After Earth (25 page)

Kitai moved closer to the warmth of the lava thread. His cutlass at the ready, he found a good spot and hunkered down. Finally, he could rest his body. But it wasn’t so easy to rest his mind. He had to remain watchful there, like anywhere else on Earth. It became harder when the light from his lifesuit dimmed and went out.

Delirious, Cypher continued to search his probe cameras for a glimpse of Kitai. But as many probes as he checked, over and over again, he didn’t see a thing. Not even a hint that Kitai was still alive. Then Cypher saw him—or thought he did. But no. It was just that he wanted to see Kitai so badly, he convinced himself for a second that he had.

I’ve lost him
, Cypher thought.
Lost him
. And he cracked. The weight of it, everything he had been through—everything he had put his son through—was too much for him. He had sacrificed both of his children on the Raige altar of pride and service.

He fought the collapse and turned back to the search for his boy. “Come on,” he whispered fervently, “come on! Where are you?”

It was no use.

Reluctantly, his fist shaking, he hit the stud that activated the cockpit recorder. “General Cypher Raige,” he groaned. “The mission with Cadet Kitai Raige was a failure. I—”

He tried to go on, but he couldn’t. With a sigh, he looked down at his tortured legs, at the blood running down them and collecting on the deck. When he looked up again, his tone was different. Softer. More human. “This is a message for my wife.

“Faia, I have lost our son.”

She would find that shocking, no doubt. How could the general not know what to do?

But Cypher didn’t feel like the general anymore. He felt helpless, unable to help his son or even himself. His eyes, the eyes of a father, began to fill with tears.

Kitai didn’t know when light began to filter into the cave. After another sleepless night, time blurs into one endless mess. He realized that he could see without the help of his suit. His cutlass sat on the ground beside him along with the rest of his gear. Only one vial of breathing fluid remained to him.

Kitai looked at the cave paintings and felt a spurt of inspiration. With the help of a rock, he drew a picture of his own—a huge map that covered an entire wall—and traced his journey step by step since he had left his father in the ship. When details became fuzzy, Kitai found himself hearing his father’s voice in his head, guiding him as he labeled every location:
Dad. Baboons. River. Waterfalls. Nest. I am here, I think
. And finally,
Tail somewhere here
in a huge open area on the map.

As Kitai worked, he developed a plan.

He didn’t stop until he saw the hog family start to leave the cave. He quickly gathered his things and followed them out into the sunlight. Once he emerged from the hole, the mother pig looked back at him as if to say “You’re welcome.”

He was still marveling at the creature’s intelligence when a huge shadow fell over him. Shading his eyes and looking up, Kitai saw the mother condor creature circling overhead.

Why? Is it hungry?
More than likely it was. He got a better grip on his cutlass and began walking south. As Kitai made his way through the jungle, he felt hollowed out. He hadn’t slept well in the cave. After a while, he glanced up again and saw that the condor creature was still pacing him on the other side of some trees.

“Leave me alone!” he cried out.

But it didn’t.

Finally, no longer content just to fly beside Kitai, it landed on a branch above him. Looking up, he could see it sitting there. There was no question in his mind that it was watching him. But the more he looked at it, the more he thought it looked listless rather than hungry. It seemed to him that it was still mourning its young. Still, it was a dangerous creature, and Kitai wanted to escape from it. But he couldn’t. He was too spent. He lumbered along as best he could, keeping an eye on the bird all the while.

He was directly below the condor creature when the ground began to tremble. Kitai looked around, confused. What was going on? Moment by moment the sound grew louder, like boulders rolling down a hill, and the ground shook even more violently. Kitai’s suit turned black and developed little bumps in its texture.

Suddenly a herd of six-foot-tall creatures burst from the foliage. They looked to Kitai like an evolved variety of okapi. He flung himself out of the way of the first creature but was instantly caught up in the stampede. One hit him as it came on and knocked him to his left; then another hit him and sent him to the ground.
Powerful hooves trampled the turf all around him, narrowly missing him.

