But the mysterious derby-wearing Mr. Farris had certainly never told her she would end a mostly warm and loving life in the deep cold of outer space. He’d told her she’d live a long life. 64 wasn’t young, but she didn’t consider it old, either (although in 1984 she probably would have considered it ancient). He told her she would die surrounded by friends, not alone in the universe and being tugged ever deeper into the void behind a tiny rocket that would continue running on power for 70 years or more and then continue in an endless inertial glide.
You will die in a pretty nightgown with blue flowers on the hem, Farris told her. There will be sun shining in your window and before you pass you will look out and see a squadron of birds flying south. A final image of the world’s beauty. There will be a little pain. Not much.
No friends here—the last ones she made were far behind her.
A spacesuit instead of a pretty nightgown.
And certainly no birds.
Even the sun was gone for the time being, temporarily eclipsed by the earth, and was she crying? Dammit, she was. The tears didn’t even float, because she was under constant acceleration. But the tears were fogging up her visor. The star she’d been watching—Rigel? Deneb?—was blurring.
“Mr. Farris, you lied,” she said. “Maybe you didn’t see the truth. Or maybe you did and didn’t want me to have to live with it.”
No lie, Gwendy.
His voice, as clear as it had been as they sat in her kitchen 42 years ago, eating coffee cake and drinking milk.
You know what to do, and there’s still enough of that last chocolate in your brain to give you time to do it.
Gwendy uses the valve on the left side of her helmet to begin bleeding the remaining air from her suit. It disappears behind her in a frozen cloud. Her visor clears and she can see that star again: not Rigel, not Scorpius, but Sirius. Second star on the right.
A kind of rapture steals into her as she breathes the last of her thinning air.
I am in bed now, and I am old—much older than 64. Yet the people who surround me are young and beautiful. Even Patsy Follett is young again. Brigette Desjardin is here … Sheila Brigham … Norris Ridgewick … Olive Kepnes is here, and …
“Mom? You hardly look twenty years old!”
“I was, you know,” Alicia Peterson says, laughing. “Hard as that might be for you to believe. I love you, hon.”
And now she sees—
Ryan? Is it really you?”
He takes her hand. “It is.”
“You’re back!”
“I never left.” He leans down to kiss her. “Someone wants to say goodbye.”
He stands aside to let Mr. Farris come forward. His sickness is gone. He looks like the man Gwendy first saw sitting on a bench near the Castle View playground when she was 12. He’s holding his hat in his hand. “Gwendy,” he says, and touches her cheek. “Well done, Gwendy. Very well done.”
She’s not in space, not anymore. She’s an old woman lying in her childhood bed. She’s wearing a pretty nightgown with blue flowers on the hem. She has done her duty and now she can rest. She can let go.
“Look out the window!” Mr. Farris says, and points.
She looks out. She sees a squadron of birds. Then they are gone and she sees a single shining star. It’s Scorpius, and heaven lies beyond it. All of heaven.
“Second star to the right,” Gwendy says with her final breath. “And straight on … straight on til …”
Her eyes close. The Pocket Rocket with the button box in its belly drives onward into the cosmos, as it will for the next ten thousand years, towing its spacesuited figure behind.
“Straight on til morning.”
EPILOGUE
ONE NIGHT SOME TIME after all these things, Gwendy Peterson’s father sits at his window in the nursing home where he lives—frailer, more unsteady, but, as he often says, not too bad for an old fella. He’s looking out at the stars and thinking that somewhere out there in their endless multitude, his daughter continues her pilgrimage. Her phone, brought to him by a nice Indian man named Adesh Patel, is in his lap.
Patsy Follett, Gwendy’s mentor, might not have had as many witty sayings as Oscar Wilde, but she’d had her share. One of them was A scandal lasts six months. A scandal that’s also a mystery lasts six years. It’s only been three years since Senator Peterson and the billionaire businessman disappeared into space, but the march of current events has driven it from the forefront of people’s minds. Not from Mr. Peterson’s, however. It’s hell to outlive your only child, and the fierceness of his loss is mitigated by only two things: the knowledge that he can’t have much longer himself, and he has her voice to comfort him. Her last recorded message. The world doesn’t need to know she died a hero; it’s enough for Mr. Peterson that he knows.
A week after Adesh Patel’s surprise appearance, Gwendy’s dad had another visitor. A woman, this time. The day manager of the Castle View Nursing Home—a haughty little fellow with a pencil-thin mustache who insisted the residents address him as Mr. Winchester—sauntered into the sunroom where Alan was playing Hearts with Ralph Mirarchi, Mick Meredith, and Homer Baliko. He introduced the tall blonde lady towering over his shoulder as Deputy Director Charlotte Morgan of the Central Intelligence Agency. He quickly shooed the other men out of the room, and after offering their guest a ridiculous half-bow, left them alone.
The woman flashed Mr. Peterson a bemused look—a look that said I’m sorry you’re stuck here with such a first-class tool—and sat down across from him. “Please call me Charlotte, Mr. Peterson. I’m an old and dear friend of your daughter’s.”
“In that case, you better call me Alan.” He rubbed the gray whiskers on his chin, wishing he’d shaved this morning. This lady is a looker. “And I didn’t figure you came all this way to talk about spies and foreign policy.”
“No, sir, not today.” She smiled and reached over to touch his hand. “But I do have something important to tell you. Something highly confidential that you must promise to never repeat to anyone else.”
He raised his right hand in the air. “So help me God.”
“That’s good enough for me.” She took a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone in the sunroom. Mr. Peterson, suddenly feeling as if he were playing a bit role in a James Bond spy film, did the same. When he looked back at his daughter’s old friend, he was surprised to see that there were tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I could lose my job and end up in Leavenworth for what I’m about to tell you, but I don’t care. I loved Gwendy. She was family.”
“Whatever it is, it’ll go to my grave with me.” And probably sooner than later, he thought.
“Your daughter didn’t sneak out for an illicit space walk. Anyone who truly knew her knows that part of the story is bullshit.” She took a deep breath—the kind that says you’re past the point of no return now—and continued. “Gareth Winston was a bad man, Mr. Peterson. And he’d gotten a very bad idea into his head—a dangerous one. Gwendy found out and put a stop to it before it was too late. She sacrificed her life so that others—millions of others—could live. I suppose that sounds awfully dramatic, but I swear to you it’s true.”