Page 47 of The Brightness Between Us

“Hi, OS,” I say, managing—I think—to keep the tension out of my voice.

“Is everything okay, Yarrow?” it asks. I guess I haven’t kept the tension out after all.

“Yep,” I say. “Just starting to feel this work in my muscles.”

“Please tell me if anything is not okay,” OS says.

“Yes. Don’t worry,” I reply.

Rover drags the tarp to the processor.

One. Two. Three.

Owl must have pushed herself hard on this latest attempt to find the beacon. On my break, I find her sprawled out on her bed, left arm and leg dangling so far off the side that they’re touching the ground. If she even breathes the wrong way, she’ll fall off entirely.

Gently, trying not to wake her, I nudge her more squarely onto the mattress.

Her eyes blink open. She stretches and smiles when she sees me. “Oh, hi,” she says. She opens and closes her mouth. “I think I was very sleepy.”

“I bet you were,” I say. “That was the longest excursion yet. Hey, move over.”

I get in the bed, lie alongside her.

“You are a very sweaty brother,” she says.

It’s cold enough today that I don’t think I have any sweat still on my body. But if she means that I smell sweaty, then yes. That’s definitely true. I am quite fragrant. “I take it you couldn’t find any sign of the beacon,” I say.

She shakes her head. “This was my fifth try. It’s so frustrating.”

“OS keeps scanning frequencies. I’m sure the beacon is transmitting its location somehow, but it’s just not transmitting in a language we’re listening with. We’ll catch it eventually.”

“I don’t know,” Owl says. “I’ve had a lot of time to think on my treks. If that beacon was Earth tech, which is fair toassume, then it had to be incredibly light to be shot out at interstellar speeds without its own power source. Even the most basic transmitter would add a lot of weight. It’s probably got a detectable signature instead, and isn’t beaming a powered signal. We just have to be close enough for Rover or a handheld to pick up on it.”

I nod. This makes sense.

“Did you have any new thoughts about our theories?” Owl asks. I don’t think she’s actually interested in our theories. I think she just wants me to say something so she’ll know I’m not currently in a weird spell.

“I just spent ten days doing nothing but shoveling soil. I had plenty of time to think about our theories, yes.” Suddenly I imagine snuggling Owl so tight to me that it crushes her. Her ribs snap. I shudder and turn on my side so I’m facing away from her. “I didn’t have any insights, though.”

She rests her hand on my shoulder. I sigh in relief that I’m worth touching.

“And how are you feeling?” she asks. She paused long enough that she probably debated a while about whether I’d be mad she asked.

I’m really tired of that question. But it’s also nice to know my family cares. “I’m still liking our old-clone hypothesis,” I say. “That the beacon was sent from theCoordinated Endeavorsometime earlier in its journey.”

“But what would they have wanted to tell us so muchthat they went to that effort?” Owl says. “That’s what I don’t get. Why not, you know, just leave a message inside the ship?”

“I don’t know,” I say, hands pinioned between my knees. I count Owl’s breaths against my neck. “They want to say something they were worried OS would censor, maybe?”

“Not knowing is killing me,” Owl said.

“Yeah,” I say, feeling a surge of excitement at that word.Killing.“Me too.”

I wake up from our nap before Owl does, and go stand by the edge of the perimeter fence, looking out at the distant malevors, those terrestrial herbivores who decided to attack us on sight. I wonder what they know of us, how they came to their decision. I know it’s probably not a conscious thing on their part, that it’s nothing specific we did; the baby yaks born here without parents didn’t have anyone to teach them how to be, and that’s not their fault.

I’m tempted to deactivate the gate, to see what would happen if I went out into the midst of them. Maybe we could come to understand one another. Or maybe they’d end my existence with one strike of those sharp horns.

Why would I imagine my life ending? Am I starting to have another fugue episode? Or are thoughts like these part of what it means to be a normal human? Is everyone tempted to step into a pit, just to test if it will really be theend? Maybe the humanness comes in the resisting.

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