“May I see it?” Nicole asked, curious as to the origins of this token and who had gotten Jodi Mackenzie, of all people, to take up religion.
“Sure,” Jodi slipped it from around her neck and handed it across the table.
“Does this mean you are a believer?” Nicole asked, curious as she examined the cross in her hands.
“No,” Jodi answered immediately. “Yes. Maybe.” She threw her head back in exasperation. “Hell, I don’t know. I prayed on the way here from Rutan, on the shuttle. Can you believe that? I meant it, too. But now, I don’t know. How can anyone believe in any God when the universe is as fucked up as ours is?”
“That is what faith is supposed to be about, or so they say,” Nicole answered distantly. “To believe in something you have accepted to be true, but that sometimes seems to go against all that you see.” She was quiet for a moment as she turned the old cross in her hands. “I used to have one of these, given me by my mother. That, and the clothes on my back, was all that was left to me when my parents died. There was a time when I believed in such things as God, but that was a long time ago, when I was very young, before the realities of life showed my beliefs to be painfully foolish.”
“What happened to it?” Jodi asked softly, more to draw the pain out of her friend than to satisfy any sense of curiosity. Nicole had never spoken much about her childhood. But Jodi figured that this was a harmless question now. “The cross, I mean. Do you just not wear it anymore?”
Nicole shook her head and smiled, but Jodi could see that her eyes were misting over. She had never seen Nicole like this. “Nikki,” she said quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. You don’t have to–”
“It is all right,” Nicole told her as her mind paged back to those distant years of her youth. “It has just been a very long time since I have thought of it, that is all. When I was a young girl, after my parents died and I was put into an orphanage, I had a friend. A boy who was very special to me. Since I was older, I was able to leave the orphanage before him, to go to the academy. I gave my crucifix to him to keep for me, the only special thing I had for the person I held most dear.”
“What happened?” Jodi asked, watching Nicole turn the wooden cross over in her hands. “He blew you off, didn’t he?”
“No,” Nicole said with a force that startled Jodi. “No,” she went on more softly now, “he would never have done that. Never. We wrote each other often, and I counted each passing day toward the time when he could join me. I would have been a senior by the time he could have come, but we would have had some time together. I knew even then that we were terribly young, mere children, but still, I had hopes and dreams for the two of us, and I knew he did, too.
“Then, in my first year at the academy, I was going back to visit him when I found out that the orphanage had been attacked, that the entire planet had been wiped out.” She smiled bitterly. How many times had she relived that day in her nightmares? “The silver of my mother’s cross burned away with the rest of Hallmark’s atmosphere. Along with him.”
Looking up at Jodi and seeing her shocked expression, Nicole apologized. “Jodi, I am sorry for bringing up such unpleasant a subject.” Pretending she had something in her eye, a convenient excuse to wipe away a tear that threatened to fall, she asked, “Did you wish to go see the show tonight at Wilmington’s, or… Jodi, what is wrong?”
“Did… did you say
“Yes,” Nicole said, confused and growing concerned at her friend’s alarming change in expression. She looked like she was going into shock. “Jodi, tell me what’s–”
“What was his name?” Jodi demanded suddenly.
“Jodi, why–”
“Dammit, Nicole, what was his name?” Jodi practically shouted from across the table. Around them, conversations ceased as people turned to stare.
“Reza,” Nicole said, looking at Jodi as if she had gone mad. “Reza Gard. Why? What does it matter? What is wrong with you?”
Jodi felt her heart hammering in her chest, and she was becoming lightheaded to the point of dizziness. “What did he look like?” she asked, licking her lips and leaning forward as if she were physically starving for the words that were to come from Nicole’s lips.
“He… he was just a boy then–”
“Did he have green eyes that you couldn’t turn away from?”
That shocked Nicole. “Yes,” she said, her face knotting with concern. “How–”
“Did he have a scar over his left eye, like this?” Jodi ran a fingernail over her left eye, just touching the skin of her forehead and cheek. “And dark brown hair?”
“Yes. Yes,” Nicole croaked. A strange sense of deja vu was creeping over her, leaving her skin tingling and a distinctly unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Jodi–”
“Did your mother’s cross have ‘3089’ engraved on the back of it?”
“Yes. That was the year my parents were married.” She suddenly reached for Jodi’s hands. “Jodi, what is going on?”
“Oh, God, Nicole,” Jodi said, fighting hard to contain her excitement, oblivious to the crowd of onlookers who had forsaken their dinner to watch the spectacle these two were providing. “He didn’t die on Hallmark,” she blurted, her words rushing forth in a stream. “He showed up on Rutan, carrying an endorsement letter from some Colonel Hickock and your mother’s crucifix. He was brought up by the Kreelans, as one of them. He taught me his name. He’s on his way to Earth right now aboard–”
“That is not possible!” Nicole shouted.
“Nicole, it’s true! I swear!”
“Reza… alive?” Nicole, wide-eyed, shook her head as the blood drained from her face.
“Nicole, I’m sorry, but – Nicole? Nicole!”
But Nicole could no longer hear what Jodi or anyone else was saying. Her eyes rolled back to expose the whites, and she fell from her chair to land at the feet of the shocked restaurant manager who had just emerged from the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.
Jodi sat in a chair next to Nicole’s bed, keeping watch over her friend as the sleep drugs did their work. In what had seemed like a trek born of a novel of the surreal, Jodi had somehow gotten Nicole back to the
But as she sat there, holding Nicole’s hand, she realized why Nicole had reacted so strongly to the news that Reza had not died, but had been raised by their enemies: even though she had been so young, she had never let go of him, never stopped loving him. She had taken on the occasional lover, but never had she allowed the relationship to blossom into something more substantial than the satisfaction of the most basic primal needs. Somehow, inside, she had gone on believing that he could not really be dead, that somehow he would return like a fairytale hero to claim her heart, a modern Prince Charming, snatched from the jaws of Death. While Jodi knew that Reza was not – or at least did not seem to be – bent on the destruction of humanity, and perhaps just the opposite, his Kreelan upbringing and all the negative implications that lay therein could not be ignored. And to Nicole, who had not yet given Jodi time to explain all the things that had happened on Rutan, it must have seemed like her long-lost knight in shining armor had returned as some infamous Black Knight, corrupted and evil. The Reza Jodi had seen would be nothing like what Nicole remembered. She was bound to be taken aback, Jodi thought, perhaps even horrified.
“It’s not that way, Nikki,” Jodi said quietly, although she knew Nicole could not hear her through the narcotic fog that had been required to sedate her shocked brain. “I just wish you could have been there to see him. Maybe, maybe when that stupid bitch Rabat finally gets done with him, you’ll get your chance. But…” Jodi sighed.
Despite the guilty feelings that the thought evoked, Jodi could not help but wonder if such a meeting would be a good thing for her. Reza represented a change in the equation of her relationship with Nicole, and that was something she was distinctly uncomfortable with.
On the other hand, if the two of them did share something, it would be so much more than Nicole had now.
An idea suddenly congealed in her mind, and she acted on impulse, calling the captain’s yeoman.
