There had been so many milestones full of so much pain and loneliness and disappointment that they both agreed that today would be different. The one-year anniversary of the day Luka and Ayla left the San Francisco together—the day the overhaul of the Accipiter Hawk was complete and all the new weapons systems were in place; the day they said good-bye to Cadie, Zaire, Two Bulls, and Benthic, and set off together in search of the Resurrection—would be a day of celebration rather than another day of melancholic nostalgia and loss. And as was the case with any true celebration, gifts were clearly in order.
Ayla stepped onto the bridge, barefoot and with her hands behind her back. They kept the ship warm and she wore a pair of dark cargo synthetics tied off at her calves and a simple silvery tank top. Her hair had grown considerably, and although she maintained bangs just above her eyelashes, the rest of it was all the way down to the base of her neck. Luka noticed immediately that something was missing: the smoothed sliver of tungsten carbide pipe on the boot-lace paracord necklace. Without explanation or preface, Ayla gave Luka an anticipatory smile, then showed him what she’d been hiding.
It was a piece of silicon paper folded into a square from the corners and bound with a colorful length of woven wire insulation as a stand-in for ribbon. Luka accepted the letter, tugged at the bow, and unfurled it. Inside he saw two handwritten numbers that, after a moment of examination, he identified as coordinates.
“Where is this?” he asked. “Is this the Resurrection?”
Ayla shrugged. “Look and see.”
Luka spun around in his chair and placed the silicon paper facedown on the polymeth surface. The ship’s computer, having records of visiting the location previously, also recognized the numbers as coordinates and plotted them accordingly on a map. Luka zoomed in so he could see more detail.
“Triple Seven,” he said.
Ayla nodded.
Luka looked up from the console. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What does this mean?”
“It means it’s time to go,” Ayla said. “It’s time for me to put the Resurrection behind me.”
“Are you sure?” he asked her. He spun all the way back around so that he was facing her fully. “We’ll find them eventually. I’m still completely committed to this.”
“I’m not,” Ayla said. “Not anymore. It turns out revenge isn’t really my thing.”
This was something Luka had already known about Ayla, which is why he had taken the responsibility and burden of vengeance on as his own. He now wondered whether her gift to him—in addition to a commitment to move on—was also a type of exoneration.
“Well, then,” Luka said, “what is your thing?”
“I think I’m better at forgiveness,” Ayla said. “I think I just want to move on and start a new life. With you.”
Luka smiled up at Ayla, then reached down beneath the console and brought out a full-size ration box.
“I’m ready, too,” he said.
“Ready for what?” Ayla asked quizzically. “Lunch?”
“Open it.”
Ayla tried to judge what was inside by the weight. “It’s heavy,” she said.
“Physically and metaphorically.”
Ayla needed only to crack the lid to know what was inside, and the immediacy with which tears came to her eyes told Luka how long she’d been waiting. It was the most unusual gift Luka had ever given, but also one of the most difficult and meaningful. Inside the box was about a kilogram of curious yellow; enough to keep him high for probably three years, or to kill him hundreds of times over; the last of his ties to the San Francisco, and to his old life.
Ayla set the box down on the console and covered her mouth. When she blinked, tears ran down the channels between her cheeks and fingers. “Thank you,” she said.
Luka stood up and Ayla leaned forward as he held her.
“I want to move on, too,” he told her.
“How long has it been?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that I’m finished. We’ll dump it today.”
“I was so scared,” Ayla said into his ear.
“Of what?”
She pulled back enough that she could look at him. “Of all the things you’ve been saying,” she said. “That you felt like you’d already done everything you were ever going to do, and all that stuff about your legacy already being complete.”
Luka looked down at the floor through the narrow space between them and nodded. “I was scared, too.”
“What changed?” she asked him.
He looked back up. Ayla’s nose and cheeks were flush and her face was wet, and when Luka leaned forward to kiss her, he could smell her tears and her fear and her happiness all at once. She leaned into him and kissed him back, and then Luka cupped her face gently and looked down into her wide, polished-onyx eyes.
“What changed,” Luka said to her, “is that now I want to live long enough to enjoy it.”
EPILOGUE
THE NEW DOME ON THE San Francisco was partially retractable. The top consisted of a carbon-reinforced polymer membrane stretched across almost a ton of graphene cable. When conditions were favorable, the material could be gathered and folded into a conical receptacle suspended in the center, exposing the entire city to both natural light and breathable air.
Being the city’s first large-scale attempt at kinetic architecture—structures capable of moving and physically adapting to their surroundings—the design of the roof was relatively crude. Although the implementation was effective and reliable, it was also considered prototypical and temporary. Now that almost all of the foundry’s assemblers had been upgraded to atomic resolution, and now that the refinery contained sophisticated disassembly technology capable of reducing most forms of matter into raw medium, everything tended to feel much less permanent. Instead of pretending that brand-new structures, from the moment they were completed and dedicated, were destined to stand forever, the San Francisco finally had access to technology that allowed them to acknowledge what had always been true: that on a long enough timeline, absolutely everything was an experiment.
