The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Turn right,” I say, loud over the freezing wind.

  Nothing. And then I think, no, he addressed the technology first.

  “Command. Turn right.”

  I’m wrong again. That was the Centauri II’s technology. Beckett controls with his eyes. I stare at something that looks a little like a light square. It glows blue. And the Earthling on the air bike I just passed has turned his head. Little words and pictures appear across the blue light, which is so bizarre, especially on a machine flying me through the air by itself. I see the word “Route,” and stare carefully at only that word, and then other words appear. “Preset.” “Reset.” I choose “Reset,” and I see a list. Centauri III is one. Canaan and New Canaan are others. And so is “Pilot Control.”

  And the air bike is slowing. It’s going to land me in front of the gates. There are Earthlings there, running up from different directions. Shouting. I stare at the word “Canaan,” and then the next option, which is “Set.” I grip the handles hard and the bike zooms back upward, leaving the Earthlings behind with a passing wind. The bike shoots between the peaks, putting rocks and a mountainside between us, the plain rushing below me like Beckett’s map in the frame of light.

  I feel a rush of fear, the cold steals my breath, and then a deep thrill of speed. The sky is glowing, pink rays streaking out from the coming sun, and I think of the words from the medical journal, the ones I have cached for so long. Because I didn’t want to believe them.

  The onset of Forgetting is traumatic … symptoms of fear, panic, disorientation, and paranoia that can lead to unwarranted violence …

  That’s what Beckett is facing if he is there for the Forgetting. With Commander Faye and seventy-five Earthlings trained to fight. And I bet they’ll have weapons, agreement or no.

  If I’m there, it’s going to kill me. And so the solution is: Don’t be there.

  I twist the grip forward and speed toward the sunrise.

  We walk back through the gates of Canaan like some kind of ritual procession. Lian Archiva and her Knowing in the lead, Commander Juniper Faye next. Me. And then a squad of seventy-five, in formation. No visible weapons. But I know they’ve got the small ones in their belts. Maybe we are a ritual. I don’t know.

  We pass the house where I exploded the door. And even though this is one of the most important archaeological sites in history, and that pile of blackened rubble is a shame caused by nobody but Beckett Rodriguez, I smile. And then I ache.

  I miss her.

  The Commander turns her head, looking back to check on me, and I fix my face to nothing, like Samara would. Faye doesn’t need to catch even a whiff of what I’m thinking. Because the soldier that delivered me to the launch took one quick second to press his thumb to my cuffs and leave them unlocked. A dangerous move that will have been documented, unless he knows someone who can hack. I’m waiting for my moment. To disappear. To get back into the caves, maybe, and back to New Canaan. And maybe that will delay my parents’ punishment a little longer, too.

  Funny how things have twisted around. I wish I could tell her.

  The sky has lightened so much we can see on our own now, but the soldiers behind me are having trouble navigating the trees and staying in formation, tripping over saplings and roots. The buds look ready to explode. And then I hear the faintest whoosh in the air.

  I glance up, but I can’t see anything. Lian Archiva stops, holds up a hand, and I see we’ve come to a half bowl in the sloping land of the city, with terraced sides and a broken tower straddling a stream at its bottom. The amphitheater. Exactly the way it was supposed to have been.

  “I was clear,” says Lian, “that there was to be no one else present at our negotiations, and that the city was not to be entered with technology?”

  “Someone’s off course,” says Faye, her eyes narrowing. “Centauri, who’s flying around on an air bike?”

  But there’s no answer.

  “Centauri!”

  I grin. She’s out of communication.

  “I was told this problem was corrected,” Faye says to Finchley.

  I think, someone’s going to pay once she gets back on the—

  An air bike zooms straight over our heads, circling once before angling down into a flat space beside the running stream and the broken tower. It’s not a perfect landing, but it’s not bad. The rider swings over a leg. A leg beneath a red dress that is dirty and a little torn, hair half up and tangled from the wind. Sam. Whose amber eyes are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Who just flew an air bike from New Canaan.

  And she looks right at me, and mouths the word “Hi.”

