The ship landed on the palace roof, a medical racer designed to ferry people to hospitals. It came down in a roar of hot gases, blasting the pad with exhaust. Warning lamps strobed in the night, their patterns tuned to the palace defenses. The light caught on the surrounding peaks, a reminder that we were on an isolated roof in the mountains rather than an airfield at the starport.
Jaibriol and my father stood next to me, shading their eyes from the glare. We had taken shelter behind a low wall on the roof. As soon as the ship was down, I jogged toward it, running through a wind that whipped my jacket around my body.
The hatch swung open and light streamed out. A woman jumped onto the roof. She wore the uniform of an emergency medpilot, a white coverall with a triangular medical patch on her left shoulder. The hatch closed, cutting off the light as abruptly as it had appeared.
As I stopped in front of her, she bowed from the waist. "Primary Valdoria?"
"That's right," I said. "My father is resting."
"Has he had any more convulsions?"
I shook my head. "Nothing else. But he's not too steady."
"I have an air stretcher for him."
So far she had given the right answers. "What's your name?"
"Erin O'Neill."
It was the name Calloway had provided. The badge on her uniform said Lyra Merson. A good, solid Skolian name. We had a dossier on Merson covering her entire life. And it was false. Every last bit of it. This woman was Erin O'Neill from Earth. If I hadn't had a lot more to worry about, I would have been vexed that the Allieds had planted her so securely in the heart of Headquarters City.
"What were you told?" I asked.
"I'm to take two people offworld, to a location uploaded to my racer by President Calloway."
"Does anyone know your orders besides the President?"
She shook her head. "No one else."
I was betting my life and Jaibriol's on her guarantee of secrecy. "I'm one of the people you're taking."
"Yes, ma'am."
"President Calloway told me that under current Allied law, ship captains can perform marriages in space that are legally binding among your people. Is that true?"
She blinked. "Well—yes. It is."
"Good." Both Imperialate and Trader law recognized Allied marriages. That way, if Jaibriol and I ever had children, they would be our legal heirs. I had no idea what that would mean, but at least they wouldn't be illegitimate.
I spoke into the comm in my wrist guard. "We're ready."
The few lights on the roof went out, leaving darkness and the gusting wind. As O'Neill peered into the shadows, two figures appeared, just silhouettes in the dark. They approached slowly, the shorter figure limping the way my father did when he didn't have his cane. The two men became clearly visible as they reached us. O'Neill gaped at Jaibriol, who was still wearing his prison closed. Then, remembering herself, she closed her mouth and bowed from the waist, first to my father, then to Jaibriol.
I motioned at the racer. "We should get inside."
O'Neill stood aside to let my father climb into the darkened cabin. Jaibriol stepped up next, followed by O'Neill and then me. As soon as the airlock closed, lamps flooded the cabin with light.
The racer was designed for speed and economy. Equipment crammed its cabin: crates with survival-gear patches slapped on their sides; bundles of cloth, nervoplex, rubber, canvas, pipe; barrels ribbed with metal; smaller boxes, brown, grey, green, black, all with labels for mesh nodes or medical supplies. A laser carbine was secured against a bulkhead with its power pack. O'Neill had brought other weapons gear, too: a survival axe, a box of needle bombs more useful for excavation than as weapons, ISC standard issue tools. A bunk hung on the hull and medical webbing lay across it, ready to fasten around a patient.
Jaibriol sank onto the bunk, closing his eyes as he sagged against one of its supporting struts.
I sat next to him. "Are you all right?"
He looked at me. "Just tired."
My father came over and stood there frowning. Jaibriol flushed. Then he grasped one of the cables that held up the bunk and hauled himself back to his feet.
What was this? Another silent communication between Jaibriol and my father, like that business about children? I stood up, looking from one to the other.
My father regarded him sternly. "Are you prepared to take proper care of my daughter?"
I couldn't believe it. I was a Jagernaut Primary, for heaven's sake. "You should ask me if I'm prepared to take proper care of him."
My father glanced at me and gave a slight, wry smile. To Jaibriol, he said, "Maybe that wasn't the most appropriate question." He stood for a moment scratching his chin. "Aren't you a bit young for Sauscony?"
