I WATCH HELPLESSLY AS SHE discards more than half my belongings. The organization that recruited me supplied my breather, and a few other necessities, but I spent more than I’d care to admit on the rest of it, this equipment she’s tossing aside like it’s worthless. I had to buy it all new, because I couldn’t access most of my belongings at home.
She’s obsessed with the idea that everything must serve more than one function—she brandishes her own tool, like one of those old Swiss Army knives people used to carry, as if it’s worth more than my wave-stove. I want to tell her that you can order one exactly like it for twenty quid online, but when she mentions having made a number of alterations to it herself, and demonstrates its spring-loaded settings, I have to admit it’s clever.
And this is why I need her. Without the relative luxury of a whole expedition to back me, I don’t know how I’m going to make it to the temple intact when I know next to nothing about this underworld that she’s a part of, this network of raiders and thieves. Back home, these are the kinds of people who start looting stores and hospitals the second a city’s people are forced to abandon it. It’s worst in the U.S., according to the news—they’re seeing the most drastic climate changes, with deserts sweeping across the continent and sandstorms violent enough to claim lives. Families get packed up and carted elsewhere once the city shuts down, and their sofas aren’t even cold before these scavenger gangs move in and start divvying up what’s left. The thought of working with one of them makes me sick to my stomach, but at least she’s only one, and not a whole gang, and at least she’s…not really what I expected, I suppose.
She seems to particularly relish in lecturing me on the ways my gear is redundant—any item of mine that can’t justify its existence in half a dozen ways is stashed in a shallow cave, there to stay until the end of time, I suppose. Or until the next spacefaring civilization comes through, following the same trail we did.
Still, once we start walking, I’m grateful for the lighter load. We have several hours of daylight left, and we ought to dispose of quite some distance before we camp for the night. The two suns bear down overhead, and without trees for shade, it’s hot. It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that I’m genuinely walking on another planet, and I occasionally push at the idea, worrying at it like a loose tooth, trying to provoke a response.
We thought we were done with our chance at this when the Alpha Centauri colony mission failed, calling out to Earth for help that they knew couldn’t come, then vanishing forever into the blackness of space. But here I am, Jules Thomas Addison, literally going where no one has gone before.
And I’m lying to the one ally I have.
It’s not bragging or exaggeration to say that right now, I’m the most important person on this planet. I have to reach that temple. Not just for me, not just for my father, but for all of us, every person on Earth. Including Amelia. That’s justification enough for the lie. And odds are there will be something of value there she can take, so it probably isn’t even a lie.
It’s justification enough for teaming up with a scavver—and I’ve promised myself that I will find her a way to earn her money, however distasteful looting is. I was prepared to do it to a small degree for Global Energy to earn my ride here—helping her is no different.
But it’s hard to reconcile this girl with what she’s here to do. It’s easier to hate vultures and carrion scavengers when they’re not standing in front of you with freckles and dye-streaked hair and a razor-sharp wit. But then again, I’d like to think I’m a fundamentally honest person, and I’m in the middle of lying to her about what we’ll find when we reach our destination.
She’s made it clear she’s here to make money, and I need to remember she’d walk away from me in a heartbeat if she thought there was a better profit in it. Which means that I need to be prepared to tell her whatever will keep her by my side.
If we’re not moving at the speed I’d hoped for in a larger group, equipped with vehicles, it’s better than nothing. We should be at the temple I’m after in under a week, traveling on foot. We’re heading for a long, winding canyon, a landmark I memorized from the endless swaths of satellite images that used to litter my father’s study back at Oxford. If we’re lucky, it should provide us with a highway that will take us most of the way to our destination. It has a stream running the better part of its length, which will take care of our water needs as well.
The only problem is that for a while, at least, it’s the same path all the other groups will be following. The canyon branches in a number of places, and eventually we’ll be taking a different branch, but until we do, we’ve got to keep our profile as low and quiet as we can to avoid attracting attention from scavengers who’d be just as happy to raid our packs as the temples themselves, and perhaps remove a little competition at the same time.
My father would be horrified.
Dr. Elliott Addison used to be the last word on the Undying. There was no one more dedicated to unraveling their secrets, no one more passionate about learning from them. But the International Alliance, haunted by their decades-old promise to find a solution to Earth’s decline, accused him of wasting time.
And the harder they pushed, the more my father began to resist. When the Explorer IV crew entered that main temple—without my father’s guidance—he raged for a week. And that was when he began fighting, trying to make them understand, making passionate pleas to the IA authorities and the public alike that some of mankind’s most important, practical discoveries came out of pure research. That the time spent to truly explore Gaia would be anything but wasted. That more power cells would certainly help now—but only until we outgrew those like we outgrew our oil reserves.
He desperately believed that the key to our salvation lay in understanding the Undying—in understanding why they destroyed themselves, after reaching such heights in their civilization. Their warnings, my father said, were to stop us doing exactly what the International Alliance would have us do: rush in, take as much profitable and useful technology as we could carry, and start shoving it anywhere it’d fit in Earth’s infrastructure.
