“You sure about this, son?”
“No.”
Their combined laugh was sad and knowing.
“Well, then,” Sam stood and walked around the table, “no time like the present.”
Paul stood. He shook with the fear of letting go. He extended his hand, and the solid shake became a bear hug, all slapping and gripping.
Sam pushed him back and grabbed his shoulders. His gaze was direct and forever. “You do this. You win this.” His hand went to Paul’s stubbled cheek. “And you take care of Al for me, okay?”
“I will.”
Another hug, but it was something deeper; Sam’s beard tickled as Paul shifted into the silver, reaching out and snapping Sam’s phase tethers, the intricate web of memory and possibility that held him securely in the construct. Paul shook and coughed as he consumed Sam’s pattern, the silver coursing through the broken collection of them, the oceans of machines dismantling and uploading the strands in a flash, in static, and silence.
Paul fell gasping, alone, to the floor, silver spilling out of him, a splash and a rebounding recall. He lay there into the night, categorizing and learning the complexities of the vessel. At some point, his breathing slowed. At some point, he pretended to sleep.
When he woke up, he missed Sam, but he knew that there are some trips you have to take alone.
He had that cigarette musk in his mouth. The touch, the feel of cotton wads jammed into his ears with a pencil tip, straight through into the decay. He had that taste of blood wrapped around his tongue, the muzzy veil of waking up. He had that indistinct disconnect that only comes from revision and abject fear.
He cycled open the door to Jud’s chamber, saw Alina on the chaise, comforting a sobbing Honeybear Brown. His heart sank as his eyes slid to another silver projector marble in the bear’s paw.
He half expected West’s blow, and that half allowed it to connect, knew that it had to. His jaw rocked away, feeling unhinged, locking as he reeled a stumbled step or three, righted, met Adam’s second swing with a steel grip and threw the larger man to the floor. He stood over the fallen soldier. He worked his jaw until the grating of bones and intricate workings released. A tooth was loose, three. He pried them from sockets with his tongue, let them fall to the floor as new grew.
West’s chest heaved; his teeth were clenched in a snarl to match his eyes. Paul walked to the conference table, joined the remaining Judith Command. West stood slowly and sat across the table, kneading his hands back to feeling from the impact.
Alina sat next to West, rolled the marble across to Paul.
“‘Phire?”
“I couldn’t get Jade’s.” The bear spoke as he settled into a chair. “There wasn’t much left of the droptroops.”
West’s eyes reached across the polished wood with an unabridged fury.
“I’m sorry, Adam.”
“You’re saying that a lot, lately.”
“They knew the risks.”
“They were my—”
“No.” Paul let the word echo. “They weren’t.”
“Just another merge.” Reynald spoke from behind a stack of glass. He threw them to the table, a faint crack splintering the bottom display, a triangle of it spinning lazily toward Paul. Before it sparked out, he read: elta bleed 96-over. [A/O reports 04%. “Not his daughters, no. Not from the AE-line. Does it matter?”
Paul snuffled back a drip of silver. His hands were under the table. He kept turning to the right.
“Any luck finding your ship, Jean?” Alina had pulled Honeybear from his seat. Her arms were around him, stroking his sweatshop plush. His cardiac shield barely contained his broken heart.
Reynald’s code burns flickered and rearranged across his temple. He barely noticed anymore; Maire’s siege of the Timeline rewrote histories faster than they could be lived. “We’ve not been able to survey deep enough. With all the traffic in the stream, we can’t get into the target Whens without Maire knowing. Hope was a close reader.”
“You don’t need Maggie.”
“She was part of the deal.”
“The deal doesn’t matter now.” Paul lit a cigarette and let the smoke cloud the stillness between them. “They’re gone, Simon and Maggie. Hunter and Lily. We all know that. We would have found them by now if they were integral to the calculus. That leaves two possibilities—either Maire’s found them already, or they were never really the focus to begin with.” He ashed.
“We’ll need as many ships as we can—”
“We’re taking one ship.”
Smoke drifted, not enough to conceal the shimmer.
“Have to be a hell of a ship.” West reached to steal a smoke. Maybe it would help the moment.
“It will be.” Inhalation, exhalation through words. Paul wiped a line of argent blood from the corner of his mouth. “Trust me.”
“What are you planning, son?” Reynald took the cigarette from West’s offer, coughed through. He knew already. “I see Sam’s not here.”
“He’s here.” An instant, a stark flash of reveal, and they saw Sam pressed into Paul’s eyes. An illusion, a lie, it was gone before it registered.
Alina fumbled with the box of Marlboros. The battered gold Zippo ignited. She smoked as if she had before. Jud looked through her eyes but said nothing.
These veils of dream we weave around ourselves, never knowing for certain, but knowing enough: this is all we have.
“I’m flying. Al’s my pilot. Everyone else, you’ll be there for the show. Don’t worry.”
He lit another smoke. Eventually, they all did.
“You can go home. All of you. If you want.”
The birthing plain pods were retracted, the sea of openings now closed forever, the expanse not worthy of a pin drop: a million or a billion, more, a trillion, more, everyone, everyone was there, all the possibilities he’d written, everyone who was left. Some near him sat. The shifts from foot to foot in anticipation alone was deafening, added to the murmur, but when he spoke, they heard.
He shook. Wracked with coughs. The silver blood, once a trickle, was now a torrent. He wrote a faded blue handkerchief into the dream and mopped the corner of his mouth.
West and Reynald flanked him. West’s hand rested in wait on his back.
Another ripple passed through the assembly and a few thousand characters screamed away in bursts of silver. Somewhere out there, Maire’s army was reaching for them. The spaces filled in.
Paul watched the empty. Alina grew concerned; his eyes were somewhere long ago. He was bending, collapsing. West held him up as silver pattered to the closed lid of a Jud cocoon. He regained his footing, wiped, straightened.
Her hearts—her heart sped a rhythm she resented, but it’s not easy to forget better times and versions.
“You can go home,” he whispered, but it carried. Another staggering ripple, seven million more disappeared. He could feel Maire out there, the grip of a projector marble slicked in blood, the windswept ice of the merge.
“We’re collapsing the Timeline,” Reynald shouted across the metal and dust. “Dismantling this foothold. We’ll use the last resources of Judith Command to fuel one final assault on the Delta bleed. Anyone who doesn’t want to come with us, your time here is done. Go home to your Whens and wait it out. You’ve all made a remarkable sacrifice to be here. We can’t expect more of you. Go home to your families.”
“What families?” A voice spoke out from the mass. “Most of us have nowhere to go!”
A rumbled assent. Paul felt them slipping, all of them innocent, each soul the work product of his madness.
“Then run.” West growled across the plain.
Whispers, multiplied. The middle C of uncertainty, a resounding seiche wave of fear.
“Those of you who choose to go with us,” Reynald continued, “will be loaded into a pattern cache aboard Alina’s ship. Our combined mind-essence will power the largest silver vessel ever…” he looked sideways at Paul, “assembled.”