After Earth

i

Faia Raige had been preparing dinner for herself, since the men in her life were away together, when she heard a knock at the door. For a moment, she wondered if she had extended an invitation to someone and forgotten. That would be unlike her. She was usually good at remembering such things.

Hearing the knock again, she wiped her hands with a cloth and went to answer the door. When she opened it, she saw two men she had never met before. There was something about them. They looked… official.

“Mrs. Raige?” the taller of them said.

“Yes. Can I help you?” Faia asked.

Then they told her what had happened. For a moment, they were just words. Then they sank in, and she began to scream. The men looked away. What could they do? They had torn her life open and ripped its heart out. What was there to do after that?

Years earlier, Faia had lost her daughter, Senshi. That was the most horrible thing she could ever have imagined, the most horrible pain she could ever have borne. But this…

This.

ii

Kitai felt a soft pecking at his cheek. What…? He brushed it away with his hand, but it resumed a moment later. Finally, he opened his eyes to see where the pecking was coming from and found himself staring into the eyes of a tiny, newborn baby bird, close enough to nuzzle at him with its beak. Instinctively, Kitai jumped back and realized he was covered in something clear and viscous. He sucked in a breath and began wiping the stuff off his face. Only then did he pay attention to the patchwork of light and shadow around him and the intertwined branches picking shadows from the sunlight.

Where am I? he wondered.

Propping himself up, Kitai looked around. He was surrounded by eggs: not the kind he had known on Nova Prime but huge ones, each of them bigger than the baby bird. And they had all begun to crack.

As he watched, the birds inside them—dark, wet things—emerged from the eggs and spread their slick wings as if they would take flight. A nest, he realized. I’m in a giant nest. Kitai looked down. He could see through the bottom of the nest, where there were gaps in the branches. If I’m in a nest, he thought, I must be in a tree. He identified the biggest branch in the interwoven structure and traced it back to an enormous trunk. And there, sitting on the branch right next to the trunk, was a massive bird of prey, not unlike a condor except it was more than two meters tall if it was a centimeter. As Kitai looked on, his heart pounding, the bird opened its beak and spread its wings. They spanned a good five meters. Of course, he had seen that kind of wingspan before…

Just before the bird plucked him out of the sky.

It seemed to be standing guard at the base of the branch. Eyeing him. As what? Food for its newborn?

Kitai had no intention of serving that purpose. He looked around for his backpack and found it on the other side of the nest. It was torn in the corner, but his cutlass was still clipped to it. That was good. With the cutlass, he had a chance against the bird. He started moving toward the weapon slowly so as not to disturb the bird. All around him, its young continued to break free of their eggs. Finally, Kitai reached his gear.

But as he reached for it, he looked down through the gaps in the nest and saw a dark shape moving up the trunk of the tree. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked enormous, even bigger than the adult bird. One of the newborn creatures moved toward Kitai. He extended his foot and pushed it away. It fell on its side so clumsily that it was funny.

But Kitai wasn’t inclined to laugh. Not when the dark shape was still moving up the trunk below him. And definitely not when he saw a second shape drop onto his branch from above.

With trembling hands, he unclipped the cutlass from his pack. Then he tapped in a combination on its handle. Instantly the weapon extended to its full two-meter length, with one end featuring a sharp spear point and the other a flat blade. None too soon, either, because the limb on which the nest rested began to shake violently.

Suddenly, the adult bird went at the invader that had attacked from below. Kitai could see the intruder better now. Its fur was a burned gold. The body someplace between leopard and lion. It snarled and swiped at the bird, which spread its wings and took itself out of the leopard’s range. But not too far. It still had a nest full of young to protect. As Kitai watched, it flew at the leopard and pecked at it with its razor-sharp beak.

This is my chance, he thought.

While the creatures were busy, he could slip out of the nest and make his way down through the branches of the tree. With luck, neither of them would notice his departure until it was too late to retrieve him. Kitai crawled to the edge of the nest, but before he could climb over it, he felt the branch shudder. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw another leopard appear on the end of the branch. Still others were scaling the trunk below him.