The sound of the herd was deafening as Kitai struggled to his feet. But there was good news—he had an open lane up ahead, a lane free of the creatures. If he kept to it, he might be all right. Then he was hit again, a glancing blow. Unable to stop himself, he fell among the trampling hooves a second time.
That’s it
, he thought.
I’m done
.

Suddenly, Kitai felt something grab him and jerk him into the air. Looking down, he realized he was rising above the okapi—and rising even more, the herd falling farther and farther below him. The okapi charged through the field, unrelenting. From this height, Kitai could see how green the landscape was. He could see how thoroughly the herd was trampling it.

But not me
, he thought.
It’s not trampling me
. He was safe.
Somehow
.

Kitai caught a glimpse of something metallic glinting in the distance, something human-made sticking out of the natural landscape. It made him wonder what it was for a second.

Then he fell toward the ground.

It rushed up at him faster than he thought he could handle. As he hit it, he tucked and rolled and by sheer luck missed a pair of colossal trees when he somersaulted between them. The next thing he knew, he had stopped, and unlikely as it seemed, he was still intact. Dazed, dizzy from the spinning he had done, he managed to get his feet underneath him. He looked around.

What happened?
Kitai asked himself. One moment he was about to be crushed under all those hooves, and the next he was rising through the air. As he was wondering, he caught movement in the trees. Then he saw what had saved him from the okapi. The condorlike bird was sitting on a tree limb far above, looking down on him.

Kitai stared up at it, still shivering with adrenaline. His neck stiff from the fall, he moved it from side to side
to alleviate the pain. To his surprise, the bird did the same thing.
Did I just see what I thought I saw?
he wondered. He stood still and stared up at the bird. Then he moved his head from side to side again, this time intentionally. And again the condorlike creature did the same thing. Kitai smiled and nodded his thanks. Clearly, the bird wasn’t like the birds back on Nova Prime.

It was much more than that.

With that discovery in mind, he backpedaled slowly into the jungle, turned, and hurried on.

Sometime later, Kitai approached the banks of a river. His lifesuit was rust once more. Exhausted, he dumped his gear on the ground. He fumbled with the breathing fluid case. For a moment, he thought he was going to pass out. Then he closed his fingers around the last vial. Kitai regarded it, knowing the significance of it. After it was done, there would be no more breathing fluid.
None
. But what choice did he have?

As his father had shown him, he accepted the contents of the last vial. Then he sat back. Even with the oxygen coursing through his bloodstream, he was bone-tired. It would be so easy for him to just give up.
So easy
 …

As Kitai thought that, he saw a log float by on the river. He stared at it, and an idea came to him. He looked around and saw a group of fallen trees by the river’s edge. He struggled to his feet, approached some long vines hanging from the trees, and started cutting them.

Before long, he had created a small raft made of fallen tree logs and lashed them together with the vines he had found. He pulled it to the edge of the river. Then he pushed it in and jumped on top of it. As the current caught the raft and pulled it along, Kitai saw that the
water was teeming with life. He stood up in the center of the raft and used a long branch he had acquired as an oar.

He was so enthralled by the fish flitting through the water, in and out of the sunlight, that he almost missed something else: a forty-foot anaconda swimming lazily alongside the raft. Kitai tamped down his fear. He held his breath for what seemed like forever, hoping the snake wouldn’t try to overturn the raft. Eventually, the thing passed him by.

He took a breath, let it out. Aside from the snake, the river was actually kind of peaceful. There was thick, lush jungle on either side of it, its leaves reaching out over the water. Kitai allowed himself to relax, to lie down on his back. The breathtaking landscape moved past him on either side.

Drained of energy, fatigued, he took the opportunity to close his eyes for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. The sounds of life served as a haunting lullaby, the river rocking him to sleep.
No
, he thought.
Got to stay awake
. But he couldn’t. Slowly but surely, he drifted off …

Then a hand touched him ever so gently, and he heard a feminine voice say, “Wake up.”

Kitai opened his eyes and saw his sister, Senshi, sitting on the raft with him. Her hair hung to one side. Stroking his face gently, she said, “It’s time for you to wake up.”

He looked up and smiled at her. “Hey.”