  Who is this?” a woman yells beside Beckett. The Commander. I’ve never seen her before, but there’s no mistaking who she is. She thinks she’s in charge. She makes her way down the terraced steps, pushing past the Knowing, who are coming more slowly. The rest of the Earthlings hang back at the rim, not sure, I think, whether she wants them up or down.

  “I am Samara Archiva,” I say. “You’ve been tricked.”

  She grins at me. And so does Beckett. He’s got his hands bound in front of him, shaking his head, grinning like he’s going to laugh. Which is crazy. I smile back. Then the Commander barks, “Finchley! Set up a perimeter! And send me five soldiers to detain this—”

  “No,” I say. “Leave them where they are, or I won’t tell you what’s—”

  “No,” a different voice says. It’s my father, now standing to one side of the Commander, and looking her in the eye. “They stay where they are, or I cut you in half.” He’s got mother’s technology in his palm. What she used to kill that family. And I think he just took it out of his hair.

  Commander Faye seems to know exactly what my father has and what it can do. She keeps her eyes on the weapon and raises a hand. “Hold that, Finchley.”

  And then Beck comes. He’s loose from the shackles that were on his wrists, and now he’s got Faye’s arms back, using them to bind hers. “Hold, Finchley!” she yells again. She’s watching that weapon. I’m watching Sampson Archiva.

  Beck forces the Commander to her knees while the other Knowing flow past them, slow and elegant, seating themselves in a circle around the tower, hands in laps. Closing their eyes, caching. Rapt. Thorne Councilman is the only one who looks a little unsure. My mother stays where she is. The sky is lightening, a rosy orange.

  “Daughter,” says Sampson, “do what you came to do.”

  Then Lian approaches my father. She strokes one painted fingernail down his cheek. “What good does this do?” she whispers. “The deed is done. Come sit with me, and cache.”

  I watch my father struggle with his mind. And then I hike up the dress, pull out the knife tied to my thigh, get behind Faye, and pull her head back, like I did with Thorne. “I have her,” I say to my father. I feel the heat of Beck’s body just behind me. We have her together. And my father steps back, and turns the weapon on my mother.

  “It is a terrible thing,” he says to me, eyes on Lian, “when your love comes for the wrong person. Reddix understood. But it is even more terrible, when the woman you can never forget to love … is evil.”

  Lian Archiva stands perfectly still. And I see a real emotion cross her face. For the first time in my life. And it’s shock.

  “All those years,” my father says. “Adam. The children she condemned. Experimented on. You. And I hated her. And I could not stop feeling love for her. It’s untenable, this life.”

  Which is what Reddix said to me when I was sleeping. “Daddy,” I say. Faye squirms and I adjust the knife edge. She goes still. “You don’t have to be Knowing. I Know how to make you stop.”

  “An absence of Knowing is not Forgetting, Samara. And we cannot Forget … ”

  “Stop this!” snaps my mother. It’s a jolt, seeing her true anger. “Your lack of vision sickens me.” Her gaze falls on me like a storm. “Your Judgment has been pronounced. You are condemned. And coming here today changes nothing … ”

  Sh
e takes a step toward me, and then cries out, her hand jumping up to her face. Blood wells through her fingers. My father has just cut her cheek from ear to chin. With a beam of light.

  I feel Beckett beside me now. “The Forgetting is coming,” I tell him. “With the sunrise. It’s the trees, sporing when the sky turns white. That’s why they abandoned the city.”

  He looks at the sky. “How long?”

  “Moments.”

  “What is this all about?” says Faye. But it really doesn’t matter if she knows or not. She’s trapped here.

  “Darling,” says my mother. It’s horrible to see her smile when she has blood in her mouth. “You do not understand. You will not be Forgetting. Only he will … ”

  “You’re short on some Knowing, Mother. Because that’s not how immunity works. You never read the missing three pages.”

  I see her blanch at that.

  “I have her,” says my father, turning the weapon to Faye. “Go, Samara.” He flicks his dark eyes to Beckett and nods. “Both of you.”

