“Get away from me!” she snapped, then she found herself running again. There had been more exercise in the last few weeks than she’d experienced since gym class at high school, and now she wished she’d ever seen a personal trainer, so she could move quicker, keep going longer… something, to outmaneuver him.
This time he easily caught up with her.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, eyes full of concern. Yes, he was probably concerned that his fucked-up little scheme hadn’t worked. What else had he made her forget?
“How could you keep this from me?” she demanded, her eyes full of tears now. Ral had seemed so nice but he must have known what she didn’t.
“What are you talking about, Sarah?” Ral didn’t look like he was pretending. Either way, she pulled her arms away from his, then glared at him some more.
“My son, Ral. I have a son. An actual living breathing child, out there somewhere in the world, and I didn’t remember! What kind of fucked-up bastard makes mothers forget their children?”
“What do you mean?” The stupid question irritated her.
“I. Have. A. Son.” Her voice wavered as she spoke, pausing between each word so that Ral understood them this time.
“I… I didn’t know.”
“You had to! You’re an archaeologist, for crying out loud! It’s your job to piece together the facts and work out what happened! And that bitchy doctor who looked at me when I woke up, she must have seen that I’d had a child, but she didn’t tell me either! My ob-gyn once said you can tell by looking, because the opening in the cervix turns from a dot into a little smile!” She cried furious tears as she realized she’d remembered some stupid conversation from her Pap smear, but forgotten her tiny Liam.
“Does it make a difference to how you feel about… about being with me?” he asked, letting go of one of her shoulders to brush the hair out of her eyes.
“Of course it makes a difference! I left my son out there! I left my six-year-old baby on his own, and I’m gallivanting off in the future playing dress-up with an alien!” She glared at the school uniform she was wearing.
“Try to think about this logically, Sarah; you’re good at that. The time passed between then and now. You’re not leaving him. Whatever happened to him is already over.”
“But I’m his mother! I should have been there for him,” she sobbed, and as she crumpled on the pavement she realized she wasn’t angry at Ral so much as herself. “What kind of terrible mother forgets their child? What did he do without me? Why did I get taken away from him? It’s so unfair!” She couldn’t help it; the tears just kept coming as she tried to wrestle between the anger that she’d missed out on seeing her baby’s future and guilt that somehow she had abandoned him, and worse, forgotten about him afterward. “He was just starting kindergarten.”
The distance between the past and the present was growing into a gaping rift as the full weight of three hundred years hit her in a way she hadn’t been able to comprehend a moment ago. The harsher truth of the situation was suddenly starkly revealed.
“He’s…” She couldn’t say the words. Sarah cried harder as she grappled with the truth. “My baby…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Maybe if she didn’t speak what she knew, it would stop being true.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Ral said softly, and she looked up at him with agony slicing through her heart, like an invisible cord had been slashed between her baby and herself. She hadn’t even known it was there until it was gone.
“My baby’s dead.” She collapsed on the pavement and wished she could pass out.
* * *
The color in everything she saw was muted, as if there wasn’t enough light in the universe any more. She watched everything from somewhere very deep inside herself, as Ral scooped her up, and then she felt the rhythmic thudding of his feet on the ground as he carried her down the street. The bright sunshine only made everything too still and monochrome, as nothing seemed to cast a shadow. She didn’t know how the sun had the indecency to shine right now. Shouldn’t it be pouring with rain? She was floppy, and she couldn’t move at all, because the weight of loss was pressing against her too deeply.
How had she forgotten that she had a son? Could a tranquilizer from three hundred years ago really do that? Or had the doctor caused it, when Sarah had been revived? Was it some sort of memory-altering surgery, or an implant of some sort? Is that why everyone in the future seemed so contented with life? Because they couldn’t remember anything bad that happened to them? Or was she just the worst mother in the universe? It seemed like it.
“Memory loss is very common in cryogenically thawed people,” Ral said, as Sarah lolled in his arms unable to even raise her head. “It’s one of the reasons we stopped using it to preserve sick people. You were very lucky that you remembered a lot about yourself, and you’re lucky that your memories of your son have returned to you. Many people don’t get their memories back, ever, when they awaken.”
Lucky, she thought. She didn’t feel lucky. In fact, she felt terrible. Worse than those mothers who left their kids at home while they were out getting drunk every night. There had to be a special circle of hell for parents as bad as her. Nausea attacked her stomach. Ral must have recognized the signs because he tipped her in the direction of a grid just in time for her to lose her lunch.
“You looked green, sweetheart,” he explained, as he held her and soothed her. When she was done, he rearranged her in his arms and resumed their walk. “I’m going to carry you back to the apartment now, no arguments, and I’m gonna take care of you.”
She tried to contest the matter, but instead she just looked at him blankly, then the tears started again. If there was one thing she didn’t deserve right now, it was being looked after by anyone else. Not after she’d failed to look after her baby. All the spanking in the universe couldn’t make this right. If a court ordered her torn limb from limb, she knew she’d gladly agree.
