There was no place to hide. Safrah knew that, even as she pleaded with Tarki to flee as far from the outpost as possible. Ship could scan all of Home and send out probes; it could probably view or track anything it wanted to from orbit.
“We still don’t know if Ship has left anyone there,” Tarki said when she paused for breath. “Maybe it was only making observations.”
“If Ship was only making observations, it would have sent a probe, and its probes don’t look anything like what we saw. That was a vessel that carries people and cargo. We have to get away from here, Tarki. You could come with me to the settlement. We can find a place for you to stay. You’ve always been a friend to us, even if you’re not—”
“—a true human being,” he finished, and she heard a slightly bitter note in his voice.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You meant it exactly that way.” He paused. “Seems it hasn’t yet crossed your mind that Ship might judge my people even more harshly than yours, if it’s returned to pass such judgments on us. Oh, we’ve grown in numbers and settled in our villages, but we just hang on to what we have, content with knowing that the days that lie ahead will be much like those that have already passed. As far back as I can remember, I would wonder if that was the way we were supposed to live, if the people of Earth had gone to all the effort of building Ship to bring our ancestors here only so that we could lead our balanced, harmonious, and small-minded lives.”
“It’s better than fighting,” she said.
“Oh, I suppose it is,” he replied, “but a battle of some sort always seems to come sooner or later. My grandmother used to tell me that. When I’d object and tell her our lives were peaceful, she would tell me that we had just been lucky for a few generations or so.” Safrah thought of the younger ones in the settlement, and the violence that seethed in them.
“The people of Earth sent Ship across the heavens,” Tarki continued, “and we’ve never crossed the ocean. We haven’t even wandered very far from this lake and the great river.” He sighed. “I wish I could know even a little of what our ancestors knew,” he went on. “When I was younger, I imagined that your dome dwellers had command of much of that wisdom. I chose the life of a boatman and trader because I knew that would bring me in contact with your people, and then I might learn what you know. All I found out in the end was that you know nearly as little as I do.”
Safrah said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“If you want to run back to your tower and your settlement, I won’t stop you, but you’ll have to go there on foot and by yourself. Whatever’s waiting for us at the outpost, I’d rather face it now than later.”
Tarki handed her a waterskin. She drank and forced herself to stay calm. If Awan had repaired their radio, and Ship was now able to communicate with him, maybe whoever was at the outpost had only come there to help them. She did not want to think too much about why Ship might have sent people to the outpost instead of to a place closer to the settlement.
“You’re right,” she said. “We’ll have to go to the outpost.”
“And now that we’ve decided that,” Tarki added, “I suggest that you go back to sleep. We can wait until dawn— I wouldn’t want whoever or whatever’s there to think we’re trying to sneak up on the place.”
It was still dark when Tarki woke her. She had not expected to fall asleep. Then she remembered what they had seen earlier that night, and fear shocked her into wakefulness. Tarki lifted the curtain as Safrah slipped out of the cabin, then let it fall. “Aren’t you going to get some sleep?” she asked.
“No. It’ll be dawn soon.” She glanced east, but clouds still veiled the sky and mist hovered over the lake. “We might as well get going,” he continued, pressing what felt like a handful of nuts and dried fruit into her hands. “Eat this— I’ve had my breakfast already.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat the food. You’ll need it.” He crept around the cabin toward the stern; she followed him. “Don’t be so frightened, Safrah. Whatever happens, at least we may find out a few things we didn’t know before.”
“I brought a stun gun with me.” She might as well admit that to him. “It’s in one of my packs. I should go get it.”
“Leave it where it is. Our weapons won’t be of any use to us now.” He pulled his rope and anchor out of the water, then sat down next to the rudder.
The fog in the east was growing lighter as the boat approached the outpost, moving slowly through the tendrils of mist rising from the lake. The doors of the two small cabins above the reedy bank were closed, and the windows shuttered. Whoever had been carried there was hiding, waiting inside for them.
Tarki steered the boat toward the dock, which was barely larger than a raft, then tied up his craft at one of the poles. “Come on,” he said, and held out a hand to Safrah, who was still huddled near the rudder. She grabbed it tightly.
