And based on the first long-range surveys, there's some kind of life down there smart enough to build cities. Still, we learned to talk to the birdcages and the shiptree, and we'll learn to talk to these guys, too. And Manitoba may be cold, but hey, people been living there a hell of a long time now. And like the Benefactors before us, we're a tougher species than we were.
“Bet it will look okay to the crews of those generation ships, when the Huang Di starts retrieving them.”
“When does Min-xue… pardon me, Captain Xie… leave?”
It's become seamless. I don't have to ask Richard; the information is just there, waiting for me, as if I always knew it. “Oh five hundred.” Thank you, Dick. He feels different now, bigger: talking to him is like talking to a reflection in a still pool. It's right there, close enough to touch, but you can feel how deep the water is underneath it.
And how long before we start taking him for granted, too?
“Genie already has.” A rueful acknowledgment, and he dissolves in a shiver of pixels. He'll be back if I need him. Or hell, even if I don't.
I snicker. Elspeth tilts her head against my arm.
Somewhere down there, there's a mountain or a sea that's going to be named after Leah Castaign. Once we pick it out. Koske gets one, too, and the crews of the Quebec and the Li Bo and the Lao Tzu. And after them, the crews of Soyuzes and Apollos that Richard could tell me numbers for, if I bothered to ask him, and some American space shuttles destroyed around the turn of the century, and a Brazilian tug crew killed capturing the rock that anchors the far end of the Clarke beanstalk, and the crew of the first Chinese Mars lander, and then there's twenty years of in-system accidents to get through…
They've already decided the little planet is going to be called Valentine, and the big one Bondarenko.
I just hope we won't run out of planets before we run out of names. On the other hand, chances are good there are going to be more planets, aren't there?
And also that there are going to be more names.
It's quiet a long time. Beep and hum of workstations, rustle of fabric, and not a word spoken as we all stand there and gape like a bunch of fools. I don't miss the fact that Patty reaches out and slings a casual arm around Genie's shoulders as they stand together. Nor do I miss the way Genie leans into the embrace. That jealous pang in my gut can just go to hell.
“Jen?”
I must have got even quieter than the rest of the crew. And Elspeth never needed technology to read anybody's mind. “Doc?”
She stands up straight and gives me another little nudge before she steps half an inch away. “When are you going to forgive Patty for not being Leah?”
I look down at the top of her head for six long seconds before I blink. “Why you always gotta ask the hard questions?”
“It's my job.”
“Uh-huh.” It's a good question, though, even if I hate it. And I know the answer, and I hate that, too: I'm not. It's a crappy answer, and it's not the Hollywood one. But it's true.
On the other hand, that's my problem and not hers, and I don't have to make it hers, do I? Because if I were a grown-up — which I'm not, not by a long shot, and I know that — but if I were a grown-up, I'd walk over there and drop an arm around her shoulders, and I'd pick Genie up, although Genie's big enough that she'd probably smack me for it, and I'd hug both of them until they squeak.
Oh, right. What the hell am I waiting for, again? I mean, really—
What's the worst that could happen?
“Hah,” Richard says in my ear, as I start forward. “Jenny, if you have to ask—”
Many men afterwards become country, in that place, Ancestors.
—Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Epilogue: eleven years later
1300 hours
Saturday 15 May 2077
Toronto Impact Memorial
Toronto, Ontario
It's been awhile since I felt soil under my feet: it presses my soles strangely, Earth's gravity harsh after so long aboard the Montreal. And yet I wander through the crowds on a fine May morning: the fifteenth. Leah's twenty-eighth birthday would have been next week. Taurus, the bull, and the year of the rooster. The moon of greening grass and false prophets.
The tourists and dignitaries and mourners don't step aside for me. I keep my head down and my chin hidden behind my collar, and if anyone notices me, it's to wonder why I'm wearing gloves and a trenchcoat on a warm spring day.
What is it that moves us to build gardens where people die?
Not that it's wrong. Something should grow out of this.
Hell. Something did.
I won't find Leah's name anywhere on the black stone paving the bottom of the shallow reflecting pool. Won't find it carved in the dolomite inlaid with stars of steel that surrounds the rippling water, or on the pale green-veined marble obelisk that commemorates the uncounted dead. I won't find Indigo's name or Face's name either, because here there are no names.
Only the water silver over black stone, and the splashing of quiet fountains, and the obelisk yearning skyward like a pillar of light. Like a pillar of desire, rising from an island at the center of the pool. An island the faithful have littered with offerings and farewell gifts.
The smell of lavender and rosemary wafts from the hedges, and early bees and butterflies service the blooms. The drone of their wings is the only sound on the air except for the whispers. Dick's done brilliantly — the ice caps are growing, the oceans receding, although they're still not at anything like historic levels. I hope he's able to stabilize the climate before it flips the other way, into an ice age.
But I guess we'll blow up that bridge when we come to it.
I pass a retired soldier on a park bench, stop, and turn back as his profile catches my eye. He climbs to his feet: still in uniform. “The jacket's gotten a little big for you, Fred. Did Patty tell you I was coming?”
She's doing grad work, now, at Oxford. They've rebuilt; Jeremy was invited to teach, and he recruited her as a student. Not that she would have had any trouble getting in, although Fred threw a fit when she decided to leave the service. It's good to see the kid getting what she wants for a change, instead of what her family's told her to want.
He shakes his head, his cover in his hand. Reddened cheeks pouchy, hair gone white but only slightly thinning, eyebrows that probably seem threatening when he glowers. “The Vancouver's just left on an exploratory mission, and the Toronto is about ready to fly. They're going to give her to Genie as primary pilot, although I don't think Genie's heard that yet, and she's not going to hear it from you.”
“Done at twenty-three. Damn.”
“Kid's special.” He shrugs. “And I wouldn't call it done. You have some finished apprentices for us, I hope?”
“Some.” I shoo a curious honeybee away. “So how'd you know I'd be here? Dick rat me out? Did Doc?” Elspeth would, too. If she thought I needed closure.