Athel (10 page)

Aghad
reaches for the thick leather bag he’s been carrying on his back and takes out
a flat wooden box, which he sets on the grass between us. Judging by the care
with which he handles it, the contents must be very precious.

“I’ll need
the flashlight again,” he says.

“It’s ok,”
I reply, sitting on the ground. “Keep it away from my eyes and I’ll be fine.”

Tahari
sets down the walking stick and, as Aghad clicks the flashlight on, carefully
opens the box. Inside, three cylinders lie on velvet lining, all identical to
the one Akaela found. Tahari points to each one of them and says, “Wisdom,
Knowledge, and Ingenuity.”

Three of the five powers of Astraca
, I think,
remembering what Lukas told us.

“Are
they—” I start, and swallow. “Is there something inside them?”

Tahari
shines the beam on the sleek surfaces of the cylinders, picks up the first one
on the left, and hands it over to me. “This is the Wisdom
Chavi
.”

Aghad
flinches at the gesture but says nothing.

The metal
cylinder feels icy cold as I toss it from one hand to the other. It looks just
like the one Dottie found, except this one’s shinier. The symbol of Astraca
embossed on one side looks identical, and so does the iris opening on one end.
I prod it, but it doesn’t yield, just like Akaela’s didn’t yield.

“Here,”
Tahari says, taking it back from me. “Show him, Aghad.”

Aghad
takes the cylinder and rests it on the flat of his left hand with the Astraca
symbol facing up. He then presses it with his index finger. To my surprise the
whole embossing clicks down as if it were a button. Aghad turns his finger to
the right, making the symbol underneath rotate a quarter of a circle. As he
lets go, I hear a soft whir coming from a mechanism inside.

“There,”
Aghad says, his voice as rugged as his breathing. “It’s unlocked now.”

I flip the
cylinder over, and sure enough, a thin golden key slides onto my open palm, the
head shaped like a sun.

The Wisdom Chavi. Lukas would kill to be in my
shoes right now
.

“How did
you know it opens like that?” I ask.

“I
remembered,” Aghad cryptically replies.

“You need
to
remember
how to open it,” Tahari
explains.

I nod. “I
know about the engrams.”

Tahari
tilts his head, his surprise quickly turning into a smile. “You’re a smart kid,
Athel,” he says. “There’s a total of five
chavis
.
We desperately need to find the remaining two.”

I squint
through the glare of the flashlight. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Tahari
retrieves his walking stick and stands up again. On cue, Aghad takes the key
and cylinder from my hands and returns them to the wooden box.

“Will you
help us find the other two, Athel?” Tahari asks, thumping the walking stick on
the ground.

I rise too
and stare him in the eyes. “You haven’t answered my question. Why me?”

 
He squeezes the walking stick with both
his fists and clicks his tongue. “Because you have something that no other
Mayake has. You can see in the dark.”

Part II

Chapter Nine

Akaela

I awake suddenly. Distant screams
spill through the window, making me jump out of bed and run over to see. The
first light of dawn rims the mountains looming over the forest. Below, billows
of smoke rise above the river and into the sky.

The rocket
, my first thought.

A new blast
from the riverbank rocks the ground. The smoke thickens, followed by sparks
arching in all directions. The Tower awakens, the elevator starts clanging. The
alarms sound and an electronic voice announces a mandatory evacuation.
 

Still
confused, I turn to awake Athel, only to remember that my brother left hours
ago.

The time
on the bottom corner of my retina reads 5:30 a.m.

Athel should’ve been back by now
.

Ash hops
onto the windowsill and rubs his side against my arm. I lean out and take
another look. I see people rushing to the riverbank, their shouts lost in the
rumble of the water running downstream and the crackle of fire, but I can’t
tell where the people are running to or where the flames are coming from. I
pick up the kitten, storm out of my room, and run into Mom, standing just
outside my bedroom.

“Something’s
happening over at the river,” she announces out of breath. “I need to go help
Kara with the little ones.” She tilts her head and blinks, deep shadows etched
under her eyes. “Where’s Athel?”

I squeeze
Ash in my arms groping for an answer, but all I can manage is, “He’s coming.
You go ahead, Mom.”

She nods.
“Don’t take too long.”

As soon as
she steps out, I stomp to the kitchen, check that Kael’s not perched on the
windowsill, and then run out into the hallway. Athel’s not on our wireless
network and wherever he went, he should’ve been back by now.

People
crowd the stairwells, their cries echoing up the narrow walls. I duck and
squeeze between arms and prosthetic hips, making my way down the stairs and out
of the Tower. Women and children gather in the clearing outside. Aroused from
sleep, the little ones cling to their mothers, lost looks on their faces.

“What’s
happening?” I shout, snuggling Ash to my chest.

An older
woman shakes her head at me and turns away.

