After two “days” of “rain,” three days after her arrival on Keanu, Rachel finally discovered something to do. Something, that is, besides feel dirty and hungry and so constantly terrified she was numb.
“We’re going to bury your mother,” Zack told her.
He had found Rachel before she’d even rubbed the sleep out of her eyes—before she’d had any breakfast—not that any of the almost two hundred humans huddled in or around this weird Temple structure were eating much.
Her father had simply touched her on the shoulder, where she lay atop a bed of leaves, not far from the strange Brazilian girl, Camilla—nine years old, and a reborn human, also known as a Revenant—who had attached herself to Rachel.
Camilla woke up, too, and made it clear she was coming along, whether Rachel wanted her or not.
“How did you find Mom, Daddy?” Even as she said it, Rachel knew it was a stupid question. How else but by wandering around in this big stupid tube? And, really, what difference did it make?
Fortunately, her father recognized her question for what it was: nervous chatter. He simply took Rachel by the hand and—with Camilla following several steps behind—led her away from the Temple to the nearest rocks, to a bundle of ginkgo leaves that looked more like a giant seed pod than a human being.
This was the body of Megan Stewart? Her mother? In Rachel’s mind, she had knelt by her mother’s Texas grave as recently as a week ago…the same day she had had the terrifying and bizarre experience of talking with her via NASA television.
Rachel’s back had been aching the moment she woke up. Last year she’d gotten what should have been a cute tattoo on her lower back. Now that yellow butterfly felt swollen and sore.
“I found her this morning,” her father said.
“Where?”
“Back that way,” he said, pointing farther down the habitat…which in Rachel’s mind was the northern or lower end, not that direction had any meaning.
The habitat was roughly cylindrical, or half-cylindrical. There was a floor, and a ceiling that, at its greatest, was at least a few hundred meters high. The floor was rolling, actual earth and rocklike terrain covered with various kinds of plant life, including some good-sized trees. The sloping walls looked like cliff faces. Rachel and those who had been scooped from Earth and shipped across four hundred thousand kilometers of space had emerged into the habitat at one end…what she now thought of as “south.”
The Temple building, a good-sized pile of material that stood three stories tall and covered as much area as a baseball diamond, sat near that southern end. Although Rachel hadn’t explored more than a few hundred meters beyond the Temple, she had already decided that the Temple rested on high ground…everything further north was “lower.”
Around them people were stirring. It reminded Rachel of the ragged wake-up at the only Girl Scout camp she’d attended, when she was twelve. No one had seemed happy or healthy then, and this morning on Keanu was no different.
Rachel had gone through the insane emotional roller coaster of seeing her mother killed in a car crash in Florida two years ago, then alive again via television here on Keanu…only to learn upon arrival that she had died a second time.
“How did she die again?” Zack had told her, but it was that first hour, a very confusing time.
“A Sentry killed her.”
“A Sentry?” Rachel hadn’t spent nearly as much time with her father as she wanted—of course, given their situation and her mental state, the right amount of contact would have been constant. She had wanted to cling to her father and not let go.
“One of the other inhabitants,” he said, clearly too tired to offer much more.
“You mean, like, alien inhabitant.” Zack nodded. “Is it still around?” If this Sentry killed her mother, clearly it was a creature to be avoided.
“I don’t think so. I stabbed it,” Zack said. “Camilla helped.” Rachel noticed that the littler girl was still lurking a few meters away. Hearing her name, she smiled and moved closer, to Rachel’s intense annoyance.
“Was that the only one?” Rachel asked.
Zack shrugged. “Can’t say. There was a passageway between here and the Factory. But I think it’s closed now.”
Rachel had no idea what that meant, and no chance to ask, because Harley Drake and Sasha Blaine were approaching. Harley was going slowly, using his arms to power his wheelchair across the bumpy ground.
Rachel felt a rush of pity for the man. God, it was so easy to forget what he was like before the accident…a pilot, a jock, a total womanizer—or so her mother, Megan, had said once. Now look at him.
Then there was Sasha Blaine, the Valkyrie astronomer and math whiz, eternally perky. Even she looked pale and worn out.
Rachel realized that her father had told the couple about her mother’s body—before he’d told her! She didn’t much like that.
They exchanged grim good mornings, and equally uncomfortable hugs. Sasha said a hello to the Brazilian girl in German—one of Camilla’s two languages—earning a smile for her efforts. Then she produced a small shovel. “I rescued this from one of the other teams,” Sasha said.
“It’ll have to do,” Zack said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Even though Zack had discouraged Rachel from a final “viewing,” he needed her to carry the body. Seeing Zack struggle to lift the bundle—which probably weighed forty kilograms, since gravity in the habitat was close to that of Earth—and stagger with it, Sasha had offered to help. But Rachel moved quickly. This was her mother—or so it seemed. And her poor father.
It was her job.
They made their way slowly to the south, a little uphill, into the deep dark recesses of a corner of the habitat Rachel had not visited. She quickly grew tired and then frustrated by the distance. “Why are we going all this way?” she snapped. “Didn’t we bury the others—” Two people had died during the awful first arrival day.
“We don’t have a cemetery, kiddo,” Harley Drake said. “Your dad has his reasons.”
“We’re here,” Zack said.
They had reached a cavernous opening inside which Rachel could see strange cell-like structures lining the walls. “We called this the Beehive,” Zack said, gesturing with alarming weakness. “It’s where we came through from the vent. It’s where…Megan…your mother…came from.”
Camilla stepped forward, as if eager to explore. Sasha held her back.
Harley jabbed the shovel into the ground. “Got any particular place in mind?” he asked Zack.
Zack looked around, then stepped out into the open. “Right here, I think.” He turned to Rachel and offered the first smile she had seen from her father in days. “This is a little like St. Bernadette’s, right?” That was the name of Megan Stewart’s earthly resting place, a cemetery near the space center.
Harley rolled his wheelchair toward the spot, but Sasha took the shovel. “Let me.”
Harley began to protest, but Zack said, “Hey, Harls, why don’t you grab some of those melons?” He pointed to a nearby tree laden with large red fruit of some kind.
Rachel knew Harley’s expressions, and what flashed across his face was fury—less at Zack or Sasha than his situation. But he accepted the assignment, though not without a final grumble: “Maybe I should volunteer to taste-test them, too.”
Sasha quickly and efficiently scratched out the borders of a grave, then dug the shovel into the earth. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “It’s loose. I was afraid it would be hard.”
The tall woman from Yale worked methodically as Zack simply watched, hands folded over his chest. Camilla wandered all around them, careful never to go any closer to the Beehive. Eventually she joined Harley, helping to carry a handful of the red melons back to the gravesite.
After several minutes, Sasha stopped, clearly exhausted. “Uh, how deep?” she said.
“Tradition suggests two meters,” Harley said.
“This is hardly a traditional environment,” Zack said. “Keanu will…absorb her, I think.” He took the shovel from Sasha then, jumped into the grave, which by then was close to a meter deep, and furiously continued the digging.