Prisha had already been halfway out of the room. Now she paused in the doorway.
"What kind of idea?" she asked.
"The radio," Neteyam said. "You can't use it because they'll hear you, right?"
"That's right..." She frowned, not sure what he was getting at. "Are you saying we can hear them, too? Because yeah, we can. The Omatikaya will be listening while they make their battle plan."
"And we can listen in here, too," said Neteyam. "Then I'll at least know what's going on."
"Oh!" said Prisha. "Yeah, because you're used to being in on this stuff, aren't you? No wonder you're going nuts. Come on."
She took him back to the common room. Some of the adults were having a meeting at one of the long dining tables, but didn't pay much attention until Prisha pulled an old radio out of a cupboard. Then several of them opened their mouths to caution her.
"We're just listening, not talking!" she said.
"Make sure there's no location transponder in that one," said Keith Pacharanat.
"I took all those out ages ago," Prisha promised. She sat down at the far end of the room, to give the grownups some privacy. Neteyam stood on one side of her, and Viraj, looking for something interesting to do, came and sat on the other. Prisha connected the device to a holopad and the speaker began to hiss. She rotated an icon, and it didn't take long for a voice to come through, though it was heavy with static.
... morning, Bridgehead! I've got your weather for today and we're expecting another scorcher, with temperatures in the mid to high thirties. Thunderclouds will move in towards evening...
Prisha smiled. "The ionosphere does some wild things above heavily magnetized areas like the floating mountains," she said. "So sometimes we can get stuff from even further away than Bridgehead." She spun the icon some more, going by snatches of voices, music, and what sounded like random beeps. "Military frequencies are usually up here... but first, listen to this." She found a particular station, but all that came out was loud static, peppered with whistles and pops.
"I don't hear anything," said Neteyam.
"That's the planet!" Prisha told him. "It's got a powerful magnetic field – that's part of the reason why so much unobtanium formed on Pandora. The pops and clicks come from that, and the squeaky ones are lightning." There was a particularly sharp gliding whistle sound. "Like that, right there."
Neteyam instinctively glanced out the window, but of course all he could see was the caverns of High Camp. The planet would be out there, though, looking down on Pandora like a Great Eye in the heavens, a guardian watching over them. It had always looked very serene, but this sound added a whole new level to it. If there were lightning then there must be storms, which would be accompanied by lashing rain and howling winds, all while the magnetic field crackled like a wildfire.
"Wanna hear another one?" asked Prisha.
"Do Vela!" Viraj urged her.
"That's what I'm gonna," she said, and found another spot on the dial. She raised the volume, and Neteyam heard a rhythmic thumping sound, like fast-paced drumming, perhaps, or one of the humans' loud flying machines. "That's a dead star, almost a thousand light-years away. It makes that sound every time it spins, which it does eleven times per second."
Neteyam had a rough idea how long a second was, and a vague idea that stars were actually very large things... so yes, that was incredibly fast. It seemed like the sky, such a quiet and orderly place to look at, was actually a loud and violent one when listened to. Maybe that, like the computers, was something he could learn more about later.
"There's even faster ones," said Viraj. "Some of them just go eeeeeee!" He made a high-pitched noise through his teeth.
"Let's see if we can find the recoms, though," said Prisha. She chose another part of the icon and began to turn it far more slowly, pausing whenever she heard something that sounded halfway intelligible. Voices drifted by.
... bet you a bottle of Jack he never...
... reporting activity around the south polar region, in the form...
... still looking for that drone that crashed last...
"Stop!" said Neteyam. He'd just heard something familiar. Not a familiar voice, but a familiar name.
Prisha pulled her hand back.
... course not, said the voice of a man. She's doing guard duty at the Noro now.
I'm surprised they let her out of her quarters, a woman grumbled.
She's been kissing ass, the man replied. She wants a banshee, as if Quaritch would let her have one to save his own life! She's fallen in love with this mutant one, all-black. She's even given it a name, but she won't tell anybody what it is.
A third voice broke in then. You two realize your mics are live, right? a second woman asked. Either shut them off or quit your gossiping before we get in trouble.
The channel fell silent.
Prisha looked up at Neteyam, who was leaning over her shoulder with his palm on the table. "Do you know what that was all about?" she asked.
