Grayson shakes his head. “Whatever you do, don’t discuss this in the middle of the farmhouse. We don’t know who is on our side and who is on Lionel’s, so we don’t know how the people there would react if they overheard you. Besides, there’s a good chance that he won’t be far away from Lionel himself.”
“So how am I meant to let Jack know if I can’t tell him?” I ask.
“You persuade him to come out here,” Grayson replies. “It shouldn’t be hard. Just pretend that you want to spend some romantic time alone with him. People will believe that. Jack certainly will.” Does Grayson sound bitter there? Somehow, I don’t think that this is going to be all that easy, not if Grayson has his memories back. “Once you get him out here, we can talk to him.”
“I just hope talking will be enough,” I say.
Grayson starts to put a reassuring arm round me, but then seems to think better of it. “Jack might be able to help. He’s the closest to Lionel of anybody, and Sebastian listens to him too. So either Jack will be able to get through to Lionel and persuade him that you aren’t dangerous even after what has happened, or he and Sebastian will be able to persuade the Faders not to go along with Lionel.”
“Didn’t you just say that a lot of the Faders are more loyal to Lionel than Sebastian?” I point out.
Grayson shrugs. “It isn’t perfect, Celes, but I can’t give you perfect here. I’ve already told you what I think we should do.”
“Run for the hills and forget about everyone else.”
“Keep ourselves safe. It’s not like Lionel has a reason to hurt Jack or your family, and I don’t think he’s an evil man. He wouldn’t do it for the sake of it.”
Maybe Grayson has a point. Maybe they would be safer without me there. Yet I can’t bring myself to do that to Jack. I can’t just run out on him, even if that’s exactly what I did to Grayson. After all, I didn’t get a choice, when it came to Grayson. And then there’s the question of what Jack is. If Lionel ever finds out how much Jack’s non-human half is coming through, won’t that make him just as suspicious as he seems to be of me?
No, I have to go back in there. I have to pretend that everything is all right. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it? After all, I’ve spent the last month or two pretending to be a completely different person. How hard can it be to just pretend that things are normal for five minutes?
TWENTY
G
rayson moves over to the Faders between me and the door to the farmhouse, talking to them. While he does so, I go back inside. They don’t try to stop me. But then, it’s getting out that is potentially the hard part, not getting back in. I just have to hope that Grayson will be able to do everything that he’s said he is going to. It seems like a lot to ask of him to hide the evidence of what I did to Phillipa, and get rid of the Faders who might try to stop us if we wanted to leave.
Do we want to leave? I won’t know for sure until I’ve been able to talk to Jack. Grayson seems set on it, but it doesn’t feel right somehow. Or maybe that is just the thought of having to leave Jack behind. I’m not sure I would be able to do that. I’m also not sure what the return of Grayson’s memories will mean for the two of us. I’m with Jack, and I plan to stay with Jack, but Grayson being there makes things… complicated.
Jack isn’t in the main room of the farmhouse, with the rest of the Faders. I ask after him, because I figure that anyone I ask will assume that I just want to be close to him, rather than that I need to get some kind of secret message to him, and a Fader tells me that he’s in one of the rooms at the far end of the farmhouse.
I find it inside a couple of minutes. It has a door of the kind of toughened glass the Underground seems to like so much, letting me see inside to where Jack, Sebastian and Jonas are sitting around a table, examining a rock that looks a lot like the one we took from Switzerland. There are computer screens attached to the table, along with manipulating arms, and I guess that the whole arrangement must be some kind of scanner. Jack looks up and smiles, hitting a button to open the door.
“Ah, Celestra, there you are!” Jonas says beside him, as though I’m a guest of honor at a party, rather than a visitor to a secret base. “We were about to come get you. You need to see this.”
As I get closer, I can see that the rock on the table definitely is the one from Switzerland. I wonder if Lionel knows that Jack brought it here yet. Given what happened outside, I kind of hope not. Images of the rock appear on the computer screens attached to the table, traced out in green lines and accompanied by a whole series of numbers that I don’t have enough context to understand. I guess that they’re some kind of information about it, but I don’t know what.
Another screen shows a view of what seems to be crystals, but then I see that one of the arms poised over the rock has a microscope attachment, and I guess that the image must be an extreme close up of its surface.
“You look like you have been busy,” I say. Secretly, I just want to get Jack out of there so that we can tell him what’s going on, but I know I can’t just blurt something like that out. Besides, if Jonas knows something about the rock we found, then I probably need to know.
“Oh, we’ve been busy,” Jonas says. “Very busy. While you were out on the raid, I was able to get a lot of work done on it. This rock is an extraordinary find. I didn’t think it would give up its secrets as quickly as it has, either.”
That sounds intriguing, and for a moment I forget what I’m there for. I move over to Jack, and he steps behind me, wrapping his hands around my waist so that we’re pressed close facing the other two. It feels perfect to be there like that. Like I’ve always been there. It’s comfortable, but it’s more than comfortable, because “comfortable” doesn’t cover the kind of heat that there is between us. It’s enough to make me want to turn and kiss him right there and then, even though his father and uncle are both there. I don’t, but it takes an effort not to. And somehow I know that Jack is having exactly the same difficultly.