The cadet looked back at the newborns in the corner of the nest. They squawked at him. Kitai didn’t know why, but he felt an obligation to defend them.

It was crazy. He had his own skin to look after, and his father’s life depended on him, too. But he couldn’t just leave the newborn birds to the mercy of the leopards. Moving back into the center of the nest, he stood in front of the younglings, his cutlass at the ready.

Suddenly a huge leopard paw erupted from between the branches of the nest, narrowly missing Kitai. It was the first of many. As Kitai watched, paws came up from the bottom of the nest here, there, and everywhere. One of them struck a newborn bird. The branches of the nest began to crack and break apart under the leopards’ assault. Kitai used his spear point to stab at one of them. The leopard screamed as the weapon pierced its hide.

Then an entire section of the nest broke off from the main structure. The leopard clinging to it fell with it to the ground far below. Another section broke off. And another. Soon all that was left of the nest was the bowl-like shape in the center of it. Before Kitai could react, one of the leopards crawled over the edge and sank its claws into a newborn bird. The cadet stabbed the leopard with his cutlass and watched it retreat back over the edge of the nest.

But there were others climbing in from every direction. Kitai spun his cutlass, slicing one of the leopards’ paws.

“Leave them alone!” he cried out.

Suddenly he wasn’t alone in his efforts to defend the nest. The adult bird, which had engaged the first leopard creature, rose into the air with the leopard’s hind leg in its beak. Then it dropped the leopard, which fell end over end until it hit the ground with a heavy thud. Free now, the bird swooped in and snatched another leopard from behind. It dragged the leopard out of the nest and tossed it into the air, where it became another victim of the planet’s gravity.

Meanwhile, one of the other leopard creatures reached a newborn bird. As it began mauling it, Kitai rushed forward and skewered the leopard’s flank. The leopard writhed in pain and, still clutching the baby, plummeted over the side of the nest.

Kitai and the adult bird continued to fight off the leopards. By the time the last of the beasts was thrown to the ground, he was breathing hard and was drenched with sweat. He looked around and saw that none of the newborns remained in the nest. Their shells lay shattered and empty.

All for nothing? Kitai asked himself.

With a screech, the massive bird dived from the nest, no doubt in search of its young. I’ve got to leave, Kitai thought. But he stood there for a moment, the cutlass in his hand, wishing he could have saved at least one of the baby birds. Finally, he retracted the ends of the cutlass and snapped it back onto his pack. Then he donned the pack and started climbing down from the tree. It wasn’t all that hard. There were plenty of branches and vines to hang on to. Finally, he landed on the ground.

That was when Kitai saw the bird through the foliage. She was standing amid the carcasses of her babies. As he looked on, she raised her head and screamed. He could hear pain in that sound. The pain of loss. It almost sounded human as it ripped through the forest.

Again the bird bowed her head and touched it to the lifeless newborns. Then she screamed again, this time even longer. Kitai recognized that sound, that sense of loss. He had felt it himself, after all. Everyone in his family had felt it. He watched a little longer. Then he left the bird behind in its misery, backed up into the jungle, and slipped away.

He hadn’t gone far, however, before he realized that something was wrong. Abruptly, he checked his wrist and felt a fresh wave of panic when he saw the naviband was missing. It must have broken free when the leopard creature slashed at him. This was a new complication he really did not need.

“Come on, no!” Kitai cried out in frustration. The woods echoed his words back at him.

It was hard enough to traverse a treacherous landscape with all kinds of obstacles, both living and otherwise. But to do so without a working naviband…? Kitai looked around. He was all alone, cut off from his father for good, and he had no idea how long he had until the sun went down.

Panicked, he ran through the dense jungle ahead of him, crashing through branches, trying to gain altitude to catch the sun before it vanished. He ran so fast, so desperately, that he was out in the open on a high plateau before he knew it. Skidding to a halt, Kitai saw that he was in the midst of ancient ruins. A dam, he thought. He had never seen one before, though he had read about them.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over him. He looked up and saw the condorlike bird in the sky, clipping the tops of trees, flying recklessly, almost angrily. It was a scary sight. Was it trying to hurt itself because it had allowed its young to be killed? Was it feeling guilt? Sadness?

