Bram packed the back of his rover with the supplies Maia had for him—the new drill bits and air filters and five bags of wheat flour. That he didn’t have to save room for Gael’s and Aavi’s luggage seemed like . . . not an omen, but a statement on the fact they weren’t here to stay. He couldn’t even wrap his head around the fact both of them had traveled across the galaxy with nothing more than a single change of clothes. Or that Aavi had apparently stowed away in a storage locker. Or that Gael was the sort of person who would leave his sister behind. Or that—
The click and hiss of the enviro-seal on the rear hatch cut off his thoughts, which was just as well. He didn’t have all day to stand around thinking. They had a long drive ahead of them. If he wanted to miss the sun on the overland portion, they had better get started.
Inside the rover, Gael and Aavi were already buckled in. Gael up front, Aavi in the back. At first glance, they were nothing alike, but Bram didn’t want to spend too much time looking at either one of them. Not right now. He felt . . .
Disappointed, mostly, but also duped. And stupid, because with Gael in the front passenger seat and Aavi in the back, he could be driving his family somewhere. A small corner of his heart wanted to thump with joy; the rest of his heart felt as loose and unraveled as his thoughts. Generally, he wasn’t a spontaneous person. Every aspect of his life met with deep thought before passing into action. This . . . this was close to nuts, and he didn’t have enough credits to try again, even if he could convince himself to do so.
Bram slid into the driver’s seat, activated the canopy seal, and waited for the all clear before powering up the rover.
Landing was tucked inside the largest crevasse on Alkirak. The widest terrace was given over to the shuttle port, hence the town’s name. The actual town covered two more terraces to the north with housing on the upper terrace and businesses on the lower. Most terraces narrowed to ledges at either end. The ledges between Landing’s terraces had been carved to a uniform width, providing a road between the town and the shuttle port, and a highway leading south toward the bulk of Muedini’s mining operations, which would allow Bram to complete half the journey home in the shade of the crevasse. With no sensors embedded along the route, he’d have to manually steer the rover. He didn’t mind; it gave his head something to safely encompass.
The first hour passed in silence. There was nothing to see but rock on one side and emptiness on the other. There were farms close to Landing, but they were all below and behind them. Bram almost forgot he had passengers until Gael started snoring softly next to him. Glancing over, he noted the shadows beneath Gael’s closed eyes, and mentally strangled sympathetic thoughts in their infancy.
The silence of the second hour was harder to take.
Gael roused as Bram directed the rover toward an incline that would lead up, out of the crevasse for the short run across the planet surface. Bram checked the environmental controls and did a quick survey of the atmosphere on the plateau. With dawn about an hour away, they had plenty of time to cross before the sun swung overhead, scorching everything in its path.
Blinking, Gael sat up and looked out his side window. Over his shoulder, Bram could just see Aavi pressing herself against the window in the back seat. He could tell them there wasn’t much to see yet, and that the surface would be more of the same—nothingness, from horizon to horizon. But that would require making conversation, and he wasn’t up for that yet.
The rover crested the rise and bumped out onto the planet surface. Setting the direction again, Bram powered forward, increasing his speed. Sensors would warn him of any rough terrain before he got there—and he knew this stretch of ground well enough to anticipate most of it.
A gasp floated forward from the back seat. “It’s so . . .”
“Empty,” Gael said, finishing Aavi’s thought. He turned to Bram. “Is it all like this?”
Conversation. Right. Ah . . . “Yep.”
“And all the farms really are in the cracks? The crevasses.”
“Yep.”
“I read that the farms and the mining will help build a thicker cloud layer so the sun won’t burn everything,” Aavi said.
Gael swiveled in his seat. “When did you—” Flushing, he turned back to Bram and then dropped his gaze. “I read that too. But I didn’t know the surface was like this. I thought . . .”
“What?” Bram asked.
“That we’d be able to see the sun.”
Bram nodded toward the east, where a purple glow limned the horizon. “It’s over there.”
“But we can’t stay up here after it rises, can we?”
“No.” The rover would protect them for a while, but an extended period would seriously tax the environmental system.
“Will we see it from your farm?”
Why this obsession with the sun? Zhemosen was supposedly a gorgeous planet. The city was probably depressing. Cities usually were. But the main continent was essentially a large island with beautiful beaches. Then there were the archipelagos.
“We’ll see the sun down there, just not for as long as you would on Zhemosen.”
“We never see the sun on Zhemosen,” Gael said.
Bram glanced over his shoulder to see if Aavi agreed with this preposterous statement. The girl was chewing her lip and looking out the window. Addressing Gael, he asked, “How is that possible?”
“I lived in the undercity. The sun doesn’t reach down that far. The overcity is too dense.”
Bram couldn’t even picture it. Dark corners, yes, but an entire layer of city cloaked in perpetual night? “What about the edges of the city? The beaches.”
Scoffing, Gael turned away.
Aavi answered for him. “We lived near the center of Zhemosen. It’s a long, long way from the coast. I don’t know how you’d get there without a pass to another district, and they cost a lot.”
“You can’t just walk?”
Aavi’s eyes widened. “Through the undercity?”
“It’s not safe,” Gael explained quietly. “And the districts are gated. You have to go up to cross and going up requires . . .” Brow creasing, he fiddled with the Band he wore on his left wrist. “It’s expensive.”
Bram had watched enough holo dramas to assume that there were other ways to cross districts. Secret doors, holes in fences. But he also knew these extra entrances wouldn’t be available to everyone, and use of them likely came with a cost all their own. That the lower levels of the City Without End was such a place shouldn’t surprise him—but it did.
