As he spoke, the words became true. It was a dream now. This life, this body, these memories, were the solid and faithful.
“Like a Tipler machine,” Elena said. “The idea that the energy released by the Big Crunch could power some kind of holographic recreation of the entire universe. I suppose with an advanced enough nanotechnology, you could rebuild the universe, an exact copy, atom for atom.”
Chill dread struck in Sol’s belly. She could not know, surely. She must not know.
“What would be the point of doing it exactly the same all over again?”
“Yeah.” Elena rested her cheek on her knee. “But the question is, is this our first time in the world, or have we been here many times before, each a little bit different? Is this the first universe, or do we only think that it is?”
Sol Gursky looked into the embers, then to the stars.
“The Nez Perce Nation believes that the world ended on the third day and that what we are living in are the dreams of the second night.” Memories, fading like summer meteors high overhead, told Sol that he had said this once before, in their future, after his first death. He said it now in the hope that that future would not come to pass. Everything that was different, every tiny detail, pushed this universe away from the one in which he must lose her.
A vee of tiger-striped tectoplastic tumbled end over end forever toward Virgo.
He blinked the ghost away. It faded like all the others. They were going more quickly than he had thought. He would have to make sure of it now, before that memory too dissolved. He struggled out of the terrain bag, went over to the bike lying exhausted on the ground. By the light of a detached bicycle lamp, he checked the gear train.
“What are you doing?” Elena asked from the fireside. The thing between them was still new, but Sol remembered that tone in her voice, that soft inquiry, from another lifetime.
“Looking at the gears. Something didn’t feel right about them today. They didn’t feel solid.”
“You didn’t mention it earlier.”
No, Sol thought. I didn’t know about it. Not then. The gear teeth grinned flashlight back at him.
“We’ve been giving them a pretty hard riding. I read in one of the biking mags that you can get metal fatigue. Gear train shears right through, just like that.”
“On brand-new, two thousand dollar bikes?”
“On brand-new two thousand dollar bikes.”
“So what do you think you can do about it at one o’clock in the morning in the middle of the Sonora Desert?”
Again, that come-hither tone. Just a moment more, Elena. One last thing, and then it will be safe.
“It just didn’t sit right. I don’t want to take it up over any more mountains until I’ve had it checked out. You get a gear-shear up there…”
“So, what are you saying, irritating man?”
“I’m not happy about going over Blood of Christ Mountain tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Sure. Fine.”
“Maybe we should go out west, head for the coast. It’s whale season, I always wanted to see whales. And there’s real good seafood. There’s this cantina where they have fifty ways of serving iguana.”
“Whales. Iguanas. Fine. Whatever you want. Now, since you’re so wideawake, you can just get your ass right over here, Sol Gursky!”
She was standing up, and Sol saw and felt what she had been concealing by the way she had sat. She wearing only a cut-off MTB shirt. Safe, he thought, as he seized her and took her down laughing and yelling onto the camping mat. Even as he thought it, he forgot it, and all those Elenas who would not now be: conspirator, crop-haired freedom fighter, four-armed space-angel. Gone.
The stars moved in their ordained arcs. The moths and cactus forest bats drifted through the soft dark air, and the eyes of the things that hunted them glittered in the firelight.
Sol and Elena were still sore and laughing when the cactus flowers closed with dawn. They ate their breakfast and packed their small camp, and were in the saddle and on the trail before the sun was full over the shoulder of Blood of Christ Mountain. They took the western trail, away from the hills, and the town called Redención hidden among them with its freight of resurrected grief. They rode the long trail that led down to the ocean, and it was bright, clear endless Monday morning.