He was learning this himself, more and more, as he bounced back and forth between the two, like the ball in a game of triad.
His voice and their footfalls echoed and re-echoed off the narrow hallway walls, until it seemed as if all the voices of those who had walked this sacred place were speaking at once. And perhaps they were, if one but had the ear to hear them.
"Sometimes, you have to move from a narrow and logical point of view to a more expansive viewpoint to really understand the dynamics of what is truly going on, and the only way you'll do that is to learn to tap into your deeper vision."
Athena stopped. "If we could see what was on the other side, we'd never want to climb a mountain," she said.
He smiled and told her, "It's not that we want to climb the mountain, it's that we need to, for a better perspective."
Apollo patted one of the stone slabs behind him. "What's this?"
Athena looked at him as if she expected him to make light of her, but she saw Apollo was quite serious. "It's a stone," she answered.
"Is that all it is?"
She looked at it, or pretended to, more as a courtesy to her brother. "What is it, then?" she asked, at length.
Apollo took her arm in his hand and they stepped back a few paces, their shadows dancing and capering by the fitful light of the torch. "Now what do you see?" he asked.
"It's still a stone—" she began, feeling annoyance. But then she realized what he was trying to show her: it was a stone, viewed up close, but a few paces removed, and it was just a brick in the wall, of no greater or lesser importance than those stones which butted up against it.
"That's what your eyes tell you, but take another step back, with your mind, and see the whole pyramid," he instructed, and, like mentioning a purple bova and then telling someone not to think of purple bovas, Athena could imagine the pyramid, stone upon stone. The image crowded its way into her mind's eye.
"And that's the whole pictograph," he said, sensing that she understood now. "That's what inner vision is. Someday, you'll understand how the left and right brains have to work together to successfully determine the best course of action."
They began walking again, and Athena walked beside him in silence. She had always been strong willed and opinionated, and she knew, in her secret heart, that Apollo may well have been right, but she was not about to admit that, not when she still felt more at ease with her logic than her unpredictable intuition. Logic was the one commodity that had never failed her. Intuition had told her to go after Starbuck, and that had not come to much, except a budding friendship with Cassiopeia.
Their shadows fell behind them, like children racing to catch up.
Starbuck was slipping away a piece at a time.
His escape was cunning, so subtle that not much of Starbuck remained in his prison of flesh and bone, and it was beside the prisoner Dalton sat, speaking softly to him, then lapsing into lengthy silences. The only sound in the otherwise empty room was the flat, stupid ping! of the vital-signs monitors, and the papery whuppp! of the ventilator that breathed for him.
Troy stood watching Dalton from the doorway of the med-unit, feeling like a terrible voyeur but unable to look away. He waited until Dalton had fallen silent once again, then made his way to where she sat. Troy knelt beside her seat, and put his arm around her shoulder, his other hand resting on hers, where it lay on her leg.
"I'm here," he said, softly.
"I see you are, but why?" Dalton answered. "I don't need you here."
Troy felt his frustration rising, but asked instead, "Is there anything I can do?"
Dalton laughed, a little shrilly, and turned to face him, her eyes red from crying. "Not unless you can raise the dead, Boxey. Think you can do that? Because if you can't, just leave me the frack alone."
She turned away from him, her eyes focused once more on her father, as if she needed to burn his image into her brain now, or risk losing the memory of him forever. Troy sighed explosively and stood; he knew she was in pain, that was clear to anyone, but she wore it like a badge that allowed her to lash out without consequence to those nearest to her.
"If you don't feel comfortable opening up to me any more, that's fine," he told her. "I'll leave you alone from here on."
"Good, thanks, you do that," she muttered, dismissing him with a shooing motion.
He stood a moment longer, biting back words that he wanted to fling at her; but what would that accomplish? He'd feel better for a moment, then regret them for the rest of his life. Troy backed out of the room, perhaps a part of him still believing she would reconsider and call him back, but that wasn't going to happen.
