“It’s already gone Ror. We are free.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Xiao Li smiled kindly, her tears mirroring Aurora’s.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Right now, my love? Nothing.”
The clouds opened, and the rain poured in filling every crevice in the thirsty dirt, gluing the world together with a deluge of love and pain. Wheatbelt Wallaby rolled in the mud until every part of her was caked with it.
Chapter 26 - Kalsang
In the mirror of the universe, Venerable Kalsang Jampa sat watching the unremitting stream of hours pass by in darkness.
Time passed without any reference points to quantify it. No regular motions dominated the heavens. Devoid of any element of circularity, the Wheel of Life flattened into a line extending only from one moment to the next. Everything was a decision. Sleep when you choose. Eat when you choose. Awaken when you choose. Breathe when you choose.
Even the unavoidable journey from birth to death had become a motion from darkness to light, as the Sun in the forward portal slowly and imperceptibly brightened. The line of time, in its usual dimensions and direction, lay only in Kalsang's memory as he hurtled homeward from his post at the frontier of the solar system.
For months Kalsang trained himself to subsist upon less and less, to prolong his life to its furthest extent. The essential elements in this struggle were water and air. Water would run out first as an accumulating amount of it was lost or irretrievably contaminated through breath, phlegm, sweat, and voiding without a terrapod ecology to cleanse it. He monitored his body as he carefully regulated his daily ration of the vital fluid. If his dehydration was too severe his kidneys would fail. Kalsang’s skin became thin and his throat eroded raw by the steady friction of dry breath.
“d'Song?” He would ask for her, the odd short name eliciting a rationed amount of hope falling into a survivable amount of despair when she failed to reappear. That too was important, for it reminded Kalsang that he was still human.
“d'Song?” he asked again.
The long avenues around him were silent as he swam through them. No phosphorescent street lamps glowed and the dim light from the sun burrowing this far underwater tinged the shadows blue. No creatures remained to cross his path, which made no sense since the city was a productive reef. He pulled open many doors. Ascending the hallway to his old apartment, he used all his hands to open as many as he could. The kaleidoscope of sight from his faces took in the desolation of endless vacant homes.
Where had they all gone?
“d'Song?”
He spied a toy at the foot of a ramp, a doll, floating in a clump of grass. He was sure it had been hers, and his two middle hands held it close to his heart.
Kalsang awoke to an alarm going off in his neuroview.
He focused his mind and his neuroview projected forward into the darkness, following the red arrow of the alarm. Soon a white speck increased into a lumpy body.
What was it?
The specs flew down before him and he read them carefully, his excitement growing. It was an asteroid, but one made almost entirely of ice, a captured comet perhaps?
While on astronomical charts of the solar system the Asteroid Belt appeared as a planetoid crowded swath of space, the true scale of distances between each made it very improbable that one would pass close enough to his path to be approachable.
Kalsang quickly forgot his dream as he eyed the floating iceberg greedily. There was enough water there to ensure an adequate supply for his full trip. He rejoiced in his life being so fortuitously spared. But then the calculations in his neuroview just as quickly erased the hope they had delivered to him. The trajectory corrections and loss of speed and fuel to reach the asteroid would so lengthen his journey as to make the trip to Mars untenable. It was a false reprieve. Kalsang watched, with whatever dismay his lethargy would allow, as the asteroid slipped from view and off the radar.
After that Kalsang’s hopes drifted like abandoned spirits in the wake of the asteroid’s trail, leaving traces in the mirror that reflected the universe. As they faded, Kalsang heard them sing, accompanied by d'Song’s soft voice.
Crossing the arid infinities of Space
Waters of the firmament are thin
A few molecules in a hundred kilometers passed
Oasis atoms drifting in the boundless desert
Lost in an endless quest for the slightest taste of wet
Ghosts stretched thin across the void
How like my mind when grasping at the mirage of true existence?
Chapter 27 - Francesca
Once Francesca returned through the airlock she'd locked Marco, who was thankfully too much in shock to talk or resist, into the store room. She stalked warily down to the ships’ cockpit, stepping over the myriad items that had ripped free when the Fulcrum had suddenly switched on the gravity.
Rather than a hidden enemy ready to pounce upon her, she found Souren hanging with one leg in the pilot's webbing. He must have been attempting to tighten the straps when one side gave way and tipped him out at a critical moment. His head hung next to a blood smeared console where it must have collided. Ouch. She knew how that felt. Francesca pulled Souren down and tied him tightly before dragging him back to the storeroom imprisoning Marco, so they could enjoy each other's company.
“Tell me if he dies or anything. Let me know, okay?”
Marco nodded hopefully.
Back at the helm, she patched her neuroview into the ship’s computer and dialled up ComSec. It took a while but finally a harassed looking woman with Command patches faded up in Francesca’s head.
“Who am I speaking to?” she demanded.
“ComSec H45E013, repeat ComSec H45E013. Salvador,” Francesca signed in.
“Corporal Salvador. Congratulations, you killed a great man today.”
Francesca’s heart sank. Had she been too late? Tears welled up at her failure.
“The worm hole’s blown?”
