Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) (24 page)

The out-of-tune twang splits the air as I dart away, and my foot kicks out from under me. I throw out my arms to break my fall, tumbling into a patch of weeds at the base of the oak’s trunk. A jolt of pain shoots up my calf from my already sore ankle. And then there’s nothing. No pain. No feeling at all. As if my leg now ends at the knee.

28.

I
roll onto my back and scuttle away crab-like, dragging my numb foot. It bumps over the uneven ground, sending odd shocks up to my thigh. Kurra stalks toward me through the brush, slower now. She’s lowered her blaster to her side.

She hit my leg on purpose. Why? She pauses to scan the forest around us, and I remember: she’s aware I’m not alone. She doesn’t know where Win’s gone either. She may even suspect there are others besides Win and me. If she kills me right away, she won’t be able to ask. Somehow I don’t think she plans to make it a polite interview.

One of the other Enforcers calls out a question from behind her, and she sends him off to survey the area with a flick of her arm. Then she focuses her attention back on me.

I shove myself backward, groping for anything I can use to shield myself, to try to fend Kurra off. Her blaster jerks up, and she barks a command in the Kemyate language that given her expression probably means, “Stop or I’ll shoot.” My body locks up, my arms quivering.

I’m a sitting duck. There’s no shelter I can get to, crippled like this, before she could zap me ten more times. But I still have three working limbs. If she gets close enough, I’ll have to try—

Close enough.

Kurra stalks through the trees toward me, flicking something out of her sleeve into her free hand, and my mind fixes on that one thought. Win disappeared—Win was doxed. Because someone from another time must be nearby. If that someone is still there, the same thing will happen to Kurra, won’t it? If she comes just a little closer.

I will myself to hold still and wait, ignoring the cramping of my shoulders. Kurra stops by a birch tree. The birch tree Win and I ran past? She’s almost at the spot.

But instead of continuing toward me, she stays where she is, about fifteen feet away. Eyeing whatever she pulled from her sleeve, and then me. Her cold gaze penetrates my skin. Her mouth tenses, lines forming like spidery cracks in the marble-pale skin around her lips.

She says something else, a string of syllables that could be a question. I stare back at her. Her hand drops, revealing the metallic square she’s holding. Its face swims with faint ripples of light. She makes a scoffing sound in her throat, a mix of surprise and horror.

“
Earthling
,” she says—not the casual way Jule used the term, but like a slur. That’s when I understand. The thing in her hand, it must be the device she was using to track Win in the office building. Whatever she said a moment ago, it was a test, to confirm what she couldn’t believe her eyes were telling her.

“The impudence,” she goes on, the staccato rhythm of her accented English fracturing the word. “Your ‘friend,’ whoever he is—when the Council hears—” She shakes her head. Her gun arm steadies.

Standard protocol
, I think, and my lungs clench. But she doesn’t shoot. She must still want to know what I can tell her about Win.

Which gives me time. I have to make her move closer—and fast, so she doesn’t notice the doxing feeling in time to catch herself. I need something to provoke her.

My fingers dig into the dirt, grounding me. “That screen of yours is defective, then? Or maybe your eyes are? Since when do Earthlings Travel?”

She takes one step toward me. “Since our feeble revolutionaries outdid themselves in dishonor, it seems,” she sneers. “You’re not Kemyate. I should have known when I first saw you.”

“Maybe you’re not as smart as you think,” I snap over the thudding of my heart. “I knew you were a monster the moment I saw you.”

Another step. Her lips curl in disgust. “Feeble words. Who else is with you?”

“No one,” I say. Did they see Jule near the safe house?

“There is someone,” she says, slowly and firmly. “Who is Noam?”

I freeze, my mouth falling open. How can she— Where did she get his name?

Kurra smirks at my discomfort. “You were writing a message to him. He—or she—is another one of your ‘friends’? Tell me about him and maybe you will live a little longer.”

Oh God. The letter I started. It was in my purse—the purse Kurra grabbed. Of course they looked through it.