He wanted us to take our time, to focus on the science, to let ourselves be drawn on by exploration, curiosity, and discovery instead of driven by greed. He was ridiculed for his insistence that we needed to open our minds, to explore this place with the thoughtfulness and reverence—and caution—it deserved, not run so hungrily for the one benefit we could see that we missed others…or missed dangers.
They used to come to our flat in Oxford, the suits from the International Alliance, and I’d put my ear to the door of his office while they argued with my father for hours. My father wanted to learn about Gaia and the Undying as badly as they did—wanted to help those who needed it as badly as they did—and he tried longer than most scientists would have to find alternate explanations for the dangers and inconsistencies he was finding in the broadcast. First they came to debate him—then to argue with him—then to plead with him to change his position. Pleading turned to cajoling turned to peer exile turned to threats, but he never seemed to falter.
I didn’t realize he’d stopped trying to convince the world until after he snapped on live television. I’m not sure he even knew he was going to commit treason that night until it was happening. But halfway through the program, the interviewer abandoned the usual, courteous dance and pushed and baited him, started accusing him of sacrificing the welfare of others—people like Mia, who desperately need the IA to solve Earth’s energy problems—merely to satisfy his own academic curiosity.
And I saw the moment he broke. A few security clearance codes blurted in frustration and anger—he already knew at that point they were going to drag him away, I’m sure of it—and in seconds hundreds of log-ins around the world had downloaded every document the IA had kept classified about Gaia, the temples, and the Undying tech.
He meant to give the world transparency. Instead he handed them the keys to pillaging this planet.
I remember the moment he met my eyes, as they held me back and dragged him out of the studio after shutting down his interview. I haven’t met his eyes since, except through a vidscreen once a week.
He’s sacrificed everything, from his reputation to his happiness to his future, to my future, for his cause. And I have, too, because I believe he’s right. I trust him.
My father is certain that we need to enter Gaia slowly, carefully, recognizing that the true wealth of these ruins lies in scientific study and understanding. And yet here we all are, charging on in like shoppers at a holiday sale looking for the shiniest baubles to bring home.
Nobody is supposed to be on the surface at present—the space station in orbit is tasked with enforcing that ban, and conducting satellite surveillance to continue building the maps and surveys the IA’s expedition will use when trying to solve the riddle of the Undying temples. Of course, as I discovered through my contact at Global Energy, for the right price, the staff on the station won’t just look the other way, they’ll even get you down to the surface. Thanks to what my father said on a live broadcast, it’s not just the International Alliance that knows how to reach Gaia now.
It must have been quite an investment for Amelia to get down here on her own. I’m about to ask her whether she raised the money herself, or has backers, when she stops at the crest of a hill, dropping to a crouch with a low curse. I thump down beside her, easing forward to prop up on my elbows and peer over the ridge to see what stopped her in her tracks.
The creek we were aiming for is a silvery line stretching along the red valley, looking strangely barren without plants taking advantage of the water. My eyes are used to Earth in ways I didn’t even realize until I landed here. But it’s not the lack of plant life that makes Mia groan at my side.
Camped all along one side of the river is a sizable expedition that’s paused for their evening meal, crates and grav-lifters visible, and a row of skimmer bikes. For a brief moment I think maybe it’s the expedition I was meant to join, and my heart lifts—but then I recognize the woman from our little encounter by the spring. Raiders. I count at least four people moving back and forth between their possessions. They’ll have visibility for the length of the canyon. Perfututi. There goes our plan.
“So,” I say, gazing down at them. “Head on down and introduce ourselves, yes?”
Amelia lets out a snort, then taps her goggles to activate their zoom setting. “Wait here, Oxford, okay? I got this.” Apparently that’s all the warning I’m getting before she starts to clamber down into the canyon without further consultation. I grab hold of her pack, and after a couple of tugs she realizes she’s not going anywhere until I let go. “What?”
“Well, I suppose most pressingly, where are you going?” I venture, still holding on.
She eyeballs me, disapproving of this new streak of curiosity. “I’m going to steal one of those bikes,” she says, in the same nonchalant tone with which she might say, I’m going to go for a nice stroll.
I tighten my grip as I turn that one over in my mind. How am I meant to work with this kind of impulsiveness? I was kidding when I said it, but was she really just going to saunter on down there and hope it all unfolded according to plan? Assuming she even has a plan.
When she tugs against my grip, I return to the question of the bike. On one hand, it would be enormously risky to try to steal one. On the other, a skimmer bike could cut our travel from a whole week to less than a day. And, a tiny voice says in my mind, if they catch her, she’s one of them anyway, isn’t she? What’s the worst that could happen to her?
The fact that I just asked myself that makes me a little bit sick, but I have to remember that what I’m here to do is more important than me, than her, or than any individual. And I have to remember that she’s a scavver, and I have no way of knowing if she’s even interested in returning loyalty, let alone capable of it.
The skimmer would get us there in less than a day.
Also, if there’s one thing I’ve worked out about Amelia already, it’s that there’s very little point arguing with her once she’s made up her mind. “Then let me help,” I say, instead. “Your safety is my safety, now.”
