by E. E. Giorgi
Athel should’ve been back by now.
Ash hops onto the windowsill and rubs his side against my arm. I lean out and take another look. I see people rushing to the riverbank, their shouts lost in the rumble of the water running downstream and the crackle of fire, but I can’t tell where the people are running to or where the flames are coming from. I pick up the kitten, storm out of my room, and run into Mom, standing just outside my bedroom.
“Something’s happening over at the river,” she announces out of breath. “I need to go help Kara with the little ones.” She tilts her head and blinks, deep shadows etched under her eyes. “Where’s Athel?”
I squeeze Ash in my arms groping for an answer, but all I can manage is, “He’s coming. You go ahead, Mom.”
She nods. “Don’t take too long.”
As soon as she steps out, I stomp to the kitchen, check that Kael’s not perched on the windowsill, and then run out into the hallway. Athel’s not on our wireless network and wherever he went, he should’ve been back by now.
People crowd the stairwells, their cries echoing up the narrow walls. I duck and squeeze between arms and prosthetic hips, making my way down the stairs and out of the Tower. Women and children gather in the clearing outside. Aroused from sleep, the little ones cling to their mothers, lost looks on their faces.
“What’s happening?” I shout, snuggling Ash to my chest.
An older woman shakes her head at me and turns away.
Caylee, a girl only a couple of years younger than me, comes running out of the Tower. “It’s the droids!” she shouts. “They’re attacking us again!”
She wrings her nightgown and stares at me with terrified eyes. At her mom’s call, she spins on her heels and joins the other women.
I thank Caylee and sprint to the riverbank. The sight I find there is disheartening. Red tongues of fire rise from the river and envelop the raised platforms and wooden cranes from which our fishing nets hang. Embers fly everywhere, fluttering in the dark like fireflies. Pools of black ashes bleed into the currents.
People wade into the river and throw buckets of water at the fire, but by the time it’s over, all that’s left of our fishing installations is black smoke and charred wood bobbing along the surface of the river.
I look over to the opposite bank, where more smoke crawls up to the sky. All I can see in the receding darkness is scattered metal over blackened sand.
“You bastard!”
I turn, taken aback by the sudden commotion. Two kids are grappling on the shore, their black silhouettes barely lit by the nascent light. Aroused by the screams, a small crowd gathers around them, trying to set them apart.
“Get your hands off me!”
“Stop it! Both of you, stop it now!”
I rush to see what’s happening, wedging myself through the pressing crowd. Akari, Lukas’s uncle, stoops down, grabs one of the kids by the shoulders, and pulls him back to his feet. My eyes go wide as I stare into my brother’s scraped and bruised face. His clothes are torn and his hair covered in sand.
“Athel?” I mutter, finding it hard to believe that my brother would start a fight at a time like this.
Yuri emerges from behind him and wipes his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “What the hell was that?” he snarls. He tries to get back at Athel, but Hennessy steps in front of him, his arms spread open.
Athel’s face is flushed. He tugs at Akari’s arms but Akari doesn’t let go of him.
“Bastard!” he yells at Yuri. “What were you thinking? The damage was already done. Do you know how many things we could’ve done with the droid you disintegrated? We lost pounds of precious chips and electronics.”
Yuri laughs, but it’s a forced laughter and nobody else seems to appreciate his lousy sense of humor. “Is that all you can think of? The stuff we could’ve done with that thing?”
“No. The other things I can think of, besides sleazebag, are: thug, liar, and traitor. In no particular order.”
Metal Jaw throws himself at my brother, but once again Hennessy holds him back. “You fool, have you drunk too much Beiji? That droid was about to attack the Tower! You think I was going to sit here and wait until he killed us all?”
“Droids can’t cross the river!” Athel retorts.
“Last time they came to the river at night, they killed one of us,” a woman shouts from the back of the crowd.
Hennessy raises a hand up in the air. “Silence!” he yells.
“The droid was lurking by the riverbank,” Yuri says, ignoring his father’s order. “It fired one of its exploding hands at the fishing nets and that’s how they caught fire.”
