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Maeve had a good feeling about the crash.
Maybe it was where the small ship had ground to a stop, half-submerged in the river, off of which ghosted a fine cool mist. Maybe it was the weather, with swollen grey clouds helping to dull the late morning heat. Maybe it was how intact the arrow-shaped vessel was, its wings and tail fins burnt down almost to nothing but little visible damage beyond that. Or maybe, it was because she’d heard a bird singing out in the woods earlier, just before the ship was spotted streaking down through the atmosphere.
Bea set their small drone out on the ridge, overlooking the crash site from a safe distance. “It’s a personal craft,” she said as she popped open the case containing the drone control console. “Bet you tonight’s rations. Just some moon-chaser who got careless.”
“Nah, probably a tech transport.” A dry wind blew Maeve’s short ginger bangs into her eyes. She lifted her cap to stuff them up under it.
The other girl scoffed. “You’re optimistic today.” She flicked a few buttons and the drone’s rotors buzzed to life as a screen on the console lit up, showing the wreck through the drone’s grainy eye. Bea took the drone up and swooped it down over the wreck. Much of the paint had been scorched off, though fragments of yellow text were still visible along its sides.
Pulling a small tablet and pen from a pouch on her belt, Maeve jotted down what remained of this text. “I heard a bird singing,” she said. “At the compound this morning, before we left.”
“No you didn’t,” Bea muttered back, circling above the wreck with the drone.
“I did.” Maeve recalled the melodic trill, heartbreakingly sweet as it echoed through the anemic trees. “Sounded just like the recordings in the database.”
“No, you didn’t.” Bea let the drone hover beside the wreck for a moment as she studied the counters below the screen. “The birds all died in the Heat Bath.”
“Not all of them,” Maeve corrected her friend, watching the screen for more text to transcribe. “I mean, most, yeah, but most of everything died.”
“Then enough of them did that you didn’t hear one this morning.” Bea looked up. “Whatcha writing?”
“The text on the ship. Maybe we can compare it to languages in the database, start to translate it.”
Bea stared through her dark bangs. “The hell for?”
Maeve shrugged. “They’re still human up there. Can’t be that different from us.”
“Real optimistic,” Bea muttered as she returned to the screen. “Nah, the moon-chasers are different. Why do you think they left us down here during the Bath?”
The Heat Bath was centuries ago, and a lot was lost during that era of fire and turmoil. One thing everyone remembered, however, was the reason for humanity’s division. Those who could afford to flee their dying planet did, and those who couldn’t stayed to die with it.
Of course, not everyone did. Bea took out her own tablet and copied the readings on the counters down on it. “Bet they all turned into bugs up there,” she joked. Trying to cut that first-job-of-the-day tension neither of them wanted. “You know, since we turned into gophers.”
Maeve was able to smile at that. It was only within the last few decades that the surface had stabilized enough for people to try and live up there again. She and Bea’s generation was the first since before the Bath to be born in the light. Their parents, however, still wore sun-goggles even on mild days, and their grandparents spoke of the sun like a boulder sat precariously on a cliff, ready to crash down at any moment.
Maeve asked, “How’s it look down there?”
“Radiation levels are fine,” Bea replied, reading off the counters. “Nothing weird in the air. No fires, no fuel leaking…” She nodded, ponytail bouncing. “Should be safe.”
After recalling the drone and packing it away, the girls climbed down the rocks to the crash site. The ship reeked of burnt metal and ozone. A few others had gone out to scour its trail, extinguishing any fires it might have dropped in its wake before they could spread through the dry forest. The girls had then volunteered to investigate the crash site.
It wasn’t common, but every so often something would fall from space. Maybe a ship like this, maybe a small satellite or piece of an orbital station. Usually these didn’t survive the crash, and the earthlings would just have to put out fires. If something was intact, however, there was often a wealth of tech, equipment, and supplies to be scavenged. When the moon-chasers fled Earth those centuries ago, they’d taken their wealth and power with them. Now, bits and pieces of that wealth had started to return.
“Bet you tonight’s rations part of the engines survived,” Bea said as they reached the river.
