by Wil McCarthy
But he remembered the images he'd captured, down in the Malsato gravity well. The creature bunched up and launched itself, savagely, premeditatedly, at one of its fellows, colliding with talons outstretched. Malevolence implicit in the act. The sympathy left him as suddenly as it had come.
He noticed Beth looking at him, curiously, worriedly. Did these troubling thoughts show on his face, even through all the messy linkware? He transmitted the gist of the thoughts to Beth.
Silence and stillness for a moment, and then he watched her shudder under the burden of what he had given her. So awful. So terribly, terribly awful.
“Better them than us,” he said to her, as the last of the pursuers slipped into the arms of the hypermass and redshifted away to nothingness.
~~~
GILL:Damn you, Introspectia, will you get out here and help us now?
CHELSEA:My deepest apologies, Madame Director. We'll be there in five hours. Really, I promise.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Hello, sweet thing,” Jhoe said, putting a hand on Luna Shiloh's shoulder. “Have you looked outside?”
His hand, like the rest of his body, had layers of pale, dead skin flaking off it in messy, thumb-sized curls. Fortunately, he seemed to have suffered no other ill effects from his exposure.
“What?” Luna croaked, turning blearily to face him. Her face looked puffy and red, her eyes slitted, her hair an unruly tangle.
Jhoe frowned, looking around him at the coordination center. It stank in here, stank of sweat and farts and partially eaten sandwiches, of improper ventilation, of days of uninterrupted human occupation. Two other workers shambled about, seemingly as dazed as Luna herself.
“Damn,” he said. “You people haven't left this room, have you?”
“What?” Luna said again. She blinked at him, then looked over at the diagnostic board and blinked at that for a while.
Oh dear. Finding things well in hand after his brief but city-saving mission, Jhoe had evacuated himself to the nearest shelter. To his surprise, he'd found it not too terribly crowded, not too terribly uncomfortable. His bunk space, considerably smaller than the interior of Luna's car, had shrunk his world a bit, but someone had gone through and furnished the bunks with soft pillows and mattresses and blankets, furnished the individual rooms with plants and rugs and great heaps of paper books. Jhoe had actually spent his time quite pleasantly, snacking and reading and sleeping, speaking sometimes with his neighbors or listening to the songs that they sang together and quietly memorizing the lyrics.
He had worried about Luna, of course, but he felt it appropriate to leave her in peace to do her job. And of course, she had promised him she would look after herself and her people, and Jhoe had seen no reason to doubt this.
Here and now, in the coordination center that looked as if a tribe of primitives had moved into it, he realized his error. Technical people left to their own devices, permitted in their time of danger to ignore such logistical irrelevancies as sleep and hygiene... He saw his retreat now in a somewhat gloomier light, less prudent than selfish and cowardly. Clearly, they could have used his help around here.
“Come to the window with me,” he said, taking Luna by the elbow and leading her toward the room's exit.
“Jhoe,” she said, as if recognizing him only now. “What's going on?”
“I think it's over,” he said to her. They stepped through the arched doorway that marked the coordination center's exit.
“Ove—” she started to say, and then stopped when she saw the windows.
Night had returned to Unua once again.
Outside, the sky had the deep, yellow-purple look that Jhoe associated with summer evenings, when the sun had set but its light not entirely faded.
Neither Lacigo nor the brown dwarf sun occupied the heavens right now, but a kind of star, bright and small and sparkly-pink, glared fitfully near the horizon.
“That's Soleco,” Jhoe said, pointing at the star. “You can't see it anymore, but the ships were all diving in there. Dozens of light trails, all scrunching in together and disappearing. It's been going on for hours.”
“Why is it red?” Luna asked, seeming more alert now than she had before.
“That has to do with relativity,” Jhoe replied. Not that he knew anything about it, of course, but he remembered the example of Black Hole Bahb.
“Oh,” Luna said, and sagged against him.
