Petty smiled thinly. "Einav, we've been working in secret for a long time now. We began a program a few years ago, back during the Scum War. We had to mothball things for a while when the marauders attacked, but now the program is charging forward again."
She looked at him. "Sir?"
"We call it the Human Outreach Program for Exploration. HOPE. It's a government institution dedicated to exploring space, to finding friendly alien civilizations, and forming alliances with them. Your father has been involved in HOPE, actually, as a consultant. NASA never recovered from the Cataclysm. But HOPE will replace it. In all our travels, even including the journey you took to the Cat's Eye Nebula, we humans have explored only one percent of the Milky Way galaxy. The rest is still out there, waiting to be discovered. HOPE will reach to the stars not with weapons, not with soldiers, but with curiosity and friendship."
Ben-Ari stared at the sky. The sun was setting, and the first stars were emerging. "There's a lot out there that's not very friendly, sir."
Petty nodded. "I know. Which is why I insisted on enlisting ex-military officers to command the HOPE fleet. We'll be launching the flagship next year, a state-of-the-art vessel with a crew of five hundred scientists and explorers. We call the ship the Lodestar, and her mission is simple: not to fight but to explore. Einav, I want you to command that ship."
She looked at the sea.
She turned to look back at the house on the beach, at the soft lights that glowed there, where her friends waited.
She looked up at the stars.
After everything, after so much pain, do I dare go back up there? Do I dare lead men and women again, maybe into danger, maybe to death?
Marco had told her to relax. To read. To enjoy her retirement. And this island was beautiful. And she loved her friends. And she was miserable here.
She gazed at the stars again. She had sailed among them before. She had found danger, had found monsters. But she had seen beauty too. The noble Nandakis. The graceful starwhales. The beauty of the heavens.
Tears filled Ben-Ari's eyes, because she would miss her friends. She would miss them so much.
She nodded.
"Yes," she whispered.
They walked back to the house as the sun vanished behind the sea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
During his long days at war, Marco had imagined a full house on the beach, bustling with life. In his dreams, Lailani would be running around, chasing all the stray dogs she adopted. Ben-Ari would spend much of her time reading, writing, and painting in her studio in the attic, but come down in the evenings to light candles, to sing, to feast with them. Addy would organize poker games and field hockey matches, and Kemi would put on music and dance and force everyone to dance with her. Marco would complain about them, of course, call them all too loud and crazy and a nuisance, but he would be happy. He would be with his family.
As it turned out, he ended up moving into the beach house with Addy and Steve.
With just Addy and Steve.
He felt like in that old apartment in Toronto. It was only missing Stooge on the couch.
The days went by, and they made it a home.
There were many empty rooms, but the house was never silent, not with Addy around. Marco put together a studio for himself on the second floor. His window afforded a view of the sea, and on his shelf, he placed model ships and seashells, one among them a precious conch. He found a used bookshop in a nearby town, and he began to purchase the old books and fill his house with them. A hardcover set of The Lord of the Rings, another of The Chronicles of Narnia. Copies of Tigana and The Chronicles of Amber and several books by Heinlein. Several rare, leather-bound Dickens novels. Every book Carl Sagan had written. A few works by local, contemporary authors when he could find English translations. A copy of Ben-Ari's memoirs of the war, which he still dared not read, fearing the memories inside.
And he wrote his own words.
Every morning, he made a pot of coffee, then sat by the window to write.
He wrote a new story, a fantasy about knights in armor, noble elves from mystical forests, dwarves who mined for gems in the depths, and dragons that soared. His story grew into a novel, then into a trilogy of novels. And as he kept telling his tale, Marco realized that here was not just an adventure story, not just escapism, though he had originally intended the story to be escapist. With every chapter, Marco realized that he was writing about himself.
The dwarves dug too deeply for their gems, and they awoke an ancient evil—like Marco and his friends had found evil in the mines of Corpus. The heroes, humble farmers from a peaceful village, traveled through dangers untold to seek the aid of the noble elves—like Marco had sought help from the yurei. The dragons soared and battled the demons from beyond, much like the human fleet had fought the scum pods and the ravagers in space.
