White Crystal Butterflies | Wattys 2021 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Ten

I leave Kwon unpacking the ice-melting device and stride off to the lab to find Krüger first. I find them both instead. "Did either of you find out what that hill was made of?"

"Ice," says Krüger. Why am I not surprised he knows? "I tested it when it was just you and me there, and Lingmei confirmed while you were looking at that arch."

That shovel tap he did the first time we were there. Of course. As for Liu, I gave her explicit instructions not to touch that formation, hill included. By the looks of it, Krüger said otherwise. His eyes meet mine, daring me to challenge that call.

Just this once, I'll let it slide. "Next time, ask me before you go poking parts of a structure like that."

"I didn't poke it," says Liu without looking up. I notice for the first time that Krüger is standing between her and I, like he's ready to take the brunt of my reaction.

"I scanned it," finishes Liu. She finally dares to meet my eye, and holds up a handheld device she and Kwon put together shortly after we landed here two months ago. It's a miniature surface-radar of sorts; Krüger has been using it to spot snow pockets in the solid-looking ground when he goes out to check his instruments. It was the only use of the thing that I condoned.

"Is that data you can trust?"

"Tobias's been calibrating it for two months. So, yeah. I trust it."

He wasn't just using it to spot snow pockets.

"So that means we've both confirmed the same thing," says Krüger. "She checked as much of it as we could reach from where we were, and it's all ice."

I hear Kwon enter the room behind me. "The hill is ice," I say without turning around.

There's a long silence. When I look over my shoulder, Kwon is giving us all a perplexed look. "How did it move, then, to do that kind of damage to the probe?"

"I don't know," says Liu. "I've never seen something like that before, and it would be way too heavy for even that wind we saw. If it started as water, maybe the wind could have pushed it up and frozen it like that, but it wasn't. It was glacial like everything else."

"Do you think the wind reading might be an error?" says Krüger.

"I don't know. It looks like one. But it could also have made those snow formations. Just not the ice hill."

We all stand in silence. Usually at least one of us has something to say. But right now, I don't even know what questions I should be asking. I wish Yahvi was here. If only for a moment, just to talk to these two. And then gone before I have to face her.

"Ice that moves could have done that to the probe," says Kwon at last, breaking the silence. "But it would have to move like it was alive."

There's no response from either scientist.

Now I have several questions.

"Is the Dara Research Institute interested in planetary consciousness on Mahaha?" I say.

Still no response. Liu keeps her eyes fixed nervously on the laptop screen. Krüger lets out a heavy breath and runs one hand through his hair. He grips it in a fist. "Yes and no."

I raise one eyebrow.

He continues. "Yes, in a sense that they're interested in it everywhere. Especially after Jenu and Lechuza were named as candidates for planetary consciousness. But no in a sense that they're not necessarily expecting to find it here."

"Why not?"

"Because there's nothing alive. The point of the Neuron Theory of Planetary Consciousness is that you need living, non-sentient organisms to act as neurons in a larger 'brain.' It's that collective network that develops consciousness." He shoots me a glance. "You were born on earth, right?"