“He’s no one,” I say. “He’s nothing to do with this.”

She shrugs. “You will tell me.”

I can’t let them go after Noam. After everything that’s already happened to him . . .

I can’t protect him unless I get out of this.

My mind trips back to the conversation I overheard between her and Win. Her disgust with Earth. My anger at what her people have done to us. I clutch on to that, feed it into my voice. “Don’t you have better things to do? Or did you screw up on Kemya so badly that they gave you no choice and sent you off to chase shadows?”

Her face tightens. “You know nothing.”

“I know this shadow’s outrun you for days,” I shoot back. “You’re obviously not half as good at this ‘job’ as you think you are.”

“I will not listen—” She tries to interrupt, but I just shout louder.

“No wonder you got assigned here! The Council must know you’re just as defective as this planet.”

“Enough!” Kurra snarls, her thumb flicking over a switch on her blaster. She springs forward, and the image of the boy crumpling by the cave flickers behind my eyes. My arms flail back instinctively, my heel jamming into the soil to propel me away, toward the oak, as if that can save me now. My head flinches down, anticipating that awful twang—

And there’s silence. Not even the sound of her steps.

I look up. The forest around me is empty. Something like a whimper rushes out of me. It worked. She’s gone.

The straining muscles in my arms give out. I flop down on my back. Overhead, the leaves stir in the humid air.

I don’t have time to celebrate. Kurra will be twice as angry now, and she knows where I am. I need to get moving.

Twisting around, I spot a large stick lying by a bush several feet away. With my lame-crab-walk, I scoot over to it and test it with my hands. Sturdy enough, I think.

I prop it against the ground as a lever and haul myself upright. My body sways as I pull my half-numb leg under me. It’s still a dead weight, except for a prickling ache that’s creeping up my nerves from my ankle. If it wasn’t fully sprained before, I’m pretty sure it is now.

How long did it take the numbness to wear off last time? Forty-five minutes? An hour? I don’t have that long. I rotate, scanning the forest. I don’t know where Win was doxed to. But I know we were running in this direction when it happened. Which means if Jeanant’s around, if he’s the one who doxed Win, I should go that way to find him. If I have the rest of the weapon with me when I make it back to Win, we can leave the Enforcers behind forever.

Using the stick as a cane, I hobble past the oak. It’s impossible for me to walk quietly with my foot dragging, so I concentrate on speed. I need to find Jeanant before he leaves if I’m going to know where he’s hidden the other two weapon parts. And . . . it would be so
good
to see him one more time, to feel the surge of certainty his presence brings.

The sunlight glints brighter up ahead. After several more lurching steps, I realize the trees are thinning. The distant warble of running water reaches my ears. I push myself toward it, faster, and a figure steps out from behind a nearby tree. A man with coppery skin and long dark hair, a rifle tucked against his arm. I jerk to a halt.

Of course. Win said the Native American army would be waiting near the river.

The soldier’s gaze skims over me, holding mine for just a second before darting away. I glance across the landscape behind him, but I can’t see any of his companions. Either they’re well disguised or farther away. Maybe he’s a scout, posted on the fringes of the ambush, ready to give the alarm.

I hold out my arms, balancing my weight on my good leg, in a gesture I hope conveys I’m unarmed and intend no harm. I’m coming from the direction opposite the American force they’re expecting, and I’m a teenage girl with an obvious injury. Let that buy me a little sympathy.

The man’s forehead has furrowed. “Where have you come from?” he demands in a low voice, striding toward me. “Where are you going?”

“I— The fort—” I blurt out. I don’t have the accent, but if he believes I’m with the British, then technically I’m on his side. “I went out yesterday and got lost. I’m trying to find my way back.”

He looks skeptical. “The fort is there,” he says, gesturing past my arm with his rifle. “Go. It is not good for you to be here.”

There’s nothing I can do except pretend to follow his directions. “Thank you,” I say, with honest gratitude. I’m glad just not to be shot at.

