A wave crashed against a rock and sent up fine spray into True's face. She ducked away and fell on her butt. Blinking salt water out of her stinging eyes, she straightened up, swiping wet sand off her behind, before squatting down again and wrapping her arms around her legs. She went back to studying the weird green sort of crab in the shallow tidal pool, muttering observations into her gear, which was set to record. The crab-thing waved a claw at her, as if saying, Go away! Quit bothering me! She grinned.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Uly asked from behind her.
"Don't know," True said, annoyed.
"C'n I see?" Without waiting for an answer, Uly crouched down beside her. "Euw, gross. Do those pinch?" He reached out, and the claws nipped. "Ow!"
"Guess so," True said, grinning again. "You bleeding?"
"Nuh-uh." Uly pouted over his reddened fingers.
"Um, the claws aren't sharp on the inside," True told her gear. "I don't think, anyway. But they look strong." She pulled a hand inside her jacket sleeve and reached down into the pool to pick it up. Julia said sometimes things like this oozed poison. Secreted, True corrected herself. Oozed wasn't very scientific. "Go wash your hands," she said over her shoulder.
He did, then came back. "Is this for Julia?"
"Uh-huh."
"Can I help?"
"You are so annoying."
"Well?"
She let out a noise and said, "Wrap up your hands. Hold it like this--here. Don't let it pinch you again." She turned her voice recorder off.
"I'm not." He took it carefully and squinted at the claws it waved.
True scooted backwards slightly and sat back on a mostly dry rock. She shaded her eyes against the ferocious glitter of the waves, like someone had thrown handfuls of ground glass out into the water. The sun beat down on her head and shoulders, and when she pushed her hair out of her face, the top of her head felt hot. The wind off the sea was almost cold, though--it would be Moon Cross in a few weeks, the beginning of winter.
She looked over her shoulder at O'Neill Point, which bulged out and up from the land, hundreds of feet high. A mile up the beach, Singh Point formed an almost-twin to O'Neill, rising higher but not as far out into the water.
Someone shouted to her--"Hey there!"--and she waved back, battling a blush that nobody would see anyway. Baines and Walman were bringing in the morning's catch, the little one-sail fishing boat bobbing wildly in the open sea before gliding into the calmer waters of Virginia Inlet. They would offload it, eat lunch, and spend the afternoon cutting the fish they'd caught. She thought about joining them, but the chance to hang around Walman lost out to the reality of fish guts.
She flexed her toes in the cool sand and took a deep breath of sea air, salty and fishy and fresh and wild.
Ever since she'd gotten on this planet, she thought she loved every new place best, but New Pacifica was really the best. Sometimes she thought it might be nice to go back to the desert, with its oven heat and tough, gnarled plant life (her dad said she was bonkers if she missed that, but she did), or the mountains, with their caps of snow and about one square foot of level ground in the whole place, or the savannah, broad plains of grass that went on forever. But she would come back here, to the sea and the forests, the cliffs and the caves.
Her toes were getting a little cold, so she washed her feet free of sand and stuck her shoes back on. "Uly?"
"Uh-huh."
"Do you ever think . . ." She chewed her lip. She'd been thinking this, but preparing to say it out loud, it sounded sort of stupid. "Do you ever think maybe there's places people are meant to be?"
Uly looked up from the crab-thing, blinking at her a little. "What do you mean?"
True reached over and took the creature back. It was looking dried-out and unhappy, so she set it gently back in the pool. It sank in and started scuttling away. "I mean, like, you just belong."
"Like here?" Uly plumped back in the wet sand, looking around and breathing in the way she had.
"I guess."
He thought that over, and she looked at him. If anyone ever belonged someplace right away, it was Uly, and the place was G889.
"Know what I think?" he said finally.
Boy, did that beg for a snarky remark. True couldn't think of one right away, so she just said, "What?"
He looked over his shoulder at her. "I think," he said very seriously, "that you 'n' me, we always belonged here."
She looked at him skeptically. "Always?"
He nodded. "Even when we were back on the stations. We were really supposed to be here." He drew up his legs, wrapping his arms around them. "Maybe that's why I had the Syndrome," he said. "I was missing G889 so bad it made me sick."
"Okay," True said, pointing at him. "That's just making things up. How would you even know about G889 to miss it?" It was a neat idea, but it didn't make any sense.