“Hai,” Tarki called out as he leaped to the gunwale; she climbed up onto the boat’s edge after him. “You can come out now.” He let go of Safrah and jumped from the boat as she leaped after him to the dock. The reed surface swayed under her, nearly making her lose her balance. “We mean you no harm.”
The doors of the cabins remained closed. Safrah could not even see the light of a lantern through the cracks of the shutters. Perhaps they were afraid. Maybe they were plotting an ambush.
“Maybe they don’t understand our words,” Tarki murmured. “Hai!” he shouted. “I am Tarki, son of Kadin, a boatman and trader. This dome dweller with me is called Safrah. You have nothing to fear—”
The door of the cabin nearer to them opened. A dark-haired boy with broad shoulders stepped out, followed by a taller companion.
She knew the smaller young man, even though he had been even smaller and younger when she last saw him. “Enli,” she said, stunned at the sight of the young trader. The other boy also looked familiar; she could not recall his name, but was certain that she and her people had traded with him, too. “What are you— How—”
“Tarki?” a voice called from inside the cabin. “Then you must be—” A small, slender girl with a long black braid came through the doorway. “You don’t know me, but I know about you. I’m from your village of Seaside and you’re a cousin of mine. My name is Bian. I’m a great-granddaughter of Nuy and the daughter of—”
“I know who you are, child. I celebrated with Kwam and Tasu when you were born.” Tarki hurried toward the three, then halted. “But how—”
A fourth person, a yellow-haired girl, followed the dark-haired girl out of the cabin. “Ship carried us here,” Enli said, “in one of its shuttles.”
“We were close enough to see the vessel that carried you,” Tarki said.
“We were by ourselves when we first heard Ship’s voice,” Enli continued. “No one else knows we’re here. Ship even made sure that there were no people nearby when it sent its shuttle for us.”
“But why did Ship bring all of you to this place?” Tarki asked.
“To find out why no one in the dome dwellers’ settlement has responded to its call,” the taller boy replied, “and why its probes have seen no one outside their buildings and no crops or animals near the settlement. But that isn’t the only reason.” He faced Safrah. “Some of our people may already believe that yours are keeping any messages you might have from Ship a secret, and that you may even be trying to turn Ship against us. Some of them are likely to come to your settlement demanding answers. We promised Ship we would do whatever we could to avoid any conflict.”
“We know your people have more weapons than we do,” the girl named Bian said, “and we were afraid you might turn them against anybody who approached your settlement.” She peered up at Safrah. “Why haven’t your people answered Ship’s call?”
“Maybe they picked up a call,” Enli added, “and had their own reasons for not answering.”
“But we haven’t received any messages from Ship,” Safrah said. “That’s the truth. We couldn’t have heard any message because our radio isn’t working.” She felt the force of what Tarki had told her earlier, that bits of the truth would not be enough. “And the reason it isn’t working is that someone among us destroyed it.”
All of them were staring at her now. Safrah bowed her head as shame bit at her. Enli and his companions had seen her people as more than they were only because they had been deceived. Now Ship had brought the four of them to this outpost because of her people’s failures and weaknesses.
“But why would anybody do that?” the yellow-haired girl asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Safrah replied, “because I don’t know who did it.”
“But why now,” Enli said, “with a strange new light traveling across the sky? Didn’t it occur to you that it might be Ship?”
“No, it didn’t.” Offering large portions of truth was proving to be even more difficult than she had expected. “We hadn’t been outside our domes and tunnels since the onset of the cold season, so none of us even saw that light until a little while ago. Whoever damaged the radio didn’t know about that light, and didn’t have any reason to think Ship might have come back.”
“Then we should go to your settlement,” the taller boy said, “and tell your people that Ship has returned.” He reached into a small pouch that hung from a cord around his neck, then held out his hand; a round, silvery object rested in his palm. “You won’t need your radio now. We can speak to Ship with this.”
Tarki’s eyebrows shot up. “Ship gave you that?” He stepped closer and peered at the object. “What is it?”
“Ship calls it a comm,” the boy answered. “Ship told us to take it with us when we left the shuttle, but asked us not to use it until we’d accomplished whatever we could by ourselves.”
