When she didn’t answer, he picked one at random and peeled the seal-pack open for her.
She stared at it in her hands for a minute, before slumping down to sit on a nearby container. Carefully, she cracked the bar into small pieces, putting one in her mouth. "All my teeth are loose," she admitted when she caught him staring.
“Oh.” Kieran suddenly felt very foolish. “I bet Cordelia could make a blender and we could soften it with some water. Make it easier to eat.”
She looked up, smiling sadly, and nodded her head.
“I don’t think any of us are going to get out of this unscathed. How did you end up out there, anyway?”
Her gaze dropped back to the bar. “You’re nice.”
“My mama always said you’d catch more flies with honey. Frankly, I don’t want you to try to eat me again.”
To his surprise, she laughed, and popped another piece of ration bar into her mouth. “Tell me something, is it true that you and the other doctor don't know what love is? I heard you complaining about Leove and Isuma, the kissing and cuddling."
"What? N-no…." He had a feeling this was something very basic, something he should try to pretend he knew about so she didn't realize he was from somewhere else, but he was curious.
"I feel bad for you," she shrugged. "You've never… you don't have anyone?"
He shook his head, confused.
“I just like to think at least someone found some good in all this mess."
He stared at her, perplexed.
"Here. I'll show you." She moved faster than he’d anticipated, suddenly beside him. Kieran braced, squeezing his eyes shut in anticipation of the horrible sound of flesh thunking into an invisible barrier. But it didn’t come. Cordelia’s barrier didn’t rise between them. And the woman wasn’t attacking. Her mouth was pressed into his.
It wasn’t unpleasant, per se.
She stepped back, staring up at him.
“What was that?” It was the same as he had seen Leove and Isuma do when they thought no one was watching.
“A kiss. Romance. A sign of affection.” She squinted at him. “You really don’t know what that is. Didn’t your parents…?”
His parents had been matched by a geneticist’s algorithm to participate in his procreation and produce genetic diversity. Sperm mixed with egg and then deposited in his mother's womb. He was pretty sure they had never pressed mouths together.
“Well, I wanted to say thanks. For being so nice. That’s all.”
“You’re welcome?"
She pushed the last of the ration bar into her mouth, leaving the small storage room with an armful of different flavours for the other settlers.
As she left, Kieran lifted a hand to his lips. They tingled oddly. The entire experience had been strange and unexpected. But not unpleasant, definitely not unpleasant. Maybe, he thought, with someone you cared about. Maybe it could be something different. Something sweet. His mind flashed a picture of Sarrin. Maybe it would be something to look forward to.
* * *
“Ready, Kieran?” The colonial woman stood in front of him, her hands clasped neatly in front.
He nodded once, glancing down at his bare, mutilated chest. “Are you sure you have time, Cordelia? They’ll be bringin’ the new batch of Augments up any minute.”
She nodded. “I can do two things at once, you know.” She sent him a grin and a wink.
He pressed a smile on his face, but it was hard, the muscles seeming to have forgotten how.
“Are you sure you want to go?”
He looked up at the peculiar alien woman. “Yes. It’s time for me to go home. Just, can I wear something more than underpants?”
Cordelia shook her head. “You know anything I make can’t go with you. All your clothes burned up. You’re lucky I found these for you. At least you’ll have something to go home in besides your birthday suit.”
“Where did you get them?” On second thought, he put up his hands. “No, I don’t wanna know.”
She smirked.
A corridor opened, stretching out of the seemingly solid wall in front of him, and with an encouraging gesture from Cordelia, he took a step forward. “You’ll be okay, won’t you? It’s just sometimes these FTL engines have a —.”
She stopped him with a shake of her head and a knowing smile. “Yes, thank you, Kieran. With all the jumps these last few days, I’ve got a good understanding of the gravimetrics involved. Once all of this is over, I can take myself home. Thanks to you.”
“Okay.”
They walked in silence, Cordelia following him as he walked the seemingly endless corridor. He didn’t want to ask about the physics of it, how they could possibly walk the 38 lightyears from the ship to the rendezvous point.
“Will you be all right?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Hoepe says I’m doing better, I just need time.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“This is my home, Cordelia,” he said, gesturing in front. “You know that.”
She turned her head to watch the stars go by through viewports that suddenly appeared in the walls of the corridor. “You see things so beautifully, Kieran.” She said it almost sadly. “Of everyone, I like to look at things through your eyes the most.”
He frowned.
“I’m going to miss you, I think.”
“Cordelia, I’ll miss ya too.”
“We’re here,” she announced, her face suddenly cheery once more.
And so they were. He looked up with a start. The Observer ship’s retrieval pod hovered in front of them. A unique design, it was tethered to the ship and could be shot out ahead, decelerating to the point a shuttle could dock, and then reeled back into the ship, accelerating until it matched the speed of the ship. It saved the massive amounts of energy required to bring a ship in or out of near-luminal speeds.
Cordelia fashioned a shuttle around them, flying it close to the pod and connecting with the airlock. “After you,” she said.
Kieran knocked on the shuttle hatch. Knock-knock-kn-knock-knock.
