Fata Morgana

by Steven R. Boyett

  She snorted. “People think I get away with things. I’m always in some kind of trouble, but then I don’t get punished.”

  “Or you get punished harder than other people who did the same thing?”

  She nodded. “But usually I get into trouble because I did something that needed to be done! Things I couldn’t get anyone else to do.”

  “Or couldn’t get permission to do?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes.” She laughed. “Yes.”

  “Maybe sometimes yes,” he agreed.

  “But I’m right,” she said. “I fix things, I find out things that help everyone. Nobody talks about that part of it. They either talk about how I have it easy or they feel sorry for me.”

  “Because you’re the CO’s daughter.”

  She nodded. “No one ever tells him you’re too easy on her, you’re too hard on her. They’re afraid of him.” She laughed bitterly. “They should be.”

  “He seems like a pretty tough nut.”

  She pulled her hand from his and turned toward him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about that. I brought you here because this place is special to me, and I wanted to be alone with you. I wanted—”

  The sun went out.

  Wennda let out a long sigh as lights winked on in the fields below, in the clustered buildings in the distance. “This,” she finished resignedly. “Us, here. Alone. At eleven.”

  “Oh.” He was quiet a moment. “Oh!” he said again.

  “Oh,” she agreed. “Some tactician, huh?” She folded her arms and looked down into the impenetrable dark. Maybe she should just lean forward and let herself fall. Just a little bit, as Farley’d said. With her luck she’d live through it.

  “Can I say something?” Farley asked.

  “I wish you would.”

  He drew a long breath. “Can we maybe scoot back a little? This cliff is scaring the hell out of me in the dark.”

  She laughed. “Something scares you? The fearless aircraft pilot who flies between worlds and fights off typhons?”

  “There hasn’t been five minutes in the last four days when Captain Fearless here wasn’t scared out of his gourd. Anyone who wasn’t would be crazy. Or lying. Or dead.”

  “Here.” She reached out, touched his back, and moved to his arm. “I’ll save you, Captain Fearless.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he said.

  She pulled him back and let him go and stood facing the dark sky with her back to the warming breeze. “‘I’m counting on it,’” she repeated. She shook her head. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what? Count on you?”

  “Talk like that.” She let out an exasperated breath. “You do things that ought to make me mad. Grab me like I’m too careless to stay on a cliff. Like I’m a child. And then say you’re counting on me to save you, like—like I don’t know what.”

  “I’m just being—”

  “You open doors for me,” she said. “Hold chairs for me, like I’m injured or something. You stand up when I walk into a room. I’ve seen you glare at your men for using language you think I shouldn’t hear. Like I need protecting.”

  “That’s the way I was brought up. My mom would take me apart with a can opener if I was rude to a lady. But if it bugs you, I guess I can—”

  “I like it.” She turned to face him and put her hands on her hips. “I like it. If anyone told me about some man doing those things, I’d say What, does he think you’re sick? Did someone tell him you’re dying, or something? But you do it and it makes me feel like a woman. You sit across a table from me and everybody’s talking about tactics, and you’re looking at me. Not at a soldier, or an expert, or any of that. You’re looking at me.”

  “It’s not as if it’s hard to look at you, Wennda.”

  “Shut up.” She was surprised at her welling tears and she forced them back. “I’m a good soldier,” she said. “I’m a great data tech. People say they appreciate things I do. They train with me, they work with me, they game with me. They gossip and argue and complain with me. What they don’t do is try to be alone with me in the forest in the dark. They don’t ask me out. Because I’m the commander’s daughter. Because everyone knows who he is and what he’s like, and they’re terrified of him. Because they feel sorry for me but they think I’m privileged, too.”

  Farley didn’t say anything. She loved that he knew not to say anything.

  “And then you show up,” she continued. “And you don’t know whose daughter I am, or what my history is, or any of that. But somehow you understand me. I try to tell you why I like coming up here, and you say it’s because there’s something ancient in me that remembers it. You know what I mean, not just what I say. You treat me some way I’ve never been treated. You make me feel pretty. No one ever made me feel pretty before. Even if they thought I was, they couldn’t tell me. I’m the commander’s daughter.” She laughed bitterly.