That was almost as bad. Why did he and my mother feel compelled to comment on the age of the men in my life?
Jaibriol regarded my father steadily. "I'll do everything I can to make her happy, sir."
"See that you do," my father said.
O'Neill stood by the co-pilot's seat staring at us with undisguised shock. When she saw me look at her, she let out a breath.
I turned to find my father watching at me. He spoke gently. "Goodbye, daughter."
I started to reach for him just as he raised his own arms. Then I was in his embrace, the same arms that had held me safe when I was a child. I hugged him, laying my head against his shoulder as I closed my eyes. "Good-bye."
"Be well," he whispered. "I love you."
A tear ran down my cheek. "And I you, Hoshpa." I drew back. "Will you tell Mother that I was sorry about what happened on Foreshires. That I told you how much I loved her and how much I wished—" I swallowed. "How much I wished it wasn't so hard for me to tell her."
He rubbed his palm over his face, smearing his tears. "I will."
O'Neill cleared her throat, a quiet sound, almost inaudible. When we looked at her, she said, "I'm sorry—but we should leave. The longer we stay, the more risk of our being discovered."
I made myself nod. My father and I walked to the airlock and stood by the door. When he touched the panel that opened the airlock, the cabin lights went out so no radiance spilled into the night. He let himself back onto the roof in darkness.
I lifted my hand. Good-bye.
He raised his arm to wave. Good-bye, Soshoni.
Then I closed the airlock.
As the lights came on, I went to the forward area of the ship. The racer didn't have a full cockpit, just a section with two seats for the pilot and co-pilot. Erin motioned me toward the pilot's seat. "I was told you can get through the cordon around the planet."
"I'm going to try." Whether I could do it or not was another question altogether.
She slid into the co-pilot's seat. Although no strain showed on her face, I felt her tension. She had drawn a truly odd assignment, risking her life to help people she was supposed to spy on. Jaibriol was sitting on the bunk, leaning against a bulkhead with his eyes closed.
"Jaibriol." My voice softened. "You'd better strap in."
He opened his eyes. Then he lowered himself onto the bunk and stretched out his legs, moving as if every contraction of his muscles hurt.
O'Neill touched a panel on the exoskeleton that lay open around my seat. "This controls the medweb." She pressed the panel, and a rustle came from behind us. Turning, I saw the web fastening around Jaibriol. A thread snaked to his arm, inserted into it—and his eyes snapped open. He grabbed the line and yanked it out of his body.
O'Neill spoke quickly. "It's just glucose fluid, Your Highness. According to the monitors, you're seriously dehydrated."
Jaibriol lay gripping the line, but after a moment, he exhaled and let it drop. It immediately snaked back to his arm and reattached. Although he stiffened, he let it stay. I clenched my teeth, hating whatever Kurj's interrogators or Kryx Quaelen had done to cause his reaction.
As I slid into the pilot's seat, its exoskeleton folded around me and psiphons snicked into my body.
Medline attending, the racer thought.
Linking into the Kyle-Mesh from Medline felt strained and overly formal. Blackstar, the EI on my Jag, would have boosted me into psiberspace immediately, but I had to walk Medline through the procedure, giving instructions at every junction. I entered the Mesh as a wavepacket cowled in black. The grid was alive with the cordon activity, its cords shining harshly, like rays of the too-bright Dieshan sun. Kurj's presence was everywhere, omnipresent. Inescapable? I hid in my cloak.
Virtual reality psiber-simulation, I thought. High orbit.
The grid vanished—and I was in space. Diesha hung before me like a turquoise and amber ball swathed in dirty cotton. The psi-sim used data gathered by the ship's sensors to create a "reality" so complete I felt as if I were here, far out from the planet, analyzing the cordon. It gave me a far better reading of the situation than the visual displays; better even than the mindscape of my Jag. Visual, mindscape, psi-sim: they were three different levels of sensor ability, each more effective than the previous, each more costly. A psi-sim drained its user's mental and physical resources exorbitantly fast, which made it impractical in combat. But to get us out of here, I needed every advantage. If we didn't escape—well, my condition wouldn't much matter then.