Two knocks came as the response before he heard the airlock being released on the other side and the hiss of pressure normalizing between the two vessels.
The door in front of him opened, and on the other side stood his mother. She was unchanged in her favourite rainbow sweater, dark leggings, and huge smile, only a few months older than she had been when he’d left five years ago. “Kieran!”
“Mom!” He threw himself into her outstretched arms. It hadn’t been a lie, she really did give the best hugs, and he nearly melted into this one except his jagged skin caught on her sweater, and he let out a yelp.
She stepped back, holding him at arms length, eyes trailing quickly over what he knew was a gruesome sight. “Oh my.”
“I had an accident,” he said. “Just a month ago. Sorry I didn’t have time to tell you. But I’m okay.”
Her lower lip quivered. “Well, you’re here now.” She pressed into him again, gentler this time. Hug complete, she pulled him into the pod. “And this,” she pulled Cordelia in behind him, “must be Sarrin.”
Kieran rubbed his arms. “Ah, no. Sarrin couldn’t make it. Cordelia is my ride.”
“I thought you were bringing Sarrin back with you. You know the rules about telling folk who are going to remain in standard-time.”
“Not to worry.” Cordelia curtseyed before them. “I won’t tell a soul. I’m not even human.” She made a show of removing both her arms and then transforming herself into a fuzzy purple ball before turning back into the ostentatious colonial woman he had grown accustomed to.
“Oh my.” His mother looked at Cordelia, then turned back to him for an explanation. “What is she?”
“I’m an explorer, like you,” answered Cordelia. “But I was strand—.”
Kieran stared at the floor, rubbing his arms. “Mom,” he interrupted. “I never told you I was planning to bring Sarrin.”
“I suppose I just assume
d. The way you went on and on about her in your reports.”
He rubbed his chest, feeling the pain there more acutely than anywhere else. “A living Augment, Mom. A massive conspiracy. Cordelia is an alien, and we’ve thought for centuries they didn’t exist.”
“I’m very much looking forward to your full debrief.”
“I wish you could have met her.”
His mother folded her hands in front of her and waited.
Sarrin. He slumped against the doorframe. Blue eyes, steel hands, matted hair, procedural marks covering the entirety of her back, and a body so skinny it looked like she might crumple under her own weight. And yet she was strong. She could crush a man’s larynx with her bare hand — his hand went to his throat, remembering the time she had confused him for an enemy.
Only once.
Sarrin, and the pain in her eyes when she came back to herself and saw what she did. The pain when she had to tell him about each of her gifts… curses. But she had told him. And she had learned to recognize him even in the throes of a deadly trance.
The pain in his chest wasn’t his skin at all.
This — his mother standing patiently — was home.
But so was that.
“Kieran,” Cordelia prompted him. “I have to go.” She glanced at the countdown clock on the wall of the transport pod, as if to illustrate her point.
“Wait,” he said, catching her arm. Then he looked at his mother. “I can’t come with you.”
She tilted her head to the side, her facial expression changing only the slightest. “I know.”
“What?”
She gave him a sad smile. “A mother knows these things. Lord knows I saw it with your sister, and I see it with you.”
“Lauren?”
“She wasn’t made for this life, the life of an Observer. She was made for adventure. Like you. She was made for love. She fell in love Kieran, and she decided to stay.”
“Love?” He thought suddenly of Leove and Isuma, and the rescued savage woman’s garbled voice saying, ‘At least someone found some good in all this mess.’
“I suppose maybe I had hoped it wouldn’t happen for you,” his mom said. “But you and Lauren were so close, so much the same, you both loved each other so fiercely. This Sarrin, she makes you happy, I think.”
He remembered the joy he had whenever he was with Lauren, the pain when he knew he would never see her again. His heart cracked in his chest. If he went, he would never see Sarrin again. If he stayed he’d never see his mom and brother again. He swallowed heavily, his eyes burning. “Mom?”
“I love you, Kieran. I’m glad I got to see you one last time before you go to live your life.” She hugged him again.
His life. So many times he had risked his life, overstepped his bounds, completely disregarded the Observer rules. Why hadn’t he seen it before? He wasn’t an Observer anymore. He was a participant. “Thank you.”
She pulled away from him, wiping at the sides of her eyes. “Besides, you never would have made a very good Observer, you can’t sit still for more than five minutes.”
He laughed, and she laughed too.
“You have to go now.” She glanced back at the timer, still holding his shoulders.
“I love you, Mom. And tell Dad and Andy… I wish I could say goodbye to them too.”
“I’ll tell them,” she said. “Don’t forget to send your debrief.” And then she gently pushed him back, beyond the hatch of the little pod, and released him. The airlock shut with a clang of finality.
Cordelia stood beside him, holding his hand. They were standing on a thin platform, open to space around them. He watched as the transporter pod accelerated away from them and then disappeared.
“Come on.” Cordelia turned and took three steps. “The others are having a time. There are more Augments in this compound than any of the others. Worse shape too.”
Suddenly, their little platform was beside the ship and the wall opened and swallowed them inside.
Kieran looked around at the bustle of the Infirmary.
