After Earth (24 page)

This
.

Kitai felt a soft pecking at his cheek.
What …?
He brushed it away with his hand, but it resumed a moment later. Finally, he opened his eyes to see where the pecking was coming from and found himself staring into the eyes of a tiny, newborn baby bird, close enough to nuzzle at him with its beak. Instinctively, Kitai jumped back and realized he was covered in something clear and viscous. He sucked in a breath and began wiping the stuff off his face. Only then did he pay attention to the patchwork of light and shadow around him and the intertwined branches picking shadows from the sunlight.

Where am I?
he wondered.

Propping himself up, Kitai looked around. He was surrounded by eggs: not the kind he had known on Nova Prime but huge ones, each of them bigger than the baby bird. And they had all begun to crack.

As he watched, the birds inside them—dark, wet things—emerged from the eggs and spread their slick wings as if they would take flight.
A nest
, he realized.
I’m in a giant nest
. Kitai looked down. He could see through the bottom of the nest, where there were gaps in the branches.
If I’m in a nest
, he thought,
I must be in a tree
. He identified the biggest branch in the interwoven structure and traced it back to an enormous trunk. And there, sitting on the branch right next to the trunk, was a massive bird of prey, not unlike a condor except it was more than two meters tall if it was a centimeter. As Kitai looked on, his heart pounding, the bird opened its beak and spread its wings. They spanned a good five meters. Of course, he had seen that kind of wingspan before …

Just before the bird plucked him out of the sky.

It seemed to be standing guard at the base of the branch. Eyeing him. As what? Food for its newborn?

Kitai had no intention of serving that purpose. He looked around for his backpack and found it on the other side of the nest. It was torn in the corner, but his cutlass was still clipped to it. That was good. With the cutlass, he had a chance against the bird. He started moving toward the weapon slowly so as not to disturb the bird. All around him, its young continued to break free of their eggs. Finally, Kitai reached his gear.

But as he reached for it, he looked down through the gaps in the nest and saw a dark shape moving up the trunk of the tree. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked enormous, even bigger than the adult bird. One of the newborn creatures moved toward Kitai. He extended his foot and pushed it away. It fell on its side so clumsily that it was funny.

But Kitai wasn’t inclined to laugh. Not when the dark shape was still moving up the trunk below him. And
definitely
not when he saw a second shape drop onto his branch from above.

With trembling hands, he unclipped the cutlass from his pack. Then he tapped in a combination on its handle. Instantly the weapon extended to its full two-meter length, with one end featuring a sharp spear point and the other a flat blade. None too soon, either, because the limb on which the nest rested began to shake violently.

Suddenly, the adult bird went at the invader that had attacked from below. Kitai could see the intruder better now. Its fur was a burned gold. The body someplace between leopard and lion. It snarled and swiped at the bird, which spread its wings and took itself out of the leopard’s range. But not
too
far. It still had a nest full of young to protect. As Kitai watched, it flew at the leopard and pecked at it with its razor-sharp beak.

This is my chance
, he thought.

While the creatures were busy, he could slip out of the nest and make his way down through the branches of the tree. With luck, neither of them would notice his departure until it was too late to retrieve him. Kitai crawled to the edge of the nest, but before he could
climb over it, he felt the branch shudder. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw another leopard appear on the end of the branch. Still others were scaling the trunk below him.

The cadet looked back at the newborns in the corner of the nest. They squawked at him. Kitai didn’t know why, but he felt an obligation to defend them.

It was crazy. He had his own skin to look after, and his father’s life depended on him, too. But he couldn’t just leave the newborn birds to the mercy of the leopards. Moving back into the center of the nest, he stood in front of the younglings, his cutlass at the ready.

Suddenly a huge leopard paw erupted from between the branches of the nest, narrowly missing Kitai. It was the first of many. As Kitai watched, paws came up from the bottom of the nest here, there, and everywhere. One of them struck a newborn bird. The branches of the nest began to crack and break apart under the leopards’ assault. Kitai used his spear point to stab at one of them. The leopard screamed as the weapon pierced its hide.

