A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  “She’s wearing that dress!” Mai declared. She was more upset than Jamie thought possible. Mai was always a rock when things were bad and getting worse.

  “What dress?” she asked, then knew the answer: her mother’s yellow dress, given to her by the famous artist Rafael. “Where is she?”

  “In there,” Mai answered, pointing with the tissue in her hand. “In the yellow dress. Pacing back and forth. Breast feeding Zelda. In the dress.”

  “Setek?”

  “He’s with her. Helpless, of course. Like the rest of us. You want to talk to her?”

  “I’m afraid to. I may make it worse. She’s devastated. We’re all devastated. It’s almost a month. Has she shown any signs of recovering?”

  “No.” Mai took her daughter back from Jamie. “She still spends hours just sitting in the stasis lab. Zelda is the only thing that makes her break the routine.”

  “Everyone is here.” Jamie glanced around at the somber people she just finished greeting. “Why did she pick this place? I want to cry every time I catch a glimpse of Freddy sitting out there so still and alone. Are there more tissues somewhere?”

  Setek emerged from the apartment bedroom carrying Zelda. Jamie met him and inspected her niece. The baby seemed content. She thought it would be a miracle if Zelda grew up normally despite her mother’s condition during and after pregnancy. Jamie started to search for the tissues but Direk met her with a small supply of them. She kissed him. He hugged her with one arm while she wiped her nose.

  “I don’t know if I can endure what may happen here,” she muttered to Direk.

  “I saw her smile today,” he said. “But she was weeping as she smiled. I don’t know what that meant. She wouldn’t explain it to me.”

  Direk stopped speaking and turned. Jamie followed his gaze. Aylis had entered the room and stood looking at everyone, perhaps checking to see if anyone was missing. She was barefoot. Her blonde hair was unkempt. The yellow dress was wrinkled and spotted with milk stains at each leaking breast. Aylis was never very concerned with personal grooming but this was the worst Jamie had seen her.

  “Jamie,” Aylis said, “Direk. Jon. Iggy. Phuti. Koji. Nori. Wingren. Pat. Pat, I’m so glad you came. I’ve worried about you.”

  “You’ve worried about me?” Patrick Jenkins said. “Lord, lass, I’m only so bad as I am because of worrying about you!”

  “Then you can stop worrying.”

  “And why should I?”

  “Because I had a dream. A wonderful dream.”

  ” So wonderful you can’t stop weeping?”

  Aylis smiled, and it would have cheered them all, but tears flowed continually down her flushed cheeks. “Everyone, sit down and make yourselves comfortable. This may take a long time.”

  Aylis stood while the rest sat down. Some sat on the floor. She waited and watched while Zelda started a nap in Setek’s lap. Jamie began to relax a little, feeling that Aylis might be approaching recovery. Her own emotions seemed to calm, after being unsettled by the apartment where her mother and father lived, and where her AMI brother rested in death. But with Aylis’s first few words, all the emotion arose once more and she leaned into Direk for the comfort he gave.

  “I had such high hopes,” Aylis began, “the day Setek and I gave Sunny to Milly. I never fully realized how deeply I cared for Milly. Losing her was in some ways even worse than losing Zakiya. Milly isn’t dead. But I couldn’t keep her alive. She stopped eating. She stopped caring about life. She tried to kill herself. She sleeps in stasis now. Someday a wiser person than I will take up the challenge to bring her back to life.”

  Aylis stopped and waited for her composure, and when it never came, she continued as best she could. “I had a dream! Eight years from now I found Milly and Sunny down in the room where Samson and Ibrahim were killed. Sunny was a beautiful little boy. Milly raised him. But he was still sick and not getting better. I had to tell Milly that I needed to put him in stasis. Milly was brave but deeply saddened.”

  Aylis stopped again. It was impossible to tell if her mouth formed a smile or a grimace, Jamie thought. She didn’t have much control of her lips or her voice. “It was so real, so wonderful, so painful. Has anyone seen the Protector?”

  Her question caused restrained reactions from everyone: glances briefly exchanged, frowns quickly extinguished.

  “No reports of sighting the Protector,” Jon replied reluctantly.