He nods sternly, waiting to make sure I leave. I turn and limp off toward the fort, counting each awkward step until I can’t hear the water anymore. When I look around, I can’t see the scout either. I hope I’ve come far enough that he won’t notice me changing course. Turning, I set off parallel to where the river must be.

Somewhere over there are the trees laid low that Jeanant talked about, uprooted trunks and splintered branches left in a storm’s wake. Where blood will be spilled. That man I just met, he could be dead by the end of the day.

When we talked about battles like this in class, I remember the teacher, our textbook, making them sound like great victories for America, the winning of this land for ourselves. But it’s hard for me to see that man as an enemy. Right now I can imagine all too clearly what it’s like to find out the world you thought was yours isn’t after all, that there are people with more power than you ever dreamed of and they’ll happily squash you with it.

Maybe he should have shot me. He’s as human as I am, and he has far more right to be here. He’s just protecting his people, like I’ve been trying to protect mine. Why shouldn’t he want to protect them from me? I’ve brought Enforcers here; I might be messing with history at this very moment. Any additional tragedy that happens here will be because of Win and me. Our fault for getting in the way.

And Jeanant’s, I guess, for leading us here. The thought makes me uncomfortable, but I can’t deny it. Why couldn’t he have made his instructions clearer?

I’m not even sure I’m going in the right direction now. I pause, scanning the forest. As long as I’m close to him, Kurra and her colleagues can’t come near me. So maybe what I need to do is bring him to me.

“Jeanant?” I call, trying to pitch my voice to carry, but not so loud the soldiers by the river will hear. There’s nothing. I risk raising my voice a little more. “Jeanant?”

When there’s no response after several seconds, I shuffle on, watching carefully in case my call has brought someone I don’t want heading my way.

A branch creaks somewhere to my left. I duck down, scrambling behind a shrub that dangles clumps of bright red berries. I peer between the spindly twigs. A pebble rattles. Then I catch a glimpse of black curls and bronze skin amid the trees.

I heave myself back onto my feet, a grin splitting my face. Jeanant halts at the movement, and then matches my smile with his own. But the warmth in his face isn’t enough to cover the dark circles under his eyes or the way he tips toward the tree next to him as if he needs it to catch his balance.

“Jeanant,” I say, hurrying over to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you, Skylar. I didn’t know if I would see you again.”

He reaches toward me, reminding me of that moment in the cave where he thought I might be a hallucination. There’s a bare patch along his jaw that I realize is one of those alien bandages, hiding some injury. He looks thinner than I remember—his cheekbones harsher, his dark eyes more stark. How long has it been for him since we last met?

I clasp his hand between mine. The contact of his skin sends a tingle of determination through me. “I’m here,” I say. “Still completely real.”

His posture relaxes, back into his usual self-assured stance. The ache that was forming in my chest eases too. After everything he’s done for my planet, for
me
, it’s nice to think that my presence offers him a little comfort.

“Someone hurt you,” he says, frowning and gesturing to my makeshift cane, my leg.

“It was— It doesn’t matter. I’m all right,” I say. I have the urge to spill my fears—the boy by the cave, Noam and Kurra, the fragile surface of history we’re walking on right now—but I can’t bear to add to the weariness still obvious in his eyes, behind his concern. He’s been carrying a burden much larger than mine.

And now I can relieve him of it.

“The rest of the weapon,” I say. “Where is it? We weren’t totally sure what you meant, about the ‘path of anger’ and all that.”

“Oh,” he says. “I had thought Thlo would remember.”

“Well, it’s complicated. Have you already hidden the parts? Do you have them on you?”

Jeanant gives me another smile, but this one’s smaller, sadder. “I was placing the third—but only the third. You know there is one more after this?”

“But don’t you have it now?” I say. “You knew we would come here— You told me— If you just give me them both, this will all be finished.”

He pauses. “I understand why you were thinking that. I’ve thought about it a lot, since I last saw you. But I can’t risk giving you everything.”

29.

F
or a second, I can only stare at Jeanant. “What do you mean? Isn’t it more risky the
longer
it takes us to find them?”

