Alight

  I invited the entire Springer population to move into Uchmal, so the city walls could keep out those predators lurking in the jungle. A few accepted, most declined. The sins of our creators won’t fade overnight. Not to mention the fact that we use spiders constantly—for any Springer, the sight of those metal monstrosities still fills them with terror.

  Instead of moving into our city, the Springers are rebuilding their own. They finally have the opportunity to live aboveground. They’re starting small, working with a few of the hexagonal buildings that had the least damage. Finally free from the constant threat of spiders, they are even trying to build their first factories so they can mass-produce goods for farming, hunting, construction and more. Making each item by hand takes too long. I even have two of the kids who were stored in the shuttle—Bariso and Nevins—helping them design a rifle to replace their muskets.

  As for Bishop and me, I want to spend more time with him and he wants to spend more time with me, but the things we have done haunt us both. Being around each other reminds us of those things. I know he’s working just as hard as I am to build our new way of life—for now, that is enough.

  I gaze up at the massive Observatory. We’ve lived here for 271 days now—Opkick has kept a close count—yet the size still staggers my imagination. Borjigin estimates this building alone took the machines twenty or thirty years to make. The whole city? Probably along the lines of a half-century.

  We haven’t cut the Observatory’s vines, because they mostly cover up horrible images that none of us need to see. We’ll get rid of those images someday, but for now there are more important things to do.

  We’ve found a total of three ground-level entrances into the Observatory. We think there is at least one more, though, a secret exit from the main room that Matilda and Old Gaston must have used to escape. She helped design the city, after all—the secrets she knows will hurt us if she ever comes back.

  Our main entrance is the one Barkah used to rescue us, the same entrance young Springers used for years to explore the Observatory and steal food stored there. Seems our wrapped packages were more than just a trophy for young Springers who proved their bravery by entering the city and risking spider attack—our food is something of a delicacy to them. Right now, it is a central unit of trade between races. They get CRACKERS and PROTEIN BARS and COOKIES, we get fruit and vegetables, meat, grains, and a certain kind of tree bark. Turns out, bark is absolutely delicious.

  “Come on,” I say to Muller. “Let’s go see your girlfriend.”

  His face flushes, but he doesn’t deny it. I should really stop teasing him so much.

  At the Observatory entrance, Barkah, Lahfah, D’souza and Borjigin are waiting for me.

  Barkah still has Kevin’s knife in his belt. Every time I meet the Springer leader, I can’t help but notice that.

  D’souza no longer wears black coveralls. Strips of colored cloth are tied around her arms, legs, stomach, and strategically around her waist and chest. Her beautiful brown skin is even darker now, as she spends every day in the jungle. She carries a Springer bag, a hatchet tucked into her belt, and a musket slung over her shoulder.

  Barkah wears a patch over his ruined middle eye, but the two remaining green eyes are bright, full of excitement for life. He loves his role as the leader of his people.

  “Hem,” he says. “Feel well…today?”

  I can’t help but smile. Barkah is picking up our language. I only wish I was as good at picking up theirs.

  “Yawap,” I say. “Tallik…tallik cree?”

  Lahfah’s frog-mouth trembles like she’s trying to hold something back, then it opens wide with grinding-glass laughter. We now know “he” is a “she.” Her leg is fully healed, thanks in no small part to young Pokano, the circle-cross who has chosen to focus specifically on Springer physiology.

  I look to D’souza. “What is she laughing at? I tried to say, I feel fine.”

  “Close,” she says. “You said, I feel poop on my face.”

  I laugh, embarrassed. Lahfah laughs harder. Barkah growls at her. She stops, but her body continues to shake with held-back amusement. The two of them go everywhere together. Lahfah has an unstoppable sense of humor, which is good, because Barkah doesn’t seem to have one at all.

  Borjigin is impatient. He looks at the thin rectangle in his hands, which he calls a “messageboard.” He and Opkick found several of them in an Observatory storeroom. They use them to get information when they are out in the city or the jungle, far away from pedestals.

