The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  If Beckett notices any acid in these words, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He just shrugs a shoulder. “It was handblown glass.” And then he’s doing that smile again, like he’s been a little bad and gotten caught at it. I don’t Know what he’s talking about. What other kind of glass is there?

  I follow him this time, Jillian coming after us. He was right about the cavern ending. Another twist and turn and the darkness pales, another turn and we stand in a tall, skinny corridor of rough blue stone, the river foaming white in its course, a narrow piece of purpling sky above our heads, streaked with pink. We’re at the bottom of one of the deep clefts I skirted on my run to the city. There’s a smell in the wind, a sweetness that I think must be something Nita described to me once. The scent of plants going to sleep. For the dark.

  Jillian goes to a large shelf of rock, jutting out from the cliff face, ducks down, and looks beneath it. “Over here,” she calls.

  There’s a space below the rock, opening after one or two crouched steps into a small oval cavern about half the size of my bedchamber and not quite its height. Jillian and Beckett go to one side and drop their packs in a pile, setting down the lights, their bodies making long, misshapen shadows on the curving walls. Beckett says, “I’ve set a perimeter.”

  I’m so close to losing control I don’t even care when I don’t Know what that means. I go to the opposite side of the chamber and sit, light and pack beside me, arms around my book like a child, back against a stone near the entryway. Where I could get out if I had to. I breathe, close my eyes, and, room full of aliens or not, I sift through my mind. Organizing. Uncluttering. Like I’ve been taught since the day my memories came. Some I relegate to the shelves in the background, some I leave sitting out to use, others I cache to the very back, to the high shelf, never to be felt again. And I Know that I am slipping. Sinking. Pulled by a force that is stronger than I am. Like gravity …

  And when I open my eyes again I see the stone chamber, the whitish light and the shadows, but I’m wrapped in something warm. Jillian has her yellow head bent toward Beckett, whose back is to me, low murmurs rustling along the walls.

  I feel a thrill of disorientation. Fear. I look back inside my mind. I’ve been asleep. For more than six bells. I feel my book beneath my hand, my pack behind my back. And now I’m mad. How could I have been so careless? If the Council did decide to travel this way, they could be right behind us.

  But I don’t move. I close my eyes again. Stay still. Caverns can be tricky with sound, and this one has a curved ceiling. Beckett and Jillian are barely speaking, but I hear it like they’re whispering in my ear.

  “I’m getting about forty meters of penetrating vision at a time,” Beckett is saying. “If you’re mapping, we can’t get lost, even if she doesn’t know where she’s going.”

  “We can run out of food,” Jillian counters.

  “She’s been going fast. I think she’s taking us straight to it … ”

  Taking them straight to New Canaan. The words make me cringe with doubt. Doubt makes me mad.

  Beckett says, “How’s the charge on the cartographer?”

  “Full. But it won’t stay that way. And we’re losing the sun. What about the glasses?”

  “Eighty-two percent. I won’t be able to leave visual recording on anymore. Not all the time. They’ll get another charge before we go back underground, but that might be all there is until the next dawn. Or the ship … ”

  And I’m thinking now. About technology. About the word “glasses.” Pieces of glass. I open my eyes, and there, perched in front of me, on top of the pile of packs, are Beckett’s magnifiers.

  “I think we should tell her,” Beckett says.

  I’d be very interested to Know what he thinks he should tell me. But I’m also feeling an itch inside my mind. I slide my body almost imperceptibly closer to the magnifiers. Jillian only has eyes for Beckett.

  “Why,” she asks, “are you so determined to break every rule we ever swore to?”

  “Protocol doesn’t say to never tell anyone anything. Just to do it at the right time. With thought. They sent us, and so now I’m giving it some thought.”

  “Well, it’s the wrong thought, Beckett! You know what those orders meant.”

  “You were the one explaining to me how those orders don’t make sense.”

  “And you’re acting like you have no future after this planet!”

