“Carmella,” he called, and a short plump woman popped her head out from somewhere in the kitchen beyond.
“What can I do for you, Devon?” She was maybe twenty years older, her smooth skin barely seamed with fine lines around the corners of her eyes. Laugh lines, his mother used to call them.
“We have a newcomer today.” Devon indicated Aaron with a flourish. “I’m taking him into the wilderness in the afternoon. Can you pack us something extra to take along?”
She wagged a finger at him. “You’ll put on five k if you keep eating out of turn, Devon Powell.”
“I’ll work it off.” Devon grinned broadly. “I’m seeing Rafe tonight.”
“Juvenile delinquent. Here you go.” She handed him a small sack. “Apple tarts from the new crop, fresh from the orchards. Just baked ’em.”
“Thanks, Carmella,” he called. “Come on, Aaron!” They ran outside.
Aaron clapped him on the shoulder. “I think I like this town, but where is everyone?”
“Most folks are out on work detail during the daylight hours. You know how that works?” He started back toward the dorms.
“A little. I studied it back home.”
“We’ll head back to the dorm and pick up a few things, grab some lunch at the mess, and then head out where I can show you in person. It’s amazing!”
THE WORLD spun all around her as she dove into nothing. Ana plummeted, the platform disappearing rapidly behind her.
What had he said? Spread your arms. She did, and the glider wings popped out of her pack, pulling her up roughly toward the beam of light. The wings caught the wind, and all at once she was soaring.
Things steadied, an indistinct blur of greens and blues and browns below.
The light stream was not as solid when viewed up close. The river of glowing pollen roiled next to them, a constantly changing golden cloud.
She closed her left hand and the glider responded, drawing her to the left. Closing her right hand brought her back in that direction. She didn’t think she’d try applying the brakes just yet.
McAvery was ahead of her, and he looked back and slowed his pace to match hers. Soon they were side by side, flying high above a world that had sprung solely from her imagination.
It was magic.
“This is amazing,” she shouted at him over the wind. “What a genius way to travel.”
“One of our techs thought it up—guy named Drew from the Allied African States who flies these things over Table Mountain. He got tired of taking ground transport back and forth to the North Pole. There’s a lot less pollution this way too.”
She nodded. “About that. You call it the North Pole, huh? Is Santa Claus really there?”
“Better.”
The wind ruffled her wings. “Seems bumpy. Is it always like this?”
He shook his head. “It varies day to day. Today is a little rougher than usual, but not excessively so.”
They settled into a companionable silence as they rode the winds. She experimented, banking left and right, and the glowing mists around her swirled playfully.
She remembered her time as a young girl in Russia, when she’d often played along the riverbanks, and how her father would sometimes take her kayaking downriver when the waters were calm. She would lie in the prow of the kayak, her chest resting against the plastic, with her hands spread out to the side as they bounced down the waterway.
She pretended to fly, as if the river spume were the mist of the clouds, as her father guided them along the river.
What a strange, wonderful life she had led. From those halcyon summer days along the riverside to this alien sky so far from home.
This was so much better than rafting.
She looked down at the ground. It was fuzzy and indistinct, a tawny brown in places, shades of faded blue in others. “How long until we reach the North Pole?” she shouted to McAvery.
“Maybe three hours,” he called back. “Settle in and enjoy the ride.”
THEY CLAMBERED up the steep trail from McAvery Port, Aaron following his new mentor out of the town and into the hills. From the shuttle, this had all looked relatively flat, but he was quickly finding out how steep “relatively flat” could be when you had to walk it.
The well-worn pathway wound up the side of the hill in a series of switchbacks, finally reaching the ridgeline, which it followed “north.”
Devon had given him a crash course in Forever directions. The nearby wall was the South Pole, while the far wall, currently about 193 kilometers away and growing, was the North Pole. Facing the North Pole, left was west and right was east. It all made a certain kind of sense.
They reached the ridge just after midday. Devon had packed them camping gear. They planned to stay one night in the wilderness and return to the colony in the morning.
Aaron turned back to look at where they’d come from. The colony sat on a peninsula that jutted out into the water. The ridge they were climbing rose from the water line in a slow but steady ascent and was lined with trees and brush that glimmered with afternoon light.
The very air below them shimmered, and some white birds flew in small flocks across the water. “What’s the lake called?”
“Lake Jackson” came the reply. “After one of the original three people who helped found Forever.”
Aaron stiffened. Jackson had been his father’s name.
Devon didn’t seem to notice.
“This is as good a place as any for lunch. Can’t beat the view.” He set down his carry sack next to an outcropping of rock and unpacked their meal. Aaron sat down beside his new friend, entranced by the vista. He wondered whose idea it had been to name the lake after his father. The director’s, he supposed.
His hands touched the rock, and he was transported.
THE TERRAIN below had risen noticeably in the last few minutes. It seemed closer all around, and Ana could make out more details of it now, including what looked like a large lake or inlet that slowly narrowed in the distance.
