The Stalk

by Janet Morris

  You did that by putting one foot in front of the other until you got where you were going. When Reice got into Remson's Y Ring office, the Assistant Secretary was still on the GEORGE WASHINGTON.

  Remson didn't want to have that report delivered, even in summary, over any comlink, so Reice had to cool his heels until Remson could come over to Spacedock Seven.

  The party for his team was going on without him. For the first time in his life, Reice, an inveterate loner, actually wanted to go to a party, to be sociable, to share his feelings.

  Oh, well. Maybe there'd be another time.

  But there'd never be another first time to be accepted by the military. Reice sipped overcooked coffee from one disposable cup after another, and waited for Remson because that was his job.

  When Remson showed up, the Secretariat XO seemed pale and wide-eyed. Reice wanted to ask how it had gone over on the alien habitat, but it wasn't his place.

  He said: "Sir, here's your report, in good order, on time."

  Remson looked like somebody who'd had too much lypo-suction, too fast. The skeletal Secretariat Assistant Secretary said, 'Thank you, Mr. Reice. Can you give me a quick summary?"

  "Yes, sir." No wonder at the feat accomplished. Just a demand for a good reason not to have to read the product of all those hours. But Reice was ready for Remson. "There's a one-paragraph executive summary on the first page, sir." He paused to let Remson know that he, Reice, could tell Remson to go read the goddamned summary, like he was supposed to do.

  Remson looked at him mildly, waiting, if not patiently. then distractedly, until Reice was forced to speak again. "In summary, sir, we've got final specs. Cost breakdown. Capability matches. Operational tasking. We can move Threshold anywhere you want beyond Pluto. It's going to take a tremendous effort and require a redeployment of force of massive proportions, but it can be done."

  "Thank you, Mr. Reice. I'll tell the SecGen what you've said." Remson took a desultory note on his deskpad.

  Reice got out of there as quickly as he could. Still time to catch the tail end of the stand-down party.

  Maybe he'd been a fool to expect more than a cold thank you from Remson, but Reice's task force had just done the impossible, double-time. Maybe they didn't understand that at the Secretariat level. Or maybe some things never changed.

  Whichever, Reice couldn't wait to get back among the people who'd sweated blood with him to get this program up and running. Maybe if he got there soon enough, he could stop feeling like such a chump.

  CHAPTER 15

  Turnabout

  "Dad. Dad. Dad? Dadaddaddaddad...

  Richard Cummings II sat bolt upright in bed, staring into the dark.

  "Dad! Dad. Dad! Dad?" he heard.

  The sound reverberated in his ears, in his skull, in his heart. His fists balled up wads of sheet and blanket. He felt as if his heart would break.

  Was this it? The end? Was this the way Death would come to him. calling in the voice of his lost and wayward son? Was he having a heart attack? Would he be found in the morning, sprawled across his ancient Tudor bed, his mouth full of blood and his eyes staring at a horror no one else would ever see?

  "Dad? Dad. Dad? Daddaddaddaddad...."

  Cummings had brought the Tudor bed at great cost and effort from Earth to Threshold. The curse attachéd to all things Tudor had never frightened him. Surrounding himself with antiquities from Earth's misty past was a privilege he savored.

  The ghost called again. Cummings' hackles rose. His son was missing, not dead. Not dead.

  Perspiration broke out on Cummings' brow, under his pajamas. The dark into which he was. stating became grainy as his eyes strove to And a source for the sound He fancied he could feel the impact of distant light sources on his eyeballs, stimuli tickling his retina For there were light sources.

  His bedroom had a churchlike stained-glass window which angled toward the stars. Through it, starlight and the Stalk's nightglow streamed in colored rays that toned the darkness.

  If there was something to be seen, some presence in the room, be it a ghost or a holograph or the spirit of a lost child, Cummings should have been able to see it.

  He saw nothing but the half-visible, half-memory shapes of armoire and desk, touched by the colored window light. Around him, the thick, rope-carved posts of the oak Tudor bed were boundaries of pure blackness. Around them, the darkness was alive with errant light.

  But no son moved there. No ghost sought him across the lightyears. No apparition moved, nor phenomena materialized.

