Shades of Earth (18 page)

I stare at the statue. It was made of concrete, by the Plague Eldest himself. If there was a secret about the planet, it would have been a secret the Plague Eldest kept. He was the one who started the Eldest system, he was the one who decided not to land the ship on the planet when we arrived. Of course he had to have had a reason for
why
he didn't land
Godspeed
—and what better place to hide that reason than within the concrete of the statue?

“It all fits,” Amy says, wonder in her voice. “The clue, the last clue, the information about what is going on here—it's in the statue.”

“In the statue,” I repeat. “In the ship, which is in orbit, in
space
.”

Amy sighs heavily. Knowing the clue is there doesn't help us at all.

Movement on the side of the screen distracts me from the statue. Someone's walking down the path behind the Hospital, through the garden. The path curves, and the person is momentarily out of view, but a moment later he stands in front of the statue.

Bartie.

He stops, tilting his face up to the metal sky. The camera is in the perfect angle to capture him. His face is lined with worry and sadness, with dark circles under his eyes and a new scar on his cheek. He's haggard, and his hair looks unkempt. There is no sign of his guitar. Taking the leadership from me has not worn well on Bartie.

“What's he doing?” Amy asks, staring.

Bartie looks as if he's talking to the Plague Eldest statue. I remember how I always used to stop and stare at the worn face. The Plague Eldest's open arms are benevolent, and his face is so blurred of features that I would imagine it looked on me with sympathy while I was trying to decide how to be the leader my people needed.

Bartie reaches into one of his pockets. I think for a moment that he's pulled out a floppy, but whatever he's holding is smaller than a floppy and darker. Black. A black square.

A black med patch.

Amy gasps.

And I know what Bartie's thinking, why he's come to the Plague Eldest.

The ship is dying, and he knows it. He's trying to decide how long to wait before he distributes the black med patches. The ones that kill.

31:
AMY

Elder doesn't talk
as he storms from the compound, heading back to the colony. I have to race to keep up with him. “Elder, wait!” I call under my breath. He slows down but doesn't stop.

His back is rigid, his shoulders stiff. When I reach out for him, he jerks away. I grab his elbow and don't let go, yanking him around to face me.

“We can save them too,” I say.

Elder barks in laughter, a short, bitter sound. We both freeze, looking to the forest, waiting for a ptero's cry. But soon the soft noises of the night that I'd taken for granted return—a low, chirruping sound from a nocturnal bird, the almost inaudible shuffling of small animals on the forest floor. We haven't seen much wildlife, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

“We
can
save them,” I say again, my voice lower.

“We can't even save ourselves.” Elder's jaw is hard.

“We've as good as solved Orion's last clue,” I counter. “We have the communication bay at the compound. We won't let them die up there.”

“Yeah?” Elder asks through clenched teeth. “And how are we going to survive the frexing aliens that are down
here?
”

My heart stills in my chest.

“There's something out there, Amy,” Elder says. He looks over my head, into the black forest. “Something that killed off the first colony.”

“Pteros—”

“They didn't program those biometric locks to keep pteros out,” Elder snaps. He's right. Those locks were for something . . . something else. “Besides,” he adds, shooting me a glance and then looking away. “There are more than just pteros.” I know he's thinking of that strange crystalline scale he found in the tunnel, and it frightens me, too. There's a lot about this planet we don't understand. A lot that can kill us. “Remember that footprint?” he asks.

I nod. How could I forget the sharp ridges of the three talons, as if designed to maim?

Elder continues in a hush, as if afraid of being overheard. “I thought I saw something in the forest, right before I was attacked. Maybe whatever it was
controlled
the ptero.”

An image briefly flashes in my mind: a bug-eyed green-skinned alien with clawed feet, one that watches us and waits until we're most vulnerable to attack.

I don't want to think about this. I
can't
think about this. I've learned too much tonight. I turn away from Elder, and we continue back to the colony wordlessly, not stopping until we nearly reach my building on the edge of the colony. The world is silent now and dark. Elder steps closer to me, sweeping the hair I'd been hiding behind out of my face.

“Stop,” a low female voice commands. I start to turn and feel the hard metal cylinder of a gun in the back of my head. I drop Elder's hand and lift my own.

“Amy?” the voice asks. The gun lowers. When I turn, I see Emma, dressed in fatigues, a semi-automatic in her right hand.

“Emma, you scared me to death!” I exclaim.

“Shh!” she says. “Or do you want the rest of the guard on duty tonight to come down here and see what you two idiots are doing?”

I glance at Elder. How much does Emma know?

“If you two can't keep your hands off each other, then go to one of the buildings,” she growls. “Snogging in the middle of the night on the edge of the camp is likely to get you shot. I thought you were—” She stops short. “I thought you were an enemy.”

I narrow my eyes. What enemy is she referring to exactly? Emma doesn't know what we were up to, but I have more than a sneaking suspicion she knows more than she's telling us. She was with Dad, that first day, when he went to the probe and found a high-tech modern compound.

She knows just how much he's kept hidden.