Maeve cocked an eyebrow at the warped engine cones on the back of the ship. “Thanks for the double portion.”
“Maeve, come on.” Swinging off her backpack, Bea set it on the pebbles and opened it up. “If we can reverse engineer some of these ships, maybe we can get off this rock, too.”
“And become moon-chasers?”
“It’d be better than frying in the dirt down here, right?” She dug a thermal capsule from her backpack. “Find some real estate on the moon for ourselves.” A dreamer in her own way, not that she’d admit it.
Maeve glanced up at the grey sky. She couldn’t imagine the moon would be a very pleasant place to live, even if the moon-chasers had allegedly managed to settle there. “Nah, they can keep it,” she said. “Why not use it to make things better down here? We’re already settled in. The moon sounds depressing anyway, just a bunch of empty grey rock.”
“You kidding me? They’ve probably got casinos and theme parks up there by now.” She primed the cap and took up position closer to the ship. “And mansions, and fast food, and…”
Maeve peered off into the skinny, sun-blanched trees. “…and big factories, and mining operations, and highways…” According to the records, all the things that helped cause the Heat Bath.
“Whatever.” Bea threw the cap into the side of the ship. It popped into a blanket of molten amber sludge that chewed a widening hole through the metal.
Somewhere in the forest, Maeve thought she heard something. A soft rustle, perhaps a branch being disturbed. She looked over her shoulder.
After a moment the heat began to subside, angry red calming to grey-black ridges and humps. That’s when Bea noticed. “What’s up?”
Maeve replied, “I thought I heard a bird again.”
Now Bea turned to look. Stillness. Then, a branch did shake. Instead of a bird, however, a large reddish-brown bat crawled out and flew away. According to the records, bats only used to come out at night. With so few birds left in the day, however, some enterprising species had moved into the empty niches left behind.
“Maybe they can sing now, too,” Bea said.
Maeve frowned. They gave the smoking thermal stew a few more minutes to cool, the new hole in the ship gaping open like a hungry mouth. During that time Bea set up the drone again and sent it in. As it entered the dark interior its headlight flicked on, providing a pool of illumination.
The entrance led right into some kind of storage room. Boxes had fallen from shelves and crates had been jostled from their moorings, many smashed open to spill dozens of cans of non-perishable food and drink. Some had been crushed into the floor in a glistening slurry of meat, liquid, and vegetation. Still, most of the supplies looked intact. There were even a few tool sets and first aid kits.
Bea bobbed her head excitedly. “Double rations for everyone tonight.”
She moved the drone next into an engine room. There her enthusiasm waned. The crash had reduced it to a ruin of mangled machinery. Maeve patted her on the shoulder. No moon mansion this time.
Something murmured through the drone’s audio. It was faint, little more than a soft whisper of static. It was enough to give the girls pause.
“You heard that,” Bea asked, “Right?”
Maeve shivered. For once, she’d hoped only she had heard something. “Yeah.”
Bea looked up, brown eyes huge. “You heard a voice too?”
Swallowing, Maeve nodded.
Bea hesitated a moment, before she turned back to the console and moved the drone on. Its hum focused to a grating buzz as it entered a narrow corridor. It passed a pair of doors on either side of the hall, both closed. Finally it reached a door at the end, smashed ajar by the impact. A screen flickered on and off in the dark beyond. There wasn’t clearance for the drone to enter. It looked possible to pry the door open, however.
Another small, staticky moan came through the mic.
They recalled the drone, flicked on their headlamps, and climbed into the ship themselves. Inside the air was biting cold and had a sharp, sterile smell, like the moon-chasers breathed industrial chemicals. Maeve, the taller of the two, led the way with a crowbar in hand,. Even so, the corridor ceiling was disorientingly high. Out of curiosity Maeve did try the two doors when they reached those, but one seemed to be blocked by fallen debris on the other side. The other was an empty bathroom.
Finally they reached the twisted door at the end of the hall. Maeve called into the dark, “Hello?”
Her voice filled the quiet like a heavy liquid.
“We heard someone in here,” she added. “Are you okay?”