Holy hands, a life spent beneath a city with no way in, no way out, and no sunshine?
“We can watch the sunrise one morning if you like,” Bram heard himself saying. “From the top of the crevasse. It’s safe to stay up there for a little while, so long as we have rebreathers. The air’s kinda thin. Once the temp tops sixty Celsius, we’ll have to duck down, though. Or back inside the rover.”
“Can we do it now?” Aavi leaned forward, a hand coming around to grip Bram’s seat. “Pleeease.”
Dusting hell. “I’ll have to see if I have enough masks in my kit. We’ll wait until we get close to Henderson Crevasse, okay? So we can head down after.”
“I’ve got one here,” Aavi said, holding up a polarized mask and rebreather that she’d dug out of nowhere. “Check under your seat, Gael.”
Gael bent forward as far as the restraint allowed and reached under his seat. A moment later, he pulled out a standard survival kit, which included a mask.
He looked up Bram with a devastating grin. Chest constricting, Bram turned back to the road, such as it was.
Half an hour later, the edge of Henderson Crevasse came into view. Bram slowed the rover, cruised along the lip until he found the top of the ledge that led down, and pulled to a halt. He grabbed the mask dangling next to the canopy control and tugged it over his face.
“Everyone set?”
Two masked faces nodded back.
Bram released the canopy. The rover doors opened up and out like wings, and his passengers scrambled onto the plateau. Chest squeezing again, Bram stepped out after them. He rubbed a hand over his heart, not really apologizing for the workout—more wondering when he’d last had to deal with so many conflicting emotions in such a short space of time.
No instance came to mind.
He inhaled slowly, exhaled just as slowly, and went to check his guests’ masks. Both let him fuss for a moment, answering his questions about whether they were able to draw a full breath and see properly. Like a mother hen, he guided them away from the edge of the crevasse and finally let them go to enjoy the sunrise.
An odd sense of peace grew around Bram as he stepped back. It’d been a while since he’d dallied up on the planet surface. An age since he’d watched the sun rise. His attention was usually focused downward, below the mists.
The sun rose swiftly, the glow along the horizon brightening—intensifying, really—and spreading like liquid along the visible edge of the plateau. The sky warmed from the deep purple of night to a dull red, except for a blue halo around the sun.
When he glanced back at Gael and Aavi, they both had their faces tilted upward. Aavi tapped Gael’s arm and pointed forward, describing something. Then she reached for Gael’s hand. Gael snatched it away before relenting and shifting so Aavi could attach herself to him, reminding Bram of all the odd and wordless squabbles he’d had with his own siblings. Then they both looked up again.
Though they faced away from him, he could see excitement in their postures. Long slender shadows made Gael seem taller and Aavi more delicate. They were both far too thin, as though food had been as scarce as sunlight where they’d come from. Had they not eaten during the voyage? The ticket he’d purchased for Gael had been meant to include meals. Had he had to share them with Aavi? Not unless his surprise at finding her in a locker had been feigned. Hadn’t seemed like it, though, and the inside of the locker had been littered with meal pack wrappers.
Bram shook his head. Their arrival together was a mystery, one he might never solve. But watching them appreciate a sunrise went a little way toward soothing the burn—even if that made him twice the idiot. Alkirak might not be most people’s idea of a viable colony, but it really was a beautiful planet. The changing colors of the sky overhead were proof of that. And his guests weren’t just enjoying the view. They were entranced.
The sun was almost fully over the horizon now, the blue and purple fading out behind a pulse of dark amber. The color of the sky wouldn’t change much until the sun set, though from the crevasse, the amber would appear more gray, which had taken some time to get used to. The ever-present cloud layer over the green zone was necessary, and his soybeans did well enough with their limited slice of day.
Speaking of which . . .
Bram tapped his guests on the shoulder. They both turned, the visible portion of their faces bright and happy beneath the tinted plastic of their masks. Bram nodded toward the rover and then pointed for extra emphasis. The temperature had probably risen ten degrees in the last minute.
Gael turned back toward the sun, which seemed to have doubled in size. It bobbed low in the yellow sky, a bright pulse of heat and radiation. He spread his thin arms and tilted his head back. His curls were damp, clinging to the back of his neck, and hanging over his ears. Sweat beaded his skin.
“Gael,” Bram said.
He turned at his name, expression not at all chagrined. Then he took Aavi’s hand and tugged her back to the rover. As soon as the canopy sealed, he yanked the mask off and turned a shy smile toward Bram.
“That was amazing. It’s so big! So huge. And the heat! My skin went all prickly. It was like standing in front of a radiator, but bigger.” He gave a cracked laugh. “I sound like such an idiot, but you can’t imagine. You just can’t.”
Gael glanced at Aavi, grinned, and turned back. His cheeks were a dusky rose—whether from the heat or excitement, Bram couldn’t tell. He did know that he’d never seen anyone quite this happy, and incandescent with it. Beautifully happy. His gray eyes wide, his full lips curved. Pleasure evident in every line, every pore.
Gael touched Bram’s arm, the pressure of his fingers light, almost nonexistent. “Thank you for this. It’s a gift, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
Holy hands, what was he to do with that? All he’d done was show them a sunrise. Who made such a big deal over something so mundane? But nothing about this situation was average or expected—and Bram was starting to think he should have been more prepared for that. For the unexpected.
Gael was still giving him a worshipful look.
Not sure what to say, Bram gave a stiff nod before turning his eyes frontward and powering up the rover.