Half Way Home (12 page)

“No way,” Jorge said. “Colony wouldn’t have cut its way through the canopy and set up here if there was open space like that nearby. I’d be surprised if there was a clearing this big anywhere else in the temperate zone. It would’ve picked the best spot. That’s like its primary job.”

“What were you trained for?” I asked Jorge.

“I’m a miner, but that doesn’t make me any less smart than you.”

“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hands. “Just curious.”

He shook his head and looked away, and I resolved to step lightly around him from then on.

“Guys, I found the way up.”

We turned and looked further down the trunk where Mindy stood, her hand on an outcropping of bark several paces away. The crowd shifted again, curiosity driving us along.

“Holy shit,” one of the guys said, looking up the trunk of the tree.

It was a spiral tunnel, rising up and off to the side, further around the base. The angle wasn’t too steep, and the carved indention ran behind the gear-like outcroppings, exposing the inclined plane to air before weaving behind the next outcropping, and so on. Kelvin stepped between two of the juts and ran his hand along the exposed core of the tree.

“Something created that,” Samson said.

“No shit.”

“I mean, like, chewed that out.”

“He’s right,” Kelvin said. He ducked his head into the cylinder of missing wood and looked up the incline. “I wonder how far it goes?”

“You’re not thinking about exploring it, are you?”

“Maybe we should,” Vincent said.

“I say forget about it,” Mindy said.

“What about the arrow?”

“Probably Mica and Peter throwing off pursuit.”

“Yeah, why would they think other people would come out and join them?” Mindy asked. “They could be trying to get Hickson killed as much as help us find them.”

“She has a good point.”

“It worms back down that way,” Kelvin said, looking through the shaft in the direction we’d come. “I think it comes out behind the arrow.”

Vincent ran down and stepped between the two outcroppings back at the carving. “It does,” he said. “I still think we should explore it.”

Tarsi turned to Mindy. “It must be biological,” she said. “The difference in us, I mean. The boys want to go up it and the girls want to circle around and set up camp.”

I didn’t say anything, wondering what it meant that I agreed with the girls on that score.

“Maybe there’s all kinds of passageways dug through the trees,” we heard Vincent say, his voice muffled. He popped his head out where Kelvin stood, having walked up through the tunnel from where the arrow was. “Maybe there’s all kinds of cool caves to live in and we could save the digging.”

“Hey, genius, whatever ate those holes are probably still around. You think they’ll let us just move in with them?”

“Maybe they taste good,” someone said, which made us all fall silent. I watched the thought settle throughout the group, lips literally being licked.

“Meat,” one of the boys said.

“You’ve never had meat in your life,” Leila pointed out.

“Yeah, but I know it’s good,” Jorge said. “It’s primal.”

“
You’re
primal,” Britny said, which got more than a few of us laughing.

“I say we vote,” Kelvin said, scanning the crowd.

“No fair,” said Tarsi. “There’s six of you and only four of us.”

If she was referring to gender, she probably didn’t realize that the vote might just as easily be half and half.

“What if we do
both
?” I asked, hoping to prevent my exposure as a wimp or me having to fake some machismo I didn’t feel. “Why don’t some of us set up camp, get a fire going, rig up some cover in case of rain. Meanwhile, a scouting party can go partway up the tree, look around a little, maybe find Mica and Peter if they’re up there.”

“Sounds good to me,” Vincent said. I looked up to follow his voice and saw his hand reaching out between two of the outcroppings further along.

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Tarsi said, looking directly at me.

“I’ll stay here and help with camp,” I said, shrugging as if I’d just as well scale a tree but didn’t mind staying for her benefit.

She smiled. I looked to the tree and saw Kelvin glowering at us before he was able to store the emotion away again.

“You guys can take the flashlight,” I told him. “Just in case it gets dark before you get all the way back down.”

He nodded and forced a smile. I realized how badly I needed to talk to him and wondered when I would ever get the time.

