Darla met “Sam” for the first time. “Sam” was the result of my dad’s fiddling with the Wang A.I. He tuned up its personality programming and gave it a voice that pretty much could pass for Sam’s former computer voice (which never sounded like Sam himself). It was a pretty good approximation—it spooked me. Mostly, the computer kept quiet.
We fell in love. I don’t know where we were when we first made love. “Sam” was driving. You ought to try this sometime.
There was one planet … it was green, and it looked like Earth (but not really; they never do), and the sky was scrubbed so squeaky clean that sunlight just slid right down it, spilling into the clearing of a forest of quasioaks and maybe-maples and making the fuzzy seedpods on the tops of tall weeds look like a cloud of ectoplasm at the tip of a magic wand—or halos on angels—steeping the grass and trees and Darla and me and our love in the light of a faraway star, a warmth and a power that has lasted five billion years and will last five billion more. It was a nice place to eat a picnic lunch. And there were motels—cheap ones (I was just about broke), the kind that have the state-of-the-art entertainment gear and beds that squeak and smell of mildew and faintly, ever so faintly, of urine. And have bad water. And a broken ice machine. And a robot desk clerk that nearly pokes your eye out when it hands you the lock pipette. If I had a nickel for every one of those I’ve stayed in, I could go back to 1964 and spend them. But we made do, and made love. Mostly we kept to the truck, and kept on the road.
Soon, the time drew near to when we would part. She said nothing about it, but I knew. Her mission was not to fall in love with me, but gather information. Roadmap? Cube? Find out. On at least two occasions I heard her rummage through the cab and aft-cabin as I feigned sleep in the bunk. She asked “Sam” leading questions when I was supposedly out of earshot. She did her best, but got nothing. She would have to duck out, her mission a failure. But she would be back for a second try, that I knew. However, next time “I” would not be here.
Last chance, Jake, a voice said. (The divvil’s, as Sean would say.) Last chance to smash the bubble. Take her, tell her, even if she doesn’t believe. Point the rig toward the nearest potluck portal and put the pedal to the metal. Exit hero with heroine.
But I couldn’t. Because, somewhere out there, there was a kid in a ‘57 Chevy who was lost and needed to get home. Because somewhere in the Outworlds there was an orphan girl who worked for coolie wages on a strange ferryboat and who would fall in love with the kid in the Chevy. Because Sam was right now lying in bed with a beautiful woman who loved him, and you can’t do that sort of thing when you’re merely coughing up a little blood, much less when you’re dead, which is what Sam used to be, but isn’t now … and because if I did, the whole damn universe just might blow a converter manifold and wind up having to be towed home. And somewhere, somewhere, there were five gods who used to be human beings. What would they have to say about upsetting the whole apple cart? Bolts from Olympus I could do without.
But mainly I didn’t because I had faith. Where I got it, I don’t know. Faith in … what? I don’t know. I think it was just an unspoken certainty that the universe has a purpose, despite all the reasons for insisting that it can’t, and that this purpose is a good one. It was absolutely absurd of me to think that.
I didn’t know exactly when she would leave. So I couldn’t linger in a last kiss, a last embrace, couldn’t know when such was happening. And I didn’t know until one morning I got up and she wasn’t there. Her pack was gone.
And so was Darla, gone for the last time.
Sam must have done more than he knew, because the computer kept saying “There, there, son.” It said it over and over as I cried.
At last, we could go home. There were still a few loose ends, though. Gil Tomasso and his driving partner, Su-Gin Chang, would be at Sonny’s Restaurant on Epsilon Eridani I to back my double up in the confrontation with Corey Wilkes. (God, Corey; you never die!) So would Red Shaunnessey. That would take care of … that.
Before we went to Vishnu, we delivered our load to Chandrasekhar Observatory. We were only a day late.
There was a problem with John. He was fine physically, but emotionally he was foundering in deep water. Guilt was the obvious ballast, and he had a ton of it. Even confession didn’t do him any good.
“You’ve known that I’ve been an Authority informer,” he said to me in Red’s kitchen before we left.
“Really?” I said.
“Yes. Of course. You knew that I reported regularly on the activities of the Teleologists.”
