Chapter Text
***
“That was a bit faster than I planned,” Pearl said through clenched teeth.
“As soon as the humming stopped, they all went berserk,” Sid answered.
Pearl hadn’t realized, but now—her eyes ticking subtly upward—it clicked that much had changed in her absence. The blaze of blue had dulled to nearly nothing, dim enough to glitter almost prettily against the smooth curve of Obsidian’s gem.
And the noise? Well, perhaps Sid couldn’t hear it.
It was still there. A disapproving murmur, waiting for someone to act—
To fix what she carelessly broke.
Maybe if I get back inside, I can—
The glint of a laser sight playing across her gem woke her out of it.
“What now?” she asked Sid, all but her mouth frozen in place.
“I have an idea.”
Without preamble, Sid stepped forward. The captain shouted, the gun-sight darting like a firefly to center on the tailor’s gem. Her hands were still raised, shoulders straight, but Pearl could feel the force of her smirk.
Sid said something in a language Pearl couldn’t begin to place, but the men didn’t respond.
The reactor warbled three notes—high, low, high—and Pearl saw the telltale shift of their attention fixing on it. They don’t know what to expect from it, she thought. At least not while it’s damaged. Her eyes roamed, taking in the scene.
Three troopers were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the catwalk, blocking escape on the lift. The fourth, weapon low, watched for danger from behind. Faint fingers of light barely stretched a few feet beyond the base of the device, even that much stifled in the dark of their gear.
Corrupted peridots lay scattered here and there, numb to the world.
Sid was still trying to get through to their adversaries—
Pearl focused, trying to sort out one word from another.
“Vedi quanto è pericoloso?” Her voice rose by degrees: “Das Gerät ist instabil.” Frustrated, louder: “Cela ne signifie-t-il rien pour vous?” Stealing one step closer, and louder still: “Värderar du dina liv så lite?”
The leader growled in wordless fury—
“Ah, you understood that. I thought you might.”
Behind the soldiers, one of the peridots raised its head drowsily, gazing at the commotion through half-lidded eyes. Sid shifted, the load in her pack clattering. She spoke again, fingers dodging in the air as she enunciated.
“What. Are. You. Going. To. Do? Shoot us?”
“Sid—!” Pearl yelped.
Sid waved her to silence and continued:
“If you fire those weapons in here. You will destroy the equipment. Stupid!”
Sid shifted again, her pack rocking, and the soldiers began yelling all at once—
Even Pearl could tell they were telling her to stand still.
Sid leaned heavily on the railing, rattling it with a hand.
Pearl saw two more peridots drag themselves to their hind feet. One even yawned, its fangs catching the light—before both settled into a low crouch. One green-eyed gaze lingered on Pearl, but briefly, then focused intently on Sid.
The captain gestured outward with his arm—
Pearl was uncomfortably aware it had been about her.
“They want you to step over to their side,” said Sid.
“So they want a hostage. That’ll be the day,” said Pearl.
The captain knew that tone—he yelled something more.
Sid raised a finger, starting to speak—
The captain lunged, bringing the butt of his rifle down on Sid’s back. But he raised it too high—Pearl saw the mistake clearly—and by the time it came around Sid was no longer there, braced in a crouch so low it barely seemed possible.
Sid burst up with all her strength; and for a few seconds, she had control of the weapon.
The peridots started to scream.
Pressed so close, the soldiers wasted precious seconds getting their footing, turning around. Whatever made them so strong took time to engage; they could have, would have beat Sid senseless if they had been prepared. They were not.
Pearl reached for her gem—
Her eyes stopped instead on Sid’s backpack.
Lunging forward, her fingers found the lead-lined case, snapped it open—
And raised the irradiated peridot.
Pearl saw a small chorus of corrupted Gems look up, their pupils widening.
She threw the stone; it bounced off the captain’s helmet—
The instant he caught it, a peridot was upon him; a furry body wrapped around his head, shrieking with the bravado of small things as it gouged jagged scars over his visor. More scaled his shoulders as he staggered back, tiny paws prying at his hands.
The man dipped, flailed, and fell over the railing.
“Run!” called Sid, elbowing another soldier off the railing on the other side.
“The gems!”
“Forget them!”
The troops waded in an ankle-deep tide of bristly neon fur, clinging to the rails as they kicked at the enraged peridots. One man looked up, aiming at Pearl as the creatures coursed over him, all drawn inexorably to the only thing that mattered.
Pearl didn’t see.
Didn’t see her enemy shoulder the weapon.
Didn’t see the peridots plunging blindly off the catwalk.
Didn’t see the blast go wide as a screeching peridot clamped its fangs on the barrel.
Pearl didn’t flinch even as the reactor’s unearthly crown burst in a cascade of sparks and crystalline light. No, she stood fast at the controls, spear cutting everything that held the captive pearl. Plunging the weapon deeper, deeper, and deeper still—
The device wheezed as if a desperate gulp of air was escaping its guts.