She eyeballs me again, and I wait out her disapproval until she adjusts her goggles with a muttered opinion that she chooses to keep under her breath. “Stay close. If they spot us, make for the ridge to the east. It’s too rocky for skimmer bikes, so at least it’ll be a footrace.”
“Yes ma’am,” I say, just to provoke that little line between her eyes that shows up when she glares at me. I need to stop noticing that.
Though we’ve got to move slowly to avoid triggering any major rockslides down the canyon walls, the breeze running through the valley masks our smaller movements. So really, it’s just a case of patience. Sweat runs into the small cuts on my hands and face, and my back aches steadily—but Amelia moves without complaint, and I’m not going to give her another reason to think twice about agreeing to partner up. This skimmer bike idea alone has proved that I was right to recruit her help—I’d have carefully avoided this group, and spent another week making my way to the temple.
Presumably because there are only a few dozen people on the planet, the camp doesn’t have any guards posted. I see a lean man with dark hair sprawled on the grass, eating, talking to the woman Mia decked with her helmet by the spring where we met. That means our other friend must be somewhere nearby too, with or without his trousers.
It’s not a huge coincidence that it’s the same group, given how difficult it is just to get to Gaia’s surface, but my stomach tightens.
Until we peel away from the main route along the canyon, heading to my smaller target, we’re going to be up close and personal with these other groups—groups that clearly have no qualms about shooting the competition. I think about the scavenger’s gun tucked into my bag, one of the few pieces of equipment Amelia put into the “keep” pile without discussion. Even if I’d thought to make it accessible before crawling into danger, though, I’m not sure I could really point it at someone with the intent to pull the trigger.
I’m rather regretting my impulsive order to that big guy to leave his trousers behind. Perhaps under other circumstances they might have held off on shooting, afraid of ruining their skimmer—but I have a feeling he won’t hesitate to aim straight at us. A couple of the other raiders are filling their canteens at the spring, and one’s standing some distance away, face lit by the screen of his phone or tablet as he hunches over it.
Most important for us, nobody’s paying attention to the row of skimmers.
The lack of order also means there’s no discernible pattern to their movements, though we watch for a while as Amelia taps her finger softly against a pebble. She’s counting the seconds, I realize, looking for the best gap. She’s not holding her stolen gun either, but I’m betting hers is in a pocket somewhere she can reach it if she has to. I ease my knife out of my own pocket—happily, it has several extra tools built into the handle, so I was permitted to keep it. All hell’s going to break loose when we make off with one of their bikes, but I think I know how to slow down their pursuit.
I’m jolted from my planning when Amelia tilts her head at me and, crouching low, heads toward the bikes.
My height means I’m a liability, but I can at least keep up, even if I can’t crouch as low. Amelia drops to one knee to work on the ignition of her chosen skimmer, and I drop down beside her, crawling along the row to the farthest bike. Time to see if all those hours of putting up with my cousin Neal’s obsession with his bike were worth it—time to see if I can remember how to find the power cables. I check the casing with one finger to make sure it’s not still hot, then reach up inside to grope around blindly, sending up a silent prayer of thanks as my fingers close over the nest of cords. Heart thumping, hands sweating, I yank the knife through them, severing the connections, then crawl down to the next one.
A shower of sand hits the back of my neck as I reach the third, and my heart surges up into my throat. I jerk around, to find Amelia silently shooting me a what-the-hell look. But there’s no way to explain what I’m doing without speaking, so I immobilize the final bike and start crawling back to her side. Once I’m close enough, I drop my head to whisper into her ear, “Nobody’s going to chase us now.”
She’s silent for an instant, then a huff of air hints at the laughter neither of us can risk. I feel myself wanting to laugh, too—some combination of adrenaline and terror and utterly mad abandon. My mind is shrieking that this isn’t me, that I belong back at Oxford, that this girl and her insane ideas are going to get me killed, that I’m no daredevil and my best bet would be to stay put and call back up to the station when it’s back overhead.
And yet I feel myself wanting to laugh. Because there’s some part of this that’s…fun.
It turns out she’s using an ancient paperclip to short out the thumbprint scanner, and with a satisfying hiss, it gives up the ghost. She winks, then rises to her feet to swing one leg over the bike. She shifts her pack around to her front to make room for me to slide on behind her. I’m momentarily stuck on where to put my hands—wrapping them around her waist seems overly familiar—when a voice rings out behind us and steps approach.
“Rasa said to leave the skimmers there.” The owner of the voice has clearly mistaken us for members of his gang, and every nerve in my body lights up as adrenaline goes crashing through me. Oh, perfututi, we’re screwed, where did he come from? “She wants to make sure they’re sheltered if the wind—” And then the voice rises abruptly to a shout. “Hey, who—”
I end my debate and throw my arms around Amelia, and she jams her thumb into the ignition. The bike hums to life, lifting up off the sand to about knee height, and as she turns her head to look back at the bike’s old owner, her smile’s pure mischief. “Thanks for the ride!”
Then we’re accelerating away, gathering speed rapidly as she weaves her way through the boulders, making for level ground. I’ve only been on the back of Neal’s bike a couple of times, but I know enough to lean when it turns, and as the wind rushes past us, I’m resisting the urge to tip my head back and shout our victory.
