No Going Back

by Mark L. Van Name

  As soon as we were clear, he closed the hatch and lifted straight up.

  “I didn’t know you could fly him remotely,” Zoe said.

  “Being portrayed as a dumb object is really getting on my nerves,” Lobo said over the comm.

  I turned away from Zoe for a second, as if checking something on my comm, and subvocalized, “You’re the one who reminded me that we need the job. Shut up.”

  I held up the comm. “I can do the basics with this,” I said, “and that’s all we need. It’s just not safe to park him here.” What I didn’t tell her was that if anything went wrong, Lobo would land in the street in front of the shop so we could escape quickly. I’d rather have the challenge of explaining to her how he did that than the task of fighting our way back to here.

  We picked our way through the rubble to the street and across it; traffic was sparse. Everywhere I glanced, people were watching us, some openly, others discreetly. No one bothered us, though, so I didn’t mind; if I’d lived here, I’d have checked us out, too.

  We reached Old and New, but though a handwritten sign declared the store open for business, the barred metal door wouldn’t let us in.

  “Got any weapons on you?” a tinny voice said through a speaker on the right of the door.

  “A few,” I said. I was carrying a small gun, a large knife, and a baton. I’d made Zoe wear some of the body armor I’d used at Omani’s. I didn’t put it on because I didn’t want to lose the speed it would cost me. If there was trouble, I expected it to come from up close.

  “I can see that, you fool,” the voice said. “I just wanted to know if you’d admit it. Why?”

  I laughed. “We’re not from around here, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”

  “I heard you had some old Earth music recordings,” Zoe said. “I’d like to look at them.”

  I pulled her closer and whispered, “The less data you give to everyone who’s watching and listening, the better. Let me talk.”

  “You’d do well to heed your bodyguard’s advice,” the voice said. “Son, just because the mics are old it doesn’t mean they don’t work.”

  I laughed and nodded.

  “I might be old,” he said, “but like the mics, I work pretty darn well, and I’m not stupid. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You lookin’ to cause trouble?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir.”

  “All right then,” he said. The door slid into the wall on our left. “Come on in.”

  We entered. The door immediately locked us in.

  Inside, the shop was well lit and tidy, though a thin layer of dust sat on pretty nearly everything I could see. Shelves of merchandise of all sorts—carvings and pottery, guns and swords, lamps and toasters, a huge variety of objects organized in no pattern I could discern—ran lengthwise on our left. On our right, a man who looked every day of a hundred and fifty but whose eyes were clear and who was still strong enough to be standing stared at us from behind a transparent booth I was sure was armored. Two beam guns on the ceiling tracked our movements.

  “You must have done well, once upon a time,” I said, “to afford those guns and this setup.”

  He nodded. “I’ve had better times, a lot of ’em.”

  “So what’s next?” I said. “We’re just here to shop. Well, to be precise, she’s here to shop, and I’m here to make sure she gets home safely with anything she buys.”

  “So look around,” he said.

  “As I started to explain outside,” Zoe said, “I’m here for only one thing: music from Earth. You’re supposed to have a great collection, and I’m always looking to add to mine. Point me to what you have, and let me take a look. I’ll buy anything I don’t already have.”

  “That stuff’s not cheap,” the man said, “but I suppose you knew that.”

  “I did,” she said.

  “I have to show it all to you personally, operate our players, that sort of thing,” he said.

  “I understand,” Zoe said, “and that’s fine.”

  “How about you and I go into the back and look at it, and your man stays here and waits?”

  Before she could answer, I said, “No. I don’t leave her. And you knew that.”

  He laughed. “I did, but if you were stupid or looking for something else here, you might have taken me up on the offer.” He stared at us for a few seconds longer. “Ah, heck,” he said, “you gotta trust people every now and then.”

  He left the booth and reappeared behind a glass-paneled door opposite us. He opened the door and motioned us inside.

  The room on the other side looked a great deal like the front room but darker, dirtier, more cluttered, and with even less apparent organization.

  “Storage,” he said when he noticed me looking around, “and where I keep the good stuff. My filing system”—he waved his hand to take in the whole room—“makes no sense to anybody but me, which means anyone who managed to break in here would have a hard time finding what they wanted without me.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  He laughed and led us to a workbench on the left wall near the back of the store. Sitting on it were a dozen different pieces of electronics I didn’t recognize, as well as a desktop shelving unit with rows and rows of small, open compartments. He ran his hand across half a dozen of them. “All of these data modules,” he said, “contain ancient recordings, some as far back as the mid-twentieth century on Earth. The newest is over a hundred years old, some songs from people here on Haven and on Freedom.”

  “How many songs?” Zoe asked.

  He laughed and shook his head. “To be honest,” he said, “this was my brother’s love, not mine, and he never cataloged it. Said he knew every single song and where it was.” He paused. “Didn’t help me much when he was gone.” He shook his head slightly, dusting off the memories. “What I know is that if you add ’em all up, they run something like five, six thousand hours. Ray—my brother, that is—he collected them before we started this place and for as long as we ran it together. He’d listened to them all. So, I can’t help you much there. Where do you want to start?”

