*
Dakota’s voice made him turn. “Uncle John?” Her green eyes were welling with tears as she prepared to board the train with her grandparents, after the heartbreaking funeral. “When you’re back on Earth, will you still come see me?” She glanced at her grandmother, beckoning from the train portal. His heart ached as he chucked her under the jaw. He felt like a hopelessly awkward uncle, and wished he could somehow find a way to show his niece how much he cared. “ ’Course I will, kiddo,” he murmured. “And I expect you to come visit me in space, when you’re a little older. Deal?” Deal, she whispered.
He saw her just twice after that, before shipping out to Triton. But he set up the trust fund before he left, in a sudden impulse that in retrospect seemed almost prescient.
“I know what you’re going through,” Julie murmured, leaning to kiss his cheek. “I’ll find Dakota and explain everything to her, don’t worry. And I’ll wait for you right here, for as long as it takes you to come back. I love you, John—”
/// Your act must be its own reward, ///
Charlie said, breaking through the soft borders of the fugue-dream.
Bandicut started. /Platitudes, Charlie. Tell me—will anyone believe that I really did this? Will they even see the comet go kaboom? Will there be any evidence?/
/// Depends on their willingness
to believe what they see.
Maybe they’ll see the flash. ///
Bandicut grunted. He suspected that the quarx had not even the slightest expectation that his act would be recognized even if it were seen. /I always thought,/ he muttered, /that when people died heroes, they at least got a little credit for it./
The quarx didn’t answer. In the silence, Bandicut drifted back into his own dreamy fugue.
Neptune Crossing Page 67