Troy thought of trying, one more time, to get through to her, to comfort her, but she had made it painfully clear comfort, at least not from him, was not what she wanted.
He turned on his heel and walked straight into Apollo, who was about to enter the med-unit.
"Troy?" Apollo began. "Everything okay?"
Troy nodded. It wasn't, but feelings were easy enough to deny. "We haven't had the chance to talk much lately," Troy said, "but I want you to know… I still have faith in you, no matter what the council does."
Apollo surprised them both and took the boy in a tight embrace. He couldn't remember the last time he had done this; perhaps not since Troy had gone by the nickname of Boxey and ran with the company of a daggit named Muffy.
"Thank you," he said.
Troy could see, over his father's shoulder, Dalton, still seated with her back to the entrance, still holding Starbuck's limp hand.
"It'll be all right," Apollo said, as if he could sense Troy's agony. "You'll see."
"What will?" Troy asked, stepping away from Apollo's embrace, his eyes never leaving Dalton. Why was it so easy for some people to receive comfort, and impossible for others? Why did it even matter?
"Something will," he said. "It has to."
Troy chuckled, and left his father with a smile and a thumbs-up gesture.
Apollo peered into the med-unit, spotted Cassiopeia seated, as ever, at her station. She motioned him over, meeting him halfway. She hugged him, perfunctorily, and said, "It's only a matter of centons now before he passes."
He nodded. He had known those words were inevitable, but he supposed he had hoped, since they seemed to be handing out an inexhaustible supply of miracles down on Kobol, there might be one last bit of magic that would correct this injustice, but he saw now there was not.
Apollo hugged her again, this time holding her closer, longer, and neither seemed to be in a hurry to end the embrace. "How are you holding up?" he asked her. It was one thing to watch someone you cared about die, but quite another to be the attending med as it happened, and he wondered why he had never considered that before.
She shrugged, buried her face a little deeper against his chest. Her hands, fisted behind his back, relaxed, and she rested her palms against his shoulder blades. "You know me," she said, "I'm always all right."
Before he knew he would do it, Apollo kissed her softly on the top of her head. "I know you are," he said. "But, just in case you're not, well, I'm here for you."
"You're more like him than you know," she mumbled into his chest. "No wonder he considered you his brother."
"He thought the world of you," Apollo said, his words overlapping hers. "He loved you as much as he ever loved anyone."
"As much, or as often?" she joked, and felt her eyes prick with tears.
Apollo laughed softly, and hugged her a little tighter. "You go say your goodbyes," Cassie told him. "We'll talk later."
He nodded. Apollo could see why Starbuck had fallen for Cassiopeia; she had a rare quality that one didn't find often in this hardscrabble life—it was kindness.
Dalton glanced over at Apollo as he stepped quietly next to her. She held Starbuck's nerveless hand in hers and, after a moment, took Apollo's hand, as well, joining all three of them together in a clasp. But Starbuck's hand was cold, and stiff. Apollo realized with growing horror there
was not enough magic left in all of Kobol to bring Starbuck back from this. There was no bargain Apollo could make, no deal he could strike. There was no last-minute reprieve. There was only the sharp, antiseptic smell of the med-unit and the machines that went ping. Human life and misery seemed out of place here, in this place of cold indifference.
Athena, Sheba, Boomer, and Tigh had entered the room and stood on deathwatch, each of them holding his or her memories of Starbuck closely, as if death would steal these as easily as it was robbing them of the man himself. They spoke softly, recalling his or her favorite story about Starbuck, but there were many, too many to tell. But the heart of each story was the same: he was my friend, and I loved him. When you got down to it, there really were no new stories, just variations on all the others that had gone before. Before it was Starbuck lying here, wheezing out his last, few ragged breaths, it was someone else's dearest friend, someone else's great love of her life, some mother's adored son. Who were they to think pain made them unique?
Apollo slowly became aware the med-scans were no longer making their infuriatingly calm pinging sound, but were a low, strident wail.