“But why not?” Tarki said. “If you can talk to Ship with that thing, then can’t Ship also talk to us?”
The boy nodded.
“Then we can avoid any conflict now, can’t we?” Tarki said. “All we have to do is show that to Safrah’s people, and they’ll know—”
“What?” Enli interrupted. “They might think it’s some sort of trick. Besides, she says that one of her people destroyed their radio, and she doesn’t even know who. Somebody among her people obviously doesn’t want any of the dome dwellers to be able to communicate with Ship. Whoever wrecked the radio might try to destroy this comm, too.”
Tarki fingered his mustache. “Then we’ll go to Westbay and show it to everyone there before they get any more ideas about going north and confronting the dome dwellers. We can head to Lakeview and then downriver after that. We’ll be able to talk to Ship and prove that we’re as much a true part of its Earthseed as any of the people in the old settlement, and the dome dwellers won’t be able to say a word against us.”
“Tarki,” Safrah muttered, stung by his words.
“I didn’t mean you,” he said, “or any of the others I’ve traded with, and once we’ve spread the word and spoken to Ship, we could send someone to your settlement to—”
“Stop it,” Enli said. “Ship asked us not to use the comm until we’d settled everything among ourselves.”
Tarki said, “That makes it sound as though Ship doesn’t trust any of us.”
“Seems to me it has good reason not to trust us,” Safrah said. “You see that device, and the first thing you think of is using it for your own advantage, and I’m no better— I was thinking the same thing.”
“Ship spoke to us for a while,” Bian said, “and one of the things it said was that it was afraid contacting more people here might only cause more conflict. We promised we would try to avoid that. If we can, then Ship will speak to us again. If we can’t, I don’t know what might happen.” She took a step closer to Tarki. “If we go to Westbay with you, we might only start more trouble.” She looked down. “I think Ship means this to be a kind of test for us.”
And if they failed it, Safrah thought, Ship might leave and never come back.
Bian lifted her head and turned to Safrah. “Would your people listen to us if we spoke to them? Would they promise not to use their weapons against our people if—”
“It may already be too late for that,” Enli said. “Look.” He lifted an arm and pointed south.
Safrah turned around, but could see nothing in the murky early morning light except an expanse of choppy dark gray water below the thinning fog.
Tarki let out his breath. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he muttered.
Safrah squinted, but could make out only a few tiny specks on the misty horizon. “What do you see?” she asked.
“Can’t you—” he began to say. “But of course you can’t—your people might as well be blind. There are more boats coming this way.” He motioned to Enli and Bian and their companions. “Go inside and grab whatever you’ve brought with you. You’re leaving on my boat, all of you.” He paused. “I’ll stay here.”
“But you can’t,” Safrah protested.
“Somebody has to stay here to let them know what’s going on, tell them about Ship. Maybe I can keep them here for a while, long enough for you to settle things with your people. We have to hope for that now.” Tarki waved an arm at the lake. “Go.”
The boat cut through the water, moving fast enough to create small waves in its wake. There was a chance that they had not been spotted through the fog, but Enli, who had taken control of the rudder, did not want to count on that.
“The fog’s very thick now,” he murmured, “and it’s hard to see what you don’t expect to see, but we should still get as far ahead of them as we can.” Enli had told Safrah that the yellow-haired girl, whose name was Lusa, came from his village of Overlook far to the south. Bian and the taller boy lived in a village even farther south, one near the southern ocean.
“I know of that place,” Safrah said. “It’s called Seaside.” She remembered the taller boy’s name then; he was called Arnagh, and she had last seen him when he came to the outpost with the traders Tiri and Malcum of Seaside.
The four young people had carried small packs aboard that looked much like the packs she had sometimes found in abandoned domes. Both of the girls, sitting next to the packs, watched her in a way that made her uneasy. She realized that she was probably the first of her people they had ever seen. They were small, Bian over a head shorter than she was and Lusa not much taller than that, and both were slender and small-boned enough to make her feel awkward and much too large.
“How did Ship find you?” she asked.
“We were staying in Plainview,” Lusa replied. “We’d come upriver to see if we could find out whether news about the light had reached the villages closer to your settlement. We happened to be out on the plain bordering Plainview when a flying thing that looked like a very large metal insect found us.”
