Dancing with Eternity

by John Patrick Lowrie

  “Why would you want to put her through one more second of this? Are you sadistic? Do you have some warped need for vengeance?”

  How about justice? But, no, I didn’t want her to be in pain if she didn’t have to be. But to forget her own daughter, her son, her husband ...

  I bulleted Tamika. [Yes?]

  “I’m— ah ... I’m taking Daimler and Steel down to medical.”

  [What’s wrong?]

  “Umm, Steel’s in a lot of pain. Daimler thinks it would be best if we ... if we wiped her memory.”

  [She wants to zero out?]

  “No, just the last two or three decades.”

  There was quite some time before Tamika answered: [Well, that would certainly put her in a better legal position.] I hadn’t thought of that. Daimler was covering her tracks, one step at a time. On the other hand, she really was in pain. I could see that.

  “She’s in pretty bad shape.”

  [She doesn’t want to see Alice?]

  “I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

  There was another pause. Then: [All right. Stay with them. Make sure he doesn’t do anything that would give them access to the net.]

  “Right. Will do.”

  So Steel was asleep, recovering from nanosurgery when the three of us hooked onto the skyhook and started our descent, the three of us plus our sad charges. We would be carrying Archie and Marcus down to the surface. Eden was the only place I knew of where we could bury them.

  Alice was stoic about her mother; still it was good to get back on the rock. It’s hard to think about anything but what you’re doing when you’re dangling over kilometers of nothing.

  We made a good descent. No goofing around, no mistakes. It helped that we had just done this a few months ago. And we had good luck with the weather. Two weeks later we were standing beside the little Buddhist shrine, the friendly stream jumping and shattering in its channel.

  We dug two graves and placed the bodies in the ground. None of us knew what to say, but the ritual completed itself nonetheless. They were as much at rest as we could make them.

  I said, “The Buckymobile should be about ten klicks southwest of us, if it’s still there.”

  “I remember where it is,” said Alice.

  I picked up my pack, “Yeah, well, let’s get going.”

  Yuri put his hand on my chest. I looked at him. He said, “I think the two of us will be all right from here.”

  Oh. Yuri was staying. Of course. He’d found a way. I should have known that. Yuri had found the woman he could save, or at least help. I would be climbing back up on my own. I looked from Yuri’s face to Alice’s. They were a team. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure you’ll be fine. We’ll … um … we’ll bullet you when we get to Ultima Thule—”

  Yuri said, “I don’t think so, Mo.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Ultima Thule’s ninety-eight light years away.”

  I didn’t understand at first. It didn’t matter on the net how far away we were. But then I did understand. Ninety-eight years. I felt like the Lightdancer had just been driven into my chest. “Right. What’s ... what’s the average lifespan on Eden?” I asked.

  “About seventy years for women, sixty-five for men,” Alice answered. “Some people live longer, but never much past a hundred.”

  I didn’t know when Yuri had last booted. I knew that Alice was already effectively in her twenties. This was messing me up. When was the last time people had actually said goodbye in our culture? I didn’t know how to do it. “Well ... well ... have a good life. A ... a great life. I— I love you both.” The three of us hugged, clutched was more like it, like we never wanted to let go. But pretty soon we did.

  “Take care of Ham for me,” Alice said.

  “I will.”

  Then Yuri grabbed my shoulders. “And you have to get that data out. Don’t forget. You have to figure out a way.”

  “Right. Right, I’ll ... I’ll think of something.”

  “I’m counting on you.” He gave me a whack on the shoulder. Then they turned and started down the trail.

  I watched them till they were out of sight, then prepared for the ascent. When I was ready, I felt inside my medicine bag for the little meteorite Yuri had found on Brainard’s Planet. I rubbed it between my fingers and kissed it for luck. It was going to be a long, lonely climb.

  I was fine until the third day when I got to the hut where Archie had lost her arm. I was making myself dinner when it hit me out of the blue that she’d never gotten her new one. I don’t know why that hurt so badly, but I fell apart into racking sobs of inconsolable bereavement.