He wondered how it could be that she was with him in that moment on Earth. But he was too tired to question it. He just took in the welcome sight of her face, which he hadn’t seen in a long time. Not since her death. Suddenly, he felt a pang of guilt.

“I was about to come out that day,” he said.

His sister smiled and shook her head. “No, you weren’t. But you did the right thing.”

It felt good to hear her say that. But it didn’t lift his burden, not entirely.

“Dad says I should have tried.”

“He’s just mad at himself,” said Senshi. “That’s all.”

“Why couldn’t you ghost?”

His sister stared down at him and touched his face again. “You’re close right now.”

“I am?” He was surprised that she would say that.

“Are you scared?” Senshi asked.

Was he?

“No,” he decided. “I’m tired.”

“That’s good. You filled your heart with something else. Now you’ve got to get up.”

Kitai looked up at her. “I memorized some of
Moby Dick
.” He thought that would please her and convince her to stick around a little longer.

But all she did was repeat what she had said: “Kitai, get up.”

Maybe she didn’t believe him. Well, he would prove it to her. “ ‘All that most maddens and torments,’ ” he said, quoting the book, “ ‘all that stirs up the lees of things—’ ”

His sister took on a concerned look. “Kitai, wake up. It’s time for you to wake up.”

She was distracting him. Kitai covered his ears so that he could concentrate. “ ‘All truth with malice in it—’ ”

Senshi said it again, this time with more urgency: “Kitai,
wake up
.”

Ignoring her, he continued. “ ‘All that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain—’ ”

His sister looked down as if resigned to the idea that Kitai wouldn’t listen to her. Her hair hung in front of her face. Then she looked up suddenly, and when she did, her face was mangled and bleeding, just as it had been when the Ursa attacked her that day. Her eyes wide, she screamed in a voice full of fear and pain,
“Wake up!”

Kitai snapped awake. Disoriented, he looked around. All around him, the jungle was freezing over. The river was already half frozen. The raft was propped up against a riverbank. Kitai cursed beneath his breath. The jungle
was turning gray. The rough undersides of the plants had become a carapace against the cold. He had lost a critical amount of time. There was only one way he could make up for it. He got up and sprinted like crazy. But with every step, the temperature plummeted. The plants and trees around him turned a frigid white. Frost formed on his upper lip and on top of his head.

Still he kept moving, kept pumping his arms and legs. His lifesuit turned icy, but that didn’t stop him. Then, up ahead, branches began snapping. Chunks of shrubbery flew about and fell to the ground. Kitai was shivering violently, his arms wrapped around himself, but he didn’t dare go on until he saw what was causing the carnage.

Then he caught sight of it—up ahead, high in the trees, a bird like the one whose nest he had helped defend. Or
tried
to help defend. As he watched, the creature viciously broke off one leafy branch after another and let them fall to the ground.

Kitai wished he knew why.

At the same time, the jungle floor began to freeze. Kitai collapsed to his knees and fell forward. A moment later his face hit the hard, cold ground. He felt as if ice were forming on his eyelids. His face was cold, so cold. Everything in front of him became a blur. He got the vague impression of claws digging at the earth, of the jungle turning to ice, of his lifesuit turning from rust to deadly white. Then he saw a flurry of dark feathered wings, and came to the conclusion that the mammoth bird was coming to kill him.

My cutlass. If I can only get to my cutlass—

It was the last thing he thought before darkness closed down on him.

Brazil was the wettest month in Nova Prime City, although that wasn’t saying much. The rainfall measured barely sixty millimeters, twice the average of most other months. It did help control the ever-present dust the light breeze usually spread, and there was a burst of color as flower gardens everywhere suddenly sprouted with new life.

Spring was certainly in the air, and it brought a rare smile to Khantun Timur Raige’s face. With the mildly damp weather came the conclusion of another year of cadet training. By now, the latest round of War Games was concluding somewhere in the cliffs just outside the city. She had checked in a day before and silently observed as the Blue team appeared ready to triumph, but the overnight report showed the Red team had out-maneuvered them. If the Green team was smart, they’d let them fight it out and slip through to win.