by Rob Favre
She studied the horizon. There was another bird out there, maybe a gull, maybe something else. It was too far away to tell. “I would be lying if I said I do not still feel for you, Old One. That is why it still hurts so much, knowing you would rather be with her.”
“The person I was before all this happened wanted to be with her. But that was before I spent the all this time with you. And it turns out… it turns out I’d like to spend some more time with you, if you’re willing.”
Renay sighed, and rested her head on my shoulder. “I find it annoying that I cannot seem to stay angry at you.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close. We watched the sunset turn the waves to flame for a while. The sky grew dark, and the waves glowed green and blue in the light of a blazing canopy of stars. We lay in the sand, talking and looking deep into the fake sky, until she fell asleep with her head on my chest. I just held her for a long time, listening to her soft breathing, feeling her warmth, until I fell asleep too.
The boys were asleep, thankfully. No need to wake them.
She had always wondered, as most people do, what she would do with her last hours if she knew when the end was going to be. And now, facing that very situation, she realized she had no idea what to do. All she could think was that she wanted to spend that time with the people that she loved. Eight hours from now, there would be a big meal, all their remaining food. No sense leaving any uneaten. Ten hours from now, the air would begin to smell sweet, everyone would get drowsy, and fall asleep. And that would be that.
Phase Six. It started in ten hours.
Rick and Hal came and sat with her. They talked, quietly, about nothing of consequence.
When it was nearly time for the feast, she excused herself and walked to the hatch.
“May I join you?” she asked. Zoe smiled sadly and nodded.
“You know, I admire that you never stopped believing. I think that may be the best thing about humanity.”
“And the worst,” Zoe said.
“I do not think so. When you are an old and bitter woman like I am, you will admire the unwavering confidence of the young.”
Zoe laughed. “You’re still my little sister, old woman.”
“They are preparing the feast now. Will you come down and join us? I would like us all to be together.”
Zoe nodded. “I will. I have done a lot of waiting here, and he does not seem to be coming.”
“It would have been a story for the ages, you know. Romeo and Juliet. It was worth the gamble.”
“You do not regret helping me?”
“For ten years I was sure I had done the right thing. For the next ten I was sure I had done the wrong thing. Now, I realize that right and wrong are probably closer than most of us think. But I am glad you are here with me at the end.”
“I am glad too, Gabby.”
They stood, ready to walk down the passage to their last meal together.
Chapter 24
I was surprised at how normal the planet looked, at least through the view port. It was still New Newton, same dark gray continents, same blue oceans. The white around the poles and at the tops of the mountains was gone, which I guess I should have expected. I found the spot where the colony had been, but there was no sign of it from here. Either it was too small to see from orbit, or there just wasn’t anything left. But if things on the planet looked the same from high above, the instruments were telling a very different story. Temperature was right around 80 degrees C, and vicious winds were whipping across the entire planet. We were waiting until the middle of the night to make our landing, hoping that things would cool off at least a little bit. In the meantime, I’d asked Mustard to scan the surface for signs of life.
Mustard’s voice was less enthusiastic than usual. “Okay, dudes, do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
Renay answered before I could. “Tell us the bad news first, Mustard.” She took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“The bad news is, there’s no sign of anything alive on the planet whatsoever. I can detect a few structures, or leftovers from what used to be structures. But nothing alive.”
“That’s… pretty bad news, Mustard.”
“Very true, dude. But seismic readings are showing some pretty big caverns dug out underneath the colony. It’s possible someone is still alive down there and just can’t be detected by the sensors.”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. There was still a chance.
“Now do you want the good news?”
The good news? The caverns weren’t the good news? “Sure, Mustard, what’s the good news?”
“You might have a chance to share more stories with your friend Juliana.”
“What?” Renay and I asked in unison.
A star map appeared in the middle of the room. Our red dot was resting comfortably right at the star labeled Crunchberry. Just a few centimeters away was a squadron of blue dots. I pointed to them. “Mustard, what are those?”
“Other starships, dude! Probably Juliana and some of her friends wanted to see you rescue everyone. Maybe they’ll make a brainy out of the whole thing after all! Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Renay’s face went pale, and mine probably looked about the same. “How long until they get here, Mustard? And why didn’t you tell us we were being followed?”
“Maybe a day, maybe a little less. It depends on their deceleration. And I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t know until just now.” His explanation used corn dogs and tater tots as a metaphor, but I’ll try to simplify it. Basically, until we stopped at our destination, our ship and the ships following us were traveling at about the same speed, which also happened to be almost as fast as the light that let us see they were there. Now that we weren’t moving at almost light speed anymore, that light was catching up to us, and shortly behind it were the ships themselves. It seemed Juliana hadn’t taken too kindly to us stealing her ship. I always figured we’d have to deal with her eventually, but I thought we’d have more time.
“How long until we can get down there?” Renay asked.
A model of the planet replaced the star map. Our red dot was floating a few inches above the surface on the brightly lit side of the planet. “It’s about eight hours until the coolest part of the night, dude.”
