“Robert,” she sobs, dashing forward and holding him close. His hair is the same color as yours, red like the earth, veined with silver, and his skin is dark as the dust. He holds her gently, his arms around her waist. Whatever words they have for each other are swallowed by the sound of the band and the crush of bodies around them.
Marisol’s slipper is lost in the rush, but the two of you flee from the lights and whirling skirts into the dust outside, the starlight bearing down on you like a thousand icy stares. Her hand in yours is the warmest thing you’ve ever touched.
“Ellis, you crazy bastard. They told me you were dead.” She laughs, too wild, tinged with grief. “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
You are silent, turning her hands over in yours. “They weren’t wrong,” you say at last.
“I don’t understand,” says Marisol, but you can see by the sinking hope in her eyes that she does.
“I did die.” She shakes her head vigorously. “I’m still dead, Marisol. But I couldn’t rest without saying goodbye to you.” It’s mostly true, and it will do for now.
“I’m sorry, Ellis.” She’s crying, and your heart sinks. Marisol rarely cries, and seeing her waste water on you is more than you can take. “I should have stopped them from taking you, I should have fought harder—”
“This isn’t your fault,” you say into her hair. “Not at all.” A gentle tug of your power, and your bone and brittlebrush horse trots up to meet you. You drape your glittering coat over its back to make a seat for Marisol as she watches, unable to keep the fear and awe from her face.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
You smile crookedly. “There are a lot of new things about me now. Come, get on.”
She swings up on the mount and scoots forward, holding her hand out to help you up. But you don’t take it. Instead, you reach into your pocket and press her stained red bandanna into her palm. It’s heavy with coins taken from the bodies of the dead, enough to buy a one-way train ticket out east. You know; you counted it yourself.
“No,” she breathes.
“You need to let me go,” you say gently.
“I can’t.” She grabs for you; you step back out of her reach. “Ellis, no! Get on the goddamn horse! We’re in this together, or not at all!”
“I can’t go with you,” you say. “I wish I could. God, I wish I could. But I belong to the desert now. I can’t leave.”
“Then I won’t either.”
“Don’t be a fool,” you snap, and she recoils. “Marisol, one of us needs to escape this place. And I can’t any more.” You gentle your voice. “Please.”
In the end, you give her your boots to wear in place of her single slipper. Your dark, naked feet stand out against the sand, but whether the sand is bearable because of the nighttime cool or because you no longer feel the desert’s burn, you don’t know.
Marisol promises to buy a ticket, but she also promises to come back for you when she can. You hope she will forget the second promise, but you know her too well to believe it.
“I love you,” she says, her eyes hard. “That’s the only reason I’m leaving. For you, Ellis. If you forget everything else, don’t forget that.” She digs her heels into the horse’s sides and it gallops away, your coat glittering under her skirt as she rides east.
“Well done,” murmurs the preacher man. He stands behind you, his coat flapping in the growing wind.
Well done, echoes the desert.
“Keep her safe,” you murmur. “Both of you, until she passes out of your realms.”
We know you will, says your mother, and the preacher man nods in agreement.
You watch Marisol’s horse until she passes out of sight, but you can still feel each hoofbeat strike against the baked clay, a staccato at the edge of your consciousness. You flex your fingers and look over your shoulder at the saloon. The windows are bright, and the chatter and music leaks from the doorway.
Nothing is permanent, but maybe Marisol was right. Maybe seeing a miracle and the ones you love, even for just one night, for one last time, will be enough.
The desert hums in your throat, and the language of the dead things coats your teeth. Back, then, towards the bluffs and the mesas, to the wilds where the coyotes cry over the yucca and the bodies of fallen men. Your kingdom lies out there among the wide, desolate plains, waiting for you to lay claim to its whispering bones.
The rising sun sears long red marks into the cloudy sky, and behind, you can hear the dead dancing themselves into a frenzy, long-lost miners with their wives and friends held close, spinning inhuman wild, as if afraid a spell will break.
You straighten your borrowed shirt and begin walking. Overhead, the sky rumbles with the promise of rain.
NEBULA AWARD WINNER
NOVELETTE
THE LONG FALL UP
WILLIAM LEDBETTER
William Ledbetter has more than fifty speculative fiction stories and nonfiction articles published in markets such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Jim Baen’s Universe, Escape Pod, Baen.com, Daily Science Fiction, the SFWA blog, and Ad Astra. He’s been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace and defense industry. He administers the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest for Baen Books and the National Space Society, is a member of SFWA, the National Space Society of North Texas, a Launch Pad Astronomy workshop graduate, and is the Science Track coordinator for the Fencon convention. He lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog, and two spoiled cats.
Like millions on Earth and aboard the Jīnshān Space Station, I watched Veronica Perez every day, but unlike those other spectators I already knew how her story would end. She disgusted me and I hated her actions, but I was curious about how it started. Newshounds had already dug up every detail of her past, from an interview with her first boyfriend at age thirteen to her biology doctorate dissertation only fifteen years later, but none of that revealed the true person.
As I ran through my systems check and prepped my ship for extended acceleration, I watched her first broadcast again, but this time with sound muted. I noted tiny movements of her eyes and mouth, the nervous way her hands twitched, and the slight wrinkles between her eyes. She clearly believed what she was saying, but how could she be so heartless? How could she doom her own child to such a life? Even after a third viewing, I still wanted to scream in her face.
“Play it again, Huizhu.” I said to the ship’s AI. “With sound this time.”
“My name is Veronica Perez,” she said. “I’m outbound on an elliptical orbit that will bring me back to the Mountain one year from now and I’m six months pregnant.”
She was so haughty, so proud of her crime. It sickened me. I’d been hired and trained to protect Jīnshān Station—or “the Mountain” as she had so casually called it. I found the casual term disrespectful. Jīnshān Station was a Bernal sphere habitat parked at Lagrange Point Five with a population of over twenty-seven thousand. My parents and sister lived there, so I embraced my job eagerly. I was also prepared to kill to protect my family, though I’d never expected my foe to be a pregnant woman.
My status board turned green, indicating the crèche was ready for me to enter. “Open the hatch, Huizhu.”
The ship’s AI obeyed without comment and I peeled off my clothes as the crèche hissed open.