  But when I recovered, I had an idea. I didn’t know if it would work. It seemed so simple that Steel would have foreseen it, but then, she had made so many impulsive decisions. I didn’t know, but I gave it a try:

  “Jemal?” I wondered if he was still on Steel’s system. “Jemal? Can you hear me?”

  And then he answered: [MO! Mo, it’s great to hear your voice, man! How is it going? How is everybody? I’ve been worried sick. It’s been over two decades—]

  “Yeah, well, a lot’s happened.”

  [Is everyone okay?]

  “Um, no. No, Arch and Marcus didn’t make it.”

  [They’re ... they’re ... They didn’t—]

  “We lost them.”

  [Oh, man—]

  “Yeah, but listen.”

  [What? What can I do?]

  “Did, umm, did you manage to get back on the net?”

  There was a pause. Then: [Umm, yeah, yeah I did. I— umm, I met a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. You know.]

  “That’s great. Listen, I need you to upload some data for me.”

  [Okay.]

  “There’s a lot of it. I want you to send it to Lysistrata-24. At the Antigone Institute. Got it?”

  I felt a lot lighter the rest of the way up.

  Epilogue

  By the time I made it back up to the Lightdancer, Steel had had almost a month to recover. She looked much better; still, it was very strange to be around someone I felt I knew fairly intimately when it was obvious that she didn’t have any idea who I was.

  Daimler offered us a deal. Tamika and I were not to speak to Steel about anything that had happened. We were to interact with her only about the present, never about the past. In return for this he agreed to put us back on the net, pay us what Steel owed us, and say goodbye on Ultima Thule. We would have no more dealings with each other. We knew that if we told anyone about our trip to Brainard’s Planet we would open ourselves up to prosecution, so we all had reason to keep our mouths shut. Tamika stipulated that none of us would get on the net before we achieved relativistic velocity. We would be out of contact until we got to the vicinity of Ultima Thule.

  I didn’t happen to mention that Jemal had already bulleted me to let me know that Lysistrata had received everything. Must have slipped my mind.

  It took us nearly four months, ship’s time, to make the voyage. Four months of back-to-back twelve-hour watches, because Tamika and I were the only ones who could stand watch. It was fairly grueling. And lonely. How we didn’t hit anything is anyone’s guess. Maybe my meteorite helped. We certainly made it by luck alone.

  As we backed down into Ultima Thule, there came a time when we were traveling slowly enough to be in contact with the outside world. We’d been gone a long time. I wasn’t expecting any messages. I didn’t know if anyone would even remember me, so I was surprised to see that I had quite a few. They’d all been left in the last couple of days. There was one from Jemal, but the rest were from two women: one named Cooper and the other named FA'izeh. I recognized the names, but it still didn’t make any sense. I opened the first one:

  Cooper: [We don’t know exactly when you’ll be back in contact. Our mother is dying. Please come as quickly as you can.] This filled me with improbable theories, but they didn’t really help. I opened the next:

  FA'izeh: [This message is for Mohandas. Our m
other, Alice Cheatham, knows you and would like to see you. She is failing and we don’t expect her to last much longer. Please take the next available transport to Eden. It is very important to her that she sees you before she leaves us.]

  Alice was still alive? She had to be twelve decades old. And what did she mean by the next available transport to Eden? The next message was longer:

  Cooper: [Mohandas, your friend Jemal is here and can pick you up at New Jerusalem Spaceport. It’s a short trip from there to Nazareth, where Mom is. FA'izeh and I are with her. If you know where our grandmother is, please bring her with you. Mom seems to think that she won’t remember her. I don’t know why that would be. Anyway, if you know where she is, please bring her. Oh, and please bring someone named Tamika, as well. If you can. And please contact us as soon as you get this.]

  Even if Alice had waited to have children until her fourth decade, they would still have to be nearly eighty years old by now; both these voices sounded young and vigorous. I bulleted Cooper: “Hello?”

  [Mohandas! Is that you?]

  “Yes—”

  [How soon can you get here? We think Mom has been hanging on just so she can see you.]

