Athel (12 page)

I show it
to her and her eyes widen. “I know, it’s kind of rudimentary. It’s temporary,
though. Until we can make you a better one.”

She’s
really pale now, and I can tell from the shine in her eyes that she’s running a
fever. I scoot closer, grab the bottle from the ground and push it in front of
her face. Surprisingly, she doesn’t jerk away like she did earlier.

“You have
to take this. To fight the infection.”

She
doesn’t budge. She doesn’t trust me, either. So I unscrew the cap, raise the
bottle above my mouth, and let a few drops fall on my lips. I want her to trust
me, but I don’t want to contaminate the bottle. The medicine tastes awful, yet
I manage to force a smile onto my face.

“See?” I
say. “Your turn, now.”

Man, she’s
stubborn. All females are, Mayake or not.

She tilts
her head and looks over to Taeh, grazing by the water.

“You want
to pet Taeh again, don’t you?”

I set the
bottle on the ground next to her and then get up to fetch Taeh. As I walk the
horse over, some color resurfaces on the girl’s cheeks. She beams and tries to
get up.

“No,” I
say. “Medicine first.” I point to the bottle, then pat Taeh’s rump. “Take the
medicine and I’ll teach you how to ride her.”

She looks
at the bottle then back at me.

Her blue
eyes make me queasy. It’s my fault she lost a hand. I don’t know how or why,
but somehow she managed to get caught in the struggle with the droid when the
snare went off.

I step
closer and crouch down to her level. “I know you’re wondering whether you can
trust me or not. And you probably don’t understand a word I’m saying. I don’t
know where you came from, and I don’t know what the heck you’re doing here.” I
chew the inside of my cheek and wait for a reaction, any kind of reaction. But
she just stares at me with eyes that remind me of a sky I’ve never seen, not
for as long as the Gaijins’ factory has blown ashes over our land. She stares,
and who knows what she’s thinking.

“I’m
sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry you lost your hand.” I swallow and force another
smile onto my lips. “If it’s any comfort, you chanced on the right place. We’ve
all lost something around here. Check this out.” I press underneath my left eye
and make it pop out of its socket. She screams and covers her mouth, her blue
eyes bulging. And then, as I push my eye back into place, she giggles. To add
to the nonsense, I shake my head and let the eye dangle down my cheek. You’d
think she’d be grossed out, but instead her chuckle bursts into full laughter.

And that
is priceless.

I pop my
eye back in and grab mom’s old prosthesis.

“That’s why
we have all sorts of gadgets to make up for the stuff we lost.”

I show her
the prosthesis, then the medicine bottle. I hold it in front of her face and
stare straight into her eyes. “To make you feel better.”

Carefully,
I slide the bottle into her left hand. She doesn’t jump when my fingers brush
her warm skin. So I dare more and take her hand into mine, close her fingers
around the bottle, and then move her hand to her lips.

Except I
forgot to uncap the bottle.

She
understands anyway, bites the cap off, and downs the whole thing in three
gulps. When she’s done, she makes a disgusted face and shoves her face down
into the creek, drinking.

“You need
to rest now.”

She wipes
her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes on the small packets of food I
left on the grass next to my backpack.

“Oh,” I
say. “Rest and eat, of course.”

As soon as
I push the food closer, she lunges for the ball of rice and scoops it all up in
one brisk gesture. At first she looks surprised by the texture, her jaws
working a little too dramatically around that rice. After that first mouthful,
though, she comes back for more, and in no time she wipes out the whole ball of
rice and the casserole leftovers, too.

Not bad
for someone who didn’t have an appetite.

When she
brings to her mouth the leaf wrappers I used to package the food, I laugh and
shake my head. “No. You don’t eat those.” I take them from her and toss them in
the stream.

She
watches them bob down the creek and her face turns sad again. Her injured arm
hangs from her shoulder as though drained of life. Most Mayakes are born
without limbs, and the lack of body parts is a sight we’re all accustomed to.
But it never occurred to me until now how painful it must be to lose one.

I shift
closer and point a finger at the dirty cloth loosely wrapped around her severed
wrist. I smell the metallic tang of blood on her. And then something else, an
artificial scent I can’t pinpoint, reminds me of the disinfectant newborn
mothers use to keep their infants from getting infections.

She watches
me unfold the clean gauze I brought from home and doesn’t object when I touch
her arm and redo the dressing of her wound.

“These
wraps are drenched in antibiotic solution,” I explain as I dress her wound.
“It’ll prevent an infection.”

The heat
radiating from her body tells me her fever is still high. I think of the stupid
snare I built at the gorge and how it was supposed to catch a droid, not a girl
from the other side of the mesa. How did this happen? Did she struggle with the
scavenger droid that got caught in the trap? Or did she get trapped trying to
free the droid?

