Fourth World Read online

  He seemed so pleased by my interest in his project that I nearly didn’t respond to him. But my curiosity got the better of me. I pointed to the bottom of the pit. “Um, yeah. What’s up with that pile of rocks down there?”

  “Oh, that. That’s a natural rock formation. We’ve discovered a number of them throughout this site. We believe they were pushed into that formation by the movement of ancient waterways. Then they calcified, solidifying together like mortar. If you all will follow me, we’ll see a few more of those ‘arches’ on the tour.”

  He turned to lead the group through a narrower part of the trail. The rest of my classmates shuffled off after him, but I hung back. Something wasn’t sitting well with me. It may have been a “natural” rock formation, but I’d seen it before—on something that was definitely man-made.

  “Isaak, come on,” Tamara called when she noticed I was still hovering at the side of the crater.

  I paused for a moment, still looking down at the trench floor. Then, resolved, I turned to her and Henry. “Hang on just a sec.” I ducked under the rope surrounding the ditch.

  “Whoa, what are you doing?” I heard Henry exclaim as I stumbled my way down the steep, rocky side of the crater.

  “I just want to get a better look at it,” I replied.

  “Isaak!” hissed Tamara. “You’re going to get in trouble!”

  “Just keep a watch for me, then. Let me know if you hear them coming back.”

  She frowned down at me, her eyebrows knitted with worry. Henry, on the other hand, had already pushed his way under the rope and was thundering down the slope after me.

  Red dust settled in a cloud around me as I crouched at the base of the pile of stones. It was only about waist high, but otherwise it looked exactly like the design on the coin. I supposed it could just be a coincidence, but that would be too weird.

  “What’s so great about this thing, man?” Henry asked. “It’s just a pile of rocks.”

  “Yeah, but the way they’re shaped…” I reached out impulsively to touch the arch.

  When my fingers brushed the rock, a deafening klaxon shrieked.

  Henry cursed at the sound. I cringed, my head jerking up. I hadn’t noticed the security drone hovering at the perimeter of the crater, but its camera was focused on us now, the red light on top of its body flashing.

  In moments, our group was back at the side of the crater. Erick silenced the security drone, and in the stillness that followed, Mr. Johnson’s voice echoed.

  “Contreras and Sandhu. Why am I not surprised?”

  ◦ • ◦

  After ensuring that I hadn’t caused any damage to the site with my “reckless behavior,” Mr. Johnson had hauled the three of us back to the bus while Erick got the rest of our classmates back on their regularly scheduled field trip. As we lowered ourselves into the front row of benches, I glanced over at Tamara and felt a twinge of remorse. Her normally tanned face was white as a sheet. Henry and I were more used to getting in trouble, but Tamara had always managed to keep her nose clean. I hadn’t meant to drag her into this as well.

  “All right,” said Mr. Johnson, leaning against the bus’ emergency manual drive console and looking the three of us over, his arms crossed. “What was it this time, Sandhu? Now even scientific studies are a tool of Earth-based imperialism? Kind of a stretch, don’t you think?”

  Henry was aghast. “What makes you think this was my idea? I’m innocent!”

  “Right. Like I’m going to fall for that.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I broke in. “He really didn’t have anything to do with it this time. It was my fault.”

  Mr. Johnson gaped at me, then began to massage the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Really, Isaak? Being Henry’s accomplice wasn’t good enough for you? Now you have to commit the crimes yourself?”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything to it!” I protested. “I just wanted to get a better look at it!”

  My teacher sighed. “Isaak, I don’t know what to do about you. In just one annum, you went from being one of the best students at the Academy to having a C-average and being in the principal’s office every other week. What happened?”

  I knew it was true, but his words still stung. That didn’t mean I had any intention to tell my homeroom teacher what happened, though—especially while he was sitting there all torqued off at me.

  “Look, Mr. J,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make trouble. I just wanted to get a better look at it.”

