"And I did, Father," she whispered. "I did."
She thought of the professor. She missed him too. He had become something of a father figure to her—fifteen years older, wiser, a mentor. But no, not a father. Something more. Perhaps even someone who could have become a lover? She missed him too. She wondered if love could have bloomed between them.
Another tear fell. She thought of those precious hours she had spent in his study, listening to him speak of science, learning from him. He had called her his brightest pupil. He had marveled at how she could pick up complex science with ease. Yet how could she not have learned well with such a patient, kind teacher? He could make even the most complicated equations seem simple. Under his tutelage, she had come to understand physics, the properties of light and spacetime and gravity, how azoth crystals could create wormholes but also warp-speed bubbles, how—
She inhaled sharply.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Azoth crystals create both wormholes and warp-speed bubbles," she whispered. She gazed at the device in her hands, the wormhole generator.
There was an azoth crystal inside.
She scoffed. No. Impossible. It was too small! The size of a grain of sand! The azoth crystal inside the Lodestar was the size of her fist, perfectly cut, its facades calibrated down to the exact atom, allowing it to bend spacetime just the right way. A crystal like that one, priceless, could create a warp bubble large enough to engulf a starship, to let it travel faster than light.
Ben-Ari took a deep breath.
"But I don't need a bubble that large," she whispered to herself. "Only a bubble large enough for me."
She bit her lip, struggling not to let foolish hope overwhelm her. She ran equations in her mind. The numbers arranged and rearranged themselves, but they soon became fuzzy, fading away. The math was slipping from her. Too complicated!
Imagine the professor, she told himself. Imagine him here with you. Imagine his voice.
She brought him to mind—his kind face, his gentle demeanor, his soothing voice. She imagined him at her side, creating the equations with her, making the numbers fit.
And she had it.
With shaky fingers, she typed on the dish's control panel. This time she was not calibrating the device to create a wormhole.
This time she wouldn't punch a hole through spacetime.
She would bend it.
The numbers were inputted. She paused.
"All right, professor," she said. "Let's see if you taught me well. Here goes nothing."
She hit enter.
The dish trembled in her hands.
Light bended around it.
The starlight shimmered.
And around her, the bubble formed.
She laughed and wept as she ignited her jet pack. She blasted forward, flying through warped space. A single woman with a jet pack—and a makeshift warp drive.
She blasted forward, laughing, crying, streaming through space at millions of kilometers per second. The starlight streamed in lines around her. And it was beautiful. It was so beautiful.
She flew for a long time, astounded by the beauty, soaking it in.
Yes. The cosmos was filled with terror and darkness and cruelty. But there was beauty too, she knew. There was so much beauty.
She kept flying until she saw her ahead—the Lodestar. Her ship. A starship shaped like an old sailing ship, navigating the cosmic ocean. The enemy saucers were still following the Lodestar, ten thousand of them. Ben-Ari had destroyed just one mothership.
But Earth is now roused, Ben-Ari thought. Earth will now fight. And I will fight too.
She overshot the enemy saucers, and she lowered herself to hover over the Lodestar. She descended slowly, then gently dipped into the ship's warp bubble, coming to fly alongside the Lodestar.
She tapped her communicator, and she spoke with a shaky voice, tears still in her eyes.
"Professor Isaac? Would it be all right if I had my ship back now?"
They opened an airlock for her. They gasped. They could not believe it. Ben-Ari stood in the airlock, legs shaking, her spacesuit charred, her body bleeding. She pulled off her helmet, and her hair was wet with sweat and blood.
He came running toward her. His black hair was disheveled. He raced toward her and pulled her into his arms. Her professor. Her Noah.
"I can't believe this," he whispered, holding her close. "I can't believe this!"
"I did it," she whispered. "Like you taught me. You saved my life."
Her knees buckled. He carried her in his arms to the sick bay. He held her hand and stroked her hair as the doctors tended to her, and she slept.