I tuck the
end of the gauze underneath the wraps so it won’t come loose, then press a hand
over my chest.

“Athel,” I
say, hoping the gesture is more or less universal in its meaning.

She stares
at me and blinks. She doesn’t even attempt to repeat my name. Holy Kawa, how do
these people communicate?

“Athel,” I
repeat, but all I get is a yawn and an attempt to get up. I help her stand up,
expecting her to walk over to Taeh and pet her. Instead she stumbles away,
shuffling between the trees. It’s sort of funny to watch her, the fever making
her sway like a drunkard.

“Where are
you going?”

She turns
and her eyes say, “Follow me,” or at least that’s what I see, so I pick up my
backpack and Mom’s prosthesis, grab Taeh’s reins, and follow the girl whose
name I couldn’t coerce from her.

We pass a
broken arch that leads to nowhere and a moss-covered slab of cement that slants
out of the ground. The terrain under the trees bends up and down like a
crinkled piece of metal as we step over the buried ruins of the city of
Astraca, until I recognize the old oak tree where I’d seen the girl the first
time.

She steps
down the incline and falls.

“Hey!” I
call, leaping down to help her.

She waves
me away and points behind me.

I turn.
Propped against the trunk of the old oak is a scratched and dented missile-like
object about three feet long. I don’t know how I missed it last night.

The girl
doesn’t get up. She braces her injured arm and rocks back and forth. I crouch
down and offer a hand but once again she shakes her head and points to the
rocket.

The doubt
that she’ll make it, despite the medicine I gave her, creeps into my head. I
push the thought away, and observe the rocket she’s so adamant to show me.

“What is
it?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure she won’t reply. “Looks like a
roc—wait a minute.” I roll it around and stare at the pointed head and
the fins at the other end. “It
is
a
rocket. I bet it’s the rocket Dottie was talking about—the one she saw
flipping between the trees when she came out here.”

“Lilun,”
she says, and her voice is so soft I almost miss it.

“Say
what?”

“Lilun,”
she repeats, looking at the rocket in my hands.

I brush a
finger along the dented fins. “Lilun,” I repeat. “Weird word for a rocket.”

She drops
her chin and giggles. “Lilun,” she repeats, this time pressing her hand against
her chest.

“Oh,” I
say and smile back.

Lilun is
not the rocket.

Lilun is
her name.

Chapter Eleven

Akaela

We thread fishing nets until late
in the day, our work lulled by the distant thuds of falling axes. By late
evening the men have piled up all the timber needed for the new structures. The
first planks have been cut, planed and stained, and now they stand against
improvised racks to dry. When darkness falls, we all shuffle back to the Tower,
strained and exhausted, but happy that we’ve made so much progress in just one
day.

To help
improve the general mood, the older women have set up tables in the clearing
outside the Tower. They welcome our return with pots of steamed rice,
vegetables, and sliced watermelon. On cue, the fiddlers raise their bows and
begin to play traditional Mayake songs as we stand in line to get our food.
Despite being exhausted and demoralized by the devastating start of the day,
the music and the food slowly reenergize us.

Somebody
goes so far as to joke that we needed new structures anyway, and that our old
ones were doomed to crumble in the water any day. Tahari stands up and raises a
glass, praising everyone for how promptly we reacted to the enemy and didn’t
waste any time weeping or feeling sorry. Instead, we rolled up our sleeves and
got to work, accomplishing so much in barely a day.

People at
the tables cheer and raise their glasses. Hennessy throws in some predictable
accolade to his son and his powerful weapon for taking down the droid.

And then,
out of the blue, an elderly woman stands up, shaking her head, and says,
“Everyone’s talking about great weapons and attacks on the Gaijins. In reality
what today has taught us is how vulnerable we are. Next time the droids will
shoot directly at the Tower. We’ll be gone to ashes without even realizing it.”

She
briskly snaps her fingers and flops back on the bench. Without another word,
people resume eating, their heavy silence broken only by the clinking of
silverware.
 

Athel
shows up at our table in the middle of dinner. I scowl, but before I can demand
to know where he’s been, he motions for Wes, Lukas and me to scooch closer, and
says, “Guys. Meet me at the barn at midnight. It’s imperative.”

My eyes
widen. “
Imperative
? Is that what you
just said? Do you even know what it means?”

He regards
me as though I’m missing the utter importance of what he’s saying. “Yes.
Midnight.”

Athel has
been gone most of the day. While everyone else has been threading, hauling,
lumbering, axing, nailing, and shoveling, my brother has the guts to show his
face now, fresh and rested, without a word about what he’s been up to all these
hours. I’d slap him if my fingers weren’t blistered and my arms sore.