Caylee, a
girl only a couple of years younger than me, comes running out of the Tower.
“It’s the droids!” she shouts. “They’re attacking us again!”

She wrings
her nightgown and stares at me with terrified eyes. At her mom’s call, she
spins on her heels and joins the other women.

I thank
Caylee and sprint to the riverbank. The sight I find there is disheartening.
Red tongues of fire rise from the river and envelop the raised platforms and
wooden cranes from which our fishing nets hang. Embers fly everywhere,
fluttering in the dark like fireflies. Pools of black ashes bleed into the
currents.

People
wade into the river and throw buckets of water at the fire, but by the time
it’s over, all that’s left of our fishing installations is black smoke and
charred wood bobbing along the surface of the river.

I look
over to the opposite bank, where more smoke crawls up to the sky. All I can see
in the receding darkness is scattered metal over blackened sand.

“You
bastard!”

I turn,
taken aback by the sudden commotion. Two kids are grappling on the shore, their
black silhouettes barely lit by the nascent light. Aroused by the screams, a
small crowd gathers around them, trying to set them apart.

“Get your
hands off me!”

“Stop it!
Both of you, stop it now!”

I rush to
see what’s happening, wedging myself through the pressing crowd. Akari, Lukas’s
uncle, stoops down, grabs one of the kids by the shoulders, and pulls him back
to his feet. My eyes go wide as I stare into my brother’s scraped and bruised face.
His clothes are torn and his hair covered in sand.

“Athel?” I
mutter, finding it hard to believe that my brother would start a fight at a
time like this.

Yuri
emerges from behind him and wipes his bloody lip with the back of his hand.
“What the hell was that?” he snarls. He tries to get back at Athel, but
Hennessy steps in front of him, his arms spread open.

Athel’s
face is flushed. He tugs at Akari’s arms but Akari doesn’t let go of him.

“Bastard!”
he yells at Yuri. “What were you thinking? The damage was already done. Do you
know how many things we could’ve done with the droid you disintegrated? We lost
pounds of precious chips and electronics.”

Yuri
laughs, but it’s a forced laughter and nobody else seems to appreciate his
lousy sense of humor. “Is that all you can think of? The stuff we could’ve done
with that thing?”

“No. The
other things I can think of, besides sleazebag, are: thug, liar, and traitor.
In no particular order.”

Metal Jaw throws
himself at my brother, but once again Hennessy holds him back. “You fool, have
you drunk too much Beiji? That droid was about to attack the Tower! You think I
was going to sit here and wait until he killed us all?”

“Droids
can’t cross the river!” Athel retorts.

“Last time
they came to the river at night, they killed one of us,” a woman shouts from
the back of the crowd.

Hennessy
raises a hand up in the air. “Silence!” he yells.

“The droid
was lurking by the riverbank,” Yuri says, ignoring his father’s order. “It
fired one of its exploding hands at the fishing nets and that’s how they caught
fire.”

“I saw it
too!” one of the fishermen says. “I came out early with my son to lift the
nets.”

“So I shot
the damn droid,” Yuri concludes.

People
cheer and clap. Hennessy pats his son on the back. “Well done, son.”

Akari lets
go of Athel and stares at him, a mix of disappointment and concern painted on
his face. Athel opens his mouth to say something, then turns back to Metal Jaw
and challenges him. “How did you get the technology to make those laser beams,
huh? By stealing?”

Hennessy
steps between the two of them and looks down on my brother. “Young man,” he
says. “I don’t know what your problem is, but if I hear you insult my son one
more time—”

“He’s a
thug! He stole from us!”

A sneer
surfaces on Hennessy’s thin lips. “That’s ridic—”

“He’s
talking about this,” Yuri interjects. He dips a hand into his pocket, retrieves
the Astraca cylinder and tosses it at Athel’s feet. I leap and pick it up.

“Your
freckled-faced sister lost it in the forest,” Yuri adds, a disgusted look on
his face. “You’re welcome.”

The moment
I hold the cylinder in my hands I know Yuri’s done something to it. Lukas walks
over and snatches it from me.

“What’s he
done to it?” he snarls.

“I don’t
know. It feels lighter.”

He pokes a
finger through the iris aperture on the side, and this time it yields easily.

“They’ve
opened it!” I say.

Lukas’s
face darkens. “Yeah. And it looks like they took whatever was inside.”

“No!” I
gasp. I take the cylinder back, pry the aperture open, and flip it upside down,
drumming it against my hand. I push two fingers through the iris opening,
groping, but all I can feel is soft velvet lining—probably what kept the
key in place, preventing it from rattling.

The sun
makes its appearance from behind the mountains, the new day welcomed by the
reek of burnt wood. The last wooden crane lets out a final creak and then
collapses into the river.