Now, at last, there was silence, relieved only by the chatter of peridots.
And after a final mechanical moan, there was darkness.
With effort, the survivors reached over the railing’s edge, hoisting the first of their injured up to safety. He was on his knees, each arm braced on a comrade’s shoulder, when the dark suddenly gave way to a pale, blinding light.
Like some vast, predatory bird, Pearl dove down on them—
Her fist shattered the fallen man’s visor completely, driving him to the ground and taking the others with him. Pearl bounced up onto the railing, sprinting across a surface no wider than a wire; beneath her, the peridots were a snarling tide of fur and vengeful fangs.
Within their grip, the glittering gem of their fallen member.
Pearl was scaling the lift by the time she heard one exhausted, battered man take a shot at where he imagined her to be. But by then she was rising out of the dark and into the light of day. Inch by inch, hand over hand—
… into the glass-bright Beyond.
***
Sid had been waiting for her the moment she emerged from the reactor room.
Pearl’s fist was still closed tight as if she wanted to drive it into the face of the world.
They shared not a word, but made their way back to the road in swift silence, leading or following at need. Pearl was rubbing at the knuckles of her closed hand without a thought, and only noticed why when she reached up to remove her earplugs.
Her palm was lined with cracks, forks of light where the irradiated peridot touched her.
She’d been aware of them before then, certainly; there was simply no time.
The searing pain running over her palm was a small price to pay for victory.
The two went down the road a piece, diverting only once when they heard the ghastly roar of steel. Crouched in the underbrush together, they watched the helicopter’s shadow pass over the road. It circled once, then was gone.
A time later they found pavement, then followed it up to a crossroads.
This would be the path up through the mountain pass, to cities beyond—
Or deeper still into the wilds, if they would have it that way.
Sid stopped to consider, but Pearl’s mind was elsewhere.
One hand crossed over the other, her thumb tracing the lines.
Finally, she spat it out: “Humans!”
It was a declaration of such contempt, Sid offered no answer.
Pearl needed none:
“They’ve been exploiting them, using these innocent Gems in scientific research. Peridots and jaspers and—” Pearl couldn’t bring herself to go on, her fingertips worrying over her scorched palm. Sid couldn’t help but wonder if touching it made it hurt worse.
“You stayed behind to retrieve her, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Pearl answered sharply.
“And the peridot?”
“Gone,” Pearl said bitterly. “Left behind with her friends.”
Pearl flashed a smile full of wry absurdity. They both knew that to call other Gems friends on Homeworld would be aspirational at best; and if corrupted Gems could feel hope or joy or comfort was impossible to know. But it was all that made failure bearable.
“I’ll need to see her,” said Sid.
Pearl reached into her gem, retrieving the blue pearl. Its surface was unmarred by defect, but almost too hot to touch, and Pearl found herself fumbling it roughly into the case Sid held out. She bowed her head as Sid snapped the case shut and packed it away.
“I don’t think she’ll be coming out,” said Pearl.
“Did she tell you anything?”
Pearl let herself slide down into her poised half-crouch.
“They’re looking for something she called Red Star.”
“Who?”
Pearl didn’t answer, and Sid nodded to herself.
“We should make haste off the road,” she suggested gently.
But Pearl’s mind was elsewhere: “Something bothers me. That Gem wasn’t corrupt when she was placed in the machine. She must have been—found somehow—and forced into it. The halves could only function together with her there.”
Sid blew out a long sigh.
“If there were other Gems who survived the blast—”
Pearl looked her way, frowning as she trailed off.
“If there were others—then what?”
“It wouldn’t be beneath humanity to find creative uses for them.”
“Others … the Crystal Gems have never encountered any others.”
“Earth is far bigger than Homeworld. Who’s to say there aren’t others like me who found a way to ingratiate themselves to the locals? Especially a pearl—diligent, compliant, with no need for rest and hardly any self-concern. If you’ll excuse me saying.”
Pearl flapped a hand dismissively.
“Perhaps, with some care, it might be possible. But how did she wind up here?”
“Do you remember how those men in the city reacted when they saw your gem?”
Pearl’s gaze was glittering, intense.
“The three athletes? What of it?”
“They know Gems. Or stories about Gems. And with monsters running loose—and leaving behind, what, gems—it would be due time to take a much closer look at anyone suspicious. Especially if they had been around longer than a person normally is.”
Pearl had lapsed into a thoughtful silence, chin on her closed fists.
“Pearls would be the last evacuated, wouldn’t they?” Sid said nothing. “Weren’t they?”
Sid rose to her feet—towering, for a moment, over Pearl, until the pale gem followed.
“We need to keep moving,” said Sid.
“Answer my question!”
“Why ask if you know the answer?”