  I move my hand, but it doesn’t attract Jillian’s attention. She drops her voice back to a whisper.

  “The Commander already heard you criticize protocol on the visuals,” she says, “and I bet they uploaded again when the skimmer was here, didn’t they? So now she’s seen you interfering with a local, against orders. What kind of career are you going to have if you only follow orders when you feel like it?”

  “Careers are on the other side of the galaxy, Jill.”

  “But what if … ” Jill hesitates. “What if things are … different from what you think?”

  I stretch out, slowly, and my fingertips brush the edge of the glass. I can’t quite reach.

  Beckett’s voice comes sharp. “How can you look at it any different? We have a huge find back there. Maybe the most important historic site that’s ever been found, and now there’s another city, too. My career, or whatever you call it, is here, and Dad will be the one in charge of that, not the Commander.”

  So Earth plans to be here a long time. Why? What do they want? As strange as they are, Beckett and Jillian don’t strike me as a first choice to lead an invasion.

  “Beckett, listen to me.” Jill’s voice is so quiet I have to be still to hear it. “I know that you … ” She stops, tries again. “I know you love this, and you want to do well at it. And that this girl … ”

  I close my eyes. In case she looks my way.

  “… that she’s fascinating to you, professionally. But you’ve already broken orders once. You have to follow these new ones. To the letter. Do you understand?” She waits. “I can’t keep on saving you from yourself.”

  “I don’t need you to save me from anything,” he snaps.

  I open an eye. Jillian is completely focused on Beckett. I move my arm, and reach one more time for the magnifiers. Beckett sighs.

  “Look, Jill, this isn’t just a project, even if that’s the way the Commander and the investors and the rest of the crew think of it. It’s bigger than that. If they called the whole thing off tomorrow and said go home … Now that I’m here, I don’t think I’d … ”

  I hook a finger around the edge of the glass. And a scream shoots through the air, piercing, high-pitched. False. A sharp whine of warning. I jerk back my hand, sit up as Beckett spins around. Jillian’s blue eyes are wide. The noise cycles and it is so unnatural. Wrong.

  And it’s coming from the magnifiers.

  During our psych evaluations, Dr. Kataria asked me what I thought about leadership. Should protocol be followed to the letter, or adapted to each situation?

  I said, “Both.”

  It seems like a good answer to a lot of questions.

  FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ

  Day 151, Year 1

  The Lost Canaan Project

  The perimeter alarm is going off, and like an idiot, I’ve left the glasses on the packs beside Samara. She’s awake, sitting up, clutching my blanket to her chest, her amber eyes staring. I cram the glasses onto my face, and the noise stops as soon as they touch my skin, though I can see the warning light still pulsing across the lenses. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Samara. She already thinks I’m a liar, thanks to Jill. And there’s no time anyway, because the glasses are showing me five humans. And they are above us.

  I find Jill’s gaze, hold up five fingers, and point. She nods, scoots out the entrance on her back, and when I turn to Samara, her eyes drop straight to the floor. Like she’s scared of me. Great.

  Jill slides back inside. “They’re coming along the top of the cliff,” she whispers. “I thi
nk just passing through. They’re moving fast.”

  Some of the fear slips out of me. The few descendants of Canaan I caught a glimpse of in the ruins didn’t look all that scary. A little soft, and with no real weapons that I could see. But Samara’s face and hands might say different, and she said they were out to kill her. But are we really going to play hide-and-seek with these people all the way to her city? And what exactly is going to happen when we get there?

  I want to go, want it like air. But I’m not stupid. Or I don’t think I am.

  “Keep an eye out?” I ask Jillian. She nods, and slides back out again.

  Samara’s mask is smooth and in place. She won’t look at me. But it’s hard to stop looking at her. She’s still wrapped in my blanket, her hair wild with sleep, and I’m on edge, trying to think how to get the information I need without messing up everything. I wish I knew what she was running from. I wish she would spill every single thought inside her head.

  I wish she wasn’t so important, so I could say anything I wanted to her.

