Shades of Earth

So that’s how long Godspeed orbited the planet under the tyrannical rule of the Eldest system: two hundred extra years. Six, maybe seven or eight Eldests? And one Elder who refused.



“What happened in those five centuries?” Dad continues, but he’s talking more to himself than to me. “What have they done to themselves? Obviously some sort of genetic modification. But their societal rules have changed over time too . . . ”



“They have been playing with genetic modifiers,” I say. Dad’s attention zeros in on me; he’s listening to me with an intensity I’ve never seen from him before. “I mean, they did something to make themselves monoethnic, obviously, but I know that the babies are injected with gen mod material before they’re born.” Dad doesn’t say anything—his rapt attention is making me a little nervous, a little babbly. “I was told that it was to prevent problems. They took out race as a source of conflict—and religion, and anything else that would make them disagree or fight.”



Dad’s look turns contemplative. “You sound like one of them,” he says finally.



“Excuse me?”



“Listen to how you said that,” he says. “‘Excuse me.’” He throws the words at me accusingly. “You have an accent now.”



“I do not!”



He looks at me full-on. “You do.”



I scowl. I don’t even know why it matters. Maybe I do sound like them. Who cares?



“What else can you tell me?” Dad stares at me. “What have you learned while you were awake?”



I learned that life is so, so fragile. I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you. I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I learned that if someone loves you, he’ll wait for you to love him back. I learned that how much you want something doesn’t determine whether you get it or not, that “no” might not be enough, that life isn’t fair, that my parents can’t save me, that maybe no one can.



“Nothing much,” I mutter.



“Come on, now.” Dad pauses, facing me. “Any detail, no matter how small, might help me to understand these shipborns.”



I don’t like the way he calls them “shipborns,” as if by being born on the ship, they’re somehow less human than the people born on Earth.



“What you really want to know,” I say, “is how to make sure we all don’t just rip each other apart, right?” The fight earlier is way too fresh in our minds. We are a powder keg; just a spark will blow us apart.



Dad nods, waiting for me to continue.



“Let us go outside,” I say in a rush, my voice already pleading. “Let everyone see the planet. Let them know what’s beyond the walls. These people—they’ve never had anything but a steel cage. If you open the door, if you let them see the world, they will love it, and they will do whatever it takes to make this mission work. They’ll do whatever it takes to build themselves a new home.”



“It’s not safe—” Dad starts, but I cut him off.



“The most dangerous thing you can do right now is keep that door locked. Open it, or they’ll tear through the walls themselves.”



Dad sends people out in groups of a hundred or so, with one armed military person for every ten people. As he organizes the groups, I shoot Elder a triumphant smile. Elder looks away, scowling.



“What’s your problem?” I ask him in a low voice as Dad starts organizing the first groups to leave.



“Nothing.” Elder doesn’t meet my eyes.



“No,” I say, so forcefully that Elder turns to look at me in surprise. “You don’t get to sulk and just not tell me what’s wrong. What’s bothering you?”



“Doesn’t it seem a bit . . . manipulative?” he asks.



“What does?”



Elder glances at the doorway, where Dad stands, giving orders to the military personnel standing at attention in front of him.



“Dad?” I ask incredulously. “You think he’s manipulating everyone?”



“It’s something Eldest would do,” Elder says, again avoiding my eyes. “Give the people something big to distract them from what’s really important.”



“And just what do you think Dad’s trying to distract everyone from? The planet? Because that’s exactly what he’s giving them. And that was my idea, not his.”



Elder doesn’t answer at first. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, although I’m not sure I believe him. He turns to face me. “I’m sorry,” he says again, this time sincere. “I don’t really think your dad’s like Eldest.”



I offer him a wan smile, but we both know where Elder’s thoughts on this have really come from. Orion. Even frozen, we can’t escape him.



Dad’s careful to make it obvious that the first people who get to go are those from the ship, despite the protests of the scientists like my mother who are itching to start researching and exploring the planet. Elder is at least grateful for this, I think, and I know most of the people from Godspeed are glad for the opportunity.



Not that they all take it. Just over half the people from the ship dare to go outside, even with the armed guard. They are filled with fear and take comfort in the walls they have known all their lives. Already the shuttle is starting to stink of body odor and refuse. Dad has Emma take the three bodies of the people who didn’t survive planet-landing away for burial, but there’s little they can do to help with the other stenches. I don’t know what Elder and Dad are going to do when it comes time to leave the shuttle permanently. Kit looks near exhausted, and her supply of yellow anti-anxiety med patches is already running out.



I notice no one wears a pale green Phydus patch.



