off, promising to let him know anything that came to her attention. Tark wondered how she would have reacted to the idea of Dmitry in love again. It was probably better if that news was kept quiet for now. Rebecca was not that distant a memory to some people.
۞
The girl he’d brought back was not what he’d been hoping for. She’d deliberately ditched her friends, he saw now, telling them exactly who she was going after. It wouldn’t work for him to do anything. Utterly ignorant, she’d foiled him without even knowing it. Luckily for the young woman, he was a creature of some small restraint, and though his disappointment was barely palpable, she read it.
“Your loss.” And she was gone, forgetting him as quickly her last drink. He shrugged off the loss, refocused, searching and scanning until he found something new. More and more ships were arriving every day, filling the station back up to capacity. Distraction would not be long off. He still had his job to do, the little voice of remonstrance said to him. Ah, that would be the perfect outlet after a frustrating evening. Responsibility in favor of frivolity. He, the man of shadow and sorrow, slouched back into the throngs.
۞
They finally fell asleep, far too late to be of much use the next day. Saturday was the smiling balm to that difficulty. It didn’t stop Dmitry from waking half a dozen times, fearing he was late for duty. Between that and a dream of Tark punching him in the throat, it wasn’t a particularly restful sleep.
Maeve seemed not to have any trouble in that area right then. She’d said she was prone to waking frequently. That sleep itself was not something she enjoyed anymore. He couldn’t blame her. It probably felt like she wouldn’t come back one of these nights. Over two hundred years of being comatose, its effects weren’t cumulative. Her body still needed rest, in spite of not wanting it.
He looked over at her. She was in oblivion, hugging a pillow tightly. Her skin shone in the dim glow of the dying candle they’d lit hours before. They had progressed from the living room into the bedroom, taking their time. Neither of them had wanted to come to a finish. Dmitry was surprised to find he hadn’t cared about the end result at all.
Suddenly, he saw Rebecca for the first time in six years, as a ghost walking into the distance. She was bleeding away. He almost tried to cling to her, to grieve a bit longer, knowing at the same time that she needed to leave. It was time for peace, for both of them. He blinked and she was gone.
He looked at this new face, which had erased the old. This newness was a blank canvas, upon which his fingers drew new forms, delving into her. They had turned in a new universe. Maeve hung from its edge, dangling uncertainly until he brought her back. She opened her eyes, to see with fresh vision, how light and color had changed themselves. And she watched. He found her wrists, blindly gripping them, urging himself into the unknown.
Maeve wanted to let go. She felt the difference in the way Dmitry touched her, knowing she hadn’t been touched that way before. Before was about being pulled along, being demanded upon, it was still steeped in loss and inequity. This was about being carried. It felt as though his hands could hold her together and keep her from flying into a million pieces.
She shivered, and he drew closer, warming her with his lips. They threw themselves from the edge of their cosmos together, twisting, burning, and exhaling; twin stars coming into being. He felt as though he’d known her for all those hundreds of years, while she’d slept. As though he had been with her in the darkness.
She had tasted that darkness far too frequently. She had fallen off the wall, with far too many bits of broken shell scattered around. How long had she been gluing herself back together? Forever, in the dark. This man, though, he had a torchlight, and a map. He was leading her out. Into what or where, she did not yet know. Perhaps the time had come to stop worrying and be led to safety.
۞Earthside – the Med.
“Ah, there you are finally, Boko. What did you do, leave the country for the weekend?”
“Yes, Mr. Warden. I apologize for being absent. Did you need me for anything?”
“No apology necessary! I’m merely jealous when anybody else gets away from it all and leaves me behind. Anywhere interesting?” Warden was half-heartedly reading through his daily correspondence. Boko was prepared to lie; his grandfather had paid for an alibi thousands of miles away from where he’d actually been.
“Pattaya.”
“Oh-ho, why didn’t you say you needed a little R&R? I would have given you more time off, cowboy. You didn’t happen to see a little stripper by the name of Bai, did you? What fast fingers that girl had; she’d rob you blind and leave you limp, languishing in the Thai heat. But that was years ago. She’d probably be at least twenty-two by now.” Warden didn’t bother to notice whether Boko gave a damn about his anecdote. Boko was in the midst of trying not to calculate the age that the stripper might have been whenever Warden had been with her. His shoulders strained against a shudder of disgust.
“You see Boko, the reason you’re able to go and get your rocks off in places like Pattaya still is because of us. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. We keep things in balance. Don’t forget it.” Warden smiled and smacked Boko happily on the cheek several times. Boko breathed heavily, weighing the possibility of what would happen to him if Warden ever found out where he’d really been.
“Have we gotten anywhere with the situation that was developing?” He busied himself with Warden’s agenda for the day.
