“Pay up,” chirped C.
“Gladly.” He extricated himself from the table and held out his hand for Vanhi.
“What’s this?” she asked, at a loss for an assumption of her own.
“Everyone helped, the whole convoy,” he said. “Every light they could spare. I wanted to give you something you missed.”
She quickly tried to calculate what month it was. “It’s not time for Diwali. Or Christmas.”
“No,” he admitted. “But it’s high time for something happy.”
She took his offered hand, but quickly let it go again. Something came away in her palm.
It was a plain steel band.
Her heart fluttered and her breath caught in her chest.
“And what’s this?” she asked, cheeky.
“Well, I made a bet with C about when you’d come back this time. I promised I’d ask you to marry me if it won.”
She closed the ring in her hand and propped her fist on her hip. “You’re asking me to marry you because you lost a bet with my PA?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Them’s the rules.”
“And if you’d won? Would C be asking for my hand instead?”
“Sir, he’s being facetious,” said C. “We made no assumptions about your return. Stone has occupied the mess, alone, for eight evenings in a row. The bet is simply a playful pretext for—”
She grabbed the sundial, yanking Stone forward by the chain. “Thank you, C.” She laughed against Stone’s lips. “I get it.”
She kissed him with fervor, savoring everything about the moment. Her entire being was warm and relaxed, from her head to her toes. It all tingled in a good way, and Stone was strong against her, but pliant in her arms.
It was all so perfect.
She broke the kiss.
Too perfect.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, grin wide.
“I—Not yet. There’s something I need to tell you.”
She didn’t want to. She’d intended to take her guilt to the grave. But she was the reason they were here. She was the reason so many people had been separated from their loved ones—wives, husbands, lovers. Why should she get a happy ending with Stone when her mistakes had robbed so many others of theirs?
His smile immediately faded, and she didn’t know how to reassure him. “I love you,” she said firmly, not wanting him to doubt that for a moment. “But I haven’t been honest about . . . about . . .”
Memories filled her throat, choked off her words.
It had been too long and was still too soon.
She led him over to a bench seat. He put his arm around her, but didn’t say anything.
She clutched the ring tighter, took a deep breath, and began. “I only became Convoy Twelve’s mission head because Doctor Kaufman, my advisor, destroyed Doctor Campbell’s career. On purpose. He lied . . . And I knew.” She paused, swallowing harshly, willing herself to go on. Stone was quiet.
“I knew,” she continued, “and I didn’t say anything. I thought I was protecting all of the convoys—I thought that if more corruption was revealed that the whole consortium might go up in flames—” Did I really think that? Or was I just protecting myself? “Or . . .” The words caught in her throat. “Maybe I was just a coward. Either way, my complacency is why we’re here. It’s why Tan’s daughter never got to wake up. It’s why we’ll never see Earth again. It’s why everyone was separated from their families and have been forced to live in these stupid ships for the rest of their lives. Everything that’s happened is on me.”
The truth made her throat ache and her voice vibrate. She wasn’t crying, but her head hurt with the potential for tears. And she couldn’t look at Stone. His grip on her shoulder had gotten tighter and tighter as she spoke, but she couldn’t tell if he was clutching at her protectively, or in anger.
“I should have told you—I should have told everyone. I know the truth doesn’t fix anything, I know it makes it so much worse. But I can’t let you . . . ask me this . . . without knowing.”
“Did you ask him to do it?” Stone asked, voice deep and inscrutable.
“No. No, I didn’t. I would never do something like that.” She cut off his next question. “And yes, he did threaten me—my career, my parents’ home. But that doesn’t matter. What I did . . . I did. And I can never make up for it.”
“What do you want me to say? To absolve you of blame? To forgive you?”
She bucked off his arm, looked him square in the eye. She thought she’d see fury, betrayal. All she saw was confusion. “No. I just . . . You deserve to know what kind of person I really am.”
“Vanhi, I know what kind of person you are. That’s why I asked you to marry me. Part of that is knowing you’re not infallible. Just as I know this isn’t all your fault.”
“Yes, it—”
“Listen, please. I have no doubt you did what you thought was best. I might not know the particulars, but I think I know you. What do you think you should have done?”
“Stepped aside? I don’t know.”
“If you’d stepped down as head, refused to be a part of the Planet United Missions, do you think our project would have been canceled? Honestly? Or would they have found someone else to run the SD experiments? Would Convoy Twelve still have been sitting exactly where it was when that pod malfunctioned?”
“Maybe. But if I’d told the truth—”
He took both of her hands in his. “Vanhi, I admire you for telling me. For taking responsibility. But it’s not all on you. Accidents happen every day. This was an unpredictable soup of a disaster. I don’t know what exactly you think you could have done to prevent it, but I know you’ve done the best you can, for everyone. Don’t let your guilt take away the one undeniably good thing that’s come out of all this—you and me.”
“You’re still asking me to marry you?”
“Of course. I love you. I know I can never make what happened feel or be okay. But the way you fix it is by making amends, not by denying yourself every little shred of happiness.”
She nodded and rubbed at her eyes. “Yeah. I guess.”
“You guess you’ll make amends, or you guess you’ll marry me?”
