‘Dear Moses!’ Zach stops at the crest. He shakes his head; his mouth drops open. ‘This can’t be true, it just can’t…’
Jared and Beth rush to Zach’s side. Beth’s hands go to her mouth as she sobs and twists away, Jared sags to his knees. I stop and pull off the harness, glancing at Rebekah and Reuben. Amos clambers ahead to see what’s brought the others to a halt. My stiff legs can’t move fast enough as Amos reaches the top. He too, drops to his knees, shaking his head. ‘What has she done?’
Rebekah and I finally catch up. My legs give way as if Mother has herself delivered the blow to my stomach. We stare in silence until Reuben staggers the last few paces forward. He freezes. ‘What the—?’ His hand grasps my shoulder. ‘How many are there?’
I mumble. ‘Hundreds, there must be hundreds.’
As far as we can see, scattered across the plain from horizon to horizon and up to the foot of the mountains, sit shelters like our own. Some completely covered with ice, others with the tops peeping out of the gathered snow, looking like my birthday cake.
‘But…’ Amos stammers, ‘Mother said we were the first.’
Rebekah clenches her teeth. ‘Is this what Mother calls Paradise?’
My heart hammers. I climb to my feet and clutch her hand. ‘Isaac? Rachel? Are they…?’ I can’t say what my mind is thinking; it seems too cruel, even for Mother.
Rebekah strides to Jared and grabs his throat, pulling him up with surprising strength. ‘Did you know about this? Did you have anything to do with…?’ Her hands drop by her sides.
Jared splutters and coughs. ‘No! Of course not.’ He looks to each of us. ‘Honest. I didn’t. Look, prefects go to Paradise as well.’
I look up from my hands. ‘She told me.’
Reuben frowns. ‘What? About this?’
‘Not exactly, she said she always delivers on her promises.’ I stand, the heat rising in my stomach. ‘Is this what she meant? She delivered them… and us, to New Dawn to die? This is what we’ve worked so hard for all our lives?’
Jared takes a few paces down the slope. ‘But how do you know they’re dead?’ He squints at the mountain range beyond. ‘They might have crossed those and living—’
‘Happily ever after.’ Rebekah laughs bitterly in his face. ‘Ha! Just like in one of Mother’s fairy tales.’
Jared shrugs. ‘But you don’t know for certain, they could have survived.’
Rebekah shakes her head. ‘Oh, I doubt that. Anyway, if she wanted them to live happily ever after, why bring them here?’
Reuben steps up to Spoons. ‘I can see why he didn’t want us to come this way. I don’t think he wanted us to see this.’
I join him and look into the machine’s eyes. ‘But for what reason? So, we didn’t discover another one of Mother’s secrets, or so we didn’t get upset?’ I crouch in front. ‘Whose side are you on?’ But his blank, black eyes give no clue.
Rebekah strides back up the slope and picks up a harness. ‘Come on. We’ve got to find out what happened here.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Beth cries out, as if she’s been holding back her pain. ‘She did the same to them as she’s done to us. What more is there to know? Stay or leave, we’re all going to die. What chance do we have if they all died?’
I try to reason. ‘But we don’t know that for sure. Jared could be right. Some might have crossed the mountains.’
‘But look at the stones.’
‘What stones?’
Beth points to the nearest shelter. ‘There. Can no one see them?’
I follow her direction. My heart sinks. Little black stones poke out of the freshly dug earth around the hut, like small children sitting by Mother’s side listening to a story. Beth sniffles. ‘See! They’re all dead.’
Rebekah pulls the harness over her head. ‘That’s not going to happen to us. I won’t let it.’
Reuben pats the spider. ‘And I don’t think they had Spoons.’
I look to the machine. ‘So that’s where he was.’
‘Who?’
‘Spoons. He was here burying them. See, there’s no snow where he’s dug the holes. It would’ve taken him under an hour or so to get here, and—’
‘This is where he must have got the rations.’ Rebekah puts her hand to her mouth, I finish her thought.
My stomach turns. ‘We’ve been eating their food.’
Rebekah lifts her arm and grimaces. ‘And wearing their overalls.’
Reuben takes the harness next to Rebekah. ‘Forget it. We’d be dead without them. It looks like Mother didn’t care for them once they’d left the ship, they were on their own, like us.’
Rebekah frowns. ‘I wonder what killed them?’
I take the last harness. ‘Wouldn’t they have starved?’