"Somebody I met at Site Nine," said Neteyam. "It's not important now. Keep looking." He would probably never see Emily Bohan again, anyway... which didn't seem fair. He would have liked to let her know he'd made it to High Camp okay. She would probably have been happy to hear it.
Prisha continued to dial through the channels, but with no more success. They found one where somebody in orbit was talking to the ground about a malfunctioning satellite, and others where the voices could not be made out at all. Finally, they came to something that seemed promising.
... Omatikaya tactics... the voice said, before dissolving in static. A moment later it came back, but so distorted they couldn't even tell if it were male or female. ... been there before, and they never... it said, and then it was gone again. Seconds crawled by, and then they got ... get real close to the chopper.
After that they heard nothing more.
"Too much interference from the magnetic field," was Prisha's diagnosis.
"Your father didn't have that problem when he called," said Neteyam.
"It changes a lot," she explained. "We're moving towards periapsis and it's always worse there because of the planet's radiation belts. The weather can affect it, too. It might be totally different in an hour or so."
"Can't you fix it?" he asked.
"It's got as much screening as we can give it," said Prisha.
Another disappointment. Neteyam was almost getting used to them now.
Later in the evening found Neteyam sitting in the lab, alone except for the slender shape of Dr. Augustine's avatar floating in storage. Occasionally a finger or toe would twitch, as if the empty body were dreaming, but then it would settle back into dormancy. It was too bad, Neteyam thought as he watched it, that the avatars had to be personalized. If they hadn't then he could have borrowed one, or even used Dr. Augustine's, and gone out to see what was happening and talk to Dad. When he looked out the window, Dad's banshee was still roosting there with several others, grooming each other and occasionally linking their kurus to keep in touch.
Then a commotion happened, somewhere off to the right. Neteyam got up and went to the window for a look. A crowd was coming, all in paint and armour – warriors! Dad was in the lead, with Tarsem beside him. Both were wearing similar regalia, as if they had settled on being jointly in command of the party. Neteyam's heart leaped. This was his chance!
"Dad!" he called out, and banged on the window. "Down here!"
Dad didn't appear to see him – but Tarsem did. With a disgusted look at Neteyam, he put an arm around Jake's shoulders and steered him away so that he wouldn't see.
"Dad!" Neteyam repeated, but his voice couldn't get through the thick polycarbonate of the window. Pounding on it with both fists made it shake, but didn't produce any sound. Dad climbed onto his banshee and flew away, with Tarsem right behind him. Pa'ay, however, lingered a moment, and turned around to look directly into Neteyam's eyes.
"He is happier to think you are dead," she said.
And then, by Eywa's mercy, Neteyam woke up.
Prisha needed her bed back, so the Patel family had put a mattress on the floor between the sets of bunks for Neteyam to sleep on. That was where he was lying down, breathing hard as he stared up at the single red nightlight shining down on him. When he sat up and ran a hand through his braids, he found his scalp sweaty, and his heart was pounding. His tail ached almost as badly as it had that first night at Site Nine, and knowing that it was all in his head didn't make it any better.
"Who's awake?" came the sleepy voice of Reet.
"I am," said Neteyam.
She raised her head from her pillow and squinted at him in the dark. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," he replied. "Just a bad dream."
"Do you have a lot of those?"
Neteyam didn't answer. The question was too much like something Nguyen would have asked, and while he knew that Reet's concern was probably genuine, he still didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about his previous prison.
More important, he thought cynically, to focus on the prison he was in right now.
He got up and slipped out of the family's unit, not wanting to disturb them any more, but not sure where else to go. Somehow, his feet led him into the common room, where the radio they'd been playing with earlier was still lying on the table. Neteyam almost walked right past it, thinking he wasn't likely to hear anything interesting in the middle of the night... but wouldn't that be the best time to talk, if you didn't want your enemies to hear? He sat down and activated the holopad, only to hesitate. If he still didn't hear anything useful, he was just going to be annoyed about it, and then he'd have an even harder time getting back to sleep.
But he turned it on anyway.
... waiting game now, said the voice of Quaritch. He thinks he's gonna outlast us.
The back of Neteyam's neck, where his queue should have been, prickled. Was he still dreaming, or was something finally going right?
He couldn't hear the reply from whoever the man was talking to, distorted as it was by the interference, but either the conditions had changed or Quaritch was very nearby, because his voice was as clear as fresh rain.
