Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

Molly’s right arm felt tender, but not broken. She probed below Anlyn’s nape with her left hand and could feel the difference beneath her palm, like some wall of subcutaneous cartilage had broken free.

A new pocket of softness lie there. Molly had no idea if her efforts were helping or hurting, but she knew what would happen if she did nothing—Anlyn would die. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her wrist and started performing a series of steady thrusts.

Waves of purple spread out from beneath her hands with each push. Something definitely moved beneath Anlyn’s skin—fluids, perhaps, spreading out through her back. Molly counted twenty pushes while she watched for an evening of the color, then she rested and reached for the alien’s neck again. She encircled it completely with both hands, careful to not let her thumbs press too hard and fool her with her own pulse.

Nothing.

She rubbed her right wrist before putting her hands back in place, then watched a bead of sweat drip off her nose and splash on Anlyn’s bare back. Molly had a sudden impulse to tear her own flightsuit off; the damn thing was cooking her without the life-support system plugged in.

She felt Edison looking at her and met his eyes, saw the question on his face.

She shook her head.

Edison grimaced as she began another round of thrusts. A dozen more. She began to wonder if the purple waves of fluid beneath Anlyn’s skin were signs of forced circulation or just subcutaneous flow from the pressure.

Once again, she searched for a pulse, her wrist throbbing. She visually scanned the rest of the alien’s body for any sign of internal life, anything moving. Something twitched near the first knuckle of her left hand. Maybe. She slid the pads of two fingers there, holding her breath. Molly could hear her own pulse in her ears, confounding her. Was the skin on the back of Anlyn’s arm turning a pale shade of blue? Molly tried to guard against wishful thinking. Focus on—

But, there! A pulse. Molly searched the opposite side of her neck and found a weak sign of life there as well.

She smiled at Edison. “Help me roll her over.”

Edison tried to say something to her but couldn’t. Molly noticed for the first time that he’d been crying, that her normally verbose friend had not said a single thing since wailing her name. She wanted to ask him to say something, anything, to get the horrible echo of his groans out of her head.

But Edison seemed lost in space. He cradled his friend in his large arms, rocking her slightly. Molly watched him reach down to adjust one of the oxygen tubes coming out of her nose. She noted the delicate precision of his movements—one of his race’s defining characteristics—but saw something tender in the way he did it as well.

Molly touched both of her friends softly and hurried out of the room.

They needed to get help. Anlyn wasn’t out of the asteroid field yet.

“What’s going on?” Cole asked. “Is Edison okay?” He leaned around his seat, looking back through the cargo bay.

Molly worked her way into the pilot’s seat as she tried to work out Cole’s question. “It’s Anlyn,” she said. “Edison was just yelling for help. She has a bad case of SLAS. Really bad. Two-tone. It’s hard to really gauge because she’s so translucent.”

Cole looked as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Was it my alterations? Gods, I knew we should have tested them harder, it was only a matter of time before something like this—”

“Don’t jump to conclusions and don’t beat yourself up. We just need to get her to Drenard, and fast.” Molly checked their velocity. They were back to a sane rate of speed, but it was still higher than she’d like for another jump.

“We can probably make it in three more jumps. I’m guessing we’ve run the blockade by shaking the Navy back there.”

“Too much time cycling the hyperdrive. We need to try it in two. Pull up the Bel Tra charts and see if there’s a shortcut you feel comfortable risking. Maybe an L4 or an L5 we haven’t considered. And jump us as soon as our speed gets out of the red.” Molly pulled her nav keyboard out of the dash and rested it on her thighs.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I need to have a chat with my mom. Find out what’s going on here.”

Cole looked over from the star charts. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

Molly skipped past the new questions on her nav screen. She felt bad about her mother being trapped in absolute darkness, calling out with no response for what probably felt like ages. This guilt, however, was offset by the way she was being kept in the dark. She just wanted to know where her father was, and what she needed to do to rescue him.

MOM?_

SWEETHEART, WHAT IN THE GALAXY IS GOING ON?_

ANLYN HAS A BAD CASE OF SLAS. WE’RE GONNA TRY AND GET HER TO DRENARD. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU TOLD HER. HOW YOU SPEAK A LANGUAGE NOBODY IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW_

“Got it in two jumps,” Cole interrupted. Molly gave him a thumbs-up, but concentrated on what her mother was typing.

I CAN’T TELL YOU YET. I’M SORRY. YOU NEED TO TRUST ME. I PROMISE, I WOULDN’T KEEP ANYTHING FROM YOU THAT YOU NEEDED TO HEAR. TRY AND UNDERSTAND, YOUR FATHER AND I TRUST YOU WITHOUT EVEN REALLY KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME_

There was a lull in the flow of words. Molly jumped in with another question: IF YOU TRUST ME, THEN JUST TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON. THE NAVY WAS WILLING TO KILL ME TO GET THEIR HANDS ON THIS SHIP. LUCIN TRIED TO KILL ME, MOM_

She hated revealing this while she was angry. It was something she planned on getting to gradually. She felt bad as soon as she hit “enter,” wishing there was some way to delete it from her mother’s memory.

NO. NOT LUCIN_

The flat denial dissolved Molly’s will to remove the words. Now she wanted to pound them home.

YES, LUCIN. HE HAD A GUN ON ME. HE WANTED THIS SHIP BADLY ENOUGH TO KILL ME FOR IT. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON. I’M NOT A KID ANYMORE. I’M 16 AND I’VE BEEN CLEAR ACROSS THE GALAXY ON MY OWN, I’VE BEEN THROUGH SOME CRAZY STUFF IN THE PAST MONTH — I THINK I CAN HANDLE WHATEVER IT IS_

Molly watched as Cole finished an emergency spin-up of the hyperdrive, preparing for the first jump. She trusted his calculations and didn’t bother double-checking them. Instead, she concentrated on the nav screen while her stomach tightened up, maybe in preparation for the jump, possibly because of what her mother might tell her.

MAYBE YOU COULD HANDLE IT. THE NAVY COULDN’T, BUT MAYBE YOU COULD. WE’LL SEE. JUST KEEP IN MIND THAT WHATEVER SORT OF FAITH YOU’RE USING TO TRUST THAT THIS IS ME, I’M HAVING TO DO THE SAME THING TO TRUST THAT YOU ARE YOU. IT’S A DARK PLACE HERE. I’M JUST AS SCARED AS YOU ARE. MAYBE MORE, KNOWING WHAT I KNOW. WE’LL SORT THIS OUT ON THE WAY TO DAKURA OR LOK_

Molly tried to digest the idea that her mother couldn’t know who she was talking to. That she was just as much a stranger to her own mother as her mother was to her. It seemed to plug missing pieces into her view of the world. And no matter how many times this happened—that Molly learned things weren’t always what they seemed—she couldn’t yet seem to generalize the idea. She constantly felt wiser, yet she kept getting fooled. Or hurt. She leaned over the keyboard.

WE’RE GOING TO DRENARD FIRST. AFTER THAT, AND ONCE MY FRIEND IS OK, WE’LL GO TO DAKURA. I PROMISE_

OK, the screen read, BUT PLEASE, TALK TO ME. IT’S THE ONLY THING I’VE HAD SINCE YOU UNLOCKED ME_

Molly thought about that, her fingers resting on the keyboard. She understood completely. Suffering a childhood alone, lying in her bunk at night in the Academy, surrounded by darkness and the whispering of strangers… she understood. She used to lie in that state and dream of the comforting presence her missing parents could bring her.