“I want to hear you say it,” said Pearl.
“Then I will: You’re losing sight of your goal.”
“Saving others is my goal!”
“Saving Earth is your goal. You may discover it’s incompatible with rescuing everybody you happen upon along the way. I’m sure it would gratify you to hear me say we crammed all the pearls on the last transport home—but you know it’s not true. A dropship full of pearls would have been the perfect diversion. You’d have heard all about it!”
“Would I?”
“Yes. I’d see to that.”
Pearl paused, her head ticking to the side. Seconds later, her eyes dropped.
“A lone straggler, then? How likely is that?”
“I don’t know,” Sid admitted. “Pearls were banned from Earth in the last decade of the war. It might not stop everyone from bringing one, then leaving them behind in the rush to escape. Better that than admit they disobeyed an order that was communicated so emphatically.”
Pearl took a deep breath, straightening her shoulders.
“We have to find a way to pursue those soldiers. Whoever leads them has our answers.”
“That I can work with,” said Sid, retrieving her radio. “When I took a closer look at the chopper, I seized the chance to plant a lovely tracking bug onto the landing gear. No matter where they go from here, we’ll keep popping up.”
Sid bent down, propping the radio on her knees—
“Due north,” she said. “To the mountains, not the city.”
“More mountaineering,” Pearl groaned.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Sid had just stuck her thumb out when a rusty old open-bed truck piled high with potatoes rumbled into view. It was hauling an aluminum trailer, atop which a pipe huffed a steady cloud of greasy exhaust. As the Gems waited, the vehicle ground to a halt.
A few tubers cartwheeled off its spuddy slopes, hitting jaunty angles in roadside slush.
Pearl watched them fall, leaning away like a cat at the water’s edge. One hand tucked slyly beside her mouth, Sid whispered: “If we stay on foot, this will take us a very long time.”
Pearl let her shoulders slump again, but tried to match Sid’s smile as a cloud of exhaust washed over her. The smoke had a familiar tang, one she couldn’t quite place. A bearded man in an overstuffed parka leaned out of the passenger window to squint down at them.
“Going our way, neighbor?” Sid asked. And then again, in Russian.
“Bronk bronk bronk bronk bronk,” went the man.
Both Gems’ smiles froze on their faces.
“Did you catch any of that?” asked Pearl.
“Not a word,” Sid answered.
The driver leaned across to see them—
“What is it, Narwhal? Oh, I see. Hello! Are you two on your way up to the resort?”
Pearl started to shake her head—
“Yes, the resort! That’s precisely where we’re going. I’m Sid and this is Maxine—”
“Victoria,” Pearl interrupted.
“—Victoria. The two of us are here on a very important study, we’re—”
“Geologists,” went Pearl.
“—Geologists,” went Sid, a bit less smoothly.
“We’re on our way up to see some very important rocks,” Pearl added.
The driver’s eyes lit up.
“Mount Manaraga has the best rocks you’ll find this side of Tunguska,” he declared.
“Bronk bronk bronk,” Narwhal added enthusiastically.
“Well, you know what they say about mountains,” said Sid.
“There’s nothing better than a mountain—except a mountain you haven’t seen before!”
Pearl heard Sid repeating the words a half-beat after the man, their voices melting together into knowing laughter at the end. It’s just that easy, she realized. They’ll end up taking us wherever they’re going because they think we have one thing in common.
“When it comes to rocks, Manaraga is where it’s at,” said Sid. “That’s where we’re going.”
“Good! Good. We can travel together for a while. I’m Frytki. Frytki Frykowski. Tell me something,” he said, reaching into a sack at his feet to produce two gnarly brown orbs that he held out with the beaming pride of a new father: “How do you feel about potatoes?”
“We love ‘em,” said Sid, taking one. “Isn’t that right, Vickie?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pearl. “I can’t imagine life without potatoes.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Frytki. “Jump in!”
Sid bit into her potato with a resounding crunch, then leapt up into the truck’s cab.
Pearl took the opportunity to palm hers into her gem before she followed suit.
With the vent pipe puffing behind them, they continued on their way.
***
Mr. Frykowski had his fair share of insights about potatoes.
Pearl found her eyes focusing; after how long, she was unsure.
“—tatoes, you see, are one of nature’s most perfect foods,” he was saying. “They’re packed with valuable nutrients like potassium, vitamin C, and vitamin B6. They can root anywhere. Under the right conditions, they practically grow themselves!”
“Fascinating, absolutely—” Crunch. “—fascinating, Frytki.”
“Isn’t it? I told you, Narwhal, this trip is the best idea I ever had.”
“Bronk, bronk, bronk.”
“—that we ever had.”
Crunch!
Pearl had been content to feign sleep; arms wrapped around her body, legs crossed, head tilted forward—she resembled a hatching chick, her nose disguised in the crook of her arm.
