Paradox (13 page)

His whole body is shaking, and even though he’s talking
right to her, it’s obvious that he’s not seeing her at all. “Alex,” he whimpers. “Not the fire, Alex. No, please, not the fire—I can’t….”

Ana forces her voice to remain steady. “It’s me, Chen. It’s just Ana. You’re safe—what you’re seeing”—she swallows—“it isn’t real. Chen?”

And then for one second his eyes refocus and he’s looking right at her. “It’s like peace, Ana. It’s not giving up. Just letting go.” With those words, Chen lifts his arms up and out to each side. He steps back.

“Chen, wait, what are you—”

He takes another step, this one onto open air, but he shows no surprise at finding no ground under his feet. Instead he just gives a sad smile as he topples, straight-backed, toward the fiery abyss below. Ana screams and lunges for him. As she drops to the edge, hands outstretched, the smile stays on his face until even that is swallowed up by the smoke and the fiery darkness.

Chen is gone.

For a long time, all she can do is lie flat on the ledge, body shaking. She can’t cry, she can’t even speak. Over and over again, she sees Chen fading into the gassy mist, that smile of resignation on his face. After a while, though, the sound of yelling breaks through her grief, and she realizes that it’s been coming from overhead for quite a while.

She looks up and thinks for a moment that her mind is
playing tricks on her. Todd’s hand is just above her, and he’s in her light again, just like he was back at the basin wall when she was fleeing the worm for the first time.

Then she sees Ysa behind him. Their faces are filled with pain and concern and horror, and they’re so real and alive that her eyes fill with tears. She is flooded with an urgent desire to live, to move, to go on. Everything that Chen is no longer able to do.

Ana climbs to her feet and slowly scales the wall until she can grab Todd’s hand. His grip is strong in hers, pulling hard as she scrabbles with her feet on the rock face. Slowly, slowly she rises out of the steaming pit and collapses next to the others onto the flat, desolate summit of Mount Fahr.

They lie there panting, all three of them, for long minutes. Ysa is crying quietly.

“What happened down there?” Todd asks. “We couldn’t really see through all the fumes.”

“Something spooked him. He was terrified, Todd. I have no idea why or what caused it, but it’s almost like … he got scared to death.” She knows it sounds ridiculous, but it’s what keeps coming into her head when she thinks of Chen’s face—right up until the end, of course.

Todd sits up straight. “What do you mean? What was he so freaked out about?”

“I don’t know,” Ana says, eyes closed. “He didn’t know me. He was just raving on about some kind of a fire. He kept calling me Alex.”

“A fire?” snaps Ysa, then just as quickly starts sobbing again. “Why would he be talking about that?”

“He was gone somewhere in his head. That’s all I know. And then he just—fell. He let himself fall. He didn’t slip or anything.” Ana goes quiet, and the others don’t press her for any more details.

There’s something bugging her about this exchange, though, and in the quiet that follows her retelling, it suddenly becomes clear. That glazed look in Chen’s eyes, the palpable fear—she’s seen it somewhere before. It’s exactly the look Todd had when he was in the Dead Forest. When he was stuck in that terrified trance. But what connection could there possibly be? The forest is miles away.

Todd breaks into her thoughts then by climbing slowly to his feet. His face is grim and his look flat. “We should probably keep moving.”

Ana sighs. As horrible as it seems to think rationally after what just happened, she knows he’s right. Eight hours left to go, and who knows what else is going to come at them on this forsaken planet? “Yeah,” she says, pushing herself up. “I guess so.”

“Ysa,” Todd says slowly as the other girl struggles into her pack. “Does this … change anything? About, you know, all the stuff we’re not supposed to know?”

Ysa gives him a long look. Then she drops her eyes and shakes her head. “No. If anything …” She shrugs. “Let’s just keep moving.”

Todd nods and shoulders his own pack.

Ana can’t bring herself to care. What does it really matter? They just need to get where they’re going. Stay safe until then.
Survive
. Those instructions are taking on a whole new meaning, somehow. She bites her lip.

The three of them turn their backs on the pit, and once again Ana fights back tears. She can’t erase Chen’s face from her mind. She feels a touch on her arm and looks down to see Todd’s hand gripping her lightly. “You know you did everything you could for him, right? What happened to Chen”—he swallows—“is not your fault.”

Not your fault
. There’s something in those words that drives a white-hot poker through her belly, and for a second there’s a flash in her mind and she’s back at the grave, watching the dirt trickle down…. She shakes herself.

Brushing Todd’s arm aside, she pushes ahead of the others and starts across the wide, flat summit toward the far edge where they will make their descent. Toward the ocean, toward the colony, yes—but above all, away. Away from Chen and loss and madness and piercing slivers of memory that burrow into her broken mind and don’t let go.

As far away as she can get.

The summit is wider across than Ana had expected. But the pace she sets to cross it helps push some of the storm clouds out of her head. By the time she clears the far side of the peak, the fist in her chest has loosened slightly and she’s able to lean over, put her hands on her knees, and catch her breath.

When Ysa approaches, her eyes are fixed on the distant view, her face a mask of wonder. “Oh!” she whispers. She reaches for Ana’s arm and squeezes. “Just …”

The Maraqa Sea is like a glassy jewel, green and glimmering in the glow of the twin suns. Stretching to the edge of the pink horizon, it steals Ana’s words and makes quick tears spring to her eyes. It feels so strange to find this beauty here, so much at odds with the ugliness she has just seen. It can’t begin to make up for everything else. But …

But maybe
, she thinks, looking out across the sea to far-off scattered brown dots that must be islands.
Maybe it’s a start
. She wouldn’t call it a sign of hope—she’s not nearly that sentimental. But with this image of beauty to hold on to, maybe, she thinks, she can continue going forward.