  “Well,” he said. “I think you deserve better.”

  “I think so, too.” She wiped her eyes and looked at him, and the naked ache in her face was heartbreaking. “I think I deserve better. And I think that’s you.”

  “I’m not better than anybody,” he said.

  “And I’m not pretty. But you think I am.” She looked up at the lying sky. “Why is this so hard?” she pleaded. “Why are we so afraid of what we really want?”

  “Maybe because it came from another world with a lifesize picture of you plastered on its nose like a billboard. Anyone who wouldn’t be afraid of that is crazy.”

  “Or lying,” she said.

  He smiled. “Or dead,” he agreed.

  She laughed. She found his hand and pulled him nearer. His face all there was to see. “It certainly got my attention,” she said. “Maybe that was the point.”

  “How could it be? I didn’t even know you existed.”

  “I didn’t say you were the one trying to get my attention,” she said.

  Farley raised an eyebrow. “Who, then? God?”

  Wennda shrugged. “The universe. Quantum entanglement. God. I don’t know. But something went out of its way to bring you here from another world. Maybe we’ll find out why.”

  “Last night,” Farley said carefully, “I found out I didn’t come from a different world at all. I come from this one.” He held a hand up as she started a reply. “From the past,” he said. “Hundreds of years ago. Before your war. Before all this.” His gesture encompassed the Dome, the ruined world beyond.

  She smiled. “Maybe that’s why I’m on your aircraft,” she said. “I’m a memory of the future. An echo across time.”

  “An echo.”

  She leaned away and looked at him. Traced his jawline with a hand. His expression serious. City light glittering in his eyes. “Another world, another time,” she said. “You still were brought. It’s not any crazier than your being here in the first place.”

  Now he smiled. “I’ve seen an awful lot of crazy in the last couple of years,” he said. “And every bit of it was real.”

  She smiled back. “Farley,” she said.

  “I think you can call me Joe by now, don’t you?”

  “Joe,” she said. “All right. So what now, Joe?”

  “You know what now.”

  “Yes.” She put a hand on his back and the other behind his neck. Muscle flexed against one palm. Stubble rough against the other. “Yes, I do.” She leaned toward him.

  The sun turned on.

  Stark in sudden light they gaped at each other. Farley’s hands fell.

  “Damn it!” said Wennda. “It can’t be noon yet!” She stepped back and looked up at the lighted sky. “I want more time!” she demanded.

  Farley looked puzzled. He cocked his head. “Listen,” he said.

  Wennda looked away from the dome and stood listening as sound carried from the city below. Shouting voices. She frowned and glanced at her chronometer. “Eleven twenty-eight?” she said in disbelief. “This can’t be broken.”


  “It isn’t,” Farley said. “They fixed the sun.”

  Wennda slumped. Now came the tears she had been fighting.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Farley. “You’ve been wanting this for years.”

  She looked up at him. “Oh, Joe,” she said, “I didn’t want it now.”

  twenty-two

  “Pitcher Proud Horse goes into his motion and sets. Here comes the throw to Garrett.… Swung on and missed, strike three. Impressive heat up and in from the big chief. And that ends the inning.

  “So here at the bottom of the second it’s still Typhons one, Daybreakers nothing. This is your old broadcaster Shorty Dubuque coming to you live from Big Dome Field here in the future, which is brought to you by the six delicious flavors of Jell-O. J-E-L-L-O—ask for it by name at a food printer near you.”

  *

  Farley smiled at the unmistakable pop of a ball hitting a glove. At the players, at the day. At a thousand jumpsuited men, women, and children gathered beneath a six-cornered sun that had not shone at this time of day in eight years. Loud hubbub, raucous laughter, cheers and jeers. Everything but Cracker Jacks. The aluminum bats took some getting used to, though. Farley understood that there was no wood to be found in the Dome—maybe even in the entire world—but hearing a bink instead of a crack! when someone got off a good hit was just plain wrong.