He put his arm around her and felt good for a second, a lover reunited with the subject of his desire. But Luna's slump continued, and he had to move his arm beneath her and lift to keep her from falling. Her body felt a lot warmer than Jhoe thought it should.
“I'm sorry,” she said, vaguely. “I feel so... tired and I just...”
Jhoe placed a finger against her hot, cracked lips, hushing her. “You're sick! Oh, Luna, I warned you... Well, never mind about that. Your shift is over now; I'm going to take you home. No, that's not right. You probably have cancers blooming all through your body. I'm taking you to the hospital.”
“You can't take me there,” Luna protested. “My...”
“You'll be just fine,” Jhoe said. “If the Unuan doctors can't help you, I feel sure the Introspectia ones will. I bet they'll be busy cleaning this mess up. A lot of radiation cases, I would think.”
“You can't take me to the hospital,” Luna repeated, more insistently this time. “You smashed up my car, remember?”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, so I did.”
The last of the alien ships vanished into Soleco, leaving the sky completely dark, and Jhoe began, very inappropriately, to laugh.
PART FIVE
HEREDAJO
Toward the very centre whither
Gravity was most inclined,
There you have made your bed...
—Pedro Calderon De La Barca, Life is a Dream, circa 1651 AD.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You're awfully quiet,” Uriel said to him over the thrumming of the chopter blades. “That's not a good note to end your visit on.”
Jhoe shrugged, then realized Uriel couldn't see that, so he grunted. Not loudly enough, though, to be heard above the chopter noise. “Yeah, I guess,” he finally said.
He was leaving, forever, but the goodbye with Luna had not gone well. He'd shared her home for nearly a standard year, and after Lars had gotten him that ferry-driving job and he finally had some money... Well, Luna hadn't let him pay for her ruined car, so instead he'd spent the money on himself, accumulating quite a surprising amount of junk. Some of it, the things he'd grown attached to and felt he couldn't part with, he'd stuffed in a trunk which would ride with him back to Earth. Other things he had given away, and a few he had left behind, so that the inside of the house had a sort of motheaten look to it. As if burglars had broken in and stolen a carload of random, valueless things.
And Luna, limping and wincing with her latest cancer scars, had railed at him, railed at the notion that Jhoe could bear to leave her, as if she held no more importance to him than the beryl drinking mug he had ill-advisedly bought with his first paycheck, or the rubber sandals and hat he'd bought with his third. “You might like Earth,” he'd said many times. “I think you would.”
But this suggestion had not mollified her. “I have responsibility here, Jhoe!” she'd screamed at him. “I'm important, I'm somebody. On Earth, even you are nobody.”
And that had stung him terribly, and so he'd stomped out without another word.
“I love you, Luna,” he whispered now, inaudibly. He imagined the whirling chopter blades cutting the sounds up, strewing and scattering them across the sandy hills.
And that thought merely underscored his failure. He had met the Unuan people, lived and worked and loved among them, and yet he knew nothing of them. Their insides, their secret hearts remained as opaque to him as on the first day he'd stepped off the lander. What will I tell the people of Earth? I've come from Unua, where the sky is dark and folk are a wee bit strange? Would the
people of Earth even care?
“For someone who's going home you don't seem too happy,” Uriel observed. She seemed mellower than usual today. Older, quieter.
“How very true,” he agreed. “And how nice of you to notice. I feel... I think you and I could have been friends.”
“I think we have been,” Uriel said. “I think we are.”
He watched the city lights down below, fading up to the dark horizon and the darker sky above it.
Uriel flew smoothly, delicately, as if afraid to jostle him, as if afraid he might shatter. “I guess you'll miss this place,” she said. “At least every now and then.”
“Yes.”
“But once you leave it you can never come back. Even if you tried, even if you climbed right back on some ship the moment you got to Earth, the Unua you've seen here would be centuries gone. You'd just be stepping into the amber again, letting the universe pass you by, even more than it already has.”
