Freefall

by Joshua David Bellin

  And then you find it again.

  Sofie lets us have our moment, then she slips an arm through mine. “What is it that you need us to do, Dr. Park?”

  My mom smiles, but there’s definitely moisture in her eyes. My mom, I tell you. Her mad science skills are matched only by her ability to embarrass the hell out of me.

  “I don’t think you have to ask me that, Sofie,” she says. “I think you and Cam already know.”

  Tau Ceti d

  Earth Year 3151

  Day

  We stand in the corridor outside the pod bay of the Freefall. The sharp light of the planetary day floods the ship, washing out the sky so we can’t see the other heavenly bodies that hang above us. With his son no longer blocking his efforts, Griff’s dad finally got the Executor to yield the secret of where we are: not on Tower City, but on the fourth planet in the same system, the one labeled d. Comparable to Mars in climate and atmosphere, a place we couldn’t have survived for long. We’ll never know why Griff chose to send us here when he had the whole universe to play with. Maybe it was nothing but accident, or malice, him finding the worst place he could imagine just shy of the place we wanted to go. But I like to think he selected this place because, even at the end, there was more to him than the cruel lesson he wanted to teach. Because he knew that here, so close to our original destination, we stood a chance.

  I like to think that, even when he’d lost so much of himself, my second oldest friend held on to hope.

  A huge crowd—as many as could cram themselves into the corridor—surrounds me and Sofie as we take our place on the storage boxes that serve as our makeshift stage. It reminds me of the crowd I saw that first day in Adrian’s room, except this time it contains not only Lowerworlders but Upperworlders as well. Though they’re pretty much segregated into distinct groupings—a patch of dark faces here, a cluster of light faces there—at least they’re closer to each other than they were on Earth. In the case of my parents, they’re standing among the members of Sofie’s team who were imprisoned on the Executor, Basil and Zubin and all the others, a bit dinged up but alive and well. The parents I thought I knew on Earth would have called this decision to mingle with the Lowerworld “engaging in acts of corponational charity.” The parents I’m getting to know out here in space call it “breaking down the barriers of injustice.”

  I like these parents a lot better.

  I stand on the stage, looking out at the buzzing crowd. It’s been weeks since Griff’s death, weeks for us to move people and equipment from the Executor to the Freefall, weeks for Sofie to reassemble the team she headed on Earth, the major difference being that I’m now a member of it. As an advisor, mostly. But it’s still weird to me, the idea that I’m some kind of public figure. Ever since she was a little girl, Sofie’s been used to people following and watching her all the time, every word she speaks getting beamed around the world for listeners to clothe with their own particular meaning. Me, I’d prefer to retreat from the spotlight so we can work on the private part, the part about me and her. In the rare moments we have alone, Sofie tells me she needs time to figure that part out: time to heal, time to grow. I know we have time now. I’m just impatient for it to begin.

  I also know, though, that this is where we need to be right now. The Executor is one tremor short of sinking into oblivion, and the Freefall, though Griff’s dad has assured Sofie’s technical crew that it’s fully operational, is also stuffed to the gills with people not accustomed to playing fair. Defeated as the Upperworld is, someone might get the idea to start a revolution of their own. My parents have been working feverishly with me and Sofie to make sure that doesn’t happen, to broker a new articulation agreement, but we’re not there yet. Maybe we never will be. Still, we have to try.

  I look at the girl I accompanied across the stars. Her jewel flashes in the corridor’s light. Red for marriage, she told me back on Earth. I consider reaching for her hand. What would be the harm? But something holds me back. Something tells me that if I can stay cool for once in my life, it’ll be worth the wait.

  Something is right. She returns my look, and her lips part in a dazzling smile.

  I smile back, my traitor heart going haywire. My face is probably as red as the jewel. Then she nods, and we step to the front of the stage. The Lowerworlders cheer. There’s a smattering of applause from some of the Upperworlders, led by my mom and dad. No boos, at least. Once everyone’s settled down, Sofie raises her arms to the crowd.

  “People of Earth,” she says, her precise, lilting voice carrying through the corridor without need of a microphone. “We have traveled much farther than any people of the past have dreamed. And we have suffered much since our arrival—much loss, much sorrow, much that has challenged and changed us as a people. But we are gathered here now because we have not lost faith. We recognize that we have all been given a second chance at life. And if we are wise, we know that we must prove ourselves worthy of this great gift. We must leave behind all that shackles us to the past. Two Worlds were our history. One world must be our future.”

  She pauses, dropping her eyes as if in prayer. I scan the crowd to see how they’re receiving her speech so far. The Lowerworlders seem to be listening intently, but the majority of the Upperworlders are fidgeting, looking embarrassed or uncomfortable. I glimpse a splash of red hair and my heart freezes. But of course it’s not him. It’s his dad. I haven’t seen Mr. Griffin since before we left Earth. I try to catch his eye, but he’s looking away.