  Zoe stared at the shelves and shook her head. Her eyes were wide. “Nothing I read,” she said, “gave me any hint at all of how much you have here.”

  “I let out only enough to attract people who’d be serious and have some money to spend,” he said. “I don’t see any point in making it look too good.”

  She nodded her head. “Well, I’m glad you did that. Tell you what: I’ll pick a few, and you play me something from each of them.”

  For the next half hour, she would pull out one of the data modules, and he’d put it in the right player. Music would come from the wall in front of her, and information would appear on the display of the player. She’d listen for fifteen or twenty seconds, scan the display, and pick another module.

  I found the whole process annoying, because about when I’d start to get a feel for a song, she would move on.

  Watching her, though, made it all worthwhile. She truly did love the music. Her face lit up with every new song she played. Every now and then she’d say a name or smile or say something like, “Wow.” She was radiating happiness. I hadn’t seen her full smile before, and it was dazzling.

  Finally, she said, “I could do this for days, months, but we don’t have that much time. It is an amazing collection; your brother should have been proud.”

  “Ray was,” the man said. “He loved this stuff. So, which ones would you like?”

  “All of them,” Zoe said.

  The man shook his head. “You clearly knew a lot of these. Why would you buy what you already have?”

  “Some of them I do have,” she said, “but not most of them. Some contain different versions of songs I know, versions I don’t have. A lot of it was new to me. The safest bet is to take it all.”

  “What will you do with it?” he said.

  She star
ed at him for several seconds before she said, “You know the singer, Passion, the one who performs old songs?”

  “No,” he said, “can’t say as I do. I haven’t liked a new musician in what must be eighty, ninety years now, and these old things aren’t really my taste, either.”

  “Well, I work with her,” Zoe said, “and together we find old songs we love, arrange them, and then she performs them.”

  “So you’re going to use them to make money,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “but we’re also going to love them.”

  “I told you they weren’t cheap,” he said.

  “How about this deal,” she said. “Your brother almost certainly had a price in mind for the collection, and he was bound to have bragged to you about what it was worth.”

  “He did.”

  “Whatever he quoted, it was almost certainly more than it was really worth.”

  “Collectors do tend to be that way,” the man said.

  “So you charge me whatever he told you,” she said, “and I’ll pay it. You just give me something ugly and cheap to carry it out in.” She glanced at me. “It’ll make his job easier if I look like a tourist with no money or taste.”

  “You’d pay that much,” the man said, “for music you didn’t even hear? I could be lying to you. Those could be empties.”

  “But you’re not,” she said, “and they’re not, so, yes, yes, I would.”

  He smiled broadly. “Well, all right then. Let’s go out front, pick something not too hideous, and do some business.”

  They chose an old leather satchel that looked like it had once been an overnight bag for someone who traveled light. The man let Zoe pack the data modules.

  “Do you need the players, too?” he said.

  “Thank you, but no,” she said. “We have all of these and more. If it’s held music, we can read it.”

  Back at the front room, Zoe got out her wallet and paid him quickly and without argument.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” the man said as he was opening the door for us.

  Zoe started to hand me the bag. “It’s heavy,” she said. “Would you—”

  “No,” I said. “I need my hands free. You carry it, and act like it’s light.”

  “Listen to your man there,” the old man said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Zoe said.

  We stepped outside. The light was much brighter here, so I put my arm in front of Zoe while my eyes adjusted. While my face was away from her view, I subvocalized over the comm, “Issues?”

  “Nothing right now,” Lobo said, “but I have no way to know whether any of the many people who watched you go into that store are going to bother you on the way out. Don’t worry; I’ll yell if someone comes within fifteen meters of you.”

  “Walk down this street,” I said, “and look in the other shops.”

  “Why?” Zoe said.

  “Not now,” I said. “Walk. Try not to smile so much, either.”

  When most people buy something valuable in a place like this, they hurry with it. If you take your time, then your purchase is probably not worth a lot.

  We took our time. We stopped and looked into shop windows, murmured as if debating entering, and slowly made our way back to the vacant lot.

  When we were thirty meters out from it, Lobo came down fast. He settled above the rubble perfectly and opened his hatch.

  It was entirely too showy for my taste, but Zoe didn’t appear to notice. She was still beaming from her acquisition.

  As soon as we were inside, Lobo lifted off.

  I pointed her toward the front and followed her.

  As soon as we got there, she put the satchel on the pilot couch she used, turned, and said, her smile back and even bigger than before, “This is the most amazing find I’ve ever made! You have no idea how much great music is on these! It’s amazing!”

  She grabbed my shoulders, pulled me closer, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you so much, Jon, for coming with me! I was lying about Bing; I wouldn’t have come with him. Without you, we wouldn’t have this music. Passion will be so excited!”

