"NOOOO!" he screamed. Then, with a hate-filled voice, he yelled, "Kill her! Kill her now!"
"Total," I said, and armed the grenade.
Epilogue
"Attention, please. Your attention, please. Will all passengers bound for the settler hyperidor ship E. Ann Hinman please check into terminal eight. Attention, please. Your attention, please. Will all passengers bound for the settler hyperidor ship E. Ann Hinman please check into terminal eight. Shuttle craft embarkation will begin in two hours. Thank you."
"That's your call, Abby!" Susie shouted over the stall door. "Geez! Maybe we should just unbolt the toilet and you can take it with you!"
She was being sarcastic, but it wasn't a half bad idea. The last month, I'd been all but living in the bathroom. I didn't think she'd take it right, though, so I ignored her.
My tummy settled down by itself and I met her outside. Kate was with her, holding her daughter, who seemed to be all curls and smiles. The three of us wandered over to terminal eight, where Aaron, Raul and Sarah had already gone. Aaron smiled his slow, quiet smile and held up our boarding passes. He gave one to me, the other to Kate. Susie snuggled up close to Raul and smiled at us.
"So, into the wild blue yonder, huh? Any regrets?"
"Yeah!" I said. "I wish you were coming with us!"
"Sorry, runt," Sarah broke in. "but traveling through hyperidors isn't my cup of coffee."
"Cup of tea," I corrected.
"Uh-huh. Whatever. I'll just stay here and keep my feet on the ground." She grinned. "Or in it, if that's what Jody wants."
"And she'll want it, no doubt," Raul said. "Company A sergeants are in high demand, now that the Resistance is an official coordinating force with the various planet governments. And there will be a long period of adjustment as NATech finds its new niche as society begins hatching from its centuries old shell."
"How poetic!" Susie exclaimed with admiration. "How come you never talk to me like that?" He smiled and whispered in her ear. She moaned and sighed. "Never mind. I guess you do talk to like that to me." Sarah laughed.
"Knock it off, Raul. I don't want her flying us into a mountain on the way back to base 'cause you got her all hot and bothered." Susie and Raul both blushed. Sarah had found her next targets. We sat around a table near the huge windows that looked out over the Melbourne spaceport, and the shuttle that would take us to our settler ship.
I held on to Aaron tightly, and stared out the window, listening in as my friends talked among themselves. I was a lucky woman. In the six months since the death of Chris Young and the vaporization of the NATech stronghold, Earth had moved rapidly forward to make up for the lost centuries. Already we had established diplomatic ties with eighteen planets, joining their System - a kind of federation of planets.
NATech still existed, but their grip and grit were gone. Wanting to throw them off, but knowing they couldn't without risking chaos, the many city-states of Earth instead reformed NATech, fracturing it into locally managed resources. They were able to maintain organization, but now truly served the public. Maybe Deiley had been right after all. He had not been seen since that night in Glendale, but I somehow was sure he'd make his presence known again. He was too good - and too smart - a man.
The puterverse was being slowly rebuilt. Because of our safeguards, embedded at the same time we'd laid our thousands of mines, the critical systems had been rewritten in UTC the same instant they'd ceased to exist in binary. It was a vast, open land now, was the puterverse, but it wasn't a wasteland. It was - to be trite - a new land, there for everyone to explore and use and enjoy.
And perhaps one day travel through. I had been the first - and undoubtedly for a long time to come, the only - traveler to pass through the puterverse. I wouldn't be the last. Although my two trips through the puterverse - first to Chris' lair, then to Dr. Barrett's sick bay as the sonic grenade detonated - nearly cost me my life, I had proven that the distance between two points no longer mattered. In a dimension without real time, movement was instantaneous, limited only by the relevant time required to hold body and soul together. Space travel was not nor never would be obsolete since puterverse entry and exit depended on open access points. There was now, however, an alternative.
And Mike and Kiki would be there as guides and mentors, the founders of a new kingdom and perhaps a new people. If they were living code, then could they in turn make living code? I placed a hand on my growing tummy. Was the creation of inorganic life any more or less miraculous than organic life?
We passed the warm spring afternoon away, quietly talking and laughing and sharing these final moments together as a group. Kate and her daughter were going to come with us; she had no one here to keep her and enough sad memories to push her. She loved little Lena dearly, but the circumstances of her conception would haunt her for many years.
Sarah was regular army. In it for life, she would undoubtedly go far, provided she learned how to blunt her observations a little more. She was, as Raul said, the Sergeant of Company A in the 179th, a position gladly abandoned by me. A commission was almost inevitable once Jody made captain.
Susie and Raul were still attached to the Resistance and Jody's outfit, though the association was becoming looser each month. My first flash of woman's intuition almost four years ago had been on the money; it was only a matter of time before they started talking quietly about going to the stars.
The boarding call came through and it was time to say good-bye. With a mixture of excitement and sadness, we made our farewells. I cried and cried and cried, holding on to each of my loved ones, not wanting to let go, until Aaron pulled at me gently. I let go of Sarah, and we walked to the boarding ramp. Susie was there, holding back tears. Aaron went ahead to help Kate settle Lena in, leaving the two of us alone.
"See?" she teased, wiping a tear. "I told you not to discount marriage and children so quickly. Of course, you didn't listen, so now I can say I told you so."
She held me close while I squeezed her with all my strength.
"You're such a beautiful woman, Abby. I'm so proud. I love you."
"I'm here because of you, Susie. I owe you everything. Thank you. I love you."
We pulled apart and I followed up after Aaron. Halfway, I turned and looked down the ramp. She was still standing there, keeping an ever watchful eye on me. I would miss her dearly.
I boarded the shuttle and found my seat. Aaron had thoughtfully chosen an aisle seat for me, knowing even on the brief three-hour trip to the far side of the moon, where the E.Ann Hinman was orbiting, I'd need to make one or two trips to the ladies room. Since he was so big, he had the aisle seat across from me.
I was reaching up to store my travel bag in the overhead compartment - didn't air vehicles ever change design? - when I heard the elderly woman in the seat beside mine give a little chuckle.
"You might want to get a little longer top, young lady. Either that or keep your arms below your shoulders."
"Oops. Sorry." I bowed in apology, then tightened the soft white tie around my midriff. I sat down next to her and quickly configured the restraint field to keep pressure off my middle.
"Pregnant?" she asked.
"Uh-huh. Four months. The baby's due in February."
"Aren't you worried about taking your baby on a hyperidor trip?"
"No, not really."
"Ah! To be young again!" the older woman reminisced with another quiet laugh. "So free of worries and cares! Life won't be as easy when you get older, young lady. You wouldn't believe the things I've seen in seventy years." She smiled a wonderful grandmother's smile. "So. Have you chosen a name for your baby, yet?"
"Not yet," I answered, looking forward to our trip together. "My husband and I are still trying to choose good ones."
"Take it from me, young lady, and pick a traditional name. They hold up the best. You give your child a traditional name and there's no telling how far he will go. But make it a solid name, too. Like John."
"John's a nice name
." I smiled at her as the engines began their startup whine. I gazed out the window, my heart fluttering with excitement as the craft slowly moved away from the terminal. "I knew someone a long time ago named John."
The End
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven - cont'd
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Final Book Page 22