Since the time, centuries before, when the people of Taahr had decided to abandon their solar system, the fate of humanity had been sealed.
A few days from now, he would have to decide on a destination to which they would bring him. Certainly not Canberra. He couldn't bear to see it reduced to rubble.
Where to go and what to do, when a universal destiny has taken everything from you?
No. There was no solution, just so much sadness.
28
The first officer's instructions were to keep them in isolation, but, after a thousand requests, the Taahrian had finally given permission for Sirio to stay in Namiko's room. After all, they had no weapons and were continuously monitored; could they ever represent a threat, even combined? Also his evolved brain, supported by millions of bits of information about the humans, processed by his neural chip, allowed him to understand full well why the man was attracted to the almond-eyed woman. After the way that they had been forced to live, and before they had to face a difficult future, he felt that he could make some concessions to his guests.
“We were under house arrest then too, but luckily we were able to get out and wake them up,” Namiko said.
“Tylor, in particular, and all of us, should be remembered as heroes,” Sirio said humorously, without sounding conceited. “They're our only hope if we don't want to fall back into the Dark Ages, or even the Stone Age.”
“Do you trust them?”
“I really don't trust them, but I've decided to make an exception.”
“To give yourself some hope?”
“Something like that.”
“Why did you come here?” she asked him directly, cutting through any other discourse.
“Well, you know when I was in the hole, the anxiety was very similar to what I'm feeling on this ship,” replied Sirio, who had been prepared for the likely question. “The only time that the fears went away was during our private conversations.”
“So you decided to replicate the experience?”
“To try to feel a bit of serenity before returning to Earth.”
“Look, I don't want you to think that I...” she started to say, but didn't finish the sentence.
“That you?”
“No, sorry, I don't want you to misunderstand or be offended. I know that I behaved wickedly. And I wouldn't want... it was just that particular moment. I don't know if that explains my behavior. No, I don't think so.”
“I understood just fine. You don't have to feel strange about it. I don't think that you're easy, just so we understand each other. I only want you to know that I'm here in the hope that we can finish what we started.”
Namiko's face became radiant and more relaxed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being able to understand all of this.”
“That's because I've lived through the same things as you. But I'd be lying if I said that I'm not fascinated.”
“So you're thinking about it?” she asked, amused.
“No, that is... I'm just being honest.”
“You're just feeling honest,” she insisted, making him feel increasingly more embarrassed. “Come on, I'm kidding,” he added, trying to dig himself out of the hole.
“But...” she continued in a mischievous tone.
“But?” he asked, getting agitated.
“If you were thinking about it... I'd understand.”
Sirio was about to go nuts. He just couldn't comprehend what this woman wanted. First, she had clearly told him that they should take things slowly and that she didn't want to be mistaken for a woman who's easy; but now, she was taunting him with what seemed to be an explicit invitation.
Namiko was strongly attracted to her Italian companion, and was well aware of how much he liked her. That provocative attitude of hers had started at a very young age, when, after a huge disappointment in love, and with the help of a friend who was a "mistress", she had decided to make any man that she met her slave.
Now, she and Sirio were facing a dramatically uncertain future; and, in all probability, what they were experiencing was their last and only chance to give in to that mutual attraction and merge in unparalleled pleasure. She knew that she had him in hand; that she was in control of the situation, as usual. So she decided to guide him in the game of passion as a gift to them both. She assumed her seductive femme fatale look, as her mistress friend called it.
At the moment that her two black pearls fixed on him, all of Sirio's indecisiveness disappeared. He remembered that look all too well. He knew its meaning; and finally, they weren't thousands of miles apart. He moved ever closer to her, until there was only the distance of a kiss separating them. As soon as their lips touched, he could think of nothing else. There was an explosion of passion, without any master: no slaves and no rules; they were free of any ideas about who should possess whom, and what to feel, physically or emotionally, to share any pleasures including the most intense of all.
They awoke in an embrace: a sign of pleasure and relaxation that neither had had in a long time.
“I think that soon they're going to come get me and throw me out of here,” Sirio said, breaking the spell of that moment.
“Where will you go?” Namiko asked, with a seemingly sad look which he had never seen on her face before.
“You mean on Earth?”
“Yes.”
“I don't have anyone: not a family or a friend, not even a country where I feel I belong.”
“Yeah, but don't you have to choose?”
“At least they aren't deciding for us.”
“You mean to let them.”
