Horizon

by Scott Westerfeld

  Kira went back to drawing, and Akiko picked up a flute she’d found in the wreckage. She began to play a soft, mournful tune.

  Molly looked at Javi and Anna and Oliver.

  “Okay, team. What’s the real plan?”

  Javi glanced in the direction Caleb had gone. “When I was up in the air, I could hear a waterfall. Off to the left of the plane.”

  “Yoshi was looking for water,” Anna said. “If he hears it, he’ll go that way sooner or later.”

  Molly shook her head. “But he must be miles away by now. And Caleb’s right—if his radio doesn’t work, we’ll never find him. You can’t see more than a few feet in that jungle!”

  “Not from the ground.” Anna held up the device. “But from up in the treetops?”

  Molly stared at her. “So why exactly did you tell Caleb it was broken?”

  “Yeah,” Javi said. “Way to make me look like a liar.”

  “But in certain situations, lying is okay. Like not telling people when their haircut looks bad, or preventing dangerous technology from falling into the wrong hands.” Anna hefted the device. “There’s no way Caleb understands how amazing this is. I mean, gravity is a law of nature, a fundamental force, and this thing turns it off like a light switch.”

  “So?” Molly asked. “If you’d just show him how it works, he’d have to believe you.”

  “But he thinks he’s in charge. What’s to stop him from taking it?”

  Molly took a slow breath. Caleb was bigger than the rest of them and willing to use force, she had a feeling. Maybe handing over an incredible, and possibly dangerous, machine wasn’t such a great idea.

  “What does it feel like?” Oliver asked. “When there’s no gravity?”

  “Stand very still,” Anna said, and twisted the outside of the device while pushing down on two of the weird symbols scattered around its edge. The symbols glowed, and a heat-ripple traveled through the air. Molly felt her insides shifting a little, like she was in an elevator headed downward, fast.

  “Whoa,” she said quietly. Javi was grinning, the girls held hands, and Oliver looked like he was about to puke.

  Then everything got much weirder—a gust of breeze passed through the jungle, and all six of them lifted a little into the air and wafted sideways, carried along like scraps of paper in the wind.

  Anna twisted the device again, and they dropped back to earth, suddenly heavy and stumbling.

  “Okay,” Molly said as her body settled to earth. “Just wow. I felt like I weighed nothing.”

  “Almost nothing.” Anna pointed at the crumpled emergency door. “After I turned gravity back on, that took about six seconds to fall. Do the math, Oliver.”

  Oliver’s eyes rolled up in his head. “Falling stuff accelerates at thirty-two feet per second squared—in normal gravity, I mean. And six times thirty-two is about two hundred. So it was going two hundred feet a second when it hit, which means it averaged a hundred feet per second if it started from a standstill. Which means you threw it … six hundred feet into the air?”

  Even Anna looked surprised at that. For a moment, no one made a sound.

  Molly had seen the door hit. Heard it, too—the crunch of aircraft metal moving fast enough to squish a human like a bug. A little reminder that everything about this situation was seriously dangerous.

  “So who made that thing?” Javi finally said. “And why was it on our plane?”

  “And is that what made us crash?” Oliver added. “Airplanes are designed to fly in normal gravity. Weird physics would totally mess up the airflow.”

  Molly’s mind was spinning again. At last they had a concrete clue about what was going on, but a device that changed the laws of physics was too much to process. “Maybe there was more than one of those in the cargo hold. Maybe one of them malfunctioned.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the top ripping open,” Anna said. “That wasn’t weird gravity. It looked intentional.”

  “You mean evil,” Oliver said softly.

  Molly swallowed. Evil was a pretty scary word to use, but it sure seemed like something had taken control of the plane, and it hadn’t cared who got killed in the process.

  “It still could’ve been the machine.” Javi pointed at Kira’s drawing of the symbols. “When you turned that thing on, only two of those symbols glowed. What do all the other ones do?”

  They all stared at the device.

