“The rest of you too,” he said to the others, noticing Tollemache’s crestfallen expression, “will have opportunities. We just have to find the right angle. ‘My lonely vigil under Proxima’s red light’ for you, Peacekeeper, something like that.”
“Well, Proxima’s not red—”
“I know a few people. And of course, you can resume your ISF career, Lieutenant Jones.”
Mardina asked, “Are they serious about having me back, Colonel Laughlin? For genuine duties, not as some kind of poster figure.”
“I believe so. I can pass your request up the chain of command if that is your choice.”
King nodded, his heavy jowls compressing. “I’ll do my best to move that along too.”
Yuri realised that King and Laughlin weren’t meeting his eyes. “And me, Sir Michael? How will you take care of me?”
Beth looked shocked. As usual she immediately picked up on the implications of his tone. “Dad, what are you talking about? I’m not going to Earth if you’re not coming too.”
Mardina stroked her daughter’s hair. “Earth is our home, when all’s said and done, sweetheart.”
“Yours, maybe,” Yuri said. “But not mine. I’m a century out of time, remember?”
“What does that matter, Dad? I was born on another planet altogether. On a world of another star! As long as we’re all together, and we’re free—that’s where home is.”
Laughlin coughed. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Not in the case of Mr Eden…”
“I knew it,” Yuri said.
“The retrospective trials of the Heroic Generation, of which your parents were such prominent members, are continuing. Even after a century or more. And an increasingly assumed legal stance is the inheritance of punishment. That is, the right to punish heirs for the crimes of their parents or grandparents—”
Tollemache growled, “I hate the little shit, but even I can see that that’s unjust.”
King spread his hands. “It’s the mood of the times, Peacekeeper. Some of those heirs got very rich on the backs of their parents’ global crimes. This is the prosecution argument, you understand, not my own position necessarily. Why, because of gen-eng and illegal psych downloads and the like, it’s suspected that some of those heirs are members of the Heroic Generation, effectively. So you can see—”
“If I go back to Earth,” Yuri said flatly, “I won’t be free.”
“There’s no question of imprisonment,” Laughlin said. “Call it house arrest. Surveillance. Your movements will be monitored and curtailed, for as long as the legal process lasts.”
“I’ll be put on trial for some crime deemed to have been committed by long-dead parents who shoved me in an ice box for eighty years.”
“But that itself is an issue,” King said. “Some prosecutors would argue that your parents did that in precisely the hope you would thereby evade any legal process. And…”
Yuri stopped listening. So he would be surrounded by walls of plastic and metal, his every step watched by a suspicious mankind, for the rest of his life.
He closed his eyes. He remembered that day when the shuttle had landed, and he’d climbed down to the surface of Proxima c for the first time, and there were no fences, no dome walls, just an arid plain, and he had just run and run until he was out of sight of every other human being in the universe. He imagined running, like that, with Beth at his side. I may as well have been left on Mars.
“I’m going to Earth,” Mardina said flatly. “Yuri, I’m sorry. Whatever the implications for you. That’s where my life is, always was. And Beth is coming with me. She’ll have a better life, and a longer one, than she would as a baby factory on Per Ardua. You know it.”
Beth looked at her father in growing horror. “Dad?”
“I can’t follow you,” Yuri said softly. “No matter what the conditions. I wouldn’t survive.”
“Dad, no!” Beth would have come to him, but Mardina kept a firm hold on her arm.
They were all watching him now, Laughlin looking embarrassed, King with an assumed expression of sympathy, Colonel Kalinski with what looked like genuine shock and sorrow, even Tollemache showing a kind of gruff respect.
King spread his hands. “Then what will you do, Yuri Eden? Where will you go?”
“There is another option. To go back to the only place I’ve ever been free.”
“Dad—”
Laughlin leaned forward. “You’re going back through the Hatch?” He glanced at Kalinski. “Is that possible? Is it safe?”
“We don’t know, sir. We haven’t tried it yet.” She glanced at King. “Even though we’re dreaming up all these schemes about mass migration through it. I don’t see why not, however. In fact, Mr Eden, if you’re serious about this—”
“Yes?”
“I’ll come with you.”
King snorted. “Are you crazy? You’ll end up four light years from home. And, after another lightspeed hop, four more years in the future.”
“I know. I understand that. But there’s a scientific purpose, sir. Somebody’s got to be the first to try it—I mean in a planned, scientific manner. We need to know the link works, that it’s stable. And we need to know how it works. I mean, we’ve had this Hatch under surveillance for years, but we never had the courage, or the imagination, to take the next step, as you did, Yuri. To go through. Well, now’s the time. And who better but me?”
“She is an ISF officer,” Laughlin pointed out. “And the nearest we have to an expert to boot. Along with her sister, of course. This is all rather a rush—but it is a compelling case, Sir Michael.”
Tollemache shook his head. “I just don’t get it. You saw the images I sent back. Prox c is a shithole. And I can tell you these press-ganged colonists they’re talking about sending through are going to be the dregs of the megacities and the slums, scraped up and shovelled through, just like it’s been in Mars. Why would you go there voluntarily, a bright spark like you?”
Stef glanced at Yuri. “Personal reasons. Because it will be better for me there than here. Just like you, sir.”
For Yuri and his family, that was only the start of an argument that raged for days. But he knew Mardina; from the minute she said she was staying on Earth with Beth, and for all Beth’s tears, he had known that his family was lost. Dead to him. And soon to be cut off from him by a barrier of thick time, just as his parents had cut him off before.
He, however, was going home.
Chapter 64
Yuri and Stef Kalinski stood side by side in the chamber of the Hatch on Mercury. A handful of technicians stood around on the surface above, monitoring instruments, gazing down curiously.
Above Yuri’s head, the great lid was slowly closing.
None of their families were here. A month after they had all walked through the hatch from Prox, Beth and Mardina were already on Earth, Yuri had been told, and Kalinski’s twin was nowhere around. It was just the two of them,
Yuri looked over at Kalinski. They were both sealed up in heavy-duty Mercury-standard armoured spacesuits. Yuri had even been shown how to open the cockroach-type radiator wings. This time there was no question of them just wandering through the Hatch system without protection, as they had on Per Ardua; now no chance was being taken. He couldn’t see Kalinski’s face behind her gold-plated visor. Even now he didn’t feel he knew her too well. They had had, ironically, little time to talk since the decision had been made to send them through the Hatch. He said, “Last chance to climb out.”