  Only the sound came to him: Dad. Dad? Dad? Daddaddad."

  Cummings pulled his covers up around his throat. He wanted to say, "Hello, son." He couldn't speak. He couldn't take the chance of encouraging irrationality in himself.

  The noise might not be real. The sounds might be only in his mind, not in the air. Cummings didn't run a log in his bedroom. A man had to have somewhere to speak his mind, have his privacy, keep his own counsel. He had gone to great lengths to assure himself that no one else could record what transpired in this room, either. No covert surveillance was acceptable, here. No corporate enemy or Secretariat bureaucrat could be allowed to penetrate this sanctum. The bedroom was snooped for bugs on a daily basis.

  But someone had penetrated this hallowed space, created a sad and sorry seance for him. Or he was losing his mind.

  Moving as little as possible, Cummings reached for the notepad computer he kept by the beside and engaged its voice-command mode.

  He held the notepad in his lap and waited.

  When next the voice spoke ("Dad. Dad! Dad? Daddaddaddad."), the words appeared on the notepad's tiny screen, just as Cummings had heard them.

  Unless he was muttering them himself, and thus was already hopelessly mad, he was not imagining the sounds.

  That was something, anyhow.

  The voice faded to nothing—or almost. Now Cummings fancied he heard breathing, a shallower, quicker pulse than his own.

  A presence in this room, uninvited, unannounced, and unseen, was impossible. Logic would not support the thought. Reason would not give credence to the possibility. Every security measure that NAMECorp could command was dedicated to assuring that incidents of intrusion such as uninvited guests in the CEO's bedroom were purely impossible.

  And yet ...

  "Dad. Dad? Dad! Daddaddaddad...."

  "What?" Cummings snapped, nearly shouted. Then whispered, "What, what, what.. .." And finally dared: "Ricky, is that you?"

  And the whisper from the brownish darkness beyond his canopy bed and before the stained-glass window said, "Yes. Yes! It's me!"

  "Thank God," breathed Richard Cummings, though he did not know why.

  "Dad. Dad! Dad? Dad? Daddaddaddad. . . ." Again, the voice of his son resounded in the darkened room.

  Cummings looked down at the computer notepad again. The notepad had recorded even' spoken word of the disembodied source, interspersed with his own responses.

  Something real was happening here, then. At least, something was saying the things he heard.

  The next time the interrogatory began, he covered his own mouth with his hand, to make sure he was not speaking. The words continued to resound in his ears, and his notepad continued to transcribe them.

  Cummings erased the dialogue glowing on the notepad's screen and set the device back down on his bedside table. He wanted no record of this encounter, however it might turn out.

  "Dad. Dad! Dad? Daddaddaddad. . . ."

  Softer, now, and wispy. Sad. As if it were losing hope. Giving up. Drifting away.

  "Son? Son, don't go. Talk to me; 1 Cummings knew he sounded like an idiot, talking to the dark. Talking to his own guilt, an empty room, or worse, to his own imagination. But talk he must, or face an agony of regret, of answerable questions, of self-doubt and even self-loath b

  No one was here to laugh at him. No one was here to find Richard Algernon Cummings, Jr. guilty of gullibility, or worse.

  No one was here at
all. Just himself, and a voice from another time and place. "Talk to me, Ricky," he said again, afraid he'd waited too long, done too little, been too skeptical, expected too much, once again, from his son. "Tell me you're safe."

  The maddening voice whispered, "Dad. Dad? Dad! Dad, Dad, Dad.... Safe and sound. Come and see."

  The new words were heavensent, gifts of riches beyond price, a balm to his anguished heart.

  They'd never gotten along together, in truth. Never found a way to be comfortable. Richard was too competitive, too judgmental, too—busy—for a child. And now, what had he left?

  A voice in the dark. A dream son. A phantasm of his misery. The boy had fled him, with his accursed Medinan girl. Fled him not once, but twice. Now Cummings was dreaming—must be dreaming—what he could not face in daylight.

