Yesterday, the shuttle came again. I heard its arrival from where I hid deep in the forest, and then its departure at dusk. They took more trees.
Flash and Diamond are worried. It’s not like we didn’t give them a perfectly clear message, right? Mundo is no longer theirs.
The fact that every time a shuttle comes back, it’s guarded with armored marines means they’ve taken the lesson to heart.
“Actually, it’s a good sign,” I tell the quetzals. “Each time they’ve come, it’s been to take equipment, different plants they need. If they ever come back and start fixing the buildings, bringing in new material, that’s when we have to worry.”
I’m not sure how I feel deep inside about Dya, Su, Mark, Damien, and the rest of the kids going away forever. There are a lot of things I’m not sure about.
Like why I ache on the inside when I think about how Rebecca and Shantaya died that day. It had to happen, right? I know that Flash and Diamond are looking for answers. It wasn’t like they were being vindictive when they ate Rebecca and Shantaya. It was Rebecca, years ago, who told me, “Sometimes, Kylee, sacrifices have to be made in the name of science.”
Flash and Diamond thought that by consuming Rebecca and Shantaya they’d gain an understanding of why the experiment went wrong. They were as upset as I was when they didn’t get any answers from the digesting bodies.
That meant that Rebecca and Shantaya died for nothing.
Despite the ache and hurt that causes the human in me, I know it was part of the scientific method. Knowledge doesn’t come without a little pain, regret, and a few mistakes.
And back then, I was still pretty broken apart inside. The quetzal part of me was still growing, enraged at what they’d done to Rocket.
Part of me is Rocket. And I remain enraged. Unlike among humans, the desire to kill isn’t muted over time. It can, however, be buffered by other stimulae. Like Talina desperately trying to keep Rocket alive. Communicating her desperation and hope as he died.
And she carried Rocket’s last feelings, shared them with me through her saliva. But for her I would never have lived his fear, pain, and disbelief. Let alone his surprise that Talina cared so much that she held him as he died.
Talina proves that not all humans are beyond preserving. The problem is that too many of them are monsters like Spiro, the Supervisor, and the rest. In Flash and Diamond’s eyes this makes saving the few not worth the effort.
The part of me that is Kylee would save the few.
Some days I teeter, but most days the quetzal perspective wins.
As the morning brightens in the eastern sky the old quetzal I named Flash and I walk out from the tree belt and across the seared surface of the shuttle landing pad.
Flash and the rest remain awed by the humans’ ability to ride the skies. Technology perplexes them. It’s beyond their conception. I constantly astound them by making the simplest of tools. Even to the point of using a stone to crack a walnut.
The buildings are looking a bit more shabby. Around the edges, sunflowers, amaranth, and lettuce are starting up.
I need Mundo’s plants. None of Donovan’s native plants are digestible in the human gut. Most are downright poisonous. Although the quetzal inside me can process heavy metals, the human part of me is still highly susceptible to toxicity. Almost all of my food comes from the fields here. A fact that ties me forever to Mundo.
Stepping around the side of the shop building, I stare with curious detachment at what remains of the dome; it collapsed around the main shaft of the tower. From the looks of things, the west side let loose first, tilting the whole, and then the rest of the floor gave way. As it plummeted down, the tower punched up through the roof.
Hard to believe that used to be our home. Rocket and me, we both miss it.
Flash chatters at the sight; yellow, green, and pink patterns of color paint the big quetzal’s hide.
“It hurts,” I tell him. “It was our home. We were happy here.”
Flash makes a deep-chested clicking, his sides alternating in patterns of violet, mauve, and orange that communicates his curiosity. Especially about how the part of me that is Rocket could have been happy there.
“Humans feel things quetzals don’t. And the other way around, I guess.”
Flash clicks and chatters his confusion. Humans remain unfathomable to him. He asks if I will ever go back to the humans.
“Humans have a word: amputate. It means to cut off. They have another word: cauterize. Which means to seal by means of fire.”
I lead the way, walking wide around the collapsed dome to the cemetery. Here I drop to my knees so that I can finger the dirt on Rocket’s grave. “This is why. When they killed Rocket, they amputated the human part of me. Because it was purposefully mean, that cauterized it.”
Flash half-flares his collar, his three eyes gleaming as they study me. A barely audible whistle sounds behind his serrated jaws.
“Of course I still love my mother. I love all of them. But they’re not . . . us. Rocket made that clear as he was dying.”
I close my eyes to better see the woman in my memory. “Ta Li Na. I always liked that name. She gave me Rocket’s last message. He told me to get away. That’s why I can’t go back. They’d try to get what’s left of him out of me. Wash him from inside. Make me one of them again.” I pause. “I can’t let that happen.”
A curious chittering utters from Flash’s mouth.
“Because I know how Turnienko, Cheng, and Dya think and work. They dissect what they don’t understand. Experiment. Like Rebecca did with death fliers, roos, and hoppers. And you did with Rebecca and Shantaya. There’s a cost to science.”
Flash replies with a clicking, his hide dancing in golds and blacks mottled with tan that express his incomprehension and at the same time his distrust and contempt for human beings.
“Dya always used to tell me not to burn bridges. It’s what she called a metaphor. Words that make a symbol. They would have killed Rocket in Port Authority. First Spiro, then the rest of the town. Talina is part quetzal. She got us away. And then they came all the way here and killed Rocket anyway. It’s my fault. I sent him down to see what was happening.”
I sniff, fighting back tears. But there have been too many of those already. “So, the bridge is burned. It’s just us now. Rocket and me. He tells me not to, but I hate them.”
Again the clicking.
“That last day, when we met Talina and my mother in the forest, Talina should have shot me. I’ll grow up. And when I do, I am going to make them afraid like Rocket was.”
I place a finger to my lips as the saliva flows in my mouth. “I can taste Rocket’s death here. I’ve let you taste it. So you know what I mean. But what you can’t know is how deeply my hate runs.”
I knot a fist full of dirt from Rocket’s grave. “But they will. One day, when I’m an adult, they’re going to feel the same terror Rocket did.”
Flash chatters a question.
“Because I swear it,” I tell him. “Right here, on Rocket’s grave.”
And in my imagination I hear people screaming, see them dying in blood, with torn guts, and in fear. Just like Rocket did. My mother taught me to be a scientist, so I know just how to make it happen.
I stand, the dirt from Rocket’s grave still clutched in my fist. I look to the north, far away, toward Port Authority. Too bad for them.