  But as soon as I step away from Faye, something whizzes past me into the rubble. Beckett grabs me by the waist, moves me to one side as a small, contained puff of an explosion turns the stones where I was standing into dust. Two more whizzing noises and we run for the bike. This time it hits the rocks where Jane Chemist and Martina Tutor sit with their eyes closed, still caching, and after the puff noise, they just … aren’t anymore. Only tissue and blood.

  “Stop!” Commander Faye roars. “Do you know how much they were worth?”

  “Get on the bike, Sam!” yells Beckett.

  Mother is staring at where Martina and Jane used to be, and Thorne is on his feet now. “What does she mean, Lian, that immunity doesn’t work that way?”

  “You can’t Forget,” I yell at him. At all of them. “But the spores are going to kill you instead. That’s what the experiments of Janis Atan showed, and I don’t think it’s a very nice way to die. It’s a shame you closed the Archives, Mother. Or you would Know that.”

  “Sam!” Beck says. “Are you immune?”

  I nod once before turning to my father. “You Know it, too. Don’t you, Daddy?”

  “Yes, daughter. Reddix showed me.”

  “Get on this bike!” Beck shouts.

  My mother’s eyes go wide, and she drops her hands. The gash in her perfect face is hideous. She’s having difficulty speaking. “Samara. Take me with you.”

  “Daddy,” I say. “Come. You can stop being Knowing. You can heal.”

  He smiles at me, and I have a quick flash of memory. Of seeing that smile. When I was first born. “I will never heal,” my father says. He is calm, almost peaceful. “Reddix had his plan, and this is mine. The NWSE will be no more. Even the memory of it. And I will be free of her … ”

  “Wait,” says Thorne, Craddock just behind him. “Wait!”

  Commander Faye is struggling to her feet. “What is Forgetting?” she screams.

  “Samara.” Lian Archiva straightens her back. “I am the Judge of New Canaan. You will take me with you.”

  I throw my leg over the air bike and grab Beck’s waist. “You are condemned, Mother. But not by me. You condemned yourself.” The air bike begins to rise. “And there is no forgiveness Underneath.”

  We rise, clear the hole, and the bike leans left, dodging one of those whizzing puffs. Someone screams below us. Another small explosion, and there is shouting. Fighting. The first beam of sunlight shoots out between the mountains.

  Beck twists the handles and I lean with him, hands clinging to his chest, as the air bike speeds up and away over the Cursed City of Canaan.

  Everything I’ve Always Wanted, by Beckett Rodriguez:

  1. Find the lost colony of Canaan.

  2. Meet someone who lives there.

  3. Go out and find a new culture. On my own.

  4. Take someone with me.

  FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ

  Day 9, Year 1

  The Lost Canaan Project

  I have sunbeams on my arms and Samara’s body against my back. I push for more speed from the air bike and we leave the screams and sounds of implosion behind, climbing higher as the old city and the treetops blur below us. And then the sky breaks. A white, sparkling sky, brighter than any light on the Centauri III.

  “Put your face in my back,” I yell at Sam over the rush of the wind. “Don’t breathe!” But from what Reddix said, I know this probably won’t do any good. What was she doing, coming out here when it could’ve killed her? When it still might? I lean forward again and we’re beyond the walls, skirting bare cliff face mirroring the white light, blinding, trying to find the pass between the mountains. She was doing what I would have, I think. I guess we can’t help it. And what are we supposed to do about it?

  The answer is simple: Stay together.

  “Where are we going?” She’s whispering beneath the wind now, instead of yelling, her breath on my neck.

  “Keep your head down!” I’m looking at the panel while I talk, opening up a channel to the Centauri. We’re beyond the mountains, their rocky sides stark in the glare. But those spores could be anywhere.

  And then a tentative voice says, “Yes?” through the screen.

  “Air bike coming into the nearest port. Close the ventilation systems, and as soon as we’re in, seal the ship … ”

  “For three days,” Sam says near my ear. “The spores live for three days … ”

  “A quarantine. No outside air for three days. Do you copy that, Centauri?” I can see the ship now, sitting like an oval-shaped city in the middle of a valley. Getting bigger. Closer.