Of course not, he said. He's as patient as a gator. He'll lurk there just out of sight and wait for you to walk into his jaws. Do not follow him, no matter what. We've gotta make him fight on our terms, not his. We gotta flush him out.
Again, the other voice said something Neteyam couldn't make out. A dim childhood memory popped up of hearing a human – he couldn't remember who – call it Charlie Brown Voice.
Can't tell you on the radio, Quaritch said. Blue monkeys got big ears. Sit tight and you'll hear about it soon enough. Over and out.
Neteyam's jaw hardened. So... they suspected a trap, and were preparing one of their own. His first instinct was to run out and tell everyone that the Sky People were planning something big. His gut told him it would be terrible, on the order of the destruction of Hometree. But Neteyam couldn't do that, and it wasn't necessary anyway. Prisha and even Quaritch himself had said the People were already listening. What he could do was tell the humans.
He went back to the Patels' unit and crept in to put a hand on Reet's shoulder. "Dr. Singh?" he whispered.
"Huh?" she opened her eyes. "What now?"
"I just heard on the radio," Neteyam said. "The Sky People are planning something. They say they want to draw Dad out rather than follow him."
"Hmm?" Reet yawned. "Okay. We'll worry about it in the morning."
"What?" Neteyam asked, astonished.
In the bunk across the way, Prisha made a noise. "What's going on?" she asked sleepily.
"Nothing, Prisha, go back to sleep," said Reet. "Neteyam, I've told you before, we're not warriors here. If they want to draw your father out, that means they're not going to do anything here. We're not in danger, and we can't do anything to help, so please go back to sleep."
"Somebody should at least make sure the People know," said Neteyam. "Prisha said they'd be listening, too, but we should check."
"All right, all right," Reet decided. "See if you can find one of the avatar drivers still awake."
Neteyam nodded, but he had no intention of doing that.
He took a breathing mask down from the rack in the lab and put it on, wincing where it touched the still-irritated skin. Then he stepped through the airlock out into the cool, damp night air of the caverns. Once again, the urge was to take a deep breath, inhale the familiar scents of the stone and moss, but all he got for it was a lungful of stale, recycled air.
The humans all slept at the same time, but among the People there was always somebody awake. They had to be on guard, especially when they knew enemies were lurking in the dark forest. Neteyam went up to a girl sitting by a fire and cleared his throat.
"I see you," he greeted her. She was familiar... maybe a year older than him. Neteyam felt like he recognized the beaded earrings she was wearing, but he couldn't place her name or anything else about her. She appeared to be a leatherworker. There was a strap in her lap, and she'd been using a long thorn to punch holes for stitching.
She looked up at him, startled, but then collected herself. "I see you, young human," she replied. "You must be the one they've been talking about. The son of Jake Sully's human brother, right?"
Tarsem and Pa'ay must not have told anybody, Neteyam realized. Of course they hadn't – the more people knew, the more opportunities to let it slip to Mo'at. He decided to just ignore the question for now, telling himself it wasn't important. "I've been listening to the radio," he said. "The Sky People are planning something. I want to make sure Tarsem and Mo'at know."
The girl gave him a sideways look – it was unusual for a stranger to call the clan leaders by their names. She seemed to dismiss it, though, and got to her feet. "I'll do that," she promised. "Can you tend the fire?" She towered over him, as all the People now did, and Neteyam had a sudden flash of her standing next to him, the top of her head at the level of his nose. He took a couple of steps back, so as not to feel like she was about to step on him.
"Yes, I'll do that," he promised.
She headed back into the caverns, and Neteyam approached the fire. It wasn't likely to go out in the few minutes her errand would take, but it was nice to be treated like he was useful. He went to sit down...
... and then swore as his heel landed on something sharp.
Neteyam sat down on the cold stone floor and pulled his foot around to get a look. There was a pebble embedded in the pad of the hell, though it hadn't broken the skin. He flicked it away in disgust. The stone was barely the size of a Warbonnet seed, but it had made a dent in his foot that was painful. A Na'vi wouldn't have even noticed it. Why were humans so delicate? It was no wonder they needed all their thick layers of clothing and loud machines. How had they ever survived long enough to even build all those things? They ought to be dead within minutes of going outside on their world, never mind this one!
