“No,” says Dex, his dark eyes on my face as he watches me work toward the conclusion.
“You created the glyphs to convince us you weren’t human,” I say quietly.
“Yeh.”
“And you built a temple you never used.”
“Yeh.”
“And you sent a signal, pretending to be a dead alien species, all so you could lure us to Gaia, through the temple, and to your ship?”
“Yeh.”
My voice is cracking, now. “Because we’resoawful, so untrustworthy, that going to all that trouble, undertaking these herculean tasks, seemed a better bet to you than simply contacting us and asking for our help in building a portal to help you come home?”
His whisper is deathly soft. “Yeh. You gotta compren, after centuries of being taught about the greed and wastefulness and selfishness of the humans who abandoned us, who trashed a planet that was unique in all the universe, not one of us would have ever thought a plea for help would’ve been answered this time.”
“You banked on our greed,” Mia says. “You banked on the fact that if you told us there was treasure on the line, we’d go through anything to find it.”
“Well,” says Neal, as Dex buttons his shirt and sits, “in their defense, they were right.”
Perhaps Neal wants to divert us away from this talk of blame, because he leans against a desk, facing Dex.
“Tell me more about the portals,” he says. “I’ve been working on them with Uncle Elliott—with Dr. Addison—these last few weeks. We’ve only ever seen manufactured portals, but the way you talk about the naturally occurring portals, they sound to me like they work differently. They sound wild, unpredictable.”
“They are different,” Dex agrees. “That difference is why we needed you. The naturally occurring portals, like the one the first Centauri ship was lost through, they lead through the aether to a set time and place, and you can’t change it. No matter when you enter the portal on one side, on the other, you’ll emerge on a specific day, at a specific time.”
“But that’s not how our portal works,” Mia says, beside me. “The portal between Earth and Gaia, it always leads to the sameplace, but it doesn’t lead to the sametime. Otherwise, every expedition,from the first one through to ours, would all have shown up on the same day. But we didn’t. We arrived just a moment after we left. The same distance apart.”
“That’s right,” Dex agrees. “That’s the difference between a naturally occurring portal, and one that’s constructed. And it’s why we needed your help. When you received our transmission, you built a portal between Earth and Gaia. A manufactured portal. We knew it had to be after our ancestors left, or they never would have left, and none of us would exist, yeh?”
“The grandfather rule,” I breathe.The paradox that explains why time travel could never work, even if itdidn’tviolate the laws of physics.
Mia leans in against me. “That’s the one about how, if you go back to before you were born, you might accidentally stop yourself being born?” she asks.
“Right. The Undying needed a portal back to Earth after the Centauri expedition left, to make sure they didn’t accidentally prevent their ancestors from leaving, and prevent themselves from being born.”
“Yes,” Dex replies. “So even if we could have found it again, we couldn’t have just gone back through that very first Storm portal to reach Earth. We’d have arrived in the same instant our ancestors left, and we might have prevented them leaving at all. What we could do, though, was send a signal out into the aether.”
“Oh, I see,” Neal breathes, as soft as a prayer. “You send a signal into the aether, and it emerges from every portal it can find, doesn’t it? Including that first Storm portal. That’s how you knew your signal would reach Earth at the right time to set us to work building the portal you needed. Your ancestors would just miss it.”
“Yeh.” Dex nods. “But we weren’t sure where in time we were—we hoped we were in the past, but it could have been thousands of years until you showed up on Gaia. But as soon as you took the ship through the portal to Earth, you activated all the internal portals on the ship, and we knew it was time to send our teams through.”
He’s sounding a little better, and he’s speaking mostly to Neal—I think Neal’s steady gaze genuinely helps, even if he’s no Atlanta. Neal’s presence helps most people, I’ve noticed.
“Right,” Mia says, and her tone of voice tells me she’s working toward a conclusion she doesn’t like one bit. “So you get the signal, you know the ship’s reached Earth, and you start sending through your teams. And they head down to Earth, posing as bits of space junk, but really …”
Dex nods, as if she’s finished her sentence, dropping his head. “But really, they’re building portals planetside, preparing for the arrival of the reclamation teams,” he says quietly.
“After most of Earth’s humans have lost their minds,” I murmur, trying to ignore the sick feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. “Since the test in Lyon was a resounding success.”
Dex leans forward, burying his face in his hands. “It’s not going to matter much longer,” he says, muffled. “They’re all scheduled to activate a couple days from now, but there’s no way Atlanta won’t speed up her plans. It’ll be hours, not days—and Prague will be just like that town, only millions more will be affected.”
I’m struggling for breath, and beside me, Mia makes a sound like someone’s struck her.
Hours.
We had even less time than we’d imagined.
