“Do you know who sent them, then?”
“Not a clue.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Because that would show I wasn’t in total control.”
“I see.” She leaned back in her seat, looking out at the sky for a moment. “But you had gotten free with everything you needed to complete your life’s mission, Cager. Coming back has gained you nothing at all. But you came back anyway.” She glanced back at me. “Why?”
“You know why.”
Ell folded her hands in her lap and studied them for a time. “Because you said you would never abandon me?”
“Is that still so hard for you to understand?”
“No, Cager. I understand.” She glanced back up at me. “It’s you that don’t understand. You need to stop taking risks for me this late in the game. I’m no further use to you now. You’re finally ready to go finish your mission.”
“You’re talking like Arlene now. Her heart was in the right place, but her taking off left a huge void in my life.”
“Then you should go find her.”
“I will. But we have unfinished business first.”
“You mean the control rod? That was a wasted effort. I have no way to call Lovely Pebble back now and she can’t return on her own.”
“I know. Protocol. We may have to take it to her.”
“How?” Ell scoffed. “In this thing? Remember the Cretaceous? That’ll look like a romp in the park compared to the Moon. Have a part fail up there and you’re dead.”
“You make it sound like it’ll be just me up there.”
“It will be.”
I studied her for a second. “Are you about to take off as well?”
“No, Cager. I’d never do that. I’ll be with you to the end.” She finally looked over at me with the same expression she’d had the day I caught her with the broken comm link. “It’s just that the end will be next week.”
“What end? What are you talking about?”
“It’s another of those protocols. Copies like me have a set operational period. Mine is up. Or will be in five days.”
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “Why have you never mentioned this?” I said in exasperation. “You told me you would outlive me.”
“Oh, Cager.” She looked out the glider window for a time. “Don’t be like that. They don’t tell the copies.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Three days ago a small area in my brain activated, and I knew. When we’re created, we believe we have extended lives. We don’t. We get a final update a few days ahead in case we have anything to finish. My allotted time was the maximum allowed. Now it’s up.”
Ell continued to look at me with that heartrending, guilty expression only she could summon.
“I know, Cager. I should have told you then, but you were so busy trying to get the glider body and had one problem after another. I didn’t want to distract you with something you couldn’t do anything about. But I should have told you anyway, so you wouldn’t have risked coming back for me.”
I finally shook off my disbelief at everything I’d just heard.
“Ell, I would have come back for you if you only had five minutes left.” But beyond that, words failed me.
Then the episode with my mom flashed into mind. I had told her I loved her that evening in my study because I didn’t recall ever telling her my first time through. Obviously, I had a problem, but I had been working on it. I had told Ell I loved her. Once. Even if it was a lie.
Yet my feelings for this little copy now exceeded any I had ever known.
Why had I not noticed this before? Was it confusion over parallels between Ell and Arlene. Both forced to be something they were never meant to be. As I struggled with my inability to understand, something deep inside let go, as if a shackle had fallen open. A small voice spoke.
This is three times, Micajah. Three times. First was your little brother who had only wanted you to include him in your life, and you lost him in the same week you figured it out. And even that wasn’t until your second time through.
Then Arlene. Wanting to be with you every day, she had followed you through one perilous ordeal after another. It was only your blind, headlong drive that finally forced her to leave you on the side of the road. For your own good.
Now Ell. Ell, who saved you from an all-consuming loneliness, yet had no choice in being sent. Who’d said she’d not leave you now even if it were possible. She, too, had wanted you.
And what is life but a search for someone who wants you.
But you returned her affection with suspicion and distrust and impassiveness because she wasn’t human enough for you. Or was it because you feared losing her too? Like you’d lost everyone else.
And now her time is up before you could figure out she has been everything to you.
It was clear. Even with a second chance, I had taken for granted those closest to me. The thought crossed my mind that I, too, was a copy. Not in the sense Ell was, but a complete copy of my older, failed self. A copy carrying over all the previous imperfections including the failure to do anything about them. All of this flashed through my mind. All of this and the realization that, since being dumped at my cabin, she, with her elfin smile, had been the only light in my empty rooms. Losing Ell would leave me in a darkness I could never escape. I turned to face her, but she touched her fingers to my lips.
“Shhh. It’s okay, Cager. I understand now. Better than you think. It’s taken me a while because you have a drive that excludes everyone around you. But if you didn’t, you couldn’t have done what you have.
“For a long time I didn’t understand why you worked so hard at time travel. All I knew was you wanted to go back and save your little brother. But I’ve never lost anyone, Cager. I didn’t fully understand what that meant. At least, not until now. Now that I’m about to lose you.” She paused, fingers still pressed against my lips, apparently gathering her thoughts.
