Horizon

by Scott Westerfeld

  It was like being a warrior in a fantasy. As if all his years of manga, anime, and movies—and the sword training it had inspired—had been in preparation for this place.

  Whatever this place was. It still felt contained to Yoshi, moons or not. More like a huge starship than a whole world. The mist was a low ceiling overhead, the dense jungle like walls around them. And those neat circles of trees were something from a giant’s garden.

  But mostly there was that rumble he’d felt from beyond the waterfall. A vast sound, like the roar of space on the other side of a hull.

  Though space was silent, wasn’t it?

  The roar of engines, then.

  He had to go back and discover what his radio had picked up, once the whole starvation problem had been solved. Maybe there was a huge transmitter broadcasting to distant stars.

  Whether this was a starship, another planet, or whatever, it made the concerns of his father seem so small. Calligraphy and grammar. Business etiquette and making money.

  None of it compared to this—a whole world to explore, monsters and all. Maybe a whole universe.

  Did you do anything useful today, son?

  Not much. Just learned to fly.

  Yoshi had almost forgotten about the shredder birds when they attacked.

  An unearthly screaming came out of the mist, and Javi cried out. Anna switched the device off for a split second, then back on, bending their course downward. With a sickening lurch, Yoshi found himself crashing through layers of branches that scratched and slapped. The creek they’d been following loomed below.

  When they were only a few feet from the ground, Anna turned off the device again, and they all splashed heavily into the cold, shallow water. Yoshi stood up to gasp for breath, and he saw that his hands were scraped and bleeding.

  Above them, the birds went shrieking through the canopy, like a roiling green dragon with a thousand tiny wings. Sliced-through fronds floated down, but the birds didn’t seem to notice the humans below.

  “See that, Yoshi?” Javi said. “They only care about the device. It’s like a homing beacon.”

  “They’re alien birds,” Anna said. “It’s alien technology. They fit together somehow.”

  Molly shook her head. “But what was alien tech doing on our airplane?”

  Yoshi hunkered in the water, watching as the flock coiled away into the sky. They had sounded so angry and fierce, like vengeful monsters.

  “Maybe someone stole it,” he said.

  They all looked at him.

  Yoshi sloshed his way to the bank. “That thing wasn’t made by us humans, but what if one of us stole it? Like forbidden magic. The aliens wanted it back, so they took the whole plane.”

  “Okay,” Javi said. “So why dump us in an alien jungle full of stuff that wants to eat us?”

  Yoshi sighed. These engineers were good at conjectures and theories, but they weren’t very good at stories. He suspected they were too coolheaded to understand anger and revenge.

  “Maybe they don’t care which human stole it,” he said. “And they’ve chosen us to be punished for the crime.”

  “Seriously?” Molly asked.

  “Guys,” Javi interrupted. He was pointing at a tree.

  Yoshi looked up. There were gouges in the bark, deep and savage. About twice his height, they made a crude X in the tree.

  “Okay, weird,” Molly said softly. “Would an animal do that?”

  “None that I know of,” Anna said.

  Yoshi took a step closer. Unconsciously, his arm moved in a figure-eight pattern, as if welding a sword to mark the tree.

  “What?” Molly asked. “You think a person did that?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too crude. But you know how cats sharpen their claws on scratching posts?”

  “That’s a pretty big cat,” Javi said.

  Yoshi looked at Molly, whose eyes widened.

  “I heard something last night,” she said. “A cry. Something big.”

  Yoshi nodded. “I heard it, too, moving out in the jungle.”

  They all stared up at the marks for a while.

  “I say we keep moving,” Javi finally said.

  An hour later, Yoshi spotted the airplane’s crash-landing trail.

  It was easy to see from a hundred feet up. Miles of sheared-off trees, scattered wreckage, and spilled luggage. So much destruction and mess. He wondered how long it would take for the jungle to swallow it.

  To swallow them all.

  Yoshi wafted down to the others and pointed. “The airplane’s that way. Maybe thirty jumps.”