Then an entire section of the nest broke off from the main structure. The leopard clinging to it fell with it to the ground far below. Another section broke off. And another. Soon all that was left of the nest was the bowl-like shape in the center of it. Before Kitai could react, one of the leopards crawled over the edge and sank its claws into a newborn bird. The cadet stabbed the leopard with his cutlass and watched it retreat back over the edge of the nest.

But there were others climbing in from every direction. Kitai spun his cutlass, slicing one of the leopards’ paws.

“Leave them alone!” he cried out.

Suddenly he wasn’t alone in his efforts to defend the nest. The adult bird, which had engaged the first leopard creature, rose into the air with the leopard’s hind leg in its beak. Then it dropped the leopard, which fell end over end until it hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Free now, the bird swooped in and snatched another leopard from behind. It dragged the leopard out of the nest and tossed it into the air, where it became another victim of the planet’s gravity.

Meanwhile, one of the other leopard creatures reached a newborn bird. As it began mauling it, Kitai rushed forward and skewered the leopard’s flank. The leopard writhed in pain and, still clutching the baby, plummeted over the side of the nest.

Kitai and the adult bird continued to fight off the leopards. By the time the last of the beasts was thrown to the ground, he was breathing hard and was drenched with sweat. He looked around and saw that none of the newborns remained in the nest. Their shells lay shattered and empty.

All for nothing?
Kitai asked himself.

With a screech, the massive bird dived from the nest, no doubt in search of its young.
I’ve got to leave
, Kitai thought. But he stood there for a moment, the cutlass in his hand, wishing he could have saved at least
one
of the baby birds. Finally, he retracted the ends of the cutlass and snapped it back onto his pack. Then he donned the pack and started climbing down from the tree. It wasn’t all that hard. There were plenty of branches and vines to hang on to. Finally, he landed on the ground.

That was when Kitai saw the bird through the foliage. She was standing amid the carcasses of her babies. As he looked on, she raised her head and screamed. He could hear pain in that sound. The pain of loss. It almost sounded human as it ripped through the forest.

Again the bird bowed her head and touched it to the lifeless newborns. Then she screamed again, this time even longer. Kitai recognized that sound, that sense of loss. He had felt it himself, after all. Everyone in his family had felt it. He watched a little longer. Then he left the bird behind in its misery, backed up into the jungle, and slipped away.

He hadn’t gone far, however, before he realized that something was wrong. Abruptly, he checked his wrist
and felt a fresh wave of panic when he saw the naviband was missing. It must have broken free when the leopard creature slashed at him. This was a new complication he really did not need.

“Come on, no!” Kitai cried out in frustration. The woods echoed his words back at him.

It was hard enough to traverse a treacherous landscape with all kinds of obstacles, both living and otherwise. But to do so without a working naviband …? Kitai looked around. He was all alone, cut off from his father for good, and he had no idea how long he had until the sun went down.

Panicked, he ran through the dense jungle ahead of him, crashing through branches, trying to gain altitude to catch the sun before it vanished. He ran so fast, so desperately, that he was out in the open on a high plateau before he knew it. Skidding to a halt, Kitai saw that he was in the midst of ancient ruins.
A dam
, he thought. He had never seen one before, though he had read about them.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over him. He looked up and saw the condorlike bird in the sky, clipping the tops of trees, flying recklessly, almost angrily. It was a scary sight. Was it trying to hurt itself because it had allowed its young to be killed? Was it feeling guilt? Sadness?

It’s a bird
, Kitai reminded himself. But it wasn’t like the birds he had known all his life on Nova Prime. It had evolved in the time since humankind had left the planet. As he thought that, the bird rocketed straight up toward the sun.
Angry. Definitely angry
.

But Kitai had more to worry about than the condor creature. He could see his breath starting to freeze in the air. The temperature was dropping rapidly. The bird might have the luxury to run wild, to let her emotions get the best of her.
But I don’t. Not if I’m going to live through the night
.

