“Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. Good-bye, Havair Heurex.”
A beep. The connection closes. I’m just about to swim off when the side of the dome shivers and a panel slides open. A door, for me.
I swim in, the panel closes, the water drains, and the pressure equalizes. My skinsuit, sensing air, melts away. The inner door opens into a spacious and tidy living room. The outside of the dome was opaque, but from within the walls are transparent. The sea and its colorful fish surround us. Fish’s mom stands in a wavering sunbeam, violet eyes flickering. “Why you write novels if no one reads them?”
Pads and scraps of paper are spread across the living room, each covered with a different drawing. Fountain pens lie everywhere. “The same reason,” I say, “that Fish continues to draw. I can’t stop.”
“Her name is Dolandra.”
“She told me her name was Fish.”
“We moved under the sea because of her. Every day she gets up before dawn to watch the fish in the sunrise.” “It’s her favorite thing.”
“I know.” Havair Heurex flares her nose at me, an expression that reminds me of her daughter. She turns to her kitchenette. “Would you like some tea?”
“I’d love some, thank you.”
She pours me a cup and it’s better than anything I’ve had in a long time. “No one shuts off their neural round here,” she says. “When I found you with my daughter that day, I got nervous.”
“I don’t blame you. You were only being a mother.”
“I looked you up. Not your public wiki. I … I used some favors. I got the local We to glean some of your private data.”
I hold back my anger. Yet one more reason to hate the local Wees. “Oh?”
“You’re dying?”
I nod. “Decades ago I drank Europan sea water. It’s loaded with—”
“Microorganisms.” Eyes wide, she retreats from me a step.
I hold up my hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not contagious. But those microorganisms are loaded with genetic material similar to—but different enough from—our own that over fifty Solar years they’ve altered my biochemistry to the point that one day soon I simply won’t wake up. If they’d discovered this forty years ago, they might have fixed me. But the genetic damage is too far gone now. I guess it’s my punishment for one stupid night of hallucinogenic bliss.”
Havair Heurex sighs deeply. “So you’ve come to Ardabaab to die?”
A school of rainbow parrotfish swims past the window. “It just seemed like the right place. Also, I came here to finish my last novel. Fish … she’s been a muse of sorts. She reminds me a bit of my daughter. Is she here?”
“She’s with her uncle on the other side of the planet.”
“Well,” I say, standing. “Thank you for your hospitality, Havair Heurex, but I should be going if I’m to finish my book before …”
“Yes,” she says. “Good luck and all.”
“Thank you,” I say, heading for the door. But I pause. “Does Fish know?”
“That you’re dying?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t told her.”
“Then if it’s all the same, please keep it that way.” I look around the room at her many drawings. “She seems to be doing just fine without me.”
“So you’re the last one?” she says, and I know what she means.
“Goodbye, Havair Heurex.”
I swim away from her underwater home, and when I arrive back at the bungalow that afternoon, I surprise a green monkey while it’s inspecting the dead lizard. The monkey leaps away, leaving the carcass behind.
I press every page of my book, inserting lithographs of Fish’s drawings throughout the text. But my novel is incomplete. I have the final chapters yet to write. And as each day comes to a close and I look at my hastily scrawled words that make no sense I worry that I won’t finish this before I die.
“Moms says I can see you again, long as I keep my neural on.”
Fish stands above my bed, the morning light slicing my bedroom in half.
I sit up. “Fish! Hello!”
“I’s at my uncle’s,” she says. “But I’s back now. Get up you loafing fool, ’cause we gots work to do!”
I laugh, and it’s as if a switch has been flipped and an engine turned on. My words flow as easily as water again. I will finish this after all.
Fish comes by every day now. In the mornings, she studies the art of bookbinding. In the afternoons, she creates new illustrations. She says we have too many, but I tell her there’s always room for more art.
She draws: Yvalu’s transport ship landing in heavy rain; a flock of migrating sea birds on Muandiva silhouetted in the bright sun; a pine forest reflected in the glassy lake of Naa; Yvalu and Ubalo, da Vinci-like, reaching for each other’s hand, galaxies swirling behind them; Yvalu tasting the dirt of Muandiva. And sometimes, she inks words, which she will never let me read.
I write:
“Yes, I’s seen him, ” the street vendor said to Yvalu as she showed the woman a holo of Ubalo’s likeness. “On Suntiks, he sat over there in the shade, throwing back lagers, listening to them steel drum bands. ”
“You sure?” Yvalu said, her hopes rising. “You certain?”
“Absolute, ” the woman said. “Certain as Shaddai makes the sun rise and the stars turn.” She made the namaste gesture and bowed. “This mentsh, he were here, same as you stand now.”
I pause to laugh.
“What is it?” Fish says, eyes flashing as she looks up from her pad.
“I’ve figured it out!” I say. “I know how my book will end.”
“Don’t tell me!” Fish says. “I want it to be a surprise.”
“Okay,” I say, smiling. “Okay.”
Later, when the sun dips low, Fish goes home, and I head out to the porch to relax in the cooling afternoon. The early stars emerge, their constellations familiar to me now. The sugarcane bends in the breeze. The crickets chirp in the grass. High above, a ship, bright as a star, moves across the sky and vanishes. I take a deep breath.
