Liam blinked. His head was splitting with pain, breathless, his heart racing. His muscles ached with exhaustion. Tears spilling from his eyes. He still had his arms loosely around Phoebe, but he quickly slipped one hand behind his back, before she could notice what he was now holding.
“Did you go?” Phoebe asked quietly.
Liam nodded. He held up his wrist, where his link was blinking like crazy with error messages.
“Will I see you again?”
“Yeah.” He laughed a little in spite of his tears. His eyes were raw from crying, and for a moment he saw spots from the lack of sleep, after what he’d just done.
“Are you going to tell me when, or is it a surprise?”
“Which do you want?”
Phoebe grinned. “Surprise.” She burst into a laugh, and Liam did too, and yet the welling behind his throat had gotten stronger than ever. Phoebe put both her hands on his and squeezed. She looked him right in the eye, tears streaming, about to say something more, or maybe they would kiss again—
“You two ready?” Mom was at the top of the stairs.
“Yeah,” said Liam. And then to Phoebe: “Just remember: fifteen.”
She looked at him quizzically as he scooted back from her, wiping his eyes.
Mom came down the steps, followed by Dad, and then Ariana and Paolo.
Liam and Phoebe stood, letting go of each other’s hands.
A thud as the Styrlax ship touched down.
A whine as the cargo door slid open.
Liam and Phoebe moved away from the stairs, a meter apart, then three, as the adults filed down. Now ten, as Liam walked down the cargo ramp with his parents and the survey team.
Mina and Kyla and a few other officers waited for them. Mina was holding JEFF’s head.
“Good morning, Liam, Lana, and Gerald!” JEFF said.
Twenty meters now. . . .
Mina hugged their parents and patted Liam’s shoulder. He took JEFF and turned back around.
“Liam,” said JEFF, “your link is emitting numerous error messages again.”
“I know, JEFF.” Liam glanced at the link but didn’t bother fixing it.
Mina put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “This is it, huh?”
Liam gazed at Phoebe, standing in the cargo hold, leaning into her dad. Ariana, Tarra, and Barro stood beside them, watching the humans warily.
“We could blast our way out of here, if we needed to,” Tarra said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Kyla. “I already told you: you’ll get no trouble from us. But the sooner you’re gone, the better for everyone.”
“I guess so,” said Tarra.
Phoebe’s eyes met Liam’s. Any one of these moments would be the last he’d see of her. His head was so fuzzy from exhaustion, from distance, but a strange set of words floated through his head, a memory from only a moment ago—for him—but one that he’d nearly lost in the swirl of emotions. You’ll tell me where you are, and when I can reach you. . . .
“Wait!” Liam called out. “Mina,” he said. “Do you still have the beacons?”
The mention of them made Mina’s face pale. Her hand reached to her neck, as if confirming they were still there. “Yeah. Why?”
Liam glanced at Phoebe. “I, um—” He caught himself before he said memory. “I had a thought.”
“Uh-huh.” Mina was already pulling the chains over her head. “I get it. And yes, it’s fine.”
She put the two radio beacons in Liam’s hand. He placed JEFF’s head on the floor and then stepped into the space between the line formed by his parents and the door to the cargo hold of the Styrlax ship.
“We could use these, to send a message,” said Liam. “A secret one, so colonial command wouldn’t know, but we would know, where you guys are. . . .” He looked from one set of parents to the other. “Just in case, like you guys said.”
No one objected, and so Liam walked up the ramp to Phoebe and handed one of the beacons to her. “We can use tap code.”
“Here.” Mina stepped beside Liam. She held out her link. “The key is on here. And we have a system set up in my stasis pod that records messages, in case yours arrives while we’re asleep. We can hook it up to your link instead,” she said to Liam.
“This could work,” said Ariana, “but we can’t risk the message being intercepted while you are in stasis and then used against us.”
“I could send one each time we’re awake,” said Liam, “between stasis intervals, and let you know exactly when we’ll be waking up again.”
“If you include the date,” said Jordy, “relative to the Earth clock—or . . .”
“That is fine,” said Ariana. “We can keep a link set to that.”
“Okay,” said Jordy, “then you guys can calculate when to send the message so that we get it while we’re awake.”
“You need a password or something,” said Mina. “So you know the message is authentic.”
“How about,” Phoebe said, “we start every message with something only we would know?” She met Liam’s eyes. “Each one could start with the letters HF.”
“Yeah.” Liam felt his face flush. “That will work.”
Phoebe smiled, her eyes brimming with fresh tears.
“Ugh.” Mina rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything else.
“Okay,” said Liam, stepping back awkwardly. He put his beacon around his neck. Phoebe did the same. “That’s the plan.”
“Hopefully it will work,” said Ariana.
At this, Liam smiled and gave Phoebe a look. “It will.” Phoebe nodded, wiping her eyes.
Liam and Mina retreated to the deck.
“Good luck,” Dad said to the Telphons.
“Safe travels,” Ariana said.
“Good-bye, Phoebe,” said JEFF from the floor.
“Take care of them, JEFF,” Phoebe replied.