It’s a bird, Kitai reminded himself. But it wasn’t like the birds he had known all his life on Nova Prime. It had evolved in the time since humankind had left the planet. As he thought that, the bird rocketed straight up toward the sun. Angry. Definitely angry.

But Kitai had more to worry about than the condor creature. He could see his breath starting to freeze in the air. The temperature was dropping rapidly. The bird might have the luxury to run wild, to let her emotions get the best of her. But I don’t. Not if I’m going to live through the night.

Kitai steadied himself, took control. He wasn’t going to panic, wasn’t going to let his emotions get in the way. He was going to keep a cool head no matter what. He was tired. He was lost. But it was going to be all right. Figuring the bird would know where to find a warm spot, he took off after her.

It wasn’t easy keeping up with something that could fly, but he did his best. Sprinting through the jungle, he moved toward what he hoped was a geothermal zone or at least some kind of shelter. All the while, the sun dropped through the sky like a stone.

iii

Cypher, trapped in the ship’s cockpit, felt a wave of panic wash over his battered body as the connection with the naviband was terminated abruptly. Something had happened to the device or, worse, to his son. Furiously his fingers tapped controls, checked probe after probe. Images blasted at him—of mountains, of jungles, of beaches—but Kitai was nowhere to be seen.

He has to be somewhere, Cypher thought. “Come on,” he said out loud, his voice cracking with the strain. “Where are you?” He scanned a stretch of plains covered with herds of evolved bison, clefts full of twisted foliage, a rushing river that churned through a pine forest. But try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a sign of his son.

Please, he thought, be alive. Be alive…

As Kitai ran through the jungle, the plants on either side of him began to close up on themselves. The world was frosting over again. Kitai looked left and right for shelter but didn’t see a single possibility. Then he caught a glimpse of a small hoglike creature running just in front of him. As far as he could tell, the hoglike thing didn’t seem worried or lost. It seemed to know exactly where it was going.

Bereft of any other viable options, he decided to follow it. It wasn’t easy. He had to use all his quickness and agility, scramble under bushes and leap over piles of rocks, swing around tree trunks and crash his way through branches heavy with leaves. Finally, Kitai saw the creature burrow into a hole in the ground. A moment later, three smaller specimens of the same species followed it.

The ice was like a tide, crackling its way across the landscape in his direction. In a matter of seconds, it would be on top of him. Kitai didn’t hesitate. He tried to dive into the creatures’ hole. Unfortunately, he was a lot bigger than they were. As the frost crept over him, he picked up a flat stone and used it to start digging to make the hole bigger. His fingers growing colder by the moment, he dug for all he was worth. Finally, the hole was big enough. Just in time, Kitai slid his body into it.

He thought he would find a hollow where he could curl up with the hog creatures. Instead, he started sliding along something slick and wet. Not just a little, either. He must have slid ten meters before he came to something soft and grassy. Not that Kitai could see down there. He was just going by the way it felt.

Need light, he thought, and hit an area on his lifesuit. Instantly a section of the suit lit up, dispelling the darkness, and he saw that the hog hole was actually a cave with smooth stone walls. Kitai moved between them. The light from his suit illuminated the stone surfaces, revealing a collection of beautifully colored cave paintings. One of them showed herds of bison. Another showed flocks of birds. Still another showed a primitive hunt.

Kitai wondered how old the paintings were. Many thousands of years, no doubt. A particular painting caught his attention. It showed a man, sleeping apparently, surrounded by different animals.

Despite the crudeness of the technique, there was a beauty and a majesty to the place. As he caught his breath, he admired everything around him, appreciated it for what it was: a window into the way the first men looked at their world. Down below the cave, which was really just a slanted pocket in the earth, a tiny rivulet of lava could be seen moving in the darkness. Kitai nodded to himself. That’s where the warmth is coming from.