  Anna’s fingers lightly touched the symbols. “I guess we could find out.”

  “No way!” Oliver said, taking a step back.

  “It’s okay.” Molly put a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Now’s not the time for experimenting. Finding Yoshi is more important.”

  “I guess,” Anna said with a sigh. “But we can use it to fly, right? We head toward the water?”

  “Exactly,” Molly said. “You stay here, Oliver, and look after the girls. And get started on those alarms, in case we get lost. Maybe Yoshi will hear them and make it back on his own.”

  “Sure,” Oliver said, still eyeing the gravity device warily. “Just watch out for those birds.”

  Javi tugged at one of the tears in his shirt. “Don’t worry, we will.”

  Molly nodded, remembering the shrieks cutting through the air. “We should bring flares, in case they’re afraid of fire. Any other questions?”

  “Just one,” Oliver said, pointing at the device. “Who made that thing?”

  They all stared at Molly, as if expecting her to say something.

  She could only shrug. She had a feeling that whatever the answer was, they weren’t going to find it anytime soon.

  The water made no sense.

  Yoshi frowned. The pool felt as cold as the natural springs the last time he’d gone camping. But that had been in the mountains of Hokkaido, where the water came from melting snows. This place was a rain forest, the air so hot that Yoshi had stripped off his shirt hours ago, tying it around his waist.

  He looked up. The waterfall tumbled down from someplace high in the mists, striking the stone outcrop in front of him and splitting into a hundred sprays.

  Why was it so cold? Where did it come from?

  Of course, the more important question was whether it was drinkable.

  Swift-running water meant fewer microbes, he remembered from his father’s survival lectures. And ice-cold was probably better as well.

  But the best argument for drinking it was that Yoshi was very, very thirsty. Besides, if the water here was unsafe, he and the other survivors were all doomed anyway.

  Yoshi knelt and cupped a handful.

  The cold made his teeth hurt, and the taste of minerals and vegetation filled his mouth. But every sip was a relief for his parched lips. He’d set off on this expedition with an empty canteen.

  He didn’t need his father’s voice in his head to tell him that had been foolish.

  Yoshi drank his thirst away, then filled the canteen. He turned on the radio again.

  “Hello? Molly? Anyone?”

  He waited. Nothing but static.

  Yoshi sighed and took out the compass. Just like it had all afternoon, the needle spun in lazy circles. And he hadn’t been able to navigate by the sun, thanks to the ever-present white cloud overhead.

  It was like this place was designed to make exploration impossible.

  But as Yoshi took a slow drink from the canteen, a sound caught his ears. He frowned and picked up the radio again, holding it closer. Through the static came a soft burbling sound, beeps and tones that he could just hear over the roar of the waterfall.

  Like a coded transmission.

  Then he saw the compass in his hand—the needle was quivering, pointing straight at the waterfall.

  He looked into the mist overhead, wondering again what was up there.

  But a moment later, the beeping faded back into static, and the compass needle went back to slowly spinning.

  He pressed the transmit button on the radio. “Hello?”

  Yoshi listened.
Nothing but static.

  He pressed the button again. “Is anyone out there?”

  Still nothing.

  Yoshi sighed. Maybe he had imagined it all. His head was fuzzy from jet lag and no sleep. A cold swim might help.

  No point in taking off his clothes. They needed washing, too.

  Yoshi made his way to a dry rock that loomed over the deepest part of the pool. He took off his shoes and katana and laid them on the rock.

  It took a long time, gathering his nerve to jump. Worse than the freezing water was the thought of leaving his sword out of reach.

  For the last mile or so, Yoshi had heard a soft rustling underfoot. Like something was shadowing him, slithering low to the ground, at the edge of hearing.

  Of course, it was probably just small animals moving through the undergrowth. Rodents or snakes, or those weirdly large insects he’d seen clinging to the tree trunks—bright green praying mantises with heads the size of pinecones.