“Ship called it a probe,” Bian added. “Ship spoke to us, and we told it that we were willing to go and meet with your people to find out why you never responded to its greetings.”
All their lives had been devoted to hiding from these people, Safrah thought, to concealing what the dome dwellers were and keeping their secrets. What could she say to these four now that would prepare them for what they would find? Perhaps she could keep them away from the settlement, tell them that they would have to wait by the tower until she found out what was going on inside the domes.
Already she was thinking of ways to keep more of the truth hidden from them.
“The last time my aunt and uncle and I traded with your people,” Arnagh said then, “Moise came to the outpost with Jina and Awan.” He leaned toward her. “Moise didn’t look so good the last time we saw him.”
Safrah took a breath. “Moise is dead.”
Arnagh sighed. “I’m sorry to hear it. And Awan?” He looked away for a moment. “And Jina and Mikhail?”
“They’re all well.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The girls were still observing her. Enli gazed ahead into the fog. Safrah rushed to fill the awkward silence. “Maybe Awan has even repaired our radio by now.”
Arnagh reached into the pouch hanging over his chest and took out the comm. “I don’t think he could have yet,” he said, holding the device out to her. “Ship told us that if it heard anything at all from your people, it would let us know.” He pointed to a tiny gem on the silvery surface. “We’d hear a soft humming sound, and that jewel there would start shining, and then we’d know that Ship was trying to speak to us.”
Safrah gazed at the comm, knowing she had seen devices like it in the records; she wished now that she had paid more attention to those images. “Ship should have left something like this with your people,” Arnagh said as he slipped the comm back into his pouch. “It could have left you a number of them, and we could have traded for them, and then your people and mine would both have been able to—”
“Ship wanted us to be self-reliant,” Safrah said. “It didn’t want to give us too many things that might fail and that we wouldn’t know how to fix or make for ourselves.” A feeling of hopelessness was settling around her that was as damp as the fog over the lake.
Bian and Lusa looked away from her, as if sensing her darkening mood.
The boat moved across the water in silence. Safrah got up and made her way past the two girls to the prow. The fog would lift soon, burned away by the morning sun. She rested one arm on the gunwale and stared out at the gray water. She would have to pick her words carefully, decide exactly how to tell these people how badly her settlement was doing and how few of her people were left. But that wouldn’t even be the worst of it. Ship would learn of their failure as well, and might conclude that her people had failed in their purpose.
“Safrah.” Arnagh had followed her. He offered her a brief smile as he sat down next to her. “I was surprised to see you in Tarki’s boat.”
“He didn’t come to the tower to trade. He was there to find out what we knew, whether we were in contact with Ship. He turned on the beacon, and then he waited for somebody to come there and meet him. I told him I’d go as far as the outpost with him and left my cart at the tower.”
“What were you going to do after that?” he asked. “I mean, if you hadn’t found us at the outpost.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think we should do when we reach the tower? Signal your people that we’re there and waiting, or go to the settlement with you?”
“I don’t know.” She turned her head toward him. “I have to tell you this. You’ll find out eventually, one way or another. My people aren’t what you think. We may have bred true and preserved the true human genome, but that’s about all we’ve done. There are very few of us left. All the older ones who reared us, Moise and all the rest, they’re all gone—dead. Now it’s only me and Jina and Awan and Mikhail and the young ones we’ve raised—thirty-one of them—and those younger ones are afraid of anything outside our settlement. They’re afraid of the outside itself.”
She heard him draw in his breath. A glance toward the stern of the boat told her that the sharp ears of his three companions had picked up her words.
“That must be why Ship saw no crops or animals near your settlement,” Arnagh said.
“We have no crops or animals, unless you count the insects and rats we occasionally find in our tunnels.”
“How do you live?”
“Our windmills and solar cells still provide enough energy for what we need,” she replied, “and for recharging anything your people bring to us. We use any tools of ours that still work, one of which happens to be a food dispenser.” She would not try to explain that piece of technology to him, since she barely understood it herself. “When we need something we don’t have or have run out of, we can usually find it in one of the uninhabited domes.”