But the bandanna around her forehead was too tight; she could feel it brushing her gem—
It wasn’t painful, exactly. Just uncomfortable and disorienting. Like water dripping.
At least there’s no risk of falling asleep this time, she thought.
The potato seminar continued:
“—preserved for months. That’s just why Narwhal and I decided to team up. You know, there’s good bread where I’m from, but not enough appreciation for potatoes. Too many sausages, if you ask me. But sea salt! Sea salt brings out the natural dignity of the potato.”
“That explains the delightful aroma!” Pearl hissed.
“Exactly,” said Frytki. “What you’re smelling, my friend, that is the scent of progress. With a little oil and a lot of modern ingenuity, the kitchen we set up back there can process, oh, a bit over three hundred salt potatoes every day.”
“Enough to feed a small village,” Sid remarked.
“Indeed!” declared Frytki. “Before you know it, this will be the key to ending world hunger. Why, if it’s up to me, the salt potato will be the first food on the moon. Once we’re settled, I have big plans for baked potato cologne. It’ll be like—like—a breath of fresh potato.”
“Will wonders never cease?” Sid mused.
Every few hours, the men stopped the truck and one would vanish into the back to check on their precious cargo. They traded them, too; there was a trickle of traffic through the valley, and though everyone was going the same way, no one seemed willing to discuss their destination.
The Gems heard more than once about roadblocks up ahead—
“I’m not paying a single potato in tolls to use a dirt road,” Frykowski declared.
It was Sid who inquired, rather more discreetly, about the glow cloud. Some travelers had passed through it on the way in; all were eager to get through the valley before it filled up with toxic dust. No one was willing to stop more than a moment, even for hot food.
“They’re afraid of the alkonost,” Frykowski explained. Narwhal made a warding gesture. “The abandoned mines are haunted, you know. Best to steer clear any time, but especially when the cloud comes out. Nothing stops them once they’re following you.”
“You heard that from someone who’s seen them?” asked Pearl.
“Of course not,” said Frykowski, face ashen, and left it at that.
The Gems only shared a glance behind his back.
***
Things were quieter after that, and Pearl didn’t mind it at all.
With nowhere safe to pull aside for hours, Sid saw her chance:
“What say I take a turn at the wheel while you two rest up?”
“Huh?” Frykowski jerked alert, looking blearily to Sid. “You sure you can handle ‘er?”
“Trust me, Frytki, your potatoes are in safe hands with me.”
The truck stopped once more so the two could debark; bedrolls were already set up in the kitchen, they said. Once the trailer door closed and the humans were out of sight, Pearl uncurled from her languid stoop and stretched her legs.
“A bit stiff, hmm?” Sid asked as she jumped back into the cab.
“Ask me that in a thousand years.”
They’d left the engine running and were soon back on course.
“All right,” Pearl said, slow resignation in her voice. “How do they taste?”
Sid’s eyes were on the road, on the emerald thread weaving through the night.
“Like hope,” she said. “You should take the chance to go back into your gem.”
“What? Why?”
“Your hand’s a mess,” Sid pointed out. “And it won’t get better until you rest.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Pearl said, her fingers twitchy-tense.
“Not the point. If you suddenly lose cohesion on that—”
“Just drive, Obsidian. It’s after midnight; someone needs to keep watch.”
“And how do you intend to do that?”
But Pearl didn’t stop to answer. She opened the passenger-side door and hauled herself out onto the roof, pushing half her weight against her injured hand. That barely slowed her; she guided the door closed with her heel and was gone.
“Ah,” said Obsidian, drumming the steering wheel quietly. “Of course.”
She reached down to turn the radio on.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
There’s a land that’s fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night …
A few seconds later, she pushed the pedal to the metal.
***
Against the wind, the radio was a tinny murmur with no distinct notes.
Silence had been a good reason to come up here, but not the only one.
With mountains rising to either side, the night sky was heavy. There were stars, but only a hint; even a Gem couldn’t make them out in detail at this speed. Maybe the one they’re searching for is right over my head, she thought darkly. Maybe I’m the one they need.
That was hard to imagine, but it was far easier to envision the sky blotted out as a helicopter swept down on the road. Inside the truck, she would never hear it until it was too late; from here, they had a fighting chance, whatever might happen.
The truck’s cab was wide enough for her to lay back, which she did for a time. But the glow was rising like a tide past their tires and still climbing. When it reached the front bumper, Pearl sat up, legs crossed as she projected light from her gem.
The beam laid bare everything before it, but there was nothing to see.
She wasn’t surprised as, over hours, a ragtag trail of followers gathered behind them. The truck’s hood was submerged in a nauseous haze by now, its headlights as good as useless—but she was the brightest beacon, a comet on a dark horizon.
She turned to sweep the road again, her light prying into the snowdrifts.
Something looked back at her.
