At the End of the World

by Charles E Gannon

  Chloe shook her head looking after one and then the other of them. “Who knew?” she asked rhetorically.

  I repeated it, but seriously: “Really—who knew about, well, them?”

  Rod grinned like a maniac. “Who cares?”

  Jeeza nodded, may have dabbed away a tear. “I do.”

  Chloe started. “You? You have a problem with—with them?”

  Jeeza’s smile became beatific. “I didn’t say I have a problem. I said I cared.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Jeeza shrugged and wept. “Because now, everybody has somebody.”

  * * *

  When the impromptu party wound down, I found myself on deck along with Prospero, who was watching fish nibble at the cakes. I grinned. “What a bunch of cannibals.”

  He grinned, too, but thoughtfully. “Not as though we have any right to criticize them for that, anymore.”

  “True enough.” I glanced sideways. He’d made a pretty rapid transition from giddy to reflective. “What’s on your mind?”

  He nodded at the waves, but I suspected that gesture was really aimed beyond the horizon. “I’m thinking about the job—the lifelong job—that lies before us.”

  I felt a flash of guilt. “Hey, was that cannibal crack a major buzz-kill? I’m sorry if it—”

  He waved away my concern. “No, Alvaro. I was just reflecting upon my own reaction to the news that Willow and Johnnie are coming. How I was every bit as happy as the rest of you, even though I’ve never met them.” He stared out at the ocean again. “These days, every healthy human being is a gift, is another reason to hope that we might survive and prevail.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Kind of ironic.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Ironic? How?”

  I shrugged. “Ironic because I know the other thoughts that must have been going through your head when we confirmed it was Willow. Because those thoughts were going through my head, too.”

  His lips crinkled into a faint smile. “Oh? So you are a mind-reader, now?”

  “I don’t have to be. You and I know that Ephemeral Reflex is essential, the same way we know that the others are right to call the mission suicide.” He started to reply; I held up a hand. “I read through all the files as soon as you put them out, just after we left Ascension. Kourou will be a stone-cold bitch. Impossible for the six of us.”

  I sighed. “But then Willow calls, and now we’ve got another ship, another crew, and more resources. And with them, we might be able to locate and gather even more. Meaning that Ephemeral Reflex might be possible after all.”

  Prospero shook his head, stared at the swells again. “So, you really do read minds.”

  “Yeah, maybe I do. Because my ESP is telling me that’s not the only thought we had in common.”

  He frowned. “Do tell.”

  I needed to look at the water as I told him. “The same second you realized Willow’s arrival might make it possible to save GPS, you also realized that by joining us, she’s also ensuring that some of us will die. Because if we go to Kourou, people are going to die. People who are our friends. People who would not die if we never went there.”

  Prospero got a little pale. “Reading minds is one thing, Alvaro, but that…that sounds more like prophesy.”

  I nodded, wishing it wasn’t true. But I knew better.

  I stared out at the waves again. Or rather, beyond them, the way Prospero had when we started chatting. And although I had no idea where we would wind up if we were to follow along the line defined by both our gazes, I could feel us coming closer to that unseen destination with every passing mile, every passing second.

  We were looking toward the same place, far beyond the horizon. Toward the place where the twinned trajectories of our fate and hope converged, became the vanishing point that awaited us at the end of both lines.

  We were looking toward Kourou.