She points to the crates. ‘So where did Spoons find the food? Surely there wouldn’t be any left if they’d starved to death?’
Rebekah pulls on the rope. ‘We can’t put this off any longer, we’ll have to walk through if we’re to get to the mountains. Plus, we might find something to our advantage down there. And… we may as well collect as much as we can from these shelters.’
Six stones surround the first hut at the edge. Reuben kneels besides one of the freshly-dug holes and reads the stone. ‘Afridi Jamal?’ He turns. ‘That’s strange, either Spoons has buried two people here, or this person has two names, has anyone heard of that before?’
Zach calls from the shelter. ‘By the look of the amount of snow and ice piled up, this has been here for years. I can’t even find the door.’
Reuben moves along the line of stones. ‘They’ve all got two names and the first begins with an A, but I don’t know how to say most of them.’ Reuben stands. ‘I’ve never heard any of these before, are they boys or girls?’
Beth bends to read the last stone. ‘How does he know their names? Spoons I mean.’
‘Wait a minute.’ I look at the first stone. I turn to the others. ‘Afridi. I’ve heard that name.’ I click my fingers. ‘Yes! Mother mentioned that one, it’s a boy’s name. If it’s the same one he would have been like Moses, a hero-worker or something like that.’
‘Huh.’ Jared stoops beside me. ‘Little good it did him.’
We stand and bow our heads by the stones of our fallen colleagues. Zach whispers. ‘Well let’s hope Spoons won’t be carving our names on blocks of stone any time soon.’
‘It won’t. I promise.’ We look to Rebekah. Her jaw and fists tighten. ‘As long as we stick to our task, it won’t happen.’
I let my eyes wander across the plain. ‘I’d assumed the ship had arrived at New Dawn recently, but by the look of all these huts, we must have been here for years.’
Rebekah trudges the short distance to the shelter. ‘Why did they stay put? That’s what I don’t understand.’ She turns and peers at the next hut no more than a hundred paces away. ‘Surely they would have seen the others and noticed they’d died? Why did they stay and not leave for the warmer lands?’
I join her. ‘Perhaps they didn’t understand, I mean, if your book had been about something else you wouldn’t have known about the explorers.’
She paces around the hut, looking for signs of the door in the encrusted snow. ‘That maybe so, but to just sit here and wait for death, it doesn’t seem right.’
Amos appears from the other side. ‘She should be made to pay for this.’ The muscles stand out on his jaw. ‘For what she,’ he glances to Jared, ‘and others have done to us.’ He glances skyward. ‘Oh look, here she comes.’ The ship passes overhead as if nothing has changed. As one, we can’t stop ourselves following its journey across the sky.
I sigh. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever get the chance to get back at her.’
‘Unless, she comes here.’ Rebekah shivers but I can see it’s not because of the cold. ‘Now she has her new body, what’s to stop her leaving the ship?’ No one answers. I guess no one wants to think about the possibility of a visit from Mother to our new home.
I shake my head. ‘This is ours, and if she tries to claim it, she’ll have to answer to us.’
We spent a few difficult hours searching the nearest shelters. Unfortunately, Beth was right; they all had stones, some six, others with eight and one even had ten – all of them had two names but none of the stones bore a name we knew. Reuben instructed Spoons to chip away the ice on three of the huts so we could enter. None were keen to go inside but if we were to find anything to help us, it couldn’t be avoided.
I’d entered the first with Reuben. Inside looked much the same as our own – empty except for two crates with their lids lying on the floor. Both were empty so they must have eaten the seeds once they’d discovered they wouldn’t grow. Reuben drew my attention to the inside of the ration box. Both the bottom and sides was covered in scratches, and the edges showed signs of being chewed. I’d staggered outside, appalled at what the unfortunate occupants must have endured; they had obviously died of starvation. But what of the others where Spoons had collected their food?
‘I wonder if they tried to plant their seeds?’ I look to the others and swallow my ration, feeling guilty for eating, knowing the fate of the inhabitants of the surrounding shelters.
Reuben answers first. ‘Wouldn’t it have been too dark? I don’t know much about plants, but don’t they need light?’
Rebekah nods. ‘Yes, but it would be light here when this part faces the suns.’ She scratches at the ground. ‘But then it depends if the earth beneath this snow ever thaws.’
Reuben swallows his ration. ‘What did you use in the lab?’
She shrugs. ‘Not my job. I was on air quality.’ She calls to Beth. ‘Were you on the growing section?’