She laughed lightly, letting some of the hurt ease out of her, then pecked him on the cheek. “Both.”
She jumped the day of their wedding. She could feel it coming, too, like a swell of water pushing over her head, rising, gurgling, pulling her under. Afterward, she thought maybe she’d triggered it somehow. As though worrying too hard about jumping had brought that very dread into being.
Maybe it had.
As soon as she’d returned, she’d grabbed Stone’s hands, marched straight up to the bridge, and demanded Captain Tan marry them on the spot.
He hadn’t seen fit to deny them.
She’d jumped again a month later. Then again. And again. And always, she was gone for longer and longer.
The first time she missed an entire year, she cried for three days straight.
“I can’t promise anything, Vanhi,” Justice said as she placed a bit of gauze over the needle mark in her arm. “Since it’s the sundial’s titanium-and-gold alloy that seems to keep it from traveling with you, this therapy is designed to fundamentally integrate that into your cells. But it might pass harmlessly through your body instead. It’s too soon to tell.”
“I understand,” Vanhi insisted, though another tear dropped from her eye. She quickly swiped it away. “I hear you’ve been trying to map little Tan’s DNA? Any progress there?” she asked, eager for a subject change.
“Yes—I mean, I’m sequencing it. Feels like all I do anymore—map everyone’s base-pairs. But nothing looks unusual. I haven’t found anything that could be causing her symptoms, and neither have the medics. By all reasoning she should be a healthy baby girl. Which is the problem, right? She shouldn’t be a baby any more—it’s been years. But she’s barely grown. The more I look into it, the more I wonder if she’s like you . . . if her lack o
f consciousness and perpetual youth might not be the result of in utero trauma so much as SD interference. Which means any work you and I do might benefit her in the long run.”
“Have you mentioned as much to the captain and Ming-Na?”
“Not yet. I don’t want to get their hopes up.”
Vanhi looked down at the gauze. I don’t want to get mine up, either.
There were three more shots, and three more jumps. Nothing seemed any different.
One night, when she returned, Stone was asleep at their dining table. His holoflex-sheet displayed a novel Carmen had been working on (if they wanted new entertainment, they had to supply it themselves).
She moved to wake him, to get him into bed, and stopped.
The hair at his temples was gray. And the lines around his eyes were deeper than she remembered.
She used to be older than Stone. But no more.
Never again.
How many years had it been for her now? Maybe three since the accident?
For Stone, it had been over ten.
And still, the convoy waited for the Progentor to arrive. To decide their fate.
She kissed Stone’s cheek, and his head lolled with sleepiness. After a moment he realized it was her, and sprang to his feet, wide awake. He frantically kissed every inch of her face, and they fell into bed laughing.
She tried not to think about how fast Stone was moving away from her. How, one day, she’d come back and he’d be gone.
You’re here with him now. Tomorrow’s never guaranteed—not for you, not for him, not for anyone. Live in the moment, be the moment.
Be together while you can.
One day, the two of them were walking hand in hand to the mess hall when she happened to look out a window.
There were more ships than usual. One more, to be exact. And it looked nothing like the Lùhng seashell shapes. This one had legs, like a bug, and windows that could have been compound eyes. Large claws hung down around its “feet,” waiting for the opportunity to grasp a docking port.
Swiftly, she yanked Stone closer, pointing. “Oh my god, is that—?”
“The Progentor?” he gasped.
Anticipation swelled in her chest, took her over. This was it, the turning point they’d been waiting for! Either the best or the worst day in the bizarre life of Convoy Twelve.
And, just like that, Vanhi jumped once more.
She had not anticipated returning to a room full of Lùhng. The broad windows of the EOL were unmistakable, but so were the many, varied faces of the post-humans. There were ones with claws and mechanical exoskeletons, ones covered in quills, and ones shrouded head to toe in long, purple garments. Every single one wore a dark mask.
She appeared so close to one dotted over in molting sections of the solar scales that she shrieked in surprise. It flailed and fell backward, but hovered just above the floor, avoiding impact.
Vanhi scurried backward, tripping over herself. Oh, god, it’s just as we feared. They’ve taken over. One must have C, what have they done with Stone?
It took her addled mind a moment to realize there were plenty of humans in the room as well, many who seemed to be pointing at things for the Lùhng, or holding out equipment for them to take.
Regardless, she continued to scramble—until she ran headlong into her husband.
“There you are! Finally!” he exclaimed, holding her tight. “Calm down. Everything’s fine.” He rubbed at her cheeks, then her arms, trying to get her to focus. He smiled sincerely, and she noticed all the little changes he’d undergone while she’d been away. He looked healthier—he’d put on weight, and the muscles in his shoulders and arms were larger. And there was a glow about him—he shone with renewed hope.
“What’s going on? What happened with the Progentor?”
“There’s so much to tell you,” he said, then took a deep breath. He seemed to be bursting with new information, but didn’t know where to begin. “Let me take you to someone who will be much better at explaining than me.”
He moved toward the door, his hand slipping around the small of her back as he sidestepped her. She swiftly grabbed his hand. “Don’t . . . don’t leave me, okay?”
