The New World Read Free

fingers. My mother grabs the manual controls with both hands and wrestles us back in position. ‘Viola, I need you to find us a landing spot! Now!’
    ‘But dad-’
    ‘I can’t get us back up, so we’re going to have to go down! Now , Viola!’
    I sit down and buckle back in, my hands shaking.
    ‘Find that stretch of ground by the river!’ she says.
    ‘It’s on the other side of the planet,’ I say, but I know from the shuddering of the ship that we’re tearing through the atmosphere way faster than we should.
    ‘Just find it!’ my mother shouts. ‘If there are people there-’
    And I can see from her face how worried she is about my father, and I know that if she’s battling with the ship instead of going down to find him, then we’re in even worse trouble than I thought-
    ***
    ‘I’ll miss you,’ Steff Taylor said at our going away party, her voice twisting up high, making it sound even more insincere than it is.
    All the caretaker families had gathered in the conference room of the Delta for the party, happy for any excuse to get drunk and say goodbye. Steff swept me into her arms in a hug angled so that everyone around us would see her face, how sad she was that I was going away for a year. Then she let me go and collapsed into her mother’s arms with a wailing that was louder than anything else in the room.
    Bradley came over with an amused look. ‘I’m sure Steff will cope with her grief better than I will,’ he said, handing me a wrapped gift. ‘Don’t open it until you’ve landed.’
    ‘’Til we’ve landed? ’ I said. ‘That’s five months from now.’
    He smiled and lowered his voice. ‘Do you know what separates us from the beasts, Viola?’
    I frowned, sensing a lesson. ‘The ability to wait to open a present?’
    He laughed. ‘Fire,’ he said. ‘The ability to make fire at will. It allowed us light to see in the darkness, warmth against the cold, a tool to cook our food.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Delta ’s engines. ‘Fire is what eventually led to travel across the black beyond, the ability to start a new life on a New World.’
    I looked down at the present.
    ‘You’re frightened,’ he said. This time, it wasn’t an asking.
    I shrugged. ‘A little.’
    He leaned down to whisper to me. ‘I’m frightened, too.’
    ‘You are?’
    He nodded. ‘My grandfather was the last of the original caretakers on the convoy to die, the last one of us who’d actually breathed the air of a planet and not of a ship.’
    I waited for him to go on. ‘And?’
    ‘He didn’t have anything good to say about it,’ he said. ‘Old World was polluted and crowded and dying from its own poisons. That’s why we left, to find a better place, one we could do our very best not to wreck like we had Old World.’
    ‘I know all this-’
    ‘But the rest of us are just like you, Viola. We’ve never seen any space bigger than the cargo bay on the Gamma . I don’t know what fresh air smells like either except what they’ve got on the immersive vids, and that’s not the real thing. I mean, can you imagine what a real ocean is like, Viola? How big it must seem? How small we are compared to it?’
    ‘Is this supposed to make me feel better?’
    ‘Actually, yes.’ He smiled and tapped the present I was holding. ‘Because you’ll have something to help you against the darkness.’
    The present was small in my hand, but heavy, substantial. ‘But I can’t open it ‘til I get there.’
    ‘How would I know?’ he asked. ‘I’ll just have to trust you.’
    I looked back up. ‘I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
    ‘And I’m going to miss her birthday !’ Steff Taylor wailed loudly, shooting me a look, and I could see that her eyes, at least, weren’t wailing.
    ‘I’ll see you in twelve months, Viola,’ Bradley said. ‘And when I get there, make sure I’m the first one you tell what the night looks like by firelight.’
    ***
    The scout ship feels like it’s