We could say we were manipulated. Only true in part. We lie to ourselves like cocks in a pit. We bloody enjoy death and destruction. Sex is obscene. War is holy. We’ll have only ourselves to blame when it’s all over, humans and Antags, that we could be such fucking dupes.
But Gurus lie.
Maybe without them, we’ll find a different balance, live a different history.
“How long have they been fucking us over?” DJ asks.
“Since caves,” Vera says. “Long time.”
The edge of the curtain is near. I hear groans, babble. We emerge and DJ is instantly on alert, pistol pointed at something unexpected, a shadowy broad X ahead of the asterisk, a figure—mostly naked, sprawled—
Human. Emaciated, bleeding, impaled from two directions. Litvinov emerges from behind the X, brandishing another long, sharpened cane, with a face of fury, about to finish the job, while Borden and Joe and Tak and Ishida and Ishikawa look on, unmoving, unmoved.
They, too, have blood on their arms and hands.
The figure stares at them with the last of its energy, its life. I don’t want to recognize it, but I do. The flattened nose, thin, interrupted eyebrows, a rictus of long pain now sharp and undeniable, eyes almost colorless, as if having spent years in darkness…
And a nearly transparent body, showing all its bones and veins, not from darkness but from so many journeys, so many arduous adjustments to chemistry and physics just to stay alive. Champion of champions, the last gladiator on this awful ship, he holds up one hand. The other is pinned to his chest by one of Litvinov’s canes. He clutches, at the last, a kind of knife, found or shaped somewhere, the chipped blade glittering. He lets go, and it spins off to chime harmlessly against a ribbon.
This is Grover Sudbury. Our nightmare, the man we condemned, the man Joe sent to this hell—
His head wobbles to see who else has arrived, and he greets DJ and me with a crooked half grin, of pain or recognition I will never know.
“I’m done,” he says through bloody spittle, eyes like milky opal. “I’m the last one. I don’t want to do it anymore. They’re all dead, and I’m done.”
Litvinov props his feet against a ribbon and shoves the final cane forward, into Sudbury’s chest. The cane splits and shivers into fragments.
Sudbury spasms. His breath escapes with a sound like sandpaper. He stops moving. Litvinov drifts back from the impact. We all seem to retreat from the awful mark, the pierced, racked, wretched example of soldier’s justice.
Complete silence before the asterisk, the corpse’s X.
“Bilyk died while you were aft,” Borden whispers, as if we’re in a church.
DJ says, “I think he came to give up.”
“I think he wanted to go home,” Borden adds.
“Fat chance,” Tak says.
MARTIAN RETURN
Down around the sun, time and space are heavy. The screw gardens and their thoughts slumber, surrounded by the sins of warmth, light, and billions of years of closely watched history.
The ship slows, bogged by those densities, those changes.
Takes forever.
And then—we’re almost there.
After our first sleep, our longest jump, Ulyanova does as she said she would, and makes a pass close to Mars. We receive two transport ships, one for passengers, another for spent matter, which we witness from the ribbons.
We aren’t told much about either, even when Vera appears outside the ribbon. She offers the opportunity to begin our departures here, to return to Mars, and to my surprise, Joe, DJ, and Jacobi are ready to go. They’ll spread the word as best they can about what’s happened, if they’re allowed to survive.
Joe and DJ and I say our farewells quickly enough. Joe asserts we’ll see one another again, that he plans on getting back to Earth and beginning a new, more normal existence—if Earth is still Earth, if we are still welcome anywhere. I hope when do meet again that he’ll explain it all to me, explain what we’ve been to each other, but doubt any explanation will make much sense to either of us.
DJ says he’s heading down to the Red because we might still get communiques—that’s what he calls them, communiques—from what’s left of the archives down there, but I doubt it. All I get are silences. Maybe that’s good. Maybe bug ancestry is nothing to be proud of. Bugs fought. We fight. Maybe bug knowledge is something to be surpassed, grown out of. Maybe we’ll go it better without them or the Gurus.
Jacobi surveys us critically, then says, “Fuck it! No excuses,” and hugs us all, to my surprise. “Brothers and sisters,” she adds, and departs with Joe and DJ.
Ulyanova gives the transports time to depart.
And then we’re off.
HOME IS THE HUNTER
Kumar has vanished. Litvinov is nowhere to be found. I presume the Russian went through the curtain, as Vera had suggested. Maybe Kumar has gone through, as well. Maybe he does not want to live in a world without bugs or Gurus or some other influence—or he cannot bear the thought of having to explain.
That leaves the last of us Skyrines, and Commander Borden. The journey to Earth’s orbit is brief enough. A nap, as it were. Who’s there to wait for me? We’re eager to be done with the fighting, the adventure—such as it was. I think we’ll part ways as soon as we touch down.
On Earth, there’s… Christ. What? A chance to get back to normal? There is no returning to what we were. Even if we know where we are, we still won’t know who we are. The people I met, whom I could imagine living with after—so many changes! So much space between me and Teal and her child—and how old will they be? How much time between me and Alice? I think a lot about Ishida, but how could that ever work? We both share so many hard memories. What will we do, any of us?
I have no idea how much time I’ve spent out here, real or unreal.
HOME FROM THE STARS
Earth is still down there. It looks real. It looks alive. Borden suggests they probably can’t see us, yet, but more transports are rising, dozens of them, some quite large—Hawksbills!
“Here come the Wait Staff and Gurus,” Ishida says.
I think they’re delivering their passengers near the new ship’s midsection, where, perhaps, quarters similar to ours, or better, have been arranged, spun out of the steel wool—maybe displacing a few ships or weapons. Fancy digs for monsters.
Vera informs us that one transport is being readied to take passengers back to Earth. Maybe we can get down without being blown to pieces. Maybe they’ll take us prisoner and debrief us at Madigan or wherever.
AND THE CHILD HOME FROM THE WARS
Right now, I’m a fraud. I do not want to have killed anyone or anything. I do not want to die like a soldier and end up in Fiddler’s Green. I want to die the death of a dreaming child.
Someday, if God will honor a solemn request, I’d like us all to join up at Disneyland in Anaheim. A great big reunion of old enemies, old friends, old warriors. We’ll meet in the parking lot, where I last saw my aunt Carrie, before she went off to die in the Middle East, and stroll between the ticket booths and up the steps, past the flower gardens, to climb aboard the old-fashioned steam train…
But first, I’d explore the train station and listen to the conductor’s ghost—a balding mustached guy from a really old western, speaking behind a window, probably wearing a vest or an apron… telling us where we need to go next to have fun or just relax. “This way, boys and girls… to the happiest place on Earth!”