“No, actually I don't think so. Fate has already had too big of an influence on my life, forcing me to live in an orphanage for years, which I always hated.”
“I didn't know,” she whispered in a pained tone, as if to say I'm sorry.
“I think about it a lot but I don't talk about it. Out of sync with being a secret agent, don't you think?”
“Yeah” she answered with an uncertain little laugh.
“So I guess I've made my choice. I'll go back to Rome. Not because it’s my city, but because I've always had a deep respect for our ancestors who made it eternal. She needs someone there to take care of her. How about you?”
“I'll go back to Osaka, instead of Tokyo, as it didn't suffer much damage. In any case, there's a good chance that my family is okay, and they'll be very happy to see me again. I only hope that my father didn't think I was already dead and have a heart attack.”
“Let's hope not. In any case, I think that with all the destruction and the satellites being compromised, as the Taahrians explained to us, communications still aren't functioning well and it's normal not to hear from people who are far away.”
“Well, my family is used to having a daughter who isn’t around much. Now that I think about it, I did tell them that I was on a long mission that would keep me away, possibly for years.”
The two looked into each other's eyes, as if each wanted to give the other courage, trying to convince themselves that it would all turn out for the best.
“I need a nice shower now,” Sirio said, “before the beanpoles, or one of those damned C6 units, comes back to give us a hard time.”
“And you call that thing a shower?”
Sirio smiled at the joke. The Taahrian bathrooms were decidedly strange, both for their size and the way they looked, as well as the temperatures at which a hygienic liquid, which was only seventy percent water, came out.
“Wait a second!” Namiko exclaimed, forcing him to stop.
“Tell me,” he said in a gentle tone.
“You said that you don't have feelings that tie you to any one particular place. Right?”
“Yeah. If you mean what I said before, I already told you why I'd choose to go to Rome.”
“But doesn't that mean that you could also go elsewhere?”
Sirio arched an eyebrow, trying to understand wh
at Namiko was getting at.
“For a good reason, I mean,” she added.
“I'm getting the impression that you want to ask or tell me something specific. There's no need to beat around the bush. Just relax. You can tell me anything that you want. I'm here, listening.”
“Do you want to come to Japan with me?”
The question hit him without warning, like a tsunami.
Seeing the unsettled state of the man in front of her, Namiko said: “You're allowed to say no. It's obvious that...”
“Namiko!” he exclaimed.
This time, it was she who had the impression of being in his hands. She hadn't really been able to elaborate on her desire to bring Sirio with her; but, knowing that there wouldn't be another chance, and being so attracted to this man with whom she had shared the absurd, and quite unique, experience of living on board an alien spaceship, she had chosen to act on impulse, giving herself, for the first time, the possibility of sharing and building a relationship with a man.
Sirio, given the overall importance of his choice, didn't take long to respond: “I'm coming with you!”
Part V
Live or Die
1
“It seems like only yesterday that we touched down with the ship,” Sirio said, looking at his beloved.
“In the end, they kept all of their promises.”
“Yeah, but practically everyone still hates them.”
“How could they not,” Namiko commented, looking at the sky and seeing the pinpoint of light which was Alpha Orionis.
She and Sirio were walking hand in hand along the streets of Chūō-ku, one of the twenty four districts in Osaka.
“If it wasn't for that spacecraft in orbit above us,” Namiko began thoughtfully, “and the million displaced persons from Tokyo, nothing here would appear to have been affected by the arrival of the Taahrians.”
“We were lucky in the disaster. You didn't lose anyone in your family and I had no family to lose.”
“You could say that most people had it worse. In any case, once they've finished the reconstruction, the Taahrians will be leaving us a better world.”
“I'm happy about that, but not entirely convinced.”
“Why?”
“Let's leave Osaka aside for a moment. People all over the world are desperate and feeling sick from a pain for which there is no cure: that of loss! A child, a friend, a loved one... How much can it matter that the aliens have built futuristic houses or an incredible telecommunications system?”
“I understand what you're saying and I share your sentiments. But they'll be leaving us the ability to make better use of renewable resources, the knowledge to eradicate diseases that were once considered incurable, and a sense of global solidarity such as we've never imagined.”
“Unfortunately for humanity, their legacy will be that of having seen their parents incinerated or their homes destroyed. Remember the food and economic crises that ravaged the Earth early on? No one was immune to that.”
“After what happened, how could it have been avoided? They were quick to stop the risk of pandemics and restore social order.”