It was a spindly creature, its muzzle bowed into the hard slush until the moment she saw it. Then it raised its head, glowing eyes locked into an unflinching stare. With long, loping strides (were there four legs or six?) it matched their pace from a standing start in seconds.
Pearl snapped off her light, but the thing’s tawny body continued to glow.
It was following them now. Others like it, some bigger, burst from the snow. Horns, they had horns like knives of crystal growing out of them—some at the crown of the head, others across the chest. In the dark, they still shone, leaving an afterimage behind them.
Some had two eyes; most had six, two small pairs arcing the sides of the face.
Pearl hadn’t been told what an alkonost was, but this seemed probable.
As she shifted onto her knees, she heard Sid rap on the roof of the truck.
“I see it, thank you,” she murmured, eyebrows arching as she watched—
Went slowly for her gem—
As her spear took shape, she saw one of the beasts dart into the road.
Sid slammed on the brakes and it was too late to do anything but jump.
Pearl had an instant to shift her feet before she launched into the air, the spear still coalescing as she aimed it to lead her way down. The point slammed hard into an icy ridge and she pivoted backwards to find her balance, her heels leading her on a soft arc before she stopped.
All around her were the creatures—
A dozen long, mouthless faces, each body a faint phantom beneath saucer eyes as bright as her gem—no, brighter. She tugged at her spear and the nearest creature dragged a hoof through the ice with a sound like glass, all discordant high notes. Its head bobbed, bowed with weight.
Too heavy, Pearl knew, though she wasn’t sure how.
Distantly, she was aware of the truck’s engine cutting, humans shouting.
“Stay back,” she whispered; to them or the monster, she wasn’t sure.
Her spear wouldn’t budge. She reached for her gem again—
The faces around her split open with a thousand jagged teeth and began to wail.
Pearl dropped her hands, bracing against the spear. It was the most mournful sound she had ever heard; an image flashed into her mind of herself crying on the night she knew Bismuth was gone forever. Her head swam, her eyes clouded, but no tears would come.
A shout—
There was a cough of buckshot, the acrid smell of powder. Frykowski burst into the circle of light, eyes half-shut against it—“Miss Victoria, duck!”—and pointed a rifle as old as he was into the herd. Half sprang away in a flash. The others began to howl again.
One clipped him as it passed; he slid off balance and dropped into the slush.
Pearl glanced over her shoulder, then returned her attention to the creature.
Those eyes—
She found herself slowly reaching up, running her hand over its ropy neck.
She found it. A hard, calcified knot, the horns rising up from around it.
What she most feared: A pearl.
She pulled her hand away once she was sure, but kept stroking the being.
“Let me help you,” she whispered up to it. “Please.”
It gave no sign of understanding, but did not move.
Not until she stretched out her hand to bring forth a sword from her gem. Then, at once, its whole body tensed; it bounded over her in a single jump and bolted away, its tracks joining the others as they scattered over the mine-pocked foothills. In seconds, gone.
“No!”
But it only gave another mournful cry that warbled long afterwards in the air, turning the first embers of morning as cold as midnight. As it vanished into the distance, the spell was broken. Pearl shook her head and tore her spear free from the grip of frost.
As she turned, she became painfully aware how many humans saw it all: Not only Narwhal and Frykowski, but at least ten more who’d been following, their vehicles all clustered into a messy convoy. In their midst, almost forgotten until she knew where to look, was Sid.
She never thought she would see such a look of horror and sorrow on the tailor’s face. Pearl trudged back toward the truck, letting her eyelids flutter shut long enough to feel Sid’s hand on her shoulder. She waited a breath before shaking it off.
Pearl turned back to the crowd, burning with a new ferocity.
“Don’t follow us,” she growled, almost stomping over a young blonde who stopped to gawp. Sid translated a moment later, but it seemed they’d all gotten the gist. The crowd started to meander back to the road, voices low to avoid Pearl’s attention.
Narwhal had helped Frykowski out of the muck. He looked up, took a quick count—
“Would … would any of you like to buy a salt potato? For the road?”
No one did.
***
Some hours passed with Sid still at the wheel, Frykowski a bundle of nerves beside her.
“Now, I was no slouch, but your Miss Victoria is really very impressive. To face an alkonost and live! Without any hesitation! Without her help, I think we all would have been doomed.”
“Without a doubt,” Sid answered vaguely.
“It almost seemed to understand her. I’ve never seen anything like that!”
At that, Sid looked up with a grin.
“You have now,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Frykowski, a faraway look in his eye. “I suppose I have.”
The wind they drove into was so strong Sid could hear it rumbling through the truck’s metal frame, but that was not what had so captured her attention. Under the sizzle of radio static, there was a new sound only she could hear: The homing device.
She had wired a pair of earbuds solely for it; the equipment was all but invisible, the sound silent to anyone else. Even if a human did their best to listen, they wouldn’t understand. Not in the same way a Gem could. For Gems, sound was different.