CHAPTER TWO
For most of his life, Marco had considered Addy his best friend, his sister-in-arms, the closest person to him in the world. A kind, wonderful woman who had become more than a friend. Who had become partner, lover, his second half. When he had finally formed this bond with her, it seemed that all his old pain had vanished, that she filled his life with light, joy, and love.
But after two weeks crammed with Addy inside a flying hippie van, he was ready to murder her.
"Addy, for Chrissake!" He pushed her wet laundry away from his face. "Must you hang your laundry all over the ship?" As he trudged across the starship, a wet sock hit his face, and he grimaced. "We have a dryer, you know."
The old Volkswagen looked cheery enough from the outside, its hull painted with flowers, peace signs, and psychedelic swirls. But on the inside, the starship was far less pleasant.
Addy had slung clotheslines across the hold, and her clothes hung everywhere, sopping wet, dripping onto the floor. It was like navigating through cobwebs. Even without the laundry, it was cluttered in here. Addy had crammed the starship full of her belongings: comic books, gun magazines, hockey memorabilia, a guitar she could barely play yet twanged on incessantly, and a real Japanese katana, her prized possession. At the moment, a pile of potato chips and empty cigarette boxes buried the blade.
She's not fully human, Marco thought. There's some pig DNA in there or I'm Kermit the Frog.
"Addy!" he said. "Do you hear me? Dryer!"
Addy was lounging in the corner, reading a comic book and puffing on a cigar. Her bare feet were propped onto a pile of books—his books, the ones he had written. Her old helmet from the war, the words Hell Patrol scrawled across it, hung askew on her head. A box of chocolate chip cookies lay beside her, half empty. More laundry—these clothes dirty—covered the floor around her.
"The dryer makes my clothes shrink." She reached for a cookie, tossed it into her mouth, and flipped the page.
"Or maybe you're growing bigger." Marco grimaced as he ducked under a clothesline, narrowly dodging her wet underwear.
"No way!" Addy snorted. "I'm a petite, delicate rose." She belched.
Marco groaned. "The Thunder Road used to be a tidy ship. Now she's a flying garbage bin."
"I told you." Addy glowered. "Her name is Shippy McShipface."
"That's a stupid name for a starship," Marco said.
"Yeah, well, Shippy thinks your name is stupid too."
Marco finally made it through the hanging laundry and reached the washroom. He pulled the door open, then closed it again. He spun back toward Addy. "You left the bathroom a mess. The shower curtains are open! You know that creates mold. And there are long blond hairs all over the shower walls. And—"
"Poet!" Addy finally rose to her feet. "For fuck's sake, you're not my mother." She walked toward him, deftly dodging the laundry, and puffed cigar smoke in his face. "You're a twenty-nine-year-old dude, but you're fussier than a stuffy old grandma."
"I'm just trying to keep things neat," Marco said. "This is a small ship, and the windows don't open. If mold gets in here, we—"
Addy groaned. "There's mold on your brain! God! Stop being a pest." She pointed with her cigar around the hold. "So yes, I hang sexy lingerie all over the place, and my beautiful long hair is visible everywhere with its golden radiance, and
I leave delicious crumbs all over, but that's what makes this place a home, Marco."
"You forgot all the candy wrappers everywhere," he said.
Addy howled in frustration. "For God's sake!" She reached down, picked up a bunch of dirty laundry and candy wrappers, and dumped them onto Marco's head. "Here!" She picked up more trash and stuffed it down his shirt. "More junk!" She lifted a sweaty old shirt and pressed it against his face. "More laundry! God! Get dirty a little. And get off my ass!"
Marco stood very still, staring at her, her laundry and wrappers hanging across his shoulders. Addy stared back, chin raised, fists clenched, and her eyes shone with fury.
"Come on, take a swing at me," she said, a glint in her eye. "I dare you. I double dare you. Or are you chicken?"
Addy was a tall woman, strong, a warrior. Marco had fought many aliens in his life, and he was a decorated war hero, but he doubted even he could take Addy in a fight. Yet he would not back down. He stared steadily into her eyes, even as she puffed out her chest and brought her face close to his, snarling. They stood like two wrestlers about to brawl.