“Uriel, have you got a point to this, or do you just want to make me unhappy?”
Uriel turned for a moment, flashing him an exaggeratedly innocent look. “I didn't make you unhappy, Doctor. Not listening to your heart is what makes you unhappy.”
“My heart is a muscle,” he said. “I've listened to it before, and it... it just makes you crazy. It just makes you lose your mind.”
“Aha,” she said, nodding. “and if you listen to your mind instead? What does that make you lose?”
He thought about that for a while, as the yellow-orange city lights rolled by underneath them. He found he couldn't argue with her logic. He found he couldn't argue with anything she'd said.
He turned to her, almost angrily. “How did you get so wise, little girl?”
She snorted. “Old people think they have some kind of monopoly on wisdom. It isn't true, though. Personally, I think we're born with it.” She paused, then spoke, gently: “Doctor Freetz, do you want to stay on Unua? Do you want me to turn the chopter around?”
“Yes,” he said, and found, with some surprise, that tears had begun trickling down his cheeks.
“Happy day!” she beamed. “I guess there's space on Introspectia, then. Can I have your ticket?”
“What?”
“Oh, I won't stay on Earth for long. Just look around some, then hop on colony ship and head for the frontier. Someplace new, someplace that really needs me. What do you say?”
He gaped at her, aghast. “Did you say all that just to swindle your way into the starship?”
“I don't know.” She shrugged lightly. “Maybe. If what I said is true, what do you care?”
A spasm of anger came and went. Jhoe found, once again, that her logic precluded any sensible argument.
“All right,” he said, giving in. “All right. Your people skills have certainly improved. Just take me back, okay?”
“As you wish, Doctor.” Her grin looked wide enough to split her head in two.
~~~
“At last, Captain Chelsea,” Jafre said into the telkom screen, “I have the chance to speak with you in real time.”
Chelsea nodded. “Yes, I gather you have waited a long time for this.”
“Much longer than you think,” he said. Bitch, he added mentally, but found there was no real force behind the thought. “It was I who called you to Malhela in the first place. I've been waiting to speak with you for over eighty years.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Well, you have my attention now. What can I do for you?”
“Take me to Earth,” he said, simply and unceremoniously.
Lin Chelsea blinked at him. “Did I hear you correctly? You want to leave Malhela?”
“I despise Malhela. The dark, the scarcity of resources, the scarcity of people... One more decade here will kill me, I swear. I was meant for more than this. Please, Captain, take me away.”
“But you have responsibility here,” Lin Chelsea protested. “You have position, you have authority! That must mean something.”
“Better to rule in darkness, eh? Forsaking Paradise forever? I think Milton was overly romantic and underly clever, and he sure as damnation never had to live on Unua. I'll... take my chances in the light, thank you.”
The captain's expression was skeptical. “Jafre Shem, or should I say 'Mister President?' I have a hard time with this concept. Surely you can't just walk away?”
“Why not?” He attempted a shrug, attempted a casual smile. Neither one felt particularly successful, so he put on a serious expression instead. “Captain, as you so frequently point out, I have no authority over you. I can only ask you, I do ask you: will you rescue me from this awful place?”
Chelsea seemed to lose her stiffness somehow, as if a tight belt or harness around her had suddenly been released. She sighed theatrically. “I have no objection, I suppose, though I warn you I will not be held responsible if you later regret your decision.”
Jafre sat silently for a moment, savoring his victory. Strangely, he did not feel exhilarated, nor even particularly victorious. Was he just slinking away, after all? Could his long years of scheming really have led up to something so small and so fundamentally petty?
“Thank you,” he said to the captain, in quiet voice that felt drained of power, drained of everything. “I'll resign my office in the morning.”
“Will your wife accompany you on the journey?”
Jafre sat up in his chair. The question had taken him by surprise. Asia! He knew been leaving something out in his planning, but... Asia? “Oh, darkness. I guess that's two things I'll have to resign from.”