There was a distant rumble. Neteyam remembered the man on the radio saying there might be thunderstorms at Bridgehead, and looked up through the great cleft in the rocks overhead. He expected to see clouds, but there was only the blue face of the planet, looking back down at him. A flock of banshees flew across this, shrieking as they went. That was odd – they usually slept at night. What had disturbed them?
A few moments passed in silence, and then there was a second, louder sound. This one was closer, and identifiable. That was not thunder. That was an explosion.
The girl came running back. "Young human!" she called out. "Get inside!"
"What happened?" Neteyam asked.
"We don't know. Something bad," she replied.
"Syulang!" someone else shouted from nearby. "Put that fire out!"
Syulang! That was her name – and Neteyam felt cold as he realized he did know her. She was what the humans called a night owl, always awake late and insisting she wasn't tired. The earrings were inherited from her mother, who'd died when she was very young... and Syulang was the first girl Neteyam had ever kissed. It had never been much more than casual flirting, because he'd always thought he had plenty of time to find a mate someday, but for a short time before the Sky People returned, they'd been quite close. What had she thought when his family had left?
The cries of more banshees outside brought Neteyam back to the present moment, and he stood up and got out of the way so Syulang could smother her fire with a blanket. Moments later, a banshee dived in through the cleft in the rocks, coming to land only metres away from them. A warrior climbed down, spear in hand, and his eyes fell first on Neteyam.
"You," he said. "Tell the others to stay indoors, out of harm's way."
"What's going on?" asked Neteyam.
"Nothing that need concern you," the warrior replied. "You cannot fight." He strode off into the caverns. Behind him, another lookout dived in to land, then another. There was getting to be a crowd, and Neteyam knew he couldn't stay here. Surely, though, one of these people would be willing to tell him...
Syulang scooped up her leatherworking tools and then took Neteyam by the arm and lifted him off his feet. He yelped as she wrenched his injured shoulder, and she quickly apologized but carried him over to the steps of the airlock.
"Go inside!" she urged. "It's not safe for you out here!" Then she turned and ran after the warriors.
Neteyam stretched his arm to make sure it hadn't been pulled out of its socket – it hadn't, but when he felt at the stitches on the back of his shoulder, they were tender and painful. He was trying to crane his neck for a proper look when the airlock door opened.
"I knew it!" said Reet. She grabbed Neteyam's arms to pull him inside.
"Ow!" he said, as his shoulder was yanked in yet another direction.
"You can't go five metres without hurting yourself, can you?" Reet asked, exasperated. She hustled him inside and shut the door again. "We have to take cover. They're blowing up the mountains."
The humans were gathering in the lab. A few of them had gotten dressed but most were in their pajamas, and a few ever in their underthings. Many were yawning. Louise was distributing coffee, and her first act when the inner airlock door opened was to push one mug into Reet's hands and another into Neteyam's. Margo was climbing into her link bed, while another person cleared a table for the hologram projector Prisha had been repairing earlier. An image flickered to life.
This was a map: a wide view of the mountains as they gently rotated in the magnetic field... except that the satellite view they'd connected to showed that one of the smaller mountains had been blown to bits, which were now dropping into the jungle below. Trees and shrubs that had been growing on it were in flames, which started more fires where they landed.
"I don't think we're in any danger here," the man said, bringing up specifications on weaponry. "We're kilometres away and they don't seem to have the firepower to take out the bigger rocks. But if they keep up the assault there's gonna be debris everywhere."
Neteyam felt cold. "They're clearing a path," he said. The Sky People would hack their way through the jungle with big knives rather than using the routes it provided to them. This was the same. "At the battle, before I was born, remember? The People waited in the mountains for the Sky People to pass below, and then dropped on them." Why could he remember so clearly Mother and Dad telling him that story, but not Syulang's name.
Reet nodded. "You're probably right. The question is, do they know we're in here? Do they know the Omatikaya are here? Or are they just looking for your father?"
"They're trying to make him angry so he'll confront them," said Neteyam. "That's what Quaritch said on the radio." Were they hoping Dad would take them to Neteyam, or did they still just want to execute him as a traitor? "Is Dad still here?"
"Margo said he went back down to Max and Norm in the samson hours ago," Louise offered. "He just said he left something important there."