Suddenly, he heard a noise, a scratching sound. Following it to its source, he saw a snake emerge from a seam in the cave wall. As he watched, it spread the skin on either side of its body into what looked like wings. Then it rose up and floated through the cave.

Kitai shrank from it, pressing himself as far back into the stone wall as he could. But the snake didn’t seem to take an interest in him. Instead it landed on a rodent that was scurrying in the darkness. With blinding speed, the snake coiled itself around the rodent and crushed the life out of it. Then it flew away with the limp little carcass.

Kitai moved closer to the warmth of the lava thread. His cutlass at the ready, he found a good spot and hunkered down. Finally, he could rest his body. But it wasn’t so easy to rest his mind. He had to remain watchful there, like anywhere else on Earth. It became harder when the light from his lifesuit dimmed and went out.

Delirious, Cypher continued to search his probe cameras for a glimpse of Kitai. But as many probes as he checked, over and over again, he didn’t see a thing. Not even a hint that Kitai was still alive. Then Cypher saw him—or thought he did. But no. It was just that he wanted to see Kitai so badly, he convinced himself for a second that he had.

I’ve lost him, Cypher thought. Lost him. And he cracked. The weight of it, everything he had been through—everything he had put his son through—was too much for him. He had sacrificed both of his children on the Raige altar of pride and service.

He fought the collapse and turned back to the search for his boy. “Come on,” he whispered fervently, “come on! Where are you?”

It was no use.

Reluctantly, his fist shaking, he hit the stud that activated the cockpit recorder. “General Cypher Raige,” he groaned. “The mission with Cadet Kitai Raige was a failure. I—”

He tried to go on, but he couldn’t. With a sigh, he looked down at his tortured legs, at the blood running down them and collecting on the deck. When he looked up again, his tone was different. Softer. More human. “This is a message for my wife.

“Faia, I have lost our son.”

She would find that shocking, no doubt. How could the general not know what to do?

But Cypher didn’t feel like the general anymore. He felt helpless, unable to help his son or even himself. His eyes, the eyes of a father, began to fill with tears.

Kitai didn’t know when light began to filter into the cave. After another sleepless night, time blurs into one endless mess. He realized that he could see without the help of his suit. His cutlass sat on the ground beside him along with the rest of his gear. Only one vial of breathing fluid remained to him.

Kitai looked at the cave paintings and felt a spurt of inspiration. With the help of a rock, he drew a picture of his own—a huge map that covered an entire wall—and traced his journey step by step since he had left his father in the ship. When details became fuzzy, Kitai found himself hearing his father’s voice in his head, guiding him as he labeled every location: Dad. Baboons. River. Waterfalls. Nest. I am here, I think. And finally, Tail somewhere here in a huge open area on the map.

As Kitai worked, he developed a plan.

He didn’t stop until he saw the hog family start to leave the cave. He quickly gathered his things and followed them out into the sunlight. Once he emerged from the hole, the mother pig looked back at him as if to say “You’re welcome.”

He was still marveling at the creature’s intelligence when a huge shadow fell over him. Shading his eyes and looking up, Kitai saw the mother condor creature circling overhead.

Why? Is it hungry? More than likely it was. He got a better grip on his cutlass and began walking south. As Kitai made his way through the jungle, he felt hollowed out. He hadn’t slept well in the cave. After a while, he glanced up again and saw that the condor creature was still pacing him on the other side of some trees.

“Leave me alone!” he cried out.

But it didn’t.

Finally, no longer content just to fly beside Kitai, it landed on a branch above him. Looking up, he could see it sitting there. There was no question in his mind that it was watching him. But the more he looked at it, the more he thought it looked listless rather than hungry. It seemed to him that it was still mourning its young. Still, it was a dangerous creature, and Kitai wanted to escape from it. But he couldn’t. He was too spent. He lumbered along as best he could, keeping an eye on the bird all the while.

