Alone

  Our Bello, who was overwritten shortly after that. The creature that took over her mind shouldn’t have any recollection of that moment.

  This Bello, this overwritten thing, she’s suddenly confused. She shakes her head lightly.

  “No, I…well, I don’t know what I was saying. I must be thinking of when you beat me on the shuttle. Yes, that’s it.”

  When O’Malley was overwritten, his brain, his soul, everything that made him him was supposed to be gone forever. But when I stabbed him, when he was dying in my arms, he smiled at me. He thanked me. In that brief instant, my O’Malley was still in there.

  And if Korrynn remembers the moment of Yong’s death, maybe my Bello isn’t completely gone.

  Brewer said the longer we were awake, making our own memories, the less chance the overwrite would work. I’ve been awake far longer than Bello or O’Malley was—if Matilda ever catches me, tries to overwrite me, what would happen?

  Korrynn sets her cup on the floor. She lies on the mattress, turns her back to me.

  “I’m tired,” she says. “Go away.”

  I can’t stand to look at her anymore. Such a selfish, hateful little creature.

  “If this is what a thousand years of life would get me, I hope I die at a hundred.”

  She rolls over onto one elbow, and smiles at me. When she does, I see the dark space of two missing teeth—another memento of when I attacked her. She refuses to have them fixed.

  “The aliens are finally here,” she says. “Which means you’ll die far sooner than that.”

  Her words send a chill up my spine, crank my anger to new heights.

  I walk away, wondering how the person I keep naked and alone in a prison cell continues to have the upper hand.

  The Observatory is the heart of Uchmal.

  The Control Room is the heart of the Observatory.

  Ometeotl, the living computer, is the heart of the Control Room.

  “Welcome back, Empress Savage.”

  I have barely set one foot in this room and I am already annoyed.

  “I’ve told you to use my name, not hers,” I say, louder than I normally would, because I’m speaking to the room, not a person, and for some reason it always feels like I need to shout to be heard.

  “As you wish,” Ometeotl answers. “Welcome back, Em. You have been missed.”

  Maybe the computer hidden within these stone walls thinks so, but apparently no one else here does. The people in this room barely notice my arrival.

  This is the place where O’Malley was overwritten. The place where I killed him. The place I killed Old Bishop. Other people died here, too: several brave Springers, Old Dr. Smith, the overwritten Coyotl and a few Grownups whose names we will never know. This was a place of flame and smoke, bullets and blood, hatchets and hate. But as with so many other things on Omeyocan, we have changed its form.

  The room once held golden coffins designed to wipe out our minds and replace them with the minds of the Grownups. We removed those coffins. In the space where those little death factories stood, we erected a dozen pedestals that are used for education. We cleaned the walls and ceiling, scrubbed away the char and soot. We painted everything bright white, painted over the mural showing human sacrifice. We removed the twisted metal X where the overwriting process happened.

  We turned a temple of evil into a classroom where humans and Springers alike learn how to make a better world.

  In a way, we overwrote this room. Take that, Matilda.

  Every one of those dozen pedestals is in use, yet the students barely give me a glance. They seem…upset. Maybe Spingate’s lessons are more demanding than usual.

  In the center of the room sits the Well, a waist-high red metal wall that encircles the dirt shaft leading down to a power cell. Etched on that wall, the carbon symbol: an outer ring with four dots, an inner ring with two dots, and a solid circle at the center.

  That same symbol is at the very top of the Observatory. It was also atop the ruined church where Spingate and I first talked to Barkah. In the past year, we’ve learned it’s the symbol of a forgotten Springer religion. We don’t know what the symbol meant to Matilda and the builders of Uchmal, or why the race she tried to exterminate would have already been using it before the Xolotl arrived.

  Symbols. So important to the Grownups that they embedded them on our foreheads: the double-ring, SPIRIT, representing religion; the gear, MIND, our scientists; the half-circle, STRUCTURE, the engineers who build machines and make this city run; the circle-crosses of HEALTH, our doctors and teachers; our soldiers, our circle-stars, aptly named MIGHT.

  And, of course, the empty circles. SERVICE. Slaves.

