by Phil Rossi
Bean was silent.
Minutes turned into hours, and they still did not move from Anrar III’s shadow. Gerald and Marisa held one another, not out of love, or relief, but just to hold onto something living and real. Gerald felt himself falling asleep and didn’t fight it. He was exhausted. Marisa was already snoring softly with her head buried in his neck. She would probably start drooling on him soon.
He didn’t care.
(•••)
The next several weeks went by in a haze. There were medical exams and endless questions from Core Sec security officials. They always asked the same questions, and each time Marisa and Gerald were only able to provide the most vague of answers. When they had awakened from their catnap on Bean, memory of what happened on Crescent was fragmented, dreamy, and fast to fade. Bean’s memory banks from the past month had been wiped clean. Apparently, Gerald had executed the command himself, but he didn’t remember doing it. In the end, those events on Crescent that Gerald remembered most clearly were the ones he believed the least.
“Mr. Evans, we’re not accusing you of anything. We really don’t think that one man, one woman, and a beat up salvage ship could be capable of making an entire station disappear. We just need your help to piece things together. We need to know if this region is unstable. We need to know if Galatea could suffer the same fate as Crescent.”
“Look,” Gerald said, “I told you. I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember, and it causes me pain when I try to. I just want to get out of space altogether. I want to feel the soil of a planet beneath my feet. How many more times do we need to go through this?”
“I apologize, Mr. Evans.”
The session went on for another hour, apology notwithstanding.
Marisa was waiting for him in the lounge area outside the Core Sec office. Her back was to him. She stood in front of a large viewport and watched the rolling asteroids and glittering stars. He placed his hands on her shoulders and she leaned back into him.
“How did it go?”
He shrugged.
“They’re letting us go on the next colony ship out of here,” he said.
“On what condition?”
“That they get to keep Bean for an undetermined amount of time.”
“And you’re fine with that?” She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not fine with it, but I do know we need to get out of this part of space for good. When they’re done with Bean, they can send the hull to me wherever we end up and we’ll use him as a big planter. Don’t worry, I’ll hang onto the parts that count.”
Marisa chuckled. “I’m sure he’ll love that.”
“I don’t think he has much of a choice.”
Gerald tapped his breast pocket and the data wafers therein. Bean’s personality constructs and memories were close to his heart—where they should be. Core Sec could have Bean’s hull, his machinery, and his data banks, but Bean would make a fine estate computer for the house that Gerald had just purchased with the mystery funds in his bank account.
The line to the docking tube remained long and slow as passengers filed onto the colony ship. It seemed that the closer Gerald and Marisa got to leaving, the slower things went. Finally, they reached the security check. Gerald removed his shoes and placed them on a narrow conveyor belt. He proceeded through a metal arch and was scanned for contraband. Once cleared, he stepped out of the checkpoint, retrieved his shoes, and slipped them back onto his feet.
Marisa stepped into the docking tube ahead of him.
“I’m off Galatea before you, sucker.” She winked. He turned for one last glance at the station. A young woman with a wild mane of dark hair and cappuccino skin stood watching him. She waved. At him?
“Do we know her?” he asked Marisa.
“Nope,” she said and tugged his belt loop. “Come on, Gerry.”
In an instant, he remembered. He remembered everything. The woman he saw now was ancient, and he saw the whole story in her face. His mouth fell open and he closed his eyes. Marisa tugged on him again. He opened his eyes and the woman was gone.
“You okay?” Marisa asked as he stepped into the tube.
“Yeah.” He hesitated for a moment and then answered honestly. “I’m fine.”
The pair boarded the colony ship, and left that piece of space behind them forever.
Epilogue
Gerald was cold.
A violent shiver woke him from a heavy sleep. He was intimate with the fact that it got very cold at night in the desert, but that didn’t prevent him from falling asleep with the window open time and again. He rolled onto his back and let out an audible groan. His head pounded. He forced his eyes open. Blue light pushed into the bedroom through wind-blown curtains and pooled on the gray carpet. Gerald realized he was lying on the floor instead of face down in a stack of pillows on his big, cozy bed. And he was naked. He lifted himself onto his knees and his hands came away from the floor wet. He probed the spot with his fingers only to discover the carpet was saturated. He became aware of the shower—it was running. He looked in the direction of the bathroom. The door was closed, but no light shined from the crack beneath it. He looked next toward the large bed. There was a lump under the sheets and a wash of dark hair spread out over a scrunched pillow. A pale, bare foot stuck out from beneath the twisted blanket.