* * *
Back at the apartment, Ral carefully eased Sarah through the front door, taking care not to hit her hands or feet with the doorframe. He was gravely worried about her. Gently, he placed her in her bed and sat with her, stroking her hair for a minute, before he said, “I’ll be back in just a moment. You’ve been crying so much that you need a drink.”
She just stared up at him with her haunted blue eyes. While he was in the kitchen making her up a bottle, he thought about how to get Sarah to feel better. There was probably nothing in the universe, except time and love, that would heal the loss of her child. If only Earth had stored their old records of births and deaths off-world, Ral could find out what had become of the boy, whether he’d had any children of his own, and set Sarah’s mind at rest. Instead, all he could do was take care of her while she came to terms with this new tragedy.
He’d known since he found her that her adjustment to life in the future had been too quick, but he’d just thought she’d start being more resistant to his authority, or questioning his ways of doing things. If he’d had any idea that she had something like this lurking under the surface of her memories, he would have done anything to make this less painful.
Ral kicked himself. She’d lost a child and he’d tried to reassure her by telling her that at least she remembered it. This was not the time to try to find the good in this situation; she needed to deal with it first.
He returned to her side as quickly as he could, and passed her the little bottle of warm juice. She took it, stared at it in disbelief, then threw it across the apartment. It sailed over the wall of her room and he heard it smash into something in the living room.
“I’m not your fucking baby,” she said, then went back to staring blankly at the ceiling. Normally, if she behaved like this toward him, Ral would have had her over his knee and screaming apologies by now, but this situation required a different approach, at least to start with. It wasn’t reasonable to spank someone for losing their child, no matter how hard Sarah was trying to get him
to do it.
He spoke in his sternest voice because he wanted her to know she was crossing a line. “Young lady, if you throw food again I will find something much worse than spanking to do to you.”
“Good. I deserve it.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke. He went to the living room and retrieved her bottle. Sitting beside her, he pulled her so she lay face up in his lap. Sarah tried to struggle, but Ral was seven foot four and had the strength of two human men, so he easily held her down as he put the bottle in her mouth and held it there.
“I’m not spanking you for something you didn’t have any control over. Where does that end? When would I stop? It’s not possible to hold you accountable for this.”
She couldn’t speak with the bottle in her mouth, so she merely glared at him. When the bottle was empty, he put it to one side and tucked her into bed.
“Try to get some sleep,” he said. She kicked the covers off and seemed to be seized with a fury he’d never seen in anyone before. Her eyes were wide, and her face started to turn red.
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do. Just don’t. You have no right. You’ve had your fun, you’ve completely fucked me over. I hope you’re happy now, because I’m not.”
“Sarah, you have to calm down,” Ral tried to tell her, but that seemed to make her worse.
“No, I don’t. I don’t have to calm down. My son is dead. I abandoned him. I’m the worst human being in the entire universe. How am I alive when he isn’t? Why do I have to live through this, and he’s gone?” She seemed to be talking to herself now, but she was completely hysterical. “By becoming a mother, I made a promise that I would take care of the baby that I brought into the world. I promised to love him unconditionally, to always want him, to always be there for him. And he’s gone! I don’t know what happened, all I know is that he was out there, on his own, and the person who was supposed to love him wasn’t with him. And I’m here, swanning around this oversized beach resort like the queen of fucking Sheba and acting like nothing happened. But it did. Do you know what it feels like? To love someone so much that you make a baby together and then they let you down so badly that all you have left is your precious baby. My child was already my world but somehow that got bigger, and now… now he’s gone. How could I not remember that?” She trailed off and went back to staring at the ceiling. Ral sat with her for another couple of hours, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence. Eventually, he was so exhausted from watching over her that he fell asleep.
* * *
There had been a time, Sarah remembered, when she had loved her husband. They had cared about one another so much that, one hot August afternoon, after much discussion and the decision that a summer baby would get the best birthday parties, they decided to try for a baby. She had a good job, a nice house, and they had been looking after a dog for four years. They were ready.
The moment he’d come inside her, she’d known she was pregnant. She took test after test, getting increasingly frustrated with waiting, until one finally confirmed it. There had been so much excitement over a red line on a piece of paper. It was nothing compared to the excitement of feeling the baby growing inside her. Pregnancy had thoroughly disagreed with her and made her very ill and tired, but she hadn’t minded so much, because she’d had complete certainty that it would be worth it at the end. Then about three months in, she’d felt a little flutter. An ultrasound confirmed it, the heartbeat was strong. Everything was fine. The baby began to kick. It grew, she grew, the refrigerator never had enough cheesecake in it.
Throughout the whole thing, her husband had been absent. It was the beginning of the end for them. He lost his job but somehow never seemed to be at home either. Sarah had worked right up until the delivery. The husband never showed up, and she was so scared of doing this alone that she’d asked the midwife if they could wait for him to arrive. The midwife had laughed and told her that babies didn’t wait for anyone. Then, everything was happening very slowly but far too quickly at the same time. The moment she’d held her little boy in her arms had been the most wonderful point of her entire existence, before or since. If she hadn’t been there through the whole thing, she would have had trouble believing that she had made such a tiny and perfect human being.