“Acknowledged.”
Phoebe looked at Liam. “Say good-bye to Shawn for me, okay?”
The lump grew in Liam’s throat. The three of them, up at Vista on Mars, when it all began, so long ago. “I will.”
The cargo door started to close. The Telphons stepped back, into the shadow of the hold.
Liam stared at Phoebe, his head swimming. These last seconds that he would see her . . . for him, anyway. He smiled, knowing what awaited her, and was nearly overcome by tears again, but also by a yawn. Phoebe saw that, and raised her eyebrows. Liam’s smile grew, though as it did, it tugged more sadness up from inside. There was a price to knowing the future, even the good things. . . .
Bye, she mouthed to him, and gave a little wave, the chronologist’s watch glimmering on her wrist.
Liam returned it . . . Bye . . .
The cargo door slid shut.
The Styrlax ship hummed and rose from the floor. It rotated and slipped toward the airlock. The inner door rumbled open, then shut. Liam heard the whoosh of air. . . .
And then silence.
“They’re gone from our scopes,” Kyla reported.
Mom stepped over and put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. Then she turned to Kyla. “Now what?”
“Saga gave us a rendezvous course. We have just enough fuel and life support to make a burn in their direction.”
“We should probably tell them sooner rather than later about losing the Telphons’ ship,” said Mom. She held up the data key. “Maybe this will keep them from being too angry.”
Everyone turned and started toward the bridge. Liam stayed behind.
“Coming?” said Mina.
“I’ll catch up in just a sec.”
“Broken heart. I get it.”
“Shut up.”
“Clever thinking on those beacons, by the way,” said Mina.
“Thanks,” said Liam, and his chest burned as he remembered who had told him.
Standing there alone, Liam tapped off the error messages on his link and compared it to his atomic watch, and counted. He pulled the tiny black marker from his pocket, pushed up his
sleeve, and wrote a fifteen on his skin.
Not hours this time.
Another wave of exhaustion rushed over him. He put the pen away and looked over his shoulder. Mina was waiting by the elevator. “Come on, already!” she called. Everyone else had gone up.
“Coming.”
The last thing Liam did was reach into his back pocket. His fingers felt the cool metal there. He slipped it free and half turned so Mina wouldn’t see what he was doing. As he pulled his sleeve down, his throat got tight again, but he managed to smile. “You’ve been here all along,” he said quietly to himself.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said JEFF’s head. “Do you mean my exact location here on the floor, or this relative position—”
“Not you, JEFF.” Liam scooped up the panda head and caught up with his sister.
They joined their parents on the bridge of the Artemis. Everyone faced the giant curved window looking out on uncountable stars.
Mom put her arm around Liam. “You okay?”
Beside her, Mina had actually let Dad do the same.
“Fine.” And he was. Mostly.
She rubbed his back. “Long journey to go.”
Liam felt the warmth of her hand. “One unknown at a time.”
His mom smiled, remembering, and pulled him closer. “That’s right.”
“Prepare for primary burn,” said Kyla. “And, initiate.”
The ship shuddered and everyone braced as they began to accelerate.
Liam felt the thrust in his feet, in his exhausted bones, but once again, the stars remained still, gave no hint at all that they were even moving. Once again, there was nothing above or below them. Once again, they were light-years from any certainty, from anything they could call home.
Liam reached to his wrist and ran his fingers over the impression of the object hidden there: the chronologist’s watch. Though it caused a wave of sadness, it also made him smile.
It was true, they were far from their destination. There was as much unknown before them as ever, and they had no way of knowing what would come next.
Or maybe they did. After all, they had hope.
They had each other.
Epilogue
PLANET DESIGNATE: PHINEA
NORMA ARM SECTOR 12
57 TRILLION KM FROM THE CENTAURI SYSTEM
Life can be long, even for a reasonably sentient, three-dimensional being. If you are lucky, there will be so many chapters, you will scarcely remember some of those along the way.
If you are lucky, there will be some that you will never forget.
And it is more than a mystery, which moments these will be. Surely there will be some that seem insignificant at the time, but that stay with you, and you may spend your life wondering why. And then there will be others that are obvious: because they were the best or the worst of you, or sometimes simply the moments when life seemed most luminous, when the question of what might happen next was so intense, so electric, that you could scarcely believe you were lucky enough to be alive to ask it.
The answers won’t always be what you wanted.
The future won’t always be what you hoped.
But you may find that that’s the adventure.
And you may find that if you are patient, those answers that eluded you have a way of coming around.
“What do you mean you’re not going?” her grandson said.
“Just help me over there,” said Great-Grandma, pointing to the reclining patio chair that overlooked the distant ridge, the crimson folds and lavender gulches.
“But Nia, you’re the guest of honor—”
“Liam,” she said, “I don’t need my name cheered another time. I just want to sit here. I can still see the energy show. It’s peaceful. I’ve earned that, haven’t I?”
Liam rubbed a hand through his white hair. “Everyone expects you to lead the counting.”