When neither Elder nor I say anything, Emma frowns. “You lot weren't just out here to snog, were you?”

“No!” I say too quickly. “Emma, we were—”

She cuts me off with a wave of her hand. “I don't care what you were doing, and I don't want to know. But you're smart, both of you, and I'm betting I can guess what's up.” She glances behind her—in the direction of the compound. “Don't go out at night,” she says, more sternly this time. “There're things out there you don't know about.”

Elder nods solemnly, then turns to go. Emma grabs my arm, keeping me in place. “Amy, this is important,” she says, her voice low and urgent. “You don't want to hear this, I know you don't, but you can't trust—”

“Who's there?” a voice—my father's—calls out.

Heavy footsteps thump their way closer to us. Dad and Chris, both dressed in fatigues, approach. “Emma? What's going on?”

Emma straightens, and whatever warning she was about to give me dies on her lips. “Sir. Found these two out here.” She pauses. “Kissing.”

There's a little bit of a tattletale quality to her voice at this, but I'm actually glad she's told Dad that I was out here making out. At least she didn't say what she suspected we were doing—discovering the compound and Dad's secrets.

Dad doesn't look happy, though. “I'll take Amy back up,” he growls. “Chris, can you escort this boy back to his building?”

“This boy can walk himself,” Elder snaps.

Dad stares him down. “There's a lot you should be afraid of out here, at night, in the dark.”

Elder doesn't flinch. “I know what to be afraid of,” he says. “And it's not the dark.” He waits a heartbeat, then adds, “It's not you either.”

Chris touches Elder's shoulder, guiding him back to the colony, but Elder shoves past him.

Dad waits until Chris and Elder are out of sight and Emma is back patrolling the camp before he turns to me. “What were you thinking?” he says. I'm shocked at how angry he sounds. “It's
dangerous
out here, Amy.”

“We were still in the colony,” I protest, because, as far as he knows, we were.

“And kissing one of
them!
”

This stops me in my tracks. The night is eerily silent now, the air very still.

“What?” I ask in a monotone.

“Amy, those shipborns . . . you shouldn't be with them so much.” Dad starts pacing, just on the outside of our building.

“I dunno, Dad. I feel like Elder's been a little bit more forthcoming than you've been lately . . . don't you think?”

“They're not like us,” Dad continues, ignoring my accusation.

“How?” I ask, my voice still cold.

“Just look at them! The way they all look the same. The way they all think a kid is their ‘leader.' They're . . . strange. Different. For God's sake, Amy, the shipborns are not like us!”

“You don't know what you're talking about!” I say, louder than I'd intended. We're going to wake up the whole colony. “They're people.
Good
people.”

Dad shakes his head pityingly, and it is that, more than anything else, that cranks my rage up even higher. “Oh, Amy,” he says. “You weren't even supposed to be here.”

Something clacks into place in my head. “Then why did you give me a choice?” I say, my voice growing louder and higher with each word. “Why even leave that decision up to me? You could have prepared me more. But no—you just waited until Mom was already frozen and then you freeze yourself, and you leave me, alone, to make up my mind on whether I should give everything up for you! And when I
do
actually do that—it's the wrong choice! If you never wanted me to come, why didn't you say so? Why did you leave it up to me at all? Why did you make it seem like I could make my own decisions when you never even packed any of my things for me? I've seen the trunks in storage—and the one with my name on it is
empty!
”

I'm breathing heavily by the time I'm done speaking, and my face is hot, and my fists are curled, and I don't care.

Dad's jaw works. “I'm sorry about that,” he grinds out. “I'd promised your mother not to try to convince you to stay, and I worried if I told you what to do, you'd do the opposite. I wanted you to be able to make a choice you could live with.”

“I
did
.”

“I didn't know things would get this messed up. This is not the mission I expected. And I had no idea you'd wake up early like that. I wish you hadn't. Maybe then you could see that the shipborns—”

“Don't even start,” I say. “The ‘shipborns' aren't a part of this argument.”

“They hate you.” Dad stares at me, daring me to break eye contact. “I see the way they flinch away from us, the way they look at us as if we're freaks—even you.”

“Elder doesn't hate me,” I say. I know this more than I know anything.

Dad barks with laughter. “Elder is a
teenage boy
. He doesn't hate anything with breasts!”

I step back as if Dad's slapped me.

“Amy, you can't trust him. And you can't—don't—I don't want you getting in over your head with this boy. I think you've let those three months you were on the ship before we landed cancel out the years you were on Earth. You're one of us. You're mine. You're my little girl.”

“Not anymore,” I say cruelly, sidestepping him and storming toward the building.

Dad grabs me and yanks me back. I think for one terrifying instant that he's going to hit me, but he doesn't. He wraps me in a hug so tight I can barely breathe. “I'm not letting you go away mad at me, Amy,” he says softly into my hair. “We can fight, and we can disagree, but I'm never going to let you walk away from me thinking I don't love you.”