  The boy was lost to him forever, by intent or accident. No more would there be time for reconciliation, for learning lessons and setting examples. This could still be a dream, up to and including the dialogue entered in a dream version of his notepad computer. Must be a dream. In a dream, Richard could admit that he missed his son more than he'd imagined possible.

  He'd never imagined that he'd lose Ricky. It was incomprehensible to him that a man could suffer as he was suffering and still survive. Richard Cummings would destroy every enemy and idiot government bureaucrat who had abetted the crimes of commission and omission leading to the disappearance of Richard Cummings III, but only because he must to save face.

  His heart could not heal with this hole in it. His soul could not escape from the ice encasing it. Death and loss were his sole companions, and he could never forgive himself for letting young Rick slip away.

  And thus, this dream so real that he could swear he lived in it, moved in it, thought in it, and talked in it. When he awoke, there would be his notepad computer beside his bed. A simulated morning would be dawning, another day yawning, and in that day would be no Rick Cummings to make his father's life a nightmare.

  The trouble with dreams this real was that they contained all the stuff of life except reality.

  Ricky Cummings had always been an innovator. Stubborn. Determined. Combative. Proud. It was so like Rick to find a haven that NAMECorp wealth couldn't reach, that NAMECorp strength couldn't corrupt, that NAMECorp control couldn't compromise, that Richard was proud of his son's determination, his creativity.

  Proud, and mourning what was lost.

  When Cummings awoke, he promised himself, he would sit down with Dini Forat's father and make peace. Peace for the children's sake, in case they still lived. This dream was telling Richard that much. No more time for posturing. Time now only to salvage what was not lost forever.

  If he had believed he was awake, he would have dictated a memo on his notepad. But he did not believe it.

  If he was asleep, he could talk to the disembodied voice of his son and be none the worse for it. He could believe, in his dream, that Ricky really was trying to contact him. He could. He would.

  "Ricky," he said, "are you still there? Rick?"

  "Dad! Dad? Dad."

  "Ricky, where are you?"

  "Here, Dad. Over here."

  "Where? I can't see you."

  "Here," said the darkness in the middle of the room. "Come here, Dad."

  "Ricky, I've missed you so. I'm sorry we quarreled." Cummings cleared his throat. "I ... forgive me, son. I ... was wrong."

  "Dad? Dad! Come with me. Come now. There's nothing to be sorry about. Come now. Come see."

  Richard Cummings threw off his covers and got out of his bed. The floor under his feet felt solid, cool, and then warm and yielding as he stepped onto a Heriz rug and moved toward the sound.

  "Okay, Ricky, here I come," he said very low. He could have turned on the light, in this dream that had so very much detail, like cool floors and warm rugs, but he did not. In case it was not a dream, he did not. In case, somehow, there was a disembodied force in this room which was his son, he did not wish to do anything to disturb it, to break the spell, to ruin the chance.

  He walked toward the sound, in the dark.

  A dream had never felt so real. He had never felt so foolish, or so desperate. He said, "I'm coming, Ricky. I'm coming, son."

  And the darkness said, "Here, Dad! Dad! Dad? Dad."

  Cummings moved softly over the rug, toward the sound. The closer he got to it, the louder it seemed. As if a person were standing there, before the stained-glass window, in the dark.

  His eyes ached as he tried to penetrate the gradations of darkness. If a youth stood there, would Cummings be able to see some sign? Would there be the soft spill of lighter darkness over a young cheek, a shoulder, a thigh? Would there be something? Anything?

  Richard Cummings said, "Ricky, I don't want you to be afraid." If there was no person there, or if this manifestation were something from beyond death's door, he must not squander his only chance. "Don't be afraid, here I come."

  "Here, Dad! Dad? Dad! Here I am."

  Cummings would save his son, if he could, as he had saved everyone he loved from all of life's threats ever since he'd been old enough to realize his destiny. He would talk to a ghost, if he must, to give it comfort. He was nearly sure he wasn't dreaming, now: the tears streaking down his face and into his mouth were too salty to be dream tears.

  Whether they were from the strain on his eyes of trying to discern a wraith in darkness, or from grief, he could not have said did his life depend upon it. He was lost, and found, and lost again a thousand times in hope and despair as he put one foot in front of the other on a journey toward reconciliation with ... something.