  “We’re late,” he says. “Can we please stop joking about feces and get inside?”

  I’m the leader of the people, but Borjigin is in charge of extending the reach of power and clean water, the continuous searching of unexplored buildings, a thousand other things necessary to make this city livable. He works even harder than I do, and—like Barkah—has little time for jokes.

  We’re about to enter when Okereke, Johnson and a young circle named Mehmet walk out. They are covered in mud and greasy char. They stink of dirt and some kind of mineral scent I can’t place. They are laughing and excited.

  “You’re filthy,” I say to Okereke. “What have you three been up to in there?”

  “Helping Spingate,” he says. “And Zubiri.”

  “Helping with what?”

  He shakes his head, all smiles. “She made us promise not to say anything until she talked to you first. But it’s really amazing.”

  Borjigin’s fingers drum impatiently on the messageboard.

  “Fine,” I say. “Borjigin, lead the way.”

  The hallway we used to flee the fire is now illuminated by a glowing ceiling rather than torchlight. The floor is swept clean, the stone walls are spotless.

  The long walk brings us to the room where Coyotl’s mind was erased, where Old Dr. Smith burned to death, where Springers died, where I shot Old Bishop and stabbed O’Malley. I wish we could center things elsewhere, but Spingate and Gaston both insist this room was designed to be the hub of all the Observatory’s abilities.

  While I will never recover from those memories, the room looks completely different. The golden coffins have been moved elsewhere in the building, and modified by Smith and Pokano to become sources of health and healing rather than destruction. The burned ceiling was scraped away, painted white, all the lights repaired. We covered up that horrible mural. We found a storeroom with replacement pedestals; a half-dozen of them adorn a rebuilt platform, and a dozen more are set up in the space the coffins once occupied.

  Despite all the cleaning and painting, this place still smells faintly of smoke and scorched flesh. Every time I come in, I look at the spot where O’Malley died.

  Springers and kids alike study at the floor pedestals. Some are learning math and science, some are helping develop Borjigin’s plan for the city.

  Spingate, Gaston and Zubiri are standing on the platform. Spingate’s belly is curved with the life growing inside of her. She walks funny now, has to in order to balance the weight—Smith says the baby is overdue.

  Gaston has grown something, too: a beard. It is thick and black, and it annoys Bishop. As big as Bishop is, all he can manage is a thin blond scraggle. Gaston is fond of saying that facial hair defines being “manly,” and will continue to say so until it stops enraging Bishop.

  And then there is Zubiri.

  Most of her face has been repaired. Smith is still working on replacing her missing teeth. Five of them are in and set, three more to go. I’m told that after the next operation, Zubiri should have her smile back. The one thing she can never have back, though, is her left arm.

  She lost it in the battle. It was torn off in the spider crash, severed just above her elbow. Smith could do nothing for that. Coffins can do miracles on skin and bone, fixing up that which is damaged, but regrowing body parts is beyond the technology’s abilities.

  Spingate looks up from her work. She sees Muller, smiles.

  “Grandmaster Zubiri,” she says,
“can you go to the shuttle and bring me back the bracer from storage? And Em, I need Zubiri back here sooner rather than later—would you mind if Victor gives her a ride?”

  Zubiri and Muller—I correct myself, Victor—stare at each other. I’m not sure they even remember I’m here.

  “I don’t mind at all,” I say. “Just don’t be gone all day.”

  “We won’t,” the two of them say in unison, and they rush out of the room before we can change our minds.

  We’ve learned that Zubiri is brilliant. Genius is the word Spingate uses to describe her. Perhaps someday soon Zubiri will lead these research efforts instead of Spingate, but the girl’s mind isn’t always on her work. Maybe if she hadn’t had her arm ripped off and her face smashed so hard she needed eleven reconstructive surgeries, maybe if she didn’t wake up every night screaming in horror as she relives that moment, then she could concentrate more.

