Someone else would quit. Her little mantra was so absurd in this hideous context that just thinking it made her feel a rush of giddiness, as if she were losing her mind. But when that sensation passed, she felt centered, resolute.
This is a crime scene. There are questions to answer.
What had Mursult told his lawyer?
Mursult’s information might be here, but where? The Cormorant-class ships were fitted with personal compartments, little more than cubbies cut into the floors and ceilings, coffin-shaped cubicles meant to serve as private places to sleep. But most people preferred to tether their sleep sacks somewhere in the main cabin rather than squeeze into these casketlike compartments, so civilian passengers generally used these compartments as footlockers to stow personal items. There had been twenty people on board the Onyx. Moss picked through each compartment, looking for Durr’s.
“Here we go,” she said, uncovering a set of burgundy overnight bags monogrammed “C.D.” Undergarments, a folded tracksuit, hosiery, a jar of Oil of Olay, bifocals. She found a Stephen King paperback and a manila envelope closed with a metal clasp. Moss opened the envelope, slid out the sheaf of papers: lined sheets, torn from a spiral notebook, the edges fringed from the perforation. Crude pencil drawings. What are these? In one of them, Moss recognized the Vardogger tree. There was a photocopy of a map, red ink pointing to a location at the Red Run, the thin space, highlighting the approximate location of the access route to get to that spot. Then she found a handwritten note:
It’s a trick, it might take you a few times before you see the trees if you can ever see the trees at all. Bietak thinks you need QTNs in you to see it, as some people never can figure out the trick, but I don’t think that’s the case—the damn thing opens whenever our engine misfires. Follow the trees once you see them, but once you cross the river, don’t step off the path. You’ll think you’ll want to—it feels like that—but if you step off the path, you will be exposed and you can’t be saved.
The next sheet was a drawing of Libra, in black ink, the bow circled with rings of blue ink—meant to be the spurting blue flame from the B-L drive, Moss guessed.
The trees lead you here to Libra. When you’re here, you will see other lines of Vardoggers. If you walk these other paths, you go to other worlds like your world but slightly off. H marks paths we took, so we remember. He sets cairns in the paths. There are many paths.
Moss flipped through the pages. A map of Buckhannon, the chemical lab marked in red.
Building a heavy-duty facility at Zion, multi-million dollars, H got the idea from cult in Japan. There’s an orchard there—Jared’s mom will move to the orchard, hold it for him. H and Jared want to re-create Japanese gas attacks, use the same stuff they used. Test batches at Buckhannon.
There were other drawings, some of geometric shapes, seven-pointed stars, one of the Black Sun design, its spokes like the Vardogger paths, and there were hand-drawn maps labeled ESPERANCE, a series of drawings showing locations of campsites, remembered fragments of geography. Moss recognized the fjords and oceans Nicole had described. There were star charts marking the location of the dim binary stars, the location of the planet that Libra had discovered. She found a longer letter:
Dear Durr. If I show up someday demanding my cut of the money, then the deal’s still on but for now it’s too late for me haha so use this info in good health. H is coming tonight, Nicole told me so. I was at my buddy’s when she told me so had to run. She’s a nice kid but a rat and squeals whenever H pushes her. It cuts me she ratted me out to him but at least she confessed to me, gave me a heads up. At least love’s worth that much. NO ONE knows you not even Nicole so don’t worry you’re safe. So now’s the time for brass tacks. Included: location of Krugger, location of Esperance, location of Libra and that special tree, the Vardogger, just like I promised. I know you haven’t believed most of what I told you but after tonight you’ll at least know the danger I am in is real, so please watch yourself too. I was with H from the beginning with all his bullshit because I wanted to LIVE. I wanted to live, that’s all. But I can’t stomach all his killing. I saw someone he burned alive with acid and couldn’t take it. Sometimes I wish I would have helped Remark make that black hole, a cascade failure to obliterate us all. Too late, too late for all. I will not get my money or my pardon, but my cut will be for you to sell this information to Navy or FBI, make a good buck for yourself but stop this man. He wants to kill us all. Krugger walks every path. He worships death. Worships death like most men worship Jesus. He prays to it. He takes their fingernails and uses them like relics, like holy things. He will be at my house soon and so I left my family there, left him to kill my family to slow him down some so I can get this information to your safe deposit box, per our agreement and also get somewhere safe. You might think that sounds harsh to let my family die but here’s something else you won’t believe but it is truth: merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. No matter what happens to my family tonight, I can find another one. I’ll walk the Vardogger trees to some other place and time and there my wife will welcome me home, safe and sound. They will be dead here, but they will be alive somewhere else. My wife will be a young woman there and my Marian will be a young child, she’ll be five again, and I’ll watch her grow up again happy and I’ll watch my youngest come into being all over again. Durr we are all just shadows that come through the woods, shadows that cross the river. It’s like this, that old poem I used to recite to my Marian when she was a child and I rocked her to sleep in my lap: ’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed, As if it could not be, And some folk thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed, Of sailing that beautiful sea. Anyway I look at the time and know even now my family is dead or dying. I cry over my children but I know they will live yet. I will drop this information at your box, then will drive to a space I like, this calm spot where I like to think, where I like to stay sometimes and sleep. I’ll think of my family that was here and prepare for my new family that will be there. You’ll never see me again—MUR.
