Pietor was sure they would find nothing.
Nothing but trees and rocks and darkness. Pietor hated that part about this place. The planet seemed lifeless, even among the underbrush. Trees and plants might be alive, but to Pietor they were boring. No scurrying rodents, no bugs, no birds. Nothing like Earth, like everything his parents told him about their home. Nothing like the wildlife vids he’d seen growing up, nothing like the Disney toons, little creatures running everywhere, talking, having adventures.
The Pointless Forest, he decided to call it, after watching an old Earth toon. The whole planet seemed pointless to Pietor, and the forest would be the same.
But in the dreams it was different.
*
Marina trails her fingers in the black water as the little boat drifts downstream. Where her nails touch the water it lights up. Phosphorescent fish rush to the surface and swirl around her hand.
Pietor leans back against the bow and tilts his head to the side to watch her play in the water. Here he doesn’t need glasses; his vision is perfect. He smiles.
“They like you,” he says.
“Of course,” she says. “They’re my friends.”
“There aren’t any fish in the real world,” he says.
“Yes there are,” Marina says. “You just haven’t brought them yet. Here they are what might be, essence of the world in all its possibilities. You are part of that, and all of it is tied to you.”
“Me?” Pietor says. “I’m not tied to anything.”
He moves his hand to the water, swirls it around just as she is doing. The fish swim to him, encircle his hand. Then one of them darts in, brushes his finger. And bites.
He pulls his hand back, and the blood runs from the bite in his finger. When the droplets hit the water, the fish cluster around, feeding on the nutrient-rich liquid, swishing their tails rapidly, darting all around the boat.
“They like you, too,” she says.
“No they don’t. They hate me.”
“They’re afraid of you,” she says.
Pietor wraps his good hand around the bloody finger to stop the bleeding, pulls it back in the boat. Marina swirls her hand around in the water and the blood disperses, then is gone.
“Should they be afraid of you?” she says.
“No,” he says. “I wouldn’t hurt them.”
“They don’t know that. They don’t know you.”
“You don’t know me,” Pietor says, annoyed. He stands quickly and the boat rocks violently until he sits again. Marina sits, faces him. Her face is impassive.
“You’re different than the others, you know,” she says.
“Everyone says I’m just like everyone else. I don’t feel like everyone else, though. I have these dreams. I dream about you, about this place.”
“You are different.”
“Am I?”
“You’re the first of your kind. Think about it. The first human born on Mohave.”
“And that means I’m different how?”
“People are reactionary, from what we’ve seen. You’re subtle, reserved, not prone to violence. For example, would you hurt me?”
Pietor steadies himself on the sides of the boat.
“Not on purpose,” he says.
She stares at him, her look exploring his entire face, from the top of his forehead all the way to his chin, scanning left to right, then back again.
“See, I do know you,” she says. “But I don’t know all of you. Not every one of you. And neither do the fish. But someday we will all know each other, and all get along as it was meant to be. You’re the voice of your people as I am the voice of mine.”
“I don’t think I am,” Pietor says. “Nobody likes me.”
“Not those people,” Marina says. “The new people that will be someday. You’re the first.”
*
Pietor’s view through the windscreen showed the Pointless Forest in all its impenetrable glory as far as the buggy floodlights could reveal. It was like a fortress, close stands of trees wrapped around and woven through other trees, creating a solid wall that stretched upward toward the sky. Sensors had mapped the forest as a big circle with a diameter of five kilometers.
The properties of the wood made it impossible to detect what was inside the circle of trees.
“There’s an opening,” Xavier said. “Look over there. There’s a way in.”
“Are you sure?” Leticia said.
“Look.”
“OK, I see it. Why was that never picked up by the colony sensors?”
“I don’t know,” Xavier said.
“Because it wasn’t there before,” Pietor said.
Again, his parents looked at him, quizzically, as if he were some sort of nasty bug that needed to be squashed.
“It had to be,” Leticia said.
“It opened for us,” Pietor said. “Maybe you shouldn’t go in.”
“Like hell,” Xavier said. “Might be our only chance to see what’s inside.”
“I don’t know what might happen,” Pietor said.
“Of course you don’t, Pietor,” Leticia said.
“I don’t think you should go,” Pietor said.
“Then stay here,” Xavier said.
“Xavier,” Leticia said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll go,” Pietor said.
“Of course you will,” Leticia said. “We wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone out here. Right, Xavier?”
“Right. Of course not,” Xavier said.
Pietor looked away.
Xavier drove the buggy toward the opening, a gaping hole in the trees that looked as if they had been grabbed by a set of huge hands and pulled to each side, anchored at their roots but bowed outward in the middle of the trunks. The opening dwarfed the buggy as it stopped near the base of a tree.
“These trees are like giants,” Leticia said. “You know? Like creatures from some fairy tale or nightmare.”
As they drove through the opening, only Pietor looked out the back window to see the trees once again closing up, sealing them in. He thought to say something, maybe to warn his parents more strongly — as if they would be warned — but instead he faded off to sleep.
*
Pietor floats on his back in the lake, naked, his toes poking above the surface. From the shore are sparkles of light, like reflections of mirrors or broken glass on the rocky beach. Little fish swim around him and bump his feet, hands, head, but this time they do not bite.
Pietor reaches out and lifts one of the fish from the water, and it doesn’t struggle. But when it is out of the water it flops a few times, then stretches, elongating down both