“The whole layer is full of it. Okereke found this as well.”
She hands him what looks like a plastic doll, or perhaps a small statue. This I recognize: the body is the same reverse-legged shape as the statues in Barkah’s church. Two back-folded legs, two lower arms, two arms coming out the sides of the one-eyed head.
Borjigin shrugs. “I don’t know what that is.”
Barkah gently takes it from Borjigin.
“Bu, Vellen,” the Springer says, examining it. “Kollo regatta jumain.”
Words I don’t know. I glance at D’souza.
“He’s talking about the Vellen,” she says. “The Albonden won’t tell me much about them.”
Albonden. It’s still hard for me to get used to that word. That’s the name of Barkah’s tribe. D’souza insists we all use it instead of Springers, but most of my people ignore her.
“Is Vellen another tribe?” I ask.
D’souza shakes her head. “I think Vellen is the name of their gods, because the rest of what he said roughly means those who came before us.”
Barkah sets the plastic doll back in Spingate’s box.
Borjigin shakes his head. “Spingate, are you saying that not only did we destroy the Springer city to build Uchmal, but the Springers destroyed an earlier city, populated by another race, to build theirs?”
But…that can’t be. The Springers were here first. My race wanted their land, slaughtered them, nearly wiped them out. Does this discovery mean that the Springers weren’t just part of the natural balance of Omeyocan, that they, too, demolished what came before them to take over this land?
Spingate shrugs. “I’m just saying that these layers are in the hole. Okereke said the hole goes much deeper and it looks like there are even more layers. He didn’t descend past the power source, though—he said it felt too creepy.”
This is making my head fuzzy. Our creators destroyed the Springers, who maybe destroyed these Vellen….did the Vellen destroy another race before them? And if so, why are so many races building a city in exactly the same place?
“We’ll have to go down there,” I say. “You were right to bring Barkah and me both in for this.”
Spingate shakes her head. She seems nervous, maybe upset.
“That’s not the main reason I asked you here,” she says. “I said we sort of fixed the telescope. What I mean is there are two kinds.” She points a finger up. “The Goffspear telescope, the big optical one in this building, still isn’t working. Without Okadigbo, we just don’t know what’s wrong with it, let alone how to fix it. But it turns out there are other telescopes in the city and in the jungle—radio telescopes. We got those working. They’ve been feeding us information for a few hours now, and we found something. Gaston, show her.”
Gaston waves his hands over a pedestal. Above it, a green, blue and brown sphere appears: Omeyocan, spinning slightly. Above that is a red point of light. Farther out and in a different direction, a blue point.
He points to the red one. “That represents the Xolotl.”
Just the name of that ship calls up so many awful memories. But if that red dot is the Xolotl, what’s the blue dot?
I point to it. “I’m guessing this is what you really brought us here to see?”
“You guessed right,” Gaston says. “Do you know what a radio wave is?”
I shake my head.
“Think of when you’re out in the city,” he says. “Sometimes when you yell very loud, it sounds like your words bounce back to you?”
I nod. “Especially with big buildings around.”
“Radio waves are like that, only on a larger scale,” he says. “They go out into space. The Observatory sends out this radio signal. Think of a ball that keeps getting bigger and bigger at the speed of light. When the radio waves hit something, they bounce back to Omeyocan, where the radio telescopes detect them.” He points to the red light again. “This is from the radio waves hitting the Xolotl and bouncing back.”
It takes me a second to understand what that means. The red light is the Xolotl, a ship in orbit…so the blue light is…
This can’t be. It can’t.
“You’re telling me there is another ship out there?”
Spingate nods. She’s staring at the dot, gently pulling at her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger. In a way, she didn’t look this afraid even when the Springers were beating the hell out of us.
Gaston notices, puts his arm around her shoulders, gives her a light squeeze.
“Definitely another ship,” he says. “Almost as big as the Xolotl. And it’s coming our way.”
Since I woke up, I think I’ve spent every day in fear. Afraid for my life, for the lives of others, but this fills me with a new sense of foreboding.
“More Grownups,” I say. “They’re coming for us.”