  She settled into the couch.

  I stood there for a couple of seconds longer, the feel of her body against mine and her lips on my cheek still fresh.

  Then I went to my pilot couch and sat.

  “Now, though,” she said, “we have to get back. The show is only a few hours away.”

  “Take us back, Lobo,” I said aloud.

  “What am I,” he said over the machine frequency, “deaf?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Jon Moore

  Passion stood out of sight of the stage as the announcer’s voice boomed her name.

  Zoe stood beside her.

  The other musicians walked onto the stage, from the outside as calm and casual as anyone could be. Minutes earlier, some had been that way, but most had vibrated with nervous energy.

  Passion turned and hugged Zoe.

  Zoe held her tightly and said, “Good show.”

  Passion nodded, stepped back, and ran onto the stage.

  The crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

  Lights illuminated Passion from behind and above. All the other lights went out.

  She lowered her head, stared at the stage, and began to sing. In person, her voice was stronger even than in the recordings I’d watched. After she finished the first line of the song, the musicians began to play. Her head rose slowly, as if the music were lifting her up, until she was staring at the audience, a tiny woman on a big stage but also a large face on huge displays around the amphitheater and on comms in the audience. The music grew in volume, her voice always with it but never obscured by it. She sang of a girl who loved a boy, a boy who had to go, a boy who didn’t return, and of the girl who waited and hoped.

  I’d never heard the song before, and I was of course never a girl, but like all the best music the truths it spoke became my own. I thought again of when I’d left Omani and burned with shame and guilt at what I’d done to her, at what I’d lost. Maggie walked away from me again, the taste of her kiss still on my lips, and I ached with what I might have had, what I might have lost, even though I’d chosen to let her go.

  I glanced to my left, where Zoe stood alone. She was watching Passion, soundlessly singing every word along with the woman who was in every way that mattered her sister. They shared the music then, Passion in the spotlight with everyone completely focused on her, Zoe alone in the dark, and to my surprise I found I could not stop watching Zoe.

  When Passion finished the song, for a few seconds the stage went dark and lights illuminated the crowd. They were standing, cheering, staring into the darkness where Passion waited for them.

  Zoe noticed me staring at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, “if that looks stupid, me singing with her. It probably is, but I’ve done it for so long now that I can’t watch the show any other way—and I never miss a show.”

  I shook my head slowly as the audience returned to the dark and Passion grabbed the light again. Another song started, this time the musicians playing first, Passion waiting to join them.

  “No,” I said. I struggled to find the words. “No, not stupid.” I looked away from her, feeling suddenly stupid myself. “Beautiful.”

  Zoe must have thought I was looking at Passion, because she said, “Yes, yes she is.”

  I looked back at Zoe. “Not her.”

  As the music reached a peak, Zoe opened her mouth to sing, and Passion’s voice again filled the amphitheater.

  * * *

  After the show, Passion grabbed Zoe as she rushed past.

  Zoe looked over her shoulder at me. “Jon,” she said, “would you like to come with us, maybe meet some VIPs?”

  If there was anything I didn’t want, it was more visibility, so I said, “Thanks for the invitation, but I’m not much for those sorts of things. I’m going to sleep. Have a good
time.”

  Zoe opened her mouth as if to speak, but then the musicians and Passion and all the others carried her away.

  I went back to Lobo.

  “I don’t know about you,” Lobo said aloud as soon as I was inside, “but I think the next nineteen days until Schmidt’s are going to be mighty boring. I can appreciate the clarity of Passion’s voice and the skills of the musicians, but actually feeling the music, as I know humans do, is beyond me.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” I said. I stretched out on my cot. “I truly am. The songs tonight were amazing, powerful and moving and often like feelings I’ve had but could never explain.”

  “I guess the time won’t be as boring for you,” Lobo said.

  I felt full, but not of food, rather of feelings I couldn’t exactly name and certainly couldn’t control. I was tired, but more from what I felt than from the work I’d done that day. “I’m exhausted,” I said, “and I want to go to sleep. You’ll let in Zoe?”

  “Of course,” Lobo said.

  As I was drifting off, I said, I thought to myself but apparently out loud, “You should have seen her.”

  “Of course I saw the transmission,” Lobo said. “Passion looked in fine form.”

  Not her, I thought, as I fell asleep, not her.

  19 days from the end

  Angelis City

  Planet Haven

  CHAPTER 36

  Jon Moore

  When Zoe emerged from her room the next morning, I was outside stretching after a run I’d taken to clear my head. I’d stayed close, and Lobo had called me when she’d begun to stir, so I was there to do whatever she needed.

  “You’re up early,” she said as she stepped outside.

  “Always. Plus, I went to bed before you.”

  “That you did,” she said. “Good show, wasn’t it?”

  “Very good,” I said. “I rarely see live music outside of bars and clubs, so it was an interesting experience.”