Patrick Mursult thought he would escape through the Vardogger, walking the paths, start a new life in some other IFT. But he was killed at the Blackwater Lodge before he could escape.
Marian will be a young child . . . But how was that possible? None of us can go back, can we?
The Terminus had followed Libra, but Libra was caught in a space-time knot, somewhere beyond time. The Onyx, however, had returned to terra firma. The crew of the Onyx had shed their clothes because they were infected with QTNs, Moss thought, remembering how her own skin had burned. That had been the sensation in the minutes before her crucifixion: burning skin. She had stripped off her clothes despite biting winter wind, and was crucified.
“Onyx, please call Apollo Soucek Field.”
She heard the tone for “failed command.” Moss found one of the ship’s computers, saw: . . . ACCESS NOT AUTHORIZED.
“Override,” said Moss. “Please place a call to Apollo Soucek Field.”
. . . ALL CHANNELS REQUIRED FOR OPERATION SAIGON.
“Damn it,” she said. “Onyx, override. Send out emergency signal. Please place a call to Apollo Soucek Field or to the Black Vale.”
. . . ALL CHANNELS REQUIRED FOR OPERATION SAIGON.
“Fuck.”
The bodies in the cabin moved when she brushed against them. They looked like they danced, like someone’s dreamy joke of a morgue ballet. She escaped belowdecks, exploring the galley, the recreation room. She found an American flag, stiff without gravity, a fabric rectangle thumbtacked to the floor. On the ceiling were a camcorder and tripod. She checked the camera, found a tape, wondering if these people had filmed themselves murdering one another. She loaded the VHS tape into the entertainment system, figured out how to turn everything on. The screen was filled with an image of Senator Charley, wearing a blue polo shirt and khaki shorts, tube socks pulled near to his knees. The American flag was over his shoulder, a backdrop. Moss had seen the man countless times on television, but he looke
d much younger here, sparked by a childlike wonder, the circus ride of weightlessness.
“Fellow Americans, I have been on the journey of a lifetime, of a thousand lifetimes,” he said, and then a woman’s voice, off camera, asked him to try again. The senator cleared his throat, plastered on a practiced smile, and said, “I have been on the journey of a lifetime. Fell Americans. I mean, fellow Americans—”
“Go ahead,” said the woman’s voice. “We can edit.”
“Fellow Americans, on March twenty-sixth, 1997, aboard a Navy vessel, the USS Onyx, a group of men and women embarked on the journey of a lifetime, a journey of a thousand lifetimes. We traveled a distance once only dreamed of. No longer the ‘final frontier,’ the vast distances of space have been opened to us . . . Wait, wait, let me try that again.”
“You used the word ‘distance’ several times,” said the woman off screen. “We can use cue cards.”
“No,” said Senator Charley. “I want this to feel natural.”
“Let’s practice the section about Majesty,” said the woman.