A blip appeared over the rim of Diesha. I concentrated and rushed toward it, the sim supplying data faster than an actual ship could safely travel this close to the planet. The blip resolved into an ISC battle cruiser, a ponderous giant big enough to swallow a thousand racers and have room for more. Weapons mountings covered its surface like craters. Its cannon maws alone were big enough to swallow a Magrail train. A host of smaller ships attended it, and docking bays opened like huge jaws ringed with the grotesque metal teeth of jutting equipment. The scene was eerily silent; the atmosphere up here was too thin to carry sound waves.
I moved closer until the cruiser filled my field of view; closer still and I could see every dent and pockmark. The hull curved above and below me like a cliff of metal. Closer yet, and I brushed its hull. I was actually feeling the inside of my exoskeleton, with Medline using its data on the cruiser to recreate the tactile sensations of the ship. But that gritty surface looked and felt authentic.
Backing away, I plummeted to the planet. The view changed with dizzying speed: a ball in space, a curved landscape, a flat one. I plunged through clouds, came out below, and continued dropping until mountains rose around me. No lights showed anyplace except in the peaks where the Imperial palace sparkled like a jewel. I "landed" on the roof of the palace near the flyer I had used to bring Jaibriol here. Medline, the medical racer, sat next to it on a landing pad. I passed through its hull into the cabin, where I saw myself in the pilot's seat with my eyes closed, my body encased in the exoskeleton. It felt bizarre, as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I shook my head—and the head of the pilot moved from side to side. My hair rustled, a noise I heard both with my ears and through the simulation.
"Ready to go?" I asked. It felt odd to speak; usually when I piloted a ship I was in a psilink, making verbal communication unnecessary.
"Ready." O'Neill's forehead creased as she watched me.
"Problem?" I asked.
"I've never seen a pilot make flight preparations with her eyes closed."
"I'm in a psi-sim."
"Can you actually see the cockpit?"
"Better than that." I concentrated on her and a translucent display appeared, glowing red. "You're sitting 48.32 centimeters away from me, turned at a 23 degree angle relative to a line drawn from your solar plexus to the holoscreen directly in front of you. A lock of hair came free of your braid and is hanging next your left eye."
"That's amazing." O'Neill tucked the hair behind her ear.
I took hold of the flystick, seeing it in the sim and feeling it with my hand. As I shoved the stick forward, I withdrew from the ship and arrowed back into the night. The racers's near-planet thrusters fired and exhaust billowed around me, white and hot. The roar of our takeoff vibrated in the landing pad. We rose for several meters and hung there, our thrust just balanced by gravity.
Sauscony . . .
I started. Jaibriol? He shouldn't have been in psiberspace with me. He had no interactive connection to the ship. Hell, he had no biomech web in his body that could link him up.
Can't dissociate from you. His thought felt tired.
Can you pull back any? With no preparation for this, his brain could end up fried when I boosted my interactions with the Mesh. Think of yourself as a program on Medline. Try to run in the background.
A sense of laughter lightened his exhaustion. I will be as quiet as a node-mouse. He created an image of the glove on an old style virtual reality setup. A tail appeared on the glove, then two fuzzy ears, two eyes, and a mouth. The animal ran under the VR apparatus.
I smiled. Then I thought, Medline, retrieve that flyer.
Our port thrusters fired, moving us over the flyer. Hot gases scorched the pad and shook the flyer, but its reinforced hull remained sound. With a grinding clank, Medline extended claws from its belly. They closed around the flyer like a hawk seizing its prey and drew it up against the racer, holding it firm in a cage of metal claws.
Flyer secured, Medline thought. However, the palace defense systems are preparing to fire on us.
What the hell? Show me.
Numerous red blips appeared throughout the mountains, indicating the installations that guarded the palace. Some were isolated gleams of red and others glowed in huge clusters, like fire. As I magnified one cluster, it resolved into a line of laser cannons swiveling toward us, the rumble of their turning a deep growl in the night.
I paged the EI dedicated to the palace security systems. Zos respond.
Here, Zos answered.
Let us leave, I thought.
