Horizon

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Um,” Yoshi said. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that.”

  Anna didn’t answer him—the other end of the model had caught her eye. There, opposite the jungle, was some kind of structure. It was as big as a dinner plate, ten times larger than the tiny crashed airplane. Kira stood at that end already, drawing it.

  Anna went to take a closer look.

  It was covered with spires that stuck out in all directions—a madhouse version of a castle, or maybe a futuristic city. The structure’s core gave off a soft red glow, pulsing like a heartbeat.

  Whatever it was, there had to be someone there.

  People with answers. People who could help Molly.

  Anna pointed at the structure. “This looks like the headquarters for whoever built all this. We have to get there!”

  Yoshi looked down the length of the model, then back at the jungle.

  “That seems pretty far.”

  “But we have to try,” Anna said, but he was right. The hologram stretched endlessly down the cavern. A panic started to build in her, the feeling that no matter what they did, they would be too late. “Maybe we should look around. Find something that might help Molly.”

  “Okay,” Yoshi said. “But what are we looking for?”

  “Anything!” Anna glared at the little robots underfoot. Most of them carried spare parts, pieces of metal and wire and plastic. Something had to be worth plundering.

  She crushed one of the passing robots underfoot.

  “Anna,” Yoshi pleaded. “Be careful.”

  “They’re just repair bots,” she said. “They don’t even see us.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but suddenly his expression changed. He was staring over her shoulder, frozen.

  Anna followed his gaze—at the opening of one of the passages was a new kind of machine, much larger than the little robots. It hunkered in a menacing crouch, its four legs and two arms folded around it, each ending in large, sharp-looking pincers.

  “Uh-oh,” Kira said.

  The machine rose up, its arms waving, their pincers snapping like metal jaws, and cold fear swept through Anna.

  Yoshi took a step backward. “What on earth is that?”

  Anna swallowed.

  “I think it’s animal control,” she said. “And we’re the animals.”

  Anna turned and ran, heading for the nearest open passageway.

  Yoshi followed, grabbing Kira by the arm as he flew past. He flicked on the flashlight in his free hand.

  The passage had a low ceiling, forcing him to stoop as he ran. The clatter of metal feet echoed behind him.

  “See?” he cried. “Kicking those little robots wasn’t smart!”

  Anna looked back. “It was trying to take my stuff!”

  Yoshi didn’t bother arguing. Kira already had a good lead on them, her size making it easier to run in the cramped tunnel.

  The animal control machine—or whatever it was—clattered along only a few yards behind Yoshi. He wondered if it was equipped with nets, or tranquilizer darts, or something more lethal. He doubted his sword could do anything to its metal limbs.

  But at the moment, at least, the robot seemed content to scare them away. Maybe it really did think they were animals.

  If he stopped running and faced it, would the machine even know what to do? Maybe it would just give up.

  On the other hand, maybe those metal pincers would slice his head off.

  Yoshi kept running.

  “Find a narrow tunnel!” Kira called back to them. “Somewhere that thing can’t fit!”

  “She thinks we can hide,” he translated. “Somewhere small.”

  “It’s too close!” Anna panted.

  They went skidding around a corner, and suddenly Yoshi’s feet were crashing through a mob of little eight-legged robots, all of them loaded with cargoes of mechanical parts.

  Yoshi tried to jump them, but his foot struck metal and he flew forward. The flashlight slipped from his hand, cracked against stone, then went spinning away. The hard floor rushed up and met his right knee. A spark of pain knocked his breath away, and a moment later he was rolling to a halt across the rocky floor.

  The larger robot bore down on him, its pincers gleaming in the dark, and Yoshi covered his head—

  But the machine jumped, sailing over him, and kept going, snatching up the flashlight on its way.

  “Huh,” Yoshi said, wincing with pain as he stood.

  The robot didn’t care about him, just his flashlight. That was good news, except for one thing—it would take the gravity device away.

  Which was their only way of escaping the mountain.