  “Um, we’re two days out from Ultima Thule.”

  [Good. There’s a commercial transport leaving for Eden three days from now. I’ll get you passage. Is Tamika there, too? I’ll get her passage also.]

  “Uh, yeah, Tamika is here. Um, when did ... when did Eden, I mean ... when did they start flying to Eden?”

  [Oh, it’s a long story. Let’s just say Mom and Dad had quite an impact on this place.]

  “Your dad ... your dad is, I mean, is your dad named—”

  [Yes. Your friend Yuri was our father. He passed away quite a few years ago. We still miss him a lot. He spoke very highly of you.]

  Even though this wasn’t a surprise, it slammed into me, ripped into my heart. “Oh, well ... he was a ... was a very good friend, a ... a fine, a fine man—”

  [I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so blunt. It’s just that everything is in an uproar here with Mom, and FA’i and I have been trying to handle everything. Please accept my apology.]

  “Oh, no. You’re fine. I mean, I mean there’s nothing to ... It was just kind of a—you know—shock.”

  [Of course. We loved him a lot. Everybody loved him.]

  That was good news. I had wondered how he was going to interact with the Edenites. I guess he did all right.

  I don’t know why I asked this next, it sort of came out before my mouth could stop it: “Do you know ... do you know who you’re named after? You and your sister, I mean.”

  [Do you know?] she asked back. [They’re such odd names. Since we’re twins you’d expect us to have names like Terry and Sherry or something like that.] She laughed.

  “You’re twins?”

  [Yes, mom says twins run in our family. But we could never find out why they named us this. Mom would always say ‘Ask your father’ and Dad would never talk about it.]

  “Oh. Yes.”

  [Maybe you could tell us the story. It seemed very important to him. All he would say was that it was Mom’s idea to give us these names, that Mom ‘saved his life.’ We never knew what he meant. I’m sorry; I’m babbling. It’s just that it’s so exciting that we got hold of you in time.]

  “Yes, yes. I can’t believe I’m going to see Alice again. This is wonderful news.”

  We spoke a little more. I promised I’d try to get Steel to come with us, but I wasn’t optimistic.

  Of course Daimler absolutely refused to even let me bring it up with Steel. I have to say that I didn’t argue the point too hard; she wouldn’t have gotten anything out of seeing her daughter. She really had no memory at all of any of this. And as odd as it was for me to be around her, I thought it would just be painful for Alice to see her.

  I suppose I expected us to be met at Thule spaceport by Traffic Control, but no one met us. Nobody even seemed to know who we were, or care. It had been almost a century since Jemal had uploaded our data onto the net. I guess if we were ever news, we were old news now. The only thing on the net that seemed to have anything at all to do with us was an advertisement for a new gadget. Evidently it was the first advance based on what we found on Brainard’s Planet to be developed to the point where it could be marketed. They called it LEPTONIC TECHNOLOGY!!!—breathed like it was the sexiest thing in the universe. Basically, it cheaply and conveniently erased specifically every memory of any orgasm you had ever had, so that every orgasm you experienced would be like the very first one you had ever experienced.

  Oh, well. Maybe they’d do something more important with it once they got the hang of it.

  I shouldn’t say that no one met us. A group of Hindu proselytes with shaved heads and saffron robes were playing antique cymbals and chanting to Krishna. They gave us each a flower. But they gave everybody who passed by a flower, not just us. Evidently people were not only traveling to Eden now; Edenites were traveling to other worlds.

  And Kristel met Daimler and Steel. Not Krupp. She had changed her gender again and looked remarkably like her sister. Daimler had already taken care of the financial arrangements, which were surprisingly large. We had accrued over twelve decades of back pay. With that taken care of, he said goodbye to us—dismissed us more like—and went off with the two women. Steel seemed happy to see her sister. She never looked back.

  Which left Tamika and me with the last orphan in this saga. He looked kind of forlorn. I scratched his ears, “C’mon, Ham. Let’s go find a room for the night.” The three of us walked out of the terminal.