Finally Marco lifted a dirty sock—one that hung across his shoulder—and draped it across her head.
Addy gasped. She shoved him. "That means war!"
Marco stumbled back. He grabbed her hand, and they fell together onto a pile of laundry.
"War, war, war!" she said, dumping more and more items onto him—laundry, wrappers, magazines, anything that came to hand. When she tried to pull more items off a shelf, he grabbed her hands. He pulled her down.
"Enough, wild beast!" he said. "It's like sharing a spaceship with a tornado. It'll take hours to clean this up."
They lay together on the floor, side by side in the mess. Addy rolled toward him, grabbed his shoulders, and stared into his eyes.
"Clean later," she said. "Now sex."
"Or maybe we can clean first, and then our reward can—"
She silenced him with a deep kiss.
"Yes," he finally said when he came up for air. "Clean later."
They added the clothes they were wearing to the piles. They made hot, sweaty love in the cramped spaceship, leaving them panting, damp, and lying side by side. She nestled against him, her arm slung across his chest. Marco kissed her forehead.
As bad as this journey was, these hours were magical. At first it had felt awkward. They would laugh nervously during their lovemaking. After so many years as friends, it felt ridiculous to become lovers. But it also felt right. It felt meant to be. It felt wonderful.
Marco stroked her long blond hair.
I love you, Addy, he thought. I've always loved you. Everything that I've lived through—the other women, my marriage, my divorce—it all led to you. You and I were always meant to be. You are infuriating, and messy, and uncouth, and I love you more than anyone I've ever loved. You are beautiful. You are strong. You are—
He winced. "Ow, Addy, your elbow! It's digging into my ribs!"
She dug it deeper, struggling to reach across him. "I see cookies!"
He grunted with pain as her elbow moved to poke his stomach. "I'll get them for you. God! You're crushing my pancreas."
"No need." Finally, after kneeing him in the groin and nearly suffocating him under her body, she reached the cookies and wriggled back to his side. She stuffed two into her mouth and offered him one. "Cookie?"
"How don't you weigh a million pounds by now?" he asked, dusting off crumbs.
She shrugged. "I burn lots of calories." She swallowed and nodded. "All right. Another round."
"I—"
"Hush and obey!"
Dutifully, he obeyed.
Finally, after a long shared shower—most of it involving Marco spraying her hair off the walls—they headed back into the cockpit. They sat down in the tattered upholstered seats. They were almost at their destination.
"Durmia," Marco said, gazing into the distance. "We're only a few hours away. From peace. From wisdom. From true awareness and spiritual enlightenment."
"And from elephant men with two trunks!" Addy nodded eagerly.
Marco picked up the book, the one Addy had been carrying around for the past year. The Way of Deep Being by Guru Baba Mahanisha. It was a thick tome, one Addy had rarely parted from back in Greece. The front cover showed an intricate mandala. The back showed a photograph of the author. The baba was a Durmian, a rare breed of alien. The Durmians had stocky humanoid bodies, four arms, and elephantine heads with two trunks. In his photo, Baba Mahanisha was sitting cross-legged, draped in robes, deep in meditation. Marco had spent the past two weeks reading the book. It was a slow read. Each chapter demanded grueling exercises in meditation and yoga.
"I've been making some progress, I think," Marco said. "But I'm still working my way through chapter five. If the baba agrees to teach us in person, I'm sure I can improve. I have so many unanswered questions."
Addy nodded. "Me too!"
Marco opened the book and flipped through the pages. "This exercise here. Where you have to imagine that you're looking at yourself through another's eyes. He says you're supposed to feel a shift of consciousness, as if you're no longer inside your own head—indeed, that you have no head at all. I can't get it to work. Can you?"
Addy nodded. "Oh yeah, all the time. It's easy!"