Then the rocks to our right explode into flying bits of gravel that strike my back like shrapnel. I twist my head to see the scavengers lining the edge of their camp, aiming their weapons after us. Explosive ammunition. Amelia’s curse is whipped away by the wind, and she accelerates so fast that she risks a spectacular crash as bullets fly past us.
And abruptly, the world snaps into focus.
What the hell am I doing?
This isn’t a game.
This is my life, and if one of those things so much as grazes us, I won’t live long enough to feel it. I’ll be dead on an alien planet, and nobody at home will ever know what happened to me. My heart surges up through my throat, and every movement, every sound, is turned up high. My whole body is pins and needles, twitching in anticipation of a bullet right between my shoulder blades.
This isn’t a game, and I’m way, way out of my depth. I shouldn’t be here.
The skimmer tips at a crazy angle with no warning, and I tighten my arms around Amelia while desperately trying to make sense of the world as it flies past. We’re careening down the side of a canyon, and for three terrifying heartbeats it seems as though there’s no way we can stop—we’re going to cartwheel end over end, to lie broken at the bottom until they come for us.
Then the bike levels out, and Amelia’s thumping on my forearm with one fist to get me to loosen my grip—when I remember how to make my arms work and do so, she takes a long, shuddering breath. We’re racing along the bottom of the canyon, taking the twists and turns like we have nothing to lose, and though I crane my neck to look behind us, I have no way of knowing if they’re following.
Then the canyon fork looms up as we take another curve, and somehow through my streaming eyes and lurching stomach I realize how much ground we’ve covered. “Take the left fork!” I scream to be heard over the roar of the wind and the engine.
“What?” Mia’s voice is half torn away by the wind. “But the temples—”
“Trust me!” I give her a squeeze, the only way I have to emphasize my words.
She hesitates a moment longer, then says something in reply that I’m glad I can’t decipher over the wind. She throws her weight to the left and the bike goes lurching down the narrower canyon path, away from the soon-to-be-well-traveled path to the central temple.
Some time later, she abruptly skids over to the side and cuts the engine, the sound echoing off the canyon walls, then dying away. The skimmer thuds down onto the ground, the jolt traveling all the way up my spine. We both hold perfectly still, her thumb hovering over the ignition, straining our ears for the sound of pursuit. There’s nothing but silence. The walls of the canyon stretch up above us, lips tilting in to obscure most of the afternoon sky, and it seems we’re hidden.
“Are we dead?” I whisper, breath still coming in short, sharp gasps, my body still a bundle of nerves.
“Don’t think so,” she whispers back. “They tried pretty hard, though. You’re sure this is the way?”
“Positive,” I reply, trying to make myself sound certain. Because I am certain I’m going the right way—just not so certain that it’s the way she’d choose, if she had all the facts.
“Then let’s get a little more distance.” She starts up the skimmer again, taking the corners with only a little more caution as we race away down the canyon. My insides are churning, and I’m pretty sure my stomach’s trying to climb up my throat to join my heart there, and the things I’m repeating to myself like a litany aren’t making much difference at all.
They’re not following us, I tell myself. We made it. We’ll get to the temple faster. This was a good idea. I’m clenching and unclenching my fists, as if by sheer physical force I can make these things true despite the one thought that keeps ringing around and around in my head.
I’m not just out of my depth, I’m realizing I don’t even know how to swim.
I can’t imagine my father’s face, if they even bothered to tell him about my death. They might think it would compromise their chance of getting him to start cooperating again. I can’t imagine Neal’s, or my mother’s—though there’s a lot I can’t imagine about her, lately.
I shove all of it out of my mind. We’re closer to the temple than we were before. Closer to its spiral shape and stone curves, and the answers I hope to find there.
Finally Amelia pulls over, parking the skimmer behind a boulder, and turning it off once more. It crunches down to the ground, and we both climb off. My hands are shaking. I clear my throat before I speak, hoping at least my voice will be level. “That was good driving.”
“It’s easy here,” she replies, shrugging away the compliment. “I’m used to much tighter quarters. Skid on some loose gravel here, you’re in trouble. Crash into a skyscraper on Earth, and you’re done. Let’s take a few minutes, stretch, use our breathers, then keep moving. Even if they repair their bikes, they’ve got no way of finding us now, and we’ll hear them coming if they get close.”
I try for normal conversation, stretching my back, willing my arms and legs to start working properly as my system tries to process the shock of what’s happened. “Where did you learn to ride like that?”
“Chicago.” She glances at me, sees that isn’t answer enough, and shakes her head. “You wouldn’t want to know.”
And of course, immediately, I do. It’s a distraction, and I need to do more than stretch my arms and legs to get myself back to rights. “Why not?” I unhook my breather from my belt and take a long drag of oxygen-rich air from its attached tank. The oxygen in the tank goes a long way, just a little added to the air I’m drawing in naturally, but that extra percent or two makes a real difference.
“Because it’ll give you all the more reason to think I’m a terrible person,” she replies, not sounding particularly guilty about it.
“I’ve committed just as much crime today as you have,” I point out.
