After Earth

  Instantly, he could feel the oxygen spread throughout his body, meeting his needs. His breathing slowed. His strength came back to him.

  “Second dose of breathing fluid complete,” he said. “Over.”

  “Count off remaining so you can keep track,” his father said. “Over.”

  Kitai hated the idea of lying to his father. However, he had no choice. He couldn’t take a chance on Cypher pulling the plug on the mission, especially when it was their only hope.

  His face flushed with shame, Kitai replied, “Four vials remain, sir.”

  Just then, a pack of wolves slinked past him, seeking a warm spot against the frigid cold. A couple of deer lay down to go to sleep. Bison crowded in, side by side with jade-eyed tigers. Everyone had sought the same refuge. Even insects, Kitai thought. During the day, they might be bitter enemies, but at night, when their world froze over, they enjoyed a kind of truce.

  Otherwise, none of them would survive.

  Kitai saw a bunch of monkeys with bioluminescent eyes staring at him. He couldn’t help staring back. Suddenly the sky opened up and unleashed a mighty downpour. Kitai ducked back into the musty hollow of a huge rotting tree, but it didn’t keep him very dry.

  Right in front of him, a bee struggled to free itself from a spiderweb. The more it moved, the more it sent a signal to the spider that had made the web. Suddenly, a spider bigger than Kitai’s fist showed up and rushed down to claim the bee. But the bee wasn’t defenseless. As the spider approached, it tried to sting its captor. Kitai watched the struggle, caught up in it. Lightning flashed as the bee tried to free itself, but to no avail. The spider just hung there, waiting. Finally, the bee got too tired to buzz its wings. But instead of moving in for the kill, the spider backed up. It looked confused.

  Kitai supposed the spider couldn’t find the bee unless it moved and sent a vibration through the strands of the web. The spider began testing each thread for its tension until it came upon the thread on which the bee was trapped. Suddenly, the spider made another charge. The bee flailed wildly, trying to escape from the thread that was holding it down. Meanwhile, the spider came in low, its venomous fangs visible.

  Abruptly the bee went still again, ceasing to fight, and again the spider seemed to become confused. It backed up, testing the tension on the web threads until it located the bee again. By this time, the bee seemed exhausted. It barely struggled, tracking the spider circling across its web. Then the spider came in for the kill.

  Suddenly the bee snapped to life and flew up despite the thread stuck to its leg. Attaining a position over the spider, it sank its stinger into the spider’s soft exposed back. The spider twitched. Then the bee stung it again and again. The spider, poisoned with the bee’s venom, moved slowly to the middle of its web. The bee took advantage of the respite to try to fly away. But the spider’s thread held it in place. Finally the bee died, hanging from the thread.

  Kitai watched it hang there. After what it had done, it seemed to deserve a better fate.

  A question came to mind, something Kitai had meant to ask for a long time. “Dad …?” he said. “Dad—”

  He imagined his father awakening from a state of semiconsciousness, dealing with his injuries as best he could. For a moment, there was no response.

  Then Kitai heard: “I’m here. SitRep?”

  “How did you beat it?” he asked his father. “How did you first ghost? Tell me how you did it.”

  Cypher pictured his son, alone in an unfamiliar and hostile world. Afraid of what he could see—and especially of what he couldn’t. Now more than ever he needed to hear this.

  “I was at the original Nova Sea of Serenity,” Cypher began matter-of-factly. “The settlements. I went out for a run. Alone. Something we are never supposed to do. An Ursa de-camos not more than a few meters away. I go for my cutlass, and it shoots its pincer right through my shoulder.

  “Next thing I know, we’re falling over the cliff. Falling thirty meters straight down into the river.

  “We settle on the bottom. It’s on top of me, but it’s not moving. I realized it’s trying to drown me. I start thinking, I am going to die. I’m going to die. I cannot believe this is how I’m going to die.

  “I can see my blood bubbling up, mixing with the sunlight shining through the water, and I think, Wow, that’s really pretty.”