“I saw it too!” one of the fishermen says. “I came out early with my son to lift the nets.”
“So I shot the damn droid,” Yuri concludes.
People cheer and clap. Hennessy pats his son on the back. “Well done, son.”
Akari lets go of Athel and stares at him, a mix of disappointment and concern painted on his face. Athel opens his mouth to say something, then turns back to Metal Jaw and challenges him. “How did you get the technology to make those laser beams, huh? By stealing?”
Hennessy steps between the two of them and looks down on my brother. “Young man,” he says. “I don’t know what your problem is, but if I hear you insult my son one more time—”
“He’s a thug! He stole from us!”
A sneer surfaces on Hennessy’s thin lips. “That’s ridic—”
“He’s talking about this,” Yuri interjects. He dips a hand into his pocket, retrieves the Astraca cylinder and tosses it at Athel’s feet. I leap and pick it up.
“Your freckled-faced sister lost it in the forest,” Yuri adds, a disgusted look on his face. “You’re welcome.”
The moment I hold the cylinder in my hands I know Yuri’s done something to it. Lukas walks over and snatches it from me.
“What’s he done to it?” he snarls.
“I don’t know. It feels lighter.”
He pokes a finger through the iris aperture on the side, and this time it yields easily.
“They’ve opened it!” I say.
Lukas’s face darkens. “Yeah. And it looks like they took whatever was inside.”
“No!” I gasp. I take the cylinder back, pry the aperture open, and flip it upside down, drumming it against my hand. I push two fingers through the iris opening, groping, but all I can feel is soft velvet lining—probably what kept the key in place, preventing it from rattling.
The sun makes its appearance from behind the mountains, the new day welcomed by the reek of burnt wood. The last wooden crane lets out a final creak and then collapses into the river.
Akari claps his hands together and shouts, “Come on, people. Let’s clean up and see what can be salvaged.”
The altercation between Metal Jaw and my brother is immediately forgotten. People wade back into the water to retrieve whatever is possible—charred planks floating on the surface, net floaters, bits of torn nets. Women come from the Tower carrying axes, shovels, and ropes. Frantic messages stream along the bottom of my retina—lists of things to do, tools to bring to the shore, tasks for the lumberjacks, the masons, the builders.
One by one, men and women run to their chores. Hennessy turns, jabs a finger at my brother, and hisses, “I’ll blame your little display on shock. But I’m keeping an eye on you, young man. I’m no longer sure Tahari should’ve pardoned you.” He narrows his eyes then turns away and strides off toward the water. “Come on, Yuri. There’s plenty of work to do.”
Metal Jaw flashes a spiteful sneer at both my brother and me and then turns away, jogging back to the shore after his father.
Lukas and Wes shuffle over, offering smiles of sympathy. They probably saw the whole altercation, but I’m only now noticing their presence.
Athel wipes the sand off his face. “So,” he says, “what do you say we go see what’s left of the droid on the other side of the river?”
We look at one a
nother, shrug, and then grin.
* * *
The rope bridge connecting the two banks has burned along with the fishing structures. So we walk downstream to the river bend, where the water is shallow enough that we can wade to the opposite shore. Athel carries Wes on his back, as his blade prostheses would slip on the slimy riverbed.
Cold water bites into my skin. I plow through knowing that, as the sun rises higher in the sky, so will the temperature. By midday, the usual film of hot haziness will once again rest over our land.
On the opposite shore, a black hole marks where the droid once stood. Its entire metal structure has been reduced to shards and now lies scattered over an area about ten feet in diameter. Wes hops back onto his blades and we all shuffle around, examining the fragments.
“Gone,” Lukas says in a broken voice. “It’s all gone.”
“The bastard,” Athel mumbles.
“Athel, the droid did attack us,” I snap. “Are you saying that you would’ve just watched and done nothing?”