“True,” she allows. “But look on the bright side. Grand theft skimmer bike isn’t as bad as breaking International Alliance planetary embargoes. You’re clearly on the path back toward the light.”
“You’re right, I’m de-escalating. I’ll be reformed in no time.
You’re a good influence.”
She laughs for that, shaking her head. “You’re unexpected, Oxford.”
“I’m reaching for the last vestiges of composure,” I admit. “Please tell me that terrified you half as much as it terrified me.”
“It did.” She eases off her pack and leans back against the canyon wall, soaking up the heat from the sun-warmed rock, folding her arms around her mid-section to hug herself. “The reason I’ve lived so long is that I avoid people like that. I thought they were going to hit us.”
“I’m glad we stole that guy’s trousers this morning,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I need a new pair.”
That startles a proper laugh out of her, and the noise thaws something inside me a little. We could have been shot. But we weren’t. “If you won’t tell me how you learned to drive, tell me something else about yourself,” I try, just to see if I can keep her talking. Let my nerves settle. And keep her from asking any questions about me, because I’m not sure my poker face is any good right now.
She considers the question for a minute or so before she replies. “When I was little,” she says eventually, “I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up.” Which isn’t quite the same thing as telling me something about herself now, but—actually, I take that back. She’s clearly not an astronomer, so in a way, I do know something about her. How things turned out for her. I want to ask what happened to get in the way of that dream, but I bury the question for the present.
“When I was small, I wanted to be an airplane.” The embarrassment is worth it, for her quick snort of laughter, even if it’s probably half fueled by adrenaline from our heist and ensuing escape. “There was logic behind it,” I protest. “I wanted to fly, but birds seemed very fragile. My father tried to explain it wasn’t feasible, but I kept pointing out every new cybernetic upgrade that came along. I was completely confident they’d have the plane question sorted by the time I grew up, which would of course be far, far into the future. My father said I might see some drawbacks to being a plane by adulthood, though, and turns out he was right.”
“I don’t know.” She’s still grinning, and the sight of it warms my core a little more, almost banishing the pang I feel at the mention of my father. Almost banishing the fear that’s still pulsing through me. “Being an airplane sounds pretty good to me. For a start, you’d have a way to get off the ground, instead of being stuck here. Better the pilot—or the shuttle, I guess—than the cargo.”
The image of the portal between Earth and Gaia comes back to me for a moment. My backer’s representative, Charlotte, somehow got me formal International Alliance identification—albeit in the name of Francois LaRoux—and I posed as a junior technician being posted to the orbital station around Gaia. I pretended to speak nothing but French, which helped avoid most conversation during transit. “The view on the way here was pretty spectacular,” I admit. “The portal itself, the way it shimmered, you know? Even if the jump through it was disconcertingly like being…stretched.”
“No,” she replies, grimacing. “I don’t know. I spent my trip stuffed in a packing crate.” Her tone does not invite more conversation on the subject of our trip here, and I move along quickly.
“Well, I haven’t entirely ruled the plane option out,” I say. “If this life of crime continues, and I become some sort of evil mastermind, I’ll certainly have the funds. I’ll take you for a ride.” And then, almost as much to convince myself as to comfort her: “I don’t think you’re a terrible person, Mia.”
“You think what I do is terrible,” she replies, looking away finally to locate her own breather mask. “Same thing, really, for you.”
And that shuts me up. I don’t know how to argue with what’s essentially true. Amelia and the others here on Gaia are destroying the only chance we have at unlocking the secrets of the Undying. It’s unfathomable to me, this willingness to disregard everything we could learn—and to take such unthinkable risks with humanity’s safety—just for the sake of quick cash. But I can’t say any of that out loud, not and keep her here with me, so I fall silent.
We’d always thought we were alone in the universe—or that any other life was so unimaginably far away that we might as well be. The quickening decline of our planet, the worldwide realization that we were doomed, was what sparked the formation of the International Alliance. Created to realize the idea of building a ship capable of traveling to the next solar system and the planet astronomers had dubbed Centaurus so that humanity might endure, the IA represented the power of ideas, faith in the future, the infinite vision and reach of our species. It represented hope.
It was such a thing to have done—the whole of humanity pulling together, pooling resources, launching our colonists, an inspired act of cooperation unimaginable before the rapidly changing climate put all our other petty grievances on hold.
But then, eight years into their journey—just over fifty years ago now—something went catastrophically wrong. Their final transmission was a plea for help playing over and over, for the International Alliance to save them. But the IA couldn’t—or perhaps wouldn’t—commit the colossal resources required for a second mission, a rescue mission able to reach them beyond the edge of our solar system. That had always been the understanding—that the Centauri colonists would be on their own once they left the heliosphere for interstellar space.
We’re sorry, was Earth’s response. Godspeed.
There was a camp that thought we should’ve salvaged the Centauri mission at any cost. That we weren’t just saving lives, we were saving our last hope, a journey we had to take. But others argued we simply didn’t have the money, the resources—that we couldn’t afford to attempt rescuing three hundred souls most likely lost already by the time their distress call reached Earth, at the cost of projects that could aid hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people suffering now on Earth.
Eventually their looped distress call simply faded away.