  Kitai was amazed that his father could come to that conclusion at such a time. Hell, it amazed him that his father thought anything was pretty. It was a side of him Kitai hadn’t seen before, or if he had seen it, it was so long ago that he didn’t remember.

  “Everything slows down, and I think to myself, I wonder if an Ursa can hold its breath longer than a human? And, I think of Faia. She was pregnant with you, and close, too. Half a moon’s cycle away, maybe twenty-three days. She was so beautiful.

  “And suddenly I knew one thing with perfect clarity, and it obliterated all other thoughts: There was no way I was gonna die before I’d met my son. Before I met you.”

  Kitai felt a lump grow in his throat. Me?

  “I look around, and I see its pincer through my shoulder, and I decide I don’t want that in there anymore. So I pull it out, and it lets me go, and more than that, I can tell it can’t find me. It doesn’t even know where to look.

  “And it dawned on me: Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity, Kitai.

  “Do not misunderstand me: Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.

  “We are all telling ourselves a story. That day, mine changed.”

  Kitai thought about that: We’re all just telling ourselves a story. It made sense, as if he had known it all his life and had just never had the words to express it.

  Kitai looked around the geothermal zone and took in the sight of the animals all resting in close proximity to one another. He wished his father could see it, could see the majesty of it. Maybe someday, he thought. He sighed. It didn’t look like he would get a lot of sleep that night.

  And how could he, with his father’s words still fresh on his mind? If we’re nothing more than the stories we tell ourselves … we can change the story, the way Dad did.

  And if the story changes, we do, too.

  1000 AE

  Earth

  From the cockpit of the ruined ship, Cypher watched the geothermal zone flood with dawn light. Somewhere, Earth’s sun was breaching the horizon.

  Kitai, who had been drifting in and out of sleep as far as Cypher could tell, roused himself. He grabbed his gear and stood up.

  “Fourteen kilometers from the falls,” he said, giving his son an objective. “That’s our halfway checkpoint. Over.”

  “Reading you,” Kitai said.

  He began his day’s trek slowly and steadily. No doubt, he was feeling the weight of the immense distance he had to cover. And without any real sleep.

  Cypher spared his leg a glance. The puddle of blood on the deck below it was growing, spreading. On the holographic readout in front of him, it said: “ARTERIAL SHUNT—58%. TRANSFUSION CRITICAL. 7 UNITS NEEDED.” Seven units, Cypher thought. Be lucky if I had even one.

  He turned off the screen. I need to focus on my son, he thought. And that, despite the pain and the worsening loss of blood, was what he did.

  Kitai hacked his way through the forest with his cutlass, the end of which he had turned into a machete. It was hard work. The cutlass was light, but the leaves he was fighting his way through were tough and heavy. After a while, he paused and took a swig of water. Then he pulled a nutrition bar from his pack and ate it.

  “Seven kilometers from the falls,” his father said, as if to remind him that they didn’t have time to stand around.

  “Roger,” Kitai said.

  He balled up the wrapper from the nutrition bar and threw it on the ground. Then he began to walk away. But before he got very far, he
stopped himself and went back for the wrapper. Can’t just leave it here, he thought. That’s how we lost this planet in the first place.

  Except when Kitai bent down to grab the wrapper, a gust of wind blew it out of reach and carried it through the thick vegetation. He frowned. Then he made his way forward through the chest-high leaves and lunged. His hand closed around the wrapper, giving him a little thrill of accomplishment. But the feeling lasted only a moment because when he looked up, he saw a scene of unexpected devastation.

  For a wide stretch in front of him, the forest had been trampled as if by a gargantuan foot. Trees had been ripped down. Baboon carcasses were lying everywhere, some of them torn in two. Kitai got the sense that a battle had taken place there. But with whom? And for what reason?

  “What could do this?” he asked out loud, his voice sounding strange in the stillness.