I squeezed Renay’s hand. “We’ll have to go a little early and hope for the best.” She nodded, trying to look brave, but I could tell she was scared. “We’ve got some time. Let’s make sure we’re stocked with food and whatever medical supplies we can find.”
She frowned. “I doubt we will find much in the way of medicine. Immortal people who never get sick would have little need for it.”
“Even immortals can stub their toes and scrape their knees. There has to be something. And hey, Renay?”
“Yes?”
“It’s gonna be okay.”
She squeezed my hand again, took a deep breath, and nodded.
The descent and landing were smooth, not a wobble on the way through the atmosphere or a bump when we touched down. It sure beat the last time I’d arrived on this planet, crushed and buffeted inside a freezer and feeling like the ship was breaking apart all around me. A lot fewer people had died on the way down this time. I hoped we’d be able to find some more for the trip back up.
We hadn’t found a ton a protective gear to wear on the yacht. Juliana and her goons weren’t the type to spend a lot of time in dangerous environments, unless you count roller coasters. We found some goggles to wear at the ski mountain, and some loose-fitting outfits in Xerxes’s wardrobe that we managed to layer and wrap around ourselves to hopefully provide a little protection. We laughed thinking about how much Xerxes had probably paid for the exclusive designer ensembles we were going to use to keep the wind from sandblasting our skin. Or we would have laughed, if both of us weren’t so numb with terror.
We stood at the door of the landing craft, listening to the soft murmur of the brook, wrapping blac
k scarves with a shimmering red diamond pattern around our arms.
“Weird being back here, huh?” I asked.
Renay exploded in a burst of anxious laughter. “More than a little weird, Old One.” She leaned in and gave me a quick kiss. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
We wrapped more scarves around our faces, pulled down our ski goggles, and stepped out into hell.
The wind screamed, and howled, and hit me like a bus. I stumbled and almost fell. Renay caught my elbow and kept me up. We leaned into it and pushed forward, but it was slow going. We were stepping into a wind tunnel inside an oven. Even with the goggles, it was hard to see much through the blistering dust. The lights from our silver-teardrop landing craft cast jagged, eerie shadows across the blasted rock in front of us.
We had landed at what should have been the old center of the colony, but it took us a while to find anything in the dark and the dust. My foot bumped up against something solid, but it was just the charred, blackened stump of a tree. We quickly realized there was an entire field of them. All that was left of the Enchanted Forest.
From there we pushed toward Central, or to where Central had been, anyway. It was so hot that I was sweating like crazy, but so dry that my clothes never got damp. We found the metal bones of the place where we had once eaten and watched movies, the place where the Exmass dance had happened, a hundred lifetimes ago. There wasn’t anything inside: no chairs, no tables, no fixtures. Either someone had taken them, or they’d blown away into the ocean somewhere. What was left of the walls at least gave us a little break from the wind. We leaned against a chunk of wall and tried to catch our breath. My throat was getting dry and dusty.
“Hey!” Renay had to scream to be heard over the wind. She tugged on my arm and pointed.
I smiled and laughed.
There, on the bare stone that used to be the Lawn, formed out of huge slabs of welded metal, were the letters T O M, and an arrow.
We pushed back out through the hot wind in the direction of the arrow. Within a minute or so, we located a hatch.
I didn’t hesitate. I reached down and pulled it open.
When the hatch made a clang, they both jumped. Was it the wind? The metal creaked and groaned, and a blast of hot, dusty air blew down the passage.
Gabby and Zoe looked at each other with wide eyes. Gabby spoke first. “Go, tell them to call it off! Hurry!”
Zoe nodded, and sprinted away.
Two goggled figures, wrapped in dusty garments with strange patterns on them, descended the ladder. They waved and took off their goggles, unwrapped their faces.
Tom and Renay.
Really them, really alive, and really here. After all these years.
Tom spoke first. “The weather here is warmer than I remember. Anyone feel like leaving?”
Without a word, she wrapped them both in a hug. “There are many of us down here, some are weak and sick. Is there really a way for us to leave?”
“It would take a really long time to explain everything, so I’ll give you the short answer: yes. But we don’t have a lot of time.”
She took them both by the hand and led them toward the gathered colonists. “First you save my dog, and now you save my boys. It seems I will never be out of your debt, Old One.”
“Gabby? Oh my god. I thought you looked familiar, but you’re…”
“Old?”
“Not at all. You don’t look a day over ten.”
She sprinted down the passage with a smile on her face. She could think about only one thing: her boys were going to be safe.
I followed Gabby down a carved stone passage. It was still hot down here, and the stale, heavy air clung to me as I moved through it. I almost missed the wind outside. Almost.
“So, it’s a little tricky to keep track of time when you’re crossing the galaxy. How many days until Exmass?”
She didn’t smile. “Things here have been… difficult. We have not thought about Exmass for a while.”
“That bad, huh?”
“It is enough to say that I am glad you arrived today, and not a day later.”