"Really?" Marco blew out his breath. "Well, you've been practicing for longer than me. I'm only two weeks into this, and you've been reading this book for a year now. What about chapter four? Have you tried imagining a hole on top of your head, like a whale's blowhole, and the breath passing between your head and toes, until your body disappears entirely, and you're only the breath? The baba says it can take an hour of meditation to reach this stage. I tried for an hour once, and I'm not sure it worked."
She patted his thigh. "You'll get better at it. Soon you'll be an expert like me."
Marco frowned at her. He bit his lip. "How about chapter five? Have you succeeded at staring into a candle's flame until the fire seems to disappear, even though it still burns?"
"Oh yeah, I do that one all the time." Addy nodded. "No problem. I make the fire disappear at will."
"I made up that last one," Marco said.
Addy stared at him. "Bullshit!" She snatched the book from him and flipped through the pages. "Ugh. What happened to the chapter about candles?"
"Addy!" Marco groaned. "For Chrissake. You've been carrying this book around for a year! Have you even read it?" He slapped his forehead. "I knew that the lack of crumbs and stains on the pages was a giveaway."
Addy bristled. "Of course I've read it! What do you think I am? Some kinda illiti . . . illeta . . . nonreading person?"
"I can't believe this." Marco stared outside the viewport at the approaching star. "We're almost at Durmia. We spent all our money on this journey to find the baba and study Deep Being. Because you recommended it. Because you've been lugging this book around for a year, telling everyone about the elephant baba. And now I learn you didn't even read the book!"
"I read it a million times!" Addy said. "Just . . . not exactly that book." She stared down at her lap, twisting her fingers.
"Addy." He grabbed her shoulder. "Look at me, Addy. What book did you read?"
She winced. "Promise you won't get angry."
"I promise."
"Promise you won't yell."
"I promise, Addy."
She groaned. "Fine. Fine!" She reached into the backpack at her feet and pulled out another book. "This is my favorite book. This is the one I've been reading all year in Greece. Okay? Happy now?"
Marco took the book from her. His eyes widened. He read the title aloud, incredulous. "Freaks of the Galaxy."
Addy nodded. "Second edition."
Marco's jaw unhinged. The back cover showed the same photograph from The Way of Deep Being—a Durmian deep in meditation, an elephantine alien with two trunks. When Marco opened the book, he saw photos of many other aliens, each weirder than the one before. There was a human
oid alien with two heads. A race of conjoined-twin aliens. An alien with lobster claws. A hundred others. He kept flipping the pages, unable to believe this.
"Ooh, ooh, that one is my favorite!" Addy pointed at a page. "The Pillowman!"
The page showed an alien with no limbs, just a torso with a head. The unfortunate fellow was smoking a cigarette.
"The Pillowman," Marco said, voice flat.
Addy nodded excitedly. "He can roll cigarettes with just his mouth!"
Marco slammed the book shut. "Addy, for Chrissake. Do you even care about meditation, or is this all just a freak show for you?"
"I think the freaks are wonderful." Addy nodded. "I love them. And the Elephant Baba is my favorite from the book. Well, my favorite along with the Pillowman. So when I found another book about him, I had to buy it. That's how I found out that the Elephant Baba also teaches meditation, and I thought it would be good to see him in person."
"I can't believe this. I can't!" Marco rose from his seat. He paced the spaceship. "You told me we're coming to study enlightenment. But you just wanted to see a freak from your book!"
"The best freak!" Addy said, chasing him. "A real life Elephant Man. Like from my favorite movie!" She raised her chin, held up her fist, and spoke in dramatic baritone, quoting the film. "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being!"
"You're a bloody loony," Marco said. "So you don't even know how to meditate?"
Addy shook her head. "Not a clue."
Marco tugged his hair. "But we meditated together! What the hell were you thinking of during those hours with our eyes closed?"
She shrugged. "You know, the usual. Hockey, cartoons, sex . . . Sometimes I'd wander off for half an hour, grab a snack, come back, and you were still there with your eyes closed. You didn't even know I left." She grinned. "I liked watching you meditate, being all cute and quiet."
Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8) Page 3