All those lives, those resources, the unprecedented global cooperation…for nothing. The mission’s failure convinced mankind the stars didn’t hold any solutions for us, not that our technology could reach. What we had was all we’d ever have—we couldn’t simply flee the world we were destroying to find another. The International Alliance rebranded itself, turning away from the stars in order to find ways to extend the remaining resources on Earth.
Until, that is, the small handful of astronomers still searching for confirmation of the Centauri mission’s demise picked up a new signal. Until my father, the famed mathematician and linguist Elliott Addison, decoded the Undying broadcast. Until that broadcast led us to Gaia, a planet with secrets and technologies so powerful an entire species destroyed itself fighting over them.
I’m not so naïve as to think that the companies hiring people like me are trying to solve the mystery of the Undying for the good of humanity. They want the alien tech for themselves, a monopoly. After seeing what the solar cell could do in Los Angeles, most of the world thinks this tech will solve all of Earth’s energy problems. The company that manages to unlock Gaia’s secrets will make a killing.
But their vision is locked so firmly on this one earthly goal that they forget to lift their gazes. They forget to see the stars, as humanity once did, as we all used to do when we were children. When we learned about other stories and cultures for the sake of doing so, for how those revelations changed us, what they made us. Gaia is the chance to learn on a scale we’ve never imagined before, and instead we’ve become traitors and thieves.
I accepted Global Energy’s offer to lead their expedition because they could get me here. Their sleek executive, Charlotte, found me through my cousin—and best friend—Neal. He’s an engineering major, and he’s interning with them this year. He and Charlotte got to talking, and she came to understand what others didn’t—that I’m my father’s son in many ways, and knowledgeable enough about Gaia to help achieve both our ends.
So she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They could put me on Gaia’s surface, and as long as I shared my findings with them, I could choose my own course. Nobody’s pretending they’re not in this race for their own corporate interests, but Charlotte understands there are bigger questions to be answered here, and she cares about more than profit.
I still didn’t tell her which temple I was heading for, of course—Mia may think I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid enough to give away the existence and location of what my father believes will be the defining discovery on Gaia, the one that proves once and for all whether we’re saving or dooming ourselves. I intended to hit a couple of smaller temples first as misdirection, to keep them from realizing I’m not here to uncover tech. The one upside to having missed my exploration party is that I don’t have to hide my goal and its significance, and I can head straight for the spiral-shaped temple.
There, I can look for an explanation that will prove my father right, once and for all—or, though I can’t imagine it, prove him wrong.
Somehow, the fact that there was a third option never really sank in. That I might not prove the danger of the tech or uncover it, because I could die without ever making it to the temple or penetrating its defenses. Mouth dry, palms damp, with a girl symbolizing everything my father stands against, everything I stand against—I’m suddenly wondering how much my life is worth.
When I look up, Mia’s frowning, scanning the ridge with her goggles in place—from the way she adjusts a dial on the side, I’m assuming she’s got some kind of magnification lens in there.
“What is it?”
“Maybe nothing,” she replies, though there’s a tension in her voice that makes me question her nonchalance. “Thought I saw a flash up there on the rim, but it’s hard to tell with light coming from two different suns—it’s weird here, eyes play tricks on you.”
“Think someone’s following us?” My thoughts summon up the trouser-less man’s face as he glared daggers at me. I have no doubt he’s both re-armed and re-trousered by now. But would they really deviate from the path they believe holds all the riches and glory just to take revenge on a couple of teenagers?
“I don’t think they’d bother coming after us for just one bike,” Mia replies, echoing my own thoughts. “But we’d better keep moving, just in case. The farther away from the other path we get, the less likely they are to keep following us. If they’re following us at all.”
We remount the skimmer in silence after that.
My stomach is in knots, and I know it’s not just the twists and turns of the skimmer bike. I don’t like misleading her. I’ve never really experienced…is this camaraderie? I’m not sure I’d know. I’ve just never been very good at knowing what to do with people my own age. Even when we were all very small, the other children knew I wasn’t quite the same as them, and try as I might, I could never fit into their games. I asked too many questions, I think.
My cousin Neal was the nearest I came, with his quick grin and quicker wit. Popular with the ladies, even more popular with the gentlemen, Neal. He more or less harassed me into joining him on the university water polo team against my protestations, and to everyone’s surprise, I loved it. To our collective astonishment, I was good at it.
He dragged me onto the back of his bike as well, giving me the practice I’d need here on Gaia, though neither of us ever could have imagined that. He dragged me out to see and do new things over and over, trying with all his might to breathe some youth into me. When the few friends I’d managed to accumulate left after my father’s disgrace, Neal was the one who stayed. He was the one who kept me on the team. I heard him arguing with the captain when I arrived for practice the night after my father’s arrest, wondering if I’d still be welcome.
“He’s just a kid!” I can still hear the anger in my cousin’s voice—a note I’d never heard before.
“He’s not just anything,” the captain replied.
I nearly turned around and walked out again, but some stubbornness made me continue on to the change rooms. Something in me decided that if I wasn’t welcome there, then they’d have to tell me to my face.