  Yoshi started to run again, following the sound of the machine down the dark tunnel. There were no flickering orange lights here, just the glimmer of Kira’s flashlight ahead. He had to keep one hand on the stone wall to guide himself, and every step sent pain stabbing through his knee.

  His feet struck more of the little robots, and he kept stumbling in the darkness. But at last Yoshi felt a breeze against his face and smelled fresh air.

  He rounded the next corner and found himself facing an opening in the stone—starlight glittered through it!

  Framed against the night sky were Anna, Kira, and the machine. Kira swung her flashlight at the robot, and the clang of metal against metal echoed down the tunnel. Pincers flashed and snapped.

  Full of sudden anger, Yoshi charged, running headlong down the tunnel. His sword might be useless, but sometimes brute force was called for—he lowered his shoulder and threw all his weight against the machine.

  It was like running straight into motorcycle—the machine was harder and heavier than Yoshi, and pain surged through his whole body. But the metal feet scraped against stone as his momentum carried both him and the robot toward the ledge.

  “Yoshi!” Kira cried, reaching out.

  The machine’s feet scrabbled for purchase, and its pincers grabbed at the ledge as Yoshi gave one last shove.

  The robot toppled, its limbs flailing, but Yoshi’s momentum carried him after it. The misty abyss opened up beneath him—

  Kira’s hand grasped his, and for a moment Yoshi was suspended over the endless drop. The muscles in his hands still screamed from the climb, but his fear of falling into the void kept them locked around Kira’s fingers.

  A moment later, Anna had pulled them both back onto the ledge, and they all collapsed together on the stone.

  Yoshi stared at the others, opening his mouth to thank them.

  “It’s still there!” Kira yelled, pointing.

  Hooked to the ledge of the opening was a single pincer, glistening in the starlight.

  Yoshi drew back his foot and kicked at it, but his running shoe bounced from the metal, which didn’t budge.

  Another pincer rose up beside the first, grasping the stone.

  “Ready for heavy!” Anna cried, her hands on the gravity device.

  Yoshi braced himself, and a moment later the crushing burden of double G fell hard upon him. The pain in his knee spiked, squeezing a grunt from his lungs.

  He fought to turn his head and watched the pincers losing their shape, the metal bending under the doubled weight of the robot hanging from them.

  Then a vast, strange sound came from everywhere at once—the stone around the cave mouth creaked and shifted. Yoshi wondered how many tons had suddenly been added to the load of rock overhead, weighing down on the passages and caverns that hollowed out the mountain. Dust silted down, a groan passing through the cave mouth.

  Then, all at once, the pincers failed, disappearing with a flash of metal. The last frantic scrapings of the robot trying to save itself slid out of Yoshi’s hearing.

  Anna switched off the device. The weight lifted from Yoshi, and a great wracking breath filled his lungs. The red spots crowding his vision began to disappear.

  “You okay?” Kira asked.

  Yoshi looked down at himself. His pants were torn, and blood seeped from his knee. When he moved th
at leg, spikes of pain went through him, but the muscles seemed to be in working order.

  “I’ll live,” he said, but then another groan passed through the stone, the rock shifting unhappily overhead.

  Kira raised an eyebrow. “Don’t speak too soon.”

  Anna stood and placed her hand against the stone wall.

  “The doubled weight unsettled all these tunnels,” she said. “Should I turn the gravity to low?”

  Yoshi stared at her. “You’re the engineer, not me!”

  Anna opened her mouth to say something, but the groaning of the stones around them was growing louder, building to a roar. A sudden darkness shut out the night sky, as if a curtain had fallen across the opening.

  Kira pointed her flashlight at it—a torrent of white was streaming past.

  “Snow,” she said. “We set off an avalanche!”

  The snow kept coming, gushing past, and whirlwinds of fluffy powder drifted into the opening. It settled over Yoshi in a cold layer.