It was dimensional—heavy or light, thick or thin, smooth or rough, up or down.
As long as the signal continued its pulse, Sid knew exactly where she was going.
The enemy—for there was no point thinking of them any other way—went straight for their nest, traveling in a predictable line. In the sound, she felt their velocity and altitude almost as if she was sitting on the flight deck with them. The thought made her smile.
There were few things in this world as pleasant as knowing what others didn’t.
Sid had closed her eyes to hear better when Frykowski stirred again—
“There’s just one question, then.”
“What’s that?” Sid murmured, eyes snapping open.
“Well … when is she going to come down?”
Sid shifted gears, turning onto a faint, unmarked track.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. She likes the high ground.”
And with that, Sid reached up, knocking on the truck’s roof.
***
Pearl knew where they were going before she heard the knock.
For the last day, they had been in a valley nestled between mountains. Now they joined a jagged track winding through the foothills to their east—and it soon became obvious why. In minutes the track led to an elevated road, all hairpin turns on reinforced concrete.
There were trees here: Mighty firs blocking the view from below.
And that was hardly the strangest thing—
Monuments of some sort, pillars carved into the mountainside so they rose up along both sides of the road, drawing the unwary eye down the crevasse awaiting unprepared motorists. As they took a curve, Pearl leaned over to look, but couldn’t spot the bottom of any.
Each tapered up to a point, sides etched with sinuous shapes like falling feathers.
That must have taken an immense effort, she thought. But though she only caught glimpses of them, she was surprised to see no evidence of the struggle that seemed to mark so much of human life in this place. The precision was uncanny, the presentation flawless.
It made her frown.
She heard another knock—
“What is it?” Pearl asked, dangling upside down to peer through the driver’s-side window.
Frykowski looked like he would jump out of his skin. Sid didn’t even glance over.
“Just warning you about the tunnel up ahead,” she said.
Pearl glanced up—
Scurried across the roof of the truck’s cab—
And let herself in through the passenger window, gliding gently to a perched position atop the center console. Frykowski met her eye with a wan smile; he looked moments shy of losing his composure. Pearl pretended not to notice.
There was no tunnel ahead, nothing but smooth, featureless rock.
Pearl held Frykowski’s eye, making sure he didn’t look over until—
The stone quivered and yielded to their passage in a way stone couldn’t.
But light could.
Darkness fell as they entered the mountainside. The holographic barrier was no more than a faint glitter at their back; what looked so solid from one angle was ludicrously flimsy from another. Another tool, like nuclear power, humans were ill-equipped to use.
But they had used it. To what end?
That was worrying enough. But the tunnel was different, at least for Pearl.
There was something strangely comforting to it: A steadying feeling no anxiety could uproot. It was impossible to imagine being attacked here, or an alien glow spilling in to overtake them. There was no form, only void; its boundaries assumed, but uncertain.
And it was warm. Surprisingly warm after the icy gales out on the road.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Pearl asked, voice brittle-bright with secrets.
“Absolutely positive,” said Sid. “If it were the wrong way, it’d be on the map.”
“And you’re sure,” Frykowski ventured, “the people here will want potatoes?”
“As sure as my mama named me Sid.”
Pearl shot a sharp glance in the darkness; but whether Obsidian knew, and whether she had an answering smirk of her own, was left only to the imagination. It occurred to Pearl that Sid had control of the truck for a day, had no doubt made excuses for their change in direction.
And they were bringing unprepared humans into whatever was waiting.
The darkness was subtly graying. The mouth of the tunnel was in sight.
And the world beyond—
“I’ll be damned!” said Frykowski. And a moment later: “Sorry, miss.”
But Pearl could only gawk.
They had emerged into a new world, a magnificent profusion of green.
***
“Is this what they call—” Frykowski rubbed his fingers together, thinking. “Micro-climate?”
Frykowski cranked the window down with such force Pearl thought the lever would snap off in his hand. With the first breath of air from outside, the windshield began to mist; emerald hills, dappled with mist, sauntered gently down into a luxurious, velvety fog.
Pearl thought first of the glow cloud—then she felt the soothing breeze on her gem.
If the glow cloud could have an opposite, this was it.
“This … this is unusual, isn’t it?”
Her voice was soft, shunning—consciously—any comparison with the slack-jawed, bug-eyed human beside her. There were things about Earth she couldn’t help but learn, and things she was sure she would never understand. It wasn’t clear where on the scale this fell.
“To be precise, dushka, this is what humans—like us three—might call a miracle.”
“A miracle!” It seemed to be the word Frykowski was waiting for. “Let’s stop here, I need to go wake Narwhal—he must see this! And the potatoes, we’ll check on the potatoes. A place like this calls for the special spice mixture. Ah, thank you, Sid! You are so wise!”