  But what does the carbon symbol mean to the church?

  At the back of the room is a wide, waist-high platform with six more pedestals. On the platform stand Theresa Spingate and Xander Gaston—my two closest friends—and Halim Horn, Spingate’s top assistant.

  Halim is unique among us: a circle-star that doesn’t like to fight. The other circle-stars look down on him for that. Even Bishop. Bishop sees no problem with other symbols wanting to fight alongside the circle-stars, but one of his own wanting to be anything other than a warrior? To him, that is a betrayal of their birthright.

  But it doesn’t matter what Bishop thinks about it. Out of our 275 people, we have only seven gears. That’s seven scientists to handle almost all of our needs. Halim’s desire and ability to help Spingate frees her from some things she’d consider to be drudge work.

  Halim hides his circle-star symbol behind a white strip of cloth he’s tied around his head. On that headband, he’s stitched a new symbol: an empty circle, like mine, but with a diagonal slash through it, the ends of the line protruding just past the circle’s outer edge. He says the symbol is called an “empty set.” It represents his lack of belief in our symbols. I don’t think he should be ashamed of who he is, or trade one symbol for another, but that is how he identifies and I have no issue with it.

  Spingate and Gaston look exhausted. They always do. They work long, hard hours. They’re the only ones who make me feel lazy. And having a baby, I gather, doesn’t exactly help them get more sleep.

  Gaston scratches absently at his thick black beard. He won’t admit it, but I’m convinced he grew it to annoy Bishop. Bishop’s best effort to grow a beard resulted in a thin scrabble that looks like he glued sparse bits of hurukan fur to his cheeks. He’s annoyed someone so much smaller than he can do something he can’t.

  As if Ramses Bishop needs facial hair to show how “manly” he is.

  Gaston’s hands work glowing images floating above a pedestal. A cloth sling runs from his left shoulder down to his right hip. Nestled inside the cloth is a lump of noisy (and often smelly) delight known as Kevin Spingate-Gaston.

  They named their baby after my O’Malley.

  Theresa is also lugging about a baby, but this one is still inside her. She’s six months pregnant with their second child. Yet here she is, working away.

  “Hello, Spin.”

  She looks up from her pedestal, seems confused by my face for a moment.

  “Oh. Hello, Em. You’re back.”

  Is she glaring at me?

  “Spin, are you okay?”

  She blinks rapidly, then gives her head a little shake. The confusion seems to clear.

  “I’m fine. Come up and join us, please.”

  I step up onto the platform. I walk to Gaston first.

  “Hey,” he says. His hands and eyes remain fixed on the pedestal display, but he turns his body so I can get at the baby.

  “Wow, Xander, I didn’t know you missed me so much.”

  He grunts once. I pull little Kevin free of the sling and Gaston returns his full attention to his work.

  Kevin is so clean. So soft. I love the way he smells—except when his diaper needs to be changed, of course. He has Spingate’s eyes, Gaston’s nose and chin. Without a doubt, though, the thing I love the most about this child’s face is h
is little forehead.

  Because Kevin has no symbol.

  He is the first human on Omeyocan without one. He has no legacy of slavery or dominance, of being a have or a have-not. He has no memories of what he’s supposed to be, of a life that others have planned for him. When he grows up, Kevin Spingate-Gaston can choose whatever path he likes.

  That makes him a symbol unto himself: a symbol of what this planet can be, what our people can be.

  I turn slightly, for some reason showing the baby to Spingate as if she’s never seen the boy before.

  “He’s so wonderful,” I say. “He’s perfect.”

  Finally, she smiles. There is the beauty that is my best friend.

  “Thank you,” she says. “He’s growing so quickly.”

  He is at that. I’ve only been gone ten days but it feels like the baby has doubled in weight. I bounce him up and down a little. His mouth opens in a toothless grin that is the spitting image of his mother’s. She gently pets his head, brushing aside his thin red hair.

  “Spin, you and Xander seem a little angry,” I say. “Is everything all right?”