  But gradually the shifting weight of the avalanche seemed to settle the stone around them. The mountain’s groaning eased, fading into the shush of falling snow.

  Long moments later it tapered off, and the night sky glittered through the cave mouth again.

  “Check this out,” Anna said, lifting her backpack. It was wet, the snow on it melted. She pulled out the battery she’d stolen from the first little robot. “Still warm. We can use it as a heater, I guess.”

  Yoshi didn’t answer. He scooped his palm across the stone, gathering a handful of the snow and squeezing it into a tiny snowball. It was perfect snow for skiing, he noticed—crystalline, cold, dry powder.

  Of course it was.

  He looked up at the stars, which sparkled bright in the sky now that the smoke from the distant aircraft fire had cleared.

  And he saw it—what Caleb must have seen.

  “Ursa,” Yoshi said. “He was trying to say Ursa Major.”

  Anna stood next to him, looking up at the Big Dipper filling the sky.

  “It looks exactly the same as at home,” she said, pointing. “And look. The North Star is up there, right overhead.”

  “I hear something,” Kira said. “There’s more of those big robots coming!”

  “We have to jump,” Yoshi translated for Anna.

  “Okay.” She hefted the device, then looked down at the battery in her hand. “We’re going to need this heater, aren’t we?”

  Yoshi nodded. Suddenly, it was all clear.

  He knew exactly where they were.

  How’s she doing?” Oliver asked again.

  Javi looked up tiredly and tried to sound more certain than he felt.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Oliver looked away, his lips pressed tight together. Not believing.

  Molly hadn’t opened her eyes since fainting after the engine fire. Her breathing had been fast and shallow all night, and she was covered with a sheen of sweat. When Javi dribbled water between her lips, she would swallow a few drops and murmur meaningless words, but that was the only sign of consciousness.

  The illness seemed to be consuming her. Her face was gaunt, and her muscles and veins stood out on her already wiry limbs.

  Worst of all, the wound on her shoulder still glowed that awful, luminous green.

  At dawn, Akiko had lured two fat slide-whistle birds straight into Javi’s net, and they had a pile of red berries ready, but there was no way to get Molly to eat.

  Oliver stood there, waiting for more, and Javi wondered if he wanted the truth. The kid had fought hard to make them all stop sugarcoating things. Maybe it was time to talk to him straight.

  “I don’t know how she is, but I’m worried,” Javi said.

  “Then what do we do if the others don’t come back?” Oliver asked.

  Javi just stared at him.

  “We said we’d go look for them after three days.”

  “Oh, right.” Javi looked at Molly, laid out on their remaining airplane blanket. The idea that she could travel in two days seemed ridiculous. “We can’t leave her.”

  “But they’ll run out of food!” Oliver persisted.

  “They know which berries to eat.”

  Oliver didn’t look satisfied.

  Akiko came through the trees, bringing more water. When the fire had been at its hottest the night before, they’d carried Molly away from the airplane and closer to the stream. One flash of smart thinking in a night of terrible decisions.

  The mistakes kept echoing through Javi’s head. Why use the device on settings they didn’t understand? Why experiment on the aircraft itself? Since when was messing with the laws of nature ever a good idea?

  Javi stared at what was left of the plane. Their only shelter, their only connection with Earth, and they’d burned it to the ground. Most of the equipment they’d painstakingly collected had been incinerated, along with everything they could have scavenged from the hundreds of pieces of luggage they hadn’t even opened yet.

  The whole camp smelled like a disaster area. Javi’s lungs were scorched and his skin was coated with smoke. The surrounding trees were white with ash, and if the dreadful duck appeared again, they had no place left to hide.

  Akiko knelt to dribble some water into Molly’s mouth, and Javi stood up to stretch, trying to breathe deep enough to clear his mind of awful thoughts.

  “She won’t die, will she?” Oliver asked softly.

  Maybe he didn’t want the truth after all.

  Javi shook his head, and not just for Oliver’s sake.

  Molly couldn’t die.

