She sneaked a peek at him. He was smiling.
She persevered. “Jackson, if I hadn’t tried to frame you….”
“If you hadn’t tried to frame me. If the fungus hadn’t gotten onto the ship. If there’d been more air. If there had just been more time. If the human race weren’t so hell-bent on its own destruction that we needed something like this. I could play this game all night.”
She searched his face. “Jackson, you really should hate me.”
This time he looked serious. “Ana,” he said softly, “I made my own choice. I acted to protect something wondrous and new that God brought into the universe through your mind and hands. Blaming yourself for my act is senseless.” He put a hand on her shoulder, and it was remarkably solid for a ghost. “Ana. I forgive you.”
Just like that, the pain she had been feeling, physical and emotional, was gone.
So was Jackson.
She closed her eyes and was at peace for the first time in more than two decades.
Now she could rest.
THEY’D BEEN walking for about an hour at a brisk pace when Aaron felt a mounting sense of urgency coming through the stone. It was like an electrical current, charging the air with negative ions. The hairs on his forearms stood on end.
“Come on,” he called back to Keera. “Something’s happened. We have to hurry.”
He broke into a run, not looking back to see if she was following. Their time was running out—he knew that much. If he was going to save the doctor, it had to be now.
The tunnel seemed to stretch on ahead of them forever, an endless hallway carved out of the rock, or maybe extruded by the world-mind.
Finally, though, something changed.
Far ahead, there was a wall. Or something.
As he approached, it resolved itself into a kind of door, or…. He reached it and stared, puzzled. It looked like a pie chart—three wedges inside a circle.
Keera came up behind him. “It’s a valve. Look, it’s open just enough to let the trickle of water in.”
Aaron laughed. “I keep forgetting we’re in the belly of the beast here. So how do we get through?”
Keera shook her head. “I’ve never seen one in person. Maybe you can talk to it?”
Aaron stepped up to the blockade and put a hand on it. It was smooth, warm, alive. He closed his eyes. Things shifted, and he was falling through the network of tubes and organs and valves, falling toward the world-mind. He spread his arms and slowed his fall until he was drifting in virtual space.
He willed himself back to the valve and reached into it, feeling for the nerve impulses that controlled it. There. A twist of his hand, sending a signal to the valve muscles, and they relaxed.
Aaron opened his eyes in time to see the valve spiraling open. He turned to grin at Keera, but instead of smiling back, her jaw dropped open and she pointed into the newly revealed chamber.
Aaron spun back around to see Dr. Anatov, lying lifeless on the floor.
The room was more of a living thing than a cavern, about fifty meters wide and maybe half that high. The walls gave off a golden bioluminescence much stronger than the blue glow of the tunnel. The floor was covered in a thick, syrupy yellow substance, and the doctor’s body was halfway submerged in it.
Aaron stepped out onto the floor, which gave way under his feet. His boots stuck to it, and it was an effort to lift his foot with each step.
Water was pouring in behind him, and it diluted the mucus, easing his passage.
Keera followed him.
Finally, he reached the doctor.
He knelt beside her. “Dr. Anatov.” He touched her shoulder. She looked so small and helpless, so different from the woman he’d encountered on the Hammond just days before. So different from the monster he’d conjured up in his dreams.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at him. “Jackson?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s me, Aaron.” He tried to put on a reassuring smile. “We have to get you out of here.”
“Aaron, look.” Keera was kneeling next to him. She pointed to one of the doctor’s legs. It was halfway gone, absorbed by stomach acid.
“I’m not going anywhere, am I?” the doctor said, but she didn’t look sad.
“Let’s not talk about that just yet. How do you feel?”
She smiled, and her face was transformed, as if she were twenty years younger.
“I feel good, Jackson. Better than I have in years. You forgave me.”
He didn’t correct her this time, but inside, his emotions were jumbled. Why did I come all the way here, if not to hate you? If not to save you? What am I supposed to do?
Even sinners deserve forgiveness. The answer came to him in his own thoughts, but he knew where it had originated. His father. You have to save her.
But how? Her body was dissolving, moment by moment. They had arrived too late, just in time to witness her slow death.
He thought about his father again, part of the world-mind now. Had his father’s spirit really been here with Dr. Anatov?
The world-mind.
Suddenly it was clear to him what he had been brought here to do. To save Dr. Anatov. Not her body, but her soul.
He laid a hand on her cheek, gently, resting it skin to skin. He didn’t know if this would work, but he knew he’d been brought here to try. “Do you trust me?”
She stared up at him, and something passed between them, an understanding deeper than words. She nodded. “In… in my pocket.”
“What?”
She indicated her shirt pocket with her chin. “It was your father’s.”
He pulled the pocket open gently and brought out a tarnished silver cross on a chain. He held it up in the golden glow and looked at it in wonder. From my Communion.
It was a gift more precious than words could describe. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, whispering, “Thanks.” He threw the cross to Keera. “Hold this for me.” Then he touched Ana’s cheek again and thrust his other hand down into the floor, through the viscous fluid until he touched the world’s skin.
