Jack shakes his head.
Justin helps him upright and studies his face a moment, then leans close, keeps his voice low. “You were right before, Uncle Jack. When I got separated, all I could think was to get to my room. I wanted to hide under the covers. Jesus fuck. When the gravity went out, I floated up, and I guess when it came on again I landed on my head. Knocked myself out cold. When you woke me up, I started screaming, ‘cause I thought, like, I thought—” He looks away, shrugs. “I just mean thanks. I wish my dad could’ve seen us. He’d have shit himself.”
Jack remembers the picture lying by Justin’s head. In what he thought were his final moments, Justin had clung to that one happy memory.
“You miss them,” Jack says. “Your mom and dad.”
Justin shrugs. “Nah. They’re dicks.” He knocks on the doorframe. “This is home, Uncle Jack. This is family.”
Jack isn’t sure what to say. He wants to say the kid is naïve. Sentimental. Something.
“Uncle Jack?” Justin says.
“Yeah.”
“I really gotta piss.”
“Oh. Right.”
Justin slips inside the bathroom, pauses, sticks his nose out. “Why do you think we stayed?” He shuts the door.
Chapter 31
Lana sits with her back against the wall farthest from the hall door. It hums lightly under her weight. Strange machinery inside works to keep them alive, filtering the atmosphere, recycling what they send down the drain. Hunter lies on the nearest seat, asleep or trying to sleep. Lana watches her. The slow intake of breath, release. They have never been close friends, but they have always been friendly. Some unnamed tension, a rivalry of sorts, wedged between them. It had something, maybe everything, to do with Jack. When Lana first came aboard she thought it was a sexual thing, like Hunter was jealous. If Hunter and Jack were in a room together, giving each other shit like they always were, and Lana walked in, they’d get quiet and blush. In time she realized it was not romantic rivalry. It was that Hunter didn’t trust Lana around Jack. She must have seen it all coming. The way Lana fell for him, the way he started to fall for her, pushed her away till she couldn’t stand it and left. Hunter was perceptive like that. Smarter than Lana, apparently, who had wanted to believe things would work out, that people change and real progress can be made. All that optimistic postwar sloganeering had gotten to her more than she realized.
Before Hunter dozed off, she’d taken one last look at Lana’s face and must have seen the fear there, because she slapped her lightly on the cheek and said, “I promise I won’t die,” and winked. It was a joke the way she said it, and Lana laughed. She wasn’t sure why she found it funny. How many billions have said it to their families and friends and lovers before sidling off to do battle with some faceless enemy, only to return in a coffin or not at all, their families and friends and lovers left to contend with the broken promise? It is exhausting to think about. You can’t carry the burden of humankind’s lunacy all of the time. Sometimes you have to see the lost souls in your mind and laugh and imagine they are laughing right back.
She’s half asleep when Jack comes out of the hallway. He picks his way around the sleepers and sits beside her. She is supposed to tell him all the reasons Hunter has to go with him. She promised me she wouldn’t die, she imagines herself saying. She says nothing. Jack has blood on his jeans. She forgot. She pulls the tube of salve from her pocket.
“What’s that?”
“Hold out your arms.”
She crouches in front of him and twists off the cap and squeezes a coil of balm into her hands. She rubs her hands together, then slides them along Jack’s wrists to his biceps.
He hisses.
“Give me a break,” she whispers.
His skin drinks up nearly half the tube, and it isn’t until his arms are shiny and his head is back against the wall in a way that says he is feeling the tingle of relief that she lets herself feel the sensation of his skin against hers. She holds his wrists a moment. She drops against the wall, keeping her right hand on his. He squeezes.
He breaks the silence. “I’m sorry I pushed you before.”
“Pushed me?”
“When I wanted to shoot the Dandy.”
“Oh. I kind of forgot. I was pretty out of it.”
“So was I.”
“It’s alright.
“No it’s not.”
She wants to tell him something nice, reassuring.
He says, “I can’t get another person killed.”
“Jack…”
“Let me finish.” He sighs apologetically. “I just need to get this out.”
“Okay.”
“Hunter volunteered. She’ll come with me and Gregorian. But I don’t want her to. Remember that.” He looks away.
Lana holds his hand tighter. “Okay,” she says. She half expects him to pull away, retreat to his own place to sleep. The way he used to. Instead, he cups his hand around the side of her head, pulls her against his shoulder. She stiffens at first, allows herself to relax.
She pictures him in the clinic again, two black eyes, busted lips. He’d been so pathetic. Like a pet dog that bit her, ran away and got hit by a car, found the next morning whining on the front porch. So unlike the distant Jack she used to know. The one who didn’t know how to ask forgiveness. And here, now, maybe it is because they might die in the next 12 hours, but she is comfortable against him in a way she never had been. Their time was always self-consciously fleeting, handled in haste and with a dash of shame, that much more thrilling for it. Like they were getting away with something. Wasn’t that partially what drew her to him? Her immaturity driving the infatuation. Wanting someone for herself when he belonged to someone else. Girlish self-assurance. Greed. Yes. She hated that about herself and hated him for making her feel that way. That was why she left. Not just to escape Jack. He hadn’t victimized her. She’d never admitted it before, but she did it to herself. She left because she needed to change.
And has she?
In this moment, pressed against him, she cannot believe this new feeling stems from that old immaturity. She does not want a momentary thrill. She wants this to go on. She wants them to be safe.
They fall asleep like this, together.
Chapter 32
Smell of coffee.
Steam under his nose.
Opens his eyes.
“Morning, hoss.” Dino.
For just a second, he can believe they are in a hotel room or an alley after another drunken night, his personal security guard finding him with an offering of fast-food joe. The illusion dissolves. The room comes into focus. Dino’s face remains along with the coffee. Dino holds out a worn tin cup, straining to keep it steady. Jack wraps his hands around it, savors the burn, sets it on his thighs.
The pod is alive with activity. While he slept, the others pulled pieces of the suits from storage and laid them on the floor. Gloves, helmets, torsos, pants, boots, air tanks, headsets, coolant liners, a box of adult diapers, and the bulky EM-packs. There are only four of these. Large white contraptions with fold-out arms. Between their nitrogen tanks and 55 microthruster ports, they weigh over a hundred pounds each. Lana sits on the helmet with the creature below, one of the EM-packs in front of her. Stetson points at various buttons and tells her what they do. There’s an impatient edge to his voice. “Like I said, this here will push you forward. Here’s your forward thrust for either side. That’s how you rotate. The left arm handles pitch and yaw. Simple. Right?” She is lost in thought, runs her fingers gently over the buttons. Justin stands nearby scooping peaches from a can with his fingers. One slides free and plops onto the floor. He frowns at it, crouches down and picks it up and shovels it into his mouth, dust and all. Hunter sits at the monitor again, reading lines of code. Gregorian and Tarziesch appear to be in the midst of a prayer ritual, kneeling with their heads bowed to the deck. Jack can’t decide if he should trust them. Who’s to say Dandy won’t make a deal with them once they reach the Homunculus? He probably has already. Their promises of loyalty to Jack could be a ruse to bring his guard down. If so, it has mostly worked.