After Earth

by Peter David

  Nor did she wait for him to respond. Without a word she pushed her chair back, stood, and then walked quietly away into the kitchen. That left Cypher and Kitai in a horrendously awkward situation, the two of them sitting there in uneasy silence while the empty chair seemed silently to accuse them of screwing things up.

  “You’re excused,” Cypher finally said.

  Upon hearing those words, Kitai was out of there like a shot, leaving Cypher alone with his feelings and his meal.

  ii

  The guest room. That was what Cypher had just entered. Indeed, if anyone had asked whose room it was, he or she simply would have been informed that it was the guest room, and that was all.

  The problem was that both Cypher and Faia knew whose room it was. It was Cypher’s room. On the infrequent days when Cypher was at home, it was where—most nights—he stayed. Faia slept in their bedroom, and Cypher slept here. Cypher wasn’t even sure that Kitai was aware of it. If a boy assumes that his parents are sleeping together, why would he question the idea?

  Cypher finished depositing his bag in the guest room and sat down in a chair for a few minutes to regain his strength.

  My strength. Once upon a time I could have off-loaded it with one hand tied behind my back. Now I’m actually tired. He stretched his arms out to either side and winced at the pain in his shoulder. That would go away before too long, but the older he got, the more often he would feel unwanted pains and the slower they would be to depart.

  He lay back on the bed and stared at the walls of the guest room. The walls provided the other aspect of the room, namely, that it was his shrine to Senshi.

  The wall was made of smart fabric, and family pictures had been transferred to it. The images moved slowly but deliberately across the cloth. There was Senshi, from her birth right up to a photo that had been taken two days before her death. Her entire life laid out in a series of pictures. Normally they simply sat there unmoving. But when Cypher entered the room and said, “On,” the pictures would start to unfurl their individual stories. There she would be, running and laughing, or picking up her father’s cutlass for the first time, or singing some merry holiday song.

  Each of the pictures had an icon next to it, and Cypher zeroed in, as he typically did, on an image of her in a Ranger uniform. It had been taken the day of her graduation from the academy, the day she became a full-fledged Ranger. He had been so proud of her that day. So proud. It was hard for him to believe that any parent had ever been prouder of a child.

  Cypher reached toward the picture, and his finger touched the icon.

  Instantly the picture obeyed, growing from the small image on the smart fabric wall to full size. He was no longer staring at a small, short film. Instead it had completely enveloped him. He was in the middle of a cheering crowd of people at the graduation, shouting and applauding not just for their own children but for the graduation of every single kid. Because they knew full well that every Ranger was a dedicated protector of Nova Prime and its people and thus deserved the cheers of every person in the crowd.

  He glanced over to his right and saw Faia and himself sitting right where they were supposed to be. Kitai was in his mother’s lap and had fallen sound asleep. Cypher supposed he couldn’t blame him. There’d been a lot of talking and speeches before the actual pinning ceremony, and it had fried Kitai’s abilities to stay awake past what his young age would allow.

  Enveloped in the fake reality of that wonderful day, Cypher could only watch as any other ghost would watch. He had no means of actually interacting with anyone in the scene.

  Senshi climbed up the steps to the platform as her name was called out. Her pin of service was attached to her uniform amid much applause and cheering. Senshi held her cutlass straight up then, twirling it several times in some mildly ornate maneuvers. She didn’t do anything too fancy, not because she couldn’t but because she didn’t want to show up any of her fellow graduates.

  Cypher and Faia had had their own recording equipment, but this footage had been taken by a Ranger cameraman who had then provided copies to everyone who was interested. Cypher was most definitely interested, and as he watched Senshi step down from the stage, he couldn’t resist. He headed straight toward her, his arms open. He positioned himself so that Senshi was walking right toward him, and he threw open his arms to receive her.