“Aaron, what in the hell are you doing?” Keera shouted, but he ignored her, seeking the interface with the world-mind. A second stretched into a minute, and then into what seemed like an hour but was probably less than ninety seconds all together.
He found it and made the connection.
Energy surged through him from the world-mind, up through his right arm and over into the doctor via his left. Then it reversed, pulling something back with it. It was an electrical current that stimulated his entire nervous system.
On the outside, he convulsed with the surge flowing through his body and down into the world-mind. On the inside, it was if he rode the maelstrom.
Ana’s thoughts, feelings, and images rolled through him. Her life in Russia as a child, the first boy she had a crush on, her doting father, the move to the NAU, joining her father at work, the pain of a life sliced short when her father was killed in the bombing.
Lab work.
Space flight, arrogance, denial, a silver cross, and a new world born.
Ten years spent in prison, and then a new life and a fresh chance.
Forgiveness. Jackson had finally forgiven her.
As Ana’s life coursed through Aaron, he was barely aware that the fluid around her had begun to glow, brighter and brighter, surging in a growing circular motion around her body.
He gestured with his head for Keera to move away. She stumbled back to the tunnel, and then the current flowing through him ended.
Aaron opened his eyes and looked down at the doctor. Her face was perfectly composed, at peace, her eyes shut.
He let go and pulled his other hand up out of the liquid.
The hair on his forearm had all been burned off, but the skin was untouched.
He staggered backward as the tidal flow around Dr. Anatov continued to build. Somehow, he made it back to the tunnel entrance, where Keera helped him through the opening. He turned back
just in time to see her body succumb to the whirlpool and sink beneath the surface.
The room went dark, and the valve slammed closed.
THE TRAXX ground to a halt, and pain shot through Colin like a sword into his gut.
He knew, without knowing how, that Ana was gone.
Colin closed his eyes, shutting out the world around him. He was the only one left from that ill-fated flight.
This was all his fault. He’d brought her back here when she was so obviously not ready.
He bit his lower lip and shook his head. Maybe he was wrong.
Maybe she was okay.
He didn’t think so.
“Are you all right, sir?” Dex, one of the rangers, asked.
“Not particularly,” he grumbled, and climbed down from the traxx.
“They’re up there.” Dex pointed to a crevice above where they’d stopped. “Or at least the beacon is there.”
Colin looked up just in time to see Devon Powell, by the looks of it, waving down at them. “I’d say you’re right.” He gave Dex a grim smile. One less casualty on his conscience, at least.
Colin climbed the slope to the cavern entrance where Devon awaited him and his team. They’d made good time getting here, but there had to be a better way to get around. A day and a half was far too long when someone was in need.
“They told me to wait here for you.” He seemed agitated.
“Who told you? Aaron?”
Devon nodded. “Aaron and Keera. They went in there.” He pointed to a hole in the back of the cavern. “I tried. I’m not so good with tight spaces.”
Colin clapped him on the arm. “That’s all right, son. It’s good you were here to greet us. Why’d they go in there?”
Devon gulped. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you,” he said nervously.
“Come on, son, we can’t help them if we don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into.”
Devon nodded. “It’s Aaron. He can talk to the world.”
Chapter Thirteen: Aftermath
ANA OPENED her eyes.
She lay on a soft bed, under the branches of a huge redwood tree. She was covered in a white blanket.
She sat up and looked around. The place reminded her of Lex’s lair.
Oh gods, no. Anywhere but there. She slipped out of the covers, ready to run away again, only to realize she was as naked as the day she was born.
“Hello, Doc,” someone said behind her.
She spun about, and there was Jackson Hammond. “Jackson? What is this? Am I…. Is this heaven?” She’d never believed in heaven, and yet, here they were.
He laughed. “Hardly. But there is someone else here to meet you.”
She took an uncertain step toward him. “You’re not real.”
He nodded. “You’re mostly right about that.” He chuckled. “You can help me figure it out, but first, Lex wants to tell you something.”
Lex, the world-mind, was there in front of her. She looked smaller than before, somehow. Less threatening. Contrite, maybe? Even so, her appearance shocked Ana. The doctor stumbled back onto the bed.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you before.” Lex came to sit next to her on the mattress. “I forgive you too.”
Ana nodded, and then she started to cry. “I am so, so sorry.”
Lex embraced her.
Lex’s forgiveness, and Jackson’s before, moved her beyond words.
At last she cried herself out and wiped her eyes with a corner of the blanket.
“If this isn’t heaven, then where am I? I remember dying—”
Jackson laughed. “I remember that too. Come on. We have so much to show you.”
AARON LEANED upon Keera for support. He was physically wasted. Helping Dr. Anatov transfer into the world-mind had been debilitating, and it was all he could manage to shuffle forward along the tunnel.
He tried to hurry. If they didn’t make it back to the cavern before the next storm, they would both be in grave danger.