  “You mean besides the fact that we have three alien ships above us, Zubiri can’t get the optical telescope to work correctly, and we have an antenna that won’t let us communicate with the Xolotl, which we need to do if Bello is going to tell us anything about why all these ships—including ours—came to Omeyocan?”

  Her words mirror my own frustration.

  “Yes. Besides that.”

  Her nose crinkles as she thinks.

  “I don’t know.” She speaks quietly, so that only I can hear. “I just feel more…aggressive lately. I’ve yelled at Xander for no reason a couple of times. He was a good sport about it at first. He tried to be patient with me, but a couple of days ago he started yelling back. We’re getting mad at each other and we don’t know why.” She nods toward the students down on the floor, working away on their lessons. “Them, too. They’re so grumpy. We’ve all been working so hard. I guess the pressure of the approaching ships is getting to us.”

  It’s that, and more. Much more. The way Bawden acted. The Belligerents gathering to attack us. The way Barkah has changed. I am gifted at solving puzzles no one else can figure out, but for this, I’m at a loss. I push those thoughts away to the back of my mind. Most often, that’s where the pieces come together, when I’m not really thinking about them.

  “There’s something else,” Spingate says, her voice a tight whisper. “I’ve been having nightmares.”

  “What about?”

  She starts to speak, then stops. She looks at little Kevin for a moment, then shakes her head.

  “Never mind,” she says. “It’s nothing. I’m just not sleeping well is all.”

  Whatever the dreams were, they disturbed her. I know this girl almost as well as I know myself; when she’s ready to talk to me, she will. Until then, getting any information out of Theresa Spingate is like trying to get blood from a stone.

  But do I know her? She’s changed. The Spingate I thought I knew would have never thought torture was acceptable.

  “Well, I hope everyone feels better soon,” I say. Then, loud enough for everyone to hear: “What’s going on with the alien ship?”

  Spingate looks at Halim. “Put it on the main display.”

  He nods, works the glowing controls floating above his pedestal. The air above the red well flares to life. Spingate and I stand together, waiting. Gaston joins us. Without a word, he gently takes Kevin from my arms and nestles the baby back into the sling.

  The image forms. I’ve seen it so many times in the last six months. A small sphere of blue and yellow and brown represents Omeyocan, our planet. Hovering above it is a red dot labeled Xolotl—our ship of nightmares that traveled over a thousand years to get here.

  Then there are the three unknowns. A blue dot represents the first alien ship. When we discovered it, Ometeotl labeled it Beta-One. Gaston didn’t like that generic name, said he wanted his enemies to have a “face,” whatever that means. He renamed it Basilisk. Farther out, a yellow dot—Gamma-One, renamed Goblin. And beyond that, a green dot that represents Delta-One, renamed Dragon.

  “The Basilisk is thousands of miles from the Xolotl, but both ships have a line of sight on Uchmal,” Spingate says. “I think the Basilisk will settle into final orbit in the next two days. It probably can’t safely launch shuttles until then.”

  Two days. We might be at war in just two days.

  “Do we have any way of communicating with it?”

  Gaston shakes his head. “Not unless the antenna magically fixes itself. Even if it was repaired, I’m not sure if it would work. Since you left to fight the Belligerents, the electronic interference that’s screwed up our communications systems has gotten worse.”

  I think of the jewels and Borjigin’s messageboard problem.

  “Could the Basilisk be doing that?” I ask. “Or one of the other ships?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gaston says. “Whatever the problem is, it seems to be originating from Omeyocan, not from space.”

  More bad news. I need the antenna to work so Bello can talk to Matilda. And if war does come, we may need to communicate with the Xolotl anyway.

  “So even if we fix the antenna,” I say, “it won’t work because of this interference?”

  Spingate shrugs. “Hard to know. The antenna is directly connected to the power plant down in the Well, so a working signal would be exponentially stronger than anything the jewels or the messageboards produce. It might overpower this interference. I’ve still got Nevins, Peura and Harman working full-time on fixing it. Opkick has been helping them search storage rooms for parts, but so far they haven’t been able to repair the damage.”

