Rada ran around the edge of the platter and grabbed Sita. “I thought they’d gotten you,” she said, hanging onto Sita with all her strength. “They shot arrows at me, and I couldn’t cross the bridge. I’m so, so sorry.”
She was crying, I could hear the sniffling. I walked away from them, not sure what to do.
I stared up at Alan’s elevator, watching it dwindle away to just a dot as it disappeared into the clouds. Rada looked over at it. “Did you get what Mimir needed?”
I patted my pocket. The Backup felt like it was in one piece after all that. I’d been careful not to fall on it. I nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
But was this thing that Mimir needed safe for us?
After all that lecture from Kyros, I wasn’t too sure anymore. I was going to have to ask Mimir some pointed questions before I handed the Backup over.
And what did I tell Rada and Sita about what I’d heard?
Could I really trust Mimir, an alien fragment of an alien starship?
Right now Mimir, he was the closest thing I had to a friend. But was he really? He was really just a part of the All Tree. And the All Tree was apparently a killing machine, first.
If I made the wrong choice, I might take everyone here from a position of being marooned, but alive, to dead at the hands of the All Tree.
I wasn’t being rash right now, I thought, thinking about what Auntie Lynn would say. I was spending plenty of time mulling this over as we rode back up the space elevator to the All Tree.
I realized I needed to ask Rada for advice, before we got back to Riverbend. I couldn’t bear this whole burden myself. It was a choice that would affect everyone. I would tell Rada, and hopefully get her to talk to Mayor Hughes, so that everyone would know about the All Tree’s history. We would all figure out what to do next. I wasn’t going to be like Yggdrasil; keeping secrets. Killing people.
That was the right thing to do, I thought, as the elevator suddenly jerked to a stop. It wasn’t inside a clade, I could see by looking around. And I knew we weren’t accelerating or decelerating, because we were weightless.
I held the Backup in front of me, and watched the black case wobble in the air in front of me as I let it go.
“Why are we stopped?” Rada asked, worried.
The All Tree stretched out before us, the clades sticking out like fins from the trunk of the All Tree. We’d stopped maybe a few hundred feet away from the tip of our clade. I could glance over to the side and see the tip of another clade about half a mile away from us, much like you could glance over at another skyscraper from the top of another.
“Hello?” said a familiar voice from all around us. “Hello? I think I have this working. Hello?”
“Who is that?” Rada hissed.
I knew. “Jessica!” I shouted.
“Kadie! Freaking A, it’s good to hear you. I thought I’d messed it up.”
“Jessica, we’re stuck, the elevator stopped,” I said. I was about to ask if she could go get help, but she interrupted me.
“Yeah, I know. I totally did that.” She sounded pleased.
“What? Why?” Rada asked.
“The All Tree asked me to. It sent me on a mission! It walked me through the whole thing via my earpiece. Ah crap, I don’t have much time, Kadie, they’re trying to break down the door to get at me.”
A long silence followed, and I looked at Sita, suddenly worried.
“Jessica?”
“Yeah, they’re not in yet, they just got the door open a bit. So look, man: the All Tree says it was too dangerous for you to come back to Nisky Clade now. It told me how to stop the elevator from here, and you’re supposed to pull on emergency suits so you can jump across from where you are to the nearest clade. There are people waiting to capture you with nets, or something like that.”
“Jump?” I asked. The word didn’t make any more sense the second time. “Jump?”
“The All Tree’s not going anywhere right now,” Jessica explained. “It’s safe. If you overshoot, the people waiting for you will snag you. I guess the Tree has alien astronauts floating around waiting for you. It’s all totally cool, but you need to hurry and get out or the Yggdrasil people will get at you here in Nisky.”
I still wanted to ask more questions, but Rada jumped in. “Where are these suits?”
“They’re in capsules hanging by the ramp. Once they’re on, there’s an airlock into space by the suits. Purple knobs open the doors they’re next to. Let’s see,” Jessica sounded thoughtful. “I think that was it. The message said to tell you sorry about all this, but with all the systems shutting down, it was the only way.”
“Thank you, Jessica,” Rada said. “You should get to safety now.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that. There’s only one door in here and they’re on the other side,” Jessica said. “The All Tree is right that this clade is too dangerous for you guys. Everyone has bows and arrows. Down at Riverbend they cut down all these trees to make barricades so that Yggdrasil can’t get in at them. It’s pretty tense, and very neo-primitive.”
“You put yourself in danger for us?” I asked, surprised.
“They’re trying to take over the All Tree,” Jessica said. “If this helps you stop them, it will be worth it. And I wanted payback after that black eye. But seriously, you better go quick, they just jacked the door open further. When they figure out you’re out there, they’ll get the elevator started again or come for you. I’d do what the Tree says and jump.”
A loud thump made us all jump. I heard swearing and a loud slap, then footsteps thudding about. Then the air fell silent. I stared up into the dark depths of the space around the All Tree’s fin-like clades, Ehalla’s reddish light filling the elevator pod. “Do you think she’ll be okay?” I asked out loud.
“Let’s get going,” Rada said, ignoring the question. “Quickly.”
We still hung in the air, weightless. We fumbled our way down toward the ramp, pushing off the sides of the pods softly, tumbling end over end, and ungracefully bouncing around.