“Kieran?” Hoepe looked up at him, turning away from the delicate work he was bent over. “What are you doing in your underwear?”
Kieran grinned. “I’m here to help.” He wrapped an arm around one of the rescued Augments and helped them to a bed. He was home.
SIXTEEN
KIERAN TOSSED IN HIS BUNK. Every fibre of the sheets seemed to be made of needles, poking and pricking his tender skin, no matter how he laid. He suspected the sleeplessness had more to do with his ever-churning thoughts. He had been so close to home. He’d actually hugged his mother. And then watched as she sped away at nearly the speed of light.
It felt like a bad dream.
Mostly, his thoughts revolved around Lauren: she had died some two-hundred years prior. He’d mourned, feeling the gutting loss of someone who had been so young, who had died before their time. From his perspective at least. He was forced to watch over the course of months on the Observer ship until news of her death reached their data fragment collector.
But now, his mother’s words echoed in his head: She fell in love Kieran, and she decided to stay.
His sister had been in love. Was she happy? Did she have friends? A family? Children? Had she stayed happy? Or had she wandered in Earth-time until her death, wishing she had made a different choice?
His breath caught in his chest, and he bolted upright in bed, unable to breathe.
The lights came on around him. Cordelia appeared, and he found himself splashing down into the blue gel of the regen-tank.
Sputtering, he clawed to the surface, gasping for air.
“I felt you were in pain,” Cordelia said innocently, looking at him over the rim of the tank, her head tilted sideways in curiosity.
“I’m fine.” He splashed once — wholly unsatisfying in the dense goo — and laid back, his lungs filling normally with air once again. “My skin’s fine.”
Cordelia sat, the corner of a bed materializing underneath her.
“I’m never going to see them again. Not Dad or Andy….”
Her eyes perked up. “I could —.”
“No, don’t make ’em appear. It’s not the same.” He sighed. “And for what? This isn’t my fight, it’s not my world. They’re gonna need someone to look after the engines — a sub-luminal ship doesn’t just run itself. And there’s so much data to go through. It never stops. I was supposed to bring someone back to help, not leave myself.”
She held her arm out, grasping his hand and pulling him as the tank and rest of the furniture disappeared. She smiled to stop his spiralling thoughts, they weren’t helping anything anyway. “We’ve arrived at Etar. Hoepe wants you on the bridge.”
He was dry, dressed, and styled in an instant. The wall melted away, the edge of his quarters unbelievably opening into the busy command centre. “You know sometimes we like ta do things for ourselves.”
Hoepe greeted him with a tense nod. A great green and purple ball rotated on the view screen: Etar. It was stunning, and yet it stirred an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. He supposed many of the others looked on it as home, but it wasn’t. He’d spent some time there when he went to the Academy, but it was some strange and foreign land, alien, not his home at all. Not yet, anyway.
“It’s so beautiful to see it like this, isn’t it?” Adeina, the recovering savage woman, stood beside him, staring at the screen.
He answered with a non-committal grunt.
“Hoepe says anyone who’s strong enough has to go down. Cordelia is getting tired.” Adeina too sounded tired, and he looked at her, surprised she didn’t look as excited as the Augments around them.
“You’re from Etar, aren’t you? That’s your home.”
Her lips pressed together in a thin line. “It was home. I don’t know what they’ll do to me if I’m found there.”
He eyed her stooped frame. “What do you mean?”
“Going to that colony was the only way to please the
Gods. That’s what they said.”
“Yeah, but the colony was dying. You nearly died there.”
She bit her lip. “You don’t understand. I was caught questioning the words of the Gods. My family thinks I chose to go, the ultimate act of devotion. I was supposed to die there.”
He gulped. That’s what he had just committed himself to, right, instead o going home, he committed himself to die here in standard-Earth-time. “You’re lucky you didn’t.”
“This planet, it’s horrible. I would go as far away as I could, as fast as I could.”
Her frank words surprised him. But everything he knew about the Speakers and about the folk, about the horrible legacy of the Gods, agreed. He closed his eyes, picturing the transport pod, wondering if he could somehow go back and stay there. But it was a foolish thought, and one he didn’t really mean. Because as terrible a place as it might be, it still had the one thing he would, and did, give up everything for.
“Everybody ready?” a cheery voice sung across the deck. Cordelia skipped across the front of the room, waving her arms as person after person disappeared. She stopped in front of Kieran, holding his face in both her hands. “Tell Gal he can’t come back.”
“Wha—?” The floor opened underneath him, and he was swallowed, speeding down a semi-transparent tube through the clouds and to the rapidly approaching forest below.
* * *
The cloud of ash swirled around Sarrin.
“Good,” shouted Roelle, “Now shape it. Control it.”
Sarrin squinted — not that it helped — and focussed on the image of the goral she held in her mind. The cloud shifted, the pieces wavering as they changed direction. The beast began to take shape — first the thick body, the head, and the bizarre horns.
All at once, the creature exploded in a cloud, raining down around them.
Roelle crossed her arms and sighed. “This is a simple exercise. You must only use the full potential of your mind. Try it again.”
Sarrin took a shaking breath, staring at the small mountains of ash piled at her feet.
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