  When we first climbed the Observatory’s three thousand steps and reached the top layer, we saw a tall stone pillar decorated with our symbols. At that time, we didn’t know the pillar housed an antenna meant to let the Observatory communicate with the Xolotl. At some point in the two centuries after Uchmal was built, a power surge of some kind damaged the antenna, cutting Matilda off from the spiders and from the construction robots that built this great city.

  I stare at the simple blue dot representing the Basilisk. The blankness of it tears at me. Because of the radio telescopes spread out across the city and in the jungle I know where the alien ships are, but for now we have no idea what they look like.

  “How about the repairs to the Goffspear telescope?” I ask. “When will those be complete? I need to see this ship.”

  “Soon,” Gaston says. “Zubiri thinks she’s getting closer.”

  I try to control my anger.

  “You’ve been telling me soon for over a year,” I say. “Maybe that word means something different to you than it does to me.”

  His face twists into a snarl. “Then fix it yourself. If you know so much, you do the godsdamned work!”

  I take a step back, shocked at his response.

  “Gaston,” Spingate snaps, “don’t take your frustration out on Em!”

  “Oh, it’s all right for you to be a bastard to me, but I can’t be one to Em? Sure, that’s fair.”

  She points a finger at him. “You shut your stupid mouth. Your attitude makes me sick.”

  I’m dumbfounded. Since we landed on this planet, these two have been inseparable, their love perfect, patient and kind. Yet here they are screaming at each other.

  Gaston takes a step toward her, but before he says anything else little Kevin starts to cry.

  The sound shocks Gaston and Spingate out of their sudden burst of anger. Their faces turn red. Spingate steps to Gaston, puts her arms around him. He hugs her back, the baby between them. Comforted in this sudden embrace, Kevin stops crying.

  “Maybe you two need a break from work,” I say quietly.

  Halim comes closer, flashing a disarming grin, hands up as if to say don’t take it out on me even though he could probably beat all three of us up at the same time.


  “Actually, it’s time for that meeting in the Grand Hall,” he says. “Borjigin said to make sure we weren’t late.”

  Again with the damn meeting?

  Spingate runs a hand through her thick red hair. She sighs heavily, as if trying to clear the stress from her body.

  “Yes, the meeting,” she says. “We should all go now, together.”

  I point to the blue dot. “This is more important.”

  “We have at least a day,” Gaston says. “If we don’t do this meeting now, we might not get to do it at all. I’m told it’s very important.”

  Spingate claps her hands. The students all look up at her.

  “Everyone, to the Grand Hall,” she says. “Right now.”

  The students exchange excited looks as they rush out of the room. Does everyone know what this is about except me?

  Halim puts his arm around my shoulders.

  “Help me out, Em. If you’re not on time, Borjigin said he would come down here and yell at me. I’m a delicate soul. I might wither and die.”

  I can feel the strength in his muscular arm. He is a circle-star, after all.

  “You might wither and die,” I say. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Did I mention how delicate I am? What if I say pretty please?”

  He smiles wide.

  Halim rarely asks for anything. I look at Spingate and Gaston. They’re also smiling. Whatever this is, everyone is in on it.

  I sigh, and I give in.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  The four of us walk toward the Grand Hall. It is the largest room in the Observatory. At least the largest one we’ve found so far—this place is full of hidden doors and hallways. We’re still discovering new areas almost every week.

  We’ve had several all-hands meetings in the Grand Hall. It’s quite beautiful. Large marble columns support an arched stone ceiling. There were carvings of torture and human sacrifice, but we covered those with large tapestries made by the Springers.

  I like the Hall, but one part of it really bothers me—a raised dais with an obnoxious golden throne. I’m sure that’s where Matilda thought she would rule. The left side of the throne has a bracket that holds a ceremonial golden knife, its pommel decorated with a double-ring symbol done in rubies. The right side holds a thin red cane—a working “rod,” the torture device used to punish people, especially children. Matilda used an identical rod on me when I was her captive. The pain. I shiver involuntarily every time I see the thing, which is why the entire throne is covered in a blanket made of hurukan fur. Out of sight, yes, but not out of mind—we all know the throne is there, a constant reminder of the evil that built this city.