  He hadn’t really expected a response. But he got one.

  “Double-time it,” his father said in a tone that left no room for disagreement. “We need to make it to the falls. Hurry!”

  Kitai started walking again. Overhead, the wind rustled the forest canopy. It sounded like claws scampering along a rooftop. Suddenly, he heard a boom. Not knowing what it was, he crouched, his cutlass at the ready.

  “Volcanic eruption,” Cypher informed him. “Twenty kilometers east. There are volcanoes all over the planet now. You’re fine. Keep moving.”

  Expelling a breath in relief, Kitai resumed his progress through the woods. For a while, it was uneventful. He liked it that way. Little by little, the ground underfoot began to rise. Then the rise became more pronounced, too steep to negotiate without some assistance.

  Pausing for a second, Kitai tapped a combination into his cutlass. The handle separated into two pieces, the end fibers of which formed twin picks, each half a meter long. With them, he began to scale the hill. He was getting better with his father’s cutlass. Good thing, he thought. There were plenty of things on this planet capable of killing him without his doing the job himself.

  As Kitai climbed, he felt the fatigue of not having slept. But he couldn’t let it slow him down. He had an objective to reach. Then he heard something in the forest behind him. Or he thought he did.

  “Is there anything behind me?” he asked his father. “Over.”

  “Negative,” Cypher told him.

  Normally, Kitai would have trusted his father’s observation, trusted it implicitly. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following him. He froze and cocked his head like a dog. Then he heard it: a sound. Like static in the distance.

  “I hear something,” he said emphatically. He listened some more. “I think it’s water. A lot of it.”

  “You’re close. Keep hustling,” Cypher told him.

  Kitai climbed faster, digging into energy reserves he didn’t know he had. Whatever fatigue he had felt seemed to fade, at least for the moment. Abruptly, he came to the end of the foliage. Pushing aside the last of the leaves with his hands, he emerged onto a rocky ledge. The sound around him was deafening, the product of an immense waterfall that stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see. A thousand feet below, it crashed into a shallow basin and raised a thick white cloud of mist. Birds circled above it in flocks. Every so often they dived into the mist and came up with something in their beaks.

  Beautiful, Kitai thought. It looked as if two continents had smashed into each other, one coast considerably higher than the other. No longer in need of the cutlass’s help, he connected its two halves and tapped them with his fingertips. A moment later, they contracted into a single piece. Then he took that piece and snapped it to his back, where it stuck magnetically.

  “Inventory your remaining supplies,” his father said, bringing him back to reality.

  Kitai began unloading his gear. As he did so, he described it to Cypher: “Roger. Food rations half available. Flares full. Med-kit half available. Breathing fluid—”

  He bit his lip. Was he going to lie to his father again? Yes, he thought, though not without a considerable load of guilt.

  “Breathing fluid—four vials available,” Kitai reported.

  “Why are you not showing me the case?” Cypher asked. “Let me see it.”

  Kitai swallowed. “What?”

  “Show it to me now.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Cadet, let me see the case.”

  This is it. There was no hiding the situation any longer.

  Kitai held the case up where Cypher could see it. Only two vials were left. He waited for his father’s response. And waited.

  “I thought that I could make it, sir,” he said finally.

  No answer. Then Cypher said, “Abort mission. Return to the ship. That is an order.”

  For a split second, Kitai’s mind flashed back to when Senshi put him in the glass box and told him not to come out. That, too, was an order, and she died.

  “No, Dad. We, I can do it, I can, I don’t need that many. I can get across with just two.”

  “You need a minimum of three inhalers to make it to the tail; you have exhausted your resources,” Cypher said, failing to keep the frustration and anger out of his voice.

  “I can get across,” Kitai insisted. “I can do it with just two, Dad.”

  His father was adamant. “This mission has reached abort criteria. I take full responsibility. You did your best; you have nothing more to prove. Now return to the ship.”