  “You slept” is what I settle for, and it’s not good. Her eyes stay glued to the rock and dirt floor. I try again. “I don’t think anyone can get down here. Or not fast, anyway. The walls are too steep. So we’re good for now. Do you need to eat? We can share.”

  Nothing.

  “The ankle set well.”

  I get a tiny response, a glance at my foot, and I wish I hadn’t brought it up. In her world, I probably shouldn’t be walking on this leg at all. It’s no wonder she’s afraid. I don’t want her to be afraid of me. I squat down in front of her.

  “Samara, listen, if we’re going to be traveling together, we need to help each other out. Why are these people looking for you so hard?”

  Still nothing.

  “Will we be safe underground?”

  Not even a blink.

  “Look,” I say, a little exasperated, “you said you’re trying to help us. Giving us a place to stay while the sun is gone. But I need to know if your city is dangerous. It’s only fair to tell me that much.”

  Her dark smudges of lash don’t even move. She doesn’t trust me. How could she? But then why offer to take us with her? What does she need? Protection?

  I glance at the entrance to the cavern, and the glasses tell me Jill is in place, on her back, watching the top of the cliff. Forget protocol. But I need to forget it fast, while Jill isn’t here.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll make a deal with you. You ask me anything you need to know, and I’ll tell you. I won’t lie to you.” I cock my head toward the entrance, toward Jill. “She won’t like it. But she’s in a new place and she’s worried about breaking the rules. I’m not so worried. So if you want to know, you ask, I tell you the truth, and then, when you’re ready, you can do the same. Deal?”

  I wait, still squatted down, where I can see her face, and then she lifts those eyes and looks directly into mine. She doesn’t do that very often. I wish I wasn’t wearing the glasses. That there wasn’t a barrier, even if it’s a clear one.

  And then Samara says, in her interestingly musical version of English, “Have you Forgotten?”

  A challenge. I feel myself smile, a little rueful, and shake my head. “No. Or, I mean, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of things, but the word seems to mean something different to you. So when you say it”—I shrug—“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  I’m watching her close in the weird light of the jar, looking for the tiny cracks in her mask. And I catch one. Surprise. Just a flash. But I don’t think her surprise was because I haven’t forgotten, whatever that is. It was because she already knew I hadn’t and thought I would lie about it. Like Jill did.

  I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing. It feels like the right thing. And anyway, the record function is off.

  I hear pebbles scratching in dirt, and Jill comes scooting back inside. “Gone,” she says, pausing to look at the conversation between the two of us.

  One second Samara is on the ground, the next she’s on her feet, her pack and my blanket in hand. “If they are traveling across the plain, then we should stay underground,” she says. “That will be the safest way.” She rubs the material of the blanket one time between her fingers before she hands it over, then slips out the entrance of the cavern, somehow managing to do it gracefully.

  Jill watches me watch her go, and then our eyes meet. I try to smile. I don’t want to argue with Jill. But I know I look guilty. She doesn’t start up our conversation again, or ask me what I was going to say when the alarm went off. I think she knows. That I probably wouldn’t go back to Earth, even if I had the choice. All she says is, “You’re not going to believe the sky.”

  She’s right. When we drag our packs and the light jars out of the cavern, it’s not the same world I left when I went in. The air has cooled, a brisk breeze whistling between the narrow walls, the purple of the sky deepened into a kind of magenta-red fire. Columns of mist rise from the river, like tiny tornadoes, spiraling and breaking as they climb. I’ve seen simulations of a Canaan sunset. The real thing isn’t the same. And I don’t think the glasses will be getting any charge out here. Not until the sun rises again. Sixty-something more days.

  Samara is standing in the mist beside the river, pack at her feet, that book strapped across her chest, looking into the distance while she braids her hair. She is so beautiful. Even ragged and travel-worn and a little bruised, she is beautiful. And she belongs with that sky above her.

