There was light chuckling, but my jokes were not well received at the time. I’m sure, in retrospect, the humor was not lost on anyone. At the time, I gazed across the cafeteria at a mixture of contained terror, naked terror, and shock. The officer corps looked grim and firm. I had done this to them. I had brought such terror into life from the night for my selfish aim. I am guilty, and deserve the court martial I receive.
That night, Sergeant Anderson cornered me in my office.
“How long have you been sitting on this thing?”
I took a deep breath. Lying was hard work. I had to keep it all straight. “I prefer to focus on the future, not the past, Sergeant.”
“We couldn’t handle an invasion here. Not here.”
“First, let’s find out what the thing is. Space is weird, Sergeant. It is a big, black void, and we don’t know what we see until we get a good look at it. We shoot at it. If it doesn’t shoot back, then we have nothing to worry about.”
“Are you okay?” she said. She took my hand. “Are we?”
I sighed. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk somewhere a little more private.”
I led her to the airlock, and handed her a suit. “Keep the recording device off, okay? Let’s just talk, you and me, as equals.”
I saw the fear on her face, saw her trembling hands accept the suit. She pulled it on quickly, nervously. I was not afraid. I double-checked her seals and she double-checked mine. It was the most basic thing in the world to a spacer, particularly on the quartermaster’s crew, but she had a mistake in her oxygen line, and I had to stop her and try again.
“Oh, my,” she said.
“Indeed.”
Outside, in the darkness, I oriented myself and looked up into the darkness toward the little rock I had conjured into an enemy ship. I felt it hanging over my head, like a needle screaming toward me.
We walked a bit, around the surface of the ship.
“It’s easy to forget how beautiful it is out here when we aren’t working,” she said. “The last time I was out here, I was carrying so many tools on my back, the devils nearly crushed my oxygen line.”
“On other colonies, they build solar sailers, and surf the sky itself. I have looked into it, and it would strain our drone supply too much to monitor human recovery in emergencies.”
She stopped in her tracks.
“My recorder has been off for a while now, Captain Aldo.”
I turned to look at her through the glass ball, her face lit up from below like a monster’s mask. She was afraid.
“I want you to be close to me when the mission is happening,” I said. “Listen, there is a loophole in the system. If it is an attack, and we can’t stop it, the ranking commander can set up an emergency ansible transfer of data. It doesn’t say what that data is, but, in the past, it was intended to be a complete record of the invasion along with a witness of it to respond to direct questions. Stay close. I may need you to handle the transfer controls.”
“We’ll still be dead, you and I,” she said. “Your clone will be fine. What about everyone else?”
I looked up at the night sky. “We can only do the best we can, Adebayo. We won’t have long to do it, I’m afraid. If we are under attack, the station has no meaningful defenses against EM sweep anymore. There are too many insulation holes where the station built out over the damage in the hull’s shields.”
“Ronaldo, please tell me you’re joking. You want to just clone out in an attack?”
“Why not? Is it wrong to want to ascend? This is your chance, Adebayo. You can come with me, if it happens that way. We can go together.”
“I should report you to the admiral.”
“The only breach of protocol and procedure, yet, is my invitation to you to come along, if we are under attack. It is implied that the highest-ranking station member or the commander go alone, except when there are exceptional circumstances.”
“I should still report you.”
“Do what you like,” I said. I looked up. “It’s there, coming toward us now, but it isn’t on a collision course. It could easily be a rock that bounced off a rock where we didn’t see it. It is not a lie to tell you that that scenario is most likely. Only one scenario like this has ever led to positive contact.”
“Where was that?”
“Far away, and long ago. Back when we didn’t even know what we were fighting. The survivors of the colony sent back their reports, and one of their officers, and it was a turning point in the war.”
This was a lie. I was amazed at how easily lies came to my lips. Someday, the truth would come out, and soon.
“Come with me, Adebayo. Please, come with me.”
“You sound so certain that we are doomed,” she said. “I’ll think about it. I’m going back, and I will be turning my recording device back on now.”
I stayed out on the hull awhile. I walked up and down, nominally inspecting for signs of damage. There, the very spot my predecessor stood when he ripped his helmet off and died. I walked around it, circling it like a vulture. I knew where it was.
I struggled to remember his whole name, beyond just Edward. I should know it. I should never forget any dead people’s names, but I do.
* * *
The mission, then, was particular in its timing. I watched the ship fly out for the patrol, and kept a line in to the communication devices, and the different maps and projections. When the admiral got close, I needed to be quick on my feet. I also needed the sergeant’s answer.
I went to her in the enlisted quarters, from which she refused to budge without a signed letter from HR, the admiral, or both. With the dimmers on, only the floor pathways illuminated. I had a homing tag set up on my tablet to go to hers, courtesy of the privilege of command, and sought her out.