  And, of course, maybe if she wasn’t in love with a boy.

  Gaston is staring at an image of stars hovering above a pedestal. He waves us to join him.

  I step onto the platform. It’s wide enough that Barkah and Lahfah can come up with me. Borjigin stays on the floor, looking at his messageboard and talking to D’souza.

  “So, I’m here,” I say to Spingate. “What’s so important that Barkah and I both had to come?”

  She looks at the Springer, as if wondering if she made a mistake to ask for him. She shakes her head, chasing away that thought. Whatever this is, it must affect both species equally.

  “Zubiri fixed the power supply in the hole,” she says.

  I look to the red wall in the room’s center, realize that a heavy black cable is running up from the hole, over the wall and under the pedestal platform. A cable just like it burned up in the fire.

  “Spin, that’s great! Does that mean the telescope is working?”

  “Sort of,” she says. “First I have to tell you what we found in the hole. Only Zubiri, myself and a few other young gears have been down there—until today. Today we needed Okereke to take the heavy cable down and connect it. He saw things in the walls that the rest of us hadn’t noticed.”

  She picks up a box that is sitting on the platform. It’s filled with dirty objects.

  “Borjigin, I need your expertise,” she says, and pulls out a piece of masonry from the box. “Can you tell me what this is?”

  He and D’souza join us on the platform. The bit of masonry is flat on two sides, broken on the other. It looks like a small chunk of a corner of a building, but the angle is wider than ninety degrees.

  “A piece of Springer building,” Borjigin says. “One-hundred-twenty-degree angle. Their specific type of concrete. You can tell because they like to mix in wood mulch.” He points to several small air spaces in the concrete. They look like slots where wood splinters would fit in perfectly.

  Spingate nods. “That’s what I thought, too. It was found in the dirt walls of the hole, the layer just below the floor of this room.”

  Borjigin nods. “Of course. The Grownups leveled the Springer city and built on top of it. There’s going to be all kinds of debris buried beneath Uchmal.”

  Spingate seems nervous. She takes another piece from the box, offers it to him.

  “This was below that layer,” she says. “What is it?”

  It’s flat on one side, melted and torn on the other. It’s not masonry. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Borjigin stares at it. He turns it over.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he says. “Some kind of composite. A support beam, maybe. I haven’t seen this material in any Springer architecture, and it isn’t in anything built by the Grownups. You said it was below the Springer layer?”

  Spingate nods, reaches into the box.

  “The whole layer is full of it. Okereke found this as well.”

  She hands him what looks like a plastic doll, or perhaps a small statue. This I recognize: the body is the same reverse-legged shape as the statues in Barkah’s church. Two back-folded legs, two lower arms, two arms coming out the sides of the one-eyed head.

  Borjigin shrugs. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Barkah gently takes it from Borjigin.

  “Bu, Vellen,” the Springer says, examining it. “Kollo regatta jumain.”

  Words I don’t know. I glance at D’souza.

  “He’s talking about the Vellen,” she says. “The Albonden won’t tell me much about them.”

  Albonden. It’s still hard for me to get used to that word. That’s the name of Barkah’s tribe. D’souza insists we all use it instead of Springers, but most of my people ignore her.

  “Is Vellen another tribe?” I ask.

  D’souza shakes her head. “I think Vellen is the name of their gods, because the rest of what he said roughly means those who came before us.”

  Barkah sets the plastic doll back in Spingate’s box.

  Borjigin shakes his head. “Spingate, are you saying that not only did we destroy the Springer city to build Uchmal, but the Springers destroyed an earlier city, populated by another race, to build theirs?”

  But…that can’t be. The Springers were here first. My race wanted their land, slaughtered them, nearly wiped them out. Does this discovery mean that the Springers weren’t just part of the natural balance of Omeyocan, that they, too, demolished what came before them to take over this land?

  Spingate shrugs. “I’m just saying that these layers are in the hole. Okereke said the hole goes much deeper and it looks like there are even more layers. He didn’t descend past the power source, though—he said it felt too creepy.”