  Mr. Johnson shook his head. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off the hook. All three of you are getting a one-week in-school suspension…”

  “Me?” Tamara squeaked. It was the first noise she’d made since the drone alarm went off. “But Mr. Johnson, I wasn’t—”

  “You’re on the drone’s security footage just like the two of them,” replied Mr. Johnson. “I know you’re a good kid, Tamara, but you need to take responsibility for your actions. Maybe it’s time to think about who you choose for your friends.”

  Tamara looked like she was going to cry. My stomach knotted with guilt.

  “Andy?” a voice broke in from the bus’s doorway. I turned in annoyance to see Erick standing there. “Sorry to interrupt. Clara’s finishing the tour for the rest of the students. Might I make a suggestion?”

  Mr. Johnson seemed as taken aback by the professor’s interruption as the rest of us. “Regarding?”

  “I looked over the crater, and there’s no damage done to the site. And it seems to me if the students are really that interested in my team’s findings, there’s a more productive way for them to pay their penance than an in-school suspension.”

  Johnson folded his arms and nodded. “Such as?”

  “We always could use a few more workers at the site. There’s still quite a bit of digging to do. The three of them could volunteer here on weekends and put in a few hours of community service. They’d be helping out the GSAF science division, and they might learn a few things in the process.”

  It took all my effort not to leap to my feet in protest. I honestly would have preferred an in-school suspension over having to spend my free time with Erick.

  Tamara looked down at the floor, her shoulders slumped. “I have voice lessons at Herschel on the weekends, though.”

  Mr. Johnson’s grin was devilish. “I’m sure your schedule can be worked out. I know your parents will be willing to cooperate once they know the alternative.”

  Tamara nodded glumly, and my temper flared on her behalf. Was it really necessary for him to be so happy about this? I was starting to think Henry was right about Mr. Johnson—maybe he really did have it in for us.

  “Of course, we can work around your other classes,” Erick intervened. He smiled encouragingly at Tamara. “I know there was no harm meant here today. I think this can be a learning experience for everybody.”

  I was just starting to feel a grudging ounce of respect for him when he turned and grinned at me. The charitable feelings I had toward him dissolved. I could just tell he was going to make a huge deal out of us “getting to know each other.”

  I knew then that the rest of this annum was going to be hell.

  The remainder of the trip had gone pretty normally, apart from Henry giving me the cold shoulder on the bus ride back. Well, and Tamara. She wouldn’t even look at me—or anyone else, for that matter. She just stared down at her rhinestone-studded sneakers like they were the most interesting thing in the world.

  I felt really guilty for dragging them into this. Though, honestly, Henry didn’t really have any room to complain. He’d gotten me into trouble way more often than vice versa. So it was an enormous relief when school got out that afternoon and I saw the two of them waiting for me out in front of the Academy as usual. Henry and I always walked with Tamara over to the pier, where she took the ferry over to Herschel Island for her music lessons, before catching the train down to the south side of town where the two of us lived.<
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  I hurried down the first set of steps to meet them. “You’re not too torqued at me?” I asked when I caught up with them.

  “That depends on whether you’re going to explain to us what all that was about,” Henry replied. He led the way down the second set of steps. The Academy was perched among the flat-faced cliffs on the northwest side of town, and it was quite a trek down to the street for those of us who didn’t qualify for a key to the elevator. There were some mornings when cutting class seemed a more appealing alternative than climbing all those flights of stairs. “Seriously, Isaak, what’s so special about that pile of rocks that it was worth six weeks of Saturday school? That’s a new record, even for me.”

  I flushed. “It’s probably stupid,” I admitted. “It’s just… I really felt like I’d seen that arch before.”

  We were onto the second-to-last flight of stairs by now, and the street sloped down before us. The stopping zone was loaded, as usual, with a line of swanky cars sent by the richer parents to pick up their kids. Wyatt Ponsford—a particularly obnoxious classmate of mine, the son of the Lieutenant Governor—was just sidling casually into the backseat of his family’s shiny black Tesla. Considering that the Ponsfords’ bayfront mansion was probably only a five-minute walk from the Academy, it always seemed a bit ridiculous for Wyatt to get chauffeured back and forth while most of the rest of us had to hoof it. But I supposed it didn’t matter to the truly rich if their legs atrophied.