She sighed. “Well then, just skip it already. They’ve been counted, over and over. Everyone who lived through that is gone. Go tell them I said to have fun with the children. Think of the future, not the past.”
She let go of his shoulder and lowered herself into the recliner, her sore legs, her stiff back, her exhausted lungs all crying out in relief. There. She closed her eyes and felt the evening breeze, the last of the red sun’s warmth.
A shifting. Liam was still there. “Would you just go already?” she said.
He crossed his arms. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to get rid of me?”
She couldn’t help smiling. He was sharp, this grandson of hers. The name suited him. “You remind me of myself, way back when,” she said, playing it off. “Always suspicious. I’m just going to enjoy the quiet without any of you around. Is that allowed?”
“Fine.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “See you soon.”
“Have fun.”
She held the smile until he’d turned away. But it faded as she watched him go, and her eyes glistened. In the quiet, she heard the strange rattle in her chest, the hitch and stutter, felt an all-too-familiar flash of weakness.
She let her head fall back against the recliner.
It was almost time.
She heard the echoes of someone addressing the crowd behind her. Felt the cooling breeze. Looked up at the magenta sky with its silver clouds, saw them shimmer in the waves of heat fleeing the world.
She rolled up her sleeve, an aching burden for her old fingers. With each fold, she exposed more of the short hash marks she’d tattooed into her skin, her nerves ringing louder with each one. Eight, eleven, fourteen . . . They were faded and warped, their once perfectly straight lines falling victim to the sagging of her skin, the calcifying of her bristles. Decades and decades.
Still one more, she thought. Had thought. She’d realized long ago when it might be, and what it would mean.
She pushed her sleeve up the last bit over her elbow, and for a moment, her fingers traced the three hollow circles in the crux of her arm. How many lifetimes ago? And yet they were still there, in her failing mind. Especially that smiling face at the playground, always begging her to play a little longer. Little Mica, made eternally young in her memory by that long-ago tragedy.
A strange wave of light-headedness. She leaned back in the recliner. Deep breath. Another hitch. The pump, as it turned out, had kept her heart ticking a bit longer than anyone expected. Had done the same for her parents and the others. They were gone now. She was one hundred and three and ought to have been gone, too. Her husband was, and he’d been quite a few years younger than her to begin with. All their friends. Even her daughter, who’d been lost while on an exploratory mission in the outer sector. An adventurer, like her mother.
Another stutter from the pump. A hollow feeling deep inside. For as well as it had served her, it had never quite worked right after she’d made that leap into the utter unknown, after that moment when she should have been dead. What a crazy girl she’d been.
Another light-headed swirl.
Close now.
Too soon, she thought with a wave of sadness. Even after so many years, it still felt too soon. . . .
In the distance, she heard a chorus of voices counting the names, as they did every year. It would have taken far too long, of course, to say the names of the dead. Instead, they uttered the names of the living, that small group of barely three hundred that had arrived here so long ago.
She was surprised how quiet it seemed in her mind. She still saw so much, so many memories, but dim, almost without sound. There were the most recent years, when she could still play with her great-grandchildren, who would take her memory and her genes into the future. The years just before that, when her husband was still here, when they would travel the southern reaches of Phinea, where it was always warm, along the coastline of the great ocean. And then earlier still, fewer memories back there, but the ones that remained were lumin
ous. When her daughter told her she would name her son Liam. When her daughter was a child herself. When she had been a young woman helping to build the first federation, and before that, the first republic, the first colony, here. When her feet had first touched this red soil.
It had taken them six years to find this planet, nearly halfway across the Milky Way galaxy from their old home. Six years of zipping through space folds, of searching, of near misses and fruitless surveys. Until finally they’d spotted this lovely red planet in their scopes, with its mellow red sun. Just like home.
Which home?
Both. And neither.
So much of it she still remembered, though she could tell there was much more that she’d lost.
Now, a great shimmer bloomed in the sky above the festival, followed by a series of cracks and concussions. The energy show had begun. She watched the concentric rings of heat radiate overhead, and felt sleep tugging her down. Felt the motor hitch again. A dimness at the edges of her vision. Time, time . . .
It would be okay. Leno had the beacon. He knew what to do. She had hoped to make it to just one more message. The tiny, once-a-decade updates that both filled her heart with joy and also unmoored her, sending her spiraling back into the past as she’d once been able to do. She’d long ago lost any sensation of her timeline, and yet, as she’d aged, as we all do, the sense of time’s impermanence had grown. Sometimes it seemed that all the moments of her life were still close by, as if she was living them all at once, a grand symphony that made her smile and cry at the same time.
More explosions of energy in the sky.
The waves of heat blurring the world and the canyons of—
Mars . . . Telos . . . Phinea . . .
The world quieted further.
And then.
Finally.
In the corner of her eye, a presence.
A warm sensation on her hand.
“Phoebe.”
She forced her eyes open, but the figure was a blur. She reached into a shirt pocket, willing these old fingers to obey, and pressed the scratchy old eye adapters into place.
There he was.
“Hey,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Liam smiled. He looked exactly the same as he had all those years ago.
The Shores Beyond Time Page 31