begin decelerating and see if they do the same. Even if they don't slow down … well, depending on what you can tell me about the range of their weapons, I think we can still stop at Lansing long enough to off-load the extra hydrogen—and then accelerate at right angles to them with enough time to get away. By the time they can change course, we'll be out of this system forever.”
“Out of our system forever. And we'll be …” He looked down at her strong and gentle face, wondered why he had ever thought it was plain. His hands tightened over a sudden desire to touch it.
Realization colored her cheeks. She looked up at him strangely, almost welcoming, lifted a hand. “Sit down, Abdhiamal … Wadie Abdhiamal. You'll be—better off without us, yes.”
He sank down on the padded wall seat, pushing aside heaped clothes. “Betha, there're no words to apologize for what I've done to you, out of my own stupidity … my God, I nearly—killed you. All the things I said, not meanin'—”
Her hand waved the words to silence. “I never meant to ruin your life, Wadie.… I owe you as many apologies as you owe me. More. Is it too late to cancel them out, now?”
He leaned back, resting his head against the wall, eyes on her. “It's never too late. But I'm not—very good at expressing my emotions, Betha. I'm not even good at admitting them to myself.” He took a long breath. “All of a sudden there are a lot of things I want to be different. But there's so little time—” He broke off; feeling the presence of ghosts. “That picture across the room: Is that—Eric, beside you?”
Surprise caught her. She nodded, her face composed. “He was my first husband. He was—a kind of negotiator too, an ombudsman. We were monogamous for eight years before we married into Clewell's family.”
“And you have children?”
“The twins, Richard and Kirsten; the boy and girl in front of me. They're about eleven now.…” She smiled. “They're all my children. But the twins were born to me, they have my name. All seven of our kids who are still at home are staying with my family.”
“You left your children—” He stopped himself before he hurt her again.
She glanced at him, puzzled. “Yes. We left them with my parents, on their tree farm.” And understanding, “Half the world is your family when you're growing up on Morningside. They hug you, tell you stories, and make you toys … there's always someone who's glad to see you. We didn't abandon our children. But it has been very hard to miss seeing so much of their lives as they grow. At least Clewell and I will get to see how they've grown.…” She looked down, shuffling papers; he saw the return of more than one kind of pain.
“Shadow Jack and Bird Alyn … are they why you're risking everything, to buy a dyin' world a few more seconds?”
She hesitated. “I don't know. I hadn't thought … but I suppose maybe it is. I wish—I wish I knew how to do more.”
“You know, then? What it's like for them on Lansing?”
She nodded.
“I'm not much lookin' forward to it myself, I've got to admit. But I've talked myself out of anythin' better— literally.” He smiled. “I don't regret it. It was in a good cause.”
She picked up a cup, set it down aimlessly. “What will you do, Wadie, on Lansing?”
He smiled again, hearing his name; the smile stopped when he remembered. “Sit and watch the world end, I suppose. All the worlds. Not with a bang but a gasp.”
“You don't have to, you know.”
He felt her touch him as though she had raised a hand. He shook his head. “Maybe I do. Maybe that's my penance for pretendin' there was no tomorrow.”
“You don't believe that?”
“I don't know.” He shrugged. “I don't know what I believe anymore.” Only knowing that he was alive in a vast mausoleum and afraid to look at death. “But I belong here, to Heaven; if that makes any sense. It scares the hell out of me, but I've got to see it through. But thanks.” He saw her smile, disappointed.
“You can change your mind.”
“Sooner than I could change Heaven …. Ironic, isn't it; that we began with everything and Morningside with nothing … and look who failed.”
“We almost failed too—more than once.” Betha stared at the wall, looking through time. “So did Uhuru, and Hellhole, and Lebensraum. But we had help.”
“From where?”
“From each other. Planets like Morningside are so marginal any small setback becomes a disaster … but they're the most common kind of habitable world; they're all like Morningside in our volume of space. But our worlds are within reach of one another. We set up a trade ring, and when one of us falls flat, the rest pick it up and put it back together. And that's how we survive. That's all we do; we survive. But it's enough … it'll have to be enough forever, now that our journey here has failed.
“We have our own ironies, you know.… Morningside was settled after a major political upheaval on Earth. Our nearest neighbor now, Uhuru, was settled by some of our former ‘enemies’ after their own empire on Old Earth fell. Need makes stranger bedfellows than politics ever did.”
He laughed abruptly. “As the five of us should know.”
“Yes.” She held him with her eyes, fingers over her lips.
“If you'd come before the war, Betha, maybe the five of us would even be doin' some good. Heaven could have learned somethin' then about sharing. Now it's too late; there's nothing left to share.”
She shifted position again, wincing. “Wadie … you said the knowledge that put Heaven's technology where it was is still intact. That if you could rebuild your capital industry, you could still make the Belt work again, and it could be everything it once was. You said even the
He listened to her voice come alive with inspiration; felt suddenly as though the pain and grief had lifted from her mind only to settle in his own. “That's what I said. But I was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“We've gone down too far. We can't recover now; death is a disease that's infected us all. We'll never work together now, even to save ourselves.”
“But if they could understand that there was hope for all of them …”
“How could you make them understand? You've seen how well they listen.” He slammed his hand down on the bench. “They wouldn't listen!”
“No, they wouldn't.…” Betha began to smile, in misery, moving her head from side to side, “Wadie Abdhiamal—how did we come to this? You saying they wouldn't, me saying they would.… How did we come to understand each other better than we understand ourselves?”
He shook his head, felt a smile soothe his own mouth, lost his useless anger watching her.
Her hand moved tentatively from the desk to touch her band on his wrist; he caught her hand and their fingers twined, brown and pale. She looked across at him, down at their hands. She drew her hand from his again, said quietly to no one, “And not one of them lived happily ever after.…”
Flagship unity (Lansing space)
+3.00 megaseconds
