Rivals

Rivals Page 1

"When are you going to start rebelling, kid?" Brent's father asked. He shifted his pack on his back and started clambering down a rough-walled ravine, where a flash flood had cut through the desert like a knife after last month's storms.

"I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to rebel against," Brent answered. He reached forward with one boot and found a rock that didn't shift when he put his weight on it. It was easy enough going, but you had to be careful. Brent grabbed at the tough roots of a juniper bush and stopped still when a scree of pebbles started shifting under him. "It seems to me we have it pretty good - you look at some of the people in this world who don't have anything to eat, or their government forces them out of their homes, and - "

At the top of the ravine, Brent's older sister Maggie appeared silhouetted against the sun. "Would you two hurry up?" she whined. "I want to get back to civilization. You know, where people have cell phones that actually get a signal?"

Brent's eyes narrowed. He started thinking of the perfect reply, something really nasty, but then his dad put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Don't," his father said. "I wish you two wouldn't fight so much." He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. "I thought this trip would do her good but I don't know. She doesn't seem to be having a good time, does she?"

"We'll just have to hit the outlet mall on the way back," Brent said. He was pleased when his father actually smiled, though he knew he would never get a laugh. Their dad was always scrupulously careful not to favor one of them over the other, and that included never saying a bad word about Maggie.

Even when she deserved it.

"Come on down, kid. It's not too much farther. I saw the sun shining on something this morning. It looked like there might be an oasis out here. Maybe we can go for a quick swim!"

"I didn't bring my bathing suit," Maggie answered, but she started carefully picking her way down the rocks. For all her lack of enthusiasm she had no trouble with the climb down. Brother and sister were both experienced rockhoppers. That was entirely thanks to their parents, who had dragged them out into this desert for hikes every year since they'd been old enough to walk. Now that their mother was gone, the hikes were even more frequent.

Brent didn't mind at all. He loved how quiet it was when you got more than an hour's walk away from the highway. He loved the shade at the bottom of ravines like this, and the thin breezes that dried all the sweat on your skin. He thought maybe when he was older he would like to live out there, and just watch the clouds go by overhead everyday until the sun turned them a million shades of red and orange.

"Hey," Maggie said. "I think I see it. But that's no oasis. God, what a stupid goose chase. It looks like an old car somebody left to rust to death."

Dad rushed down the bottom of the ravine, where the footing was a lot more stable. Brent hurried after. This would have been a bad place to be when the rain came through - millions of years' worth of mud and sand had been washed away in a foaming wall of water - but now the ground had dried out so much it shrank away from itself, making a fine pattern of cracks like a gigantic spider web. Tiny flowers surrounded by thick spiky leaves sprouted up through some of the cracks, thriving on whatever moisture remained. The flowers' petals were soft, delicate colors you couldn't find anywhere else in the desert.

"Is it even worth checking this thing out?" Maggie asked.

For his father's sake, Brent held his tongue. Maggie had been like this ever since their mother died a year ago. Dad claimed it was because he didn't know how to talk to a teenage girl so he wasn't doing a good job helping her through her grief. Brent thought otherwise. He thought Maggie was just a jerk. The two of them had never gotten along very well. There had been a brief time, after the accident, when the two of them had hugged a lot and cried on each others' shoulders. But that had ended all too quickly.

"I hate to tell you this, Mags," Dad said, "but that is no rusted-out car."

Brent came up around a bend in the ravine and saw what he meant.

Cars weren't fifty yards long, for one thing.

It was funny, though. He could see why Maggie had been confused about its size. If you didn't look right at it, it seemed smaller. And it got bigger as he got closer to it - much bigger. It was almost like it couldn't decide how big it really was, or what its real shape might be. But that didn't make sense, he thought.

Whatever it was, it was made of metal and yes, a lot of it had rusted away. But parts of it were still shiny, even though it had clearly been buried in the sand for a long time. The flash flood must have uncovered it, or at least, uncovered part of it. It looked like the top part of something much bigger that was still buried.

Brent thought it might be a crashed airplane. It had a roughly cylindrical shape. Part of the top of it had been eroded away but the side walls still rose up like steepled fingers to form a series of huge arches. The surface of the object was pitted and scratched by time and weather, but it looked like it had once been very smooth, even aerodynamic.

It lay across the ravine running perpendicular to the course of the flood. It looked like the water had tried to go around it, failed, and then just gone over it instead. Looking down through one of the arches Brent saw puddles of water inside that hadn't even evaporated yet. "What is it?" Brent asked.

"I don't know," Dad confessed. He moved closer. Brent started to follow but his dad put up one hand to stop him. "Just let me check it out first."

Maggie came up beside Brent as Dad stepped through one of the arches, into part of the cylinder that was still mostly intact.

"Is this going to take long?" she asked, but before Brent could answer a hundred dusty-winged birds came swooping out of the cylinder and flapped vehemently away. One came close enough to brush Brent's cheek with its wingtip.

"Dad!" he called. "Dad!"

He rushed forward, through the arch - and immediately stopped.

And shivered.

The air under the arch was at least twenty degrees cooler than the air outside. Shade in the desert was always a startling thing, but this was different. It felt like he'd stepped into an air conditioned hotel lobby. Yet the arch was open to the outside air, and he could still feel the sun beating down on his shoulders.

He couldn't explain it. He couldn't even begin to think of how that might be possible.

"Dad?" he asked, and stepped further inside.