“I’ve done all this before,” he says, in that even, reasonable tone. “Before Thlo came and she found you and you found me. If I do something differently now, the whole chain could unravel.”

I shake my head. “No. It was your message that brought Thlo here—the message you’ve already programmed to be sent, right?”

“But there are so many other factors. Too many variables I can’t predict or control. If I don’t follow the same path, I can’t be sure I won’t give something away that will lead the Enforcers to the rest of the group. And anything could happen with the locals . . . I only know the steps I planned already worked, so the only guarantee I have is if I follow them as closely as possible.”

I comprehend what he’s saying, but at the same time, I can’t accept it. “I’m right
here
,” I protest. “What if the next place we go to, some local
kills
me, or the guy I’m Traveling with, or Thlo, before we get to the last part?”

“I don’t want that to happen,” he says quietly. “But all I have is what I know: that what I planned before was right. I have nothing else to hold on to, Skylar.”

I hear it in his voice then, under the forced calm. He’s as scared as I am. Scared of shifting the path he took. Scared of rewriting everything that’s happened into a much more unhappy ending.

What happened to the guy from the recording, the guy who talked about taking chances, breaking out of old patterns—about working together to do something incredible?

“You’re not doing this alone now,” I say. “You have to let us be a part of that plan, so we can make sure the weapon’s safe. Isn’t that worth the risk?”

“You haven’t seen . . .” Jeanant says. “The line between success and failure is so thin. After that mistake when I was approaching the field generator—the Enforcers could have blasted my ship to bits before I made it into the atmosphere. It was the difference of a second.”

“But you got that second. You
did
make it.” Anger I hadn’t realized was there bubbles up. “Do you even know how much you’re risking if you keep making more shifts, leaving this trail for us to follow?”

My present, my future, the world I know.

“It’s all in the plan,” Jeanant says, but a plea’s come into his voice. “I decided exactly what I would do before I came, in case I had to escape down here: the details that would be noticeable but superficial. I promise you, I’ve been as careful as I could while balancing covering my tracks and protecting the weapon. We’ve done far too much damage to Earth already.” His hand brushes the side of my arm and drops away. “I’m so sorry for that. And so glad to have had the chance to talk to you—it’s made the time between so much more bearable. Please, would you tell Thlo something for me? Tell her when she has the weapon reconstructed, to make absolutely sure the moment is right before she strikes.”

There’s a finality in his words that makes my gut twist. “Why can’t you tell her yourself? Where are you going to go, when you’ve finished hiding the weapon? You just have to wait until your present is the same as hers—I know that’s a long time—but then she can find
you
.”

That small sad smile comes back. “That can’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Skylar,” he says, “I don’t want to talk about this. Just tell Thlo what I said. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Are there any words more guaranteed to make a person worry?

“
What
?” I say. “What’s going to happen? Why don’t you think you can meet her?”

He sighs, and closes his eyes. “I knew how this was going to end when I left Kemya,” he says. “I’m ready for it. If I’d managed to destroy the generator, the Enforcers would have destroyed my ship immediately after. As it is, they’ll have destroyed it as soon as I jumped down here, so I have no way to safely leave until Thlo arrives. I can’t expect to outrun the Enforcers for years. And I can’t let them take me back to interrogate me—no one’s strong enough to hold out forever. I can’t let them pry the others’ names, the plan, from my mind. So I have to make sure, when the time comes, that I die rather than let them take me.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that a lump fills my throat. “No,” I say. He can’t mean it. Is the future really that inevitable? Or is he sure the same way he’s sure he can’t break from his plan and end his mission now?

I grasp his hand again, squeezing it tight. Trying to remind him that this moment is just as real as his plan, as the fears in his head.

“Please,” I say. “Take the chance. Let me have the rest of the weapon, and tell
me
a place to meet you, in my time. I’ll bring the parts to Thlo, and then I’ll go home, and I’ll come find you. I’ll help you, as much as you need. It can end that way instead.”