Thankfully, Jonas manages to distract me by pointing to one of the computer screens.
“Now, Celestra,” he says, “you’ve probably already guessed from your time in Switzerland that this rock is from wherever you are.”
I nod. That’s why finding it was such a big deal, after all. And, given the way it reacted to me, I can’t imagine it being from anywhere else. The rock and I are connected. The more we find out about it, the more we’ll learn about me. I have to believe that.
“Well, it’s certainly no ordinary rock.” Jonas says, then pauses, as though something amusing has just occurred to him. “Although in one sense, the ordinariness of it is what is so extraordinary, if you take my meaning.”
I look at him blankly.
“What I mean is that this rock definitely originated somewhere in our solar system. Our tests show a connection between it and our sun, so that the power it gives off increases in sunlight, while what we have been able to determine of its chemical structure suggests a near Earth origin.”
“So it’s not some kind of alien rock?” I ask. “And if not, what am I?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Jonas asks with a faint smile. “All of the Underground’s research has been based on the assumption of life far off in space, in other systems. Even other galaxies. This… well, taken with what we know of you, it’s a little confusing.”
I obviously look confused again, because he explains.
“What I mean is that this rock suggests that, whatever you are, you are from this star system.”
“Okay,” I say. “Um… unless I’m missing something, Earth is the only planet in the solar system with life on it, right?”
“As far as we know, yes,” Jonas says.
“So that means?”
“It means you must be human!”
Human. I don’t feel very human sometimes. Not when there’s power rising up in me, and it seems so natural for me to hurt other people. And humans don’t have the power to burn other humans alive.
“I can’t be human,” I say.
Behind me, I can feel Jack’s surprise too. “Celes is right,” he says. “Saying that we’re human doesn’t make any sense, Jonas.”
Jonas laughs. “Oh, very special humans, obviously. Highly evolved ones, perhaps, who have moved a long way beyond people nowadays.”
“Are you sure?” Sebastian asks.
“You’ve seen the analysis for yourself,” Jonas points out.
Sebastian nods. “It’s just… that’s amazing.”
Amazing is one word for it. Though to me, it seems more confusing than anything. After all, how can it be true? How can Jack and I somehow be more evolved than the next human? Even the idea of us being from another planet seems to make more sense than that, because at least with that, there’s the idea of us having come from somewhere we don’t know about. If we’re from Earth… well, we know about Earth, don’t we? And I’m pretty sure none of my science classes at school covered people able to do any of the things I do.
Jack seems to still be confused too. “How can we be human, Jonas? Are you sure you haven’t just done the analysis wrong?”
“When have I ever gotten something like this wrong? Besides, I double checked. Everything about that rock says that it came from within this solar system. Now, I’m not going to say that there might not be civilizations on other planets in the solar system that we don’t know about. It’s possible that they could exist, and that they’re somehow shielding their existence from us. Compared to some of the stuff we’re having to deal with today, that’s maybe not so farfetched.”
“But you don’t think it is that, do you?” I ask.
Jonas shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I think that the Underground would have picked up more signs than we have if a civilization like that existed. And then there’s the fact that you and Jack seem to exist within normal human ranges. You aren’t conditioned to the kind of situations you would find closer to or further from the Sun. I think the idea that you’re some kind of super-evolved human just fits better than that.”
“But it brings us back to the question of how could that happen,” Sebastian points out. “Unless you’re suggesting…” He looks at Jonas for a while. “You are, aren’t you?”
Jonas shrugs. “It fits.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand. The last thing I want is two scientists going off into some kind of discussion that only they can understand, treating the whole thing like it’s just some abstract problem for their amusement. It isn’t. This is my life.
Jonas explains. “Barring sudden mutations, evolution takes a long time. Thousands, even millions of years. Now, we know you didn’t advance to the point you’re at on another planet, and there isn’t much evidence for people like you in our planet’s past, so that development has to have happened somewhere else, right?”
“I guess so,” I say. “But where else is there? Where can that kind of change have been happening?”
“Nowhere,” Jonas says.
“Nowhere?” Now, he isn’t making sense.
“What I mean is that it can’t
have been
happening, because the only place it could have happened, Earth, we would have known about it.”
“So we’re back to the start,” I say.
“No. What if… what if instead of this having been happening, it hasn’t happened yet?”
Jonas pauses to let those words sink in. I’m glad he does. There are some words that need a lot of work to accept. “You’re talking about time travel,” I say. “But that’s impossible.”
“Actually, there is nothing in physics that specifically forbids it,” Sebastian puts in. “It’s just that people have always assumed that the difficulties involved would make it impossible to achieve practically, while we have had to ask, if it is possible, where are all the people from the future?”
“And now we know,” Jonas says.