it was far too late for prophecies.
Or perhaps, just unwilling to accept it.
Part XIII – Visitors
“We are all of us—everywhere and at all times—mere visitors.”
19
While Anlyn guided the Bern ship toward one of the distant structures, Edison repeated his speech one more time, just in case anyone was listening. Anlyn felt soothed by his sonorous voice, even though the words sounded like complete gibberish.
Anlyn had arbitrarily chosen the middle of the three major stations to head toward. Each of them was covered with long docking arms to accept massive ships; as a result, they looked like pincushions with the needles inserted at precise intervals. What really looked odd about the stations, however, was that they all stood perfectly empty.
Anlyn glanced over at Edison as he wrapped up his speech one more time. They waited.
Nothing.
“Do you still think it’s a good idea to explore that station?” Anlyn asked in Drenard.
“Absolutely,” Edison said, replying in kind. He peered through the canopy at the distant structures hanging in the void. “It would’ve been quite the raid if your cousin had left the way open. There’s nothing here to stop us.”
“I’m actually shocked he let us through at all. But you’re right, this has been anti-climactic.” Anlyn paused and pointed to her screen. “Hey, according to these charts, we’re going to pass near a major jump point on the way. There’s at least a dozen of those route lines converging on a few spots, probably where they directed outbound traffic. You think we should stop and look for any trace signatures?”
“I don’t follow,” Edison said.
“Hyperdrive traces,” Anlyn said. She turned to him, reminded once again that her betrothed was a genius, but he hadn’t been exposed to
“When you jump through hyperspace,” she explained, “you leave a signature. They fade over time, but if someone jumped out in the last few days, we could possibly get a general idea of where they went.”
“Fascinating,” Edison said. He leaned over the ship’s computer and typed away. His fingers paused for a split second. “I found a help file on it,” he murmured, then went back to typing furiously.
“Great,” Anlyn said. “That means I’m going to be the expert on the subject for another five whole minutes.”
Edison turned his head and flashed his teeth, which made Anlyn laugh. Edison snorted, which really got her going. The two of them chuckled and wheezed far more than the moment merited—perhaps laughing off some of the day’s anxiety. They laughed with tears in their eyes, with a mind to stop laughing and soon. They laughed with the release of trauma, with the energy that probably should’ve found an escape with a good cry. Most of all, though, they laughed to fake it. They laughed for each other.
It took a moment for Anlyn to compose herself, to keep from carrying on like that forever. She took deep breaths, her heart pounding in her back as the sad echoes of their gaiety filtered aft through the empty ship. She wiped her eyes and looked up at Edison, a somber smile on her face.
“Love, what in the galaxy are we doing here?”
“I’m just following you,” Edison said between pants.
“I’m serious. Are we crazy? Are we wasting our time? What were we thinking?”
Edison finally stopped laughing and gazed out at the wasteland of empty starship stations. He took a deep breath, his chest swelling to fill his tunics. “I’d rather be here than around that table, arguing with your people,” he said. “I was always more up for a good raid than a council meeting.” He turned to Anlyn, his face suddenly full of sadness. “Now my brother, he would’ve preferred the other.”
Anlyn felt a chill at the sudden turn in the conversation. She held her breath, torn between her desire to chase the topic and the fear of scaring Edison away—back to his native English. She toyed with the SADAR using the few buttons she had memorized and watched as he began the trace scan on his own screen. Anlyn took advantage of the distraction:
“You hardly ever mention your brother. Why is that?”
Edison fiddled with the dials along the edge of his SADAR. He cleared his throat, and Anlyn braced for a bout of English techno-babble.
“My brother and I didn’t see the universe the same way,” he said.
Edison fell silent; Anlyn turned to face him. She watched him move to his other display and flip through pages of Bern writing. His head went from side to side as he scanned the lines. She held her breath as he read a few pages and made an adjustment to the scan. Finally, the scan having begun, he turned away and looked out his porthole.
“You don’t have to talk about it—” Anlyn said.
“I killed him,” Edison blurted out.
“Love.” Anlyn reached over and ran her fingers through the fur on his arm. Suddenly, she didn’t want him to talk. She didn’t desire to hear, to know. She felt guilty for ever wanting to drag anything out of him before he was ready. “I didn’t mean to bring that up,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about your home—”
“No.” Edison shook his head. “Before that, before the EMP, my brother and I fought in a bunker. Cole and Molly were there and… and I killed a member of the council with my bare hands. Then I left my brother in there. I left him in that bunker to die, knowing what I was about to do.”
Edison turned and faced Anlyn, tears streaming across his fur.
“I hated him,” he said. “I hated my brother, but exterminating my entire people was easy compared to that—” He stopped, too choked up to continue.
Anlyn reached for him; she wrapped both arms around his head and cooed softly. In the back of her neck, her heart stabbed with pain, hurting at having brought the subject up. Or maybe—at hearing him say the same things in her own language that she’d been used to puzzling through in his rigid English.
“I love you,” she said in the common, Drenard form.
“And I you,” Edison replied.
So they held each other, floating beyond the Great Rift on the Bern side of the universe, Edison with his head snuggled against her tunics, Anlyn with her cheek resting on his fur. They stayed like that for several minutes, precisely the length of time it took the Bern computer to crunch the hyperspace signatures.
And thereby destroy the mood.
20
Walter slapped his flightsuit, thumping the Wadi on its head, but the stupid thing just continued to squirm in his pocket. He reached the end of the alley and rounded the corner, having decided to try the building with the thick door first, mostly to stick to the same order as before. Unlike other Palans, he