He straightens up and stares at me. “I saw the whole thing as it unfolded. The droid came out of nowhere and fired across the river. The nets hanging from the wooden cranes caught fire instantly. By then, they were already lost, burning away like paper. I jumped in the water with the first fishermen who’d come out early, but there was nothing we could do to save the structures. The heat was so intense that once the first wood plank exploded, the fire jumped from one platform to the next.”
“Where was Yuri?” Wes asks.
“He came out a few minutes later. By then the droid had exhausted its ammunition and was about to leave. Yuri came and zapped it with his lasers.”
I shake my head and scuff the sand. “If you had laser beams, you would’ve done the same thing,” I say.
After a few minutes my hope of finding anything useful is close to nil. Every scrap of metal, wire, or chip has been reduced to dust. There’s no point in regretting what’s been done. I’m just as angry as Athel, even more so now that Yuri has stolen from us and gotten away with it. The thought leaves me with a bitter sense of defeat.
We’ll never know what was inside the Astraca cylinder.
Lukas sighs. “Look at this. I could’ve made so many microbots with all this stuff. Half an army already.”
“We’ll get another droid,” Athel retorts. “Just wait and see. The next droid will be ours.”
“Speaking of which,” Wes says. He points a finger toward the thick aspen grove sprawling past the riverbank. “What do you think that is?”
Consecutive thuds vibrate through the ground. The aspens shake, and a few of the thinner ones creak and drop with a long whoosh. And as the last two trees drop, we all look up, frozen with fear.
A massive, eight-foot-tall sniper droid stands before us. The sun glistens off its metallic armor as it wobbles onto the shore.
Amazingly, none of us attempts to run or scream. Somehow, we all remain grounded, realizing that whatever we do, we’re doomed. A sniper droid is a fully armed tank on two legs operated by artificial intelligence. Once it aims at you, there’s not much you can do.
The one standing in front of us doesn’t aim, though. It drops onto its forearms, which also happen to be its weapons, and locks its goggles on Athel.
“I bring a message,” it says in a flat, metallic voice.
Athel doesn’t move a muscle.
“The message has been translated from Xamarii for your convenience. The message follows: You have forty-eight hours to return what belongs to us. If you don’t comply, in forty-eight hours we shall destroy you, your people, and your land.”
Xamarii is the language spoken by the Gaijins.
The droid stands up again, its movements echoed by a melody of clonks, whirs, and pneumatic hisses. It stares down at us one more time, then turns around and vanishes back into the aspen grove, trees swooshing and swaying as the robot passes through.
Back upstream, on the other side of the river, people are so busy working around the burnt structures that nobody seems to have noticed what just happened.
As soon as the thunderous steps are nothing but a soft hum in the distance, we exhale a sigh of relief.
“I almost wet my pants,” Wes says.
“What do you think it was referring to?” I ask.
“I hope it’s not the droid leg,” Lukas replies. “That’s what I used to make Scrub, my microbot.”
“You think they’d fuss this much over a droid leg?” Athel says. He balls his fists and bites on his lower lip. “The bastards. They steal from us every day. They scavenge the gorge for metals to use for their own technology. It’s our land, yet they get to keep what it has to offer. And now they accuse us of stealing?”
Wes looks down at the debris scattered at our feet. “Maybe they want their scavenger droid back.”
“That’s absurd,” Lukas says. “We barely have technology for our own people, let alone enough to make a whole new droid.”
Athel stares vacantly ahead, his eyes lost in deep thought.
I touch his arm. “Athel?”
He jumps, jerks away from me and wades back into the water. “There’s nothing to see here. We need to go back to the other side and help build the new structures.”
But then, as soon as we reach the other side of the river, my brother runs back to the Tower without offering a single word of explanation.
Chapter Ten
Athel
Day Number: 1,585
Event: The droids destroyed our fishing platforms
Number of Mayakes left: 429
Goal for today: Find out what the sniper droid was talking about.
I watch the destruction spilling down the river and cringe. The air reeks of smoke, and the water is polluted with ashes and charred wood. Tahari was right. The Gaijins are tightening their grip on us. He was right about the Mayakes being completely helpless, too. I just saw it unfold before my eyes.
