Milly looked up at Tye. “I have to choose?”
He nodded. “Seems an easy decision, given the situation.”
Milly smiled.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Year 2080 – Maryland
The road back to Washington was pleasant, but Tye couldn’t stop thinking about Milly and Robin. They’d said their goodbyes two weeks prior, when their company turned southeast toward the sea where they’d met the ship that would take them most of the way home. Guilt crawled through him every time he thought about not going with his friends. What if Haven still lived? What would she think of him? He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d abandoned her, but he’d found a purpose, and that pull consumed all others.
Pain shot up his right leg and arm. Being old sucked, and he’d gotten used to living in a modern society that had drugs, doctors, and an array of support services that made aging palatable, if not enjoyable. Sometimes it was like living a dream, and he’d wake up lying under the blaze of the desert sun, the sound of mortars and gunshots thundering over the hills of sand in Iraq, the last fifty years nothing but a dream. He thought often about his days as a soldier. Everything had been so clear, his enemy and purpose defined.
He’d given a note to Milly explaining things, should his wife still be alive, and the knight accompanying Milly brought a radio with a solar panel. The hope was Respite and Argartha could establish a schedule of regular communication. If he discovered Haven still lived, he might change his mind and go home, but for now he’d decided, and his friends were gone.
The path he followed led through the kudzu and weeds to what Milly had dubbed the Soldier’s Woods, Arlington National Cemetery, the same place he and his friends had trekked through the first time he’d come to Washington. The Order for Historical Preservation maintained the path, and the turtle, but nobody had arrived looking for Argartha while he’d been on duty. In the last twenty-seven months he, Milly, Robin and Ingo had been the only people admitted into Argartha.
He thought of Tester often, and more than once he’d come around a bend in the road, or over a rise, expecting his friend to be leaning against a tree, or lying at ease in the weeds. When he’d asked why Tester had been rejected, he’d been told there was too much darkness in him, and he couldn’t be trusted. What did he really know about Tester, anyway? Not much, but he knew his heart wasn’t dark.
Tye stumbled, and pain shot down his leg again and his chest hurt. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and took a pull of water from his canteen. The midday heat had soaked him through, and his head pounded in rhythm with his heart.
He looked forward to getting back to the library. Besides helping secure the old Library of Congress, and maintaining the turtle, he had a research assignment that entailed looking through the tattered volumes stacked in the library basement. Argartha wanted to reach out around the world, send emissaries to the pockets of civilization like Respite, and develop plans to seek communities still hidden and alone. To bring the world back from the edge would require teamwork, and expertise of all types. Sharing food, drugs, resources and solutions would bring people together, and the way to do that was study the past.
Few old timers were left. As his generation died, only the older reborn would remember the days when a President ruled in the White House, and wars got waged over arbitrary borders, and for black gold. He’d fought for oil, though he hadn’t felt that way back then. He was serving his country. Now he understood he’d been a cog in the economic war machine, and that’s why he was part of the group charged with making sure that never happened again.
The remains of a stone wall cut across the path, and Tye pulled himself onto a shard of marble, straining to get his leg over. Pain pierced his chest, and he slid down the boulder to the ground. His breath caught in his throat, and a thousand pounds dropped on his chest. He tipped over and rolled in the weeds, struggling to breathe.
A million pinpricks of light danced, and panic rose in him like the tide. He sat up, and put his back against a tree, ragged breaths escaping his constricting lungs. His vision faded to dark, his hands trembled, and pain shot from his chest to every extremity of his body.
He looked to the sky, and the clouds parted and a ray of sunlight warmed his face. The ache eased, but his breath didn’t return. He saw Haven, his mother and sister, and they smiled, beckoning him to join them.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Year 2080 – Pacific Ocean
The sea was calm, the wind gentle but steady, and the Santa Maria II cut through the water with ease. Milly sat on the bow with her feet dangling over the side, enjoying the cool sea spray. Robin sat beside her, a permanent smile affixed to her face. They’d done it. They’d travelled to the new world and now it was time to return home as heroes.
“It’s like the sacred texts,” Robin said. “Everything ends where it began.”
“Yeah, let’s hope all the trees aren’t uprooted and everything burned,” Milly said.
“They planted a new party tree in Hobbiton,” Robin said. Her old friend’s skin sagged, her face covered with liver spots and freckles,