The passage ended in a big, open cavern. It was packed full of people, maybe a few hundred, maybe a thousand, sitting in clumps on battered chairs and tattered blankets. Every one of them was thin and frail, covered with a layer of grime.
Gabby shouted, “They are back! Tom is back! We are leaving! We are saved!”
A cavern full of people stopped everything and turned to look at us. The only sound was the distant howling of the wind from back at the hatch. I gave the room a cautious wave. “Hi, everyone. I’m back, I guess. This place seems… nice. But we’ve got a much better place to show you, if you’d like to come see.”
Days, weeks, years of tension released and exploded in a joyous cheer. It echoed through the cavern for a while. Gabby ran off to talk to whoever was in charge. I made my way through the crowded cavern, shaking hands and accepting bony hugs from a lot of grimy people I didn’t recognize, and some that looked familiar in a distant way. It took a while, but I finally found who I was looking for.
Mom and Dad were waiting for me. They were gray and skeletal, with thin arms and thinning hair. But their eyes were shining with joy and tears. I ran up and hugged them both, for a long time.
I was expecting my dad to drop some sarcastic comment, but all he managed to say was, “It is good to have you back, Tom.”
“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
They both laughed, and hugged me again.
We only had enough space on our landing craft to get a few dozen people at a time up to the yacht, so we had to make quite a few trips back and forth to get everyone off the planet. Having food on the shuttles proved to be a very popular idea. I didn’t get the specific details until quite a while later, but it had been some time since anyone on New Newton had eaten a good meal. Most of our passengers ate heartily; some helped those who were too weak to eat on their own. More than one mother embraced me in a tearful hug and thanked me for saving her children. On the third trip up, I chatted with a balding middle-aged guy whose skin hung loose on his gaunt frame. Something seemed familiar about him, but it wasn’t until he started laughing about five minutes into our talk that I realized it was Kev. We caught up a little. He and Miranda had gotten married, which surprised me considering how much she had hated him when I left. But they had kids and everything now, so I guess she must have found something she liked in him.
I know I’m supposed to be all modest about this part, and tell you how humbled I was by what everyone else had suffered, but that would be a lie. I mean, I was humbled by what everyone else had suffered, but that’s not all I felt. Mostly, I felt like a hero. Sure, I’d saved everyone in the colony before, but the last time I’d done it, most of them didn’t trust me, and even after I’d saved them, they didn’t really like me. Now I was getting thanks and hugs and high fives and grateful handshakes. I had a lot of younger people tell me I looked nothing like I had in the movie, and a lot of older people tell me they couldn’t believe how young I looked. I loved turning on the view port during the approach to the Bigger Beef and watching jaws drop at the sheer scale of it. Even better was when I got to lead them out into the volcano and taking a step onto the field above the lava. Some folks needed more coaxing than others before they were willing to follow.
Oh, yeah, we’d renamed the ship on the way back. Renay wasn’t a fan of Bigger Beef at first, until I explained that it was a joke about comparing it to the Heifer. Actually, she didn’t like it after that, either, but she gave up arguing with me about it.
Before the last trip down, I ran into Renay as she arrived from another part of the ship with a light box full of fruit and sandwiches. I came up behind her and wrapped her up in a big hug.
“Guess who?”
She squirmed uncomfortably. “Not now, Tom.”
I let go. “Everything okay?”
“We still have a lot of work to do.”
“They are fine, yes.”
This was a different person than the one I’d gone down to the planet with a few hours ago. I took her hand. It was stiff. “Renay, hey. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. We still have people to save and a hostile force approaching. Now go get some more food, this will not be enough.”
I did. I spent the last trip down wondering what was happening, but once we touched down I was too busy getting the last group of survivors loaded into the ships to think much about it. Before we took off, I stood sweating in the dust and heat, looking around the hollow shell of what had once been my home as the thick darkness gave way to a dim haze. Cordelia was coming up, and maybe one of her sisters too, but it was tough to know for sure because of all the dust. It was the second home I’d seen reduced to ruin and decay. Maybe my next home would be able to avoid that fate. Wherever that ended up being.
I walked past a grim field of blasted and blackened stumps where an enchanted forest once stood, and stepped onto the shuttle.
We took off, for the last time. The Hope/Freedom’s mission was over, an empty husk on a dead planet. Someone would find it one day and wonder how it got there. I didn’t plan to be around to answer any questions.
The boys had eaten too much, too fast, and complained about how much their tummies hurt. But they were so exhausted that they fell asleep anyway. She covered them each with another blanket. She was so tired. But rather than sleep, she just watched her boys, with tears in her eyes, and felt glad.
Chapter 25
I glanced longingly at the water. It was still sunset here at the beach, as it always was. The gentle waves glowed with soft fire and slid quietly across the golden sand. I really wanted to peel off my shredded layers of designer outfit, just dive into the warm water and feel all the sweat and dust wash off my skin. But I couldn’t do that, not yet. I had something to do that couldn’t wait. I had to find someone, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of where to look.