She was wide awake, sitting in her cot behind a screen of blankets and old towels, with the other women enlisted. She was reading something bound in paper and leather. She stood up and saluted me.
“It’s almost time,” I said.
“How much time?”
“Two days,” I said.
“Plenty of time. Are you wide awake?”
“Completely awake.”
“I, as well.”
She gestured to me, to follow her. I did.
She took me to a far room, on one of the uninhabited floors with limited gravity. We were lighter there, taking slightly longer strides, able to push too hard against the ground to touch the ceiling. She took my hand out to the edge of the room, and placed it on the farthest wall from the door. She attached me to it, binding me with a rope to an old supply hook.
Then, she pulled herself up, where gravity was light enough we could almost float a moment, at this weird corner of the room, where it must turn higher up than the rest, for some archaic designed reason in the old space vessel.
And, hidden there among boxes and the stale stench of dust and biotic cleansing agents, and lashed to my surprise to a ceiling that helped me float—there, we became one.
Afterward, she held on to me to keep floating.
I assumed this meant she would be with me when I jumped, but this was no answer.
We fell asleep, and I woke up alone, untied, and resting gently on the ground.
Back in my office, I saw a stack of messages, and ignored them all. The only thing that mattered was the jump.
It was nearly time. Thinking Sergeant Anderson was on my side after the night, I called her and asked her to meet me in the chamber for some maintenance checks. I asked her to come alone.
I had my tablet set up.
I had everything ready.
I called NetSec and asked for an update on the lightspeed quickconnect, claiming that I was having issues getting through.
“Everything’s fine over here. They’re getting close, though. Another day. Maybe two if the object picks up any more speed. It’s fluctuated.”
It has fluctuated, and has been fluctuating for some time, but I didn’t tell him that. The object h
as some unstable elements that kick off and contribute to either speed or slowing down as they deteriorate unevenly. It is likely a methane ice with radioactive elements, or some other unstable composition. Regardless, I thanked him, and told him to keep me informed if anything changed.
Sergeant Anderson messaged me to tell me that she was busy.
I messaged her back that it was important that she come, alone.
She arrived.
“Adebayo,” I said. I kissed her cheek. She drew away from me.
“What is this?” she said. “There is nothing wrong with this facility, and you order me over here?”
“Just hold still,” I said. “It only takes a moment to check the system out, together.”
I pushed the first button.
“What are you doing on your tablet?” she said.
“Working,” I said.
“It is good to work. It is good to follow rules. It keeps the station spaceworthy. It protects us from stellar radiation. I leave you to it, sir.”
“Wait,” I said. I held out my hand. “Come with me.”
“I will not. If something happens, let me die here. There is enough of me in this universe. I will not go with you.”
“Please?”
She shook her head and turned back to her work. “Sorry, Captain,” she said.
I did not make a scene. If I made a scene, she might suspect something was up. I lowered my hand. I left her to her work. I told myself that Shui Mien was out there, and a thousand others just as beautiful. I should not be greedy and take everyone with me. I should limit my transgression to a single cell.
This is what I thought, until she arrived behind me. She placed a finger on my back. I paused, in my doorway, afraid to turn around, because I knew it was her.
“What scheme are you up to, Commander?”
I turned slowly. “Come with me,” I said. “You’ll see.”
She crossed her arms and looked me up and down. I was in my cleanest remaining uniform, and my hair was cut sharp and tight. She did not trust the way I was dressed. “Why can’t you tell me now? There is no reason to wait.”
I took a deep breath. “It will make more sense when I show you, first.”
Trusting me, the fool for it, led to a happy glen and a lake, an ocean, an island of sand, and all the great trees of all the colonies. She took my hand and let me lead her in. The glass descended. She looked at me, as the gas poured in, with an expression I am unable to describe in words. It was as if every emotion poured into her along with the gas of the transfer protocol. The gas cleared with the vacuum seal of the line, pressurizing the chamber a little, and all the air whooshed out in a rush.
Then, it was over. There were no spots in my eyes, this time, and no great sense of alienation. I was in the same terrible space station, above a planet where I would go to live and die. It did not feel like it was supposed to feel. I don’t know what I thought would happen.
I plugged back into the data lines. I checked my protocol network, and had set up the ansible for immediate, emergency transfer. When the time came, I did not hesitate to push the button on the quickconnect, and then wait for the signal to return, empty. Then, clearing all the protocols, I could send us both across the galaxies of man.
My line lit up, with NetSec howling. Everyone would be afraid. I kicked the alert back into the network.
“We are on alert!” she said, as the war horn sounded. “What did you do?”
I completed the cycle, blasting us both across the two galaxies of human habitation, cloned in every system as the warning harbinger of a war that was . . .
Well, the quickconnect returned after my last blast, and the admiral was on the horn with me, trying to figure out what happened.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought we were at war, there, and I hit the alarm. I thought an EM blast was coming.”