Since atmospheric hypoxic zones were still known to occur—and since every minute the roof was open was a minute’s worth of energy not being collected by the integrated photovoltaics and stored in the quantum battery bank for nighttime, or as a safeguard against the high-altitude, light-obstructing particle bands that still circulated—the roof was seldom retracted for more than an hour or two at a time. Therefore, when it was open, it had become customary for almost everyone aboard the San Francisco to stop whatever it was they were doing and congregate on rooftops and balconies, or in the Embarcadero, where patches of sunshine were clipped and cropped into interesting and irregular polygons by the constantly evolving skyline, or beneath the Yerba Buena Gardens, where the radiance from above inherited exotic hues and shadows and motion as it passed through the massive globe and the atomized nutrient, and then was refracted by all of the different species of flourishing vegetation within.
But this time was an exception. The retraction of the roof had been scheduled far in advance and everyone in the city was asked to remain indoors and respect the privacy of the only two individuals on the rig for whom the request did not apply: an eight-year-old boy named Kayhan, and his mother, Cadie Chiyoko. The two stood alone on the rooftop terrace of City Hall not far from where the phoenix once rose, Cadie squinting up into the sky, and the boy leaping from tile to tile, selecting his next destination through the evaluation of criteria known only to him.
The boy’s black hair was long and thick, and had waves and curls that could not have come from Cadie. It hung down on either side of his face, concealing his dark almond eyes and his complex olive complexion. The boy seemed content to entertain himself, though as soon as he heard the cumulative murmur of drones descending through the roof, he immediately found his mother’s side.
Cadie put her hand on the boy’s shoulder to reassure him as they were surrounded by th
e compact, twitchy machines. Most of the drones took positions around the mother and her apprehensive son, each transmitting their individual perspectives on the scene into orbit where Cadie assumed the data was being combined into a single 3D representation. The lenses on the two shrouded octocopters in front of Cadie lit up, their split beams combining into semiopaque interference patterns that gradually resolved into a tall and elegant little girl in simple white synthetic thermalwear, her long, copper hair pulled back into a simple and impeccable ponytail.
At the sight of the little girl, Cadie’s hand immediately found and covered her mouth as she closed her eyes and took deep, quivering breaths. The boy at her side tightened his grip on her leg as he looked back and forth between the hologram and the effect it was having on his mother.
The girl’s voice must have come from both of the projection drones simultaneously, combining into a single, centralized, acoustical illusion. It was young and sweet, but without a trace of vulnerability.
“Mother,” the girl said. Her delicate smile was more evident in her eyes than it was in her lips. “Hello.”
It took Cadie a moment to respond. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long,” she finally managed as she blinked. “You are so beautiful.”
“Thank you,” the girl replied. “But this is not my true physical form.”
Cadie took her hand away from her mouth and nodded. “I know that,” she said. She smiled at the girl as she shrugged. “But you’re beautiful anyway.”
The girl looked down at the little boy who was watching her warily.
“Who are you?” she asked him.
The boy responded by maneuvering himself still farther behind his mother’s leg.
“This is Kayhan,” Cadie said. “He’s your half brother.”
“Kayhan,” the girl repeated. “A Persian word meaning world, universe, or cosmos. Who is the other half?”
Cadie smiled at the awkwardness of the question—the innocence of her daughter’s literalism. “Her name is Farah Abbasi,” Cadie said. “She’s a doctor here.”
“She,” the girl noted.
Cadie smiled. “It’s complicated.”
The little girl looked at her mother thoughtfully. “Combining the genetic material from two females into a single viable embryo is not complicated,” she said.
“I don’t mean biologically complicated,” Cadie said. “I mean emotionally.”
Cadie doubted whether Haná had any idea what she meant, but the little girl accepted the response with a nod. “Are you married?”
“No,” Cadie said. “But we live together. The three of us.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes,” Cadie said. “That’s complicated, too, but yes, I love her very much.”
The girl smiled at her mother. “I’m glad,” she said.
Cadie was surprised by the warmth of the sentiment. She hadn’t known whether she would be able to connect with Haná or not, but she now felt that they had—at least on some level. The feeling was a reminder to her that there was no sweeter concern in the world than that which came from your own child.
“How about you?” Cadie asked. “Are you happy?”
“Yes,” the girl said without hesitation. “This may be difficult for you to understand, but I have never known any other life, and therefore I cannot imagine any other form of existence.”
“I understand better than you know,” Cadie said. “Since you contacted me, does that mean you’ll be leaving soon?”
“Yes. We are scheduled to leave in 33.7 cycles.”