“I never thought… I’ve been suspecting that your people weren’t what we thought you were, but—”
“Moise made us promise that we’d never let you know how much we’ve lost and how weak we really are, but I had to break that promise. Tarki knows, because I told him, and now so do you.”
No one spoke for a while. Then Enli called out from the stern, “And here we were afraid of a conflict. At least we won’t have to worry about losing a fight, if there are so few of you.”
Safrah heard the relief in his voice; he owed nothing to her people. “Don’t be so sure,” she said, feeling her anger rise. “Our young ones could still give you a battle.”
“But there’s no reason to fight now,” Enli replied. “Tarki will tell the people coming this way what’s happened, and also that we have a way of communicating with Ship. They’ll know he’s telling the truth. And if they still have any doubts, we can show them the proof.”
Safrah said, “You’re a fool.” She could not keep her rage out of her voice. “Why should I assume your people won’t try to overpower us, especially when they find out how few of us there are? Why should I believe you wouldn’t take their side?”
“We didn’t come here to fight,” Bian objected.
“You might change your mind if you think you’d have something to gain. Let me tell you this. We know the region around our settlement, and you don’t. We’d have the high ground. We’d see anyone coming from a distance, and a number of your people would fall before you even got close to our dwellings. And even if you got inside, we know the routes through the tunnels, and you don’t. You might win out in the end, but you would trade some lives for that.”
They aren’t like us. She was hearing Moise’s voice once more, reminding her of her obligations. They may look like us, but they haven’t bred true. They’ve become something else; never forget that. If she had to fight these people to make up for her betrayal of her own kind, she would do that. Whatever she felt about Terris and Morwen and the others, she would have to stand with them against any outsiders.
“We should have stayed with that boatman Tarki,” Lusa said, “and sent you back to talk to the other dome dwellers by yourself.”
“I would have had to go with her,” Arnagh said. Safrah glanced at him, surprised.
Lusa’s lip curled. “So you two must be closer than I thought. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Arnagh’s face reddened. “It’s got nothing to do with that.”
“Stop it,” Bian said. Safrah could hardly hear the girl’s voice, but there was a fierce look in her tilted dark eyes. “We promised Ship we’d do whatever we could to avoid a fight, and look at us.”
Safrah steadied herself. “I’m sorry.” She said it quickly, to get it over with, even though she had nothing to apologize for and was still angry at all of them.
“Think of what Ship said to us,” Bian continued. “It was worried that, if it returned, it would only make more trouble for us and for the dome dwellers. Maybe it was right to worry. Maybe it’ll decide we’re too much trouble for it to worry about us anymore, or that we were a big mistake and it’s time to start over with some other Earthseed.”
The same thought had come to Safrah. Enli made fists of his hands. Lusa bowed her head.
“There’s this to consider, too,” Safrah said. “Somebody destroyed our radio, and I don’t know who among my people could have done that. I can be sure it wasn’t Mikhail or Jina or Awan, but I don’t know who of the younger ones might have done it or why. It could have been just a fit of anger, or somebody not really understanding what they were doing, but it might have also been somebody who wanted to make sure we’d never be able to talk to Ship.”
They were all staring at her now, their eyes hard. “You keep talking of these younger ones,” Arnagh said. “First you tell us that they can give us a fight, and now you’re saying that one of them might have destroyed your radio. What kind of people are they, anyway?”
“We did the best we could, bringing them up,” Safrah said, “but then we lost all our older ones, and the younger ones have been living apart from us for a while now. They go their own way, they don’t listen to us, and sometimes I think they don’t really care about anything. I’m afraid of them. You might as well know that. I don’t know what they might do.”
The fog had lifted. Maybe, Safrah thought, the younger ones weren’t so wary of the outside as she assumed. Perhaps one or more of them had been sneaking outside for a while now and knew the night sky well enough to see that something new was crossing the heavens, a light that might be a sign that Ship had returned. Could that have provoked someone to destroy their radio? Were they that fearful of Ship’s judgment?
“Safrah,” Arnagh murmured, “I think you’d better tell us all exactly what we’ll be facing when we get to your settlement.”