  She ties off her hair, one thick, loose braid behind her, and walks right up to me, but it’s not me she’s come for. It’s the light jar I’ve set at my feet. She bends down, dropping little pieces of sticky fruit one by one into the jars. Jill straightens from adjusting her pack straps and snaps, “What are you doing?”

  Samara turns the amber gaze on her. “Feeding our lights,” she says, like Jill is exactly four years old.

  Jill’s face goes from annoyed to a little disgusted in the space of two seconds, and I want to laugh, but I do have a sense of self-preservation. My lack of career focus has not put Jill in a humorous mood. We start down the narrow cleft without a word. Samara looks back, to make sure we’re coming, and I feel the weight of that glance in my chest.

  I’m taking a gamble right now, offering to break protocol. A big one. No matter what I said to Jill back there, about lifework and Dad being the one in charge, I know full well who’s in charge of Dad, and Mom, and that what I’m doing out here could hurt them. But I want to understand Samara’s world. That’s the bigger goal. I need to understand it, and to do that, I’m going to have to gain her trust.

  I think she’s going to make me earn it.

  The canyon isn’t very long. It’s like the roof of the cave system fell in who knows how long ago, and soon we’re ducking down beneath rock again, back in the dark with that smell, the water loud and echoing beside us. I switch to night function, and we walk for three hours up, over, and around the rocks. I’m a little bit glad for it. The ankle seems strong, but I came out of that cavern feeling every bruise from my fall, and the exercise has definitely loosened up the ache. And it’s kept Jill from talking. Asking me what I said to Samara in the cavern. None of us are talking.

  I squeeze between two boulders, Jill coming through without brushing the stones, and then I thrust out an arm, barring her from taking another step. The river is spilling down into a waterfall, and there’s a long drop on one side that wasn’t there before.

  “Thanks,” Jill says, sucking in a breath.

  “No problem.” Samara is a little way down the passage, already disappearing over the edge of a steep incline of rocks, matching the path of the water. We follow her, and I whisper to Jill, “Careful. And don’t forget the cartographer.” She winks an answer at me. Like everything is fine. No disagreements about protocol or what planet we live on. I’m relieved. More than I thought I’d be.

  It’s not a hard climb down the rock slide, but the stones are wet, slick
, and holding your own light in a jar doesn’t exactly speed you up. Especially a jar that any collector of the early space exploration period would have paid half the funding of the Canaan Project to own.

  Samara waits for us at the bottom, holding up her light, looking at the path ahead. I do the same with the glasses. The passage goes on as far as I can see, mostly straight, no obstacles. I turn and help Jill make the last drop, so she can hang on to her jar, and when her boots hit the ground she turns before I can let go. Smiling at me.

  “Hey,” she whispers, a hand snaking up the back of my neck. Like we’re on the ship, five minutes early to a tutoring session. I pull her hand down, and she runs it back up my chest. I grab it, push it away again.

  “Don’t, okay?”

  The frown line comes down between her eyes, but I don’t care. She did that on purpose. So Samara would see. Because … I don’t know why. But I don’t like it.

  Samara doesn’t act like she’s seen anything at all. She just moves on in her circle of light, and so do I, finding a track among the broken stones. Jill comes after us, and the silence between us is different now. Tense. More than tense. Which is just fantastic. We’re going to be the first people from Earth to see what became of the lost colonists of Canaan. We’ve got one of them walking right in front of us, and it’s like Jill doesn’t care about that.

  I care. And it’s not the time for Jill and me to be fighting. Or anything else.

  Samara is moving fast, light, like she’s barely touching the ground. Sleep has done her good. She’s more … present. That’s the best word I can think of for it. I’ve spent a good part of my life wanting to know the story of Canaan, but right now, I almost want to know the story of Samara Archiva more. She’s been traveling rough, but below the more recent wounds her skin is soft, almost translucent brown in the light of her jar, and the embroidery on her long shirt and leggings is tiny, detailed. I don’t think she’s lived this way for long. What did she do in this city of hers? And why is she going back?