The truck stopped and the man bounded out with such haste he was nearly bowled over.
Pearl watched until he disappeared into the kitchen-trailer.
Then: “What exactly did you tell him about where we’re going?”
Sid folded her hands, still staring out the window at the impossible green-gold vista.
“Frytki is new here. He was looking for a resort that’s no doubt burned down, collapsed in an earthquake, or gotten buried in snow—or all of the above. It was a dead end. So I proposed to him, based on what we know, that there is a government facility that conducts advanced experiments, and its personnel would no doubt love to have their rations enlivened by his incomparably sophisticated potatoes. Or at the very least he could make vodka out of them.”
She ran her wrist across her gem, still covered in a bandanna—her weariness unmistakable.
“I was just speculating, of course. But it seems I might have been right.”
“That would be the real miracle,” Pearl sniped.
“And yet, this hardly seems like a nefarious Diamond Authority plot.”
“If humans are misusing Gem technology, we still need to know about it.”
“Does this strike you as misuse? Maybe they’re finally learning from the past.”
The two of them gazed at each other in silence, measuring their next words. But Sid cut off whatever might follow, reaching down to turn on the radio. A women’s chorus answered, the acoustics so crystal clear they might have been in the same room together:
Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joy shall never end
I'll fly away
The words were already on Pearl’s tongue—Is that really necessary?—when she glanced up to see confusion on Sid’s face. She was still working the radio dial, checking every station, but the song remained the same until she turned it off completely.
“It’s the only signal on this side of the tunnel,” Pearl observed.
“Some damned micro-climate. Comes with its own soundtrack.”
“And the—” Pearl groped for a word to describe it: “The tone?”
“Nada. You don’t hear it either, right?”
Pearl shook her head no.
“It’s like we left it behind on the far side of the tunnel,” said Sid. “For what it’s worth, there’s no doubt this is the place. The chopper has been just ahead of us—they’re circling now. It’s the first time they’ve shown some subtlety, but they’ll put down around here.”
“And then we just need to improvise some way of determining what they know about the corrupted Gems, learning how they’ve gotten their hands on so much Homeworld technology in working order, and finding someone who knows about those awful transmissions.”
“That seems about the size of it.”
“I wish Garnet were here,” Pearl groaned to herself—
Sid raised one eyebrow to half-mast. “And who is that now?”
Their eyes met a moment, and Pearl turned to open the door.
“N-nevermind. Let’s see this place for ourselves, shall we?”
As her feet touched spongy, unfamiliar ground, the enormity of the distance between her and Beach City sunk in. Yes, Earth was not so big when you didn’t have to walk the distance, just as 5,000 years was not so long when twenty times as much lay ahead—
But when you were here, alone, so alone even future vision hadn’t seen you leave—
The wonder another Gem might have felt—that Rose would have felt—chilled into suspicion as Pearl took stock. Their journey in the tunnel had passed through the heart of a mountain. They stood facing a magnificently green, clover-specked path wending its way up another slope, one soft and gentle and rich with dewy shrubs, which looked to her a thousand miles removed from anything that existed in the land called Russia at any point in history.
Sid dropped to her knees in a way that left Pearl vaguely unsettled until she saw—
The tailor plunged her hands into the soil to bring up a clump of rich, dark earth.
“Don’t tell me you’re having an epiphany too,” said Pearl.
“Not yet …” Sid paused to take a deep whiff of the dirt. “But give me a minute.”
Her eyes unfocused with the depth of her thought, staring straight ahead for a while until she abruptly rose. Out came the Geiger counter, which she directed at a skinny, moss-draped tree.
Silence.
“Nothing?” Pearl asked.
“Not a hint of normal background radiation,” Sid confirmed.
Normal for here, Pearl wanted to say. Normal Sid had spoken of as if it was disassembling the landscape one molecule at a time with a dull, relentless fury; normal she could still feel burning when she closed her eyes. Instead, she said: “I haven’t seen a place like this in—”
“Five thousand years,” said Sid, but she wasn’t smiling.
A voice from behind:
“You bastard! I’m on to you!”
Pearl saw Sid’s expression freeze before she turned slowly—
Sucking in a deep, soft breath before she faced Frykowski.
“Frytki! Eager to get started, are you?”
Frykowski thrust a faintly shaking finger up at Sid.
“You—you—you knew all along!”
“Now, I wouldn’t say that exactly—”
Pearl could see it in the way Sid held herself: Her hands were up, palms out in a placating gesture—but if the man rushed her, they wouldn’t even come in contact before he hit the ground. She could trip him or simply step aside with equal ease.
Frykowski launched himself at her—
—and she let her arms drop, accepting the hug with a look of slow-burning consternation.
“You knew the resort was still here! That’s why you insisted on driving.”
Pearl was slowly balancing herself on one leg in an ever-more noticeable display of agility.
“Hah! What was your first clue?”
