  A red haze pulses on the edge of Ana’s vision. For a few moments she doesn’t trust herself to speak. But the confusion and fear she can see on Chen’s and Ysa’s faces make it clear how serious they are. What the hell is going on?

  “Fine,” she says, forcing herself to take slow, measured breaths. “Let’s get going.” She throws a glance at Todd to see his reaction to this whole debacle, but his back is turned and he’s already climbing.

  She looks at her circlet. Ten hours to go. Is she really supposed to wait until then? Well, there’s more than one way to season the soup, she thinks, and the expression jars her, like something distantly misremembered, but she knows what she’s taking from it right now.

  There’s knowledge to be had, things that she desperately wants to—has to—know. But Ana knows how to be patient. She can work different ways toward a goal. She can set a course and come around at it from the sides, can work toward an end result without letting on, without making it obvious—and without ever giving up.

  She’ll bide her time. But she will get to the bottom of this.

  With that thought resolved to her satisfaction, Ana looks up and down the slope and is surprised both by how far she has come and by the distance yet to scale. They’re maybe halfway up the mountain, and it looks like the most challenging portion of the climb is still to come.

  “It just gets better from here,” Chen croons, doing a little tap dance. “Come on, mountain baby, do your worst!”

  With a groan Ana rotates her sore shoulder, grateful that the pain is staying manageable, then tackles the slope. “How did you guys get out, anyway?” she says after few minutes. Safe topics. Baby steps. “That cave was completely blocked off.”

  “The two caves are connected,” Todd calls from up ahead. “I got them out the way you and I got in.”

  “It’s a warren in there,” Ysa says, panting slightly.

  “You got to them from inside the caves?” Ana can’t believe it. “But how did you guys find your way around?”

  “Sheer genius,” Chen says, tapping the side of his forehead.

  Todd flashes a grin over his shoulder. “Ignore him. As you noted, it took a while. What matters is, we’re all out safely, and back together.”

  Mountain climbing in a group, Ana quickly discovers, is vastly more entertaining than doing so alone. Even her own brooding funk grows lighter the farther they go. Chen moves easily into the lead, keeping up a rolling prattle all the while, often stopping to wait for the rest of them to catch up. Ana’s not sure if he’s being inclusive by not going too far ahead, or if he just doesn’t want to lose the laugh track to his ongoing comedy routine.

  They’re covering ground at a good pace, still loosely following the lava stream toward the summit. Chen seems to take his position as guide very seriously, sometimes leading them off to the side on unlikely looking detours that always end up at easier climbing spots. He’s obviously done his research on this place.

  As Ana stops to catch her breath, Chen does a flying leap onto a boulder just ahead and teeters a little on the apex.

  “Meet your master!” he bellows to the ground below. “At my feet, minions!”

  And so the time goes by—if not flying, not exactly crawling, either. The slope grows steeper the higher they climb, until it takes Ana’s full energy and concentration just to keep moving. Her forearms ache, and there’s a jagged scratch down the back of her right hand where she caught it on a thorny bush. Inside her suit, her arms feel damp and itchy.

  Then she tilts her head and has to bite back a gasp as she realizes how near they are to the top of the mountain. A hard climb up, sure, but so deliciously near!

  There’s a low, mournful sound in the distance, and for one second a cold hand grips Ana’s chest. Could it be? But no, it’s just the wind wailing through the barren mountain scrub.

  She catches Todd’s eye and knows they are thinking the same thought, fearing the same fear. And she realizes that she is assuming the worm will be back. It has stalked their moves so far—why should it be any different up ahead?

  “Our final destination,” Ana calls out to the others. “Will there be some kind of worm protection there, you think?”

  Todd opens his mouth, then grimaces and shakes his head. “I sure hope so.”

  “Well, there’d have to be, right?” she says. “It can’t be just us the worm is after. No wonder there’s no sign of animal life around this place! There must be some sort of shelter for people to have survived at all.”

  “Survived?” Chen calls over his shoulder, with more venom than she’s ever heard from him. “Who said anything about people surviving?”

  Ana gapes. “What are you talking about?”

  She sees a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye as Ysa pushes past her on the trail and tackles Chen.

  “Hey!” he yelps. There’s some giggling and some raucous laughter, and Chen topples backpack-first onto the uneven ground and ends up lying like a flipped beetle, waving his hands and feet in the air.

  Ana is not impressed. In the chaos she never loses sight of the question, just waits patiently until everything dies down and the two pull each other back up. They take a few steps, then turn back, and she’s standing there—yes, theatrically, I fully realize this—with her hands on her hips.

  “Are you telling me there is no one at the colony?” she says slowly.

  Ysa glowers at Chen. But when she turns back to Ana, Ana is surprised to see the sunslight glint off a tear track winding down Ysa’s cheek. “They died,” she says softly. “All of them. They’re gone.”

  “Well, not all of them,” Chen amends. “There’s a few—”

  Ysa bru
shes a hand across her face and shakes her head at Chen. She fixes Ana with her gaze. “And we really, really can’t talk about it. It’s like I said before. You’ll find out about it all eventually, and believe me—that’ll be too soon. But just give it a little longer, okay? Can we leave it for now?”

  It’s just about too much to take. “No!” Ana explodes. “We can’t leave it. We’re heading to some colony, that’s the whole goal of this … this mission, or whatever the hell it is. You said that’s where we’re going to finally be told what’s going on. Okay, fine. But now you tell me that there are also no people there? Or just a few people, but a bunch of them have died? Or whatever the hell you mean. What is going on

  here?”

  She looks to Todd for support and is surprised to see him shaking his head. “Let’s just get where we’re going,” he says. “There’ll be more than enough time to talk it through then. Okay?” He reaches a hand toward her and it’s all she can do not to slug him right across his cowardly, non-confrontational face.

  Instead, she launches herself at the mountain, scrambling faster than before, tearing new scratches on her hands and pushing against the stitch growing in her side. She throws her whole soul into the mountain and lets it burrow under her skin, losing herself in the strain of her muscles and the yank in her side that tells her she’s doing too much too fast and the wrench of her shoulder as she grits her teeth against the pain.

  She knows she can’t keep it up, but she just wants some distance. The others don’t call out to her—whether they’re conferring among themselves or just giving her space, she has no idea. She only knows she’s so angry she can hardly see straight. At Ysa, at Chen—and at Todd most of all, just for being okay with this ridiculous state of affairs when he should be siding with her and backing her up on this.

  She can’t keep this pace up forever, though, and after twenty minutes of breakneck climbing, she knows she needs to take it down a notch. She pulls herself onto an overhang that juts out of the rock face, drops her backpack, and collapses onto the warm stone. She pops a few water capsules and rips open a blackberry-nut bar with her teeth, then finally allows herself to look back at the slope face she’s just scaled.