If he says yes, I swear I’ll make it happen.

For a second, I think he might change his mind. A glimmer lights behind his eyes that could be hope. He opens his mouth, and then jerks his hand away to clap it against the side of his arm. Against the outline of the alarm band he’s still wearing.

“They’ve caught up with me,” he says.

Before I can speak, he pushes me toward the shelter of a thicket. “Wait here,” he says urgently. “You’ll find the part, where I intended—over the hill, by the log—it’ll all follow the same plan. I have to, Skylar. For Kemya. For Earth. I’m not going to let you down.”

But you are,
I want to say.
You are, right now
. But he’s already hustling away.

As I lean against the brambles, the slow burn of anger swells inside me. He’s so busy trying to be noble and stoic, he can’t see how he’s screwing up his own plan. Leaving the vaguest of messages, so even the woman who knew him best was stumped for weeks. Deciding he’d rather
die
than take the chance of finishing this now. He says he hates what his people have done to Earth, but he’s acting a lot like the rest of them, isn’t he? Too afraid of making mistakes, of deviating one inch from the available data, even when his stubbornness could mean we’ll never find the rest of the weapon. It’s not just his life on the line, but mine, and Win’s, and Thlo’s, and Jule’s—everyone who’s come here following him. Who believed that stuff he said about working together and setting off on new courses.

My grip tightens around my makeshift cane. I’m going to
make
him see . . .

I straighten up, and grass rustles underfoot somewhere behind me. I flinch back down.

A moment later, two people move into view, mostly hidden in the depths of the forest. They both have short dark hair, which lets me hope briefly that they might be just more Native American scouts. But they veer closer to me as they stride past, and the sunlight catches off the fabric of their clothes. That plain canvaslike material all the Traveler outfits are made of.

One of them, a woman, turns her head toward me. I stiffen, but her gaze passes by the thicket without pausing.

These must be the Enforcers that set off Jeanant’s alarm band—the ones chasing him from his present. They’re heading the same way he went. I suck in a breath, watching as they’re swallowed up by the forest again. He got a good head start. He’s probably already whisked away.

Taking the last piece of the weapon with him.

The thought of having to do this—the deciphering of his clues, the fumbling with the locals, the jarring sense of being out of my time—yet again sends a fresh burst of frustration through me. Then I remember the look on his face when I thought he was going to agree to my proposition.

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want it to be this hard. But he honestly doesn’t see any other way. I’m sure, remembering the way he talked in the recording, that he meant everything he said back then. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s the product of an alien culture that’s been content to sit back and wait for thousands of years rather than risk making a new home. That he’s been alone and constantly dogged and hasn’t had anything solid to cling to for days, maybe weeks, except the path he laid out for himself. I’m not sure I’d even still be sane, if it were me.

It’s amazing he made it this far.

The Enforcers seem to have moved safely out of hearing. I haul myself to my feet, testing my stunned leg. My knee bends, and a shock of pain sears up it. My toes are tingly, but everything from the ball of my foot to the top of my calf is still numb.

I hate being this helpless.

I can make out a short slope scattered with saplings up ahead. That must be the hill Jeanant meant.

As I turn toward it, the still air breaks with a twang and a crackle. A yell carries from beyond the hill, a brief sentence in that alien language. My heart stops. It’s Jeanant’s voice.

Before I’ve thought it through, I’m hobbling toward the slope as quickly as my off-kilter legs will take me. Have they hit him, or did he manage to get away? Why was he still here?

I’ve just hit the base of the slope when a woman’s voice reaches my ears. I halt, worried about the sound of my steps. There’s a thick fir tree ahead, at what appears to be the crest of the hill. I pad up to it, setting my stick and my feet as gently as I can, and crouch down, leaning against its low, needle-heavy branches. The pungent green smell fills my lungs. My breath catches.