A year after he began writing, Marco completed his trilogy, and he named it The Dragons of Yesteryear. To his surprise, a local publisher printed a thousand copies, and they sold across the islands. Then a larger publisher bought the trilogy, and they printed half a million copies, and they sold across the ocean. They sold out.
For the first time in his life, Marco was sharing his writing with more than his friends. He kept a drawer in his desk for fan letters, and when he received one from Lailani—who had found a copy of his book all the way in the Philippines, where she had opened her school—it made his year.
Loggerhead and Le Kill remained, unpublished, in the second drawer.
In the days that followed, Marco began to take long walks.
He walked along the beach for kilometers. He hiked among the hills. One time, he spent three days hiking around the entire island, sleeping on the beach, before circling back home. His royalties arrived in his bank account every month, leaving him free to spend his days hiking, lost in thought. He kept Kemi's soulshell in his pocket, a constant warming presence. He remembered what Eldest had told him, that he had to release her soul before it withered, yet he could not bring himself to do it. Not yet. It still hurt too much. And so he took Kemi with him on his walks, and he spoke to her, though she could not answer.
On his walks, Marco got to know the people who shared the island with him, most just by face if not name. He waved at the old fishermen. He exchanged pleasantries with the young man who sold gyros in the town. He became good friends with the old married couple who owned the local bookshop, the only bookshop on the island. Most people here spoke only a smattering of English, but Marco spent some evenings with them, dining on fried calamari and crunchy fish with chips and lemon, washing it down with strong arak.
But mostly he walked alone.
Mostly he preferred walking alone, reflecting, daydreaming.
During his walks, one familiar face caught his attention more than most. She was a young woman who seemed to live on the beach. Often Marco saw her fishing on a pier. Sometimes he saw her sleeping by the water, and sometimes he caught her hiking among the hills. A couple times, he nodded and smiled at her, but she looked away shyly.
One night, Marco woke up before dawn, cold sweat covering him, the blankets tangled around him. Once more, a nightmare had roused him. Oddly, it wasn't about the war, not about scum or marauders in the darkness. In his dream, he had been back on Haven, back in the call center, trapped among the desks, desperate to please his superiors, wasting away. Trembling, he walked to the sea, and he swam until dawn, then walked along the beach, wearing nothing but his shorts. Often at home, he felt shy about walking with his shirt off, even in the heat, for he still carried scars from the war. Today the beach was deserted. He walked in the sunrise.
It was on this dawn, of all days, that the shy girl approached him.
She met his eyes briefly, then looked at her feet, cheeks flushing, and twisted her fingers.
"I wanted ask you, sir," she mumbled. "Are you being Mister Marco Emery, sir?"
He couldn't place her accent. She wasn't Greek; her accent sounded vaguely Asian, th
ough with a touch of the west. Her hair was black and smooth, her eyes dark and slanted, and she seemed very young to him, barely older than a youth.
He nodded. "I am."
She kept staring at her toes, swishing them through the wet sand.
"I am being a fan, Mr. Emery. Of The Dragons of Yesteryear." She dared glance up and meet his eyes. "Your books help me so much. Take me to new places. Adventures. Maybe you sign my books?" She pulled three books from her pack, along with a pen. Her hands were shaking.
He smiled. He had never signed a fan's books before.
"Of course," he said. "Who should I make them out to?" When she blinked at him, confused, he said, "What's your name?"
"Ah." She smiled and pointed at herself. "This is Tomiko. I say right? I mean: I is being Tomiko."
Marco blinked at her.
He frowned.
"Tomiko?" he whispered.
She bit her lip. "I say bad? I no speak English well. Or Greek." She pointed at herself again. "Name is being Tomiko."
Marco couldn't help but laugh.
Tomiko.