  The voice comes back faint through the panel. “So … does anybody know how to do all that?”

  “Roger? Is that you?” Roger’s the bug man. What’s he doing on the communications bridge?

  “Beck … ” Sam whispers.

  “It’s Beckett, right?” Roger says. “Come in. The Centauri’s had a change in ownership. And somebody told me to say copy that.”

  “Beck … ” she whispers again, and my heart freezes.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. But I’m going to remember … ”

  I’ll bet she is. And I don’t even know what happened while she was Underneath. “Sam, we’re almost there. Hold on … ”

  I aim for the open port door. I can see the other ports snapping shut one by one around the sides. And as soon as we glide in, our door closes, too. I hear the vacuum of the airlock. I jump off the bike, get Sam’s face in my hands, make her gaze focus on me.

  “Stay here. For just a few more minutes. Stay right here. And then we’re going to go somewhere and let them come. And then they can heal. Okay?”

  “You’ll stay with me?” she whispers.

  I kiss her mouth one time, and then the interior door slides open and the room is full of people, and I’m pulled into my dad’s hug.

  “The ship is ours,” he says. “Faye is relieved. What’s going—”

  “You heard what I said, right? Three days of quarantine … ”

  And then Mom has me. She’s little, but no less forceful, and I get both my cheeks kissed and then a smack.

  “You moved forward without supervision? What was your training for, Beckett?”

  There are other people milling about—Roger, Dr. Kataria, the tech crew, Lanik—and Samara’s about to fall off the bike. I pull away from Mom, get Sam off the bike, put an arm around her waist and behind her knees and scoop her up. Which seemed like the right and slightly dramatic thing to do, until I remember that Sam is almost as tall as I am.

  “Is she sick?” says Lanik, coming to look her over.

  “Not like that,” I tell him. I’m already pushing awkwardly through the small crowd. “Sam,” I whisper, “stay here. Don’t go yet … ”

  Mom says, “She’s from the visuals,” and Dad changes gears.

  “Where are we heading?” he asks. “Medical center?”

  “My room.”r />
  They don’t ask any more questions. Not yet. But it’s a long way to our quarters, with her head bobbing against my neck, and when the door to my room slides open, it almost doesn’t seem familiar. Like looking at somebody else’s stuff. I kind of wish I’d cleaned it. But I don’t think Sam is seeing what’s around her. I set her on the edge of the bed and she’s gone. Somewhere else. Mom and Dad are hovering in the doorway, trying to figure out where this is going. It’s really good to see them.

  “Sam’s dealing with her memories,” I tell them. “It’s going to take a while, and … she’s probably going to scream a lot. She’s … There have been some terrible things.”

  Mom says, “Shouldn’t she have Kataria?”

  “Kataria is not going to be familiar.”

  “And you are?” Dad asks.

  “Yes.”

  He keeps his skepticism to himself, which is appreciated. “She just lost both her parents. And I said I would stay with her.”

  And since she starts up right then, they leave me to it. For a day and a half.

  Though there’s time to talk to Mom and Dad in between. While Sam is sleeping. They’ve seen the visuals Faye uploaded from the glasses, but there’s a lot to fill in. And to tell me. About the first attempt to disable the Centauri’s thrust, so it couldn’t launch, and how the needless destruction and rounding up of the locals had convinced enough of the crew to change the leadership as soon as Faye left the ship. A military captain, Davis, is in charge now. Jill and Vesta are confined to quarters, like all of Faye’s supporters.

  But mostly I let Sam work through her memories. And her grief. I held her. Stroked her hair. Slept beside her, in case she needed me. She did. But even with this new crop of experiences, now that the first one or two relivings are over, she’s been relaxed, more than I’ve ever seen her. In control. And she’s telling me things without going away. About Reddix, and her mother right before Judgment. About Knowing and amrita. How her mind showed her immunity.

  “I could go to any memory I wanted while I was asleep,” she says. She’s curled up sideways on my bed, using the wall as a backrest, wearing a pair of my jogging shorts and a T-shirt. Except for the scars on her arms, she really could be from Texas. I can’t stop looking at her.