Before the boys set off, we all dumped our packs and arranged our meager supplies across the moss. More than half the water went to the climbers. We kept the tarps, most of the rope, one of the machetes, and all the domestic gear. They took the small amount of medical supplies and packed several bombfruit in their sacks. We agreed they would only climb until nightfall, then descend with the flashlight, but Vincent and Kelvin argued they could set up camp within the incline, behind one of the outcroppings, and descend the next day.

The rest of us relented once the other boys got excited about the idea. We also resolved that if they found anything important or discovered passageways through the interior, they would yell down or send a messenger back before they explored any further.

We exchanged hugs and wished each other luck. I felt awkward and conspicuous as the only male not joining the climbers. As soon as they disappeared, the five of us remaining behind immediately set to work. We agreed that the tunnel provided the best place for sleep, so we concentrated on clearing and creating a fire pit, carving burnable wood from one of the outcroppings, and gathering bombfruit.

Mindy and Tarsi had worked in supply together and knew how to split the occasional intact fruit in half, both sides of which created functional bowls. They gathered the soft gold seeds from the interior, which Britny and I took for creating utensils. We picked out one of the large stones sticking out of the moss and dug out a few smaller ones. Using one to beat against the other, we turned the seeds into functional shapes for spooning and mixing.

We dug the fire pit out by hand and stone, then lined it with the latter. Fiber from the inside of the bombfruit was laid out to dry and several of us took turns with the machete to perform the arduous task of carving out strips of firewood from the trunk. We quickly learned the best method entailed holding the handle with one hand and gripping the dull side of the blade with a handful of moss in the other. Then the machete could be pulled down the outcropping, peeling back a layer of wood with each pass. It proved laborious work, but we all tried to shoulder our fair share of it. We also agreed that the fire wasn’t to be wasted. We would light it when it got dark and enjoy its warmth before going to sleep.

The afternoon went by quickly, thanks to the work. We passed the time and toil by chatting and getting to know one another better. I found myself talking pre-birthday stuff for the first time, and several others did as well. So much of our lives had been spent in a virtual world that the others knew nothing about. The professional training we took for granted—that which the colony had ended up with little use for—finally came out.

Sadly, not much of what our small group had been taught seemed useful for starting an agrarian culture on a remote planet, but all of it fascinated the others and helped explain quite a bit of our personality differences and our philosophies on life. Teachers just don’t see the world the same way tailors do, and vice versa.

As the sun set and the fire was finally lit, we reclined in the moss, our heads on each other’s bellies in a tangle of repose. It reminded me of the manner in which we’d passed out the night before. As we lay, touching, we swapped guesses on what the boys were encountering. We also talked about who—if such a thing were possible—we wished we could teleport out of the camp. We even debated what the current timetable for the rocket must look like, the habit of our shared project not leaving us nearly as easily as we’d left it.

That evening seemed simple enough. A small group of us spent it stretched out on the moss, just listening to each other’s voices and tossing out our own. And yet, of all my time on our unnamed planet thus far, it was one of the best, most normal nights of my entire waking life.

I wish there could’ve been more of them.

What began as a pleasant evening soon turned into a miserable night’s sleep. We tried to make ourselves comfortable in the chewed-out tunnel, but it proved nearly impossible. We had to lie directly on the rough wood—the tarps were too slick, causing us to slide toward our feet as we tried to drift off. Eventually, we moved back to the soft moss by the fire, enjoying the warmth from the glowing embers.

But then it started raining. Heavy, like the day we were born. We returned to the tree and spent the rest of the night trying to get comfortable without ever truly succeeding. There was a lot of talk about how the boys must be faring and how it made no sense to be out exploring the unknown when we should be working to sustain ourselves for the future.

Despite the discomfort and a night of tossing, turning, whispering, and complaining—I found myself waking up the next morning, the light of day making the leftover rain sparkle in the moss. The waking meant I must have slept. And the rain meant we had fresh water to go with our breakfast.