“We’re fine,” she said. “We’ve gotten a good look at the enemy. It’s nothing. It’s galactic debris, and it’s dead as a stone. It’s human, even. It’s from the station itself. It’s part of the old warship engine crashed onto a methane meteor. Captain, what did you do?”
“I believe I have made a terrible mistake, Admiral.”
The ansible reports were flying out of the station swift and fast, carrying our alert, throwing all the transfers off.
“I’m getting lots of urgent messages from NetSec. I’m getting lots of messages about a dataline jam on the ansible.”
I never planned my second move. Getting away was all that mattered. I didn’t bother to cover my tracks. I didn’t think anything of it.
“Let me put together the reports and we’ll figure it all out,” I said. I hung up.
“You did something awful, did you not?” Sergeant Anderson said. She looked at me with such horror. “You did something evil to me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I did not want this,” she said. She grabbed me. She punched me, hard. It hurt. I didn’t fight back. She called security down, called emergency and rang alarms and arrested me.
She, whom I have transcended.
She had nothing to do with me or my plans. Nothing. It was all me. It was only ever me. I did it for myself. I decided to bring her, because I thought . . .
I don’t know what I thought.
I like to think in other colonies we are lovers.
* * *
Obasanjo came to visit me. He sat down outside the bars of this cell in dirty, dusty clothes. Confessor, he said he was proud of me.
I told him that I was going to become a monk, if I could.
He frowned then. “You have defeated the bastards, and now you’re going to surrender to them?”
“I think I have found God, Obasanjo.”
“When?”
“After I committed my great, selfish sin, I had a dream. In this dream, I shared the dream with every other version of my self, all of the hundreds of us who were born that day when I overloaded the system with my false alarm. We were all together, in our consciousness, all one soul spread out in so many bodies, all sharing the same memories. We sat under a mesquite tree in San Antonio, together in one body. We looked up at the sun, and I knew that I was looking at God.”
“I had a dream I gave the old admiral a good punch in the jaw once. It didn’t cause any conversion experiences. I never punched him, either.”
“I touched the sun, Obasanjo. I did something . . . Past the branches of the tree, and all the way up to the sun itself.”
“Like Icarus, you have fallen,” he said. He reached through the bars and held out a sweet stick of pasted jujube and malted amaranth. I took the candy. I chewed. I swallowed. “I wanted to tell you that I always loved you,” he said. “I wish it was me that you loved.”
“I have always considered you my friend,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t be more than that.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything worthy of my infatuation. It is a lonely posting, and that’s all. I’m getting married, though, and I thought I would tell you that, just to clear the air. Amanda doesn’t want to see you. We are having a party. You aren’t invited. Frankly, I don’t think Amanda wants to see you again.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “I understand how she feels. I’m sorry I made such a mess with her. I hope you both are very happy.”
“Tell God, if you see him again, that I don’t believe in him. I don’t believe in anything that would drag us out here to this place.”
“I will let Him know, if I encounter Him again.”
That day, after he was gone, and the sun was setting, I was taken outside for physical activity. During my exertion period, I was permitted to plant huisache trees in the yard, under supervision of the monks. My imprisonment is not so bad, when I have visitors, and I am able to plant trees.
I regret that I did not apologize to Obasanjo. I knew. I always knew. I think I took advantage of him, a little bit, and abused our friendship with the kernel hidden
in his face and voice. I should have apologized to him. I wish to send him a lovely note for his wedding, and I hope, dear confessor, you can let me borrow a pen and something that would work as a formal card.
Memory is the story we tell ourselves, and we believe it is our only story. Memory of us is what we ask of God. What God forgets does not exist, even as a memory’s memory. I turn my life over to God, that he may never forget me. For too long, I have felt like an afterthought in the mind of God and history. Perhaps it is my pride, again, but I wish to never to be forgotten by God—to never feel forgotten by God . . . By God, or by anyone.
I can’t think of anything else to confess.
About the Author
Photograph by Angela McDermott
JOE M. MCDERMOTT is best known for the novels Last Dragon, Never Knew Another, and Maze. His work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program. He lives in Texas.
You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY JOE M. MCDERMOTT
(AS J. M. MCDERMOTT)
Last Dragon
Maze
Straggletaggle
THE DOGSLAND TRILOGY
Never Knew Another
When We Were Executioners
We Leave Together
COLLECTIONS
Disintegration Visions
Women and Monsters
Thank you for buying this Tor.com ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
For email updates on the author, click here.
TOR•COM
Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.
*
More than just a publisher's website, Tor.com is a venue for original fiction, comics, and discussion of the entire field of SF and fantasy, in all media and from all sources. Visit our site today—and join the conversation yourself.
The Fortress at the End of Time Page 23