I told him that I really didn’t know that.
“I made my report to Colonel Petrovsky on Goliath, the night our camp was raided. I had to. No choice. I’ve never had a choice. It’s my brother. Did you know he was a political prisoner?”
I told him I hadn’t known that.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why the Militia let us go that night?”
“Yes, I’ve wondered.”
He stared at the plank tabletop for a full minute. “I’m a fraud, Jake.”
“Because you gave into fear?”
“Because…” His face had tightened into a knot of pain. “Because I—”
“Take it easy, John. You were under no obligation to become a light of the universe.”
“After a life of seeking the truth, trying to find some answer…”
“Forget it.”
“And now what? The Militia will want my report! And I’ll have to tell them you have the map!”
I laughed so hard I nearly choked on the sandwich I was eating.
It got to John; he laughed in spite of himself, then faded to depression again.
“You’ll have to kill me,” he said.
I shook my head. “John, give it up. Go home, make your report. Tell them that your group disappeared through a potluck portal on Seven Suns. That’s the truth. Or tell them I have the map. It really doesn’t matter, John. It never really has mattered.”
It didn’t help him. He rose slowly and went into his room. The next day he was gone. His clothes, his toilet kit, everything was still there. We never found him, never saw him again.
Home.
The farm was fine. After all, we had just left.
There was work to do; the fish tanks were foamy with algae, the paddies were dry, the reactor was on the fritz—everything I had been putting off for a year or so.
Sam was in disguise, so as not to terrify the neighbors. A pretty good one, too. Rumors were thick, though. The stories about us were at the peak of their circulation—but they would eventually die down. We hoped, but didn’t know.
“Time to get off this mudball,” Sam said, “Time to pick up and move.”
“You’re right, Sam,” I said. I called a real estate agent the next day.
And one day I got the strangest, most miraculous letter of my life. The cover letter was from one Ernest E Blass, Esq., of the firm of Dolan, Musico, Shwartz, and Blass. It read:
Dear Mr. McGraw,
As I am informed that you are primarily an Inglo speaker, I will write this in English instead of Intersystem (which I must confess I prefer myself). The enclosed letter, addressed to you, will no doubt cause you as much bafflement as it has to us. It was discovered among the assets of a holding company which a corporate client of ours has just acquired. To trace the long history of this letter, and the long and circuitous route by which it came into our hands, and thus into yours, would be tedious and time-consuming at best. Suffice it to say that, on the face of it at least, this letter had been held along with other papers and instruments in a fiduciary trust, which itself can trace its history back at least over a hundred years. Now, Mr. McGraw, let me tell you straightaway that what I believe we have here is a hoax, pure and simple, for there is no possible way for…
Inside the manila pouch was a yellowed envelope with my name and address on it. I tore it open and saw it was a handwritten letter. It was from Carl Chapin: It was dated November 6, 2005.
>
Dear Jake,
There is no possible way I can ever know if you’ll receive this, of course, but just writing it is giving me chills along with a warm feeling of nostalgia for a time long past and an experience that I’ve often suspected might have been just a momentary hallucination. But no. Deborah remembers, too, so it must have been real. Our life together has been overall a pleasant one, and we owe to you the fact that we are together. We have been married for over forty years. We had four children, three boys and a girl, and they are all grown up now, and two are raising families of their own. I don’t want to bore you with statistics or a recitation of the events of our lives, but we do want to assure you that we are fine, and that the decisions we made back then have proven out pretty well.
Shortly after the last time we saw each other, I went to college and majored in electrical engineering. The years ahead saw a growth in computer technology (I still think of Sam even to this day!) and that’s the field I chose to go into. I did pretty well, and wound up managing my own company for a while, until we were bought out, and then I went into consulting. Well, I said I wouldn’t bore you with details. I’d love to ask how you are, if only I could believe that there was even the slightest chance that you could answer. But I still think of you, Jake. You were a hero to me. I was young, and looking back, a pretty stubborn kid. I must have been hard to handle at certain times. But you helped me, Jake. You took a lost kid and helped him get home. And I’ll never forget you. Debbie has something to say to you, too, so I will turn this over to her.
Hi Jake!