Elder and I are in the last group to go out—along with the people from Earth, who have been waiting impatiently. The scientists crowd at the door eagerly. My mother already carries specimen jars in both hands, and the grin on her face is wide enough to make my cheeks ache. Dad stands at the door to the bridge, silently counting as we each pass through it.



I slip my hand through Elder’s as we near the bridge. He glances nervously toward Dad, whose eyes miss nothing, but I don’t let go.



“Ready?” Elder asks as we pass through the door that leads to the new world.



I’m too excited to answer. A wave of heat hits me—but it’s a warm breeze of a dying summer day, not the stifling, hard-to-breathe claustrophobic air of the shuttle.



Emma Bledsoe stands guard by the control panel, a long-range rifle at the ready as she scans the forest and the sky for more of the pterodactyl monsters—or anything else that might be hiding in the twilight. I gaze out at the view before me, taking in so much more than I did the last time I left the shuttle. Then, I was too consumed by my fear for Elder and my horror at the pterodactyl monster to notice much of anything else. Even now, I have to push down my terror of what creatures could reside in the growing darkness and force myself to see what this world has to offer. The forest surrounding the shuttle is unlike any forest I’ve ever seen before. Instead of the trees having one thick trunk with branches that rise to the sky, each of these trees has dozens of small, thin trunks all tangled up together. The trunks are no thicker than my leg, but they twist and weave in dense groves. The branches are tangled knots with frayed ends of green leaves—but the leaves are thin and broad and look almost like washcloths draped over the sides of the branches to dry.



“Amy?” Elder says, drawing me back to reality. I take a step forward.



The marks of the shuttle landing are clear: we’ve decimated a huge chunk of the land. The sandy ground directly under the shuttle is burnt black and looks like it boiled and then froze again. Smoke drifts up in lazy tendrils, and I’m glad that the ramp is long enough to get us to where the ground may be black, but at least it’s not bubbling.



When my feet hit the ground, I gasp. Earth. Real, true earth under my feet. The first thing I do is shut my eyes. I take a deep breath—I imagine filling my lungs with more than air, with dirt, with trees, with an ocean. And then I breathe out, and it’s all even bigger than before. Air. Not recycled—a fresh, clean breeze, with scents of dirt and plants and so much more.



Even though dozens of people swarm around me, many of them glancing up at the sky or cowering close to the shuttle, waiting for one of the pterodactyl-looking things to swoop down and grab them, all I’m aware of is Elder holding my hand and the entire world spread out before us.



And I know what I told my father was true: let us taste the world, and we’ll do whatever it takes to shape it into our home.



“Isn’t it amazing?” I ask Elder.



He nods silently. His eyes are cast up too, but I know he’s not searching the darkening clouds for a monster to come soaring down and attack. He’s looking for walls that aren’t there, that will never be there.



“Watch out!”



With both of us looking up at the sky, we nearly stepped on a small man crouching over the earth, a pool of white plaster at his feet.



“What are you doing?” I ask.



For answer, the man—one of the biologists from the mission—carefully lifts up the plaster, revealing a massive footprint. “Colonel Martin gave me permission to start collecting evidence of the planet’s life forms,” the scientist says.



I recognize this footprint—it’s from the dinosaur bird that attacked Elder when we first landed. As the biologist gently lifts up the plaster cast, I can see the long gouge marks of the monster’s talons. Clumps of yellow sandy soil mar the image, but as the scientist starts to brush it away, I repress a shudder. I remember when those talons curled into Elder’s flesh.



Elder touches his chest, as if still feeling the pain under the bandages Kit made for him. Wordlessly, we step away as the scientist jumps up to show the cast to his colleagues. I start to head back near the ship, but Elder pulls me away from the growing crowd, closer to the forest.



“Does it still hurt?” I ask.



Elder drops his hand from his chest. “Not much,” he mutters. His attention seems focused on the trees.



“What are you looking for?”



Elder shakes his head, his eyes darting along the brush at the forest floor. “When I was attacked . . . ” he says slowly. “I thought I heard . . . ”



He leans down, staring hard at the ground. The shadows of the tree and the fading light of twilight hinder his vision. He creeps forward. “Do you see that?” he says in almost a whisper.



I crouch next to Elder. At the base of the nearest tree, I see what might be animal tracks, although they’re nothing like any animal tracks I’ve ever seen before. Most of the prints are indistinguishable—whatever animal walked here crossed its tracks several times. But at the base of the tree is one perfect print, embedded about a half inch into the soft soil, with crisp lines and clear shapes: three ridged toes in front of a oval marred by criss-crossing lines.



Elder’s hand hovers over the print. The back half of the print is about the size of his palm; the elongated toes—or claws—extend a few inches past his fingers.