Nothing. Her headlamp revealed a dashboard crowded with buttons, switches, and cracked monitors.
Setting her jaw, Maeve got her crowbar into a twisted section of the door and began to pry it open, putting her whole body into the work. With a few grunts of injured metal, the door jerked open a few inches. Stepping back, Maeve wiped the sweat from her forehead, then peered inside.
A pair of tall chairs with coffin-like backs sat facing the dashboard. Some kind of metal shielding had gone up during the crash to cover the front windows and protect the pilots, hence the darkness. Not that it had helped. A figure was slumped in one chair while another laid crumpled on the floor, both wearing white plasticky uniforms. They were unmistakably human, though taller and spindlier than anyone Maeve had ever seen, even in pre-Heat Bath photos. Unsettled by their silence, she stepped closer to examine them. She knew a corpse could make noise as air leaked from it. She’d heard it herself. What they’d heard here didn’t sound like that.
The seated moon-chaser, a man with a black crew cut and bugged grey eyes, stared at the window, his neck skewed at an unnatural angle. The one on the floor, an older fellow with a precisely trimmed goatee, stared at the door. His eyes had a milky gloss over them, like he’d been blind.
“Check this out.” Bea tapped the flickering screen. It jumped between static, blankness, and an image of a red planet, framed by alien text and the black of space. “What do you think that is? Mars?”
Maeve cocked her head. “I thought they went to the moon.”
“Centuries ago, yeah.” Bea’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve probably tried to expand since then, right? Wonder what Martian property values are like.”
Maeve’s attention fell back to the bodies. “Maybe they were colonists,” she wondered. “You know, trying to set up there.”
Bea shrugged, though she had the distant look in her eyes that suggested her mind would drift back to this later. “Wanna get the supplies now?”
“They said something,” Maeve said. “We both heard it, Bea.”
Her friend nodded hard, ponytail jerking like an agitated limb. “Well, they’re quiet now. Guess we took too long.”
A vinyl figurine of a red bird laid on the floor, holding a wrench in its beak. Swallowing, Maeve reached down for it. “Yeah.”
Something else caught her eye. Laid in the shadows just under the dash was a scrap of paper. Chicken-scratched onto it was some kind of symbol. The closest thing Maeve could compare it to was a lop-sided triangle, formed of many smaller shapes. Under it was a line of messy text she couldn’t read, though it appeared to be three words. Maybe there was something in the records like it? She took it and the bird and stuffed them together into a side pouch on her backpack. Records or not, it felt wrong to leave it here.
Bea called up the compound to tell them about the salvage while Maeve started carrying the rations out, laying them in rows on the riverbank. It had taken the pair about two hours to hike through the woods to the crash site, and with no roads going out to the river, it would take a while for the others to reach them with all their equipment.
“What do you think these are?” asked Bea, washing the slime of spilled food off of cans in the river. “I think I saw chicken on the floor. Maybe some carrots and potatoes.” They’d set their backpacks and the drone case down, having hefted them all day by now.
“Doubt it.” Maeve set a stack of first aid kits on the rocks. “I mean, they can’t farm in space, can they?”
“Well, no.” Bea shrugged as she wiped her gloved hands on a rock. “They probably just grow it all in labs.”
Maeve regarded the cans. “Is this safe to eat?”
“I mean, they wouldn’t poison themselves, would they?”
“They already did, though.” Maeve pointed to the roiling sky. The clouds had darkened somewhat, threatening a storm.
“Oh.” Bea paused. “Yeah.”
The wind soon picked up, moving in raspy whispers through the trees. For the moment it helped cancel out the rising midday heat, but Maeve could tell it could get ugly. “I think it’s gonna rain.”
Bea exhaled through her teeth. “Bets on how bad it’ll be?” Last time it had grown into a flood which forced them back underground for a week.
“Maybe a few days.” Maeve’s attention wandered back to the ship. “What do you think they were doing?”
Bea was silent.
Maeve looked over. Her friend was still knelt by the water, staring across the river. An odd feeling prickled along her neck. She called, “Bea, you good?”