Nobody had ever read Le Kill aside from Addy. Nobody else knew that Tomiko was the heroine in his unpublished manuscript. And standing there on the beach, signing the books for her, Marco realized that there were as many mysteries, as much magic and wonder, here on Earth as in the vastness of space.
He hesitated for a moment, the words on his lips.
Come on, you've faced scum and marauders in battle, he thought. You can ask a girl out for dinner.
So he did.
And Tomiko grinned—a huge, happy grin that made her eyes light up—and accepted his invitation.
They ate at his favorite place, the little taverna on the boardwalk in town, and he ordered the calamari and fried fish and two bottles—real glass—of Coca-Cola. Over dinner, Tomiko told him her story. She had grown up in Osaka, had managed to flee the burning city during the marauder assault. She had turned eighteen during the war, and during the chaos, she had never received her draft to join the military; Japan's HDF command had collapsed in the marauder assault. So she had begun to make her way west, to Paris, hoping to find her French father, a seaman who had romanced her Japanese mother but had returned to France soon after Tomiko's birth. Tomiko had reached Greece when she learned that Paris, like so many other world cities, was gone.
"So I decide I stay here in Greece," she said over her plate of calamari. "I like the beach. Weather is being good. I catch fish and sing for money."
Marco walked her home, to her tent on the beach, and for the next few days, he couldn't stop thinking about her.
He walked by her beach again, and she smiled to see him, and he invited her for another dinner, this time at his house. Again she accepted. That evening, Tomiko seemed shy, almost frightened, around the loud and brash Addy and Steve. She seemed relieved when Marco walked her home along the beach.
"Addy can be loud, huh?" he said.
Tomiko laughed nervously. "She very nice. I is just being shy. I am shy around new people." She slipped her hand into his. "Not with you, though, Mr. Emery."
He laughed. "You can call me Marco."
When they reached her tent, Tomiko stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
"Goodbye, Marco," she whispered. Then she blushed furiously and fled into her tent.
Soon, Tomiko was coming over for dinner almost every evening. Soon, she and Marco kissed goodbye every night—at first just pecks on the cheek, soon on the lips, and then longer kisses while lying on the beach.
In the spring, Addy sat Marco down on the couch in their living room, placed her hands on her hips, and told him, "Marco, I want you to invite Tomiko to live with us."
He nodded. "Yes, I've been thinking of that. We do have a spare bedroom, and—"
"No spare bedroom," Addy said. "She'll live in your room. She'll sleep in your bed."
He smiled wryly. "I think she might have a choice in the matter too."
Addy rolled her eyes. "Please, Poet. The girl is fucking crazy about you. I can see it. And you're madly in love with her. I can see that too. There are blind men in Fiji who've seen it by now, even the ones who've been dead for a century."
Marco grew serious. He patted the cushion beside her, and Addy sat down.
"I don't know if I should," he said.
"Why?" Addy said. "Tomiko is sweet, Poet. She's really sweet. And smart. And beautiful. Hell, if you don't want her, I'm going to dump Steve and woo her myself."
He stared out the window at the sea, but he was gazing at his past. At RASCOM and Fort Djemila. At the battle of Corpus. At the invasion of Abaddon. He thought of his journey through space and facing Malphas in Toronto, of learning a horrible truth.
"She's nineteen," he said softly. "She's so young. Eight years younger than us. And she can't understand. Nobody can. What we went through." He looked into Addy's eyes. "You understand. Ben-Ari and Lailani understand. We might never speak of it, but we understand. Tomiko won't. And I might never be able to speak of it to her."
Addy's eyes dampened. She caressed Marco's cheek.
"Marco, she doesn't need to understand. She needs to make you happy."
He nodded. "She makes me happy," he whispered.
Addy smiled and wiped her eyes. She hugged him. "Go to her. Go to her now. Bring her flowers."
He went to her.
He invited her for dinner again. Then he invited her to spend the night. Then he invited her to spend the rest of her life. And she said yes. And she kissed him and slept in his arms that night, and he was happy.
