The words came out in a rush, as though she hadn't said them so much as let them escape.
"—if anything at all comes out to say hello—well, it'll pretty much have to be better than what you leave behind."
She smiled, a bit sadly. "Tell me that's not something worth giving a life to."
***
Kai's waiting for me in the docking lounge, as I knew he would be. I can see his surprise through the scowclass="underline" I shouldn't be walking on my own, not so soon. The others—disoriented, aftershocked—have handlers at their elbows to guide them gently back to their life sentences. They're still blinking against afterimages of enlightenment. Blind from birth, blind again, they can't quite remember what they saw in between.
They never will. They were only built by chance; maybe a tweak or two to give them green eyes, or better hearing, or to keep them safe from cancer. The engines of their creation had no foresight and no future. All that matters to evolution is what works in the moment.
I'm not like that. I can see for lightyears.
So no handler for Sunday Ahzmundin. My shepherd's back at the lock, increasingly impatient, still waiting for me to emerge. I coasted right past her and she never even noticed; her search image was set for disorientation, not purpose.
"Hey." I smile at Kai. "You didn't have to do this."
"Get what you wanted? Happy at last?"
I am. I'm genuinely glad to see him.
"They played you, you know," he says. "You think you pulled a fast one, you think you surprised them? They knew exactly what you were going to do. Whatever you think you've learned, whatever you think you've accomplished—"
"I know," I say gently.
"They wanted you here. This was never supposed to challenge your dedication to the mission. It was only supposed to cement it."
"Kai. I know." I shrug, and take his hand. "What can I say? It worked." Although not quite the way any of them think. Still holding his hand, I turn my wrist until the veins come into view. "Look."
"What?" He frowns. "You think I haven't seen those before?"
I guess he isn't ready.
I see that's he's about to pull away so I turn first, to the invisible lens across the compartment. I wave a come-hither.
"What are you doing?"
"Inviting the Doctor to join us." And I can tell from his reaction that Sawada has brought an assistant.
Called out, they arrive through a side door and cross to us as the last of the pilgrims vanish into their tubes. "Ms. Ahzmundin," Radek says (and it takes a moment to figure out how I know his name; it came to me so quickly he might as well have been wearing a tag).
"Sunday," Sawada smiles at me. "How was freedom?"
"Not all it's cracked up to be."
"Are you ready to come home?"
"Eventually." I see Radek tense a little at my reply. "Is there some rush?"
"No rush," Sawada says.
"We've got all the time in the world," Radek adds. "Go do your walkabout thing until the stars go out." And I can see he means it literally.
"Something funny?" Radek asks as Kai's scowl deepens.
I can't stop smiling. I can see it all in the way they don't react. Their faces don't even twitch but their eyes swarm with stars. And not just any stars: stars that red-shift from light to heat way too fast for any natural process. Lights hiding under bushels. Whole suns being… sheathed…
"You found a Type Two," I murmur, almost to myself. "In Ophiuchus."
Now their faces twitch.
"At first, anyway." Revelations abound in the tic of an eyelid. "Now they're in Serpens. They're coming this way."
Of course.
These people would have never even reached into space if not terrified that their rivals would get there first. They'd set the world ablaze with their own indifference, only to rouse themselves to passionate defense when that same world is threatened from outside. Left on its own, Humanity sucks its thumb and stagnates in its own shit; faced with The Other, it builds portals to infinity. It builds creatures like me, to seed them through the cosmos.
All they ever needed was an enemy.
I see something else, too: that before long, this sight will pass from me. It's starting already. I can feel my thoughts beginning to cloud, the cataracts returning to my eyes. My neurons may be stickier than Falk's & Friends', but soon—hours, maybe a day—they'll rebound to some baseline state and I'll fade, like a run-down battery.
That's okay. These insights are secure; I don't have to reconstruct the journey as long as I can remember the destination.
"It's your decision," Sawada reminds me. "It always has been."
He's wrong, of course. It's not my decision, it never was. I was right about that much.
But it's not theirs either.
I turn to my teacher. "You're not choosing my path, Mamoro."
He shakes his head. "Nobody ever—"
"The path's been chosen. You're only clearing it."
All those times I dared them to kick me out; all those times they smugly held the door open and dared me to leave. All those times I kept trying to be free.
You can keep your freedom. I have something better.
I have a destiny.
First published in Reach for Infinity (J. Strahan, Ed.), 2014, Solaris.