Slowly, as if trying not to attract attention, Bea turned to her. “You didn’t hear that?”
That prickle became cold fingers working into the fine hairs of Maeve’s neck. “Hear what?”
Bea’s head whipped back across the river. “I thought…” She stood up. “Nah,” she muttered, “Nah…”
"Nah what?”
Bea opened the drone case and booted the machine up. “I dunno,” she said. “I dunno. I thought I heard something, and I think I’m just weirded out because there’s two dead guys fifty feet away, but I wanna check."
“Okay.” Maeve crossed her arms. That dry heat hadn’t left the air, but she felt a chill deep in her chest. “What did you hear?”
“I heard a voice,” Bea snapped. “Alright? I heard someone talking across the river.” Composing herself, she added, “I’m gonna send the drone over there to take a look.”
Maeve scrounged for an explanation, to try and reassure them both. “And it wouldn’t be someone from the compound? One of the fire crews?”
“Could be,” Bea said, with an edge to her voice that suggested she wasn’t convinced herself.
“It might be an animal,” Maeve reasoned.
Bea shook her head. She had the drone in the air and now flew it across the water. “I dunno, Maeve, gimme a minute.”
Maeve came over to watch the monitor. Trees drifted by as the drone advanced. Its camera shook a bit in the stiff wind, buffeting the mic with a choppy moan. In the corner of the camera’s eye, a branch trembled against the breeze. Bea flinched, the drone stopping as she lost focus. Maeve set a hand on her friend’s shoulder, getting her to ease the slightest bit. She turned the drone to face branch.
A bat stared back at them, leaning towards the drone to sniff it.
The girls each heaved a long breath of relief.
The sound of the wind levelled out, no longer a random pummelling of noise against the microphone. It came in a rhythm now. Three short sounds. The longer Maeve listened, the more these started to sound like words.
“What the fuck…?” started Maeve.
“Nah.” Bea was trembling. She turned the drone around to fly it back to them. “Nah, Maeve. The others can come pick this up.”
Maeve couldn’t argue. She wasn’t sure she wanted to eat lab chicken, anyway.
The river came into view of the drone’s camera, with the two of them a single hunched spot of color on the other side. As it came closer, however, the image lost resolution. Stretches of the screen melted into messes of pixels. “Come on, asshole, don’t do this now,” Bea growled under her breath.
Maeve watched the screen. Maybe the stress and strangeness were getting to her, too. If it wasn’t however, if her eyes could still be trusted, the pixelation was forming in the shape of a lop-sided triangle.
“One second,” she said, getting up and hurrying over to her backpack.
“Maeve, come on,” protested Bea, “don’t you get fuckin’ weird, too.”
“Trust me on this.” Maeve sorted through the side pocket, trying to fish past the bird figure for the slip of paper. Her hands were shaking too much. Pull it together. She paused, let herself breathe a moment. Trying again, she pried the paper out and unfolded it. Sure enough, it matched the almost-triangle she’d seen forming on screen. Or close enough, at least. The sketch was a crude approximation, even of the incomplete image she’d seen.
Something hit the riverbank, plastic cracking against rock.
Maeve looked up. The drone laid in a crumpled mess on the river bank near Bea, who sat hunched in front of the console.
There were those cold nervous claws raking against Maeve’s neck again. She called, “What’s wrong, Bea?”
Bea shuddered. No- she spasmed. Like she’d been electrocuted.
Maeve stood. “Bea, are you okay?”
With another unnatural shiver Bea jerked to her feet. There she swayed for a moment. Then she turned, like a turret atop an old-world tank, to Maeve. Her face was slack and her eyes were empty glazes of milky grey.
Maeve’s heart dropped into her stomach.
Bea gave a small, odd gurgle. Then she shambled towards Maeve.
Panic took over. Maeve felt herself turn and run towards the trees. A part of her mind remained locked on the thought, It’s Bea, why are we running, as another part screamed, oh god, something’s happening to Bea. The rest of her had already decided, that’s not Bea.