“I should say the same thing to you!” he said with a grin.
“Not funny.”
He kissed her knuckles. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
The Progentor, it seemed, was a who, not a what. And they had to go aboard the bug-like ship to meet them. That ship was now housed in the belly of a Lùhng vessel, and Vanhi and Stone had to undergo the dreaded decontamination process she’d heard so much about. It wasn’t as bad as she’d anticipated, and the Lùhng who performed the procedure were very careful to get their approval every step of the way.
“I’ve only been over here once before,” Stone admitted, after they’d pushed their way into a pristine, white hall. “Hope you don’t have a vertigo problem.”
Vanhi dealt with the disorienting direction changes much better than her husband, right up until they were shown to the hangar where the Progentor’s ship was kept.
The big glaring white globe of the hangar was daunting. The walls curved up and over and on and on for what felt like forever. The bug ship occupied a curved surface in the opposite hemisphere from which they’d entered, and Vanhi felt very much like either she or the craft were going to fall onto each other at any minute.
They walked over the bowled surface toward the ship, and they both stumbled several times.
“I forgot how awful this is,” Stone said.
“It’s okay, I’m right here. We’re almost there.”
When they were only ten meters away, dizziness overtook Vanhi, and she fell to her knees. “I just need a moment,” she promised. “Just a second.” She leaned her forehead against the cool stark white floor. Stone knelt beside her, rubbing circles at the top of her spine.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the vessel open. A ramp uncurled from beneath the compound windows, almost like a butterfly’s tongue. Before she could get up, five figures appeared, all about six feet tall and two to three feet across, covered head to foot like sheet ghosts on Halloween. Only these sheets were a shimmering raven black. Greens and purples danced across the surface as they moved.
They didn’t float like the Lùhng. Whatever propelled them forward kicked at the edges of their shrouds, revealing their adhesion to the incline.
The figures alighted on the decking and strode toward her. She heard a faint clang, clang, like metal joints moving.
Stone stood, then bowed deeply.
“Did you just bow?” she asked, confused.
“Just watch.”
The lead figure stopped only a pace from her, the edge of its shroud skirting so close she could reach out and yank it down if she had the will to.
Then it bent, crouching down in front of her.
There was a strange sound from the other figures—like a collective gasp. As though crouching were unprecedented.
Vanhi pushed herself up, struggled into a sitting position.
“Progentor, this is my wife, Doctor Vanhi Kapoor. She’s the one we’ve been telling you about: the woman out of time.”
The creature moved closer, so close her eyes went out of focus. She tried not to lean back, afraid of upsetting this new, apparently benevolent, being. Without warning, it whisked off its covering, tossing the black sheet aside.
She ducked out of the way, dodging the shimmering edge of the shroud.
More chatter emanated from its entourage.
When she glanced back, his face was still in hers. It took a moment for her eyes to focus.
Before her was a black man—a human. And not just any human, but one she recognized. One she hadn’t seen in years. One that should have been dead lifetimes ago.
“Jamal?”
Reality had twisted all the way around itself, blown past surreal, and burst out the other side into incomprehensible.
She was walking through the Lùh
ng ship, unabused, pacing down tubular halls which, only minutes before, had been a perfect wash of white. Now they were brilliantly decorated, with words, symbols, and colors so bright it hurt to look at them. She couldn’t read any of the writing, but they contained familiar strokes and appeared to be largely logographic.
Looped through her right arm was Jamal’s own. Under his veil, which he’d left behind in the bay, he wore a billowing, lungi-like skirt, topped with a long tunic with wide sleeves, all made of the same raven-like material. The two of them strolled together like old friends wandering casually through a park, and she walked forward in a half daze. Behind them strode Stone, near enough for comfort, but not enough to come between the Progentor and the Woman Out of Time. Behind that, Jamal’s entourage kept their distance. The four figures hadn’t removed their coverings, and Vanhi made a point not to ask about the mechanical squealing emanating from beneath the shrouds.
Music followed them wherever they went, dissipating once they’d covered a stretch of hall, but always at a low, gentle volume right where they stood.
“This is all typically projected straight into their minds via implants,” he explained to her, softly, and with a smile, as though he were amused by her childlike expression. She was sure he thought her face stuck in a rigor of wonderment, but she was adrift, overloaded. “I don’t have implants, so out of respect, they project it into physical space for me.”
She turned, staring at Jamal while he described the composition of the music and the meaning of various writings. It was Jamal Kaeden, she was sure, though his voice was different, his accent unusual. But what she found strangest was that the English he spoke was very close to her English. It wasn’t Old English or some newfangled Neo-English. It was hers, from her century—her decade, even. From when they’d launched.
“How are you . . . the Lùhng only learned ASL. How can you . . . ?”
“I speak twenty-second century English, Arabic, and Hindi. Exclusively. And badly, I’ve been told. There have been several crewmates tutoring me, so that I may speak more naturally. These languages are quite dead. Most languages based largely on vocalizations are. Your ASL is close in some ways to two types of interstellar languages meant to bridge the gap between the cybernetic-based post-humans and the genetically enhanced post-humans. I am not surprised they preferred it.”
Noumenon Infinity Page 50