  Instead of bleachers there were rows of lightweight metal folding chairs. Farley and Wennda sat near the first-base line and watched the ragtag Typhons take the field. Even after two full innings, the Dome dwellers on both teams seemed unsure about where their positions were, here in the fresh-cut diamond of grassland near the Dome wall. Garrett, now at catcher for the Typhons, waved furiously for third baseman Arshall to get closer to the dense foam square that was third base. Arshall frowned but complied, his new black ball glove hanging from his wrist like a canned ham.

  Shorty announced from a folding table made of the same superlightweight stuff as the chairs. He spoke into something that looked like a notecard but apparently was a microphone. Farley couldn’t figure out where Shorty’s voice was coming from. He couldn’t see any loudspeakers. Or wires.

  Shorty had designed the Typhons’ uniforms, a silhouette of a diving Typhon on paper jumpsuits printed special for the occasion. The Daybreakers sported a stylized, faintly hexagonal sun with a huge smile, thick-lined wavy rays, and a bandage on one cheek. Hard-edged tribal patterns ran up the sleeves and legs—all courtesy of Wennda.

  Farley had been impressed. “So you have hidden talents,” he’d told her.

  “They’re not hidden at all,” she had replied. “You just need the time to experience them.”

  Time.

  Farley glanced down at her hand on his, the feel of it new and yet familiar.

  He saw Commander Vanden sitting farther down the row, ramrod straight and scowling. The guy’s face would crack if he changed expression, Farley thought.

  The commander spotted him, and Farley gave a slow, grave salute. Vanden’s frown deepened, but he only nodded curtly and turned to say something to Grobe, who sat beside him, consulting an unfolded com panel.

  Yesterday’s final planning session with the commander and his advisers had yielded Farley everything he could have wanted. The science boys had gone into the expected technical, highly theoretical, and largely incomprehensible detail about what the vortex was, and how and where Farley should re-enter it—assuming he had an aircraft to re-enter it with. That part would be determined tomorrow morning when Farley and his crew set out on foot for the Redoubt with weapons, armor, supplies, and a team of six Dome troops.

  The crew had whooped and hollered when Farley gave them the news. He could not have been happier himself, except for one detail: One of those six troops would be Wennda. At the meeting he had tried to object, and the commander had quashed it out of hand. “If I didn’t have any say in the matter,” he’d told Farley, “I highly doubt you will, either.”

  *

  “And once again the Typhons take the field—man, you never thought you’d hear that line in here.

  “Coming up to hit is Plavitz. He moonlights as the navigator on our aircraft, so he’s probably the biggest reason why we’re here with you today.”

  Plavitz twisted in his batting stance to glare at Shorty. But the crowd cheered, unaware of the announcer’s intended irony. The cheering thawed Plavitz, and he doffed an imaginary cap and bowed to the crowd.

  “On the mound Yone gets the sign from Garrett … aaaand here comes the pitch. Ball, low and outside. Quite an arm on this brand-new pitcher; they must spend a lot of time throwing things at each other in the Redoubt.

  “Yone sets … and here comes the throw. It’s a high-fly hit to left center field! Lang goes back—followed by Arshall at third, Pohl at shortstop, and Ryner at first. It’s an exodus from the infield! Lang staggers back and makes the catch! From the look on his face, he’s just as surprised as we are.

  “So that’s one out here at the top of the third, in what is without a doubt the best ball game ever played here in sunny Future Dome Field as Samay steps to the plate. I hear she can really make a fork lift over there in Fabrication. Sorry about that one, folks; the only fork I ever lifted had pie on the end of it.

  “Samay’s got a lot of choke on that bat, very uneven stance. Yone throws—and Samay jumps out of the box as a fastball rockets past the plate, strike one! Now Daybreakers catcher Broben calls time from the bench.”

  *

  “He’s trying to kill me,” Samay told Broben as he approached her. “He’s from the Redoubt, you know.”