She made it a few yards before Bea (oh god Bea, that’s not Bea) scrambled into her path on all fours. Her movements were jerky, uncoordinated, like an insect with half its legs plucked off. Caught off guard Maeve stumbled back with a yelp. As Bea (not Bea!) scuttled towards her, she kept mumbling, a gibberish that sounded more and more like speech.
“Look at…” Hard to discern, the words coughed out thin and breathless. “Look at me.”
Behind Maeve was the river. She couldn’t swim. To her right the rock face. She couldn’t climb fast enough. That left only one escape.
Maeve hurled herself towards the ship. Gloves and boots slapped mud behind her as the thing wearing Bea’s skin closed in, wheezing, “Lookatme.” But she reached the wing first, scrambling across the injured metal and tumbling into the hole. She almost slipped on the half-dried sludge of spilled food, now reeking of lukewarm grease and chemicals, but kept her footing and fled up the hall.
“Look at me.” Not-Bea’s hands and boots churned the sludge behind her.
Throwing her shoulder through the bathroom door, Maeve fell into the tiny room and slammed the door behind her. Her pursuer crashed into it at once, jarring it back open for a second before Maeve forced it shut. She pressed all her weight against it, looking for some way to lock it. All she saw was a small blank touch screen on the wall. The door shuddered, weight crashing against it again and again. “Lookatme.”
Screwing her eyes shut, Maeve held the door against the assault. Everything in her wanted to cry out for Bea, on the off chance anything was left of her friend to hear it. That’s not Bea. What happened? I don’t know but THAT’S NOT BEA.
Maybe this went on a few more minutes. Maybe it went on an hour. At some point Maeve broke down, barely able to hear her own hiccuping sobs over the assault. Eventually it stopped. Her breath caught, as if any sound would incite it again. Outside, her pursuer heaved for ragged breath. Then, uncoordinated feet shuffled away. Wiping her eyes, Maeve listened as everything fell to quiet.
Shivering against the door, Maeve tried to collect her thoughts. A ship had crashed. She and Bea had investigated. The crew was dead
Then they started hearing voices and Bea went crazy?
Wait. The dead crew. One of the men had scribbled that symbol. One of them had the same blank, blind eyes as Bea.
Maeve felt like she should have struggled with this more. Should have tried to put the pieces together a different way. The image forming here raised more questions than it answered, brought her more dread than comfort. And yet, it was the only one she could see.
They brought it with them.
They’d picked something up. Maybe on Mars, maybe somewhere else. It had gotten them. Now it had gotten Bea.
Blinking back a fresh round of angry, helpless tears, Maeve tried to focus. It had gotten Bea, now it was after her. Once the others arrived, it would no doubt try to get them, too. Cold nausea twisted in the back of her throat. What would she do about it?
She could look for a way to fight back. Maybe she could at least free Bea. But how? There was little more to go on than intuition. Well, what did her intuition tell her?
Her eyes snapped open. The blocked-off room. It was a leap of faith, but the ship was small, and whatever had taken Bea sure as hell hadn’t come from these woods. Maybe if she could get in there, she’d find something useful. Real optimistic. That’s what Bea would say to this, if she were here and herself. Maeve almost managed a trembling smile.
That warm swell of hope cooled off fast. She’d need her crowbar.
Opening the door a crack, Maeve peered out into the hall. No sign of Bea. She crept out to the opening. A soft rain had started, darkening the rocks outside and tapping against the ship’s hull. Maeve inched towards the entrance, and looked out.
Bea stood facing the river again, face angled up at the sky, like something hovering over the trees had her attention. All Maeve saw there was the gunmetal clouds. She crawled out onto the clipped wing. Closer to the ship laid their backpacks. The crowbar sat in its holster on the side of Maeve’s.
Drawing in a deep breath to steady herself, Maeve made her move. She crept with such caution, such tense slowness, that she thought her muscles might snap inside her limbs. The rain prickled her arms like cold needles. Next she lowered herself to the rocky bank. Pebbles softly crunched under her boots. She whipped her head around to check Bea. Her friend- the thing puppeteering her friend- remained fixed on the sky.