Todd comes up behind them and Ana turns to give him her best I’m-holding-it-together smile. He exhales visibly. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, good.”

“Can we see the settlement from here?” Ana asks. “The colony?” The last discussion on this subject left a sour taste in her mouth, but that’s still their goal, the place where answers lie.

Todd seems unsure, looking off into the distance with brows furrowed. “I don’t think so,” he says.

Ysa waves an arm toward the distant shoreline, pointing off to the right. “It’s a little farther down the coast that way. Can’t see much from here.”

Ana contemplates the distance they have yet to cross. The sea is there, lapping the far horizon. Before this is a wide wasteland that she remembers from the map as a stretch of sand dunes. Before that is the mountain slope, rolling and tame at its base but growing steeper the higher it gets.

And immediately below them? The mountain just … drops away. Ana smiles.

“How …” Following the direction of Ana’s gaze, apparently, Ysa says with a quavering voice, “How are we going to get down
that
?”

Ana snaps into take-charge mode; something about the
mountain face draws it right out of her. She reaches behind her to pat the side of her pack. “We’ll be fine right here. We’ve got all we need and more,” she says.

“We’ll be using ropes, I guess,” Todd says. He’s already shrugging off his backpack, opening it up and looking for gear.

“Third pocket from the bottom left. There’s at least one compression block in there,” Ana says, distracted. There’s a faint flicker in her middle and she’s cupping both hands around it to keep it going and growing; she doesn’t know exactly what it means but she knows that it’s all her and it’s all good. And anything remotely good right now has to be grabbed hold of with both hands.

Todd finds the brown rectangular lump of compressed rope and tosses it to her, then shuffles around in the pack a little more. “There’s only one—though I guess we’ve each got one if we need more.”

“This should be plenty,” Ana says, picking at the opener tab. “It makes, what, fifty feet of rope? A hundred?”

“Ninety-five,” Ysa says.

Todd buckles his pack shut again as Ysa eyeballs the drop. “It’ll be enough,” she says with a shudder. “The length, anyway.”

The tab finally gives and Ana tugs at the bristle of rope sticking out. She pulls on it until she has enough rope to wind around her hand. Then she closes her fingers around the coil, holds it tight, and gives the compression block a good strong shake.

With a gentle
pfft
, folds of rope start blooming out of the postcard-sized block, changing its shape like a sponge filling with water. In seconds a scattered coil of rope is lying at their feet.

Todd picks up the end and studies it. He nods approvingly. “It’s the good stuff,” he says. “No knockoffs for these planetary explorers.”

“You have the anchor?” Ana asks.

He nods and tosses her a flat shiny disk, which she catches in her free hand. She studies the rocks around her and finds a smooth, flat area with no cracks or crumbling bits. She runs her hand along it to check for soft spots. Finding none, she puts a hand on either side of the anchor and breaks it neatly in half.

“Have you used one of these before?” she calls over her shoulder.

“Sure,” Ysa says, but there’s a wobble in her voice.

Ana doesn’t need to wonder if she herself has used one. A series of flashes goes off inside her head: rocks and cliffs and clean, biting air; muscles straining; adrenaline pumping; hands red with rope burn; the feeling of power and mastery painting every dull edge bright.

Ana smiles.
Bring it
.

Slipping one half of the anchor into a pocket, she slaps the flat edge of the other half onto the rock. Even before it makes contact, she registers the strong, almost magnetic pull between the rock and the anchor. She tugs on the anchor once
it’s set; it doesn’t budge. It’s as if it were growing out of the rock. Good. The bond is strong.

These movements are more than memory; they’re rich with the feelings she had when she first saw the mountain. This is knowledge. It’s hardwired inside her.

“You want me to take the first swing down?” Todd asks.

“Go ahead,” Ana says, sliding the loop of rope off her hand and pressing it around the anchor. She tucks the edges in until they disappear behind the silvery half-disk, then places her palm flat on the anchor and pushes down until the metal warms.

“Did it seal?” Todd asks. There’s a tremor in his voice. This descent seems to be putting him and Ysa out of their element. Ana feels like she’s just finding hers.

“Yes. It’s all set.”

He nods and moves into position on the ledge. Leaning down, he presses an indentation on the side of each of his boots, and climbing spikes spring out from the toe and the bottom. There’s a second’s pause as he circles the rope around his waist. Any hesitation Ana might have sensed disappears as Todd starts down without so much as a nod of farewell.

And why should he? It’s just a mountain descent.

Just scaling down a mountain face on the far side of the universe.

Ana squats next to the cliff edge and watches as Todd rappels down, getting smaller and smaller. A few minutes later, he lands safely on a wide ledge.

“Come on!” he calls up.

Ana turns to Ysa. “You’re next,” she says. She can’t wait until Ysa gets herself over the side and down the mountain, because suddenly it’s like nothing exists but Ana and this climb, and every moment separating her from it passes with agonizing slowness.

Ysa takes considerably longer than Todd, or maybe it just seems that way, but finally it’s Ana’s turn. She checks to make sure the rope is still secure, then loops it around her waist. She pops out her own spikes and kicks her boots against the rock, hears the satisfying
clink
that will steady her on the way down the rock face.