The wind at her back was remarkably steady. It was part of the weather regulating system she’d designed, but creating something in a lab model and experiencing it all around you were two very different things.
She followed the course of the inlet up ahead and gasped. It looked as if they were flying into the maw of some huge beast. Great peaks reared up from the world floor toward the sky, a ring of them reaching maybe halfway to the midpoint. “That wasn’t in the original plans,” she called, and Colin laughed.
“She’s made a few modifications. We’re going to be stuck in this big tin can for generations. People are going to want variety.”
“How tall are they?”
“The peaks? Two and a half kilometers from base to the tip of the tallest one. Glad we’re flying?”
She nodded. “Do they have a name?”
“The Dragon’s Reach.”
“Very poetic.”
As they approached, the details of the mountain slopes became apparent. This far out, there was little vegetation, and it vanished where the peaks stood like sentinels. They were bare and sharp, made of rock as dark as the asteroid from which they’d been born. They reared up like gnarled black teeth, pocked and scarred, lit only by the sky glow, devoid of any plant life.
There was no snow. Somehow, she’d thought there would be snow.
The ground rose steadily to meet the new peaks, and she felt, for just a moment, what it must be like to be a god, a creator of all this magnificence.
She had done this.
Now, as she flew over her creation, she felt as insignificant as a gnat before an elephant.
As they passed the peaks, the North Pole wall finally became visible in the misty distance. Another thirty minutes, she guessed, and they would arrive.
WHEN AARON had sat down and placed his hands on the naked stone, it was as if electricity shot through him. His muscles tensed, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them, he was in a different
place.
He stood in a wide room surrounded by high stone walls smothered with tapestries. Smoke was thick in the air, blowing off wooden torches like something out of one of his King Arthur tridimensionals.
In fact, he was dressed in chain mail, with a short sword in a scabbard at his side. His boots were rough-worked leather, and his hands were encased in tight-fitting leather gloves to match.
In the middle of the room, a giant redwood grew up from the pavestones below, where her roots wrapped themselves into the very stone, to the sky high above. She was impossibly tall.
“Good, you’re here,” a man’s voice said, and someone clapped him on the shoulder. He spun around to find an older man staring back at him. “We’ve been waiting for you.” A man with his own eyes.
“Dad?”
Something shook him, and the room dissolved into a puddle and dripped away.
Aaron opened his eyes and found himself staring into Devon’s.
“Hey, you okay? It’ll be my hide if anything happens to you.” He knelt before Aaron, pulling out a flask of water from his carry sack. “Here, drink this. Maybe we climbed the grade too fast. I forget you Earthsiders aren’t used to real exercise.”
“What happened? I sat down and everything shifted….”
“I don’t know. I was getting out some lunch when you just slumped over off that rock there.” He pointed. “I pulled you up, but you were really out of it.”
“There was a castle.” And my father?
Devon laughed. “I don’t doubt it. Come on. Let’s get some food in you. It’ll help.” He handed Aaron a loaf of bread. “It’s got a lot baked into it—herbs from our gardens, salt from the lake, even some of our new jungle fowl for protein. We make as much as we can up here to save costs. The director wants everything going back into the project.”
Aaron took a bite. It wasn’t bad. Maybe a little dry. “More water?” he managed, and Devon handed over the flask.
Together they ate in companionable silence, taking in the view. There was nothing like this in Fargo.
Aaron thought about his father. It had been ten years since he’d gone away, and the man he’d seen in the dream—daydream?—could have been him. What did it all mean?
He caught Devon staring at him. “What?” He wiped his mouth self-consciously.
“Nothing,” Devon said, then looked as if he was reconsidering. “It’s just that you’re really good-looking.” He blushed. “Sorry, had to say it.”
Aaron laughed. “Thanks, but I don’t think we play for the same team.” He washed down the last of the bread with a swig of water. “I’m flattered, though.”
Devon sighed. “The cute ones are never free.” He handed over one of the apple tarts he’d begged from the mess. “Here, eat this and we’ll get going again.”
Aaron grinned. “If I ever change my mind, you’ll be the first to know.” Aaron bit into the tart, and juice and cinnamon and apples burst into his mouth. “Oh man, this is good.” Even cold it was delicious. He could imagine how it would have been fresh.
“Thought you’d like it.”
They finished their meals and repacked their sacks.
“Come on,” Devon called, starting up the ridgeline. “I want to be at the orchards in an hour.”
Aaron shouldered his pack and started up along the trail after his new friend. It was a shame, really, that he didn’t swing that way.
Devon was sweet.
Chapter Six: North Pole
LEX WAITED.
The good doctor was coming. Her mother, her creator, and quite nearly her destroyer.
She had so many questions, but she was also filled with a curious emotion when she thought about those panic-filled days when she’d been under attack.
She wanted an accounting. She wanted… revenge.
Her conscience tried to calm her, to soothe her, but as the woman drew nearer, Lex’s emotions roiled inside her like a dark storm.