He was directly below the condor creature when the ground began to tremble. Kitai looked around, confused. What was going on? Moment by moment the sound grew louder, like boulders rolling down a hill, and the ground shook even more violently. Kitai’s suit turned black and developed little bumps in its texture.

Suddenly a herd of six-foot-tall creatures burst from the foliage. They looked to Kitai like an evolved variety of okapi. He flung himself out of the way of the first creature but was instantly caught up in the stampede. One hit him as it came on and knocked him to his left; then another hit him and sent him to the ground. Powerful hooves trampled the turf all around him, narrowly missing him.

The sound of the herd was deafening as Kitai struggled to his feet. But there was good news—he had an open lane up ahead, a lane free of the creatures. If he kept to it, he might be all right. Then he was hit again, a glancing blow. Unable to stop himself, he fell among the trampling hooves a second time. That’s it, he thought. I’m done.

Suddenly, Kitai felt something grab him and jerk him into the air. Looking down, he realized he was rising above the okapi—and rising even more, the herd falling farther and farther below him. The okapi charged through the field, unrelenting. From this height, Kitai could see how green the landscape was. He could see how thoroughly the herd was trampling it.

But not me, he thought. It’s not trampling me. He was safe. Somehow.

Kitai caught a glimpse of something metallic glinting in the distance, something human-made sticking out of the natural landscape. It made him wonder what it was for a second.

Then he fell toward the ground.

It rushed up at him faster than he thought he could handle. As he hit it, he tucked and rolled and by sheer luck missed a pair of colossal trees when he somersaulted between them. The next thing he knew, he had stopped, and unlikely as it seemed, he was still intact. Dazed, dizzy from the spinning he had done, he managed to get his feet underneath him. He looked around.

What happened? Kitai asked himself. One moment he was about to be crushed under all those hooves, and the next he was rising through the air. As he was wondering, he caught movement in the trees. Then he saw what had saved him from the okapi. The condorlike bird was sitting on a tree limb far above, looking down on him.

Kitai stared up at it, still shivering with adrenaline. His neck stiff from the fall, he moved it from side to side to alleviate the pain. To his surprise, the bird did the same thing. Did I just see what I thought I saw? he wondered. He stood still and stared up at the bird. Then he moved his head from side to side again, this time intentionally. And again the condorlike creature did the same thing. Kitai smiled and nodded his thanks. Clearly, the bird wasn’t like the birds back on Nova Prime.

It was much more than that.

With that discovery in mind, he backpedaled slowly into the jungle, turned, and hurried on.

iv

Sometime later, Kitai approached the banks of a river. His lifesuit was rust once more. Exhausted, he dumped his gear on the ground. He fumbled with the breathing fluid case. For a moment, he thought he was going to pass out. Then he closed his fingers around the last vial. Kitai regarded it, knowing the significance of it. After it was done, there would be no more breathing fluid. None. But what choice did he have?

As his father had shown him, he accepted the contents of the last vial. Then he sat back. Even with the oxygen coursing through his bloodstream, he was bone-tired. It would be so easy for him to just give up. So easy…

As Kitai thought that, he saw a log float by on the river. He stared at it, and an idea came to him. He looked around and saw a group of fallen trees by the river’s edge. He struggled to his feet, approached some long vines hanging from the trees, and started cutting them.

Before long, he had created a small raft made of fallen tree logs and lashed them together with the vines he had found. He pulled it to the edge of the river. Then he pushed it in and jumped on top of it. As the current caught the raft and pulled it along, Kitai saw that the water was teeming with life. He stood up in the center of the raft and used a long branch he had acquired as an oar.

He was so enthralled by the fish flitting through the water, in and out of the sunlight, that he almost missed something else: a forty-foot anaconda swimming lazily alongside the raft. Kitai tamped down his fear. He held his breath for what seemed like forever, hoping the snake wouldn’t try to overturn the raft. Eventually, the thing passed him by.

He took a breath, let it out. Aside from the snake, the river was actually kind of peaceful. There was thick, lush jungle on either side of it, its leaves reaching out over the water. Kitai allowed himself to relax, to lie down on his back. The breathtaking landscape moved past him on either side.