Gerald went into the bathroom and he flipped on the light. He turned off the shower and watched the last of the water trail down the drain, carrying a few grains of red sand with it. A towel in the corner of the bathroom was mostly dry and didn’t yet smell of mildew. He used it to rid himself of the excess moisture and then wrapped it around his waist.
Back in the bedroom, he sifted through his discarded clothes for a pack of cigarettes. The beat-up box held only a single stick of tobacco. He shook his head and stuck the final smoke between his lips—he didn’t remember going through a whole pack earlier that night, but his lungs did feel tight. It might be time to consider giving the damn things up.
He went to the open window and his gaze trailed up along Cutter’s Spine. The low mountains scraped at the glittering stars. His eyes moved out to the mesas and rested on the glowing lights that were the fledgling core mine. If Gerald strained and the wind was right, he could just barely hear the electric generators burning their stinky, liquid fuel. The wind changed direction and all he heard was quiet; all he could smell was dirt. He turned his eyes down to his own stretch of land. To his magnificent dirt gardens. He laughed. Bold salvage pilot turned dirt farmer, he mused. Long boxes of dark, fresh, and very fertile earth stretched out along the flat desert plain. The dirt looked black in the moonlight.
Gerald’s PDA flashed on and off where it sat on the floor. Leaving the window, he retrieved the device. The small display told him that Marisa had left him a message during the course of the night. He looked to the bed where the lump remained motionless. The sleeping girl was a stranger to him—even after the hours they had spent getting to know each other. A sigh passed over Gerald’s lips and he let the towel drop to the floor. Stepping from the mound of cotton dampness, he slipped into his jeans and a tee shirt that reeked of tobacco and alcohol. Gerald took the PDA and went out onto the back porch of his New Memphis home. There, he slumped into a lawn chair and looked the device in his palm. The PDA’s LCD read 4:18 a.m. Marisa’s call had come in at 3:34. As he pressed play, her face materialized from a wash of pixels and static.
“Gerry,” she said and took a breath. “You’re busy right now. Alex said she saw you with somebody at the Depot and that you left with them…” She laughed. It was a small, short, and unsteady sound. “I know what you’re thinking. So. Yeah. I’m on the pills tonight. That’s not what this about. I’m not calling for…that. You have to listen to me, Gerry.” She glanced around. It was dark wherever she was. Gerald had trouble discerning her features. “There is something in me…inside my mind. I’m remembering things that never happened. Things I…think never happened. Things that now I’m wondering i
f they did happen.” She looked off camera and then turned back to lean in. The camera lens was unforgiving. Marisa looked like shit. Her hair was a mess; her eyes were sunken and bloodshot. Gerald filled with both anger and sadness. “I’m not crazy. Gerald. Something followed us here. Something from that place…the place I don’t remember. It all has to do with Crescent. I don’t know what. Jesus.” She popped a pill and followed it with a wash of dark liquid. She waggled the pill bottle in front of the camera. “Maybe Kendall’s gas blast did scramble my circuits…maybe I’m only remembering hallucinations from the poison…maybe it’s the carthine. But I don’t think the memory of the gas is real. Kendall never managed to gas the station—he ran out of time.” She laughed. “Time,” she repeated and popped another pill. “But, Gerry, I hear a name in the static when I listen close.” She smiled and looked sad. “No. This isn’t a ploy to get us together. Just…I want to know if you’re… experiencing anything. I’ll even settle for an email. Please, don’t ignore me.”
Playback ended. Gerald dropped the cigarette to the patio and watched the smoke trail off into the night. The wind gusted and he wrapped his arms around himself.
“I don’t need this shit…” he said.
Gerald was not experiencing anything out of the ordinary on New Memphis. There were no voices whispering in the static. Nothing moved in the corner of his vision. Hell, his few occasional blackouts were self-induced. His index finger hovered above the callback icon for several instants. He looked back toward his bedroom. The desire to crawl back into bed with his new friend had waned completely. He retracted his finger and slid the PDA into the front pocket of his jeans. He didn’t want to call Marisa back either. He didn’t want to have the conversation she was getting at.
Gerald remembered everything that had happened before they came to New Memphis—from his arrival on Crescent to watching the space hulk disappear before his eyes. He scarcely could believe the memories. Probably, Gerald wouldn’t have believed them at all if it weren’t for the scars and the accompanying nightmares. He didn’t want to have that conversation with Marisa. He didn’t want to see her. Every time he looked at her, he saw that place.
The place where two worlds that had no business being acquainted had met, and the door to hell had shuddered open.
He didn’t want to go back there.
Not for love. Not for hate. Not for anything in the world.
