PROVINCE OF ITALY
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
JUNE 1, 2000
Yolande Ingolfsson paused and looked back from the entrance of the graveyard. The hills looked raw, without the ancient olives; the new plantings were tiny shoots of green, and she could see the workers still piling the black stumps and branches together for burning. There were gaps in the fruit orchards as well, despite all the anticold bacteria, and the sheep were few and sickly. The winds out of the west had been cold, these past winters; cold and full of death. But the land would recover, if not fully in her lifetime; the grass stood green, and the thin rumpled grainfields were beginning to show yellow with promise. She shivered slightly, pulling the collar of her coat closer about her; it would be a long time before Italy was as warm as it had been.
The grave was a little ragged, neglected when so much else needed every pair of hands. She knelt and laid the roses on the shaggy grass. That’s all right, she thought, smoothing it with her hands. There were small white flowers blooming in it; they smelled of peppermint. It’s life, is all.
“Myfwany,” she said, and found herself empty of words for a long time. The sun moved, and her shadow crept across the living flowers and the ones she had brought.
“Myfwany, sweet,” she whispered at last. “I don’t know what to say. They’re calling me a hero, now. Even Uncle Eric, in public.” She shook her head again. “The world is so full of mourning, it should make my own griefs seem small. And yet . . . I’m lucky, I suppose. Gwen’s safe; our children are safe. There’s no war hangin’ over they heads now. But—” she beat her fists together. “Oh, love, did I do right, or did I fuck it all up?”
Warm wet slid down her cheeks, into the corners of her mouth. She raised her hand to her face, reached out to lay the teardrop on the roses. It slid onto the crimson petal, lay glittering.
“Oh, honeysweet,” she said, her voice shaking with the sobs. “All the tears I never cried, would they have made a difference? My love, rest you well. Rest ever well. Till we meet again, forever.”
Epilogue II
CONTROL DECK
ALLIANCE SHIP NEW AMERICA
PAST THE ORBIT OF PLUTO
OCTOBER 1, 2000
“That’s it,” Captain Anderson said with a sigh. “If we needed any more confirmation.” He eased the earphones from his wiry black hair; a stocky pug-faced Minnesotan of Danish descent, and a physicist of note as well as a Space Forcer. “Over to you, JB,” he continued formally.
The Second Officer nodded and touched a control. Anderson turned to the gaunt man who stood behind him, watching the receding light of Sol in the main tank-screen in the center of the control deck. It was set to show what an unaided eye would see from this distance: no more than an unusually bright star.
“So they’re keeping their word, for once,” Lefarge said softly. “Not that we left them any choice, the way we had it set up.” It was surprising enough that von Shrakenberg had trusted him to broadcast the final specs on the comp-plague . . . He pushed the complexities out of his mind. It was difficult; that was something he was going to have to learn all over again, to live for the future. Cindy would help, and they would both offer what they could to Marya.
“They couldn’t touch us at this range, anyway,” Anderson said meditatively.
“That’s true,” Lefarge agreed. His voice had an empty tone, to match his eyes. “They’ll probably follow, one day. If not to Alpha Centauri, to other places.”
“We’ll be ready,” Anderson said, coming up beside him. There was no other sound besides the ventilators, and the subliminal tremor of the drive. That would continue for months yet . . . “Or we . . . our descendants could go back, first.”
“No. No, not if they have any sense. There’ll be nothing here worth coming back for; we’re taking all the valuables with us. All that’s left.”
The ship’s commander cleared his throat. His authority was theoretically absolute, until they reached the New America’s destination, and he knew Lefarge would obey as readily as any crewman. But there was something in that lined face that made him reluctant to order; it would be an intrusion, somehow.
“Brigadier—” he began.
Lefarge looked up and smiled; it even seemed to touch his eyes, somehow. “Fred,” he said. “While we’re off duty, Captain.”
“Fred. Look, man, there’s no real need for you to stand watches; yes, you’re qualified, and it’ll be only five years total.” The bulk of the colonists would be in Low-Met all the way; there were five active-duty crews, who would work in rotation. “But it’s at the other end we’re really going to need you. Hell, why waste your lifespan? You’re going to have a life’s work there, and barring catastrophe the crew’s doing routine. For that matter, I’m going to have time to finish that novel at last.”
“I think I am going to have a life job, when we get there,” Lefarge said, nodding. “And to do it properly, I’m going to have to be looking forward.” He met the captain’s eyes again, and his were like raw wounds. The other man had seen more than enough of grief these last few months, but it was still shocking. “So I need time for . . . thinking. And to get the saddest words in the English language out of my system.” He laughed bleakly at Anderson’s silent question. “If only. If only.”
Epilogue III
OBSERVATORY DECK
DASCS LIONHEAR
NEAR PLUTO
OCTOBER 5, 2000
The bright dot of the New America’s drive was another star among many, in the screen that fronted the darkened chamber. Gwendolyn Ingolfsson hung before it, lost and rapt, unconscious even of the man whose arm was linked with hers.
“Oh, gods,” she whispered; starlight broke on tears. “How I envy them!”
LOW EARTH ORBIT
JULY 1, 2014
INGOLFSSON INCURSION TIMELINE
EARTH/2B
Nomura sat silent for a long time. “Obviously, that was not the end of the story,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” Carmaggio nodded, running a hand over jowls that rasped with blue-black stubble. “You’ve been working on the physics parts of IngolfTech. What else do we sell?”
Nomura looked down, to where an Australia whose deserts were turning green passed by, and up—to his employer, a man in his sixties who looked and probably felt younger than he had in the last year of the old century.
“Biology,” he whispered. “Genetic technology.”
“The New Race they created replaced them—ironic justice, but it doesn’t do shit to help us. Homo Drakensis; and homo servus to serve them. One of them came here.”
The physicist’s ears perked up. “Cross . . . temporal travel?”
“Time travel and cross-temporal travel; they were working on using wormholes for FTL, and something went wrong.”
“Wrong?”
Carmaggio nodded. “You’re going to be among about twenty people who know the truth, about the one specimen of homo drakensis we got handed by accident.” He smiled wryly at the eagerness behind the younger man’s poker face. “And you’re going to regret knowing it,” he said. “Welcome to the Nightmare Club. Because somewhere out there”—his nod indicated a direction beyond the universe that turned outside the windows—“they’re still waiting. They know about us. They’re trying to find us. And they’re hungry.”