  Sofie must see him too.

  “People of the Upperworld,” she says, her voice softer but no less powerful. “We mourn with you for all you have lost. We mourn the death of your leader, Chairman Conroy, and his son, and all who have given their lives on a world far from home. We mourn as well for the one who brought us here, a child of both Lowerworld and Upperworld who had lost his way in all the distance we traveled. We mourn for him, but we do not accept the path he followed. We know that there is another end to our common history than the way of violence and death.”

  There’s absolute silence, not even the sound of uniforms rustling. The Lowerworlders seem unwilling to risk an outburst. I can’t be sure if this means people are listening to Sofie or tuning her out. I can’t be sure how any of this will end.

  All I can be sure of is the girl I love.

  “People of Earth!” she cries, lifting her voice so loud it makes my body sing. “Soon to be people of another world. I am a child of the Lowerworld, as he who stands at my side is a child of the Upperworld. At one time we were divided by walls so high we could not think to overcome them. Chance, or fate, brought us together. But the path we have now chosen is of our making alone. The walls of ignorance and hatred have fallen in our hearts, as they must fall in all hearts, across all lands, across the very stars! We stand before you united in spirit, united in purpose, and united in the struggle for justice!”

  Her voice ends, the ship catching its echo and letting her final word hang there for a moment before it fades. There’s a jostling in the bodies closest to the stage, people pushing against their neighbors as if a scuffle is about to break out, the Lowerworld portions of the crowd and the Upperworld portions shoving for space they can’t or won’t share. When will we stop fighting each other? I think. Killing each other? Billions of people have died already, along with the two brothers I loved back home. Haven’t we learned anything in a thousand years?

  But then, to my amazement, I realize it’s not a fight breaking out. It’s something I never thought I’d see: Lowerworlders and Upperworlders falling to their knees together, bowing their heads. Not everyone, but enough. Some of them link arms, while others clasp their hands or spread their palms on the floor in front of them. A few surge forward and reach up to where Sofie and I stand on the podium, eager to receive our touch. We do what they want, my head spinning as I look into faces alight with smiles and tears. Then Sofie grips my hand and raises it before the crowd, and her voice rings out again, as clear and stron
g as the first time I heard it. I hold her hand as tightly as I can, and I lift my voice with hers.

  “Justice!”

  “Justice!”

  The members of our team stand, join hands, and hold them high, crying the word over and over. The rest of the Lowerworlders follow their example, thundering the refrain in a hundred different languages, much louder, I think, than they did on Earth. Slowly the Upperworlders lift themselves from the floor and stand unsteadily, unsure what to do, as bewildered by the noise as I was that day in New York CITI. But then a few take up the chant, my mom and dad and Griff’s father all by themselves at first, then more and more, still not everyone but enough to rock the corridors of the Freefall. I feel tears on my cheeks, tears for Adrian and Griff, for all the ones we’ve lost on this planet and the planet we left so long ago. We can’t go back and save them from a world that’s ceased to exist. But we can go forward and try to lead those who remain to a world that’s yet to be.

  Not Sofie’s world. Not my world.

  Our world.

  At last I think I can see a way there.

  EPILOGUE: HOMECOMING

  Earth Year 3151

  Freefall

  Sofie tells me she loves me the day we launch the ship.

  Actually, she tells me that a lot these days. There’s a guarded quality to her words sometimes, a sense that she’s feeling her way. But there’s no doubt in my mind that what she feels is real. Though we spend practically every waking minute together, we haven’t kissed since that morning in the tunnels. She tells me that even a prophet has many things to learn. I tell her I’ll always love her, no matter what, and we leave it at that for now.

  There’s so much we need to work on. Not only me and her, but all of us. Healing old wounds. Building a new society. We’ll arrive on Tau Ceti e as passengers of a single ship, united by our determination to survive. But it’ll be up to us to decide if we can live that way. We might end up falling into old patterns, divided by history and suspicion and resentment. Or we might make the effort to live in peace, the first pioneers of a truly new world. That’s the hope, anyway. It’s what Sofie and I have pledged ourselves to work toward for the rest of our lives.

  Together. As friends, allies—or something more.

  That’s my hope too.

  And there’s one thing, more than anything else, that makes me think it’s all going to work out. I’ve talked with Griff’s dad—cried with him too, but that was only part of it—and he told me that everywhere he looked in the Executor’s code, he saw signs of how hastily Griff had done his damage. In some ways, that explains why the problems were so hard to fix, because everything was random and unorthodox. It probably also explains why the Freefall was so glitchy, why no one woke up when the ship touched down. But it doesn’t explain why, when both of the starships went astray, the only pods to eject—other than the Centurions under Griff’s control—were mine and Sofie’s. You could say that was Griff’s doing too, but it’s hard to see how casting us into space could have served his designs. No, I think there was something else going on, something that can’t be explained by science or technology. The best I can put it is that it was meant to happen that way. When we needed each other most, we both called out, and the other answered.

