Paradox (5 page)

“Come on!”

With a desperate lunge, Ana grabs the outstretched hand—and is pulled over the lip of the crater.

She scrambles to her feet to find a boy standing in front of her. She’s so shocked to find herself facing another person that at first, all she can do is stare. He’s tall, with light shaggy hair, maybe in his late teens or a little older.
Around my age
, she thinks, then wonders how old she
is
.

“Thank you,” she gasps, almost a reflex, and yet it feels like a vast understatement.

The boy nods, but all his attention is down in the crater. The ground shakes as the creature pounds itself against the cliff wall. Standing well back from the edge and leaning forward, Ana gets her first good look. It appears to be some kind of giant monstrous worm. It has a huge lumpy head and a long dirt-colored body that disappears into a cloud of dust.

“But what is it
doing
here?” the boy mutters.

Ana turns to look at him more closely. He’s wearing a gray jumpsuit with a black vest, sturdy hiking boots, a towering backpack. Ana’s heartbeat quickens.

“The rocket,” she says, suddenly getting it. “The open door. You were in that other compartment!”

He turns and looks at her, an odd expression on his face.

“I’m Ana,” she says quickly.

“Ana,” he says, his smile tentative, as if she’s a strange puzzle he’s trying to figure out. “I’m Todd.”

The earth trembles under them again, and Ana steps farther back from the edge. The boy—Todd—shudders. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That creature freaks me out. I can’t figure out what it’s doing here.”

“But you did come on the rocket?”

Todd nods. She doesn’t remember him, of course, no more than she does anything else in her life, but something about the way his hair hangs across his forehead has the unexpected
ping
of familiarity.

Ana smiles awkwardly. “Sorry. I’m—well, I’ve got some memory issues. Surgical retrograde amnesia. That’s what
my letter said. I have no personal memories at all. Just basic knowledge and some muscle memory, though I don’t seem to have any trouble with keeping new memories. I can remember everything since I woke up on the rocket.”

Todd is silent for a second, then says, “I guess I have the same condition. My first memory is waking up in the rocket.” He raises his left arm, pulls down his sleeve, and flashes his own circlet at her. Ana can see the numbers on his band moving. “I know we’re here from Earth. We’re supposed to follow the map and reach the colony on the shores of Maraqa. That’s about it.”

“Maybe the memory wipe is standard procedure,” Ana says, but she can’t suppress a stab of disappointment. There was a moment when she’d thought this might be her chance at getting some insight into who she is and why she’s here. On the other hand, things are no worse than they were an hour ago—in fact, they’re quite a bit better. She has a companion, and two broken minds have to be better than one.

“We ought to keep moving,” she says, glancing down at her circlet. “Twenty-three hours sounds like ages, but I have a feeling—”

There’s a crack like thunder, and the edge of the crater wall collapses, the ground dropping away beneath Ana’s feet. For a second she’s part of a cascading rockslide; then Todd grabs her backpack and pulls her free.

“We need to put some distance between us and that thing,” Todd says.

“No kidding,” Ana says. “Let’s go!”

Todd sets a brisk, steady pace, his boots kicking up puffs of dusty soil. His purposeful strides make it clear he knows where he’s going, but he hasn’t activated his map. “You know the way from here?” Ana asks.

He nods. “I pulled it up just a few minutes ago. There aren’t a lot of different path options at this point.”

They are following a narrow, dusty path that winds through the rugged landscape for a mile or two before disappearing into a dark bank of trees: the Dead Forest, which dominates the near horizon. Beyond the forest, the Timor Mountains stand like a row of sentinels blocking their view of the sea. Ana thinks back to her own bird’s-eye view of the route. Todd is right. There’s just one way to go forward.

“Something else, though,” he says. He glances at her sideways. “This amnesia? I’m not sure how it is for you, but I do seem to know certain things about this planet—the terrain, the landscape, facts. You know?” He looks anxious, as if he’s begging her to tell him his condition makes some kind of sense.

“It sounds a little like my muscle memory,” Ana says. “My body does its own thing sometimes, before my mind even catches on.”

“Who knows how this stuff works?” he says.