  “I was hoping. I didn’t know how to ask him to come. Iggy says the cryptikon no longer connects to him. I prayed for him to be here with us. I use the male pronoun because he spoke - he actually spoke - in a masculine voice in the dream. He sounded a little bit like Petros.”

  She stopped talking again. She let her eyes wander the room, as though looking for the invisible and silent alien entity. She walked to the rear patio door and looked out at the empty field by the lake. She walked slowly back with her head bowed. Jamie pressed down on her thighs with clenched fists. Direk covered one of her fists with his hand. She tried again to relax. The ache of grief was settling into the back of her throat.

  “I know how I must appear to you. I know you aren’t wrong in your opinion. Let me struggle through the entire fantastic dream, and then you can go. I’ll feel better if I can tell you about it.”

  Jamie listened intently as Aylis resumed her narration. The idea of having a remembrance for her parents and the rest who died in the assault on the Lady in the Mirror was both appealing and painful. The brief ceremony they endured shortly after the battle was nearly unbearable. Perhaps in eight years such a gathering might be appropriate.

  Jamie was amazed and enthralled at the detail in the dream. Several others tried to ask questions but Aylis refused to answer. Aylis forged ahead with her narration, as though afraid of losing her way. Most peculiar was the way Aylis concentrated on Milly, almost as though seeing the dream through her eyes.

  Long before the end of her story it became apparent it couldn’t be anything more than a very elaborate tale of wish-fulfillment. It was almost embarrassing to hear Aylis tell it, and it evoked pity for her. Even so, it was a story that moved Jamie, making her feel an even greater sense of loss. It was quite possibly within the power of the Protector to accomplish such a miracle. Aylis tried to grasp that possibility and build it into a hope she could share with them. Instead, her hope would die when nobody could feel what she must have felt in experiencing the dream.

  Aylis finished her description of the dream and sat down next to Setek. Nobody said anything for several moments. Jamie was reluctant to speak, and imagined the others were weighing the cost of settling certain questions the remarkable story raised. In particular, she was shocked and disturbed by what Aylis said about Admiral Etrhnk - her brother Petros. How could Aylis ever forgive him, even if she shared some of the blame?

  ” Sam killed himself,” Setek said, assuming the burden of cross-examination. “He jumped into the mirror, leaving no trace. This is what Milly saw, still connected to the surveillance network. You tell it from her perspective. Why?”

  “She was imprisoned in a nightmare existence for centuries! It was so unfair! Sam and Jessie never got the chance to raise Sunny. Zakiya and Alex never got the chance to be parents. Pan will never… Petros will never… Sammy. Poor Sammy! It isn’t fair!”

  Setek waited a few moments, then continued to voice his thoughts. Jamie was at first uncomfortable that Setek wanted to challenge Aylis’s story, but he seemed curious rather than critical.

  “You provide detail that I know you wanted to avoid learning from the forensic analysis of the battle,” Setek said. “You even provide a valid theory of what may have happened to Sam. Your version of the battle is consistent with the known facts. How did you derive your narrative?”

  “I tell the story as Milly experienced it. Because it was Milly’s dream, not mine.”

  The room was silent for several moments, until Setek voiced the conclusion most of them must have reached. “You employed a
neural interface.”

  That was what Aylis was doing in the stasis lab! Jamie thought. She knew enough about the procedure to be afraid for Aylis.

  “I couldn’t give up on her! I’ve kept her semiconscious, letting some part of her mind continue functioning. I know it’s cruel. Especially after all her brain has suffered over the centuries. But a few days ago she began to dream.”

  “But it’s so dangerous to connect yourself to such a mind,” Mai said. “Your own mind could be jeopardized. You never asked for my help!”

  “You would have stopped me.”

  “You know it takes neural-interface therapists years to acquire skill in treating the emotionally disturbed. Milly is an extreme case. I had a hell of a time putting her back together.”

  “I seem to have an aptitude for it. Either that, or Milly isn’t such a bad case. You did a better j ob on her than you thought.”