  Whatever was making the sound, it probably wasn’t interested in Yoshi. And now that the roar of the waterfall had swallowed the jungle’s sounds, the memory seemed like something else he’d imagined.

  Yoshi reached one bare toe down into the water.

  Bad idea. A shiver went deep into his bones, sapping his will.

  Behind the roar of the waterfall, he sensed a larger sound. Something vast and sovereign, like the rumble of the sea.

  He was just stalling, Yoshi knew. He heard his father’s voice.

  Leap in, or admit you aren’t up to it. Don’t dither like a coward.

  That was motivation enough—Yoshi jumped.

  The freezing water enveloped him like a crushing fist. His muscles flinched all at once, squeezing the breath from his lungs. Here underwater, the roar of the fall was a thousand times louder, crowding every thought from his head. Shudders surged through him, and when his feet brushed the muddy bottom, Yoshi kicked himself upward as hard as he could.

  He rose above the surface, sputtering for air, and swam straight toward the edge of the pool. He crawled out and lay there, panting and shivering on a mat of vines.

  It took a while to recover from the grip of the cold. But finally he sat up, pulled his sopping shirt from around his waist, and laid it out flat.

  Yoshi grinned at himself. He’d found water, and after hours of marching through the jungle and sweating, he felt clean at last.

  But then the slithering sound came again.

  It was barely there under the roar of the waterfall. But Yoshi had seen something, too—a movement among the vines.

  His whole body tensed.

  Was it a snake? Something poisonous?

  He glanced up at the rock where his katana lay. Maybe three steps away.

  But no sword could move faster than a snake’s strike. The best thing was to sit here, absolutely motionless.

  Another rustle among the vines. Closer.

  Even with his skin chilled from the water, Yoshi felt a trickle of sweat course down his back.

  Suddenly, the rustling was everywhere, like an army of rats had emerged from holes in the ground. Yoshi stared, but couldn’t see anything through the red-tinged vines.

  What was moving down there?

  His heart beat faster, and he glanced again at his sword. The rock was bare, with no vines to hide scurrying creatures.

  Should he just jump back into the water?

  The thought of that icy cold enveloping him again made him shudder—and at that moment the trembling of the vines stopped.

  Yoshi felt a tautness in the air. Like something was waiting for him to make the first move.

  He couldn’t just sit here. His father’s voice came again …

  Don’t dither like a coward.

  Sudden determination flowed through his muscles, and Yoshi leaped up. His bare feet sank into the vines as he ran for the rock.

  But as he jumped for the katana, he felt himself trip. His weight pitched forward, and he fell face-first toward hard stone. His hands came out and broke the fall, the skin of his palms scraping, his wrists screaming with pain.

  He tried to free his feet, but something held his ankle. It was trying to drag him back away from his sword …

  Yoshi reached for the katana, his fingers barely closing around the hilt. He waved it once to fling the scabbard away—the steel blade flashed.

  He spun to face his attacker.

  Flying was the bomb.

  The jungle slipped beneath Anna, brimming with the shrieks of birds, the buzz of insects. Three-fourths of Team Killbot skimmed the canopy like a hot-air balloon, the treetops brushing their feet.

  It wasn’t technically flying, Anna reminded herself. She, Javi, and Molly couldn’t maintain their altitude. They wafted down every thirty seconds or so, crashing softly into the web of branches before pushing off again.

  But even if it was only jumping—it was jumping really far. Each push took them hundreds of feet through the mists.

  Molly had found bungee cords in someone’s luggage, and the team was tied together so nobody drifted out of the gravity device’s range, which was about thirty feet. The three of them had learned to jump in tandem to keep from spinning like a bola, but whenever a gust of wind stirred the misty treetops, it carried them adrift.

  Anna wondered if there was a way to control their flight. Maybe if they made wings? Or some kind of fan, like the propellers on an airship?

  “Yoshi! Are you out there?” Molly cried out at the top of their next leap.

  Anna listened as they arced downward into the treetops. No answer, except for a stirring of the birds that sounded like rusty hinges.