Ana feels a grin pulling at the sides of her mouth. A word comes to her:
schadenfreude
, and her mind fills in the blank:
feeling joy at someone else’s suffering
. That’s not exactly what this is, but knowing that her new companion is just as broken as she is
makes the uncertainty and emptiness of their situation somehow easier to bear.

The path is little more than a faint trail in the rocky soil, with sparse, coarse vegetation that looks nothing like Earth grass. It’s wild and untamed, but just the fact that it’s bona fide plant life, here on this alien planet, is pretty amazing. As they walk, the worm’s grinding and pounding grows fainter until eventually it fades altogether. Then it’s just silence and rough terrain and a bright pink sky overhead. Just a boy and a girl out for a casual afternoon stroll.

Or so Ana tries to tell herself.

“I’m sorry for taking off on you back at the rocket,” Todd says after a few minutes.

“Don’t be,” Ana says. “How could you even know I was there? I wasn’t expecting you, either.”

He tilts his head and studies her, seeming to come to a decision. “Still. It’s a rough world out here. We’ll be better off sticking together.”

Together
. Now there’s an interesting word. She’d resigned herself to being fully alone for this journey, and while she’s thrilled to be proven wrong, that core of self-reliance remains. Another behavioral muscle memory, perhaps? Still, if they’re going to be companions, they should try to find some way to connect. But can two people really get to know each other when neither of them properly know themselves? “Tell me everything you remember,” she says. “Whatever’s there, start to finish.”

The story Todd tells is nearly identical to her own: circlet,
letter, mission, map-with-dotted-direction-line, and all. The only difference in their stories lies in her early introduction to the worm. Ana grimaces. They can’t build a shared past, that’s clear. But maybe, going forward
together
, they can jointly make some sense of right now. “So here we are,” she says. “Twin amnesiacs off exploring an alien world.”

Todd grins and it’s like a sunrise breaking over his pale face, triggering again that indefinable quickening inside her chest, that reaching for … 
something
. Ana finds herself suddenly needing to look away. “So back to the memory-loss thing,” she says.

“What about it?”

“Don’t you wonder what the deal is?” she asks. “Why would whoever’s in charge of this expedition send us to an alien planet with no memories? What possible advantage could there be?”

Todd’s eyebrows come together as he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll have to figure it out as we go along.” He clears his throat.

Ana keeps her expression steady, but inwardly she wishes she had half the chilled-out temperament Todd seems to possess. He looks so much more comfortable with his condition than she is.

On the other hand, why
should
she be comfortable with this? Having a blank, empty mind is not natural, it’s not right, and—sure, for now all she can do is take things as they are. But one thing’s certain: If there are any answers to be had anywhere on this planet, she’s going to find them.

Whatever it takes.

The scenery stays stubbornly the same as the trail winds on—an endless display of flat, barren earth with scattered and struggling vegetation. It’s like a world that used to have life and is clinging desperately to what little is left. Overhead and to their rear, the twin suns smolder in the bright sky.

As they walk, Ana catches herself more than once following the curve of Todd’s shoulder, her gaze lingering at the hollow of his throat before she jerks her attention away. What is going on with her? She wishes she could blame this on muscle memory, like her eyes are used to lingering on Todd. But she’s pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Still …

“I think we knew each other before,” she says suddenly.

Todd jumps a little, then says, “Well, we did come in the same rocket.”

“I know. It just …” She can’t express that flare of
knowing
she gets every time she looks at him. “It seems like something more than that. I don’t know. I’m probably crazy.”

Todd shifts his pack around on his back. “Do you want to take a few minutes’ rest?” he asks. “We’ve been going for an hour straight, maybe more. Whatever that creature was, it’s long gone by now.”

Ana frowns, and her eyes flick to her circlet. “What about the countdown? Don’t we need to keep moving?”

Todd casts an uncertain look at the trail ahead of them. “Yeah, I guess,” he says.

Ana frowns. “Got anything more than that?”

“What?”

“Well, you said you know stuff about this place,” Ana says. “So what happens when the timer hits zero? Do you know?”

