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  Chapter Three:

  Night came early, around what Cristaña informed Marie was five o’clock. As the sunlight faded on the horizon, the flowers curled back up into their sepals. Marie thought the process was both sad and elegant.

  The expedition set up camp quickly. The white torch-lights that had guided them earlier were placed on pedestals interspersed through the trees, which allowed the team members enough light to pitch the tents. Cristaña and Havily did their best to teach Marie the ropes, and as much to her surprise as everyone else’s, she didn’t mess up too badly the first time around.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Havily assured her. “You’ll have it down quickly enough.”

  Marie wasn’t sure she should be comforted by that idea; it implied a whole lot of evenings of pitching tents.

  Dinner that night found Marie and the other Babies sitting in silence, slurping up a tasteless version of tomato basil soup. Marie was still hyper and excited, but everyone else was exhausted. Even the normally perky Jennifer looked a little glum.

  Near the end of dinner, a cool voice called her name. “Marie Nettleson!”

  The conversation in the tent lulled, then picked back up. Marie twisted around, her eyes landing on a tall, slender woman in her mid-thirties. The woman’s entire countenance spoke of severity. She had pulled her gold hair back in a tight bun and had worn her lips down into thin lines. Marie could easily picture her in a business suit, ready to ruthlessly crush a competitor.

  “That’s Pamela Holbech,” murmured Jennifer in a hushed voice. “If she’s calling for you, you’d better go.”

  Marie shot Jennifer a startled look, but stood and approached the woman, studying her curiously. She could feel the eyes of several onlookers.

  “Marie Nettleson,” said Pamela sharply. “Come with me.” She turned on her heel and stalked out of the tent, obviously expecting Marie to follow. Which she did.

  Two men stood outside. One Marie recognized: Pamela’s thoroughly unpleasant brother, Darius, who inspected her with cold blue eyes. The other was a man in his mid-forties. He had a mop of grey hair, a strand of which trailed over his forehead and fell carelessly into his dark brown eyes. He was slightly overweight and looked as though he hadn’t shaved in days. He jittered with nervous energy.

  “Marie Nettleson, I am Pamela Holbech, your section commander.” Marie’s eyes flicked briefly to Pamela. “This is my brother and second-in-command, Darius Holbech. And this is the expedition leader, Barnabas Morton.”

  “Yes,” interrupted Barnabas quickly, shaking Marie’s hand. “I’ve managed to meet everyone on the expedition at least once—everyone except you.” He offered her a friendly smile, and Marie couldn’t help but smile in return. “If you have any issues at all, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

  Beside Barnabas, Darius scowled.

  “Now,” said Barnabas, looping his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s talk, shall we?”

  “My dinner—” protested Marie.

  He appeared surprised. “Have you not finished yet?” He shot Pamela a questioning look.

  “Well, I have,” Marie tried to correct him, “but—you see—I haven’t had the chance to put away—”

  “Ah! The food carton!” Barnabas waved his hand dismissively. “Pamela will put it away for you! It’s no problem, dear.”

  Marie glanced back to see Pamela shooting her a look of pure poison before disappearing into the tent.

  Barnabas pretended not to notice. “Now,” he said, steering her away from the noise of the mess hall, “My instructions concerning you arrived only shortly before you did. Is it true you have not received any training?”

  “Y-yes…”

  Barnabas clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Well, we’ll have to remedy that. I will see if Pamela can arrange for someone to teach you the basics. Perhaps even Pamela herself can do it.” Recalling Pamela’s sour face, Marie doubted she would be thrilled about that.

  “And am I also correct in assuming you have been asked to keep a record of the expedition’s activities?”

  “Yes.” That was her only duty, and she didn’t want to mess it up. She had brought a journal explicitly for the purpose of detailing the events of the day. Her fingers already itched to write the first entry.

  “Well, my dear, if you have any questions regarding the terrain or the activities of the expedition members, don’t hesitate to talk to me.” He regarded her carefully, the carefree expression on his face fading into something more serious. “I know about your agreement with SpiritStar and the government, Miss Nettleson, and I know what the American people expect of you. Your account of this expedition is the one that will be trusted and remembered. I don’t want anything to be misinterpreted. Please come to me if you have an issue. Don’t assume anything.”

  Marie eyed him carefully, at last nodding. “I will.”

  He smiled and let go of her arm. Marie studied him for a minute, thinking. She did have a job to do. “But,” she added abruptly, “If I am to give an accurate account of this expedition, I would prefer not to be excluded from certain activities. As in, if we meet people, I don’t want to be absent from all your meetings with their leaders. I want to be present for at least a few of them. After all, I am supposed to be”—her voice turned sardonic—“the people’s ambassador.”

