Page 7 of The Brightness Between Us

“It makes me feel bad to be lied to,” I venture, taking the sort of diplomatic tack I know Dad will appreciate.

“I know,” he says.

“It’s only because I found that skeleton that you had to come clean,” I press. “Does Father know you’re telling me this?”

“Yes, we discussed it,” Dad says, with a glance at the polycarb curtain.

I let out a long sigh, exaggerating the wince at the end so Dad can know how very much I’m suffering. That he really should be treating his poor gored daughter better. “I thought I’d made an amazing discovery,” I say, in this mournful self-centered tone that I instantly hate myself for.

“And yet. It was just a duck,” he says. His tone is carefully neutral.

“A duck skeleton is still amazing tome,” I grumble,wincing as my ribs grate. I hate it when I wallow, and yet here I go. “I’venever seen one.”

Dad busies himself untying and retying the straps of his shoes. His face is turned away from me, so I can’t see his expression, but I think... his shoulders are shaking? “Dad, are youlaughingat me?” I ask. “Tell me that you’re notlaughingat me right now.”

He doesn’t answer, just unties and reties his straps again.

“You’re laughing. At your precious daughter who’s beenmaimedby ayak,” I continue.

His whole body is shaking now.

“Dad!” I say. “I can’t believe this. I nearlydiedout there, because you’ve kept a central reality of the world from me, just likeyourmother did toyou, I might add, and my dad, my owndad, finds this state of affairshilarious. Gah!” I started talking with my hands, and it makes my ribs flash in pain again. “Ow!”

“I for one do not find this situation humorous,” interrupts OS. “I know how fragile your physical body is. We have seen that children can be terminated forever as simply as tumbling in the wrong location.”

Dad’s face falls. He stares at his shoes.

“Thank you, OS,” I huff. “At least someone gets it. But that made Dad feel bad.”

When Dad looks up, his cheeks are red. He’sstilllaughing. Unbelievable. He’s an absolute monster.

He must see the fury on my face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not sure exactly what’s funny. I’m just tense and ready to find relief anywhere, I guess. The truth is that the malevors are no joke. They’re way more aggressive than we’d ever have expected yaks to be. That’s why we had to print the perimeter fencing and the pneumatic guns. It’s why we haven’t been brave enough to risk hunting them. We’ve been lucky that the low-nutrition muck out there limits their health, otherwise they’d have spread more by now and would be a real problem.”

“Do you really think one of them gave Crane her fever?”

“It’s hard to imagine. But something made her sick.”

I try not to think about Crane, who had just turned two when we buried her. Yarrow got that fever, too, but he survived it.

The malevors aren’t aliens after all. Damn.

Dad strokes my hair. “I’ve been running isotope data in the lab—the processor has been overheating, and we need to keep all our precious metal in good shape, so I should get back to it. Rover will be here to take care of you. I’ll send Yarrow in to say hi, too. Just rest easy until dinner, okay? Shout if you need anything. I love you.”

He’s gone, and I’m left in the infirmary. With the pain in my lower back—I just want to scratch, scratch, scratch that wound, even though it would hurt, hurt, hurt—what I’d most like to do is start my rewatch ofPink Lagoon,season four. Anything to stop thinking about the charging malevors and the duck skeleton and how we’re alone in the universe after all. And how mad Father must be at me.

I look over at the skeleton, and feel something bigger and sweeter than disappointment. I don’t regret what I did. Even if a duck is an Earth creature, Yarrow and I have never seen one. We will never see one, unless the dads become willing to try to raise any more of them... or we do, after our parents are dead.

I touched the skeleton of a small, fragile winged creature that lived its short life on a planet tens of thousands of light-years from its home, before it failed to thrive and the dads killed it. Whose flesh was slowly eaten away by alien bacteria, after its zygote was transported across the galaxy in a spaceship. What an awful and brief and magnificent existence. The big mystery of our life on Minerva is how quickly it can turn from grimy to majestic and back.

The printed walls are translucent, which means we can’t ever fully block the outside light. It’s why I got OS to reschedule my free time away from the Scorch, because the intense midday light from the Sisters makes thePink Lagoonreels harder to watch. But now the twilight is in its rapid finish, and the settlement walls have started to emit the solar energy they were storing all day. Since the light-processing cells are embedded in every permanentsurface, the evening illumination doesn’t come from any one place; it’s part of everything.

A shadow passes the wall, pauses by the curtained doorway to the learning room, then moves on. The figure is tall and broad-shouldered. Father, unmistakably Father. Not willing to see me yet.

“You don’tgetto be mad at me,” I mutter, wincing again. Of course ambition comes with risks. The fact that I got hurt this time doesn’t mean I had the wrong idea.

“I am not mad at you,” OS responds. “I’m not even remotely thinking of you through pathways that could be ascribed to anger.”

“Thanks, OS, but you’re not the one I was talking to,” I say. I know that the fact that I just spoke out loud to try to convince Father that he can’t be angry—when he’s not here—means I’m feeling guilty. Yarrow would say maybe I could be the one to start the conversation, just apologize, tell Father the story I’m telling myself about why he’s angry. That’s how he’d phrase it, and he’d say it all with that bland sweet smile on his face that makes me want to shove his nose into the nearest puddle of bioluminescent goop.

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