  She had distinguished four species by sound: the rusty-hinge birds, the cranky-baby birds, the slide-whistle birds, and of course the shredder birds. Luckily, she hadn’t heard any of those since they’d attacked Javi back at camp.

  “Okay,” Molly called. “Looks like this tree’s yours, Javi.”

  “I got it.”

  Their next landing tree was coming right at Javi, who was in the middle of the three of them. As they descended into the canopy, he reached out and grabbed the passing treetop. Anna felt the bungee cord pull at her waist, then she swung in a slow arc past Molly coming from the other direction. Their combined momentum bent the tree, like a catapult readying to fire. It swung back, trying to throw them in the direction they’d just come from.

  Javi clung on grimly as the treetop swayed back and forth to a gradual stop.

  “I still don’t love flying.”

  “Are you kidding?” Molly laughed at him. “This is awesome!”

  “I concur,” Anna said. Even with the laws of physics bending around them, this was the most normal she’d felt since the crash. The numbness inside her was finally lifting. Maybe it was the jungle stretched out below her, full of life and color and sound. Or maybe it was getting away from the crashed plane and its gaping rows of torn-out seats.

  “There’s something I don’t get,” Javi said as the three untangled their bungee cords. “If we barely weigh anything, how come we bend the treetops so much?”

  “Yeah, and my legs are getting sore,” Molly said. “Even with gravity switched off, this is hard work.”

  Anna’s mind spun a moment, and the answer came. “We’re like an asteroid. Rocks in space are totally weightless, but they can still crush you. They have momentum, they have—”

  “Mass!” Javi cried out.

  “Right,” Anna said. “Remember when Mr. Keating explained the difference between weight and mass?”

  Molly looked away, and Anna realized what she had said. In her mind’s eye she saw Mr. Keating being lifted into the air and flung from the plane. The numbness closed in again, like she was packed in mud.

  An awkward silence fell over the group.

  “Sorry,” Anna finally said.

  “It’s okay,” Molly said. “But maybe don’t mention him in front of Oliver.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, either,” Anna said
. “I just want to jump. And find Yoshi. I like him.”

  Molly smiled. “Me too. You guys ready?”

  Anna checked the bungee cord connecting her to Javi and nodded. They pushed off, hard, and soon Team Killbot was arcing through the air again, leaving dark thoughts behind.

  As they drifted up into the mists, Molly cried out, “You out there, Yoshi?”

  Anna listened but heard nothing except the calls of slide-whistle birds. She tried the radio again, which only sputtered with the usual static.

  “Check that out,” Javi called, pointing.

  Thrusting up from the surface of the jungle canopy was a stand of much taller trees. They were spindly and thin-trunked, crisscrossed with vines. They reached so high that their tops were lost in the mist.

  And they seemed to be arranged in a perfect circle.

  “That’s weird,” Anna said.

  “Yeah,” Molly said. “It looks like someone planted them that way.”

  Anna looked at her. “Mind if we take a detour?”

  Molly nodded, and on the next jump, they angled their path toward the taller trees.

  As they drew nearer, Anna saw that the area was buzzing with life. Bright flowers covered the trees, and iridescent lizards leaped from vine to vine. A cacophony of birds filled the branches, shrieking as they jostled with each other.

  It was almost deafening but, just barely, Anna could hear another noise from deep within the stand of trees.

  A very familiar noise.

  It sounded like a half-clogged drainpipe sputtering up blood and gristle, like a wild boar trying to form words in some hideous unknown language. It sent a ten-foot icicle up Anna’s spine.

  Shredder birds. Lots of them.

  “Uh-oh,” Anna said.

  “Plan A!” Molly called. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a signal flare.

  With a horrible gabble, a ripple of green emerged from the taller trees, at least a hundred birds in tight formation. Molly tore off the top of the flare. It sputtered to life, sparks and smoke trailing behind her as she flew.

  The flock of shredder birds reacted, coiling away from the hissing flame …