Kitai steadied himself, took control. He wasn’t going to panic, wasn’t going to let his emotions get in the way. He was going to keep a cool head no matter what. He
was tired. He was lost. But it was going to be all right. Figuring the bird would know where to find a warm spot, he took off after her.

It wasn’t easy keeping up with something that could fly, but he did his best. Sprinting through the jungle, he moved toward what he hoped was a geothermal zone or at least some kind of shelter. All the while, the sun dropped through the sky like a stone.

Cypher, trapped in the ship’s cockpit, felt a wave of panic wash over his battered body as the connection with the naviband was terminated abruptly. Something had happened to the device or, worse, to his son. Furiously his fingers tapped controls, checked probe after probe. Images blasted at him—of mountains, of jungles, of beaches—but Kitai was nowhere to be seen.

He has to be somewhere
, Cypher thought. “Come on,” he said out loud, his voice cracking with the strain. “Where are you?” He scanned a stretch of plains covered with herds of evolved bison, clefts full of twisted foliage, a rushing river that churned through a pine forest. But try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a sign of his son.

Please
, he thought,
be alive. Be alive …

As Kitai ran through the jungle, the plants on either side of him began to close up on themselves. The world was frosting over again. Kitai looked left and right for shelter but didn’t see a single possibility. Then he caught a glimpse of a small hoglike creature running just in front of him. As far as he could tell, the hoglike thing didn’t seem worried or lost. It seemed to know exactly where it was going.

Bereft of any other viable options, he decided to follow it. It wasn’t easy. He had to use all his quickness and agility, scramble under bushes and leap over piles of rocks, swing around tree trunks and crash his way through branches heavy with leaves. Finally, Kitai saw the creature burrow into a hole in the ground. A moment later, three smaller specimens of the same species followed it.

The ice was like a tide, crackling its way across the landscape in his direction. In a matter of seconds, it would be on top of him. Kitai didn’t hesitate. He tried to dive into the creatures’ hole. Unfortunately, he was a lot bigger than they were. As the frost crept over him, he picked up a flat stone and used it to start digging to make the hole bigger. His fingers growing colder by the moment, he dug for all he was worth. Finally, the hole was big enough. Just in time, Kitai slid his body into it.

He thought he would find a hollow where he could curl up with the hog creatures. Instead, he started sliding along something slick and wet. Not just a little, either. He must have slid ten meters before he came to something soft and grassy. Not that Kitai could see down there. He was just going by the way it felt.

Need light
, he thought, and hit an area on his lifesuit. Instantly a section of the suit lit up, dispelling the darkness, and he saw that the hog hole was actually a cave with smooth stone walls. Kitai moved between them. The light from his suit illuminated the stone surfaces, revealing a collection of beautifully colored cave paintings. One of them showed herds of bison. Another showed flocks of birds. Still another showed a primitive hunt.

Kitai wondered how old the paintings were. Many thousands of years, no doubt. A particular painting caught his attention. It showed a man, sleeping apparently, surrounded by different animals.

Despite the crudeness of the technique, there was a beauty and a majesty to the place. As he caught his breath, he admired everything around him, appreciated
it for what it was: a window into the way the first men looked at their world. Down below the cave, which was really just a slanted pocket in the earth, a tiny rivulet of lava could be seen moving in the darkness. Kitai nodded to himself.
That’s where the warmth is coming from
.

Suddenly, he heard a noise, a scratching sound. Following it to its source, he saw a snake emerge from a seam in the cave wall. As he watched, it spread the skin on either side of its body into what looked like wings. Then it rose up and floated through the cave.

Kitai shrank from it, pressing himself as far back into the stone wall as he could. But the snake didn’t seem to take an interest in him. Instead it landed on a rodent that was scurrying in the darkness. With blinding speed, the snake coiled itself around the rodent and crushed the life out of it. Then it flew away with the limp little carcass.