  She held her breath. She wasn’t sure he would accept that. It was a rather high demand. She waited anxiously for a response. His eyes flickered with an emotion: respect? Annoyance? She wasn’t sure.

  At last he smiled and inclined his head. “As you wish. And I think, Miss Nettleson, that despite your age, you may prove to be an asset to this expedition.”

  Marie smiled as he walked away from her, her heart inexplicably soaring. Perhaps she wasn’t as far down the social ladder as Jennifer thought.

  She strolled back to the mess hall, her eyes on the shadowed canopy above. Her thoughts turned to her new nickname. Citizen—they called her that because that was exactly what the American public had demanded: a citizen. She supposed it was a misnomer—there were other normal American citizens on the expedition—but it wrapped up the sentiments of the public nicely.

  When SpiritStar and the government had started putting together the expedition’s team members, a few of the anti-Other Side protestors had been quick to point out that every team member was either employed by SpiritStar or the government. It was cause for immediate outcry. The expedition’s team members, the ambassadors of America, would not accurately represent the American people! SpiritStar was sending a bunch of nerds and “machine-gun-toting maniacs” to the Other Side! How could two such specialized groups represent such a diverse people?

  It wasn’t a very logical—or even a very accurate—argument, but it had stirred up the public like no other. There was no one normal on the expedition, no run-of-the-mill American. Marie hadn’t complained about it. She didn’t exactly want her next-door neighbor negotiating a trade contract with an otherworldly power. It wasn’t a normal expedition; its members shouldn’t be normal people. And besides, the expedition wasn’t even strictly ‘American.’ True, the American government was funding a large portion of it, but SpiritStar was funding it as well, and SpiritStar had grown to be an international company. Half of its expedition members hailed from overseas. Furthermore, several foreign governments had chipped in to fund the team, with a few even sending their own specialists to join the group. The expedition was more international than American.

  But Marie’s arguments were voiced by very few. Instead, the insistence that a nonbiased, normal American take part of the expedition grew until the protests started causing civil unrest. The public had gotten the idea that whatever was on the Other Side, SpiritStar employees and government agents could not be trusted to report it. When two weeks before the expedition was supposed to leave, protestors carrying signs claiming “One of Us Goes or No One Goes” made their way to the capital, Congress had to do something. So later that day, the Speak
er of the House promised the public an ordinary citizen would be added to the expedition, much to SpiritStar’s dismay.

  And there was only one person in the entire United States of America whose addition would not delay the expedition: Marie.

  Thinking about it, she figured she probably could have demanded and received a lot more money than five million dollars.

  The days soon began to pass in a predictable pattern. Every morning the wake-up horn sounded before sunrise, and Marie crawled out of bed. She quickly became a pro at taking down the tent, and each day team 12 got a little faster at packing up their things, so much so that after a week they could be dressed and have everything put away in five minutes. This improvement allowed Marie to actually sit down and eat her breakfast with the Babies instead of gulping it on the go. After breakfast, Marie had only a few minutes before the expedition started off, always before sunrise. She never quite got used to seeing the sunrise, and Mabel always looked amused at the awed expression that appeared on her face during every Morning Bloom. At night Marie usually found the time and energy to scribble a few notes into her journal, but some days she was just too exhausted or had some other matter to take care of, such as taking a shower.

  Hygiene proved to be an interesting problem. Marie learned from Cristaña that she had to register for showers, which took place in weird vertical rollers. Five minutes for each shower; take any longer and the water shut off, which Marie unfortunately found out the first time she took one. She had soap gunk stuck in her hair the entire day. Washing clothes took place as a team. No one person had enough clothes for a load, so every couple days the entire team compiled their clothing and put it through a washer and dryer, which had been built into rollers as well. Teeth-brushing took place in another type of roller, and the lines for the strange sinks could get unbearably long: half an hour waits, sometimes. Using the bathroom…unfortunately, there wasn’t a roller for that. The latrines were so disgusting that after using them for the first time, Marie swore that once she returned to Earth, she would never again go near a place without indoor plumbing. Everyone complained about the latrines, but SpiritStar employees complained the most. Marie often overheard Ranjana Singh bemoaning the disgusting state of the toilet paper trash cans.