  “The interface operates in both directions,” Setek pointed out. “It could be the dream was mostly yours, a fiction built on suggestive facts. A cooperative effort. It’s still a disturbing and mysterious phenomenon.”

  Aylis seemed to accept Setek’s analysis with resignation. If her exposition of the dream was hoped to relieve Aylis’s grief, Setek’s comments dashed that hope. Aylis was exhausted, unable to even produce more tears. Setek handed Zelda to Jamie so he could put both arms around his wife.

  “What do you think?” Direk quietly asked Jamie.

  Jamie stroked Zelda’s soft brown cheek and allowed herself a small delight in the miracle of babies. “I believe in hope. How did she know we picked Alexandros as a name for our son?”

  Aylis pushed away from Setek. She stood up, a frightened look on her face. “What’s wrong?” Setek asked.

  “There’s an alarm signal from the stasis lab.” Aylis’s voice was filled with dread.

  Mai approached, handing Chumani to Jon. She grabbed Aylis by the wrist and pulled her out the patio door. “Listen, old woman! You and I will do battle if you don’t let me help you! What’s the alarm signal mean?”

  “The restraint of function on Milly’s brain is completely lifted. She’s in distress! How can it be? We’re going to lose her forever!”

  “Uncle Iggy,” Jon said, “you need to teleport these two ladies.”

  Aylis, Mai, and Iggy disappeared. The rest of them queued up for transmat. Jamie was in the first group to arrive at the stasis lab in the hospital. She was still carrying tiny Zelda. Nori and Wingren came with her. In only a few moments the entire group arrived. There were only two coffin-like stasis units in operation: one for Milly, and a small one for baby Sunny.

  “Kill the stasis,” Mai advised. “Get her out of there. Ready resuscitation.”

  “Why?” Aylis asked. “What do you see in the brain scan?”

  “It doesn’t look too bad. What choice do we have? This unit is defective. Perhaps she can survive until we get another unit ready to take her.”

  The stasis coffin drained and dried its occupant rapidly while Nori brought clothing. The coffin applied its awakening procedure. Aylis and Mai dressed the body in the coffin. By the time they extracted it from the coffin and laid it on an adjoining table, it began to move. The color of life surged into its paleness.

  Jamie felt her heart pounding and her hopes rising to an untenable level. Her augments could protect her biology but her hopes lay exposed to attack. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that Milly could be saved. She couldn’t bear to endure what could be a final death for Milly. She wanted to leave. It was exactly as Aylis said: Milly’s loss was more tragic than Zakiya’s or any of the others. With baby Sunny in her arms, Milly was the radiant symbol of hope for the future and for victory over evil.

  Milly opened her eyes. She turned her head slowly from side to side. She looked at every face. She finally returned her gaze to Aylis. Jamie couldn’t determine what was in Milly’s expression. Certainly not happiness.

  Aylis stood next to Milly, her hands extended toward her but hesitating to touch her. Milly struggled slowly to a sitting position, avoiding being touched by Aylis or Mai. Aylis seemed further distraught, if that was possible, and mixed with it was a forlorn hopefulness. The hopes of all of them suffered as Milly’s eyes filmed with tears. A grimace pained her face. She trembled with the effort to get her feet down to the floor.

  Everyone, Jamie thought, must know where Milly was going. Everyone wanted to dissuade her. Everyone stood in silence and watched. Everyone but Mai. “Don’t let her, don’t let her,” Mai whispered.

  Jamie could see the toll taken on Milly’s freshly-awakened body, even without the data that traced ominous red curves on holographic displays. She was sure alarms were sounding in whatever medical data links Mai and Aylis maintained with their patient.

  Milly slid one bare foot unsteadily in front of the other as she moved toward the little stasis coffin that contained Sunny. Aylis put a reluctant hand on her as she crept past her. Milly shrugged it off as violently as her weakness allowed.

  Milly breathed heavily and leaned on the table and the stasis coffins for support.

  Milly reached the little glass coffin where tiny Sunny lay in stillness. She fell upon it, draped her arms across it, stared down into it with tears raining from her tortured face.