I exited the tunnel and stretched my aching back. Britny was already up and filling water pouches from the collection tarps we’d left out, their centers in shallow depressions we’d dug by hand, the edges raised with piles of moss.

“Morning,” I said, grabbing my tarp thermos with its melted-together edges and filling it up with a single scoop.

“Did you sleep?” Britny asked.

“For the last hour or so. You?”

She shook her head. I turned around and looked up the wall of corrugated bark, wondering how far the boys had gotten up and if they were already on their way back down.

“Did you hear the horn go off last night?” Britny asked.

“The klaxon? From the base?”

She nodded. “Just before sunup. Only sounded for fifteen minutes or so.”

“I must’ve been asleep,” I said. I took a sip of the water and held it in my mouth while I allowed it to be absorbed. Swallowing what remained, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and looked toward the distant and fuzzy line of black, the tall perimeter fence barely discernable. “Should we sneak closer and investigate?” I asked.

Britny shrugged. “Been wondering the same thing.” She pouted her lower lip and wrinkled her forehead. With her olive skin and jet-black hair, it made her look lovely and menacing at the same time. I found myself liking her even though I didn’t know her as well as some of the others.

After a moment of seemingly intense concentration, she shook her head and reached for another water pouch to fill.

“What?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“What were you thinking just now?”

“Oh, just whether or not we should go back. See if someone else left. Then I was wondering why someone would make their break early in the morning. And would they find us here? Will Hickson send people out to look for us? Then I…”

I walked around the collection tarp and took the water sack from her, folding the flap over and tying off the neck. “You what?” I asked.

“I wonder if it was wrong to leave,” she said. “If maybe I was being impulsive. Maybe I just needed a day off, and then I would’ve been fine. It—I know it sounds weird, but I did enjoy the work at times. And I wanted to see the rocket go up, you know? I just didn’t want to live in fear, and now I wonder if we’ll be living in a different kind of fear. What will it be like if we do set up something permanent, and then the people at the base manage to do well? How long before there’s some sort of conflict?”

I put my arm around her. We remained on our knees in front of the collection tarp, her head leaning to the side and resting on my shoulder.

“When you have doubts, remember the things that made you want to flee,” I told her. “That’s what I do. There were good times, but they were only good because everything to either side was absolute shit.”

Britny laughed and wiped at her cheeks. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe we need some really bad stuff to happen out here so we can appreciate the less crappy stuff.”

“Don’t jinx us,” I said, looking over the tarp and back at the tree. Through a gap in the bark, I could see a few sleeping forms stirring. And Tarsi—I could see her sitting up—she was looking out at the two of us and smiling.

Of all the brutal days endured thus far on our strange planet—the cleanup following our birth, the eighteen-hour work shifts for the rocket project, the restless nights of exhaustion—none was ever so long as that day of waiting for the boys to return. And waiting. And doing nothing.

Several times, we lamented the fact that a scouting party, just two or three of us, could have gone to the breach in the fence and returned already, determining the reason for the horn sounding. After lunch—during which there was another round of distant target practice—the concern was raised that the boys wouldn’t be back before nightfall. By dinner, it was all we spoke of. As it grew dark, we stretched out by the fire, lying across the sumptuous moss, resting on one another, and sleeping as poorly as we had the night before, but for different reasons.

Tarsi and I lay with our heads together—hers on my arm—as we tried to convince one another Kelvin was okay. Most of the night was like that, whispers and fidgeting and people sneaking off to pee. Even the faint glimmer of stars through the new clearing in the distance did nothing to soothe my mind. Once again, I feared I would never sleep only to wake up to another missed dawn.

Gruff voices and laughter wormed their way into my dreams. I snapped up, waking Tarsi, who had fallen asleep on my stomach. We both turned to the sounds. Some small part of me feared it was a group from base coming to force us home, but the voices seemed to be leaking out of the tree.