Final Days

He would fulfil his duty in the meantime, and give whatever orders proved necessary in order to ensure preparations for the transition went as smoothly as possible. But any lingering doubts about staying behind had vanished in the wake of Amanda’s decision not to seek escape.

After all, as she herself had quickly pointed out, someone had recorded those images of her on that storm-tossed ship, with that incomprehensibly alien structure rising from the deep ocean behind her. And, in his heart, Fowler knew that person could only be himself.

FIFTEEN

Orlando, Florida, 2 February 2235

Not too many hours after Donohue had walked out on him in Hong Kong, Saul woke up in the back seat of a taxi, outside the four-storey walk-up in Orlando he’d called home for the past six years, to the sound of a recorded voice asking him to please get out.

He stumbled out into the night air, feeling bone-crushingly weary, and looked down at the stained shirt and ill- fitting trousers he’d been forced to wear the whole way back from Hong Kong. A woman walking her dog gave him a quick once-over and quickly crossed over to the far side of the street.

Saul tugged the collar of his shirt close to his nose, sniffed and winced, remembering the look on the face of the man forced to sit next to him during the sub-orb fligh

Closing his front door behind him, he activated his UP just long enough to check his mail, and found a message waiting from someone he hadn’t heard from in a very long time. Saul came to an abrupt halt in the narrow hallway, and stared at the name floating next to the message icon.

He resisted the impulse to open and read it immediately. Whatever Olivia had to say, it almost certainly wasn’t anything he wanted to hear.

At least, not right now.

He instructed the house to run him a bath and meanwhile waited in the kitchen, dumping the clothes he’d been provided in the waste-disposal unit and pulling on a bathrobe. He ate half a tin of ravioli straight from the fridge, his gaze lingering on an old picture of Deanna and their daughter Gwen, until the house informed him ten minutes later that the bath was ready. He ordered a suit from a local fab-shop before easing himself into the warm water, some of the weight of the past few days sloughing away as he submerged.

He lay staring up at the bathroom ceiling, Olivia’s message occupying his thoughts far more than he wanted it to.

I could just delete it, he thought. Reading it had every chance of making his life a lot more complicated than it already was.

When he finally emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, the house informed him that a shrink-wrapped package was waiting by the front door. He opened it, pulling out a jacket and a pair of trousers cut from soft dark cloth, and also a grey silk shirt. They hadn’t been cheap but, after what he’d been through the last few days, Saul really wasn’t inclined to give a damn.

He got dressed and checked himself out in the bedroom mirror, but something still didn’t feel right. Saul felt twitchy and on edge. Maybe a little loup-garou, he thought, remembering that he had some stuffed in a coffee jar at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards . . .

No. He remembered the look of contempt on Donohue’s face, Jacob’s body slumped in a chair. He turned away from the mirror, suddenly feeling ashamed, and left the house.

As he bought himself a steak dinner at a local eatery, thoughts of Olivia continued to nag at him, making him feel lonely even at the one time he felt he needed most of all to be on his own. By the time he’d finished eating and was on his way to Christy’s to get good and drunk, he’d noticed a second message had arrived.

Saul abruptly came to a halt, realizing he was only delaying the inevitable. After reading both messages, he changed direction and headed for another bar, one he hadn’t stepped inside for several years.

Some of the tension he’d worked so hard at shedding was starting to creep back. By the time he arrived at Harry’s Bar and Diner, Olivia was already sitting waiting for him by the bar.

It was early enough for the place to still be fairly quiet, no more than a half dozen people scattered around the tables. Pebbled-glass windows splashed diffused streetlight across leather couches and dark varnished wood.

Saul climbed on to the stool next to Olivia’s. ‘This was my plan for tonight,’ he said, resting his arms on the counter. ‘I was going to get drunk and maybe make up some bullshit about the hard week I’ve just had, for the benefit of anyone who would listen, then let them call me a ride home when I couldn’t stand up any longer. A simple, yet effective strategy, and now you’ve gone and messed it all up.’

Olivia set her drink down – it came in a tall narrow glass and struck him as an unhealthy shade of pink – and glanced at him sideways in amusement. She had wide dark eyes and black hair that fell across her shoulders, and her features revealed a complex ethnic heritage that included a Seminole father and Korean grandmother.

‘As soon as I sat down here, it brought back a whole lot of memories, Saul. Not all bad ones, either, but, if it makes you feel any better, that’s not why I’m here.’

Saul ordered himself a drink. ‘So why are you here?’

‘Actually, it has to do with Jeff.’

‘Your ex-husband?’

‘Do you know any other Jeffs?’

‘I guess not.’

The barman deposited a Drambuie on the rocks in front of Saul. Even after so many years, the details of their past affair remained fresh in his mind. Olivia and Jeff Cairns had already been separated by the time she’d started sleeping with Saul – not that this had offered any great reassurance to his wife at the time. However, he’d been well on the road to patching things up with Deanna when the Galileo gate had collapsed.

‘Hey, look at you.’ She leaned forward to examine him under the overhead lights, and he could tell, from the way her eyes moved, that she was studying the bruises on his face. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

He took a sip of the Drambuie. ‘All in the line of duty, ma’am.’