“I wasn’t so sure at first,” Frykowski recounted. “But there are Americans coming up the path behind us. How come could there be Americans in a place like this? And then I realized: This land here—it’s like nothing else—it could only mean one thing: A golf course.”
Now with the flat of one foot all the way up against the opposite knee, Pearl turned her back.
“Ah, yes. Of course! You got me, Frykowski. You are a discerning man.”
Stepping back, Frykowski looked up at Sid earnestly.
“That is the word, bastard? Someone who plays a trick.”
“Yes, that is one word for it. But I think you might mean something more like—sly devil.”
“Ah, yes! You are the devil,” Frykowski said with a satisfied nod.
“Bronk bronk,” Narwhal agreed as he walked up to join them.
“The potatoes that will be grown in this soil!” Frykowski said. “They’ll be historic!” To Sid, he said: “Us two must get familiar with the growing conditions here. I’m trusting you to take the potatoes and find somewhere safe to park. We’ll meet up later.”
“But—”
Frykowski raised a finger. “I know! My potatoes are in safe hands!”
“Now, wait a moment, I—”
But Frykowski was not listening. The two men went on ahead up the path, side by side as they spoke in a rapid-fire pastiche of their respective languages. Twenty paces on, Frykowski was laughing with undiluted glee at the prospects that lay before him.
Sid almost went to catch up with them; then looked for Pearl, whose back was still turned.
To a Gem who knew how to look, the faint tremor of her shoulders was raucous laughter.
Sid put her hands on Pearl’s shoulders, leaning in toward her ear—
“Come on, Miss Flamingo. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless before,” said Pearl.
“Hmmm. Don’t get used to it.”
“Now listen, Sid. We have to do whatever we can to make sure those two don’t come to harm,” Pearl said. The humor was gone from her voice already, the mirth in her eyes extinguished. “If not for us, they wouldn’t be here. I consider that a matter of duty.”
“If not for us, they wouldn’t have made it through the valley,” Sid shot back. “But for what it’s worth, I think their odds of becoming collateral damage are nowhere near as high as ours. The best way to look after them is to look after ourselves—I suggest we do that.”
The argument might have gone on, could have gotten far worse—
But Pearl’s answer was cut off as she used her nose to gesture over Sid’s shoulder.
More humans were coming up the path, groups who had clearly traveled together, the grime and slush of long miles clinging to their coats and boots. But it was fifty degrees warmer here than in the world beyond; many were simply shucking their scarves and outer garments, leaving them behind in piles. The atmosphere was festive, tired smiles and laughter twinkling in the air.
But Pearl’s attention was fixed on the strange shadow coasting across the ground—
Sid saw it too: A fat black spheroid, instantly recognizable even after millennia.
A robonoid.
It was watching from above, and when it spiraled down to the humans, Pearl reached for her gem. She didn’t expect what came next: More laughter, waves from the people as they stood boldly before it. It’s scanning them, she realized. A second later: Taking their picture.
“Let’s go,” hissed Sid.
Go they did, slipping behind the potato truck until the robonoid passed by.
When they were sure it was busy with another group, they retook their seats.
With Sid driving—
Slowly—
The road rose further into the heights, cupped by the mountains on three sides. Ahead were flocks of humans who could not have arrived more than an hour ahead of them, most pacing slowly along their way, the thinning air hindering their progress as they leaned on one another.
To both sides, pale, stately structures crowned with steeples and onion domes looked down with an ageless austerity on the scene. Pearl knew that no Gem had designed these: They were at once too round, too ostentatious, too organic, and yet—
They were a thousand years old at least, the remains of high stone walls still snaking down between them in some places, pockmarked with the scars of long-forgotten battles. This was all intentional, she knew; someone had created this to evoke awe.
For the sense that something, anything, could last forever.
A vast and ancient fortress gate was waiting to receive the people outside. A dozen of the black-clad soldiers directed the crowd; at least as many robonoids buzzed between them. Women in white were flitting from one group to the next, chatting and collecting winter clothing in big bags.
If we go through there, we’ll get caught, Pearl thought—
But Sid was already turning off the main road to an unmarked trail that forked alongside.
“What are we going to do?” Pearl asked.
“Simple, my dear,” said the tailor. “Even Shangri-La has a loading dock somewhere.”
Pearl wanted to object; wanted to say they should double back, get proper disguises, find another way, learn what had drawn so many people here against such enormous odds before they had to reckon with it themselves. But as they looped around the main complex, she saw what she hadn’t realized she was looking for: A massive, modern observatory perched on the highest peak.
Its telescope was pointed out at the horizon.
Another pearl’s memory echoed inside her. A red star …
“Let’s do it,” Pearl said, her breath huffing out in a little gasp.
Sid had been waiting for that objection, but now she looked over.
“Let’s deliver potatoes,” Pearl said firmly.