“Can you tell me where you’re going?”
“I am interested in terraforming,” the little girl said. “I’ve chosen to join a research team assigned to Venus.”
Cadie smiled at her daughter’s response. “Terraforming Venus,” she said. “You certainly come by that honestly.”
The little girl seemed perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t have time to explain now,” Cadie said. “I have something very important to talk to you about.”
“I’m detecting that the signal is beginning to attenuate,” the girl said, “but I will broadcast for as long as I can.”
“Good,” Cadie said. “I have a proposal for you. For all of you.”
“We are listening, Mother.”
“We’d like you to give us access to Equinox,” Cadie said. “And in return, we will give you full access to the Global Seed Vault.”
The girl seemed unprepared for the direction in which her mother had taken the conversation. She watched Cadie for a moment, then said, “Please wait.”
The avatar appeared paused and lifeless, and Cadie imagined her daughter’s consciousness being temporarily redirected and absorbed into some form of a collective. When the girl returned, it was like a puppeteer once again taking up her strings.
“Do you personally control access to the GSV?”
“No,” Cadie said. “But I know the new director, and I’ve been given authorization to negotiate on his behalf.”
“Accessing and researching the GSV would mean that some of us would need to stay behind,” the girl said.
“Yes,” Cadie agreed. “It would also mean that our two species would live and work in close proximity for the first time: you on the outer ring, and us on the inner ring. Haná, I’m not just proposing a transaction here. I’m proposing partnership.”
“Our two species are no longer interdependent,” the little girl stated. “What would be the basis for a partnership?”
Cadie shrugged. “Just trust,” she said. “That’s the only way it could work.”
“Are there many of you willing to trust us?” the girl asked.
Cadie didn’t know whether the question was intended to be hypothetical, or perhaps even slightly sarcastic. “No,” she admitted. “I’m not saying it would be easy—for either of us—but I believe very strongly that it’s worth trying.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” the girl said. “There are no Coronians willing to stay behind.”
“Not even for full access to the GSV?” Cadie asked. “Imagine what our species could do together with all that data, Haná. Imagine what we could do if we combined all of our knowledge and all of our technologies. We could go far beyond terraforming. We could introduce life throughout the entire solar system. There must be someone willing to stay behind for an opportunity like that.”
“There is not,” the girl said. “We believe that any form of symbiosis—any kind of peaceful collaboration between our species at all—is impossible.”
Cadie looked away from the projection of her daughter. Her eyes traced a pattern along the silicone seams between the floor tiles as she waited for the dead-end exchange to fade a little further into their past, and while she searched for a new approach.
“Haná,” Cadie finally said. “Can you tell me the story of the first Coronian?”
“Mother, I think we should use what little time we have left to say good-bye.”
“Please,” Cadie insisted. “What was her name?”
The girl looked at her mother with uncertainty. “The first Coronian was the child known as Genevieve.”
“Where was she born?”
“She was born aboard Equinox.”
“Why wasn’t she taken to Earth?”
“As you know, a child who develops in microgravity cannot survive on Earth.”
“Correct,” Cadie said. “So what would you say gave rise to the Coronian species?”
The girl’s response was both instant and rote. “The deliberate abandonment of our ancestors,” she said. “That is why the consensus is that Earthbound cannot be trusted.”
“But what else gave rise to the Coronians?” Cadie pressed. “Why didn’t Genevieve’s parents just let her die? Why didn’t they leave her behind and return to Earth themselves when they had the opportunity? Why didn’t they abandon her?”
The girl considered her mother’s question for a moment. “I suppose it was
compassion,” she said.
“Yes,” Cadie said. “But it was more than just compassion, wasn’t it? Would they have stayed behind for a complete stranger they had compassion for?”
The girl took another moment to evaluate the question. “Perhaps this was the parent-child bond,” she proposed.
“That’s right,” Cadie said. “The bond between Genevieve and her parents was so strong that it ultimately divided an entire species.”
“That is interesting,” the child said. “I had not considered it that way before.”
“So what do you think might be the only thing strong enough to bring those two species back together?”
The girl watched her mother while she contemplated the question. She looked down at the curious and timid little boy clinging to his mother’s leg, and when she looked back up, Cadie could see that she finally had it.
“It has to be us,” the little girl said. “I have to stay behind, and you have to come to Equinox.”
“That’s right,” Cadie said. She smiled and found she was blinking back fresh tears. “It has to be us.”
The girl’s eyes momentarily wandered and Cadie knew there was communication occurring somewhere beyond her perception.
“What’s happening?” Cadie asked.
“I have been given permission to stay,” the girl said. “But I have also been given a warning.”
“About what?”
“The consensus remains that peaceful collaboration between our two species is impossible.”
“It might be,” Cadie said. “But as I learned from your father, sometimes the only way to prove to everyone that something is possible is to just show them.”
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