“Right,” I
snap. “Obviously, somebody will still be wide awake and full of energy tonight
at midnight. I’ve got news for you, Athel. The three of us here”—I sweep my
hand across the table to include Lukas and Wes, sitting next to me—“have
been working nonstop since six a.m. So now we’re going back to our floors, hit
the sack, and sleep like logs.”

I stand up
and pick up my plate. Athel stretches his arm across the table and grabs my
hand. “Wait. You don’t get it.” He looks to the boys for support. “I’ll explain
everything. I’m not joking. It’s really important.” He sighs, looks over his
shoulder, and lowers his voice. “I know what the Gaijins want back, the thing the
sniper droid was talking about. It’s that rocket you saw, Dottie. Yuri and Cal
didn’t make it, the Gaijins did. We’ve got forty-eight hours to fix it and find
a way to return it to them.”

“How do
you know?” Wes asks.

The
question seems to irritate Athel. “Look. You heard the woman a few minutes ago.
She’s right. The next attack is going to be to the Tower, and we won’t even
have the time to blink. The Gaijins can squash us with their pinkies. We don’t
have a place to hide or run to. We’re at their mercy, and until we have not
just good weapons, but a strategy to strike back, we’ll have to play by their
rules. We can’t waste any time.”

Athel
looks at each one of us and then adds, “So. Who’s game?”

I exhale
and drop back into my chair.

Lukas
says, “Midnight. We’ll be there.”

*
 
*
 
*

“How on earth—and
where—did you find this?” I ask staring at the rocket Athel has hidden in
the stable, behind several bales of hay.

His lips
stretch into a wide grin. “I’m never gonna tell you, Sis.”

“Yes, you
are!”

My shout awakes
Taeh. She stirs and leans out of her stall, her eyes shiny with sleep.

“I’m so
sorry, Taeh,” I whisper, walking over to hug her.

Athel
settles on the floor with his legs crossed. “I’ll tell you everything in due
time. First, we need a plan.”

Lukas slides
his data feeder out of his satchel and takes pictures of the rocket.

The frame
looks like it’s come out of a battlefield: kinked and scratched, blue paint
peeling off, and a rim of rust all around its nosecone. One of the exhaust
nozzles is dented but probably still functional, as I’ve seen this thing with
my own eyes flying across the forest, burning leaves and chipping branches on
its way.

 
“How do you know it’s from the Gaijins?”
I ask, leaving Taeh and joining the boys back by the stack of bales.

“Didn’t
you say you saw Cal and Yuri in the forest with it?” Wes says, echoing my
thoughts.

“Not
exactly with it,” I reply. “Still, I thought—”

“It is
from the Gaijins,” Lukas says, brushing a finger along the broken fin. “The
frame is clearly made of a nickel-titanium alloy. Only the Gaijins have the
technology to produce it.” He takes another picture, his eyes sparkling with
excitement. “This is epic, Athel!”

Athel
doesn’t reciprocate the fanfare. “Can you fix it?”

The smile
evaporates from Lukas’s face. “Is it broken?”

I snort.
“It’s supposed to fly up, not zigzag across the forest.”

Lukas
pinches his chin. “I see. Sounds like one of the engines isn’t functioning
properly. I can take a look, but it depends on the extent of the damage.” He
fishes a screwdriver out of his bag and taps it on the side panel. “Also, if it
needs replacement parts, I may not be able to supply them.”

“It
doesn’t matter
how
you fix it, as
long as you
do
fix it,” Athel says.

Lukas
finds one of the bolts and starts unscrewing it. “I’ll try to see what’s going
on with this thing. But the Gaijins are wrong. We never stole it. I bet the how
and why it got here in the first place would make for quite an interesting
story.”

I chew my
lower lip, not liking any of this. I don’t like that we’re hiding a rocket
inside the barn, I don’t like that it was made by the Gaijins, and I don’t like
that my brother’s still not telling us how he acquired it.

“What if
it’s all a trap?” I say. “What if you think the droid wanted us to fix it, when
in fact he really meant for us to bring it here so it could explode in the
middle of the night?”

“You mean,
like a Trojan horse or something,” Wes chimes in.

I nod.
“Exactly.”

Lukas
stiffens and lowers the screwdriver.

Athel
seems thoughtful for a moment, as though the notion hadn’t even crossed his
mind. His cheeks flush, or maybe it’s the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling
that’s playing tricks on me.

“It’s not
a trap,” he says, his voice firm.

I narrow
my eyes. “Why? Where were you all day, Athel? You weren’t at the riverbank,
helping out like we all did. Will you once and for all tell us what you’ve been
hiding from us?”

He meets
the equally concerned stares of Lukas and Wes and sighs. “Fine. But you guys
will have to trust me.”

“Your
sister has a point,” Wes mutters, scratching his brow. “It’ll be easier to
trust you if you tell us what’s going on.”