  She passed right through him like a specter, and he turned and watched as she went to her “real” parents behind him. Cypher of the past wrapped his arms around her, and Faia grinned and said wonderful things while the young Kitai continued to slumber in her arms. Senshi laughed at that, and she reached over and kissed her little brother on the head. He stirred a bit in his sleep but did not awaken.

  They were together, and they were a family. A family that Cypher was able to remember only vaguely.

  And the strangest thing of all was that when he had thought back on that wonderful day previously, he had forgotten that Kitai was even there. He’d just assumed that they’d gotten a babysitter for him.

  Tears welled up in Cypher’s eyes. He would never have allowed himself to be seen reacting in that manner outside this room, but inside it, he could react however he wished, as all around people cheered for the accomplishments of Senshi Raige and all the other Rangers.

  iii

  In her office, Faia was hunched over a table with holographic wind turbines. She had spent weeks building them to perfect scale, but she still didn’t have the power supply linked in so that they would turn automatically. That didn’t matter to her, though. After all, it wasn’t as if wind blew automatically, either. Instead, she very carefully spun the turbines with her hand and then jotted down the information she was able to acquire. Low-tech it may have been, but the results she was receiving were as reliable as anything else she might accomplish.

  Then she heard a soft footfall at the door. She turned in her chair, and Cypher was standing there with a small, pained smile on his face. She gazed into his eyes and saw no hint of the man who had treated his son with carefully maintained indifference at dinner.

  “Look at that,” she said, studying him carefully, tilting her head one way and then the other. “Yep. Cypher’s back. General Raige had him hostage.”

  He crossed the room and sat down in a small chair beside her. He reached out tentatively, and she took his hand, squeezing it warmly. He sighed. It was as if he were relaxing right into her.

  “I have a last mission to Iphitos. Flying tomorrow,” he said. Iphitos was a small planet, one of six anchorages over in the Milky Way’s next spiral arm. Residing there was not for the faint of heart. There was a colony of maybe a hundred or so people, and they were getting ready to see if Iphitos could be terraformed from a training facility and Ursa respository into something more welcoming to human habitation. They could just as easily have been attacked by the Skrel as Nova Prime had been so often over the centuries, but so far that hadn’t happened. The general assumption was that the colony was simply so small that the Skrel hadn’t taken any notice of it, the several million people residing on Nova Prime posing a far greater threat.

  Faia frowned when he said that. “Last mission?”

  “Yeah. You see … after it’s completed, I’m announcing my retirement.”

  “Retirement?”

  “That’s it,” Cypher said with a nod. “It’s that time.”

  “No, it is most definitely not that time.”

  He blinked in astonishment. He’d forgotten that she often surprised him, and then he was surprised when she did it again.

  He looked deeply into her eyes. “I want my family back. I want you back.”

  He reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a necklace. It was not one of the items of jewelry that were fashioned by Nova Prime artists. No, this was unquestionably antique jewelry from Earth. It was not only incredibly rare, it was also symbolic. Or at least as far as Cypher was concerned, it was.

  But Faia simply stared at it. She allowed a small smile
to acknowledge its significance and his good intentions, but otherwise she seemed indifferent to it. She stood stiffly as he attached the necklace around her slender throat and then nodded in the direction of Kitai’s bedroom down the hallway. “That boy in there is trying to find you,” she said. “He is … a feeling boy, he’s an intuitive boy, and I … Moby Dick.”

  He stared at her in confusion. “What? What about it?”

  “He watched you read that book with Senshi his entire life. He’s reading that book now. He’s reaching for you …”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

  “You didn’t. You couldn’t. Because you couldn’t ask even something as simple as, ‘So how are things going?’ Cypher … don’t get me wrong. I respect everything that you’ve done. But you have a son in there that you do not know. He is drowning. He thinks it’s his fault, what happened to Senshi. He doesn’t need a commanding officer. He needs a father.”

  Cypher spoke to her, his voice distant, as if he were speaking from another place and time. “We fight monsters. And before that, we learn how to fight them. And before that, we dream about fighting them. That is who we are, and it is my responsibility to instill that into that boy.”

