“I don’t know.”
She followed the sound, walking deeper into the forest. She heard it again and again, originating from somewhere high up. She jumped suddenly. Something flew from one tree to another in the overhead branches. It landed on a limb and began to sing again. She recognized it from one of her field guides. It was a bird. “There!” she said, pointing.
Gordon watched it with her. Then another one joined it, and they sat together on the branch. “Well, will you look at that!” Gordon exclaimed.
Between the trees grew shorter plants. She recognized some of them from the books: ferns, shrubs, and the like. Something rustled in them, and a furry head lifted out. A large brown animal walked past, munching on leaves. From its head grew two pointy bones, with other protrusions branching off. It watched them with big, watery brown eyes, chewing all the while. Then it moved off into the trees.
She looked over at Gordon, who stood there staring, mouth agape. “This is . . .”
H124 turned in a complete circle, the surrounding forest welcoming her. Then she noticed something gray up in a tree. It was smooth and sleek, with a black window in it. Some kind of technology. “Look at that,” she said, pointing.
“It’s a monitoring device. I’ve seen them before.”
Fear gripped her. “PPC?”
“Nope. Seen one like it in a weather shelter.”
“Rover tech?”
“I think so.”
She waved at it. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
“Don’t think it works like that. It’s not a live feed or anything. It just records data now and again. The one I saw seemed to be recording rainfall and humidity.”
“So they’re monitoring the place.” She thought of Raven’s video, the one where he mentioned how the Rovers had been talking about planting forests again. This must be one of them. Trees planted to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
“This is amazing,” Gordon said. “But where did these animals come from? They died out long ago.”
“Maybe the Rovers managed to save some of them.”
He stared up at the two birds. “I guess so.”
They wandered through the forest, spotting more birds and other four-legged elegant animals. She made a mental note to look them up in her field guide when they got back to the plane.
For a while they sat down at the base of a tree, listening to the singing in the branches, watching the sunlight filter down to the forest floor. She felt something here, something powerful stirring inside her, like a lost piece of a puzzle clicking into place.
“Well, I guess we better mosey,” Gordon said, getting up and brushing dirt off his pants.
She stood reluctantly. “All right.”
Together they walked back to the plane, taking their time, breathing it all in. A small metal box at the base of one tree caught her eye. She went to it. The box looked identical to the ones she’d seen in the weather shelters that held Raven’s video entries. She bent down and opened it, finding a PRD inside. It was newer than the previous ones.
“What’d you find?” Gordon asked.
“Another PRD. I’m going to copy the contents.” She started up the PRD, finding it still partially charged. Indeed, it was full of video entries. She pulled out her PRD and paired the two devices, copying over the contents onto her own. Then she gently placed the Rover PRD back into the box and latched it closed.
“What do you think’s on it?” he asked.
“If it’s like the other ones, it’ll have history lessons explaining how the planet got to be the way it is.”
“Cheerful stuff, then.”
She laughed. “Very cheerful.”
They walked back to the plane. She looked forward to watching more of Raven’s videos. As they lifted off and flew away, she craned around in her seat to watch the green patch grow smaller.
“That was something,” Gordon said.
“Indeed.
They flew on in pleasant silence, staring out as they did. Her eyes burned, and though she fought against it, she slipped into sleep again, dreaming only of green.
H124 jerked awake as the plane dipped. “What is it?”
Gordon gestured ahead. “Snowstorm.”
She rubbed her eyes and peered out through the windscreen. Great clouds of gray clustered all around them. She couldn’t see ahead, nor the ground below. She didn’t understand how Gordon could possibly know where he was going.
He kept glancing nervously at the altimeter and adjusting his controls, looking at the flight plan he’d created on his PRD. “Supposed to be a mountain pass right here. We’re almost out of fuel. If I turn back, we’re dead in the air.” He looked again at the altimeter. “We should be okay.”
For a moment she thought he was right. The winds died down a little, and they flew on smoothly. Then a sudden surge of air pushed them down. The plane dipped, then another gust hit them, shoving them down even farther.
“Oh, hell!” Gordon shouted as a third downdraft sent them plummeting out of control. The altimeter said they were low now, too low. He flipped on the landing lights, illuminating the space beneath them.
She saw shapes looming up, strange spires caught in the lights. Dead trees, she realized. The plane grazed down among them, their branches scraping and splintering along the bottom of the plane.
Gordon gripped the controls, teeth bared, sweat streaming down his temples. “They just might slow us down enough . . .”
A ripping of metal filled the cabin. She gripped the door handle and seat, feet braced against the floor. The plane screamed toward the ground, the trees below pummeling its underbelly. A tall one loomed up huge in the lights, and she shielded her face as it passed right by the windshield and collided with the right wing of the plane, tearing it off with a deafening squeal. The