There was a pause. “I am not at liberty to disclose information like that to terrorists.”
What did she just get called? No, no, no, that was all wrong. The injustice of the accusation stung Francesca. Of course, what else were they to think? The Revs had a long record of installing operatives higher up than her.
“I’m not a terrorist. I stopped those guys.”
The Commander regarded her sceptically. “Guys? We only have one ‘guy’ working with you Salvador. A Marco Uliassi. No history of this kind of action with him, and certainly not with your level of training.”
“Yeah. He was useless, but good enough to get the Indian in.”
“Did you say Indian, Salvador?”
This was getting too complicated. “Sorry Commander. Just download my mneme log and see for yourselves.” Francesca sat back and opened her intentionally recorded memories for ComSec to rifle through, back to a point. Flashbacks flipped up in her mind as Comsec did their thing in her head. All the time she kept thinking, “Jesus, don’t let August Bridges be dead.
When ComSec had finished their scan, Commander Bitchface appeared again.
“It looks like we had it wrong.”
And a big load of thanks for putting your ass on the line to stop the bad guys? Nada.
“The wormhole survived.”
Thanks to who? Awesome news anyway. Francesca’s relief didn’t last.
“Then why’d you say I killed August Bridges?”
“That’s true, you did. Forensics have re-calculated the altered trajectories resulting from your Fulcrum engaging. The impactors missed the wormhole, their original target, and contacted Bridges’ spacecraft instead.”
Francesca was in shock. Had she actually killed August Bridges, the guy she admired over pretty much everyone? Without responding, Francesca downloaded an optical of the wormhole’s coordinates through the ship’s telescope. She would be getting a better view than anything ComSec would have seen from the Moon, especially si
nce her flight path was sideways to the Sun so her instruments wouldn’t be blinded by it. She was probably close enough to fly in for an up close and personal.
After some flicking around, there it was, unmistakable, the machine she and Raoul had seen come to life that amazing day on the Moon. Rotating like a magical ring with a small blue ball, it had to be the Earth, shining through it no matter which side of the ring was facing towards her. And, to the side, a bunch of debris sparkling like a cloud of glitter. Like tinsel on the Christmas plant in their balcony garden when she was growing up, marking out another year of family tragedy. Even more sad because it was pretty. Francesca wept.
“We’re sorry, Salvador.”
Then the ComSec guys commenced with their assessment of the ship. It wasn’t long before they gave Francesca more bad news.
“Corporal Salvador. We hate to tell you this, but you don’t have enough fuel to get back to Earth.”
And merry Christmas to you too.
Francesca closed her eyes to try to do whatever people are supposed to do when someone casually tells them they don’t have long to live. Get mad at God? Then she had a start, and asked in a hushed voice, trembling because bad news always came in threes.
“Raoul? I mean the other guys. What about them? We blasted off straight on anti-matter right next to the station. Did anyone get hurt?”
“We’re talking Tsuchinshan?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh, only a few injuries there. Luckily they were all in the gymnasium on the other side of the complex.”
“And?”
“Okay. Well this guy. Corporal Ferriz contacted us wanting to send a message to you. We had him marked for a suspect until you cleared things up.”
Francesca cheered up. If she was going to die, at least she had something to live for.
“Do you want me to send it through?”
Did people have to be this stupid?
“Here it is.”
The mneme opened and magically Raoul blossomed in the air in front of Francesca.
“Nobody died mi cielo.”
Then he sat there, looking out towards her soul. She could feel that he yearned for her, the same way she yearned for him. She saw it in the sadness in his eyes. Why hadn’t they just gone ahead with everything? Probably because everything always led right away to nothing and he was the same as she was. Afraid. Everything had remained unsaid where it was safe from being spoiled. And now it was too late.
“Ahem.”
There was a long wait before he said anything else. It wasn’t like Raoul to be at a loss for words. His beautiful eyes were red, and, for once, Francesca was happy to see a guy who had been crying.
“Baby. I don’t know if you are okay. I don’t know what I’d do. Anyway, I wrote this poem for you.
There is no need to name this thing.
Whatever it is.
Nameless it is free, boundless,
a rainbow without residence,
drawing light from the dark rains
and painting with the weave of Open Sky.”
It was a message straight from his naked soul to hers. She felt uplifted, like Shayera Hol whose wings had never carried her as high as her love for Green Lantern John Stewart had. It wasn’t her fault that his duties as the first mortal Guardian of the Universe had come between them. It was his. Men could be shits like that.
“Come back to me mi cielo.”
Francesca reached out to touch him and he faded.
“It’s not happening my friend.”
Her beautiful Raoul. If he offered her a ring now she’d take it. She’d never thought that about any guy. She had the crazy idea that maybe she should offer him a ring. After all, if she was going to die they might as well get married. Maybe she could order one that looked like the wormhole ring. They could disappear into it - into their own parallel dimension. Maybe, if she drove the ship into this wormhole that was where she’d end up. Some place with him where all the other crazy shit in her life didn’t exist. No, if she did that she’d only end up back on Earth.
Francesca’s eyes popped open. Was she that stupid that she hadn’t seen her way to escape when it was floating right in front of her face?