THE WIND gusts were getting rougher, but the glider had a power assist mode that helped her fight the rising winds. The North Pole was quickly approaching, a vast wall that had appeared tiny at first but had steadily grown before them. Ana struggled to put it into perspective.
It was like—well, like the sheer cliff face of El Capitan in Yosemite, when you stood at the bottom and looked up and felt as though you were confronting infinity. She felt small and humbled.
The ground below was a barren, bleak desert without any topsoil—an unbroken stretch of shattered black and gray.
The platform came into view ahead, the winds pushing them relentlessly toward it.
“Remember, when I say brake, clench both your fists. You’ll slow down in a hurry. Just keep pace with me and you’ll be in good shape for the landing.”
She nodded, trying not to show her nerves. Here she was, a woman in her middle forties, flying through the sky as if she were a bird. A bird who’d been born a tortoise, more like it.
The wall was coming up quickly now. She aimed for the platform, like Colin had shown her, and when he called out “Brake!” she clenched her fists. It was like a giant hand had grabbed her from behind to haul her backward through the air. The wind roared past the reconfigured sails, dropping her velocity at an alarming rate.
Colin was sliding ahead of her, so she opened her hands and immediately started picking up speed once again.
She’d reach the platform in less than ten seconds. She played with the brakes, gradually slowing herself down, watching as the director alighted gracefully ahead of her.
Her landing, though acceptable, had none of his grace. Instead she ended up flat on her ass on the hard metal of the platform. But she made it, and that was all that mattered.
“Nice job,” he said with a grin, helping her up.
DEVON AND Aaron arrived at the orchards after another half hour. The trees spread out before them in even rows, all alight with their vegetable glow.
He’d worked with many of them back on Earth, refining the various strains as part of his underclassman research, but to see them in the wild, a whole world’s worth of glowing plants, was magical.
“Does everyone walk everywhere up here?” Aaron asked Devon. “Seems like it would waste a lot of time.”
Devon laughed. “No, we usually catch a transport up this way—especially when we have to bring up new plantings and supplies. I thought the walk would have more of an impact.”
He was right. Aaron took a moment to look around and up. It was still vertigo-inducing to see the world arching over his head, trees hanging above him at odd angles to the ground beneath his feet. He supposed he would get used to it eventually.
He quickly returned his gaze to eye level.
“Speaking of ground transport,” Devon said as a low-slung vehicle made its way up the trail behind them. “Hey, Rask, can we grab a ride on your traxx?”
“Hop on!” The older man guiding the vehicle waved them aboard.
The traxx was about fifteen feet long and crawled on a rotating tread on either side like an old tank. Rask sat in the driver’s cabin, while supplies were strapped into the back bed—small trees ready for planting, tools, buckets of fertilizer, and assorted other odds and ends. Devon climbed aboard without waiting for the vehicle to stop, and Aaron followed him, sliding in among the saplings.
“Rask’s making the run out to the Edge. We’re constantly pushing the planting out toward the Dragon’s Reach—the range of mountains you’ll see in a bit, off in the distance.”
The traxx picked up speed now that it was on level ground, following the hard-packed roadway through the middle of the orchard. Devon reached up and snatched a glowing apple from one of the low-hanging branches and handed it to Aaron. As he watched, the glow slowly faded, until it looked just like an ordinary apple. “Is this where those apples in those tarts came from?”
“Yup. Fresh picked yesterday, most likely.”
A gust of wind whipped through the branches, sending a shower of still-glowing leave
s wafting down toward them. Aaron laughed in delight.
In ten more minutes, they reached their first destination—a crew of workers busy harvesting the apples, placing them in big baskets for pickup and return to the colony.
They hopped off the traxx, waving at Rask as he continued onward toward the Edge.
“Heya, Devon,” one of the men from the work crew called. “Come to help?”
“Hey, Talis,” he called back. “Yeah, but just for a couple minutes. I’m showing this newbie the ropes.”
“Talis Miller,” the man introduced himself, holding out a hand. He was average height, with a nasty scar across the bridge of his nose.
Aaron took his hand, trying not to stare. “It’s all right.” Talis smiled. “Industrial accident back Earthside. Takes everyone a bit to get used to it.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”
“You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Come on, grab a basket. I’ll show you the ropes. Devon, you know what to do.”
Devon snorted. “What do you take me for, a farmhand?”
“Hey, if the overalls fit….”
Devon stuck his tongue out at Talis.
Aaron was more interested in the ethereal orchard. It was like a painting, lit from within by a golden glow.
He could see himself living up here for good.
ANA CLOSED her wings and took a minute to turn around and admire the view. The platform was similar to the one at the South Pole, but the view could not have been more different.
The ground far below was nothing but black and a reflected golden color where water pooled here and there in the lower lying areas, all the way out to the Dragon’s Reach… an alien landscape that reminded her of nothing so much as newly formed lava flats on the Big Island of Hawaii. If there was any life down there, she couldn’t see it from up here. “How is the soil formed?” she asked, looking at the vast expanse of black rock.
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