He still woke up from nightmares most nights. Sometimes, Tomiko told him, he screamed in his sleep. But she was always there to soothe him in the darkness. When the panic struck, Tomiko held him close, stroked his hair, and sang soft lullabies in his ear. And he calmed and slept again.
Most days, Marco still remembered. An insect would fly into the house, and his heart would burst into a gallop, and he would see the scum in the mines. A dish would shatter, and he'd seek shelter, seek his gun, sure the bombs were falling. And during those times too, Tomiko was there to hold him, kiss his cheek, sing to him, and calm him.
But mostly, the memories were softer, more bittersweet. Memories of Caveman in his firetruck pajamas. Of Jackass and her books. Of Elvis crooning. Good memories of fallen friends. He never told Tomiko about them. He wasn't sure how. He wasn't sure she would ever truly understand what he, what Addy, what the rest of them had gone through. But as the days went by, he realized that it was okay. That Addy had been right. That Tomiko didn't need to understand.
That she made him happy.
And that's what mattered.
Her name was Tomiko, like in his book, and she was meant to be there for him.
Because after all, the world was small.
And after all, the world was good.
And after all, the world was beautiful, and so was she.
One hot night, Marco and Tomiko decided to sleep outside on the beach. They lay on the sand between the seashells, the water just beyond their toes, and gazed up at the stars. She had never been to space. Marco pointed at the constellations, telling her about the stars, about the places he had visited, about the wonders he had seen. About aliens who lived in a watery world, their fins like purple banners. About starwhales who glided through the cosmos, communicating telepathically. About ancient forests that grew in ships of light. About a thousand other marvels.
And then he told her more.
He told her about how during a drill at boot camp, they had peed into bottles and milk cartons, and their sergeant accidentally knocked them over. About how Beast would boast about Russia, but he had actually been from Queens. About how Caveman would somehow find and pick flowers even in the desert. About the time Elvis would croon old songs in the shower, and once they had all joined him, performing a spirited rendition of "Suspicious Minds." About all those funny tales from his youth. And with every story, Tomiko laughed, wrinkled her nose, and
nestled closer to Marco. Finally she slept, a smile still on her lips.
Marco remained awake. He lay under the stars at her side. Then, slowly, he rose to his feet without waking her. He walked to the edge of the water. He pulled the conch from his pack, the soulshell the yurei had given him. A glow still emerged from inside.
"Goodbye, Kemi," he whispered and raised the seashell overhead.
Golden wisps emerged from the shell, coiling upward in the night.
Goodbye, Marco, he thought he could hear her say.
The golden light rose higher, becoming one with the stars.
He hesitated for a moment, then took out the small wooden box Eldest had given him.
When you're ready, open this box, she had said. This is my parting gift to you.
Inside, he found a crystal the size and shape of a willow leaf. He recognized it. A crystal from the Tree of Memory aboard the soulship. When he turned it in his hands, the crystal facets showed his memories. The ones he had described to Tomiko. And memories of Kemi—smiling at him, dancing in the forest of the Nandakis, and waving from a field of stars. He had said goodbye to her, but he knew that she wasn't gone. He knew that Kemi, that Caveman and Beast and Elvis, that Anisha, that his father, that all those he had lost would forever enrich his life, would forever live in memory.
He placed the crystal in his pack. He returned to Tomiko and lay beside her.
She woke and looked at him. She touched his cheek.
"You're crying," she whispered. "Are you all right?"
He nodded and held her close. "I'm all right, Tomiko. I'm happy."
* * * * *
Ben-Ari sat in the small transport shuttle, flying toward the starship orbiting Earth.
The Lodestar had been designed to look like an old Earth sailing ship, the kind Magellan and Captain Cook had used when exploring the world. She didn't have masts or sails, of course, but her hull was the right shape, silvery and gleaming. A figurehead thrust out from her prow, shaped as Eos, the Ancient Greek goddess of dawn. The ship was several hundred meters long, and five hundred people worked aboard her.
Earth Valor (Earthrise Book 6) Page 26