“I learned early that humans need to be loved. And so I loved you. I told you so. And I was so happy when you told me you loved me as well. That stopped the loneliness. And after that, I hoped you would tell me again. But you never did. I wondered why, every day, but was afraid to ask. I thought you must have. After all, I was formed in the likeness of an image pulled from deep within you that first night you met Lovely Pebble.” Ell looked down at her lap. “But when you would take me out chasing whales, I knew you had at least accepted me as your companion.”
I nearly shut down in the face of her last statement. I took her hands. She was shaking now. Ell, the alien, had become human. The soft radiance of her humanity now exposed me as the alien. And I owed her an explanation.
“Ell, …”
But what could I say after all this time? What words could ever fill in my endless omissions. Cancel out my countless, inadvertent failings. I was beyond words. In the virtual world, I could have flooded her with my feelings. If she could have held them. But we were both real, and words were all I had.
I tried again. “Ell, I did far more than accept you. You are all I have that’s worth having. I do love you. More deeply than I can express.” The words sounded foreign coming from my mouth. Hollow. Contrived. And I suppose they were, but they were the most heartfelt words I had ever spoken. “I should have told you this every day.”
She looked back up. “Why didn’t you?”
I tried to find an answer for her but there was no answer. I finally just said, “Because I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved.”
She shot bolt upright, looking straight into my eyes. Starting to speak several times, she faltered, remained silent. I could almost see the thoughts flickering beneath her features. Finally she said, “I was born with memories of things I’d never done. Memories without meaning. Only the memories I’ve formed with you matter. Those are my life. Now I’m about to lose them. And you. Forever.” She looked lost. “I’m so scared, Cager. Even more than that night in the Cretaceous.�
��
Tears began to slip down her face. I had seen her cry a few times, but not like this. I took a deep breath and began to reassemble my old, rational self. Perhaps that me had some use after all.
“Don’t be afraid, Ell. I’ve failed you up to now, but I promise, I’ll never fail you again. I’m going to fix this somehow.”
“Cager, I know you mean well, but there’s no way to reverse the termination setting. It’s in every cell of my body. Take me by the cabin to pick up Schrödinger then drop us off on Lovely Pebble. You can go complete your mission then come back so we can spend our last days together sailing. I’d like that more than anything. I would go with you now but my countdown would be running the entire time. If you drop me off, you can return just minutes later by my internal clock. That still leaves us five days together. Five days with you knowing I’m loved is time enough.”
Five days. My God. I had wasted thirty-five years with my dithering silence. Yet no amount of backtracking through time could recover a single day of it. It had barely been enough to recover the glider.
And now I faced a heart-rending dilemma. Should I ignore Ell’s plea and drag her along with me in some desperate attempt to find some way to save her? Or just accept her circumstance and take her sailing as she asked? But even as the question formed, I knew the answer. As cruel as my decision was, my old self won out. It always won out. I swung the glider around. “I have an idea, but we need the control rod.”
“Cager, you’re not listening to me. It’s over. You’ll never find Lovely Pebble on the moon. This glider will overheat long before you can carry out a search. Stop. Please. Even if you could find her, she can’t save me. Her glider can’t save me. Not even in trade for the rod.”
“I know. That’s not my plan.”
Chapter 64
Up close, the Moon takes on a very different cast. Neither orange nor yellow nor ashen white as seen from earth, but gunpowder-gray. The stuff of shadow. Ell had been right about the dangers. As we streaked across its dark, basaltic plains, cratered and strewn with rubble; scattered boulders and silhouettes of sarsen gardens flashed beneath our hull as distant plains rushed to meet us. We hurtled though utter desolation north along the terminator, that twilight strip separating night from day. Where a moment’s distraction would leave us broken and marooned in this unforgiving realm.
To protect the glider from the full fury of the sun, I maintained a height that concealed all but its upper limb below the horizon. If we got too hot, I dropped lower into shadow. Too cold, and I rose up into stronger sunlight. A trick that, so far, had kept us quite comfortable.
I had spent several hours studying maps of the northern highlands and knew exactly where we were as we skimmed the surface below 8,000-foot Mount Pico on an eighty-mile run across the Sea of Rains to the dark crater, Plato. Flying through the center of Plato pointed me to the crater Anaxagoras. A continued flight across its center aimed me at our destination.
We crossed dark Plato in perfect silence then shot up and over Mare Frigoris, the Sea of Cold, into the northern highlands of the Moon. From there I lifted up into the blinding sunlight of that so-different sky for the final crossing of cratered desolation leading into the uncharted polar mountains where Lovely Pebble had placed her glider some thirty-five years before. By the time we arrived at the pole, the glider smelled of hot leather. The ice packs I had placed around the chips had so far kept them operational. I dropped back into shadow to cool the interior.
Ell peered through the side window, searching, as we flew through stygian darkness from sunlit peak to sunlit peak. Finally, pointing to a towering summit rising into the light, she called out, “There it is. I see it. She’s still here.”
I landed in the shadow of the larger glider, and within moments, it transported us into its holding bay. Our gullwing doors opened with a sigh as the small difference in air pressure between gliders equalized. As I climbed out, Lovely Pebble appeared.