Her husband hadn’t felt the same way about any of it. He didn’t even try to find a new job, and eventually, Sarah got exhausted with working long hours, looking after a baby, cleaning a house, and paying for everything. The last straw had been when he told her he didn’t want to sleep with her anymore, now that she’d had a baby. Gathering her dignity and baby Liam’s squishy soft toys, bottles, diapers, and pacifiers, she’d moved back in with her parents. The divorce dragged out as he consistently failed to sign things. She signed away the house to him for a quiet life, and she had known from the outset that the child support agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. If she felt anything about the divorce, she was guilty that she’d let her baby down by allowing such an unreliable man to father him. She slowly started again with her little bunny.
And now he was gone. She didn’t know how to begin to process that. Ral kept trying to remind her that it had all happened three centuries ago. It didn’t make it better. She hadn’t wanted to outlive her baby. He should have had the very best of everything; two loving and committed parents and all their attention and affection, every single day.
Sarah spent several days lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, remembering everything she could about her baby. It felt so thoroughly wrong that not one trace of him existed now. He might have never lived. His own mother had forgotten him. She couldn’t forgive herself for it. Who had tucked him in at night? Who had read him a bedtime story? Who had helped him tie his shoes? Had her parents adopted him? Did he know his mother had been taken away, or did he think she’d upped and left of her own volition? He had probably spent his whole life being angry that his mother had dumped him to go who knew where.
Who would blame him?
Ral kept bringing her food and drinks when he was home. When he wasn’t, she didn’t care enough to get anything for herself. The only reason she got out of bed was to go to the bathroom. At night, she lay awake, alone, clinging to a pillow and quietly sobbing. When the tears ran out, she would stare into the darkness and the thoughts would subside, then some new thing would occur to her, and she’d begin to cry again. In the day, she would try to distract herself with things on her tablet, but she couldn’t focus properly and eventually she’d be back to thinking about it all again. Then more tears would fall. She had lost track of the days when Ral came to her one day looking apologetic.
“Sarah, I’m really sorry, but I have to go out to Froom, one of the planets in the next system. I’ll be away for at least a couple of days. It’s an emergency.”
“An archaeological emergency?” Sarah frowned in disbelief. How could anything archaeological count as an emergency? Then she realized that, wherever Liam was buried, it now counted as archaeology. Or at least, it would if the Earth hadn’t been destroyed. Her heart tried to strangle her again as she realized his grave would have been liquidized by magma. It was a truly horrible thought, and the nausea returned swiftly.
“There’s a building falling down. It’s three hundred years old, from one of the earliest Anassian colonies in these parts, and it’s being used as a homeless shelter, to house thousands of refugees. It’s also a scheduled monument, which means that it can’t just be knocked down, despite its dangerous condition. It needs to be stabilized properly, using the least invasive techniques possible. If it falls, it’s going to land on two other buildings. The area’s been evacuated, meaning that thousands of people cannot go home until it’s safe. And there’s a hurricane headed their way. I have to leave in the next half hour.”
Sarah sighed. She didn’t want to admit how much she wanted Ral to be here right now. He was abandoning her when she needed him most, but she understood why he had to go. Anyway, it wasn’t like she deserved the comfort and car
e she’d been unable to give to her baby. There were thousands of people on another planet who were worthy of Ral’s attention and input. It was only right that he should go and help them instead. She realized he was talking to her again.
“…you want someone to come and take care of you, call Laila. She said she’ll be straight over.”
Sarah nodded. “I’ll be fine. I’m not the first person in the world to lose a child. Unless there’s some special future technology that makes sure babies never die until they become adults.”
“There isn’t. There’s three days of food in the fridge that just needs reheating in one of the cooking eggs. If you don’t want to make anything after that, I want you to get takeout. I’ve messaged you links for two takeout places near here, and I’ve put more money on your chip so you can have whatever you want.”
He said some more things, and he might even have kissed Sarah on the forehead before he left; she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined that. Her thoughts were swirling too much to pay attention. After he’d gone, she felt emptier. She stayed in bed and wished to fall asleep and never awaken.
* * *
When Ral returned from the emergency on Froom, he hoped Sarah had gotten some distance on things. He had a little present for her, nestled in his pocket, and he was looking forward to seeing her unwrap it. He opened the apartment door. Strangely, the lights weren’t on, even though it was nearly dark. When he fixed that, he saw the whole apartment looked exactly as it had before he’d left. She hadn’t had any house parties, then.
Her shoes were near the door, so he went to see if she was taking a nap. He found her lying in her bed, in a stupor.
“Sarah?” He hoped she would snap out of it now he was back. She didn’t reply. He pinched her ear, and waved his hand in front of her eyes. She didn’t react, although she was clearly awake.
She looked hollowed out. Ral had seen this before, in the field, many years ago at a site that ran out of water. Earthlings got like this when they were badly dehydrated. Without hesitating, he called an ambulance. While he waited, he went to the kitchen and saw that all the food was still in the fridge, uneaten. Worse still, not one single cup was out. Two paramedics arrived within minutes and checked her over.
His Little Earthling Page 14