Alight (48 page)

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?”

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.”

No one speaks. The blue dot blinks softly.

I couldn’t have possibly anticipated this. No one could have. We
earned
peace. An uneasy peace, certainly, but humans and Springers are working together, trying to build bridges that will lead to us sharing this planet. Not as one people, perhaps, but as cooperative neighbors. We’ve fought for that, and now a tiny point of blue light tells me it might all be for nothing.

“How long?” I say. “How long until it arrives?”

Gaston scratches his beard. “About two hundred days.”

We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know if it is friend or enemy.

Spingate clears her throat. “It’s likely they detected our radio wave, so they know that we know they’re coming. We’re trying to figure out how to send a communication, but we’re not sure how to do that, or if they would even understand. Should we—”

The room speaks, cutting her off.

“Grandmaster Spingate,”
Ometeotl says.
“Contact Gamma-One detected.
”

Farther out from Omeyocan, past the blue dot and in yet another direction, a yellow dot appears.

Spingate and Gaston say nothing.

“Is that the sun?” I ask. “One of the two moons?”

Spingate slowly shakes her head. “The
Xolotl
is labeled Alpha-One. That was the first thing the radio wave detected. Then it detected the blue dot, which we labeled Beta-One. The wave keeps expanding, continues to detect things that are farther out.” Her hands rub absently at her swollen belly.

Gaston turns quickly to another pedestal. He calls up glowing symbols, grabs them, moves them, turns them.

The yellow dot grows a line: it points out into yet another area of space.

“A third ship,” he says, his voice flat, stunned. “Estimated time to orbit, two hundred eighty-one days. Maybe it’s a ghost image or something, or an asteroid, or—”

“Grandmaster Spingate, contact Delta-One detected.”

A green dot appears. This time I don’t have to ask what it is—it’s all too clear.

Gaston works the controls.

“Getting the estimated time to orbit,” he says. “Roughly…three hundred thirty-two days.”

Three ships, out there in the blackness of space. They are all coming from different directions.

They are all coming
here
.

Our fight for Omeyocan is long from over.

To my nieces, Riley and Sydney. May you grow to be strong and wise in all things. I love you.

S
cott would like to thank the following people for their research expertise:

Dr. Joseph A. Albietz III, M.D.

Maria D’souza

Dr. Nicole Gugliucci, Ph.D.

A Kovacs

Dr. Phil Plait, Ph.D.

Chris Grall

MSG, U.S. Army Special Forces (Ret.)

John Vizcarra

And these lovely people for story feedback:

Abby Parrill-Baker, Ph.D.

Daniel Baker, Ph.D.

Lindsey Baker

Jody Sigler

BY SCOTT SIGLER

T
HE
G
ENERATIONS
T
RILOGY

Alive

Alight

Alone
(coming soon)

N
OVELS

Infected
(Infected Trilogy Book I)

Contagious
(Infected Trilogy Book II)