On the bank now, she inched towards her backpack. Growing up a scavenger, she’d learned how to move fast and quiet. Even so, her eyes snapped back to not-Bea every few steps. It- she?- never looked back. The few steps to the pack dragged by like glaciers. Maeve made it, however, slipped the crowbar out, and started back to the ship.
Not-Bea grunted.
Maeve froze. She turned back to it, ready to see those slate grey eyes staring back. But they remained turned up at the sky.
Not-Bea grunted again. It sounded more like a word. Oh god, is she talking to something?
Shuddering, Maeve kept going. Clambering up onto the wing and back into the ship, she got back to the blocked door. Turning the knob, she pushed against it. But whatever was blocking the way wouldn’t budge. She needed to create some space to wedge the crowbar into.
Icy claws on her neck. Icy sickness in her gut. Throat tight, not seeing any other way she might get her friend back. Maeve took a moment to brace herself. Then she stepped back, and threw her shoulder into the door.
The bang reverberated through the hall.
Trying to keep her breathing steady, Maeve moved back and charged again. Something gave and the door opened a crack. She crammed in the end of the crowbar.
Outside, rhythmless steps crunched closer.
Maeve charged again and pulled and strained with every fiber in her body, grunting through bared teeth. Her shoulder surged with pain.
“Lookatme.” Approaching. Fast. Clapping on the wing now.
Bit by bit Maeve widened the gap. Her grunting crumbled into hoarse whimpers as determination became panic. But inside the room, something scraped against the floor.
Boots slapped against the sludge. “Lookatme.” Just down the hall.
In a frenzy Maeve hurled herself against the door again and it jarred open, just enough for her to squeeze through. With a cry she shoved it closed again. At once fists battered the other side.
Maeve moved the obstruction- some kind of polymer chest that had fallen in the crash- back into the way and hoped it held. She now found herself in a small bedroom, little more than two bunkbeds and some closet space. Everything was in disarray, personal items and some spare flight suits strewn all around. She started with the closet, tossing out suits to look behind them. There had to be something here. Please be here.
The banging became slower and heavier, not-Bea throwing its full weight into the door. At least Bea was the smaller of the two. Maybe that would give Maeve more time.
She would need it. There was nothing in the closet. She tore into the bunks, lifting the thin mattresses to check under them. Nothing. Please, there has to be something. With another strangled whimper, Maeve fell to her knees and sorted through the fallen items. A book here. Some kind of camera there. Some photos of people and things she couldn’t care about now.
There were no words in the raspy, breathless babbling outside. The chest scuffed against the floor as it started to shift.
Oh god. Maeve stared down at the itchy faux carpet. There’s nothing in here, is there?
Wait.
The chest.
She lunged at it and pried it open. At first she found only more personal things, shifting around with the incessant impacts. Holding it back against the door, Maeve rifled through its contents. Notebooks. A candy bar. A pack of cards.
The door opened a crack.
Hurling a small binder out of the way, Maeve found something beneath it. A sealed bag made of thick mesh-like material. She unzipped the top and pulled out the contents. In her hand was some kind of tablet, made from connected tiles of smooth wine-red stone. It reeked of ozone and oil and was painfully cold to the touch, sapping the warmth from her fingers.
Outside the babbling grew louder, more frantic. Not-Bea didn’t just slam into the door. Now it clawed at it, gnashing its teeth.
Standing up and bracing her back against the door, Maeve turned the tablet over, examining it, trying to figure out what to do with it.
In its center, some of the tiles shifted aside. Under them was dry, leathery flesh and what had to be a single rheumy grey eye. Maeve’s blood flooded with ice water. It stared up at her, its pupil like a lopsided triangle.
In her mind, a voice. Calm. Thin but pleasant. Soothing, even. “Look at me.”
A scream clawing up her throat, Maeve dropped the tablet. She stomped on it, putting every scrap of power she had left into it. When that failed to crush it she grabbed the crowbar and pummelled it. Something cold and wet sprayed across her knees.
Not-Bea wailed in the hall, the sound piercing into the room. Her head spun and she swore she would pass out.
Then it all stopped. Utter quiet.
Doubled over and heaving for breath, Maeve dared to open her eyes. On the floor, the tablet had been smashed to rubble and thick, purplish pulp.