“Okay,” said the senator. He smiled to the camera and said, “We have discovered a planet rich in wondrous, strange materials, beautiful fauna and undreamed-of life. Yes, life. I have had my eyes opened anew to the miracle of God’s creation and have had my mind opened to the possibilities of his grandeur. As Christians, and as Americans, we have called this planet ‘Majesty.’”
“A touch too preachy. Oh, hold on,” said the woman’s voice, off camera.
The image of the senator turned to fuzz, but a new image appeared. Someone had filmed through one of the ship’s windows—an image similar to pictures of Earth seen from a distance, the curved sphere of a planet, but the planet filmed here was a sphere white with ice and black with oily seas, crater-pocked and scarred with jagged mountains. A sizable moon rose over the crescent horizon, a golden giant. The monitor turned to static.
“—Shannon?” from over the comm.
The sudden voice startled her.
“Shannon, was that you? Are you okay?” said O’Connor. “I received the emergency signal.”
“I’m . . . I found something important up here,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I have rendezvous instructions for you, enact immediately,” he said. “You have been assigned to TERNs Group 5, the Cancer. Don’t come home, Shannon—”
“Listen to me,” she said. “The Onyx went to Esperance, they went to the—”
“I understand,” he said. “But it’s too late now. Once you reach Cancer, set the autocourse on the Onyx for Apollo Soucek. We need more ships for the evacuation, we need every ship. The Navy has seized control of the Grey Dove. They’ve recalled the ship, but we need more.”
“The answer might be here, on the Onyx,” said Moss. “We need more time.”
“It’s too late,” said O’Connor. “The hanged men are here, the running men are here. People everywhere are looking at the sky, their mouths are filled with silver. The forests are burning, the snow is heavy. It’s too late, Shannon. It’s too late.”
Moss pulled herself along the lower-deck passageway, flying upward through the portal leading to the helm, thinking, Remarque. They murdered the Libra’s commanding officer. The cockpit of the Onyx was identical to the Grey Dove’s: a reinforced-glass canopy, two flight chairs nestled into a sea of controls, panels of switches and knobs. She thought of her mother. She thought of Cancer. Receding in the distance was her ship, the Grey Dove, the tether snapped.
“Onyx, were you given new instructions?”
. . . RENDEZVOUS WITH USS CANCER, SET AUTOCOURSE FOR NAVAL AIR STATION OCEANA.
“Onyx, can you belay that order?”
. . . NO. ALL RESOURCES REQUISITIONED FOR OPERATION SAIGON.
“Onyx, can you belay the order to dock with the USS Cancer if you fly to Oceana?”
. . . YES.
The TERNs would be loaded to capacity, she thought. Two hundred souls. She thought of Cancer, an older ship, a ship that once had faulty O-rings before its overhaul. We would live like rats, thought Moss, and there would be nowhere to run, no haven, nowhere, there would only be one blind jump to the next, to far-future IFTs in unknown galaxies searching barren stars and infertile planets for safe landing, for any safe landing, until the food ran out or the recycling for the water malfunctioned. Everyone on board would kill one another, they would eat one another, drink one another, and eventually they would all starve, they would all die of thirst, or they would run out of oxygen. One way or another, they would all die.
Only a few hours of oxygen remained in her tank. “Onyx, please reestablish life support,” she said. “And belay request to rendezvous with the Cancer. Continue to Oceana.”
An impulsive request, but she felt the burden of culpability, the belief that her actions had brought the Terminus here. She felt she deserved to die or never escape. Pushing through the hanging legs and arms of the corpses felt like swimming through a skein of seaweed. Driscoll was in the toilet, his lipless, toothy grin—she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see Durr’s revealed heart. She used the American flag as a cover to the upper-deck portal, to keep the blood out as the air began to circulate. When the Onyx had reached healthy oxygen saturation, Moss removed her helmet. She’d been expecting a smell of putrefaction, but there was none.