  “Oh, look,” Faia said drily. “The general’s back.”

  “You’re damn right he is.”

  She spoke without heat. There was no anger in her voice. Just sadness. “Let me make a prediction. When the general is old and no longer looks like his statue, the father is going to realize this is the exact moment he lost his son.”

  His face frozen in annoyance, he stood, turned, and walked out. As he did so, Faia glanced at her reflection on a screen, studying the necklace. Its cold stones shimmered like distant stars.

  iv

  Kitai was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and a pair of blue shorts. His uniform, the clothing that he valued above all else, was lying crumpled on the bed. Anyone could have taken a single glance at it and known that it had not been removed with any manner of care. He had simply ripped it off himself and thrown it onto the bed. When he was ready to go to sleep, he was fully prepared to just kick the damned thing off the bed and let it lie on the floor all night.

  Then he heard a quick stepping of feet and looked up. Cypher was standing in the doorway, staring at him. His face was immobile, as if he had a hundred thoughts battering around in there and still hadn’t decided what would be the best way to approach his son.

  What was he going to discuss with Kitai? Was he going to shout at him about his failure? Was he going to unleash the true despot he had hiding inside him? Was he—

  “Pack your bags,” Cypher said. “You’re coming with me to Iphitos. We depart at second sun.”

  Kitai blinked in confusion. Whatever it was that he had expected his father to say to him, this was most definitely not it.

  But why? Why would he bring me to Iphitos? Is he planning on just leaving me there? What the—?

  With that pronouncement, Cypher turned away and headed down the hallway without a word. That had been a command more than an invitation.

  Kitai, alone again, did the only thing he could: pack.

  1000 AE

  United Ranger Corps Space Port

  i

  Kitai could not recall the last time he’d been to the Rangers’ main hangar bay. It was the largest single structure in Nova Prime, cut deep into the mountain where the city stood. Ships of all sizes would tear out of there at seemingly random times. Sometimes they were at the command of the Rangers. Other times ships were flown out at the command of the Savant’s science guild. Even the Primus, who was the head of the religious guild, had need for various ships, and whatever anyone required could be found at the main hangar bay.

  Everywhere Kitai looked, he felt nothing but a relentless sense of wonder. At the moment, he was engaged in watching a transport ship being fueled. He wondered if it was the vessel his father and he were scheduled to take. He was mildly chagrined to admit even to himself that he hadn’t the slightest clue why the ship was heading out to a colony world. But his father had said that was where they had to go, and if that was his dad’s opinion, well, then, that was that.

  Kitai was finding it difficult to believe the many swings his opinions of his father had gone through in the last twenty hours. First he’d been terrified of him. Then he’d become angry. And now he was grateful that his dad was taking him along on this adventure. So grateful, in fact, that he resisted asking what was going on. The fact that his father had thought of him at all, for whatever reason, was more than enough for him.

  He had, though, taken it upon himself to see if he could get information out of his mother. But she had simply smiled in her enigmatic way and said softly, “If your dad wants to bring you along, then I suggest you go.” That had been her entire opinion on the topic. Kitai hated to admit it, but that actually sounded pretty reasonable.

  He glanced across the hangar to where he knew his parents were. He was astounded to see that they were embracing. The teen smiled in joyous amazement at that. It was no secret to him that his parents did not get along especially well, and it filled him with nothing but happiness to see them displaying genuine affection for each other.

  Were the two of them managing to work things out? It was impossible for Kitai to know for certain, of course. Perhaps he would be able to ask his father at some point during this outing.

  That was when Kitai noticed something that looked extremely unusual. It immediately snagged his attention.

  Something was being loaded into the aft cargo ramp of a ship called the Hesper. The thing was big: about two meters tall and almost three meters long. It was a loading pod of some sort, organically grown in such a way that it looked like an oversized boulder.

  “What is that …?” he whispered.

  “Guess you’ll find out.”