Swallowing hard, she managed to call, “Bea?”
The only answer was heavy panting. Maeve peered out through the crack. In the hall laid Bea, crumpled onto her side, her tongue lolling from her mouth like a dog as she heaved for breath.
Gasping, Maeve dragged the chest away and leapt out into the hall, gathering her friend into her lap and cradling her. “Oh my god, Bea?”
Bea was loose in her arms, still fighting for breath, shivering badly. Finally, her eyes fluttered open, once again their usual warm brown. “Maeve...?”
A wave of relief so heavy it could have crushed her rolled over Maeve, and all she could do was squeeze Bae closer.
They stayed like that a short while. Catching their breath. Feeling the reassuring warmth and solidity of each other’s shapes. Letting their brains get around this sudden peace and latch onto it. Eventually they disentangled, and just sat against the wall together, leaning onto each other in their exhaustion. There Maeve told Bea everything. Once it was over, Bea just stared at the wall.
“So... Yeah.” Maeve shrugged.
Bea shuddered. “Okay.”
Maeve glanced down at her. “Do you... remember anything?”
The shorter girl’s lips twitched. “It talked to me,” she said, very softly. Almost dreamily. “It told me it understood. Y’know, said it heard me talk about how much I want to leave. Said it could help.” A more violent shiver wracked her. “It showed me things. The rings of Saturn up close. The eye of the storm on Jupiter. The caves deep under the surface of Mars...” She blinked. “It was so beautiful, Maeve. All I had to do was—” Her breath hitched. “All I had to do was let it have me. My mind could wander these beautiful places, while it used my body.”
Maeve gave her hand a light squeeze. What did you say at a time like this? To something like this? You had to say something, right? All she could muster was, “How are you now?”
Bea, shivering again, leaned into her. “Bad, Maeve,” she said. “It showed me everything I ever wanted to see and promised me everything I ever wanted to have and it all feels bad now. I could still see everything here, too. I could see you running away. I could hear you crying, and it kept telling me, ‘she’ll be okay, she can come with you. She just has to look’.”
Maeve held her closer, rested her cheek atop her hair. It was almost instinctual, giving whatever comfort she could. “Bea, it’s... It’s over. We’re okay now, right? It’s over.”
“I just want to stay here,” whimpered Bea. She was the shorter of them, but she’d never felt so small as now. “Just for a bit. Give it a minute to pass, I guess.”
“Yeah, of course.” Maeve didn’t want Bea leaving her sight either, not when she was shaken up like this. “I’m right here.”
Bea swallowed hard, pulling away a little. Maeve lifted her head, peering down on her as she went back to staring at the wall.
“All good, Bea?”
Bea gave a short nod. “I just...” She let out a long breath. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Yeah.” Maeve gave her shoulder another gentle rub. “Of course.”
“If I left Earth, would you come with me?
Maeve blinked. She’d never seriously considered it. Never really thought it was possible. Humanity had come from Earth, and most of them had stayed there to suffer with their home while a privileged few fled into the void. Judging from this ship, there may have been even worse things than the Heat Bath waiting for them there. If anything, this had reaffirmed something for Maeve. Strengthened a kind of faith she held, that humankind’s place was down here, not up in those icy, mind-devouring depths.
She asked, “Honestly?”
Bea nodded.
“I don’t know if I would, Bea.” Maeve frowned. “I think I’d try and talk you out of it.”
The shorter girl bowed her head lower. “Okay,” she said, soft as down. “I get it.”
Sighing, Maeve squeezed her shoulder. “Sorry, Bea.”
“It’s alright.” Bea’s voice had taken on that distant, dreamy quality again, like she’d just woken up from a deep sleep. “I get it. Sometimes we don’t want to see something. We need to be shown it.”
Maeve felt ice in her blood. “Bea,” she asked, mouth drying out around the words. “What the hell does that mean?”
Bea peered up at her with empty grey eyes, a serene smile spreading across her face. Lopsided triangles swam in the slate. “You just have to look,” she whispered. “Just for a moment.”