  “He’s not trying to kill you,” Broben said. “He’s putting it right across the plate. Here, look.” He stepped close behind her and put his hands over her hands holding the metal bat, conscious of Garrett grinning in his crouch behind home plate. He moved Samay’s arms in a practice swing. “Swing it like that and blam, it’s outta here.”

  She frowned at the artificial sky. “That would be impressive, all right,” she said.

  “Broben at the plate now, showing his left fielder the old baseball adage that it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

  Broben scowled at Shorty. “I’m just trying to get her to first base,” he called.

  “You’ve already got her way past that,” yelled Everett from the bench.

  Broben turned toward the bench and held a fist up to Everett. The big waist-gunner grinned and showed both palms.

  “And third baseman Everett yields the call.”

  Broben turned back and glared down at Garrett. “Tell that whiz-kid pitcher of yours to lay off the heat,” he snapped. “That’s an order.”

  Garrett saluted with his glove and shrugged at Yone on the mound.

  “Yone gets the sign.… And here comes an underhand pitch that you’d have to call off-speed. Samay closes her eyes and swings—oh, it’s a rocket comebacker to Yone!”

  The ball bounced off Yone’s glove and into center field. On the third-base line, Broben did a funny little dance and made a shooing motion. “Go, Sammy, go! First base, honey! Shake a leg!” He ran to her and set his hands on her hips and pushed her into motion. Samay trotted to first base and kept going. The baseman, Ryner, snagged her arm and reeled her back. “I think you’re supposed to stop here,” he said as the anemic throw from center field rolled by behind him.

  All of Farley’s crew put their hands over their heads.

  “Second!” Broben yelled. “Go to second!”

  “He said stay here!” she yelled back.

  “He’s on the other team!” Broben called.

  Samay frowned but began strolling toward second as Ryner’s teammates yelled for him to get the damn ball, for the love of Mike. On second, Boney took pity on Samay and left his position to take her by the arm and lead her to the bag.

  “And Typhons second baseman Boney Mullen gives the assist. I have a note here that the gang listening over in Filtration wants a clearer explanation of that las
t play. Fellas, I’m here to tell you that it can’t be done.

  “Up to the plate now is center fielder Berne, the big Dome brain who works on the Dome’s big brains. Yes, I really said that. Give him a hand, folks; he’s one of the reasons we aren’t playing in the dark today.

  “Pitcher Yone looks serious after giving up that last hit. Here comes the throw. Up-and-in fastball, strike one.

  “Berne gives Yone the stink eye. Yone goes into his windup. My money’s on the heater—oh, and Berne connects! It’s going.… It is going.… It is … off the sky and left for the Dome’s first-ever home run! Man, that hit nearly ruined three p.m. for the next eight years! It’s good for two Daybreaker runs, and the crowd goes wild as the local boy makes good on Super Sun Day.”

  *

  Farley cheered along with everyone else as Berne trotted heavily around the bases. That was one hell of a hit. Samay jogged across the plate and Jerry took her up in a huge hug. Berne stopped before the plate, red-faced and sweating, and looked at the crowd. He seemed surprised to see them cheering. He gave a little wave, took a deep breath, jumped up, and landed squarely on home plate. The crowd shot to its feet.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Wennda asked.

  “Are you kidding?” said Farley. “Fixing the sun’s one thing, but if you really want people to love you, hit a homer.”

  Wennda nodded uncertainly and resumed clapping. Farley laughed. Just another sunny day in the park.

  He looked to see if the commander had cracked any semblance of a smile and was unsurprised to see him still seated, scowling as Grobe said something into his ear.

  Farley frowned. Vanden was looking even more pissed off than usual.

  Farley nudged Wennda and jutted his chin at the commander. “What’s he so cheerful about?” he asked.

  Wennda leaned forward and looked at her father. She stopped clapping. “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  Vanden spoke briefly to Grobe and inclined his head at Farley. Grobe nodded curtly and hurried away.

  Farley’s pulse kicked up a notch.

  A chime sounded and Wennda snapped out her cellophone and held it to her ear. “Sten,” she said. “What’s going on?” She frowned at Farley. “They what? How many? Just now? When did they leave?”