He resumed his place beside Catareen in the dim, cool room. From outside he heard the sounds of the departure. A ringing of metal, three clear notes in succession. A strange sound of suction, unidentifiable, that came and went. And every now and then the sound of voices, a child calling, an adult answering. They were indistinct. They seemed to come from far away, farther than he knew them to be.
He did not wish to see the ship depart. He preferred to be here, in this quiet room.
As time passed he drifted into sleep and out again. His head fell onto his chest, and he jerked awake. Each time when he woke he was briefly surprised to find himself here, with the dark silent form laid out on the bed. Each time he understood that he was in fact here. Then he'd fall asleep again.
Finally he got onto the bed beside Catareen. He was so tired. He wanted only to lie down. He moved carefully, trying not to disturb her. He arranged his body beside hers on the narrow mattress.
Her eyelids fluttered open. She turned her head and looked at him. She was quiet for a while. Then she said, 'You.'
Her voice had thinned. It was a low whistle, barely audible.
'Me,' he answered. 'When you go?' 'Don't worry about that.' 'When you go?'
'I'm not going.'
'You are.'
'No. I'm staying here.'
'Not.'
He said, 'I wouldn't want to go without you.' It was not what he'd meant to say. It did not seem quite literally true. And yet, he'd said it.
'You go,' she said.
'Shh. Don't talk.' As if he'd ever imagined asking her to speak less.
She said, 'Go.'
He answered, 'This is where I want to be.'
She looked at him. Her eyes were fading. She opened her mouth to speak but could not speak.
'Sleep,' he said. 'Just sleep. I'll be right here.'
She closed her eyes. Carefully, he put his arm over her. Then he decided she probably wouldn't want that. He removed his arm. He inclined his head toward hers, let the skin of his cheek touch the skin of her forehead. He thought she would not mind that.
Soon he was asleep, too.
He dreamed that he stood in a high place. It was bright and windy. In the dream he could not determine whether he was on a mountain or a building. He knew only that he was standing on something solid and that the earth was far below. From where he stood he could see people walking across a plain. They were distant, and yet he could see them perfectly. There were men and women and children. They were all going in the same direction. They were leaving something behind. He could just barely make it out. It was a darkness, a sense of gathering storm, far away, shot through with flashes of light, green-tinted, unhealthy, small shivers and bursts of light that appeared and disappeared in the roil of cloudy darkness. The people were walking away from it, but he could not see what it was they were moving toward. A brilliant wind blew against him, and he could only face into it. He could only look at that which the people were fleeing. He hoped they were going to something better. He imagined mountains and forests, rivers, a pure windswept cleanliness, but he could not see it. He could only see the people walking through the grass. He could only see what was on their faces: hope and fear and determination, a furious ardency he could not put a name to. The wind grew louder around him. He understood that the wind in his dream was the sound of a spacecraft, departing for another world.
He awoke. It was still dark. He could still hear the wind from his dream.
He knew immediately that Catareen had died.
She lay rigid. Her eyes were closed. The orange no longer shone through the thin membranes of her eyelids. Simon put his hand on her small, smooth head. It was cool as a stone.
He wondered: Had she hastened her death in the hope that he might still be able to get aboard the ship? Could a Nadian do something like that? It was impossible to say.
The ship. He might still have time to get aboard, then.
He ran from the room, down the stairs, and outside. He knew. Of course he knew. Still, he shouted, 'Wait.'
The ship was one hundred feet or more above the ground, quivering as its reactor prepared to deliver the blast. It floated, humming. Its three spider legs had been retracted. It was a perfect silver platter, trembling as if it might flip over, girdled with green-gold porthole lights. Centered in its underside was the circle of the reactor, deepening from blinding white to volcanic red. Ten, nine, eight…
Simon ran to the empty place where the ship had been. He shouted, 'Wait, please, wait.' He stood shouting in the middle of the scorched circle the ship had left behind. He knew it was too late. Even if they could see him (they could not see him), there was no way to bring the ship down again, no rope or ladder to unfurl.
'No,' he shouted. 'Please, oh, please, wait for me.'
The reactor fired. Simon was consumed by red light, obliterated by it. He was momentarily made only of light, blinded, shouting. It was not hot; it was only bright. The reactor made a small sound, a mechanical cough, and then the ship hurtled upward so fast it seemed to vanish entirely. By the time the red light had dissipated, by the time Simon's sight was restored, it was already impossible to tell which light was the ship and which was one of the nearer stars.
Simon stood looking up at the sky. He fixed on a moving light that might have been the ship, though he could not be sure. The sky was full of starlike lights that moved, that could have been fly craft from Eurasia or secret weapons aimed at various enemies or alien ships bearing pilgrims from one world to another. The sky was full of travelers. Simon remained under the stars and the points of moving light shouting, 'Wait, wait, wait, oh, please, wait for me.'
When he was finished shouting there was nothing to do but go back into the empty house. He returned to the bedroom. He lay awake beside Catareen's body, which contained no trace of her. She had departed entirely. Her flesh had joined the inanimate objects of the room; it was no more than the chair or the lamp.
He lay beside the body until the room began to pale with the first light of morning.
By the time the sun was fully risen, he had dug her grave. He chose a place behind the farmhouse, in the shade of the tree they had looked at together through the bedroom window. When the hole was deep enough he went and lifted her body and carried it outside. She weighed almost nothing. In death, she was like a collapsed umbrella. He held her body carefully, with her head pressed to his chest, though of course it made no difference. As he carried her across the yard the horse nickered. It wanted to be fed.
Before he fed the horse he took Catareen to the grave, sat awkwardly on its crumbly edge, then slid down and laid her on the cool, moist earth. It didn't seem right to put dirt directly onto her face. He thought at first he would go back into the house for a cloth but decided instead to remove his shirt and drape it over her head. He thought she should have something of his in the grave with her, though of course it made no difference.
When her features were shrouded by his T-shirt he reached up, took a handful of earth, and spread it over her face. He worked carefully and gently. He added another handful, and another. He covered her handful by handful until she was entirely blanketed by earth. Until she had disappeared. Then he hoisted himself out of the grave and shoveled the rest of the dirt in.
The horse whinnied insistently. It needed to be fed. He went and fed the horse.
The sun was high by then. The heat of the day had begun. He was alone here, with the horse and Catareen's grave. The others were on their way to a new world, one that might be beautiful or might be barren.
He made breakfast for himself and washed the dishes. It was nine-thirty on a summer morning in an empty house on the outskirts of Denver. He walked onto the porch and looked at what was there. Grass and sky. A single finger of cloud, dissolving in the searing blue above the distant mountain range.
It was time to go.
He saddled the horse. He was drawn more to the idea of riding the horse than he was to the prospect of driving away in the Winnebago. The Winnebago could stay here, in the heat and the silence. The sun would rise and fall and rise again on the truck and the house, on the scorched circle where the spaceship had been, on Catareen's unmarked grave.