  Molly looked down at the glitter of water below. “Let’s keep following the stream, see if it gets closer. We got lucky, though. It looks like thirst won’t kill us!”

  Javi rubbed his belly. “No, that would be hunger. I hope those guys haven’t eaten all the pretzels.”

  Yoshi hoped so, too. It had been a day since he’d eaten. His hunger seemed to change by the hour, sometimes clanging like an alarm in his head, other times settling into a fuzziness that made everything even more unreal.

  Anna kept saying that if you had water, it took two weeks to starve. But after only one day, Yoshi was ready to eat one of the bulbous green berries that grew down by the stream. Or kill and roast one of the fat multicolored birds that sounded like crying babies. Even the big green insects with pinecone heads were starting to look tasty.

  Yoshi shuddered at the thought. Maybe when the airplane snacks were all gone …

  “Let’s go,” Molly said. “We’re almost home.”

  You lied to me!” Caleb cried.

  Anna shrugged. “We told you the truth first. But you didn’t believe us.”

  “Yeah, but who would?” Caleb sputtered, giving the device another dubious look. “I mean, an antigravity machine?”

  Anna only smiled at him. Caleb couldn’t deny it anymore. He’d seen the four of them bounding in from the back end of the plane, where the stream passed within a hundred yards of the wreckage trail.

  In a funny way, it was scary how close that stream had been. The jungle was so dense that they might never have found it without the gravity device. They could’ve died of thirst right here by the plane, waiting for rescue parties that were probably light-years away.

  She cradled the device closer. “Well, now you know.”

  He picked up the spear he’d made—really a long, straight stick with a sharpened end—and pointed it at her. “You guys can’t go sneaking off like that. Or stay out in the jungle all night!”

  The others didn’t respond. They were all too busy wolfing down pretzels and peanuts. Oliver was passing out potato chips, clearly relieved to see them again.

  Anna nibbled at an emergency food bar from one of the survival kits. It was unhealthy to eat too fast when you were hungry.

  “We found Yoshi and water,” she said calmly. “We discovered a carnivorous vine, and figured out that we’re on another planet. That’s a pretty useful trip.”

  “Another planet?” Caleb groaned. “Are you guys kidding with that?”

  Yoshi spoke up from where he stood with Akiko and Kira. “The girls saw the moons, too. This morning, when the mist cleared. They tried to tell you.”

  Kira held up her drawing pad, and Anna went over to look. She and Javi had woken up after the mists had rolled back in, and hadn’t seen the moons at all.

  The drawing showed two moons, one crescent, one full. Molly had said they were red and green, but Kira didn’t have colored pencils.

  “All you saw was lights in the sky,” Caleb said. “They weren’t moons because we’re not on another planet!”

  “They looked a lot like moons,” Molly said calmly.

  “What if they were rescue airplanes? Did you even try to signal them?”

  Molly rolled her eyes. “You mean, wave my arms and yell, Yo, moons, over here?”

  Caleb rubbed his temples, like this was giving him a headache.

  “You should hear Yoshi’s theor
y,” Anna said. “It’s way freakier.”

  “We don’t need theories—we need food!” Caleb thrust his crude spear up at the white sky. “And a way to signal those rescue aircraft. We should build a big enough fire that the smoke rises above the mist. Away from the plane, so we don’t have to worry about blowing anything up.”

  Molly shrugged. “A fire might be a good idea, for when night comes.”

  She glanced at Anna, who was pleased she knew right away what Molly was thinking: Don’t mention the creature with the foghorn voice, or whatever was scratching its claws ten feet up on a tree trunk. Not in front of Oliver.

  Instead, Anna said, “Cooked food is safer than raw. I’ve got a few ideas about what to try eating first.”

  “Today?” Javi asked through a full mouth. “Why would we risk eating alien stuff before the Earth pretzels run out?”

  “Because,” Anna said, “you don’t want to be starving when you try your first alien food. It might make you puke your guts up. And you’re going to need some pretzels to come back from that.”