“ComSec. Do I have enough fuel to make it to the wormhole?”
The guy didn’t answer, and she was about to ask again.
“Affirmative Salvador. Just enough fuel but you’d come out the other end on ancillary power. Not enough to get back to Earth.”
“But then you could come get us, right?”
“I guess so. You’d have to have enough power to get into the correct orbit. I’d have to check.”
“Check? What do you have to check? You’re telling me this is our only chance and you think I’m not going to do it?”
“Well. I suppose so.” I suppose so? Francesca wanted to hug this guy, but then she wanted to kick him. He was sitting on a pile of experts and it took a testarudo like her to figure out something so obvious. Francesca thought her way into the navigation console of the ship and ordered it to calculate her path through the wormhole.
While she was doing it, the guy interrupted again.
“The reason we advise against that idea was that your craft really isn’t designed for the intensity of radiation near Mercury.”
This guy was all good news.
“You mean like we’re going to die if we do that?”
“It’s possible.”
“Coño. If there’s any possible remaining to me I’m doing it, right? Everything else is impossible.”
Another maddening pause that was way too long.
“Okay. We found a sequence that might work, but we will have to carefully maneuver your craft. You can’t travel outside a very tight corridor or you won’t make it back alive.”
“Do it already will you?”
And that was that. The fulcrum pulled in, making everything spill around for a few minutes. She neurochatted with her prisoners for them to web up, and she clipped herself in for a ride.
As the anti-matter drive engaged and the g-forces started to pull, she let her friend Marco in on a little secret.
“Hey Marco, do you know your friend Souren there planned a suicide mission for us and didn’t tell anybody? Don’t worry, I’ll probably get us home, but I just wanted you to think about who you pick as friends. I always like ones who don’t try to kill me.” That should make for some warm feelings between the two of them.
The crush of acceleration continued for what must have been a day. By the end of it Francesca felt the areas that weren’t sore, instead of the ones that were, because they stood out. Half way there they twisted so the ships ass-end was pointed at the sun and the portals now contained a view of a blue dot that was the Earth. She hadn’t expected it to be that small, which made her feel very, very small herself. Reminding herself how close to the edge they were focused her mind on the present.
But it didn’t take long for the present to turn into the past. She was pissed that the guys at Mirtopik hadn’t patched Raoul through yet. Apparently, the communications system had been damaged when Marco had blasted off. She’d tried chatting with Marco over the intercom, but he was too boring, and she didn’t want to spend what could be her last hours being that bored. Francesca filled in that time thinking about True Love instead.
True Love was real. Tia Yuricema had told her Franceleeta that everyday as she flipped out the fried tostones from the pan in preparation for their daily routine of watching neuro-soaps. Tia loved proving her point, freezing the action to point out a particular look and embarking on prolonged neurolink journeys to archived reruns, actor bios, celebrity news, banner-ads, and accidental porno mnemes (which were clearly not True Love) to prove her point until Francesca BEGGED for her to stop.
"Well. You know it is True."
"Yes Tia, you told me."
"Do you know why it is True?"
Francesca knew the answer by rote and communicated this by dulling her eyes an
d looking bored.
"Because the Lord God would not have made so much evil in the world without creating some things so perfect the Devil himself would hide his face in shame should his eyes fall upon them. There, see the Look he gave her."
"Bah."
Francesca bared her missing teeth in mock fury until Tia relented, at least until after the next programmed break. Francesca didn’t really mind the obsessions of the old woman. Where else did she have to take refuge. She loved her weekend visits, especially missing Momma peeling herself out of last night’s binge and trying too hard to be cheerful to hide the bruises on her soul.
It was far better to sprawl out on the pull-out sofa and live in a world where the passion of this week’s hero could outshine last week’s betrayal. That other actress had been a bitch anyway. The one he was with now - she would be True.
Francesca lingered purposely on other good memories. Reading the latest editions and combing the comic archives with Elena, enjoying their favorite heroines and latest adventures.
Sentimentality was addictive. Francesca clung to these crumbs of what could have been. And then this insanity would turn back to Raoul. Why had he not made a move? She could see that he thirsted for her. Of course, that would have made him just another one of those guys whose biology made sex into something like eating. Raoul was different. He was so much wiser and more self-controlled. His maturity accentuated his manliness and made her desire him more.
On the other hand, she hated him completely for it. It was unfair to torment a girl by constant attention and flirtation without delivering the goods. It had driven her crazy, but she was proud that she had held back and not given in herself. If he could play it cool, then she could. She could definitely do that. And who cared. Maybe their time had run out.
Round and round in her head. Francesca could not will him into her life right now and even if she could he was not a magician to make a broken person whole. She would destroy him before any happiness could come of them being together. She could see it happening because she knew what a total nutcase she was. And what man would want a woman who had so much anger in her? Would even Raoul, with all his depth and compassion, want to bring that chaos into his life? That settled it. She was happy that nothing had happened. For sure she would feed on the life force of any True Love that happened into her life until she had eaten it all away. Such a man as Raoul deserved True Love in his life, and Francesca knew it could not be her.
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