An End tst-2

by Paul Evan Hughes

  something

  We were connected.

  To the homeworld, to all the planets of the system. They’d all been connected by that halo, and now it was silver.

  Maire was gone. The planetship was nothing. Hannon and JudithGod floated alone above a dead world.

  Please don’t let it spread. Please don’t let it get home.

  God was in a metal bubble. There was no one to answer prayers in that void. If the silver traced the halo back to the homeworld, if the silver spread to the other planets in the system…

  A loss so dear…

  Hannon began to shake. His hands were cold.

  and this heart, for you

  There are silences beyond silence.

  THE MACHINERY OF NIGHT

  he is knowing… and this heart i contain for you i have come again to zam zam? rupture rend rive split cleave Please don’t let it—Is it too late? He knew what she couldn’t believe. my lips remember the echoes of that night

  How the body is weak, how fragile biology bursts upon cool metal, how the final crack of the spine signals an end.

  His blood was tacky on the black surface. His body was broken under the tons. Boys, not men, not boys watched.

  “We have to get him out of there.”

  “Let him stay.” Hunter wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of gloved hand.

  “We can’t just—”

  “Do it yourself, then.”

  The chamber door cycled open. She came in, snapping of static, sloshing of shield. His eyes studied the floor as he walked by. She reached out.

  “Don’t.”

  “Hunter—”

  “Just don’t.” He pulled away, left the chamber.

  She found him later, as she always found him, on the empty bridge, thermals off, freezing away the emotions of the deep. She made certain that the bridge door was sealed and deactivated her phase shield. It splashed to the floor and dissipated in tendrils of mist. A shake of curly hair and she was dry.

  How the heart is weak, how fragile emotion wells under too-old eyes, how the lock of a glance sends lovers into abandon.

  “Come here?”

  She crawled into the vacuum chair with him, a lithe and feline move. He inhaled and there was nothing. Exhaled and he could still breathe. Would it last? Their arms tangled, she shifted position and her lips found his jawline, rested there for a moment. She shivered in more than the cold of space.

  Even in the cold, the lace of the silver began to bristle in fine patterns across his skin, a disconcerting screen door gooseflesh. It danced, disappeared only to re-emerge in another place. It was searching for a foothold.

  “How much longer?”

  He shook his head against the meeting place of neck and shoulder.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He looked into the eyes of the little girl who, almost two decades ago, had waved at him each day from behind a wrought-iron gate. They cage us, in so many ways, in so many ways.

  Decades?

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “Liar.”

  “Liar.” His voice was mocking. His impersonation made her smile: lips parted in that liquid way. His eyes moved from hers to her lips, back to eyes. Not a signal, but a signal.

  “Lily Lily.”

  “Hunter Hunter.”

  Breathing became as one.

  They kissed and laughed in the vacuum chair, spinning lazily on its mount, revealing in turn the cracked systems display, the projector that emitted static and coordinates that no one wanted to acknowledge, the dead form of an angel, chest an angry confusion of wires, stripped of parts, featureless face surveying the action with dull, dusty eyes.

  It would all end soon, but for now, they kissed.

  Screaming, but not his own, not his, not its. Screaming from without, and it was warmer, and then a jolt that cracked, and it was warmer, warmest, painfully hot. Sudden, violent, an end to the scream: things broke as they hit the world.

  The near was the worst.

  Berlin pulled himself from the vacuum chair. His wound had freshened; fluid over tacky, still black, still staining.

  Task moaned. The nose of the vessel was crumpled into snow.

  snow?

  Elle had been impaled. Tickings of interior biomechanics: its hands flexed on nothing. It tried to speak, but there was no chest, no throat.

  Out of the chair, Berlin braced himself between wall and ceiling. Gravity, but it felt like floating. He maneuvered hand-over hand to Task’s cockpit bubble. There was blood.

  The air burned.

  “What—”

  “Don’t try to talk.”

  “Elle—”

  “It’s dead.”

  The pilot’s face collapsed into an emotion. “Let me—”

  “You don’t want to see it. How badly are you hurt?”

  “Legs are broken.”

  “Okay.”

  The cant of the vessel would make the extraction difficult. Berlin stood precariously on the ceiling of the cockpit, Task locked into the chair above him.

  “Get ready.”

  “For what?”

  Berlin palmed the release mechanism and Task fell into his arms in a ball of misshapen limbs and his own screams. Berlin caught the smaller man, lowered him to the floor as quickly and gently as possible. The tears streaming down Task’s face indicated nothing of speed or tenderness.

  “We’re upside down.”

  “No shit.”

  “Are you sure Elle isn’t—”

  “I’m sure.”

  As if to prove the point, sparks ignited on the shattered chestplate of the near. There was fire.

  “God damn—”

  “This will hurt.” Berlin hefted Task over his shoulder, the pilot biting his lower lip and trying to muffle the agonized wail between the thin flesh of his cheeks. He struggled over ceiling-mounted displays to the chamber exit.

  “Will the belly port work if we’re upside down?”

  “It should.”

  “Well, we’re on fire. It’d better.”