He’s already shaking his head. “Not exactly …”

But something’s making him jumpy, and the idea that he might know more than he’s saying is suddenly too much. “Come on,” she snaps. “You obviously know something. This timer, all these seconds ticking away and toward
what
? Death? Life? Destruction? Dinner?”

Todd grins, then seems to catch himself, and his face goes serious again. “Okay, this is what I do know. You’ve noticed the movement of the suns, right?”

Ana squints at the sky. “Sure. The bright one seems to be doing all the moving so far.”

“Torus,” Todd says. “That’s the brighter sun. Its orbital period takes about a day on-planet. We’re in a binary star system, of course, but Anum, up there”—he motions to the steady overhead orb—“moves much more slowly. You can hardly track it with the naked eye. I think Anum’s orbital period takes about a year.”

“Okay,” Ana says, “thanks for the astronomy bulletin, but—”

“But,” he interrupts, “once each day—the middle of the day, I guess it would be considered—Torus passes directly in Anum’s path. It’s called the sunsmeet, and we
don’t
want to be outside for it.”

“That’s it? That’s the big countdown, some kind of eclipse?”

Todd frowns. “It’s more than just an eclipse. The solar
response is fierce and dangerous. Trust me, we need to get to the colony by zero hour, before the sunsmeet.”

Ana nearly stops walking. “Wait, a colony?”

Todd nods, turning to continue down the narrow path. Head spinning, Ana turns to follow him. But as she thinks about it, she realizes there’s an echo of recognition around the word. It fits. They’re headed for a settlement on this planet, where they will find safety.

This bit of knowledge warms her as she follows Todd down the narrow path. The countdown has shifted from a threatening specter to a friendly cheerleader.
Keep going!
the glowing numbers seem to chant.
Just reach your destination and everything will be okay!

And something else: a colony means people, people who will know what’s going on, who maybe can even fix their memories—or who can at least fill in the gaps. Relief ripples through her.

Then they step around a bend and her feeling of relief slips away. About a half mile ahead the path dips down a shallow incline, then leads straight into a bank of trees so dense it looks like an impassable wall.

The Dead Forest.

They’ve been making their way toward it for hours, but now that they’re right here, she can’t believe it looks so … dead. Ana shivers.
A name is just a name, right?
But its still, silent look, the dark cast of the shadows between the trees, sets her nerves on edge. Something in there isn’t right.

On the path ahead of her, Todd has stopped walking. Ana thinks back to his earlier hesitation, of how he knows the landscape….

“This is what you’ve been nervous about, isn’t it?” she asks.

When he turns toward her, though, there is a look of purpose in his eyes. “We’ve got to go through it,” he says. “There’s no other way. It’s just a forest.”

She decides to ignore the slight tremor in his voice. “Just a forest,” she repeats, surprising herself by reaching out and giving Todd’s hand a quick squeeze. The touch of his skin makes her suddenly remember Bailey’s hands, her sparkling ring, and she finds herself glancing around, looking for a shimmer. But there are no floating distractions here, just the ever-present suns and the Dead Forest looming ahead.

“Let’s do this,” she says.

They stride on toward the forest.

“So,” he says after a moment, looking at her slyly, “you got any memory of Sixteen Questions rattling around in that mind of yours?”

The shift in tone jars Ana, but then she realizes she
does
remember it. A complicated back-and-forth game of nested questions. Has she always hated this game, or is that just her imagination? She narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to distract me from the bastion of evil that’s up ahead?”

Todd grins as he brushes his hair out of his face. “I’ll take that as your first Q. Since yes-and-no answers are not accepted in this round, I’m going to reply with: In addition to providing a positive distraction from the forthcoming uncertainty, does
the game of Sixteen Questions activate any dormant memories of your past?”

Ana’s mind races. Maybe she hated this game once, but Todd’s right. The distraction and the challenge have her pulse racing like she’s back in the presence of that monster worm. Except this adrenaline rush is all good, and all hers.

“My mind is unfortunately empty of any and all specific memories,” she says, shaping each word carefully, seeing how she can turn this game to her advantage, “and this mind wants to know what
your
mind knows about the existence of that monster that was chasing us back there.”