He shrugged. "I dunno. I said maybe."
"And anyway, what about me? I didn't have the Syndrome. Your theory is unsound," she said loftily.
He threw wet sand at her. She shrieked, chucked a handful back, and they had a sandfight for a few minutes until Uly got some in his eye. "Ow! Ow! Owwww! Quit!"
"Stop rubbing! You'll grind it in! Hold still, let me--"
"Hey, that's cold!"
Once the sand was all washed out, they sat down again. Putting her emptied water bottle back in her pack, True found some bread wrapped up in plastic, which she split in half and shared with him as a silent apology.
He munched cheerfully, forgiving her right away. "But really," he said with his mouth full. "It's going to be so cool when all the other kids get here, and the Terrians fix them. Aren't you excited? Any day now," he said, echoing what his mom told him every time he asked when the colony ship was getting here. "Any day."
True didn't say anything. She'd never told Uly how on the stations, other kids usually didn't like her. They said she was weird, and bossy, and too boylike. Which was so not true.
Maybe a little.
But she saw no reason that the kids coming to G889 should be any different from the kids on the stations. They'd be worse, even. At least the kids she'd known on the stations had been drone kids, too. Her dad said these would probably be a bunch of top and mid-level kids. Their parents could afford units that weren't cramped little cubes, and they didn't know what it was like to put magazine pictures on the walls because it cost too much to buy fancy holo-screens that showed different windows every day.
True bit down on the end of her braid. She wasn't a drone anymore. Dad said they were out of debt because of Devon. And even if they had still been in debt, they were staying here, so it didn't matter. The stations were twenty-two years away, and the memories of cold, blocky steel and cramped units seemed dim and unreal. Here, everyone was going to live in the dorms until they got houses built, no matter what level they'd lived on in the stations. When they built the houses, they were all going to be big. Huge. And nobody would even need holo-screens, because they would have real windows that showed the real world outside, and instead of just looking, they could go out the door and run around.
"What about the healthy kids?" she asked. "I bet they won't like it. I bet they'll whine."
"No, they won't," Uly said cheerfully. The red in his eye was fading already.
"I bet they're scared of everything."
"So what? You were too."
"Was not."
"You screamed all the time," he said. "At everything. Bugs and rocks and birds--"
"You take that back."
He leapt to his feet and darted off. "Make me!" floated down the beach.
She raced after him, managing to forget the threat of more kids in New Pacifica. She was catching up when he skidded to a halt, spraying sand in front of him, and grabbed his gear. She jogged to a stop and thought about splashing him while he wasn't paying attention.
Before she could go down to the water and grab a handful, Uly said, "Yuh-huh. She's here. Yeah." He looked at her. "How come you turned your gear off?" he wanted to know.
Ooops. She'd shut it all the way off, not just the recorder. "'Cause I felt like it," she said, reaching up to flick it on.
"--are holding in orbit," Devon said. "True, there you are."
"Orbit?" True said. "Who?"
"The colony ship!" Uly yelled, jumping up and down on the sand. "It's here! It's here!"
True went cold.
Devon laughed. "Settle down, honey, they've still got to land. Come on up into town, both of you. We're going to need your help."
"'Kay." Uly switched off and grabbed her hand. "Come on! Let's go!"
"My bag," True said, jogging back for it. Slinging it over one shoulder, she dashed up the beach again, the pack bumping against one hip. "You got everything?" she yelled at Baines and Walman, who were dumping their fish into cold storage containers and piling those in the coolness of a cave as quickly as they could.
"We're fine," Baines shouted. "G'wan." Walman flapped a hand.
Well, darn.
Uly didn't wait for her, but started climbing up the wooden steps. Slinging her bag on her back, True started after him. "Come on, slowpoke!" he called down.
"Why are you so happy?" she grouched back.
He paused to look down at her. "Why aren't you?"
She puffed slightly as she got to the step below his. "It's all going to be different," she said breathlessly. "There's going to be whole bunches of people now--"
"It's not like they're strangers," he argued, starting up again.
"To me they are. You know them, I don't."
"Oh . . . yeah. I guess. But it'll be different better," he said confidently. "It's going to be great. You'll see."
Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All characters, names, and trademarks are the copyrighted property of Amblin/Universal. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Hello all! This is the beginning of the obligatory multi-plotted colony-ship-arrival uber-fic. Enjoy.