  They abandoned the vessel and the artificial co-pilot to flames.

  The siege machines opened fire, and the planet below was raped of atmosphere.

  Just a tiny vessel, just a sliver of silver and black. The children were terrified, or as terrified as they could be given that they could not understand what was happening. Lily felt them, far away, yet the closest minds she could touch. There were other consciousnesses buried in the vessel, but she knew that they wouldn’t wake up until it was safe and they were far away from the enemy fleet.

  Fighters scrambled from the worldships, but too late. The escape ship phased and it became

  cold, the coldest, if she could still feel, and she knew she could, although she didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. The containment sphere had solidified into metal and she had been launched from Hannon’s globe.

  collision with..?

  Snow.

  She sat up. The sky was blue. When had she last—

  Black smoke from across the ice plain. A vessel embedded into white. A figure on top, hunched over, pulling at something…Two figures. Fire spread.

  Maire looked at her own personal space. A Maire-shaped imprint sat within a larger melted circle. She stood.

  The fire and the vessel and the fire within the vessel weren’t far away. She walked.

  She paused, tried to find that [something] within, but it was gone for now. Hiding the silver in the host body had been an accomplishment of great beauty. Unfortunately, she was tapped for now. She couldn’t kill.

  She walked.

  It fell into the tube. Heaven was below. Stranger had been talking.

  “You’re Hannon, aren’t you?” Zero asked.

  Stranger said nothing.

  The vessel slowed in the pipeline. There was a great hiss as it cracked in half, shielding realigned. The cockpit chamber ceiling lifted from the walls and slid back, revealing the now-vertica
l nacelles, the tube stretching forever above them.

  how long?

  The landing platform approached.

  “Are you?”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “Jesus Christ—”

  Stranger/Hannon’s face went blank. “Who?” Innocent. Unwashed.

  “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “Your chest.”

  Hannon nodded, undid the clasps on the front of his uniform. Pulled the sides back. Turned to Zero.

  you took the blue out of the sky my whole life changed when you said goodbye

  The cardiac shield was firmly in place, although strands of silver pulsated at its edge. The puckered maroon of an incision snaked into under out of the metal plate. Shiver and slither of phase shielding. Hannon covered himself.

  “So now you know.”

  “You found a way to contain it.”

  “In some.”

  “In men.”

  “In some men.”

  “It spread to all of the worlds through the halo?”

  “It spread to most of the worlds. Maire’s Extinction Fleet took care of the rest.”

  Not a blush spread on Zero’s cheeks. Somewhere below, the humming of landing struts and the jolt of contact. Crackle of phase release.

  “You called this place Heaven.”

  “Yes…It is.”

  “Who’s here?”

  Hannon smoothed the front of his uniform.

  “It’s her. Judith.”

  Cold eyes look at nothing. “It was Judith.”

  He found that he always opened his eyes before she did. Tip of nose to tip of nose, gentle motion of an Eskimo kiss. Liquid sound of her smile. Dimple revealed.

  His flesh didn’t change.

  He brushed Lilith’s hair back from her cheek. Lips bridged distance. He stood from the chair, pulling on his pants. Buckling his belt. Pulling on shirt.

  She

  made no move to dress.

  The vacuum chair rotated from his exit. As it spun beyond her visual range, she sat up, arms crossed on the top. She watched him tuck in his shirt. The chair completed its rotation and he sat to lace his boots.

  “So professional.” Sarcastic. Grin.

  “I have to look my best for the troops.”

  “Right.” She straightened his collar. There was

  music?

  in her mind.

  She held his hand, looking over every inch for any sign of

  The bridge door alarm beeped.

  “Fuck.” Lilith crawled out of the chair. Hunter sat back and watched as she pulled on clothing. Her hair was a mess. He shook his head and smiled.

  “En—”

  “No.”

  Lilith turned to him with a look of confusion.

  “Your shield, sweetness.”

  She blushed. She blushed easily. Eyes closed, inhale, hand taps chestplate. Her form was enveloped with sloshing glass. She ran her fingers through her hair. “Enter.”

  an eternity between

  Walking into a moment…He was.

  He shut the door. The wind was trapped outside. A newspaper fluttered and a hand went to it, held it to the tabletop. Nirvana. He smiled, remembered how she actually had smelled like Teen Spirit. Decades of absence…That memory had been buried half a century before, during the first war, in nights of futonsnuggle and Cowboy Killers. Pain supplanted by reality. Impossibility erased by

  He walked to the counter. She was already sliding his cup toward him. Black, no cream, no sugar, just black. He leaned over and windburned lips brushed the dimpled cheek.

  It wasn’t a literary crowd, but they were trying. A quick survey of the customers revealed books and newspapers, cigarettes and cloves, coffee and cappuccino. Anachronism in the world of the new future.

  Sip.

  It really wasn’t as bad as the kids thought. He’d tasted worse mud.

  “How’s your day been?”

  He shrugged. Pale blue-green eyes squinted, tried to dig behind his own. “You know.”

  “I thought you might enjoy that.” She tilted her head toward the back of the shop.