And maybe I was just very good at polo, because nobody ever did. And so I stayed, though the early green shoots of friendship with my teammates died away.
Nothing survives for long in the desert of our disgrace.
Amelia’s the one to restart the conversation a couple of hours later, when we take another break to stretch. She pulls down her kerchief so she can snag a few lungfuls from her breather, silent long enough that I’m surprised when she breaks the quiet to speak. “How do you know you’re taking us to the right temple?”
“How much do you know about the Undying?” The basics of what we know about the ancient aliens are taught even in regular schools, I assume—except I’m not sure how much school Amelia actually attended, so I’m treading carefully.
She shifts, leaning back against a rock and eyeing me. “I know enough.”
Not helpful. I hunt for my least lecture-y tone. “The broadcast that reached us fifty years ago, the one m—Dr. Addison decoded when he was at university, didn’t just give the instructions on how to build the portal to Gaia.”
“It also talked about how they destroyed themselves,” she interrupts. “That the precious technology they’ve hidden here on Gaia is their legacy, that only worthy people can inherit it, blah blah blah. I’m not a total idiot, Jules, I didn’t come here knowing nothing.”
“Ah, but see, what most people don’t know is that there’s a code within the code.” My father was the one who discovered the second layer of encoding in the Undying’s message. “It’s classified. Originally they all thought it was just a distortion in the message, but actually, it was intentional.” And this is where I lie to her. Not about the existence of the second layer of the code—that part is true. Just about what it says. “Beneath the instructions for the portal were a set of coordinates showing which of their structures held the key to finding their precious technology.”
“There’s a what now?” Amelia’s frowning at me. “If there were more information, telling us where to look, we’d know it. The IA’s good at keeping secrets, but not that good.”
I wipe my brow, glad I thought to pull out a handkerchief from the discard pile when Amelia was throwing away half my gear. “They kept this one. And anyway, only a handful of academics know how to translate it.”
The frown’s graduated to a scowl, though it makes lying to her no easier—the scowl’s almost as appealing as her smile. But some of Amelia’s skepticism is fading away in favor of curiosity, and she leans forward. “You’re still talking about Elliott Addison, aren’t you? This is the warning he was trying to give on TV, before they cut the feed. This is what he went to jail for. You’re saying you know what he knows?”
I’m treading on dangerous ground here. I know even more than that, but I don’t want her to realize she’s talking about my father. She’s a scavver, and I won’t ever be able to entirely trust her. She certainly wouldn’t trust me, if she knew whose son I am. “I do. And before you ask, no, I’m not telling you how I know. That’s not a part of this deal.”
She closes her mouth, frowning again. But the expression shifts as she mulls my words over, and eventually she’s eyeing me with cautious interest. “So you’re telling me that you have, essentially, a secret map to all the good stuff that no one else has?”
“Not exactly how I’d put it, but…yes.” I’m lying. I’m lying. But I have no choice.
She squints at me for a long moment, a dimple in her cheek suggesting that she’s chewing at her lip. “I don’t suppose you’ve also got a map outlining the locations of all the traps and pitfalls and puzzles inside, like the ones at the big temple that pulverized half the astronauts in Explorer IV.”
“Not as such, no.”
“But you can read their writing? Understand their language?”
“As well as anyone can.” I pause. “Except for Elliott Addison, of course.”
She’s watching me, eyes narrowed, and for a long, breathless moment I’m certain she’s figured it out. I have lighter skin than my father due to my mother’s genetic contribution, but we’ve got the same hair, the same eyes, the same jaw. I’m waiting for her to ask me how I could possibly know what I know. Someone as savvy as she is wouldn’t just take the word of a near stranger on any of this—she’s going to demand answers. Any second now.
I’ve only told her a fraction of the whole story.
It’s true, about the layers of coding. There’s the first layer, telling us of the riches of the Undying, waiting to be claimed by the worthy.
And then there’s the second. The layer we thought was a distortion in the signal, a blip of no consequence, ignored for decades. It’s different from the first, shoved in there like an afterthought. It’s inelegant, messy…inconsistent, in ways that are hard to quantify. There’s a not-rightness about it that’s hard to pin down. And the message it conveys is much, much smaller than the first.
When you graph it, the mathematical equation in that second layer of code marks out a shape resembling a Fibonacci spiral, like a Nautilus shell or our own Milky Way, but subtly altered. And there’s just one word, its isolation making it all the more difficult to translate. But we think we know what it means.
Catastrophe. Apocalypse. The end of all things.
It’s this secret layer, with its scientific inconsistencies, that stopped my father in his tracks. He was already begging the IA to slow down, to try to understand what the words meant before looting Gaia like the world was clamoring for them to do. But that second layer of code changed everything, for him. Here was proof, he claimed, of what he’d been saying all along—the Undying themselves were sending us a message of danger, and if the IA couldn’t justify slowing down for the sake of discovery, surely they’d have to slow down for practical reasons, for the safety of their expeditions and Earth itself.
But the leaders of the International Alliance weighed the good of the many—already, Los Angeles has a fresh water plant powered by just one small piece of Undying tech—against the “unfounded” warnings of an academic already out of favor, and of course they decided against him.