  During meals and later in the evenings, Marie spent much of her time with the Babies. Jennifer proved to be a loyal, if excitable, friend, and as she was no more of a ‘military’ person than Marie, she turned out to be a good person to complain to. Dustin stayed quiet most of the time, but when he did speak his dry sense of humor inflected every word. Marie ended up snorting with laughter into her food carton half the meals. Raymond remained quiet as well, but he didn’t have the sense of humor Dustin had; most of the words issuing from his mouth came in the form of complaints, and Marie tried to avoid him outside of meals.

  But there was one person Marie tried to avoid even more: Joseph. She felt bad about it. Joseph was a nice boy. He was sweet and brilliant and patient and extremely talented… at making her uncomfortable. Much to Marie’s dismay, he had a very obvious crush on her. He tried flirting with her at every meal, and Marie always replied awkwardly, hoping he would get the message, but he never did. He even brought her bouquets of the flowers he and Mabel had recently discovered, which Marie couldn’t force herself to refuse. Every time he did something nice for her, she felt guilty.

  “Oh, thanks, Joseph,” said Marie weakly. She had entered the tent to find that Joseph had already grabbed a food carton for her.

  He smiled brightly. He reminded her of a puppy wagging its tail.

  Beside her, Jennifer smirked before saying loudly, “That’s so sweet of you, Joseph. You’re such a nice guy. Don’t you think so, Marie?” Marie shot her a furious look. Jennifer thought the entire situation was funny and did her best to make it as awkward as possible—as if it wasn’t already awkward enough.

  The terrain didn’t change much as the days went by. The trees continued to tower over them, bursting into bloom as the sun rose and fading as the sun fell. Marie’s continual delight with the flora endeared her to Mabel, who took to telling her the properties of the plants she and her team had recently discovered and warning her away from the poisonous ones, something she certainly didn’t do for everyone. Indeed, Marie found her watching sadistically as Jaime Hart, whom she greatly disliked, pranced perilously close to a poisonous fern-like plant.

  “She can be nasty,” Joseph assured her one night over dinner. “And she’s a very strict taskmaster. Trust me, I know. She’s my boss.”

  The trying trio, as Mabel called Jaime, Hamako, and Bryce, kept mostly to themselves, always muttering about some theoretical aspect of the communication device. Both Marie and Mabel disliked them. Marie had tried to strike up a conversation with Bryce once, and Bryce had looked at her like she was some alien bug that had been taught to talk. The only other person in the team she ever saw them talk to willingly was Valeria, which Marie supposed was to be expected: Valeria’s job description meant she occasionally had to work with the communication device. Valeria, for her part, was too busy running ahead or behind to deal with a roller to talk much with the rest of team 12, but from what Marie could tell, she didn’t seem as stuck up as Jaime, Hamako, and Bryce.

  Havily did little but complain about ‘that Holbech witch,’ so Marie had yet to hear what she actually did on the expedition. If Havily’s complaints were any indication, Marie guessed her job required her to see a lot of Pamela. Almost the opposite of Havily in personality was Tiffany, who wasn’t very talkative, but was extremely kind and upbeat. Every night, if anyone had sore muscles—which was usually everybody—Tiffany would give them a massage. Ranjana was the only one she never offered a massage to, but that could have had something to do with Ranjana’s tendency to glare daggers at anyone who looked at her the wrong way. Ranjana was never excited to see Marie, and her short temper ensured Marie didn’t waste too much time trying to talk to her. Out of everyone, Marie talked to Cristaña the most, simply because Cristaña seemed to be the most normal member of the team—and the one with the most information. Cristaña didn’t seem to mind her constant barrage of questions, but Marie suspected Pamela had ordered her to be friendly toward Marie. Marie needed ‘training’ after all, and if Marie’s gut instinct about Pamela was correct, Cristaña’s willingness to answer her questions was the only form of training she was going to get.

  But most of the time, everyone was too tired to talk. After the first two or three days, the thrill of being in a new world faded. As the landscape became increasingly repetitive, Marie increasingly felt the exhaustion the day’s march inflicted.

  “Does anyone even know where we’re headed?” Marie groaned one day as she sat down for another tasteless lunch. “I mean, did we just pick a direction and go?”

  Dustin leaned back against a tree root. “They’ve developed some system to make sure we go in a consistent direction. Something to do with the sun. But other than that, not really. The only thing we know is we’re not going in circles.”

  “What a comfort,” Marie said dryly. How stupid.

  Joseph sat down next to her, looking exhausted. He had huge bags under his eyes and the slightly glazed expression of someone who hadn’t slept well the previous night. His eyes fell to his food carton.

