"Well, we may be moving again any second―but let's see if the Bugs'll let us," I said.
I bent toward the dash microphone. "Hey, out there. You guys. Bugs―whatever the hell you call yourselves. We'd like the time and the opportunity to conduct a ceremony of interment. You know? We want to dig a hole and put him in it. It's our custom."
"Use Intersystem, for God's sake," Sam scolded.
The answer was astonishingly quick.
"GRANTED."
And it was in English.
"Be damned," Sam said. "When will those things stop surprising me?"
Yuri said, "I think they were waiting for someone to go out there and do it."
"Maybe."
Carl pulled the release bar on the left hatch. It whooshed open, rising like a seagull's wing into the sweet-smelling air.
"Nobody thought to check when those guys got out," he said. "These were unlocked all the time."
We went outside to find Ragna and Oni climbing out of their vehicle, looking crumpled and weary. The thing they were driving was sort of like a camper, with a little room to move around in, but for the time they had spent cooped up in there, it must've been hell. They were indomitably cheery, though, in spite of it all.
Ragna stretched and took several deep breaths. "Ah, that is feeling much like the body I had of old, not this hurting thing I am having for the last several years, it is seeming like."
Oni smiled. "I am hoping we will be having the time to be working out the entirety of our kinks."
"Depends on how kinky you are, Oni," I said.
She nodded, then did a take. "Oh, that is a joke." She gave a polite, forced laugh. "Quite funny, too!"
I laughed. I liked Oni a lot.
So we buried Corey Wilkes. I found an old shaped-charge mine in the ordnance locker―they're good for clearing a blocked back road when you have to make a delivery, though I hadn't had the occasion to use one in a long time. I picked a likely spot a little way off the road and blasted out a good-sized hole with it. Sean helped me carry the body over. Before dumping Wilkes in, I looked down at him. Bare blue feet, white pajama bottoms, bandaged chest, purple lips and earlobes, the generally collapsed look about the face and swelling of the abdomen signaling the commencement of decomposition―he didn't look like the formidable enemy I had known.
"I suppose some appropriate words should be spoken," Sean said.
"If you feel like it, go ahead," I said. "Unless you have something to say, Sam."
Sam spoke from the key. "Not really. Dump him in."
"I didn't know the man," Sean said, "except by reputation, though I've seen his handiwork in what was done to Carl, and the trouble those rowdyboys have given us. Nevertheless…" He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and spoke. " 'And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is too great to bear. You are driving me today from the soil; and from your face I shall be hidden. And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, "Not so! Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold." Then the Lord gave Cain a mark so that no one finding him should kill him. And Cain went out… and dwelt in the land of Nod to the east of Eden.' "
Then Sean crossed himself. He smiled and shrugged. "I'm not sure how appropriate it was, but I imagine it sounded all right."
"It was fine," Sam said. "Better than he deserved. That was the Douay version, wasn't it?"
Sean nodded. "It's the one I know."
I sighed. "Well…"
We threw him in. I used another mine to blow a shelf of rock to smithereens. John and the rest, who had been looking on from a distance, came over to help us carry the pieces over and cover him up. We filled the hole to about three quarters of the way, up, making a sort of sunken cairn, then kicked in what little loose dirt was handy. Everybody helped but Darla, and I didn't blame her.
And that was that. We stool around, not very eager to get back into our traveling prison. I wasn't very worried about Moore trying something, not with the Roadbugs around.
Darla was gazing off into the distance.
"If there is a heaven, I imagine it would look something like this place."
I looked out. It was the most Earthlike planet I'd ever seen.
I could have sworn that the trees in the closest stand of timber were Douglas firs. The sky was purest blue, daubed with fleecy clouds. The air carried familiar smells, the tall grasses were kelly green, waving in a benign breeze. A clear stream flowed through a dip in the terrain to the left. A gentle hill rose from the far bank―great place for a farmhouse, nice little place indeed.
"You could find peace here," Darla said.
I watched her for a moment. Then she came out of her daydream, gave me a strange little smile, and walked off.
Winnie and George were having a good time, chasing each other through the grass like two kids―which they were, in a way.
"We go home!" Winnie had said when asked where she thought we were being taken.
"Home!" George had echoed.
Everyone still wondered what they meant.
An hour had gone by quickly.
"Okay, everybody," I said. "I hate to say it, but we should probably get back aboard. The Bugs are probably getting impatient."
Groans. But they all climbed in.
We told Ragna and Oni to come with us. They protested but finally gave in, and after running to fetch some things, they climbed aboard.
Before I did, I looked toward Moore's string of vehicles. They had been watching us enviously through the ports the whole while. Apparently, their doors had been sealed after they'd deposited the body.
"Too bad, kids," I yelled. "Be good and they might let you out for recess next time."
Puzzled looks from the boys. What'd he say?
We watched it happen on a lifeless planet with a thin, clear atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Around us, endless plains of orange dirt rolled out to a featureless horizon.
We saw a Bug road crew create and spin up a cylinder.
It was about a week after the rest stop. We hadn't run out of food, but most of the good stuff had been consumed. We assumed Moore and his gang were in bad shape in that regard. We had gotten a few desperate calls.
On our arrival, we had discovered a number of Bugs moving about, towing strange equipment and generally scurrying back and forth over the road. Farther down the road, there were more gathered a few kilometers from where the portal should have been.
Our Bug trainmen pulled us over not far from the road crew. Out on the plain, something was happening. A gray shadow of a cylinder appeared, wavering at first, then stabilizing and taking on substance. The shadow darkened, becoming an inky shaft jutting into an orange sky. Gradually, the cylinder took on its familiar hue, which is to say it was no color at all except that of black velvet at midnight.
We watched, mouths agape.
Yuri, though, was excited. "I was right! Damned if I wasn't right. They're made of pure virtual particles. The goddamn things don't even exist?"
"What do you mean?" John asked.
"I don't have the ghost of an idea how it's done, but these objects are being sustained in their existence from microsecond to microsecond. No, let me correct that. The time interval has to be vastly smaller. Perhaps the mass that makes up cylinder only exists within an increment shorter than the Planck limit, less time than it takes light to cross the diameter of a proton. But string those infinitely tiny blips of time together, and the mass takes on virtual existence. The thing of it is, anything goes within that interval. The physical laws of our continuum are null and void. You can create a new-class of matter and a new set of physical realities in there. You can do anything, as long as it's canceled out within a short enough period of time. Our universe looks the other way. It's like a student making rude faces when the teacher's back is turned and instantly becoming a model pupil when the teacher spins around to catch him at it."