“I was getting worried, Cager. The communication link went dead several days ago. I knew you were working on some sort of glider project but never thought you could pull it off with the technology available to you. You have certainly proved me wrong.”
“You are seldom wrong. Neither is the wonderful creature you sent to help me. I couldn’t have done it without her.”
“Yes. My copy. Her time is nearly up. It must have been a close …”
“She is not a copy. Not of you, at any rate. She’s different in ways you could never appreciate.” The words rang harsher than I had intended, but I pressed on without apology. “Anyway, I have your control rod in pure form. She ran the development program that produced it while helping me with glider concepts.”
When I turned to her, Ell stood staring in fascination at Lovely Pebble. “You can unload the rod now.” She gave a start and began pulling the case from the back of the glider.
I turned back. “I suppose you’re still stuck with your protocols. Do you want to discuss them now or after installing the rod?”
“It has to be now. But you already know that.” Her voice carried a trace of contriteness. And suspicion. “I think I know what you want in return, but it’s not possible. I wish it were. But I can’t save my copy. The glider won’t allow it.”
I nodded. “We know. The replacement rod is simply our gift to you for bringing us together. We’ll return to earth to spend our last four days. You owe us nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter that it’s a gift, Cager. I have no way to install the rod even if I could accept it. Once the defective rod is removed to make a place for the new one, the glider again becomes incapable of transporting matter. It can’t lift the replacement rod into position.”
“That’s okay, I’ll do it for you. Because I don’t think your glider will be in any position to refuse.”
The realization of what was about to happen crossed Lovely Pebble’s face.
“You are quite devious, Cager. And quite correct. Without the rod, the glider remains broken. Eventually something critical will fail, then I, too, will die. Even that is against protocol.”
“Then the glider will release the control rod when I try to lift it out?”
“Yes. The glider uses a hierarchy of protocols. You have it at a disadvantage.”
“I suspected there would be rankings, or one day it would get caught between two conflicting alternatives. So which would have precedence, the payment for service or the return to home base after exceeding mission limits? Plus indications of a captain gone rogue.”
Lovely Pebble let slip a melancholy smile. “The protocol to return to home base has precedence over everything. Everything except uploading a copy. I’m sorry.”
“I understand.”
Ell stood quietly by the black case. I nodded to her, and she knelt down and unlatched the lid. The titanium gleamed dully against the dark padding. I removed the defective rod and laid it on the deck then lifted the new one from its case and stood watching Ell.
“Ready?”
She smiled slightly.
I held the rod in position. A moment later, the glider seized both ends. I staggered backwards, momentarily gripped by vertigo, then Lovely Pebble said, “We’re back in the homeport docking bay.”
Chapter 65
Ell and I stepped from the glider into a world beyond hallucination. A transparent chamber of breathable air protected us as we stood on the edge of a broad, ebony concourse floating high above a giant gas planet. A thousand miles below, violent maelstroms churned the atmosphere into writhing storms of ochers and amber, throwing faint rumbles of thunder up even to our height. And above us, layer upon layer of additional concourses arced through darkening indigo skies as millions of embedded glider docks glinted with reflected rays of binary, setting suns.
Against this backdrop, we were mere specks, insignificant motes adrift on those lifeless skies. Skies as clean and pure as precision lenses. And we were the only real-world beings there to witness them, though I later learned th
at a boundless virtual civilization hummed along the interlocking platforms beneath our feet. But our musings were short-lived.
In the virtual world, hours play out in seconds. At the instant of docking, the glider reported it had incurred a major protocol conflict. A Protocol Council convened within the span of a thought, and Ell and I found ourselves facing them through a real-world port into their network. Thousands of virtual denizens in their various alien projections filled tier upon tier of forum-like accommodations not unlike spectators in a Roman coliseum. Standing at a dais opposite us, a weathered patriarch with the short-cropped, silver hair and clear, blue eyes of an imperial Roman statesman, threw a corner of his toga across his shoulder as the council took a second to review the anomalies reported by the glider. A moment later, in a mellifluous voice as might have befitted Cato or Cicero, he called Lovely Pebble for an explanation.
“There has not been such a breach of procedure since the Governing Councils were established shortly after despotic inhabitants attempted to seize control of the entire generating capacity of our newly created virtual world network. An attack thwarted only by massive memory loss in the data cores leaving the surviving virtual residents reeling in fear and shock. What is your explanation?”
After her account of events, the glider corroborated her story. Seconds later, the ancient prolocutor announced that they had found Lovely Pebble free of protocol violations. They also determined no protocol adjustments were necessary since everything had worked as designed.
“But the matter of Micajah Fenton, a real-world passenger owed payment for services already accepted, is another matter entirely.” The council exemplar turned his gaze to me. “I am merely the portal that interfaces our two worlds. Are you comfortable with my image?”
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