Abruptly the bee went still again, ceasing to fight, and again the spider seemed to become confused. It backed up, testing the tension on the web threads until it located the bee again. By this time, the bee seemed exhausted. It barely struggled, tracking the spider circling across its web. Then the spider came in for the kill.
Suddenly the bee snapped to life and flew up despite the thread stuck to its leg. Attaining a position over the spider, it sank its stinger into the spider’s soft exposed back. The spider twitched. Then the bee stung it again and again. The spider, poisoned with the bee’s venom, moved slowly to the middle of its web. The bee took advantage of the respite to try to fly away. But the spider’s thread held it in place. Finally the bee died, hanging from the thread.
Kitai watched it hang there. After what it had done, it seemed to deserve a better fate.
A question came to mind, something Kitai had meant to ask for a long time. “Dad…?” he said. “Dad—”
He imagined his father awakening from a state of semiconsciousness, dealing with his injuries as best he could. For a moment, there was no response.
Then Kitai heard: “I’m here. SitRep?”
“How did you beat it?” he asked his father. “How did you first ghost? Tell me how you did it.”
Cypher pictured his son, alone in an unfamiliar and hostile world. Afraid of what he could see—and especially of what he couldn’t. Now more than ever he needed to hear this.
“I was at the original Nova Sea of Serenity,” Cypher began matter-of-factly. “The settlements. I went out for a run. Alone. Something we are never supposed to do. An Ursa de-camos not more than a few meters away. I go for my cutlass, and it shoots its pincer right through my shoulder.
“Next thing I know, we’re falling over the cliff. Falling thirty meters straight down into the river.
“We settle on the bottom. It’s on top of me, but it’s not moving. I realized it’s trying to drown me. I start thinking, I am going to die. I’m going to die. I cannot believe this is how I’m going to die.
“I can see my blood bubbling up, mixing with the sunlight shining through the water, and I think, Wow, that’s really pretty.”
Kitai was amazed that his father could come to that conclusion at such a time. Hell, it amazed him that his father thought anything was pretty. It was a side of him Kitai hadn’t seen before, or if he had seen it, it was so long ago that he didn’t remember.
“Everything slows down, and I think to myself, I wonder if an Ursa can hold its breath longer than a human? And, I think of Faia. She was pregnant with you, and close, too. Half a moon’s cycle away, maybe twenty-three days. She was so beautiful.
“And suddenly I knew one thing with perfect clarity, and it obliterated all other thoughts: There was no way I was gonna die before I’d met my son. Before I met you.”
Kitai felt a lump grow in his throat. Me?
“I look around, and I see its pincer through my shoulder, and I decide I don’t want that in there anymore. So I pull it out, and it lets me go, and more than that, I can tell it can’t find me. It doesn’t even know where to look.
“And it dawned on me: Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity, Kitai.
“Do not misunderstand me: Danger is very real, but fear is a choice.
“We are all telling ourselves a story. That day, mine changed.”
Kitai thought about that: We’re all just telling ourselves a story. It made sense, as if he had known it all his life and had just never had the words to express it.
Kitai looked around the geothermal zone and took in the sight of the animals all resting in close proximity to one another. He wished his father could see it, could see the majesty of it. Maybe someday, he thought. He sighed. It didn’t look like he would get a lot of sleep that night.
And how could he, with his father’s words still fresh on his mind? If we’re nothing more than the stories we tell ourselves… we can change the story, the way Dad did.
And if the story changes, we do, too.
1000 AE
Earth
From the cockpit of the ruined ship, Cypher watched the geothermal zone flood with dawn light. Somewhere, Earth’s sun was breaching the horizon.
Kitai, who had been drifting in and out of sleep as far as Cypher could tell, roused himself. He grabbed his gear and stood up.
“Fourteen kilometers from the falls,” he said, giving his son an objective. “That’s our halfway checkpoint. Over.”
“Reading you,” Kitai said.
He began his day’s trek slowly and steadily. No doubt, he was feeling the weight of the immense distance he had to cover. And without any real sleep.
Cypher spared his leg a glance. The puddle of blood on the deck below it was growing, spreading. On the holographic readout in front of him, it said: “ARTERIAL SHUNT—58%. TRANSFUSION CRITICAL. 7 UNITS NEEDED.” Seven units, Cypher thought. Be lucky if I had even one.
He turned off the screen. I need to focus on my son, he thought. And that, despite the pain and the worsening loss of blood, was what he did.
Kitai hacked his way through the forest with his cutlass, the end of which he had turned into a machete. It was hard work. The cutlass was light, but the leaves he was fighting his way through were tough and heavy. After a while, he paused and took a swig of water. Then he pulled a nutrition bar from his pack and ate it.
“Seven kilometers from the falls,” his father said, as if to remind him that they didn’t have time to stand around.
“Roger,” Kitai said.
He balled up the wrapper from the nutrition bar and threw it on the ground. Then he began to walk away. But before he got very far, he stopped himself and went back for the wrapper. Can’t just leave it here, he thought. That’s how we lost this planet in the first place.
Except when Kitai bent down to grab the wrapper, a gust of wind blew it out of reach and carried it through the thick vegetation. He frowned. Then he made his way forward through the chest-high leaves and lunged. His hand closed around the wrapper, giving him a little thrill of accomplishment. But the feeling lasted only a moment because when he looked up, he saw a scene of unexpected devastation.
For a wide stretch in front of him, the forest had been trampled as if by a gargantuan foot. Trees had been ripped down. Baboon carcasses were lying everywhere, some of them torn in two. Kitai got the sense that a battle had taken place there. But with whom? And for what reason?
“What could do this?” he asked out loud, his voice sounding strange in the stillness.
He hadn’t really expected a response. But he got one.
“Double-time it,” his father said in a tone that left no room for disagreement. “We need to make it to the falls. Hurry!”
Kitai started walking again. Overhead, the wind rustled the forest canopy. It sounded like claws scampering along a rooftop. Suddenly, he heard a boom. Not knowing what it was, he crouched, his cutlass at the ready.