  The dark was purer, in this part of the room. The stained-glass window was red, yellow, and blue, pure and backlit, a mandala from some ancient time. He'd found it in what once had been Cambridge and brought it here. Carefully. Patiently. Without so much as adding a scratch to its surface.

  The window was like a wheel with ornate spokes. Colored light was trapped between the spokes. The spokes began to move, at first slowly, then faster, clockwise.

  Beneath the spinning mandala of light, a dark place ahead of him was shimmering. "Come on, Dad. Take my hand."

  Cummings almost faltered then. He almost ran back to his bed, jumped in, and pulled the covers up over his head. This couldn't be happening. But it was.

  He saw the dark before him as a shape, and that shape was the shape of his son. A hand of thick black substance came out of shadow and lesser dark to envelop his. He.felt substance there, human bone and human flesh. He clasped the fingers hard in his own.

  "Ricky," he said. "Ricky, it's really you!"

  And then the dark all around him exploded in a kaleidoscope of light, and he was falling. The hand in his clutched him tight. "Don't be afraid, Dad! I've got you. Don't be afraid. Dad! Dad? Dad. Daddaddaddad...."

  Down they tumbled, in an impenetrable night of blackness, limbs entwining and separating, always together, always apart. Just as they had lived, they fell forever through blackness without form or stars, skydivers through eternity executing some random ballet.

  Cummings' tearing eyes were whipped by the wind of their fall and dried when their falling stopped. A hand was still grasped tightly in his. He couldn't see a thing, but under him was a surface that was solid and welcome.

  A voice close by said, "Dad! Dad? You made it. You did it."

  But what had he done? Where was he? For he was somewhere. The boy's hand in his held tight. He knew his son's grip. He'd felt it over too many years not to know it. The hand of a baby, the hand of a toddler, the hand of a youngster, the hand of an adolescent: the hand in his was all of these hands, and more.

  Richard Cummings held the hand of a guide and felt his way forward toward the light.

  Cummings thought the light must always have been there, a pinprick, a glimmer, a star, a nebula, a universe, waiting. It was beautiful, and he moved toward it without fear that he might fall again, his son's hand in his own, content now to follow along wherever fate
might lead.

  What was happening to him was beyond his experience— perhaps beyond anyone's experience. Anyone except his son, he corrected himself.

  Rick's hand in his was his touchstone, his connection with reality. Nothing mattered so much as keeping direct contact with the flesh of his flesh. He had thought he might never again have the opportunity to take that hand in his.

  They climbed a hill together, his feet told him. They climbed down the hill into a valley, and the star before them never wavered. This valley was filled with a lighter darkness, as sunrise on Earth lightens the dark when day is still an hour or two away.

  He would take Rick out of this place, home to Earth, to the Cummings' ancestral places. Rick could bring his new wife as well. All the carping and the bickering and the foolish attempts of old men to force their preconceptions on the young would stop. He would grab old Beni Forat by the straggly beard and make the Muslim cleric see reason.

  Reason was all about him. It wafted on a cool breeze moist with forming dew. It sang a distant song of morning's chorus from the throats of waking wildlife. It glowed from the dark sky above, turning purple in the light of a sun yet unrisen.

  Let the morning star guide them. Let the boy beside him say his name like a mantra: Dad! Dad? Dad. Daddaddaddad. Fathers give up all other names when they hold a newborn.

  He should have remembered. How had he forgotten? How long had it been since Richard Cummings had shouldered the responsibilities of a man, lived the life of a man, known the joys of a man, cried the tears of a man?

  He had become a force of unnatural progress, a field effect, a magnate of the expansion of humanity of among the stars.

  And he had nearly lost everything he truly cared about. Walking with his son toward the morning star, up a soft hill of good ground springy with turf and fragrant with grasses, he said, "Thank you for coming to get me, Rick."

  "Dad, I had to," said the voice of his son.

  Cummings risked a look away from the morning star in its purple heavens, toward the dark shape beside him. He could almost see a shape now, almost recognize the beloved form of his son.