  Javi turned pale, and Caleb just walked away, shaking his head.

  While Caleb was busy building his signal fire, the others convened at the stream, at a bare spot with no undergrowth for tanglevine to hide in. Kira and Akiko were filling empty water bottles, and Anna stood ready with the plants she’d gathered for the experiment.

  There were three piles of berries. The green ones from the bushes along the stream, the blue kind that grew in the undergrowth, and the red ones that were shaped like popcorn.

  Hopefully one of them was nutritious, and none was deadly poison.

  “It’s best to start with berries,” she said.

  Molly crossed her arms. “Why?”

  Anna smiled. It was always fun explaining biology to Molly, who hated squishy stuff.

  “Berries are supposed to be edible. It’s all about reproduction for them.”

  “Sexy times!” Javi said.

  Anna ignored him. “Berries taste good so that animals will eat them. Because then the seeds get carried in a stomach to some new place, and plopped on the ground, along with fertilizer. In other words, fruit is a plant’s way of spreading its seeds, while making sure they’re covered with nutritious poo.”

  “Not so sexy after all,” Javi said.

  Molly nodded. “Nature is weird.”

  Yoshi was translating for Akiko and Kira, who also looked dubious.

  “So plants want their fruit to get eaten?” Oliver asked. “Then why are some plants poisonous?”

  “To keep certain animals away,” Anna explained. “Like, hot peppers have these tiny seeds that get crushed by mammal teeth. Those peppers reproduce better if birds eat them. So they evolved to be too spicy for mammal tongues.”

  “Because birds like spicy food?” Molly asked.

  Anna smiled. “Fun fact: Birds don’t have taste buds.”

  “But I’m a mammal,” Javi said. “And I love hot peppers!”

  “That’s a kick-butt thing about humans,” Anna said. “We eat and drink poisonous stuff for fun.”

  “True.” Javi wore a smirk. “I ate a whole jar of jalapeños once. Let’s see a tiger do that.”

  “Tigers have better things to do,” Anna said.

  Molly was frowning. “So if we avoid stuff that tastes bad or burns our tongues, we should be okay?”

  Anna hesitated. In nature, there were lots of exceptions to any rule. Evolution was like a gazillion microprocessors—one inside every living cell—all running slight variations of their DNA code at the same time, seeking out the best results. It was bound to be complicated.

  But to keep everyone from starving, she had to make it sound simple. Because sometimes lying was okay.

  “If it tastes good, it won’t kill you,” she said. “If in doubt, spit it out.”

  Yoshi finished his running translation for the girls, then asked, “But if this is really another planet, why would anything be healthy for us?”

  “Because it’s all so familiar,” Anna said. “There are birds, trees, insects. For everything to wind up looking the same as life on Earth, it has to be made from the same building blocks. As long as the proteins are the same, we can survive.”

  Yoshi translated this for the girls, but he didn’t sound completely convinced. Then again, neither was Anna. Convergent evolution happened all the time on Earth—similar animals emerging from different gene pools, every biome looking more or less the same, from top predators down to bottom feeders.

  But on another planet?

  All she really knew was that they had to test the theory, or starve. And that she was proud of herself for not saying any of this scary stuff out loud.

  But then Oliver said, “So we’re really on another planet?”

  “I guess we can’t be sure,” Molly said. “But it’s the only explanation that fits all the facts.”

  “So that means we’re light-years away from Earth,” he said softly. “And we’re never getting home.”

  “No it doesn’t!” Molly said. “If we got here, there has to be a way back.”

  Javi spoke up. “I mean, if someone can teleport us here, or whatever they did, then they can send us back the same way.”

  Anna tried to think of something to say, but no words came to her. Maybe Javi was right, and some kind of easy-to-use teleporter had brought them here. But what if they’d been shipped here unconscious and frozen, and the trip had taken a hundred years?

  What if they’d lost everything already and didn’t even know it?

  But Oliver only sighed. “Okay, let’s eat. Who gets to go first?”