Akari
claps his hands together and shouts, “Come on, people. Let’s clean up and see
what can be salvaged.”

The
altercation between Metal Jaw and my brother is immediately forgotten. People
wade back into the water to retrieve whatever is possible—charred planks
floating on the surface, net floaters, bits of torn nets. Women come from the
Tower carrying axes, shovels, and ropes. Frantic messages stream along the
bottom of my retina—lists of things to do, tools to bring to the shore,
tasks for the lumberjacks, the masons, the builders.

One by
one, men and women run to their chores. Hennessy turns, jabs a finger at my
brother, and hisses, “I’ll blame your little display on shock. But I’m keeping
an eye on you, young man. I’m no longer sure Tahari should’ve pardoned you.” He
narrows his eyes then turns away and strides off toward the water. “Come on,
Yuri. There’s plenty of work to do.”

Metal Jaw
flashes a spiteful sneer at both my brother and me and then turns away, jogging
back to the shore after his father.

Lukas and
Wes shuffle over, offering smiles of sympathy. They probably saw the whole
altercation, but I’m only now noticing their presence.

Athel
wipes the sand off his face. “So,” he says, “what do you say we go see what’s
left of the droid on the other side of the river?”

We look at
one another, shrug, and then grin.

*
 
*
 
*

The rope bridge connecting the two
banks has burned along with the fishing structures. So we walk downstream to
the river bend, where the water is shallow enough that we can wade to the
opposite shore. Athel carries Wes on his back, as his blade prostheses would
slip on the slimy riverbed.

Cold water
bites into my skin. I plow through knowing that, as the sun rises higher in the
sky, so will the temperature. By midday, the usual film of hot haziness will
once again rest over our land.

On the
opposite shore, a black hole marks where the droid once stood. Its entire metal
structure has been reduced to shards and now lies scattered over an area about
ten feet in diameter. Wes hops back onto his blades and we all shuffle around,
examining the fragments.

“Gone,”
Lukas says in a broken voice. “It’s all gone.”

“The
bastard,” Athel mumbles.

“Athel,
the droid
did
attack us,” I snap.
“Are you saying that you would’ve just watched and done nothing?”

He
straightens up and stares at me. “I saw the whole thing as it unfolded. The
droid came out of nowhere and fired across the river. The nets hanging from the
wooden cranes caught fire instantly. By then, they were already lost, burning
away like paper. I jumped in the water with the first fishermen who’d come out
early, but there was nothing we could do to save the structures. The heat was
so intense that once the first wood plank exploded, the fire jumped from one
platform to the next.”

“Where was
Yuri?” Wes asks.

“He came
out a few minutes later. By then the droid had exhausted its ammunition and was
about to leave. Yuri came and zapped it with his lasers.”

I shake my
head and scuff the sand. “If you had laser beams, you would’ve done the same
thing,” I say.

After a
few minutes my hope of finding anything useful is close to nil. Every scrap of
metal, wire, or chip has been reduced to dust. There’s no point in regretting
what’s been done. I’m just as angry as Athel, even more so now that Yuri has
stolen from us and gotten away with it. The thought leaves me with a bitter sense
of defeat.

We’ll never know what was inside the Astraca
cylinder
.

Lukas
sighs. “Look at this. I could’ve made so many microbots with all this stuff.
Half an army already.”

“We’ll get
another droid,” Athel retorts. “Just wait and see. The next droid will be
ours.”

“Speaking
of which,” Wes says. He points a finger toward the thick aspen grove sprawling
past the riverbank. “What do you think
that
is?”

Consecutive
thuds vibrate through the ground. The aspens shake, and a few of the thinner
ones creak and drop with a long whoosh. And as the last two trees drop, we all
look up, frozen with fear.

A massive,
eight-foot-tall sniper droid stands before us. The sun glistens off its
metallic armor as it wobbles onto the shore.

Amazingly,
none of us attempts to run or scream. Somehow, we all remain grounded,
realizing that whatever we do, we’re doomed. A sniper droid is a fully armed
tank on two legs operated by artificial intelligence. Once it aims at you,
there’s not much you can do.

The one
standing in front of us doesn’t aim, though. It drops onto its forearms, which
also happen to be its weapons, and locks its goggles on Athel.

“I bring a
message,” it says in a flat, metallic voice.

Athel
doesn’t move a muscle.

“The
message has been translated from Xamarii for your convenience. The message
follows: You have forty-eight hours to return what belongs to us. If you don’t
comply, in forty-eight hours we shall destroy you, your people, and your land.”

Xamarii is
the language spoken by the Gaijins.

The droid stands
up again, its movements echoed by a melody of clonks, whirs, and pneumatic
hisses. It stares down at us one more time, then turns around and vanishes back
into the aspen grove, trees swooshing and swaying as the robot passes through.