I leave Wes, Lukas and Akaela behind on some lame excuse, and then run back to the stables. I’m pushing Taeh’s limits, making her ride day and night like this. And yet, after I groom and feed her, as soon as she sees me pick up the saddle, she stomps her hooves with excitement.
“We have to go back, girl,” I say, adjusting the underpad on her back.
Something was hiding under the oak the tree. Something or somebody.
Was it all a dream?
No. Someone was lying inside. And then Tahari and Aghad came and scared it away. On the bright side, I now know the chavis are hidden inside the cylinders, even though Yuri robbed us of ours.
The fact that Tahari picked me, of all people, to help him find the remaining keys, blows my mind. Yes, I know he chose me because I can see in the dark. But I’m still a minor, one who was sentenced to Wela just a few weeks ago. Mayakes don’t forget things like that.
I dress Taeh for another ride, the sweet scent of her sweat tingling my nostrils.
“We’re on a mission to find five chavis!” I tell her.
Truth is, all I want right now is go back to the forest and find the old oak again, the ravine, and the niche at the bottom of the ravine. There was something in there. It was alive. Breathing. Whatever it was, I have to see it again.
I mount Taeh, and at the click of my tongue, we gallop back toward the forest.
Past Beacon Rock, the forest gets thicker and more hostile. My memories of last night are jumbled, making it harder to find my way back. At a fork in the trail Taeh takes a left. A wall juts out from below the roots of a large fir, but I don’t recall seeing it before. I click my tongue and rein Taeh around. I examine every oak along the path and yet none of them look like the one I’m looking for.
I should’ve brought Kael with us.
But if I had, Mom and Dottie would’ve known I was away instead of helping with the reconstruction of the fishing platforms.
I stop and dismount, my steps crunching over a thick bed of leaves. A squirrel crosses my path and scuttles up a tree. The
sun filters through the foliage and blinks in my eyes.
I pat Taeh. “We might as well go looking for the chavis,” I say, even though I’ve no idea where to look or why Tahari insisted I should be the one looking for them.
The gargle of a creek emerges over the muffled sounds of the forest. Taeh pulls away from me and leaves the trail, stomping over a bed of ferns and wild vines. I wade through the thick vegetation, following her. As soon as she finds the water, she dips her head and drinks.
A flash of white glints behind a spruce. I turn and it’s gone. Cautiously, I peer around the tree. All around it, twigs and shrubs look freshly stepped on. I freeze, the familiar feeling of being observed crawling under my skin. A faint rustle makes me jump. Could be Taeh, could be the wind. The rustle comes closer, from behind.
I turn suddenly, on pure instinct, and duck. A thick tree branch flies over my head and misses me by an inch. As soon as she realizes she missed me, she tosses the branch and runs.
I run after her. It. The creature.
“Wait!”
She may know how to fling tree branches, but she’s not a fast runner. After barely a few hundred feet, she stumbles and rolls in a bed of ferns. She quickly sits up, doubles back against the trunk of a tree, and raises her hand, her fingers wrapped around a rock. She bares her teeth and hisses.
I stop and catch my breath, every neuron in my brain asking the same question: Who is she? And… what is she?
I might know the answer to the second question, but the possibility is so remote I refuse to believe it. I keep my open palms up and crouch so I look less threatening—though I’ll admit the rock clutched in her graceful fingers doesn’t look too friendly. She hisses some more, showing small white teeth between thin red lips. Her face is round and flushed, her eyes the color of the sky, and her hair so light it looks white, clumped in tiny braids that flop over her shoulders like tentacles. That’s all I saw last night, when I found her sleeping in the niche under the oak tree—the drape of white braids, almost silver in the darkness.
And she has freckles, just like my sister. Freckles all over her cheeks and nose. I smile at that and she frowns, though the rock comes down a tiny bit. For a moment I wonder where Dottie got her freckles from—no other Mayake has them. Who knows, maybe the strange girl with the white braids and I share some genes. How old is she, anyway? Sixteen, maybe eighteen? No older than that.