Cassiopeia moved with fluid efficiency, shutting down the monitoring equipment, hushing their cries the way a mother calms a child who awakens in tears from a bad dream. Unfortunately, bad as this was, it was not a dream that could be soothed with just a few soft words. These tears would not dry with a kiss, nor this pain be turned away by a gentle song. This was real. This was forever.
Dalton hugged her father and christened his face with bitter tears. Starbuck's only family offered and received comfort from one another, but Apollo had already turned and left the room, wondering why he was still alive and not his closest friend, outward bound now on a journey with no ending. In his chambers, Apollo took down the bottle of ambrosa from which he and Starbuck had sometimes drunk on special occasions, and each drink brought the tears a little closer, and every moment took him a little farther away from someone he already missed with all his heart.
Even as he cursed the drink that gave him hope, he poured himself another.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MOURNERS for Starbuck's funeral began to gather as the hour of his service crept closer.
Apollo couldn't say why, precisely, but he felt the ceremony should be held in the temple inside the ancient pyramid; it was just something his intuition told him should be so, and even if he didn't always understand the reasons, he had at least learned to trust his feelings, and he felt this one quite strongly.
Starbuck's funeral bier rested atop the marble dais where, the day before, Apollo sat praying for guidance. It was a small chamber, but then, Starbuck had few close friends and even less family. Everyone admired him, but only a small handful really knew him. Apollo stood in the back, away from everyone else, his hands clasped together in front of him, watching the mourners. Dalton sat near the bier, and Troy sat as far away from her as he could, present as a show of respect for Starbuck, whom he considered a great man and a great friend, more than out of concern for Dalton's feelings. Trays was there, as well, seated beside Dalton, and Boomer, Sheba, Athena and Cassiopeia, suffering their loss together, having come together at last as friends.
Tigh was officiating, as he had done at Commander Adama's ceremony, and he stepped forward to the little rostrum and began to speak. He had prepared notes, and they were laid out before him on the stand, but he ignored them and spoke from his heart. What he thought was unimportant; what he felt was all that mattered. "Another great man, Commander Adama, once said, 'A Warrior has nothing to fight for, if he does not allow himself to love, and be loved in return.' Well, Captain Starbuck was a man who loved many, and was loved by many more," Tigh said, well aware of the irony. Tigh glanced at Cassie and Athena, but they had taken his comment with the same good grace in which it was delivered. "That made him a great Warrior. But he was also a great man, and a great friend to many of us."
Tigh swallowed, his voice beginning to crack. It was impossible to not be affected by the moment, and to help him recover, the Leonid thought of Starbuck, sitting and listening and laughing at this incredible outpouring of affection and sentiment on his behalf. He would have been amazed, and probably a little embarrassed, but that was Starbuck, and thinking such things helped Tigh get through the rest of his speech.
He kept it short, not because there wasn't much to say about Starbuck— "Some are good stories, and some are the truth," Starbuck used to say—but because there wasn't much he could say about Starbuck without the sting of tears, and sadness and sorrow were not the way Starbuck would want to be remembered.
From the back of the room, Apollo watched the others in the temple grapple with the weight of their grief, joining them all together like some enormous black yoke.
Cassiopeia wept openly, and bitterly, and Athena held her and cried as well. Apollo never thought he'd live to see this day, but then, he also never thought he'd live to see the day Starbuck was no longer here. Dalton's head was bowed, and Trays' hand rested on her back.
And Troy… well, Troy was like his father, in some ways. His face betrayed little, but the unnatural brightness of welling tears in his eyes gave him away. He had never really gotten to know Starbuck in quite the same way Apollo had, but that kind of camaraderie was lucky to happen once. It could never happen a second time because there would never be another like Starbuck.
"Starbuck was an example of courage, and cooperation—" Tigh continued, casting a meaningful look toward Trays as he did, but it was a wasted effort "—and, above all, humor. I think above all the things about Starbuck I'll miss, it's his humor I'll miss most. The sly grin on his face, a tankard of grog before him, one of his horrible fumarellos clenched between his teeth, possessing a losing hand of pyramids but trying to bluff everyone into believing otherwise."