“Social order? And the thousands of terrorist attacks? What do you call those?”
“Listen, I know that. Their arrival brought the Apocalypse. But don't you think that this is the time to look ahead, especially since what appeared to be a demon has turned out to be an angel?”
“Yes, you're right. It's just that I have little faith in human beings. What will people do when the aliens leave? What will the new world order be like?”
“Time will tell.”
“What I really fear is that the galaxy is inhabited. Don't you find it unsettling that there's an artificial planetoid out there? Who built it, and how much knowledge and know-how must they have? Even the technology of our Taahrian friends would pale by comparison.”
“Yours is a thought that I've tried to keep out of my head. Why do we always end up talking about them? Couldn't we give it a little break?” she asked with a smile.
“It's just that this morning I felt like a hero.”
“And you were waiting to tell me that?”
“That was the first thing that I wanted to tell you, but when I saw you with that mini-skirt on, well, it made me a little crazy.”
“As if you've never seen my legs,” Namiko said, still smiling.
“Uh, for that matter, you never held back, even when we had the fate of the Earth in our hands.”
“Now don't make sound like a sex maniac.”
“Never!”
“Listen silly, how is Tylor?”
“He's doing well, or at least, he seems like he is. Since they stopped torturing him with interviews and filming, he appears a lot better.”
“That's incredible. Would you ever have thought?”
“About what? You know that, as much as I love you, I still can't read your mind.”
“I was talking about the fact that he achieved notoriety six months after our return.”
“With this huge disaster, it couldn't have happened otherwise. The journalists and television networks bounced right back, once things were restored.”
“Yeah, and we were really lucky that in that drama, there wasn't a shred of government in existence. Otherwise, they would've kept us in some secret laboratory, questioning us and doing experiments.”
“The only human beings to have been on Betelgeuse. You know, I still don't understand how the story got out.”
“I can't say. Maybe Franz's attacks or Igor's delusions made their mark.”
“It's fortunate, in any case, that some still consider us to be nothing more than imposters and liars.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because someone might believe that we're the enemy: allies of the Taahrians; maybe alien androids or something of the kind.”
“If that's why, they already did!”
“Really?”
“If you occasionally followed what they're saying on television...”
“How did the public react?”
“They took it as just one of the many hypotheses.”
“Let's hope... The important thing is that they've loosened their grip and aren't bothering us any more. Oh, I still haven't told you the most important thing.”
“Which is?”
“Tylor went to Canberra.”
“I never would've believed it. I thought that he...”
“Yeah, me too, but after three years, he was able to get past the trauma. He told me that he's even begun to participate in the construction of the Great Central Southern Sun.”
“That's fantastic! With a mind like his, they'll be finished in half the time.”
“I think he can even improve some of the Taahrian specifications.”
“Hahaha, you can bet on it.”
“I really admire him. He's the great hero who saved our civilization. Without his insights, it would almost certainly have been the end for us and the Taahrians.”
Namiko seemed to stop and think for a moment, then asked: “Do you ever dream of Alpha Orionis?”
“Often! And about the six of us.”
“And what happens?”
“Sometimes, it's fine, and others, it's a drama that seems so real that I wake up with a start, like the other day.”
“That's why you were so agitated that night.”
“Do you want to go back to living alone?”
“Come on, I was only joking.”
“Me too, of course. I would never leave you!”
Namiko felt really happy about what he had said. Sirio was truly in love with her. She had tested him hundreds of times, but it was his nature not to give too many compliments. That afternoon, in fact, things were going decisively well.
“And you, do you ever dream about the others?”
“To tell the truth, I dream more about the Taahrians and the spaceship; Eldgh, in particular. But I'm sorry to have lost contact with the others.”
&n
bsp; “Well, one is in jail, charged with being a dangerous terrorist, and the other is locked up in a mental institution.”
“Poor Igor...”
“And Franz? A terrorist. Would you ever have thought?”
“The reality is that I don't spend too much time thinking about him,” Namiko said.
“And Mike, who never showed up? After having found him again, I thought that he might like to hear from us, but we're the only ones doing the calling.”
“People are a mystery. Who knows what's going through his head.”
“I only know that he went back to Illinois, that he had a family and lends a hand with corn cultivation.”
“The Navy SEAL gave himself a bucolic life,” she said, amused at her own joke.
“You're unusually witty today. What's going on?”
“You don't like it?”
Live or Die Trilogy Page 11