There was another distant rumble of an explosion. In the display, a second small mountain dissolved into fragments, and a thousand banshees took flight, screaming. One of the tiny figures of the animals was hit by a chunk of falling stone, and vanished from the satellite's view.
"Can we call them?" asked Neteyam. Dad needed to know.
"No," said Louise. "If the RDA don't know we're here, we can't tell them."
"But..." Neteyam began.
"Radio silence!" said Reet sharply. "If they find out we can hear the explosions, they'll know we're nearby. If we lead them to us, we lead them to the Omatikaya. Do you want that, Neteyam?"
"No," he said, but surely there was something he could do.
Reet calmed herself. "If your father's nearby, he already knows. Everybody knows, for kilometres around. Trust me. Go back to bed."
"I can't possibly sleep," he protested.
"I didn't say you had to sleep," said Reet. "Maybe Prisha will have something else you can help her with. Just, please, I'm begging you, stay out of the way!"
Neteyam's patience was getting very thin, and that brought it nearly to the snapping point. "I'm not a child!" he snarled.
Reet stood up straight, and something seemed to snap in her, too. She looked him over. "How old are you, Neteyam?"
"Sixteen," he said, standing up straight. Possibly seventeen, he thought... should they count the time after the Sky People had recorded him, when he'd been living out east with his family in the islands? Or was that part of somebody else's life?
"Okay," said Reet. "I know among your people, you're considered an adult when you've completed certain rituals. Your iknimaya, taming a banshee, and your uniltaron, your spirit quest, right?"
"Yes," said Neteyam proudly.
"Well, humans do it by age," she informed him. "Until you're eighteen, then yes, you are a child. Now go back to bed. At least there you'll stop hurting yourself!"
For a moment Neteyam couldn't believe he'd just heard that. Maybe he didn't understand English as well as he thought he did... but no, she was glaring at him like a mother whose children had disobeyed her. He looked around the room, hoping somebody would support him, but the other humans were just watching, not sure how to react to this exchange.
Another scientist, one whose name Neteyam couldn't remember, broke the silence. He put a hand on Neteyam's back and said, "the Omatikaya will have it handled, kiddo."
"I am not a kiddo!" snapped Neteyam, shoving his hand away. He wanted to stomp off and sulk, but that was what Reet wanted him to do, and Neteyam ought to be above such behaviour anyway. He was the oldest. He had to act like it. Sulking was something Lo'ak or Kiri did, and then Neteyam would help to talk them out of it...
But Lo'ak and Kiri weren't here, and the humans weren't treating Neteyam like the oldest. They thought he was a child, so he could act like one if he wanted. He turned his back and stormed out.
Unfortunately, there really was nowhere to go except back to the Patel family's trailer. He got there to find Viraj awake, sitting on his bunk and playing a handheld game of some sort. Prisha was on the floor with parts all around her, putting something together. Both looked up as Neteyam shut the door hard behind him.
"What happened?" asked Viraj.
"Your mother told me to go back to bed," he said, sitting down on Prisha's bed. "Because I'm a child, and I can't be of any help to them."
"I had an idea," said Prisha. "I'm building another radio, and if we put them at opposite ends of the compound we might be able to clear up more of the interference by averaging the signals. Radio astronomers do it all the time. Then we can listen..."
"I don't want to listen!" Neteyam burst out. "I want to do something! I hate this. I'm a prisoner in here, just like I was with the Sky People. I'm a warrior! I should be out there! I..." he moved to punch the wall, then paused and looked down at his hands. The right one was still in a cast. The left was no longer bandaged, but the side of it was bruised where he'd thumped on the table after his stumble earlier. "I can't even call Dad and tell him I'm here, because then Quaritch will know where the People are!"
That was why Dad had left, he realized suddenly. It wasn't just to protect the family, although that had probably been important. It was because Jake knew the Sky People were willing to go through anything and anyone to get to him. That was why Mother had allowed it, because protecting the Omatikaya was her priority, the last thing her own father had asked of her before he died. They'd left so that the People could live in relative peace.
Understanding that made Neteyam feel both better and worse. Better, because it no longer seemed like Dad had done something selfish. Worse, because Neteyam now realized what a terrible choice it must have been to make... but at least he knew what he had to do now
The Sky People were after Neteyam and his father both. They must know that Dad turning up just after Neteyam had vanished meant that the two were trying to get together. Quartich wouldn't stop hunting them even if it meant finding and destroying High Camp and everybody in it. So Neteyam had to do what his parents had done. He had to leave. He stood up.