  “Are you okay?” Marie asked cautiously.

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Mabel kept me up late last night running tests on a new plant Darius found. Damn Darius. Couldn’t he have waited until morning to show it to Mabel?”

  Marie clucked her tongue sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He fell silent for a minute, his eyes on the ground. A blush stole across his face, and he raised his eyes uncertainly. Marie tensed. “Marie, I—”

  “Marie!” squealed Jennifer, plopping down next to her. “Guess what?”

  Marie had never been so happy to see Jennifer. Throwing Joseph an apologetic glance, she turned, “What?”

  Jennife
r grinned. “Barnabas thinks it might rain today!”

  Marie blinked. Well, that certainly wasn’t what she would have expected Jennifer to be so chipper about. She looked up. Sure enough, the light seemed a little dimmer than normal, as if clouds obscured the sun.

  “Ew,” said Dustin, his eyes on Jennifer, “So tonight at dinner you’re going to smell of wet dog?”

  Jennifer’s eyes narrowed. “Be careful, soldier. Be very careful.”

  Dustin smirked.

  An hour later, clouds broiled overhead. Day turned to dusk within seconds. The flowers shrunk all around, and the wind picked up. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The first drops came—big, fat ones that splashed Marie in the eye. At first they were intermittent, but then they came in a steady downpour, till the air turned white with water.

  “Stay here!” Cristaña shouted, running off to Roller 12. Beside Marie, the rest of the team members had crouched down in identical positions on their knees on the ground, their hands covering their faces.

  Cristaña came running back and in one swift motion opened an umbrella large enough to cover four people.

  “Stay!” she ordered before rushing to set up two more umbrellas. When at last she was done, she returned to Marie, panting.

  “Why the panic?” Marie asked, bemused.

  Cristaña ran a shaky hand through her sopping wet hair. “Basic protocol. Odds are this is just a downpour of regular rain, but they have to test it make sure.”

  Marie glanced around. Everyone was soaked. “If it’s poisonous, it’s a little too late to prevent contamination.”

  Cristaña shrugged. “It’s a different world. You can’t be too careful.”

  Marie stared at one of the rivulets running down the side of a tree root and frowned. She relished this experience. She enjoyed the expedition. She felt like Lewis and Clark, exploring the unknown. She saw beauty and majesty in her surroundings. She didn’t see danger. She realized, however, that everyone else did. Danger in the plants. Danger in the rain. Danger even in the dirt.

  The previous week, Hollis Paddock, an equipment specialist, had tripped and scraped his knee—just a small thing, no bigger than a paper-cut—and two days later he still wore a bandage over it. “To prevent an infection from alien microbes,” he had told Marie when she had inquired. “We don’t know what’s in the soil.”

  Staring out into the rain, this overwhelming paranoia suddenly seemed incredibly absurd. Glancing quickly at Cristaña, Marie stuck her hands out into the shower and brought a few drops to her lips. The rain tasted cool and clean. It was the best-tasting water she’d ever had.

  After that first day, it rained almost every day for two weeks. Once it was determined by the hydrologists that the rain was, indeed, safe, Barnabas pushed them on as usual, and such days were decidedly unpleasant. The red dirt that normally packed the ground turned into sticky mud, and slogging through it took a ridiculously long time. The rollers had a difficult time dealing with it, and Valeria consequently became increasingly frazzled. Tiffany had to give her a massage at least three times a day.

  For reasons unbeknownst to Marie, during their rain-slogs, as Ranjana called them, Barnabas decided he needed to spend more time with Marie, so he made a conscious effort to fall back at least once a day and speak with her. They discussed everything from the rate at which the team consumed its supplies to what could be done with the land they had already discovered.

  “This place is amazing,” he told her quietly. “Unbelievable, really. There’s so much land here—so many resources—so much stuff Earth could use. If there are no humans in this world, SpiritStar is set. There is enough here for it to make trillions—easily. The government, too,” he admitted.

  Marie arched an eyebrow. “And if there are people?”

  Barnabas shrugged, his eyes wandering around. He didn’t seem too concerned. “It becomes a little more complicated. Still, if we can come up with a favorable arrangement, SpiritStar is still set. This was an expensive project for SpiritStar—you really have no idea how many billions were invested in it—but if it pays off, the percent return will be astronomical. Bruno Campbell will become the richest man in the world, no problem.”

  Barnabas gazed up at the trees arching above them. “And regardless of how the finances work out, this mission is a great triumph for science. SpiritStar will go down in history.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “As will I, and as will you—regardless of what happens here.”