  “Where could you have seen it?” Henry scrunched his nose up. “You mean, like, online? Or in real life?”

  When the Tesla pulled out, I noticed a rundown blue pickup truck had been parked behind it. The truck stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of the usual luxury sedans. Its sides were caked with red-brown mud, and the paint on the roof was badly oxidized. I wondered vaguely what a deathtrap like that was doing parked outside the Academy. Maybe they were lost.

  “Neither. You know that box of junk we found in my mom’s garden after my dad took off? It looked like something I—” I broke off as I realized that the driver of the blue truck was gesturing wildly at me. “Oh, geez.”

  I trudged up to the driver’s side window. There was Erick, smiling with way too many teeth again. “Hey, Isaak. Fancy seeing you again so soon.”

  Yeah, imagine that. And I was sure it was a coincidence and everything. “What are you doing here?”

  “I told your mom I’d give you a ride home today,” he said blithely.

  I looked at him in horror. “You didn’t tell her—”

  “No, no. Well, not all of it. I just said you’d decided after the presentation to volunteer to work at the site on weekends. I omitted the rest of it.”

  I suppose he probably expected me to thank him or something, but I just stared at him warily. After a moment—when he realized I wasn’t going to say anything—he went on, with a bit less enthusiasm, “I do think we need to talk, though, Isaak. And I thought it might be easier to do it this way. You know, without your mother here.”

  I blinked at him, uncertain whether that was a threat or not. Probably better not to find out. I glanced over my shoulder at Henry and Tamara. “Uh, I guess you guys better go on ahead.”

  The two of them stared incredulously at me for a moment, Tamara’s mouth drawn into a frown and Henry’s burly arms crossed. I shrugged helplessly at them.

  “Whatever,” Henry said at last. “But you’d better be on Speculus later.”

  “Sure thing,” I agreed, skirting around the front of the pickup and pulling open the passenger door.

  As we pulled away from the curb, I realized that Tamara hadn’t said a word the whole time.

  ◦ • ◦

  The truck was a relic. Its vinyl seats were rough and cracked, and the rearview mirror had apparently fallen off at some point and been reattached with duct tape. Erick drove the vehicle himself, rather than relying on the self-steering mechanism. For some reason, this didn’t surprise me. The truck seemed to fit his personality in a way I couldn’t quite describe. Sort of old-fashioned, like a pioneer. I supposed it fit with the rugged-Martian-colonist stereotype you saw in flix, though I hadn’t ever known anyone who was actually like that in real life: sun-baked cowboys who wanted to shape the new planet with their own two hands.

  It was the polar opposite of my dad. He’d always liked the modern conveniences. I don’t think he even knew how to drive a car himself. I guess maybe that’s why he wound up heading back to Earth, in the end. Building a new world yourself is too much work. That thought made me feel bitter, and I folded my arms and slumped down in my seat.

  Erick steered the pickup in the opposite direction from the way Henry, Tamara and I usually walked, heading for the crosstown expressway. Through the window, red boulders and scraggy clumps of spider weeds gave way to ever-denser clusters of buildings. Before long, the blue of the bay disappeared behind the city skyline.

  We rode in silence. He didn’t even have music streaming. There was nothing but the constant, electronic hum of the engine and the swoosh of the tires over the pavement. It was only a matter of time before the quiet drove me out of my mind.

  Finally, I shifted in my seat and blurted out, “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me what I was doing in the crater?”

  “Not unless you want to tell me.”

  That wasn’t the response I’d expected, and it knocked the wind out of my sails. What was even with this guy? My mom would have been all over me—“Explain yourself, Isaak!” I supposed my dad wouldn’t have pressed, but that’s just because he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. This was an approach I was unfamiliar with. Now I felt obligated to say something, since I’d opened my stupid mouth, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what to say.

  So I just looked back out the windshield at the road in front of us.

  After several more moments of silence, Erick said, “I understand you’re very close to your grandfather. He’s an archaeologist on Earth?”