“The good doctor saved us some money and dealt with herself. I mean, really, wanting to inform news agencies, and publish a paper on the whole thing! It’s just as well she‘s gone.” Warden paused to smell the cigar that he was rolling between a thumb and forefinger. It was the only thing he could do with it, anymore. “As for the others, well, we’re taking our time to assure complete success. It’s my suspicion that there are planetside connections that haven’t been fully discovered. But when I do….” He crushed the cigar with one swift squeeze, and let it fall to the ground, scattering a cloud of tiny fragments at his feet. “Let us say that I am like a cobra on the hunt.” Warden stared at the debris on the ground with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay. Then, he walked off the terrace, into his offices, just as if he were any other normal man.
“The cobra does battle with the mongoose, and dies because he does not believe he can be defeated.” Boko whispered this to himself, wishing that he hadn’t had to return to this particular cobra’s den. Grandfather had been firm about completing the circle, though. Only a few more weeks and then the whole thing would come to a crashing halt, if all went to plan. Boko only hoped that he’d be able to get clear before all hell broke loose.
۞
Jemi had withdrawn from the others. She was hiding out in a massive library, which sprawled over two acres of levels. It was open-air, with climate controlled glass cabinets to protect the books, some of which were centuries old. She was curled up in a corner sofa, poring over history books, trying to understand the past, which she had once thought of as the future.
Birds sang just outside, just loudly enough to conceal the whisper of soft movement nearby. She didn't hear anything, engrossed as she was in the development of environmental legislation in the latter half of the twenty-first century.
She was cursing aloud over a notation concerning test drilling in Alaska when a hand clamped over her mouth. She fought the urge to panic, and merely bit down hard onto a couple of fingers. She heard a familiar yelp, sighed, then turned around to find Josh nursing his hand. He tried his best to give her a baleful glare. It was difficult, given the rather foolish expression that was competing with it.
"Can't you take a joke? That was my friggin' trigger finger, dammit! They didn't train you to do that in the language institute, did they?"
"For a Recon dude, you sure seem to have a low threshold for pain. Kind of like a little baby."
"You're lucky we're in a library. I'd hate for you to scream and scare all the peaceful bibliophiles." Jemi got a chill up her spi
ne, even though Josh was visibly joking again. She was aware of his abilities, just as he was obviously aware of hers. She remembered when they'd first met, at the listening post that had been remade into a “training facility”.
She'd seen the unease in his demeanor, the look of a caged animal, trapped inside the frigid confines of their temporary home. He'd already been friends with Leif by that time, the two of them spending hours with their heads close together, speaking in low tones. It had been as though they recognized, each within the other, a common language.
She was an excellent translator.
Leif had been there first. Then Maeve. He’d watched over her zealously. It was apparent that he’d needed help, or respite, or just someone to keep him grounded in reality. That was Josh’s job. They’d covered her with blankets when it got too cold inside their barracks, brought her meals, and read to her.
At first, they'd all believed that she was in a catatonia, until it became apparent that she was only active by night. Those were the hours during which she apparently saw to herself. They knew that by the damp towels and other debris, left in tidy heaps for them to find. Jemi could not remember a single occasion on which Maeve had ever spoken. The first time she'd heard the other woman's voice had only been a couple months ago.
“Is she going to be okay?” Jemi didn’t have to say who she was.
Josh seemed to be weighing the question carefully.
“Don’t know.”
“We’re going to bring her in soon, though, right?”
“Yeah. I think we’re just going to get all the details fine tuned first.”
“You think she can’t do it.”
“I don’t think that, exactly. I mean, she was selected, and then all hell broke loose, and, well, you remember.” No, they didn’t. Not in the sense that they’d been there. Not like Leif, who couldn’t get away from it. He’d picked her up, and tried to put her back together, now so long ago. His greatest sorrow lay in knowing that he’d failed.
۞
Saturdays still felt calmer. The streets were crowded with off-duty personnel, the restaurants were full, but everyone was relaxed. The stranger was still among them, observing and adjusting small details in his plan. He would begin soon, cutting off the head of the beast; the rest of the body would die soon after. It was necessary to plot out his movements accordingly. Once initiated, he would not be able to turn back, nor would his actions go unnoticed for long.
A route must be chosen. It was all too obvious where that fool of a commanding officer had put them. The stranger could smell his prey, down in the hushed and empty catacombs of temporary housing. They had all left trails of breadcrumbs, but he was only interested in one, for now. He would wait. He would strike, and wait again, to see how they scattered into the wind. No, not wind, he mused. There was no wind here.
۞
It was raining in the arboretum. Maeve watched as people laughingly dashed into the downpour. She supposed it was such a novelty as to seem enjoyable. Weather without the unpredictability. It was hard to tell whether the water came from sprinklers, or if it was so humid in that area that it naturally occurred. Confusing the issue even further, rumbles of thunder traveled along the seemingly endless expanse of trees and underbrush.
She had to give them credit. They had everything packaged up neatly and presented to those who lived here. A town, athletic facilities, shopping, arts, museums…she’d even seen wave pools, a water park, and indoor skiing. Colonel Tarkington had said that the Nimitz was one of the smaller stations. It hardly seemed