Athel
opens his backpack and slides out a roll of rice paper. He unfolds it with care
and flattens it on the floor between us.

Lukas
opens his mouth and runs his hands through his hair. “A map of the five powers
of Astraca! Wow, Athel, how did you—”

“Not the
original,” Athel quickly interjects. “Tahari wouldn’t part with it. He said it
took him and Aghad two years to find it.”

“To find
the original?”

Athel
nods, pressing down the edges of the map so it’ll stay flat. Thin strokes of
sepia ink sketch an eclectic collection of streets and buildings that sprawl
from the upper left corner of the map to the bottom right one. Round blobs of
ink mark the trees, while thin, wiggly lines reproduce creeks and waterbeds.
Some of the squares, possibly houses, are filled with ink, and I can’t help but
wonder if that has a special meaning.

Wes blinks
several times. “What are we staring at?”

“The city
within the city,” Lukas replies, beaming. “There was a whole underground city
built underneath Astraca, complete with tunnels, buildings and secret
passages.”

“So it’s
not the real Astraca?” I ask.

“It’s the
underground
Astraca,” Lukas clarifies.
“The Underground City. Originally built as a series of emergency tunnels that
led outside the city, over the years it expanded to almost a fourth of
Astraca’s original size. Only a few knew about it, the consuls and the
senators—people in power who were sworn to secrecy. As a result, any
trace that it ever existed was lost in the fire.”

“Not all,”
Athel corrects him. “One thing was left.”

“Engrams?”
I venture.

Athel
nods. “Precisely.”

Wes shoots
his hands up. “Hold on and slow down. Why did Tahari give you a map of the
Underground City if the whole thing was supposed to be kept secret?”

Athel
sighs. “I went back to the forest at night, and he was there with the other
man, Aghad, a rice farmer. They were looking for the
chavis
. They already have three, so they only need two more to
complete the set.”

“Of
course! I knew it!” Lukas yells, making Taeh snort in her stall. I elbow him in
the arm and scowl. “Sorry,” he mumbles, “but this is so… epic!” He shifts and
snaps picture after picture of the map.

Wes scratches
his brow. “Isn’t the Underground City where the AIs are hidden?”

We all
stare at him, the thought dawning on us for the first time.

Wes is
right. At the time of its fall, Astraca had mastered the production and use of artificial
intelligence on every level of its society, from cleaning the streets to
running banks and bureaucratic tasks. Robots so sophisticated they had become
part of the society and started making their own demands. When the consuls
refused to listen, the bots turned into bloodthirsty machines that walked the
streets killing, burning, and destroying.

Athel
drums his fingers on the map. “Tahari didn’t mention the weapons. But I’m sure
it’s part of the plan.”

“Why did
Tahari talk to you in the first place?” I ask. “How come he suddenly likes you
so much that he’s willing to share a map it took him two years to find?”

“Aghad
found it, actually,” Athel replies. “He’s the one who had the engram about the
map’s location. He told Tahari about the weird dream he kept having, and Tahari
immediately understood. It still took them two years to find it. They finally
unearthed it the other night when Akaela and I saw them.”

“Why did
Tahari spill all this to you?” I press on.

Athel
stabs the map with his index finger. “Because he needs our help in finding not
only the
chavis
, but the five doors
they’re supposed to unlock. In case you haven’t noticed, the Gaijins are
tightening their grip on us. They’re getting impatient and tired of our
presence here. It’s our land, and they’re not shy about exploiting it, but it’d
be much easier if they could get rid of us altogether. The Underground City is
our only way out right now. The Tower is big and bulky and an easy target for
the Gaijins’ missiles. Our only hope is to unlock the city and escape
underground.”

“We’re
going to send the Gaijins away and win this war,” Wes says, not a wrinkle of
doubt on his face.

“We’re
clearly unprepared,” Athel retorts. “Yuri can take down one droid at a time,
but the Gaijins are going to send a full army.” His eyes stray back to the
rocket. “Which is why we need to let them win this one altercation about the
rocket. We’ll return it and buy some time.”

Lukas
looks languidly at the bulky contraption leaning against the hay bales. “We
don’t get to keep even a little tiny chip for another microbot?”

Athel
shakes his head. “It has to be back in working shape, Lukas.”

“Why did
Tahari give you this map?” I prod, frustrated that my brother still hasn’t
answered my question.

“When we
met in the forest last night, he thought I had the engram too and was looking
for the
chavis
. He likes the fact
that I can search for them at night without needing a flashlight. The map is
only the first step to finding the city. Here, let me show you.” He rotates the
map and tells us to hold down one corner each. “These are the five doors.”
Athel marks them on the map with his index finger: “Wisdom, Foresight,
Knowledge, Prudence, and Ingenuity.”