  This abrupt change of subject threw me even more than his prior reverse psychology crap. “I… uh, yeah?” I replied lamely. “Well, he used to be, anyway.” Abuelo had retired five years ago, when the dig site on the eroding Veracruz coastline that he’d dedicated his life to finally crumbled into the sea. He’d known it was coming—that’s what had made his excavation so critical—but it had still been a major blow.

  Erick smiled but kept his eyes trained on the road. “I’m familiar with his work. Dr. Hector Garcia. You might not realize it, but geologists and archaeologists actually have a lot of overlap, professionally. We use similar methods. But that’s not why I’ve heard of Hector Garcia, of course. He’s quite famous on Earth. Or he was for a time.”

  “Yeah, since he’s the one who finally translated the Cascajal Block.” It was sort of a Rosetta Stone, only for the ancient Olmec—a civilization that existed in Mexico over three thousand years ago. People had tried for over sixty years to decipher the writing on the block, which was the oldest written language in the Americas. But Abuelo was the one who had finally done it.

  Erick nodded. “And I understand you inherited your grandfather’s knack for languages. Your mother tells me you’re a regular polyglot. How many do you speak, anyway?”

  “Eight.”

  Erick swore.

  I flushed. “Well, to different degrees of fluency.”

  “Still, at your age? That’s impressive.”

  I stared down at my scuffed shoes. They looked embarrassingly at home on the mud-caked vinyl car mats. “I grew up speaking English, and my mom wanted to make sure I knew Spanish. Heritage and all. None of us really use it, though, apart from the EBCs.”

  “The EBCs?”

  “Yeah, you know. Exclamations, baby names and curse words.”

  Erick laughed at this, a huge, bellowing sound that felt much too large for the cramped pickup cab. I squirmed in my seat.

  “I picked up some Greek and Russian just from kids in our neighborhood,” I went on, staring out
the window at a group of pedestrians waiting at a crosswalk. Businesspeople in suits trying to ignore the tourists beside them, snapping pics of the AresTec tower on their palmtops. “Henry’s mom taught me some Hindi… the rest are from the classes the Academy is having me take. Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, stuff like that.”

  That was the root of my scholarship to the Academy. The Academy had pretty much been founded as a place for government officials and GalaX execs here on Mars to send their kids to, since they’d sooner cut their own right arms off than see their precious snowflakes in a public school. But the Academy did recruit a few kids from the local middle schools every annum. They sought out students who not only had good grades, but who were gifted at something. Kids they knew, if they were given the opportunity, would grow up to be useful.

  My usefulness was in my knack for language. I guess I could see why that stood out to them—all of Mars is kind of a mishmash of different Earth cultures, what with the simultaneous colonization process, but Aeolis province is an especially diverse area. See, the International Climate Treaty of the late 2040s had provided generous financial incentives for any Earth nation that reduced its carbon output, and most of the industrial hubs of the world had done that by moving their manufacturing plants to Mars. GalaX had started the terraformation process a decade before with their MarsEpoch project, but the planet was still basically a frozen popsicle at that point. Even with the McKay-Zubrin space mirrors melting most of the permafrost, Mars didn’t have much of an atmosphere to speak of. It needed more carbon dioxide. And that was something Earth had in abundance.

  With the jobs moving to Mars, and the government subsidizing most of the costs, people from all over Earth started flocking to Mars to find a “better life” in the new world. In less than a decade, Mars went from having just a few pockets of scientific outposts to major colonies all over the entire planet. That’s when GSAF was established, to oversee the colonization process.

  My hometown, Tierra Nueva, had been one of the first manufacturing towns in Aeolis. When it was first founded, it was mostly made up of immigrants from Mexico. You can see their fingerprints all over the south part of town, where most of the landmarks and street names are still in Spanish. But Tierra Nueva has gotten a lot bigger over the years. More corporations have shifted their manufacturing plants to the valley, and that’s drawn large communities of immigrants from India, Russia, and most recently Greece, still reeling from its civil war back on Earth.