She left the lights on. She tried to sleep during her return to Earth, but her body tensed and her mind flitted with fear. Images darted through her thoughts. The hanged men, the running men, Nestor asking if she believed in the resurrection of the body. No, there is no God, this is the natural order. She imagined a snake flailing in the weightlessness of space until it curled toward itself to swallow its own tail. She thought of silver, swatches of silver swimming together, a school of fish. Njoku in the Pacific, reaching deep into a watery thin space and feeling a fish appear in the middle of his hand, the sensation of the fish slipping free . . .
Moss skimmed the surface of sleep and woke when she fell to the floor, the clatter of everything that hadn’t been tethered crashing down around her, the camcorder cracked to pieces, the tremendous thud, thud, thud of the bodies whapping the walls and floor. Earth’s gravity. She hurried to the pilot’s chair, strapped herself in, thinking of the wreck of the Libra, just before the misfire. Libra had burned and fallen in that long, dreamless night. The Onyx’s cockpit was tinted, shading the incandescent smear of fire as it burned against the atmosphere like a struck match. They murdered Remarque, she thought. At one of the Brandt-Lomonaco space-time knots, Pacific jack mackerels were caught in a Gödel curve—a loop. She thought of Libra, her disorienting night in the brig, her experience of mutiny and the shipwreck that followed. Mursult’s letter to Durr had spelled out what Remarque had been attempting, a cascade failure to obliterate us all. A black hole.
“I can do what Remarque couldn’t do,” said Moss, piecing her thoughts together even as she said them aloud. Nicole had told her that Remarque had ordered mass suicide. That if the entire crew of Libra blinked, then the planet Esperance would go unfound. “My God,” Moss said aloud, to no one. “Libra’s a jack mackerel. I can do what Remarque couldn’t do.”
But what would come of it? she wondered. What would happen if she managed to breach Libra, if she somehow managed to cause a cascade failure?
She had been brought here, pulled across the river when she was pulled from the cross. Everyone’s mistake, she’d been told, is that we believe in our own existence. The falling star as it blooms. Patrick Mursult believed he could walk the Vardoggers, travel backward in time: Marian will be young. If he could walk backward in time . . .
When was terra firma? she wondered. It wasn’t here, it wasn’t 1997. 1997 was Libra’s IFT. If she could cause a cascade failure, if Libra can blink, when was true terra firma? She imagined the thin space overwhelmed by the Terminus, imagined the Terminus reaching Libra, imagined the White Hole traveling Libra’s Casimir line back to the point of its original launch, to
terra firma. Marian will be young, five years old. Nicole, when she rescued Moss from the brig, had said that eleven years had passed. Ebullience rose through her like bubbles in a flute of champagne. If Libra blinked, then this IFT will blink, everything will blink. NSC ships would still comb the universe and distant time, would still sail Deep Waters, but Libra will have blinked in its future. Esperance will go undiscovered. There would still be a chance of that planet’s discovery, Moss realized, some chance of another ship happening on that planet, there would still be a chance of the Terminus, but only a chance. A possibility. But there can be other possibilities. Terra firma would be the date of Libra’s initial launch, the moment just before Libra first used its B-L drive.
November 7, 1985.
“Courtney,” said Moss.
The Onyx cut through the whiteout squall, the ocean an undulating gray beneath the gusts, and skidded on the ice-slicked runway at Apollo Soucek. People broke through the barriers and swarmed the runway, chased the Cormorants as they taxied, insensible of their own safety in their desperation to flee. Moss saw bodies in the snow. She was still far from the terminal when a yellow truck the size of a bus cut across the runway ahead of her, sped toward her, to collide with her. What are you doing? she thought as the truck fishtailed on the slick surface. It was an anti-icing truck, the cherry-picker arm and hoses flailing wildly. The truck swerved and cut back and rammed the Onyx’s front wheel.
“What the fuck?” shouted Moss, the Onyx now stuck in the wreckage of the truck. Maybe an accident caused by the ice, maybe the truck had slid into her, but she saw the first few people rush toward the Cormorant shouting. Others appeared, families, soldiers, surrounding the Onyx, trying to climb aboard. They want to get into this ship. They want to save themselves, take over this ship.
Moss popped the canopy just as one of the men reached her. He’d clambered up the wreckage of the yellow truck, his eyes wild. “Take me on this one, take me!”
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