Drained of energy, fatigued, he took the opportunity to close his eyes for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. The sounds of life served as a haunting lullaby, the river rocking him to sleep. No, he thought. Got to stay awake. But he couldn’t. Slowly but surely, he drifted off…

Then a hand touched him ever so gently, and he heard a feminine voice say, “Wake up.”

Kitai opened his eyes and saw his sister, Senshi, sitting on the raft with him. Her hair hung to one side. Stroking his face gently, she said, “It’s time for you to wake up.”

He looked up and smiled at her. “Hey.”

He wondered how it could be that she was with him in that moment on Earth. But he was too tired to question it. He just took in the welcome sight of her face, which he hadn’t seen in a long time. Not since her death. Suddenly, he felt a pang of guilt.

“I was about to come out that day,” he said.

His sister smiled and shook her head. “No, you weren’t. But you did the right thing.”

It felt good to hear her say that. But it didn’t lift his burden, not entirely.

“Dad says I should have tried.”

“He’s just mad at himself,” said Senshi. “That’s all.”

“Why couldn’t you ghost?”

His sister stared down at him and touched his face again. “You’re close right now.”

“I am?” He was surprised that she would say that.

“Are you scared?” Senshi asked.

Was he?

“No,” he decided. “I’m tired.”

“That’s good. You filled your heart with something else. Now you’ve got to get up.”

Kitai looked up at her. “I memorized some of Moby Dick.” He thought that would please her and convince her to stick around a little longer.

But all she did was repeat what she had said: “Kitai, get up.”

Maybe she didn’t believe him. Well, he would prove it to her. “‘All that most maddens and torments,’” he said, quoting the book, “‘all that stirs up the lees of things—’”

His sister took on a concerned look. “Kitai, wake up. It’s time for you to wake up.”

She was distracting him. Kitai covered his ears so that he could concentrate. “‘All truth with malice in it—’”

Senshi said it again, this time with more urgency: “Kitai, wake up.”

Ignoring her, he continued. “‘All that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain—’”

His sister looked down as if resigned to the idea that Kitai wouldn’t listen to her. Her hair hung in front of her face. Then she looked up suddenly, and when she did, her face was mangled and bleeding, just as it had been when the Ursa attacked her that day. Her eyes wide, she screamed in a voice full of fear and pain, “Wake up!”

Kitai snapped awake. Disoriented, he looked around. All around him, the jungle was freezing over. The river was already half frozen. The raft was propped up against a riverbank. Kitai cursed beneath his breath. The jungle was turning gray. The rough undersides of the plants had become a carapace against the cold. He had lost a critical amount of time. There was only one way he could make up for it. He got up and sprinted like crazy. But with every step, the temperature plummeted. The plants and trees around him turned a frigid white. Frost formed on his upper lip and on top of his head.

Still he kept moving, kept pumping his arms and legs. His lifesuit turned icy, but that didn’t stop him. Then, up ahead, branches began snapping. Chunks of shrubbery flew about and fell to the ground. Kitai was shivering violently, his arms wrapped around himself, but he didn’t dare go on until he saw what was causing the carnage.

Then he caught sight of it—up ahead, high in the trees, a bird like the one whose nest he had helped defend. Or tried to help defend. As he watched, the creature viciously broke off one leafy branch after another and let them fall to the ground.

Kitai wished he knew why.

At the same time, the jungle floor began to freeze. Kitai collapsed to his knees and fell forward. A moment later his face hit the hard, cold ground. He felt as if ice were forming on his eyelids. His face was cold, so cold. Everything in front of him became a blur. He got the vague impression of claws digging at the earth, of the jungle turning to ice, of his lifesuit turning from rust to deadly white. Then he saw a flurry of dark feathered wings, and came to the conclusion that the mammoth bird was coming to kill him.

My cutlass. If I can only get to my cutlass—

It was the last thing he thought before darkness closed down on him.