So he defied them. Tried to warn the world. And now he’s locked away.
I only worked out what I had to do a couple of weeks ago. I was staring at the topographical maps of Gaia again, studying the now familiar lines for the thousandth time, when suddenly I blinked out of my daze, and pulled the map in closer, my breath catching in my throat.
Because there it was, at the end of a canyon, backed against a wall of cliffs: a small, otherwise unremarkable temple in the shape of a spiral. Shaped into the same Nautilus spiral as the second, secret layer of code. Only a handful of us even know about the Nautilus, and it’s barely a speck on most of the maps, which is why none of the other scavengers are likely to bother with it.
That temple is where I’ll learn what the message means. Where I’ll learn why they paired this shape with the warning they did: the end of all things. That’s where I’ll find the answers to my father’s questions.
And if I have to lie to her, so be it. She’s all I have to replace the expedition that was supposed to back me up, and my chances without her are slim at best. So I’ll make sure she has reason to want to get to the temple. Even if it means lying to her about what we’ll find there.
I expect her to read all of this on my face, to somehow know. To call me out, to walk away, chasing her loot and leaving me to survive alone.
But instead she just leans forward and shoves to her feet with a groan for sore muscles, and reaches for her pack. “Then we’d better keep moving.”
The bike chews up the ground between us and the temple, and though the canyon’s twists and turns make my stomach lurch, it provides us at least a little bit of cover in case our new friends manage to repair their bikes and pick up our trail. For the last part of our journey, though, we have to work together to heave the skimmer up the steep canyon wall. According to my maps, the temple should be just beyond the stone rim.
Once we reach the top, I see it. A huge stone structure juts out of the cliff face at the end of the valley, its walls curving ever so slightly around in the start of the Fibonacci spiral it forms from above. I’ve studied every satellite photo of this temple, imagined myself standing before the huge pillars supporting the entrance a thousand times in the last few weeks, but nothing prepared me for the reality of a structure built by an alien species.
This moment feels holy.
“Hey, Oxford!” It’s only when Amelia shoves the bike into me that I realize I’ve dropped my end, leaving her to haul it over the lip of the cliff by herself. I grab the seat, pulling it onto level ground, then turn my attention back to the temple’s façade.
“That it?” she pants, clearly needing a few minutes with her breather.
“That’s it.” I can’t contain myself—I can see the entrance chamber in my mind’s eye. If this temple is anything like the one Explorer IV’s astronauts photographed, there’ll be carvings in the anteroom, frenzied and abstract. The patterns and waves of glyphs will be etched into the stone surfaces with the kind of violent exuberance that makes me want to get to know their creators—and makes me a little afraid of them. Dropping my pack, I’m walking toward it before I’ve even decided to move.
“Jules, stop!” Amelia grabs my arm, dragging me to a halt. “It’s been there a zillion years, it’ll probably still be there in the morning. Let’s not get blown up or melted or sliced and diced tonight, okay? It’ll be dark soon. We can hole up here tonight, the temple walls will hide the light from our camp from the canyon floor.”
I grit my teeth, forcing down a noise of frustration. She’s right. Deus, I know she’s right, and this is exactly the sort of thing I need her around for. But it’s right there. I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of this. My father spent most of his life dreaming of this. A pang shoots through my heart, making my eyes water. He should be here. With an entire expedition of experts at his back, and the world holding its breath to see what he would uncover.
I’ll have to feel it for him. I breathe deep, gazing at the temple and letting the euphoria in. “There’s nowhere left on Earth,” I say, the excitement bubbling up again, overruling my frustration. “Not the highest mountain, not the remotest desert, or the deepest trenches of the ocean. Nowhere someone else hasn’t been first. But this, Mia, this is ours. Everybody else who comes here, they’ll be walking in our footsteps. We have the privilege of this first glimpse of another culture. Another species. Another world.”
I can’t help it, the excitement rising in me—she’s still holding my arm to keep me from running forward, and I grab hers in return, reeling her in so I can throw my arms around her, lifting her clean off her feet to turn in a wild circle. “Us! First!”
She gives a startled squawk as we whirl, and she swats at one of my arms, and it’s the feel of her—wiry and tense and strong—that reminds me who she is. What she is. Scavenger. I set her down, trying for nonchalance but getting only so far as awkward. She’s got a smile on her face, small and a bit baffled though it is.
“Let’s make sure our first steps inside the temple aren’t our last,” she says breathlessly, dismissively, but I can see an answering glimmer of excitement in her eyes. Some part of her gets it, that this isn’t just about scavenging—that it can’t be, no matter how badly you want money. For just an instant, she’s not one of them. She’s just a girl, standing at my side, while we linger before the doorway to an ancient alien world.
I have to clear my throat, then clear it again. “Right. You’re right. I just—I want so badly to know why they led us here. What secret they’re hiding, what really happened to them.”
Her mouth quirks. “So long as you’re not dying to know.”
I can’t hide my smile, despite her horrendous pun. And maybe a tiny bit because of it. “Just think, Mia. We could find anything in there. And tomorrow, we’ll be the first humans in the universe to set foot inside that temple.”