  Aylis took hold of her shoulders and tried to pull her away. Milly lashed out with one arm with surprising strength, knocking Aylis backward, causing her to stumble and fall to the floor. Mai tried to do what Aylis failed to do and Milly fought her. Mai also fell to the floor. Jamie saw military training in how Milly handled herself.

  No one wanted to stand and watch Milly die of heartbreak. No one knew why they wanted Milly to move away from the small coffin. It would do nothing to change Milly. But it was unbearable for them. It was not on the shiplink but it was clearly what Jamie understood of the mood of everyone.

  “Direk,” Jamie said quietly, and Direk moved to control Milly.

  Direk was gentle as Milly tried to fight loose from him. Setek helped him by restraining one of her arms. She was wild with anger or grief or frustration. Jamie couldn’t imagine from where her strength derived or how much longer it would last. Milly went limp in the grasp of the two powerful men, and they gently lowered her to the floor. She curled into a fetal position, her arms covering her head as Setek and Direk released her, the pink soles of her feet tucked up as tightly as she could pull them. Milly’s feet had no toes, all of them having been amputated because of freeze damage. Jamie had never noticed Milly’s feet before. She questioned Mai about it by shiplink.

  [That part of the dream is wrong,] Mai responded. [Milly was never completely frozen. She could never have been successfully thawed with the medical technology of six hundred years ago.]

  Setek bent to help Aylis from the floor but she refused to stand. She sat and stared at Milly with nothing but heartbreak on her face. Jamie felt as badly as she ever felt in her life. She wiped her eyes and glanced quickly at all the others. She was grateful they shared the burden of the moment with her.

  Jamie sat down on the floor, not understanding why she did it. Perhaps out of respect for Aylis and Milly. She put Zelda in her lap and saw the baby was awake but content. Jamie was prepared to wait. She didn’t know what would happen. She only knew she wanted to stay, to help Aylis if only by being present. To help Milly if at all possible.

  Direk sat down beside her. Setek knelt behind Aylis and massaged her shoulders. Everyone else sat down on the floor. Jamie knew they felt as she did.

  What followed was at first a further descent into despair for Milly. It bordered on insanity. Yet it was intriguing. And it ended in a very unexpected way: glorious and joyously sad.

  Here we go again, I thought. It was very quiet. Even Aylis stopped her pitiful weeping. Protector was shifting the scenery for Act Three, or changing the reels for the Double Feature. Anyway, I thought I did a pretty good acting job in the previous act or reel or episode or chapter. It wasn’t difficult. Rememberi
ng Sunny was all the nudge I needed to go crazy with grief. He was the only thing I knew was real. Pain was always a clue to reality.

  Footsteps tapped the floor as someone walked toward me. I heard the faint sound of a hand touching and rubbing the floor next to my head and I could feel air currents: all clues that someone was sitting down next to me. A hand patted me on the shoulder and stroked my bare arm. For some reason I felt it was someone new, not Aylis or Mai or any of the others. I moved my arm a little bit to refuse whatever sentiment the touch meant to convey.

  It was damned hard not to believe this was real, but I swear I could still feel my ribs cracking from how hard Aylis held me during the dream. I was a connoisseur of The Image and The Lie, having spent hundreds of years watching history through a glass darkly. I was tired of it! I wanted Sunny back! It was time for Protector to deliver the goods. I had ante-upped, played the hand, called my pitiful bluff. Protector had to show me his hole card, if he had one.

  “Who is it?”

  I felt this imaginary person lean close to me, breath tickling my ear as she said, “It’s me.”

  “Me who?”

  “Jessie.”

  That got my attention. She was worth a look, real or not. I uncovered my head and stared, dry-eyed. I could say the world turned up-side-down, but from my snake’s-belly perspective, it was already that way. “Do they see you, too?”

  “Looks like it,” Jessie answered in American lingo. “They seem to be in a state of shock.”

  “So, how’s it going?” I still had my face on the antiseptic floor.

  “Are you all right? Why are you lying here?”

  “I’m just tired. You know who I am?”

  “Of course. Do you know who I am ? “

  “Why did you come to me?”

  “I saw you on the floor with Aylis. I guessed you were why I was here. I’m just winging it.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”