Carl said everything I wanted to say, except for this. Over the years I’ve sometimes stood out on the back porch looking up at the stars, on summer nights, just looking, wondering. Are you out there somewhere, Jake? Or was it a dream? So many years and miles separate us, but I’ll never forget the crush I had on you. Carl was my age, and I loved him from the very first, but you were a knight in shining armor. Oh, I guess that’s as romantic as you can get, isn’t it? But I look up and I think and I wonder. Will he get home? Will he and Darla be happy? I hope you are well, Jake. I’ll always love you. Good-bye.
And then, again in Carl’s hand:
Me again. I guess that’s it. Nothing more to say, except that over the years I’ve kept asking myself this question: What was it that we found at the end of the Skyway? I’ll never know, but I’ll never stop thinking about it. Goodbye, Jake, and good luck.
P.S. My lawyers have devised a pretty fancy scheme for seeing that this letter has a chance of getting to you. They think I’m crazy, but I pay them enough money to build several mental institutions.
Hail and farewell, Carl. Hail and farewell.
Home. We sold the farm very handily, turning a nice profit. After thirty years of sweat and strain and broken backs. So we packed up the truck and made ready to move. We would stay well away from Terran Maze for a while; maybe for good. I’m not political, but on a bad day my opinion of the Authority was about as low as it could get. Governments just don’t come much more odious. Well, with any luck, the dissident movement would one day change things for the better.
But there is always hope, as I found out on the day we were to leave. Sam was out in the truck with Zoya, going over our itinerary (we were going to take a little vacation, visit a few nice spots), and I was in the farmhouse looking for things that we may have left behind. It was a nice day, and I was sort of taking my time saying good-bye to the place, when I heard, of all things, Arthur’s voice coming from the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. I opened the drawer and saw an oblong piece of olive drab material. The communicator, and I had forgotten all about it.
“Jake? Come in, Jake. This is Arthur! Can you read me?”
“Arthur!” I yelled. “What the hell? Where are you?”
“Oh, good,” Arthur said. “I have someone here who wants to see you, Jake. I’m hovering at about half a kilometer. That’s your house down there? The tacky yellow one?‘
“Get down here this instant!” I shouted.
I raced outside just in time to see the ship land.
“Darla!”
“Jake! Jake, darling!”
And again she was real in my arms, warm and real and alive. And not pregnant any more.
“You’ll be wanting this,” Arthur said, handing me my infant son.
I couldn’t speak. Sam said, “The spitting image of somebody.”
“Well, it was like this,” Arthur said, “I was on my way back to Microcosmos, and I said to myself, you big idiot, here you are with a time machine—”
“The airborne bogey that was tailing us when the missile hit!” I blurted.
“Yeah, that was me. I got back a little before I left, is all. Nothing unusual. But what a mess! Darla was in bad shape, and I very nearly lost her to the cylinders! You can imagine what it’s like flying near those things! Why, I almost lost the ship. Would Prime have been pissed! Anyway, so I snatch Darla up, and I streak back to the plant, and those darlings whip up a minihospital cum maternity ward in a blink of a gnat’s eye, and…” Arthur slumped against the ship. “I’m pooped.”
The road shot over brown sand and pink rocks, bisecting the plain and racing toward the potluck portal. The cylinders rose against the yellow sky like dark angels on judgment day, and through them lay all of eternity.
“How’s our speed, Sam?”
“Don’t ask me, I’m diapering a baby.”
“Darla?”
“Warming this bottle, Jake. Just a minute.”
“Hey, you people know I can’t drive and read instruments at the same time. Zoya?”
“Thirty meters per second, Jake, and holding steady.”
“Good. Can’t you keep that kid quiet, Darla?”
“He takes after his father.”
“And his grandfather,” Zoya added.
“Son, we shoulda never allowed womenfolk aboard this vessel.”
“Yeah, you’re right, Sam. I’ve always said—” I took a better grip on the control bars. “Commit markers coming up. Everyone strap in! Now!”
Everything was right. The board was green. This was going to be the longest trip, and the best. The markers shot past. I looked back to see that everyone was strapped in tightly, even the baby, Samuel Jacob, in his little crash seat.
We shot into the portal, and the gates of eternity opened…
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