"Where are you going?" asked Prisha.
"I'm going to find Dad," he replied.
She scrambled to her feet. "You can't do that!"
"I have to. When I find him, he'll take me away with him, and the Sky People won't have any reason to bother the People anymore."
"You're gonna get killed out there!" Prisha protested.
That made him pause, as half a dozen things flitted through his mind: the fall from the Osprey, the eel bite, the medicinal sap, encountering Pawk, and his accident at the climbing wall. Maybe she was right... but he couldn't think like that. "I made it up here, I can make it back," Neteyam said. "I've got a better idea what I'm capable of now."
Prisha's mouth opened and closed as if she were searching for words. "You're still wearing Dr. Spellman's pajamas!" she said.
Neteyam looked down at himself. Humans wore a lot of clothes and it was still annoying when he actually paid attention to it, but he was getting better at ignoring them. Now he could feel the cloth hanging from his shoulders and waist and didn't like it. For a moment he thought about just stripping and going out there naked except for a breathing mask. That was more or less what Spider did...
... but then he remembered his sunburn, and the pebble he'd just stepped on, the cut on his shoulder and the bruises on his feet. Other humans weren't like Spider. They hadn't been running around the jungle their whole lives. Nguyen had warned Neteyam that his body was new, and needed extra care. Maybe... maybe Neteyam needed to learn to do things the way humans did.
"Where can I get some clothes?" he asked.
"I don't..." Prisha frowned. "No, wait, I know. Follow me."
She led the way to one of the other trailers. This one had nobody in it, although the beds were rumpled. Whoever lived here was probably now in the common room, keeping an eye on the situation. Prisha stood on a stool and opened an overhead compartment, which was full of folded clothing.
"These are supposed to have been Spider's," she said. "The McKoskers are always trying to get him to wear real clothes but he won't. I don't think he'd mind."
"Thanks," said Neteyam. He grabbed the back of his shirt to pull it off over his head.
"Oh, my god," said Prisha, and quickly turned her back.
Neteyam chose items carefully. A pair of blue jeans like the ones he'd been given at Site Nine, because the thick fabric would be good protection from thorns and stinging insects. He found a white tank top that would wick sweat away from his skin, and a dark blue shirt with a geometric pattern on it in half a dozen darker shades. That would be good camouflage in the forest, and Neteyam smiled a little to think Spider had probably chosen it because it resembled Na'vi skin. Prisha dug out a pair of hiking boots that were a little big on him, but Neteyam could make them fit by wearing an extra pair of socks. He put on the beads Reet had given back to him, and buckled a belt to stick the obsidian knife into.
When he'd finished dressing, Neteyam was a bit surprised to realize it actually felt pretty good. The boots were heavy and the trousers were restrictive, but having this layer between himself and all the dangers of the mountains was reassuring, like wearing armour. What else did humans take with them when they went outside. He found a knapsack and tossed in a first aid kit, and filled a metal bottle with drinking water.
"What else do I need?" he asked Prisha.
"Food," she said.
That was right... he didn't know what he could eat out there in the forest. Viraj found some field rations packed in silver foil, and explained to Neteyam how to break the capsules to rehydrate them. He packed those up, and added an extra oxygen canister. The older-style face masks available here wouldn't last days like the one he'd been given at Site Nine.
"You can't use the main entrance," said Prisha. "They'll see you. There's an emergency exit back here, if we just clear the stuff out of the way."
The exit in question was at the end of the long tube that connected the private living spaces. Folding chairs and paperwork in boxes had been stacked in front of it. They pushed these aside, and found the door to a smaller airlock.
"It's probably alarmed," she said, "so you'll have to hurry."
"Right," said Neteyam. He hung a mask around his neck, ready to put it on, then paused, looking down at Prisha. She hadn't been forced to help him. Neither had Viraj. Either one of them could have simply told the adults, and he'd still be stuck inside. "What are you going to tell your Mom?" he asked.
Prisha shrugged. Then she stood up straight, looking him right in the eyes, as if she were hoping he would kiss her. And maybe he should. After all, it wasn't as if...
"Get away from that door!"