~~~
Miguel stepped up into the Malhelan lander, then turned, offered Beth his hand. She accepted this with good grace, and let him help her inside.
“Well, so much for shore leave,” he mumbled at her.
She nodded. “Yeah. I enjoyed it very much, though. Thank you.”
“My own pleasure, uh, darling.”
He had found, to his amusement and minor dismay, that that was the pet name she wanted him to call her by. She called him 'Ace' in return, though, and he liked that. He liked much about her company. Indeed, their week on Unua had passed in a sort of haze of mutual affection, and he felt sure that in later years he would recall little of it besides the sound of her laughter, the feel of her hair in his hands on a hot, dark night... or a hot, dark day, for that matter. It made little difference, here.
Together they stowed their bags in the indicated compartment, and moved back to find their seats among the other passengers.
“Hey!” A young woman called out, looking at them and smiling. “Hey, Solar Commercial uniforms! I'm going to be riding on your ship!”
Beth led Miguel to the row of seats in front of the young woman, and sat him down in the window seat, taking the aisle for herself.
“Hello,” she said, sticking her hand back in a friendly way.
“Um, hello,” the young woman returned pleasantly. She looked at Beth's hand uncertainly, then clasped it in both her own. “My name is Uriel Zeng.”
“Beth Lahler. And—” she aimed an elbow at Miguel “—my... my boss, Miguel Barta. Chief Technical Officer aboard the Solar Commercial Starship Introspectia. It pleases us to meet you. Now, what's this you're saying?”
Uriel grinned, obviously pleased with herself and with her circumstances. “I'm riding back to Earth on your ship. As passenger, I mean. Taking the place of Doctor Jhoe Freetz.”
“Huh,” Beth said. “I don't believe I know him. Miguel?”
“Uh, I think Tomus Kreider knows him.”
“Ah.”
Uriel turned, raised a finger to point. “See that guy back there? That's the President of Unua.”
“Ex-president,” the man called up. He sounded tired. He looked tired, and a little bit shrunken, like an inflatable dummy with a good bit of the air removed. “I'm going to Earth as well.”
The man seemed at war with himself for a moment, as if agonizing between two difficult decisions. But then he offered a w
an smile, and rose from his seat, and moved three rows forward to sit down across from Uriel. He crossed his arms, held them out toward Beth.
“Jafre Shem, refugee. Salutes.”
Politely, Beth took the Ex-president's hands and shook them. “It pleases me to meet you,” she said. She cast a wide glance that took in Jafre and Uriel both. “You must feel very brave, going away like this. Miguel and I were born on Earth, and even we don't know what we'll find there when we return.”
Jafre smiled a little more sincerely. “Eagle among the turkeys, that's me. I've got to get away from here, find some place where I can stretch my wings.”
“Earth has quite a lot of turkeys, too,” Miguel said, perhaps a little unkindly. He instantly regretted his tone, but then, nobody else seemed to have noticed. Or else, in the spirit of the day, they'd let it pass.
“I feel the same way,” Uriel said, her eyes glittering. “I may not stay on Earth. I may move on as soon as I get there. But you're right.” She turned to Jafre. “Stretch my wings, yeah, that's exactly the way I feel.”
She made light fists of her hands, and then crossed them, and then offered them to the Ex-president of Unua.
Miguel had the sudden sense that he was observing an event of some significance. A kind of tension crackled in the air, as if lightning might soon strike here. Human lightning.
Jafre stared down at Uriel Zeng's hands for a second or so, and then, though he did not look like a man who often felt happy, an expression of genuine delight broke out across his face. “Salutes, my dear,” he said, taking Uriel's hands in his and shaking them, warmly. “I don't believe we've met.”
~~~
The gangway had crowded up with people, people of varying heights, varying speeds and directions of movement, and with voices of widely varying loudness.