Beth keeps her eyes on the snow. ‘We used some sort of powder.’ She grabs a handful of snow and squeezes. ‘Mother would send us different types and we just added water to test what worked best.’ Beth opens her hands and looks to the compacted ball. She pulls back her arm and tosses it at the side of the hut. ‘My job was to measure the plant growth every day in the different colored trays.’ She grabs another hand of snow. ‘Then I put a tick in a box next to the height each had grown. If they grew more than a quarter of an inch in height quicker than the previous best batch, I had to inform Mother.’ She stands and hurls the next ball at the side of the sledge. ‘I spent six years measuring little green shoots and thought I was doing important work!’ She spins around. ‘Would you believe I used to lie in my bed before lights out, worrying if the new powder would be better than the last?’ Beth slumps against the sledge. ‘What a waste.’
Rebekah shuffles to her side. ‘Not completely. We have the best seeds with us now, we’ll be grateful for your work when we can eat.’ She looks up to the stars. ‘Did you see many improvements?’
Beth rolls another ball of snow. ‘Not often, twice, maybe three times? I don’t think it made much difference whatever we grew the plants in. Once I reported an improvement that didn’t happen, just so our team would look good in her eyes.’
Rebekah wraps her hand around Beth’s shoulder. ‘We all wanted to impress her, don’t worry about it.’ She looks to Zach. ‘What did you do at the farm?’
Zach looks up. ‘I was in charge of watering the rows of trays that Abel had planted.’
‘Sounds like fun.’ Jared laughs, but stops as Zach catches his eye. ‘Sorry, what I meant to say was that it must have been valuable work, you know,’ he looks at the cube in his hand, ‘to feed us.’
Zach fidgets with his hat. ‘That wasn’t my only duty. I was also responsible for light scheduling.’
Jared glances at Rebekah before turning to Zach. ‘Light scheduling?’ We can all see Jared isn’t really interested. ‘What did that involve?’
Zach holds Jared’s gaze. ‘Switching them on and off.’
Jared bites his lip and nods. ‘Oh, I see. Why?’
Zach continues. ‘The lab told us if they stayed on all the time, the plants wouldn’t grow properly, so we used lights to mimic day and night. And,’ he looks up as if seeing the farm, ‘Abel also helped to control the gas levels.’ He looks at our blank faces. He straightens. ‘To make it like Earth so the plants can breathe. The lab worked out the higher the level of some gases, the quicker they would grow.’ He stands and looks to Jared. ‘See. I did take an interest outside the watering and switching the lights on and off.’
Beth sighs. ‘That was one of Grace’s duties, experimenting with the gases.’
I look to Beth. ‘So, what happened once the plants were fully grown? Did you prepare them for the kitchens?’
He shakes his head. ‘No. Once they’d reached four inches, the Prefects collected them. We didn’t do anything with the plants other than water them.’
I turn to Jared. ‘What did you do with them?’
He frowns. ‘Wasn’t my job… but I think they were sent up to Cloud Five. I guess they were processed there.’
Rebekah stands. ‘What about the bread? Does anyone know where or how that was made? Or the butter?’
I look up. ‘It wasn’t the kitchens.’ I glace at Jared, remembering when he’d found me on the floor. ‘It arrived already made. We… the orderlies just had to cut it and count the slices out for each dormitory.’
Reuben laughs. ‘Perhaps it was Spoons and his team. Must be easy with all those hands.’
Rebekah stands. ‘Talking of Spoons. Has anyone seen him lately?’
Beth sighs. ‘Probably burying more of these poor souls.’
Rebekah takes a few paces and looks around the side of the nearest shelter. ‘Well I hope he knows what to do with the plants when they’re ready, seeing as we don’t.’ She bends and scoops up a handful of snow and makes a ball like Beth. She turns and flings it at the hut. As it hits a loud boom echoes over our heads, displacing the powdery snow on top of the roof. She turns. ‘That was definitely closer than the last one.’
We climb to our feet, looking back to the direction we assume it came from. Amos spins around. ‘Something’s coming.’ He points towards the center of the settlement. ‘From over there.’
I listen. ‘Don’t worry, that’ll be Spoons. That’s the sound he makes when he’s in a hurry.’ In seconds, Spoons skids to a halt in the middle of our gathering. Without a glance, he attaches the rope from his sledge and takes a few paces. He stops and looks back. We don’t wait for another hint and quickly arrange ourselves, ready to follow.