The slope dips down several feet from the base of the fir, into a small glade surrounded by birches and maples. The grass shines in the early sunlight, dappled with delicate purple flowers. It would be a beautiful scene, if Jeanant weren’t sprawled in the middle of it. One of his legs is stretched out in front of him at an awkward angle and his bag—the one that holds his time cloth—lies a few feet beyond the reach of his splayed arm.

The two Enforcers I saw earlier stand over him, aiming their blasters at him. Jeanant pushes himself a little more upright, and I can tell from the way his leg slides on the ground that he can’t move it. And now they’re speaking to him, first the woman, then the man, in Kemyate, their voices harsh.

Jeanant gazes back at them. His handsome face looks even more worn than a few minutes ago, but his eyes are defiant, his chin steady, as if
he’s
the one in control of the situation. I swallow thickly. How can that unshakeable confidence save him now? They’ve got him.

He says something to them, with an odd twist to his body—turning away from the slope, as if he’s trying to subtly direct their attention elsewhere. My gaze slips away from him to the edge of the glade, just below me. A fallen tree lies on the forest floor there. Its jagged edges are crumbling, the peeling bark splotched with lichen. A bed of dead leaves coats the ground beside it. Except in one spot, near the middle of the trunk, where it looks as if they’ve been swept to the side to clear the soil.

Because they have been. Understanding hits me with a sickening jolt.
By the log.
The dirt in that spot looks churned up, as if someone dug into it and then covered the hole. Someone who didn’t have time to smooth the leaves back over that spot to hide it.

He’s still here because he wasn’t finished. If he hadn’t been so stubborn . . .

The male Enforcer glances around the clearing. If they start checking the area, it won’t be long before they find the log and that’ll be it. They’ll have the part, and I’ll lose both that one and the one it was meant to lead to. Everything Jeanant’s done, everything Win and I have done, it might be for nothing.

I’m edging forward before I notice and yank myself back. I can’t barge in there—I’ll just end up shot again, hauled off for questioning. That won’t help Jeanant.

I have to distract the Enforcers somehow, give him a chance to grab his cloth. Then they’ll follow him, and I can get to the weapon part.

I paw the ground, my fingers closing around a rock the size of my palm. The woman Enforcer is still talking to Jeanant, her voice rising. Jeanant shakes his head. I grip the rock, wind back my arm, and hurl it.

It patters into a bush maybe twenty feet away. The Enforcers pause, not taking their eyes off Jeanant. When there’s no further sound, they seem to decide it wasn’t important. The woman snaps out another demand.

The Native scout. He and the army he’s with, they’re not far behind me. If I could convince them that the Americans are arriving, that they’re
here
, and send them charging in . . . It might almost be true. Win said the battle would start in an hour, and that was a while ago. The American force can’t be far off.

But they weren’t supposed to be met by a charge of Native soldiers right now. If I disrupt the ambush, change the timing of the battle, how will that affect the outcome? Who wins? Who dies? If there’s one young man out there who’s supposed to father a line that stretches all the way to my present—one wrong step and I’m killing all those people, people I
know
—

My thoughts scramble and scatter.
Wrong
. The sweat freezes on my skin.

It hasn’t happened yet. I haven’t done it, everyone’s still safe. I’m going to keep them that way, like I promised myself I would.

Before I can come up with an alternate strategy, the woman below makes a comment that sounds decisive. The Enforcers step toward Jeanant, their blasters pointed at his arms.

To numb them too. So he has no way to struggle, so they can carry him back to Kemya, helpless, for that interrogation he was terrified to face.

My hand shoots out, as if I can stop them from here. In the same moment, though he’s looking toward the opposite end of the glade, Jeanant calls my name.

“Skylar!” he yells, so loud it sends a sparrow bursting out of a nearby tree. “Careful!”

The Enforcers’ gazes twitch away, as if they expect to see the person he’s talking to. And using their momentary distraction, Jeanant lunges.

He grabs the man by the hand, the hand holding the blaster, reaching for something on the base of the gun. There’s an instant when I see how perfectly it could play out—he’ll swivel the gun, blast the woman, turn it on its owner, and leap away.
Yes
.