I can't do that.
Why not?
It violates my programming.
For flaming sakes. I had programmed it. Verify my brain patterns. Then execute the command.
I know who you are. Land or I'll blow up your racer.
I couldn't believe it. How could Zos refuse my commands? I was its damned mother.
You programmed me to protect your family, Zos thought. Jaibriol Qox's escape endangers them. So I am preventing his escape.
That was the problem with the EI knowing me so well; it had figured out my intent. Look, if Jaibriol and I don't get out of here, a lot of people may die, including me. If I'm executed, it may kill my father. So quit messing around and let us go.
No answer.
Damn! What was the confounded computer doing? Zos, respond.
The rumbling of the canons ceased.
Zos?
You may leave.
I let out a breath. Erase all record of this exchange.
Done.
Thank you. I shifted my attention to the racer. Medline, show me the cordon.
Medline showed me the grid of gold lines in the sky. The intersections mark ships in the cordon.
The grid curved into a spherical surface enclosing Diesha. The pattern of squares was perfect, a tribute to the uncompromising order Kurj sought in the universe. Every intersection contained at least one red blip and some had so many they merged into a blaze. As I focused on one fiery blur, it resolved into the mammoth battle cruiser Maxar with its multitude of attendants. Medline flooded me with data, including intelligence reports only someone with my stratospheric clearance could access. But my knowledge of ISC was no help. It only emphasized the impossibility of escape. How would we get through? Those ships would shoot any craft that gave the slightest conceivable hint it was fleeing the cordon.
So do the inconceivable.
Medline, I thought. Invert.
Restate command.
Kick in the inversion engines and get us out of here.
That is impossible.
Never mind that. Just do it.
To invert, we must leave the planet and accelerate to relativistic speed. If we leave the planet, the cordon ships will destroy us.
I didn't say speed up. I just said invert.
To invert, we must speed up.
I had no idea what would happen if we tried to invert while we were at rest. Popular wisdom held that we couldn't complete the process and would cease to exist in a limbo between the real and imaginary universes. Since no one had ever returned from trying it, no one knew if that was true.
I've intercepted a message to command central, Medline thought. The ship waiting to escort us to the hospital wants to know why we're sitting here, holding the flyer.
We had run out of time. Medline, invert.
To invert, we must spee—
Forget that! Just invert, damn it. Now!
Engines engaged.
The twisting started.
As nausea swept over me, the stars and mountains blinked out of existence. No, the mountains disappeared, but the stars remained. They smeared across the sky like spots of paint in a black liquid. Then I realized the mountains were also still there, but smudged into the sky, black on black. We hadn't inverted; we were caught between universes.
I leaked back into the racer and saw myself in the pilot's seat, my hands clenched on its arms, my eyes shut. The sim linked me to reality, but I was barely holding onto it. If I lost that last link to the universe where we belonged, we would melt into this bizarre otherworld. But the sim had drained my resources. I couldn't hold it. The cabin rippled around us and began to fade.
Then Jaibriol moved. He flowed off the bunk like paint dissolving in rain. The intravenous thread slid out of his arm with a drawn-out sucking noise. He crossed the cabin in slow motion, his face a smeared patch above the darker smears of his clothes. His body blurred and ran in dribbles onto the deck. The cabin was twisting, the fore section going to starboard, the aft section going to port. As it contorted, O'Neill and I poured out of our seats, our bodies dripping over the softened exoskeletons. The front of Jaibriol's body ran to one side, the back to the other, spreading him out in the two directions. The cabin continued to twist, trying to close on itself like a Möbius strip.
As Jaibriol reached me, the front half of his body dribbled across the black runnels that were my arms. His hand melted onto the flystick and the flystick spilled forward, splashing over the controls. I felt the thrusters fire. Sort of. Acceleration pasted us into our seats, sloshing our bodies, and Jaibriol melted across my exoskeleton, seeping onto the deck like a surrealistic painter's nightmare.