  Kitai hung his head in shame. His father was right. There was no way he could make it to the tail on the breathing fluid he had left. He looked out at the waterfall.

  Unless …

  “What was your mistake? Trusting me? Depending on me? Thinking that I could do this?”

  There was no hesitation in his father’s response. “I am giving you an order … to turn around and return to this ship.”

  I’ve got 80 percent, he thought to himself. I could sky it.

  “You wouldn’t give any other Ranger that order,” he said to the air.

  “You are not a Ranger, and I am giving you that order,” his father snapped.

  No, he wasn’t a Ranger, but he knew what it took to be one. He had prepared so hard, including being able to use the lifesuit’s aerial abilities.

  “Come back to the ship, cadet.”

  But what good would that do? “You said we would both die if I didn’t make it to the tail.”

  “An error in strategy on my part. I take full responsibility. Now, I gave you a direct order.”

  All his life, he had been in awe of his father. He would never even have considered disobeying a direct order from Cypher. Until now.

  Kitai felt himself overcome by a wave of emotion. Everything he had always kept bottled up inside, everything he had wanted to say to his father. How it was so obvious that he didn’t believe in his son. How the mere sight of Kitai made Cypher so ashamed, he stopped coming home.

  Everything he felt, he was saying it now.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he screamed. “What did you want me to do?! She gave me an order! She said no matter what, don’t come out of that box! What was I supposed to do—just come out and die?”

  “What do you think, cadet? What do you think you should have done? Because really that’s all that matters.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Cypher said again, “What do you think you should have done?”

  Kitai walked up to the edge of the falls. He could see the mist, the birds rising from it and diving into it. He could hear the incredible roar of the water far, far below.

  Kitai was boiling with fear, anger, and frustration. His reply was unguarded and came out with a rush. “And where were you? She called out for you; she called your name! And you weren’t there ’cause you’re never there! And you think I’m a coward? You’re wrong! I’m not a coward! You’re the coward!

  “I’m. Not. A. Coward.” Cypher stared at Kitai, at his son. What was he supposed to have done? He felt as
if he had been hit with a rock—and by his own son. No one had ever said that out loud to him. He had thought it on his own many times, too many to count. But he could never admit it, never confront it, never face up to the truth that he hadn’t been there when Senshi needed him most.

  Kitai had been a boy, a small, frightened boy. But what was my excuse? Cypher asked himself. Where was I when she needed someone to defend her from that Ursa?

  He felt himself falling as if from a great height into a dark, bottomless pit. Where was I?

  He’d sworn an oath to the colony. An oath to the Corps. That was why he had been away from home all the time, why he had never given enough of himself to his family.

  Because of my oath.

  Suddenly, his anger and his pain and his resentment were all spent. There was nothing left inside him but remorse.

  Kitai stood above the falls, hyperventilating from the emotion of what his father had said to him and what he had said in return.

  Then, before even he was sure he was going to do so, he turned, took two steps, and dived off the cliff.

  For a single, sublime moment he hung there, arms outstretched, floating on an updraft of air. He had time to think about how peaceful it was, how completely and utterly serene. Then the ground flew up at him, a huge uprush of wind snatching sound away from his ears. His father yelled something, but he couldn’t make it out.

  At the same time, his lifesuit released fabric on either side from his leg to his outstretched arm, and he wasn’t falling anymore. He was gliding, soaring like a bird. They really didn’t teach this until Phase 2, but he had studied in advance, and boy, was he thankful that he’d cheated a bit. He glided lower, not into the water at the base of the falls but over it. Making adjustments in the positioning of his arms and legs, he changed direction and followed the flow of the river through the lush landscape below.

  His lifesuit, he noticed, had turned black. Free-falling at an insane rate of speed, he slid past rock walls and over ledges, the wind pulling at the skin of his face like a G-force thrust. Then he heard his father yell at him again, and this time he could figure out what Cypher was saying. It was: “Kitai, you’ve got incoming; dive! Dive!”