  If that can happen, isn’t anything possible? If I can travel across the galaxy to find the girl I thought I’d lost forever, can’t we find a way to live together at last?

  The Freefall’s in the final stages of preparation for takeoff, the gravitational drive engaged for its journey to Tau Ceti e. Sofie breaks away from a conversation with her team and takes my hand, pulling me away from the crowd. She reaches up and delicately, almost shyly, gives me a kiss.

  “You ready?” I ask her.

  “For anything,” she says, and smiles.

  I grip her hand as the ship rumbles and then rises. The planet that held us prisoner falls away, and we’re soaring into the space between worlds. But it’s a short flight, and we won’t need deepsleep. We can sit by a window, and tell each other stories of the places we’ve been, and watch the everlasting stars as they guide us home.

  Acknowledgments

  Eternal thanks to:

  My superstar agent, Liza Fleissig of Liza Royce Agency.

  My cosmic editor, Karen Wojtyla, and her stellar assistant, Annie Nybo.

  My galactic genius copy editor, Brian Luster.

  My celestial publicist, Katy Hershberger.

  My out-of-this-world cover designer, Greg Stadnyk.

  My astronomical friends within the YA writing community, especially Kat Ross, who read an early draft of the manuscript and provided invaluable feedback; Jen Rees, who offered editorial assistance on the revised draft; and S. Alex Martin, who helped me with the trickier science.

  My dazzling children, who’ve rocketed from picture books to YA before my very eyes.

  My heavenly readers, for whom I first embarked on this voyage.

  And Christine, for showing me the stars.

  Author’s Note

  The Science of Freefall

  Many of the places, events, and technologies in Freefall are based on known (or at least probabilistic) science. These include:

  Tau Ceti e. An “exoplanet” (a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system), this is the fifth world circling the star Tau Ceti, approximately twelve light-years from Earth. We don’t know much about this planet, but some consider it within the “habitable zone” (the range of orbits around a star within which a planet might possess Earth-like properties, particularly the presence of liquid water), which is why many science-fiction books have been written with the Tau Ceti system as a setting. Shortly after I completed writing Freefall, scientists announced the discovery of a possibly habitable planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our own sun (only 4.24 light-years away), but for the purposes of the story, we can assume that Cam’s society determined this planet not to be suitable for human habitation.

  The Executor and the Freefall. Spaceships that travel at sub-light speeds, and thus would take thousands of years to reach the nearest stars, are typically termed “generation ships” (because multiple human generations would be born and die during the course of their journey). But with the deepsleep or suspended-animation technology described in this book, the passengers on my two starships are able to stay alive throughout the thousand-year voyage. Technically, to travel twelve light-years in a millennium, these ships would have to be moving at speeds far in excess of current automated (much less occupied) spacecraft. But that brings me to:

  The gravitational drive. In other words, a drive that “locks onto” and amplifies the gravitational field of its target star. Strictly speaking, that’s impossible: Artificial gravity can be created only through linear or rotational inertia, and the “slingshot” method utilized by automated spacecraft such as New Horizons, which acquired a “gravity assist” from Jupiter to increase its velocity on the way to Pluto, wouldn’t be adequate to power a ship across the galaxy. Though the drive envisioned in these pages isn’t a warp drive, which requires immense mass to warp or bend space, I’ve made my starships massive to assist the illusion of their actually manipulating a star’s gravitational pull.

  Biofeedback. There’s nothing fictional about the ability of some people to exert conscious control over involuntary functions such as heartbeat and breathing. The pod-and-deepsleep technology in Freefall is, however, an admittedly fictionalized exaggeration of the biofeedback process.

  Nanotechnologies. Engineering microscopic machines to perform medical and other tasks is one of the frontiers of present-day science. In Freefall, nanotechnologies have many applications, from performance enhancement to biomechanical drone warfare.

  There are many other aspects of Freefall that I’ve made no attempt to explain scientifically—mysteries that, as Cam suggests, perhaps can’t be explained that way. And as I see it, that’s the job of science fiction: to use the known and plausible as a means of exploring the unkno
wn and perhaps unknowable.

  About the Author

  JOSHUA DAVID BELLIN has been writing books since the age of eight (though his first few were admittedly very, very short). He is the author of Survival Colony 9 and its sequel, Scavenger of Souls. When he’s not writing, he spends his time drawing, catching amphibians, and watching monster movies with his kids. A Pittsburgh native, Josh has taught college English, published three nonfiction books (one about monsters!), and taken part in the movement to protect the environment. You can find him online at joshuadavidbellin.com.

  Margaret K. McElderry Books

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  Also by Joshua David Bellin

  Survival Colony 9

  Scavenger of Souls

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