He could see all the questions running through Keera’s mind, but she didn’t ask any of them, apparently realizing how spent he was. Instead she helped him go on, though he could see from the worried look on her face that she didn’t think they were going to make it.
Still, they continued for what seemed like hours. He faded in and out of consciousness, but somehow his feet kept moving.
Until they just couldn’t move anymore. “I have to stop.” He no longer cared what might happen.
Keera looked him in the eye and then nodded. “Here, let me help you down to the ground. We can rest for a while before we go on.”
He nodded, grateful, and let her ease him down. The hard ground felt like the softest mattress to his weary body, and he was out in seconds.
Aaron awoke once more, for a few seconds, hearing voices above him. He glanced up to see the director himself standing there.
He was so tired.
Aaron closed his eyes and was lost to the world of dreams.
AARON AWOKE slowly. He was lying on something truly soft, not the hard floor of the tunnel that had been his last remembered resting place.
His head lay on a cushion of some sort, and sheets were drawn up over his supine form.
His eyes flickered open, taking in the golden light streaming in from the open window.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” someone said, and he turned to see the director himself sitting next to his bedside. Keera and Devon were standing behind him.
“How are you, buddy?” Devon asked with a tentative smile.
Aaron grinned back. “I feel like I was rolled over by a traxx a couple times, but otherwise I’m fantastic.”
Keera squeezed around the director. “I’m so glad you’re awake. I was worried that you’d tapped yourself out.”
He laughed. “It’ll take more than a brush with death to keep me down.”
She sat down on the bed next to him and kissed his cheek.
“Aaron, I need to ask you some questions.” The director looked worried. “I’m sorry for this. I know you’re tired, but it has to be now.” He took a deep breath. “Look, we need to know what happened down there—if the world-mind had anything to do with Dr. Anatov’s… demise.”
“I understand. Do you mind if my friends stay?” He pushed himself up to a sitting position.
“I’d prefer it.” The director motioned for Devon to pull up a chair. “They may be able to fill in some of the gaps, and you all owe me the cost of a traxx.”
Aaron blanched. “God, I hope not.”
The director chuckled. “We’ll work that out later.”
“Fair enough.” He thought back over the events of the last few days. “I don’t think the world-mind had anything to do with it. Those tunnels funnel rainwater down to those stomachs for processing. I think she just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The director nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that. The world-mind and Dr. Anatov have a history.”
“I know. My father told me all about it.”
“Your father?” His brow was furrowed, and he put a hand on Aaron’s forehead. “Aaron, your father’s been dead for ten years. You remember that, right?”
Aaron laughed. “Can I get something to eat? This is gonna take a while to explain.” He searched his memory, looking for the right place to begin. “You see, there’s this thing I can do….”
PART THREE: REFUGEE, 2165 AD
Chapter One: Moonjumper
ANA TESTED the world’s propulsion systems, readying for the day she would need to fly.
Things down on Earth had gone from bad to worse, and Lex had put her in charge of the more scientific aspects of Forever. It was a strange thing being a goddess… and far more limited than she had imagined.
Officially, as far as most of the world’s colonists knew, Lex was the world-mind.
Only a select few—Colin, Aaron, and the director’s immediate family—knew the truth: that the world-mind was
now three.
It had been a difficult transition for Ana to accept. She still felt like herself, mostly, but she intersected with Lex and Jackson at odd points in her psyche.
She was no longer entirely her own person, or ever entirely alone. She missed being alone, sometimes.
The whole thing was all a little too… spiritual for her scientific mind to comprehend.
Still, done was done, and here she was, so she might as well make the most of it.
They had a world to take care of, after all.
EDDY TREMAINE backed the Ford F1050 hauler back into the mouth of the cavern. The beat-up old truck belched a cloud of black smoke in complaint. His hurried conversion of the vehicle’s electrical system to run on biofuel had been a limited success.
It had gotten them up the mountainside, and that was all that mattered.
Davian Forrester, his ex, stood behind the truck, guiding it and its precious cargo back into the darkness inside the shallow cave.
Eddy had been sure he was going to lose the load a couple of times on the way up the mountainside, as it shifted on the truck’s flatbed around some of the hairpin turns, but the Moonjumper had stayed attached to the truck, and soon they’d have it hidden away securely.
The old Ford’s radio had picked up the satellite news transmissions on the way up from the valley floor. Things were going downhill out there fast, and battles had already broken out between the North American Union and the Sino-African Syndicate along the Pacific Coast. Eddy didn’t figure it would be much longer before there was a full-scale war.
Another war. The last ten years had been a nonstop series of them.
He was done fighting.
“That’s it,” Davian called from the rear of the truck. “There’s a ten-foot drop-off back here.”
“Got it,” Eddy shouted back. He set the brake and got out to gauge the parking job he’d done. The front of the truck was beneath the roof of the cavern, far enough back that only the bumper would be visible from above. It’ll have to do. “I’m gonna start unpacking the jumper.”
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