  The voice that had spoken to him captivated him so thoroughly that he nearly jumped into the air. Clutching his chest, he let out a long sigh, and then he saw that it was Rayna. She smiled and waved to him. She was in her Ranger uniform, and he noticed that she had a cutlass strapped to her back.

  Rayna had made it.

  Eager to turn the topic away from the strange pod that had startled him so thoroughly, he nodded toward her weapon. “Congrats,” he said.

  “Hmmm. Oh. This.” She chucked a thumb toward the weapon on her back and shrugged. “Yeah, it’s no big deal. You’ll be next. Guaranteed.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hey, you have no reason to complain,” she objected. “I admit it: I’m jealous.”

  “ ’Cause I get to do Lightstream travel?”

  “Hell no. Not that. I’m jealous because you get to travel with your dad. He’s hot.”

  “Riiiiight,” Kitai said with repressed amusement.

  ii

  Cypher watched from a few yards away as Kitai studied the transport ship. He hated to admit it, but he found his son’s attitude amusing. The general tried to remember the days when he’d first witnessed such modern-day miracles as spaceships and wondered whether he’d had the same degree of obvious enthusiasm. He couldn’t recall himself being in that state of mind.

  Lieutenant Alvarez approached. “Good morning, General,” she said briskly, and then added, “Ma’am,” to accommodate the fact that Faia was standing there as well. Then she shifted her attention back to Cypher. “Your ship had maintenance issues. We’ve got you on the Hesper, sir. Runway two-seven. It’s only a class-B Ranger and cargo transport, but if you give me another hour …”

  It didn’t matter in the slightest to Cypher. One ship was pretty much like any other, and so he gave it no thought. “That will be fine, Lieutenant.”

  Alvarez smiled at that. “Yes, sir. Just between you and me, the boys on board are pretty excited to rub elbows with the OG. I’ll see you on board, sir.” She saluted, and Cypher briskly saluted back. Alvarez then headed off to make sure the ship was ready.

  Faia looked at Cypher with curiosit
y. “OG?”

  “The Original Ghost.”

  “Oh, right. Of course. How could I forget?”

  He watched her warily, uncertain of whether his wife was kidding him. He noticed a look clouding her expression. Something close to doubt.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said with a confidence he did not truly feel but firmly believed he had to display. If she wanted her husband to spend time with their son, that was what he was going to do even if not all of it made a whole lot of sense. He would speak with Kitai, and he would try to understand this remarkably sensitive boy he and his wife had brought into the world. Even if it killed him. Or Kitai. Or the both of them.

  Suddenly there was a loud, nearly deafening bang behind them.

  Instantly Cypher grabbed Faia’s wrist and twisted so quickly that she barely knew what had happened. All she knew was that one moment she was facing Cypher, and the next he had pulled her behind him to provide her bodily protection. His cutlass was already in his hand, and he was making sure that Faia remained behind him while he determined where the threat had originated.

  That answer came less than two seconds later. There was a worker on an overhead gantry making some minor revisions, and his wrench had slipped out of his hand. It had clattered to the floor only a few feet away from Cypher and Faia, and that was the noise to which he was reacting.

  Cypher scowled at the worker, who called down, “Sorry!” Cypher, annoyed, made an irritated noise and then reached down for the fallen tool and tossed it back up without giving it further attention.

  Cypher then looked back to Faia, about to ask her whether she was okay. He saw, however, that she was smiling up at him. She looked pleased and flattered, and it was only belatedly that Cypher realized the truth: She was flattered that he had automatically moved to shield her from perceived danger.

  He released her then, muttering, “Sorry,” since he actually felt a bit embarrassed to be seen acting in such a protective manner, especially when it wasn’t necessary. Faia, for her part, reached up and removed the scarf she was wearing. To Cypher’s surprise, she was wearing the necklace he had brought her the previous evening. It sparkled against her skin, and Cypher couldn’t help smiling at the symbol it presented. It seemed to him that at least on the surface, he was going to be getting a second chance with his wife.