He loosens his grip on me, and I step back, stunned by his words. Dad is not the mushy type. “This world is dangerous, Amy,” he says. “I don't know what's going to happen. I can't let you walk away from me mad. I love you too much for that.”

He holds his pinky up, waiting for me to wrap mine around his.

The ice inside me melts. “I love you too,” I say, making a pinky promise just like we used to do when I was a kid. “I promise.”

And I mean it: I love him.

I'm just not sure I can trust him.

32:
ELDER

My eyes shoot open
the next morning when I hear loud footsteps clambering up the staircase leading to my building. I stretch, my neck cracking. I used a pile of clothes as an impromptu bed, but I'm going to have to find something better—especially for the pregnant women, who must be hurting more than me.

“Elder!” Amy calls, breathless, as she runs into my room.

A loopy grin slides across my face; I don't mind being woken up this early in the morning if Amy's my alarm clock.

Then I see her face. “What's wrong?” I ask, jumping up and grabbing a tunic from the pile of clothes, pulling it over my head. The air's already humid and sticky, despite how early it is.

“Kit,” Amy says, still panting from her run up to my building. “Come on.”

I stagger after her, pulling on my moccasins as I go. “What happened?” I ask, my heart sinking. Other than Amy, Kit is one of the few people on this planet I actually trust—and one of my few friends. If something's wrong . . .

“I don't know,” Amy says. Her eyes dart to the bottom of the hill, where Colonel Martin is giving directions to Emma and Chris, pointing out something in the distance.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Is she all right?”

“I don't know,” Amy repeats, grabbing my hand and dragging me down the stairs toward Colonel Martin. “This morning, Dad tried to find her, to go over that list she made detailing what everyone's skills are. He was going to start making permanent work assignments. But she's missing.”

“Missing?” I feel stupid. It's barely morning; the suns have just risen.

“Dad thinks that she's just wandered off or something, that she'll turn up soon.”

“Kit wouldn't do that,” I say.

She spares a glance at me. “I know.”

Colonel Martin turns as we run up to him. “Amy,” he says, admonishment in his voice. “I told you not to trouble Elder with this.”

“Dad, Kit wouldn't just
go
. If she's missing, that means something is wrong.”

I glance at Amy. We both know if she's missing, it's probably already too late.

“I've already volunteered to go looking for her,” Emma says. She scowls.

“And I've already said it's nothing,” Colonel Martin says firmly. “I've sent some soldiers ahead to the shuttle to see if Kit went there.”

“She wouldn't,” I say.

“We don't have time to just stop all operations because one woman wandered off—against my orders, I might add.”

“Dad,” Amy says so forcefully that he looks a little surprised. “Kit would
not
just wander off alone. That's not like her.”

Colonel Martin considers what she's said.

Chris steps up beside him. I want to knock him aside; I don't need one more person saying that Kit's just carelessly gotten lost. “Maybe she's in the latrines,” he says.

“She's not; I checked,” Amy says. “We need to go looking for her.”

“Let's wait for the men I sent to get back,” Colonel Martin says, but his voice isn't as commanding as before. “She might have gone back for more supplies from the shuttle . . . ”

“She
wouldn't
,” I insist. “Kit is one of my people, and I know her. There's no way she'd leave the colony without letting me know. I'm telling you—if she's gone, something is seriously wrong.” I watch as doubt crosses Colonel Martin's face. He doesn't want Kit to have been taken; he doesn't want it to be his fault. His guard hasn't protected her. But I don't have time to assuage Colonel Martin's hurt feelings. “If you're not going to do something, I will,” I say. “I'll get together search parties now.”

“I'll help,” Amy says immediately.

“And so will I.” Emma shoots Colonel Martin and Chris a disgusted look.

We work quickly. As soon as word spreads that Kit has disappeared, people start volunteering for the search party—more than a hundred in less than an hour.

Colonel Martin casts an eye over the group assembling in the meadow. There's a grim sort of determination to the search party, and they carry tools—shovels, scythes, even, in a few cases, just a large tree branch, smoothed down on one end for a handle on a makeshift club.

“They don't need weapons. My men have guns,” Colonel Martin tells me. My people, armed as they are, make him nervous. I file this information away in my mind.

“Guns didn't save Kit,” I say. “Or Lorin. Or Juliana Robertson, or that Earthborn doctor.”

I track down the last person who saw her—Willow, a pregnant woman who had come to her in the middle of the night with stomach cramps.

“After she gave me a med patch, she left,” Willow tells me.

“Did you see anyone else?”

“There was one of
them
on patrol.” Willow means one of the Earthborn military. She points at Chris, who's standing on the edge of the gathering crowd, looking worried. “That one.”

I stride over to him and confront him with this information.

“I remember seeing her,” Chris tells me, his hands already up as if defending himself from the accusation in my voice. “It was right before my shift ended.”

“Did you make sure she got back to her building safely?” I demand.

Chris blanches. “I . . . no. I just assumed . . . ”

“That's when she was taken,” I say, convinced of it now. I glare at Chris. It was his job to protect the colony, and he let one of my people pay the price for his carelessness.

The question is—who took her, and why?