I nodded and said, “That reminds me of the assignment I always gave my 600 level history students—it was a paper on time travel. If you could only travel backwards in time and it had to be at least 800 years where and when would you go and what would be the hardest part of your journey… In seven years I only gave out two ‘A’s.”
“Smell?” Anzio asked.
“One of them yes,” I said. “Everyone else would create these elaborate scenarios and situations and then be devastated when I downgraded them. They’d come to see me during office hours to lobby for a better grade and I’d just ask them, You want to travel back before there was toilet paper, toothbrushes, or modern sewers and you ignore your sense of smell?”
“So one of them, he was thinking right,” Anzio said. “But you said two they made the ‘A’s…”
“Yep, one of the kids came back a week later with a note from his doctor confirming that he suffered from chronic sinusitis—said he wouldn’t be able to smell anything anyway.”
Anzio laughed. “So his disability got him a better grade!”
“Maybe,” I said. “I didn’t really believe him but I figured if he was that determined and smart enough to get his doctor to lie for him he deserved an A.”
“Ah Mark,” Anzio said after a while. “I’m not sure what I should be deserving of in this moment…”
“Semi?”
“Yes. She is exquisite, an incredible intellect that is refined, cultured, and incredibly randy. She’s over a thousand years old yet looks and acts like a teenager when I take her to my bed. I find myself genuinely attracted to her and I somehow know she feels the same, yet our relationship, I fear, is causing her great internal conflict. She really wants to help us but she has a responsibility—perhaps you would say a debt—to Coridia that she cannot ignore.”
“Anzio my friend, I do believe you’ve fallen for this gal,” I said. “I’ve seen it before; the best and brightest of us single fun-loving bachelors waking up one morning and discovering a self-imposed felt-lined ball and chain around your ankle.”
“I’m not dragging the ball,” Anzio laughingly said. “But she must have a lot of experience with men and yet there is this sexual naiveté that is as attractive as it is confusing. What I’m trying to point out Mark is that even though I’m ok in the bed department I’ve never had anyone respond like I’m some kind of Greek god. I like her but there is an intellectual mystery at work here too.”
“No, don’t try to defend yourself or change the subject; there is nothing you can say—you’re already lost to the rest of us dedicated bachelors.”
“Oh, and you say that as if the great Dr. Mark Spencer hasn’t already—how do you say—gone down with the ship!”
I did my best to give an innocent and bewildered look to Anzio but the truth is my heart wasn’t in it. I kept thinking back to what Hiromi or Kamiko had said to me, about not waiting until it was too late.
“At first I was worried about Julie,” I said. “This change in her… it’s hard to describe but I know it’s very real. She has a determination about her that I’ve never seen before and it’s not… unattractive.”
“Mark my friend, why don’t you just go to her?”
“As much as I want to Anzio I can’t, not right now. Look, I know she’s attracted to me and I think, I hope, it’s more than just attraction, but now isn’t the right time. She has something inside her that she has to do and I get the strong feeling that pushing the issue would be a mistake.”
I couldn’t remember ever feeling this conflicted before. With all of the other momentous events going on I’d fallen for a girl. Actually, she was an incredibly gorgeous, sexy woman that was as smart as she was pretty. She was also totally focused on the same thing I was trying to focus on, keeping the Earth independent and free.
“Anzio,” I said. “I think what we talked about before is starting to happen. I think our actions are going to determine the entire world’s future and there isn’t any time to consult anyone. We’re going to be making up decisions as we go that will affect billions of people. Do you still think we have the right to do that?”
After a couple of moments Anzio replied, “I think you ask the wrong question. I think you need to ask yourself if you’ve got the right to set back and do nothing while our planet either goes down in flames or becomes enslaved. If there is a chance we can change that my friend then how can we justify not taking whatever actions are necessary?
“Besides, I’ve come to know you Mark,” he continued. “And I’m thinking that you maybe have a plan, yes?”
“Not a plan, Anzio. Maybe an idea but it’s dangerous and risky—and it’s something I’m going to have to do alone. I think the team needs to get back to Earth and deal with Jaki and the rest of her Noridians asap but I need to go a different direction. ”
“Why you need to do this by yourself?”
“Because it probably won’t work and that means I probably won’t be coming back - which is another reason it’s probably not a great idea to chase Julie right now. We arrive at Larga tomorrow morning and I don’t know how long it’s going to take the team to prep for the return to Earth but I’m going a different direction. ”
“Ah then,” Anzio replied. “So on this trip of yours it’s not like I’ll be breathing too much of your oxygen or running us out of food. That’s good because I get hungry when I get nervous.”
“Anzio, you’re not coming with me.”
“What exactly is it that I’m not coming with you on?”
“When the rest of the team heads back to Earth I’m going to sneak off and find a Lower House to plead our case to.”
“And what exactly it is our case?”
“I’m not sure yet but I’ll figure something out.”
“It is sounding to me my friend like you’ll be needing our midnight snack/thinking-out-loud sessions now more than ever… and I’ve always wanted to see the other side of the galaxy.”
Larga was an incredible world with a significant ring of orbital habitats with what looked to be industrial manufactories and even ship repair or construction yards. I couldn’t be sure because there was so much to see and we went straight to one of the larger habitats, but I thought I saw several ships in various stages of completion. It’s almost impossible to explain how large a planet is from orbit—pictures can’t do it justice. The orbital ring therefore was indescribable with only a small portion of it close enough to make out any detail at all.
What attracted most of my attention however was a construct I still have trouble finding words for. A giant ring circled the planet. The closer we came the more apparent the scale was. What from a distance appeared as a solid ring turned out to be structures separated by tens or hundreds of miles; it was made up of tens of thousands of these separate habitats or constructs—some of them the size of small cities. None of the different orbiting platforms as far as I could tell however were connected with each other in any way yet somehow managed to maintain their perfect orbital spacing. What I was focused on though was a huge gap in that spacing.
As we drew closer it became obvious that all sizes of ships were constantly emerging from the ‘left’ side of the gap and many more were entering the ‘right’ side. Submerging from that gap in the ring was a long double-barreled tube that extended well down into the atmosphere until it was swallowed up in the clouds. From a little further out I had assumed that this was one of the fabled Space Elevators that writers like Clark had envisioned so many years ago but Anzio quickly denuded that thought with a number of precise observations and comments. We later learned that we were seeing what best translates as a Transorbital Corridor.