  “We choose randomly.” Anna held out five straws from the airplane kitchen, then dipped one into the pile of green berries she’d gathered—the same berries the lucky winner was going to eat.

  Kira spoke up, and after some arguing, Yoshi translated. “She says you’re missing two straws. The girls want to help.”

  Anna looked at Molly. It was weird enough, having a straw in there for Oliver. But testing possibly poisonous berries on the two young sisters seemed downright wrong. Kira, however, had her fists balled up like she was ready to fight. Even the usually timid Akiko wore a firm expression.

  “Sure,” Molly finally said, and Anna pulled two more straws from her pocket.

  They were all in this together, she supposed.

  “It doesn’t matter who draws,” Javi muttered. “It’s going to be me eating those berries. Randomness hates me.”

  “Randomness treats everyone the same,” Oliver said. “That’s what random means.”

  “My last words shall be I told you so.”

  “Respect the straws,” Oliver said, stepping forward.

  Anna stared at him, a little surprised.

  Oliver shrugged. “Might as well go first. The odds are the same, and this way I get to stop stressing … probably.”

  As he said that last word, he yanked a straw out of Anna’s hand, his eyes wide.

  No berry stain.

  “Congratulations,” Molly said. “But keep that straw. If these berries aren’t edible, we’re going to keep going till we find some that are.”

  Oliver’s smile faded a little, but Anna was glad he wasn’t testing the first batch.

  Molly went next. She gazed at the straws for a long moment, muttering, and when she finally pulled one out, it was clean. She looked a little disappointed, like she’d wanted to go first.

  But again Anna was relieved, even though Molly’s safety made her own chances worse. They all needed Molly alive and well.

  Of course, Anna didn’t want any of them to die. Not any of the younger kids, or Javi, or herself. And especially not Yoshi. It seemed wrong for someone with all those sword skills to die of something as weak-sauce as berry poisoning.

  “This is a waste of time,” Javi said. “It’s going to be me!”

  Oliver sighed. “You have a twenty percent chance. Same as everyone else who hasn’t gone.”

  �
��Speaking of people who haven’t gone,” Yoshi spoke up, “why isn’t Caleb here?”

  “He’d just get in the way,” Molly said.

  “But that’s not fair,” Oliver said.

  Molly sighed. “He’s in the jungle gathering wood, and he didn’t believe us about tanglevine. That’s probably more dangerous than eating berries.”

  “Especially when I’m the one who’s going to wind up …” Javi began, but his voice faded as Kira stepped forward, gazing at the straws.

  When she reached out a hand, Anna flinched away. But Kira stared her down, and something about her fierce expression let the numb part of Anna’s mind take over. All of them were alive thanks only to random chance. Any of them could be dead in a week. From hunger or from some alien virus. Or from being torn apart by shredder birds or carnivorous vines or something much worse.

  Maybe poisonous berries would be an easier way to go.

  Anna held out the straws, and Kira took one.

  The end was stained green with berry juice.

  Uh-oh,” Javi said.

  Kira was gazing at the green-tipped straw. After a long moment, a soft smile curled her lip. Akiko looked like she was about to cry.

  Molly stepped forward. “Maybe we should—”

  “She’s too young,” Yoshi said. “I’ll do it instead.”

  Kira must have understood. She let out a burst of angry Japanese and waved the straw in Yoshi’s face.

  She wasn’t backing down. Her white streak of hair flashed in the sunlight.

  Javi edged a little closer to the pile of green berries. They looked ripe and sweet, and his taste buds were tired of pretzels.

  “Let me,” Molly said. “This was all my—”

  “You already chose a straw!” Yoshi cut in. He switched to Japanese and started arguing with Kira.

  Javi reached for the berries. It was easy, really, because he’d always known it would be him. He was always the loser at rock-paper-scissors or coin tosses, all the way back to his first eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Kira had just gotten in the way of the natural order of things.

  Besides, he was really hungry. And those berries did look good.

  He picked up three and ate them.