  “What?”

  “The book. That girl has your book.”

  The young woman was much too entranced with her beau to notice the middle-aged couple staring at her. He noted with some concern the black glove on the table, the silver ring now gracing silver hand, and he knew, he just knew.

  There was a copy of “The Stillness Between” on the table.

  The young couple held hands…There were still tears in the girl’s eyes.

  She leaned in close from across the counter and whispered. “He just proposed to her.”

  “Ah.”

  Sip.

  President Jennings was on the link. We will take this jihad to the stars—

  Shivers.

  “Paul?”

  His hand shook as he placed the cup back down. Chattering staccato before complete contact. She put her hands over his, made them still

  ness between

  books, you have so much time! Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He blinked, confused. More and more…More and more. He was losing moments. He was somewhere between now and worlds of impossibility.

  He smiled, not convincing at all. “I’m okay. I never get used to seeing people with that book.”

  She grinned. “At least you’re in good company. That couple over there was looking at Hesse’s Demian and Hayes’ Deus Ex earlier. In fact,” she leaned in, a conspirator, “he looks just like Hayes. Your protégé might be in my coffeehouse.”

  Something that he didn’t want to acknowledge crawled up and down his spine for a while, then settled in at the base of his skull, tickling, raising gooseflesh. His grip tightened on the coffee cup.

  “Yeah. Good company.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Hey. You sure you’re okay?”

  Nod. “Yeah. Just déjà vu.”

  Eyebrows furrowed. “Again?”

  The young couple walked out. The man looked at Paul for an instant, smiled. There was something in that glance

  i contain multitudes

  that broke his heart.

  He reached into his front pocket and pulled out his marble. It rolled across the uneven countertop and she picked it up. The iridescent patina was scratched by half a century of travel and abuse. Four bright distortions winked in the afternoon light, scarred onto the surface from the pocket companionship of a brass Zippo with an engraved floral pattern that had long since been lost to the miles and decades of his life.

  “I need a cigarette.”

  “You know you shouldn’t—”

  “Ever feel like you’ve lived too long? Like you’ve lived it all before?”

  He hadn’t intended to hurt her with the statement, but he saw the wound develop in those eyes. At seventy-eight, they were both just over middle-aged, but still…Sometimes he felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.

  “Not when I’m with you.” She withdrew the small glass bauble from her own pocket: a marble of her own, with its own scratches and a chip, given to her on that night when hopes and dreams became.

  Snippets of conversation, and then laughter from behind. Maggie was laughing. He knew her name.

  He knew her name, and he didn’t know how.

  drifting and drifting, he resigned himself to the urge to look back. their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, and the tear-wet surface of her face revealed to him the secrets of futures now long long. they had abandoned everything they had known, and for that reason, they were damned.

  the dialogue kept rising to the surface of his mind, and those prophetic words became universe upon universe. she reached to him, saw his unrest, and tenderly touched him.

  you know we can’t go back

  i know

  it was for the best

  i know

  we will survive this

  he let her words attempt to echo in the dead expanse. his s
ilence screamed in the void, and they embraced, each an anchor in reality for the other.

  you know i have to leave.

  i know.

  deconstruct

  and something left me. sometimes the only things left are the torn page and the indentation of bic micro metal scrawling your life on a page for a stranger. we departed. hell, i never really knew her anyways. so why do i feel this way?

  when did the exclamation points and devotion disappear and the introspect and long sophisticated yearnings take their place? when did i love you become i am sorry? “I think too much.”

  “No such thing.” She squeezed his hand. “Just one of those days.”

  We will take this jihad to the stars, and make them suffer the consequences of creating this horrible—

  “Today’s the day?”

  “Yeah.” She turned the channel on the link. She’d had enough of Jennings for now.

  “If I were younger, I’d go too.”

  “I wouldn’t let you.”

  One-cornered grin, metal-on-ceramic clink as spoon followed its habit path.

  “I’d go.”

  “You’ve fought enough wars, old man.”

  “I need a smoke.”

  “Yeah.” The one dimple appeared in her smile as she reached under the counter and placed something on the top. Rectangular box, red and white and black.

  “Jesus—How did you—?”

  “I have my ways. Happy birthday.”

  Marlboro 100s. He smelled the pack.

  “It’s fresh. Been kept in airless for—”

  “Decades. Sweetheart…Thank you!”

  She came from behind the counter and they embraced, forgetting for the moment the customers, the rain, the impending war and an end, of sorts, lost in that perfect moment, remembering a time of bohemian lovemaking and a world in hesitant watching, the uncertainty of young adulthood in the ghetto, rooftop stargazing and balcony summers, futonsnuggle and the way that her

  lithe fingers remove the cigarette from the pack, and i lean in with gold zippo, floral pattern, butane scent fighting against the scent of

  scratch, flame, click.

  she inhales, pale green eyes locked on my own muddy nothing. her eyelids draw together. the tip of the cigarette glows, releases as she releases. lips still pursed, breath still inhaling until the slight pause. smoke escapes from those lips, those lips that i can still feel, still taste. they smile.