The room fell quiet. It was easy to picture that.
"And I think that's where I'll leave him," Tigh said. "He'll always be there, when I think of him, which will be often, just another night in the ODOC, with just another bad hand, and just about to tell another bad joke." He swallowed, hard, and twice, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he fought to keep the tears he felt from his eyes. "He will be missed," Tigh managed, and then he had to nod that the service was over.
As the ceremony concluded, an eerie light, seemingly from nowhere and everywhere at once, filled the chamber. It was a light Apollo had seen before, many yahren earlier, in this same chamber, with Adama. No one else seemed to see it, but Apollo watched as the beam bounced in geometric shapes off the symbols and sigils on the walls, at last striking Starbuck's head, suffusing his peaceful, slumbering face with a brilliant glow that lingered, then winked out.
No one reacted; no one else had seen it and Apollo might have doubted the proof of his own senses, if he hadn't seen the same thing before. But he had to wonder if perhaps Starbuck was Kobollian, after all.
Apollo watched them all slowly file past the casket and out of the temple. When he was alone, he crossed to Starbuck's coffin and stood looking at his oldest friend's peaceful face. There was a slight smile on it, but then, there usually was. Even death was not serious enough to change that.
"You're already missed," Apollo said. "But your journey's not over yet. It's just beginning."
Centons later, after the last goodbyes had been spoken, the final farewells whispered, the coffin bearing Starbuck's body was placed into his favorite Scarlet Viper. Bo jay had spent the time during Starbuck's ceremony readying the Viper, removing the seat and navi-hilt, making sure there would be enough room in the cockpit to fit the coffin. After the service, Apollo had tucked a deck of pyramids, a pack of fumarellos, and a gold cubit into Starbuck's pockets. Beside him, in the coffin, he laid with reverence a bottle of Starbuck's favorite ambrosa. Bad enough his friend had to take this trip alone, but Apollo couldn't allow him to make it unprepared.
Apollo stood with his hands on the ledge of the cockpit, looking down at the coffin. Th
e lid had been closed and sealed, and all that remained was for Apollo to lower the canopy into place, but he found he wasn't ready to do that. Not quite yet. For when that happened, Starbuck would really be gone.
"Somethin' wrong, Apollo?" Bo jay asked, wiping his greasy hands on his jumpsuit.
Apollo looked up and forced a counterfeit smile. "Everything's fine," he said, and closed the canopy. The hull damage, suffered during Starbuck's last battle was left untouched by Bo jay, a testament to Starbuck's courage under enemy fire. Bo jay watched as Apollo's fighter sped down the launch tube, followed by Starbuck's Viper, slaved to the lead fighter's controls until this last task was completed.
The launch aperture irised open and the two fighters boomed out of the man-made asteroid and into the vacuum of space, leaving the tug of gravity farther behind with each moment. At least this time you're not following me into trouble, Apollo thought, and smiled sadly.
Not that there'd been a shortage of those times, Apollo recalled; he'd always been the gung-ho one, first to charge into trouble, while his old friend was content to drink, gamble, and womanize.
Sure, Starbuck was a hero countless times over, but that was because Apollo would get them both into situations against overwhelming odds, and then he and Starbuck together would have to battle their way back out.
"Who's going to watch my back now?" Apollo asked.
From the start, they had watched out for one another—on the ore planet Carillon, and the insectoid Ovions and their grisly casino; their search-and-destroy mission on the ice world; and Starbuck had been there for him after Serina had died.
It was funny how they had both had one great love, and had dealt so differently with the loss: Starbuck, by avoiding a serious, committed relationship, and Apollo, withholding love, as if he were still inextricably bound to Serina, as if to love anyone else was a betrayal, an infidelity. It had been almost twenty yahren, but the hands that held Serina close in the night had never really let go—Apollo sighed and dragged himself out of his musings, studying the scroll of information flashed on the screen of his helm, but it only confirmed what he already knew—it was time to let go.
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