  Eden was largely the same but remarkably different in many ways. We kept running into Yuri’s engineering. Cooper hadn’t been exaggerating about the impact he and Alice had had. Jemal met us at the spaceport, and we climbed aboard the hypersonic monorail to Nazareth. No sonic booms, of course. Yuri would never have put up with anything so annoying in his design.

  As we pulled into Nazareth Station, we could see that the desert above the slot canyon had been transformed into a huge encampment. Tents and vehicles covered acres of rock dotted with temporary water and sanitary facilities.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Jemal said, “Oh. All of this is for Alice. But don’t worry. We’ll get to see her. We’re on the VIP list.”

  There was an endless line of people sitting in camp chairs and under parasols waiting to go down the stairs that I had descended a few months ago—a few months for me, but over a century to the rest of the universe. I guess our arrival had disrupted things in a pretty major way.

  We were waved through to descend into the rose light of the slot canyon, surrounded by soft swirls of textured rock. We walked beside the little golden stream, winding and winding until it opened out into the amphitheater that held Nazareth. The waterfall at the upper end of the cathedral-like space still flowed. If you looked closely, you could see tiny evidences of new power systems, sewer systems, irrigation. It was the same, but decorated with tiny, high-tech jewels here and there.

  Jemal led us to the Cheatham house, where I had met John and Louise. It was surrounded by offerings—hundreds of candles and flowers and portraits, some tended, others not. The front door opened and out came two beautiful young women. I could see Alice in their faces. And Steel.

  “Mohandas! Tamika! How wonderful that you could make it! How wonderful to meet you! This must be Ham! My goodness, you’re a big fellow! Mom told us all about you!” We were flooded with warmth and welcome. They hugged us and kissed us and bade us come inside.

  The sitting room and dining room had been turned into waiting rooms, but no one was in them. The house had been cleared for us. Cooper and FA’izeh led us up the wooden stairs to the door of Alice’s bedroom. It was filled with medical equipment, but the machinery had been placed so that Alice’s view of the room was uncluttered. She lay in the middle of the bed, her head propped up on pillows. She was asleep, her silver hair floating around her placi
d, shriveled face. Her hands, resting on the coverlet, reminded me of those of Mrs. Fogarty, who had run the boarding house where we had stayed. Alice had been transformed into a tiny elf.

  “I’m going to wake her,” FA’izeh said. “She’s been asleep for a good while, and she’d never forgive me if I didn’t.” She moved to Alice’s side. “Mom?” Her voice was as gentle as calling birds. “Mom? Mohandas is here. And Tamika. Mom?”

  Her eyes opened, blue and clear. She blinked a couple of times and said, “Hello, FA’i. Who did you say was here?” Her voice was as tiny as she was.

  FA’i waved to me. I stepped forward. “Mohandas, Mom. Here he is.”

  She broke into a huge smile when she saw me. “I remember you!” she said and took my hand. Then, conspiratorially, “We had our moments, didn’t we?” With a twinkle in her eye she pulled me close. “You were a naughty boy!” She touched the end of my nose with her shriveled, elfin fingertip.

  Cooper and FA’izeh looked at each other like they didn’t quite know what to say and I found myself blushing like a schoolboy in front of a little old lady who was fifteen hundred years younger than me.

  “It’s wonderful to see you again, Alice.” I’d never meant something more sincerely in all the centuries I’d been alive. “It’s— it’s— I didn’t think I’d, I mean, it’s a miracle you’re still alive. How ... how did you, how did you—”

  She put her tiny hands on my face. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about medicine now! You people never wait to see how long the net will keep you alive. You always rush off and re-boot before you start looking like me!” She laughed.

  That was right. She’d been on the net this whole time. So had Yuri. Until he— “When did you ... I mean, when did Eden ... How did you, how did you convince them to—”

  “Listen to this boy,” she said with a smile. “All questions! You come here and give me a hug. Careful now; there’s not much of me left.” It was like hugging a bundle of twigs, but I didn’t mind. I would have hugged her forever.