  Without her, they weren’t a team anymore. Without her, they had no leader, no one to challenge them to find solutions in this strange place. It was bad enough, the thought that they might never get home.

  But to lose Molly as well …

  The explorers came back that night, a day early.

  They must have seen the signal fire, which Akiko and Oliver had built to help guide them home. The three of them came skimming in just as the sun was setting, bounding over sliced-off trees in the landing path.

  As they descended, Javi felt the low-gravity field of their device lift his tired muscles for a moment. The bonfire ruffled and sparked, then settled again as normal weight returned. Akiko and Kira ran to embrace each other, spinning off into their own private stream of French and Japanese.

  “Are you okay?” Oliver said. He was staring at Yoshi, whose knee was wrapped up in a bloody bungee cord.

  “I’m fine,” came Yoshi’s answer. But he looked pale, and he walked toward the fire with a definite limp.

  “He had an argument with a robot,” Anna said.

  Yoshi half shrugged. “Which I won.”

  They looked exhausted, and when Anna spotted the slide-whistle bird plucked and ready by the fire, her eyes went wide.

  “Wait,” Javi said. “Did you just say a robot? Does that mean you found people?”

  Yoshi started to answer, but then he saw the form stretched out in the shadows beyond the fire. “Is that Molly?”

  Javi nodded. “She’s worse. Um, we kind of blew up the plane.”

  “We saw,” Anna said blankly.

  A moment later all six of them were crowded around Molly’s unconscious form, and Javi was explaining everything—how they’d found the two new settings, set the airplane on fire, and barely escaped being burned to death. And how Molly had fainted after all the excitement.

  “She hasn’t moved since,” he finished. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We can get her help,” Anna said.

  Oliver looked up. “So you did find people?”

  “No.” Anna took a breath. “But someone made this jungle, and we think we know where they are.”

  Javi blinked, his brain too tired to understand.

  “Wait. We’re on Earth?” he managed.

  “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be,” Yoshi said. “Behind the waterfall was a huge wall of stone, maybe miles high. Someon
e built it. Someone built all of this.”

  “The wall’s full of machines,” Anna said. “Tons of weird technology, along with robots that maintain it. The whole thing is wrapped around this valley, to protect it.”

  Javi stared at them. They looked tired, but not like they’d gone crazy in the last two days. And he’d seen plenty of stranger things than robots and giant walls since the crash.

  “Protect it from what?”

  “The arctic,” Yoshi said simply.

  “We were almost at the top of the wall,” Anna explained. “And when we doubled the gravity, a ton of snow came tumbling down. We triggered an avalanche, because our plane crashed exactly where it should have—somewhere not that far from the North Pole.”

  “We even saw the Big Dipper.” Yoshi looked up. “Also known as Ursa Major. That’s what Caleb was trying to tell us.”

  “The walls are heated, to keep the jungle warm,” Anna said. “The water comes from melted snow, and the mist covers everything because it’s way hotter down here than the tundra around us.”

  “Down here?” Javi asked.

  “We’re down in a valley, a rift in the earth.” Yoshi said something to Kira, who brought over her drawing pad. “We saw a model of the whole thing. The jungle’s at one end, and some kind of huge building is at the other, with a lot of other stuff between.”

  Javi stared at the drawing—some strange futuristic castle. “But why would anyone build a whole valley in the arctic? And such a weird one?”

  “Good question,” Anna said. “But whoever it was, they must know how to help Molly. If they designed all this, they can fix whatever poison that bird left in her.”

  Javi could only nod at this. If it would save Molly, he was willing to believe anything. “So how do we contact them?”

  “They don’t answer the radio, and there was no one in the wall,” Anna said. “So we have to go to the other end of the rift.”

  “It’s that way.” Yoshi pointed toward the front of the plane.

  Javi sat down heavily, staring into Molly’s still face. For a moment, he’d thought they were all saved. That it was simply a matter of sending out a distress call and waiting for rescue parties to show up.