  This is making my head fuzzy. Our creators destroyed the Springers, who maybe destroyed these Vellen….did the Vellen destroy another race before them? And if so, why are so many races building a city in exactly the same place?

  “We’ll have to go down there,” I say. “You were right to bring Barkah and me both in for this.”

  Spingate shakes her head. She seems nervous, maybe upset.

  “That’s not the main reason I asked you here,” she says. “I said we sort of fixed the telescope. What I mean is there are two kinds.” She points a finger up. “The Goffspear telescope, the big optical one in this building, still isn’t working. Without Okadigbo, we just don’t know what’s wrong with it, let alone how to fix it. But it turns out there are other telescopes in the city and in the jungle—radio telescopes. We got those working. They’ve been feeding us information for a few hours now, and we found something. Gaston, show her.”

  Gaston waves his hands over a pedestal. Above it, a green, blue and brown sphere appears: Omeyocan, spinning slightly. Above that is a red point of light. Farther out and in a different direction, a blue point.

  He points to the red one. “That represents the Xolotl.”

  Just the name of that ship calls up so many awful memories. But if that red dot is the Xolotl, what’s the blue dot?

  I point to it. “I’m guessing this is what you really brought us here to see?”

  “You guessed right,” Gaston says. “Do you know what a radio wave is?”

  I shake my head.

  “Think of when you’re out in the city,” he says. “Sometimes when you yell very loud, it sounds like your words bounce back to you?”

  I nod. “Especially with big buildings around.”

  “Radio waves are like that, only on a larger scale,” he says. “They go out into space. The Observatory sends out this radio signal. Think of a ball that keeps getting bigger and bigger at the speed of light. When the radio waves hit something, they bounce back to Omeyocan, where the radio telescopes detect them.” He points to the red light again. “This is from the radio waves hitting the Xolotl and bouncing back.”

  It takes me a second to understand what that means. The red light is the Xolotl, a ship in orbit…so the blue light is…

  This can’t be. It can’t.

  “You’re telling me there is another ship out there?”
br />   Spingate nods. She’s staring at the dot, gently pulling at her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger. In a way, she didn’t look this afraid even when the Springers were beating the hell out of us.

  Gaston notices, puts his arm around her shoulders, gives her a light squeeze.

  “Definitely another ship,” he says. “Almost as big as the Xolotl. And it’s coming our way.”

  Since I woke up, I think I’ve spent every day in fear. Afraid for my life, for the lives of others, but this fills me with a new sense of foreboding.

  “More Grownups,” I say. “They’re coming for us.”

  Gaston huffs. “I wish. At least we’d know what we’re dealing with. We haven’t been able to fully recover the Observatory’s memory, but I did get some information on the path the Xolotl took to get here. This new ship is on a completely different trajectory.”

  I stare at him instead of the blue dot. “Maybe you could say that in words I could understand?”

  “It’s not more Grownups.” He lets go of Spingate, taps the red dot. A line extends from it, arcing away to my left, away from Omeyocan.

  “That’s the path the Xolotl took to get here,” he says. He taps the blue dot. Another line appears, curving away and to my right. “That is the path the new ship took.”

  The ships came from completely different areas of space. It took the Xolotl a thousand years to reach this planet. That new ship could have been traveling equally long, but from another direction.

  “If it’s not Grownups,” I say, “then who?”

  When Gaston speaks, his voice is quiet and steady, free of any trace of the mockery or bravado that usually define him.

  “When the Grownups got here, they destroyed the Springer civilization. Based on what Okereke found in the hole, we think the Springers destroyed another race that was here before them—meaning the Springers are probably from somewhere else, just like we are. Three races have occupied this same area. So who is in that new ship? My guess is it’s a fourth race. And based on what the Grownups did when they arrived, and what the Springers probably did when they arrived, we have to assume this fourth race isn’t coming here for milk and cookies.”