I couldn't hold the psi-sim steady. I leaked out of the racer, passing through its hull as if it were a film. Only part of me slipped, but it was enough to see the nightmare outside. In this bizarre interstice between universes, the cordon had degenerated into a skyscape of oozing gold lines and red smears. Ships fired, but their missiles and beams pooling uselessly in space. Eerie vibrating noises echoed everywhere. The air slid past me like oil, smelling of exhaust.
We were moving into the cordon. Meedliiinnnne, I thought. Ploooot cooourssssss . . .
The words trickled away. I tried to create an image in my mind of an open space I could see in the deformed grid. Medline responded by heading for the opening. As we approached, the gold lines smeared out wider and wider, filling the hole. By the time we reached it, the opening was gone, but we dribbled past the gold smears like oil soaking through a sponge.
I scraped back along the ship and soaked through the hull, my identity recollecting in the cabin. Jaibriol was lying in a pool on the deck, his body smeared across its surface. Everything was dark. Dim. So dim.
Fading out . . .
Fading in . . .
Data dripped into my mind telling me we had come out of stasis. Medline had cleared the planet enough to fire the photon thrusters. The real part of our velocity was 60% of light speed . . .
. . .96%.
. . .99.999999%.
Our liquefying mass increased by a factor of 7000. The engine sucked in matter from a cosmic ray flux that extended through real and imaginary space, its density far greater than the tiny fraction we saw in the subluminal universe. The racer ate fuel like an insatiable behemoth, hurtling gods only knew where. For eighteen minutes, or maybe eighteen millennia, we poured through space, running on the rim of light speed, trying to invert—trying and failing.
Meeeeeeeddddliiii . . .subliiiight . . .
The cabin went black—
And the twisting stopped.
I gasped, shocked by my sudden solidity. My eyes snapped open. We were accelerating at more than one g, but we were solid. Normal. No, not quite normal. Bits of my uniform were embedded in the seat where Jaibriol had fallen across my arm, and I could see pieces mixed in with my skin too.
"Jaibriol!" My voice rasped. I smacked my palm against the exoskeleton and it unfolded, letting me twist around to see the cabin.
He lay in a heap, sliding along the deck. His legs were flat on the ground as if he were on his back, but his torso was twisted so that from the waist up he was lying on his side. One arm was caught behind him, pulling away from the rest of his body. It made him look distorted, broken in two.
I struggled out of the pilot's seat. As dizziness swooped over me, I slid down to the deck. Then I crawled to Jaibriol. Please don't let him be dead. I lifted his arm, the one behind him, and put it in front of his torso. With a groan, he rolled onto his back, his body relaxing into a normal position. As we slid along the deck, he stared at the bulkhead above him, his gaze unfocused.
I pulled myself up to lie alongside of him. "Can you see me?"
He squinted at my face. "Yes."
"Are you all right?"
"I think so."
"Primary Valdoria," Medline said. "We are using up a great deal of fuel."
"Stop accelerating," I said.
The hum of the engines changed, and Jaibriol and I stopped sliding. As he turned his head, the motion caused him to drift up from the deck.
A groan came from the co-pilot's seat. I pushed off the deck and floated to the cockpit, where my exoskeleton caught my body and pulled me down. O'Neill sat in her own seat, her face pale.
"We made it," she said.
"I hope so." I settled into the exoskeleton. The holomaps in front of my chair showed images of the region where we were traveling, along with graphs charting fuel consumption, trajectory, location, date—
I whistled. "We've jumped three months into the future."
Jaibriol floated over and grabbed the arm of my chair. "That can't be. We've only been traveling a few minutes."
"We never inverted," I said. "So we never compensated for the time dilation." It could work to our advantage, I realized. "They'll search for us in the wrong place. Or I should say the wrong time. They'll be looking for us three months ago."
"That means I haven't reported to President Calloway in three months," O'Neill said. "She must think we're dead."
"Let us hope they all think that," Jaibriol said.
We had lost three months of our lives. Three months had passed since my father gave our story: a desperate Jaibriol had managed to reached the palace and capture the flyer; he tried to adapt its engines for inversion; I and "Lyra Merson" grabbed him with the racer; the backlash of his improperly inverting engines caught us—and after that no one knew what had happened.
"Medline," I said. "Release the flyer."
The grind of opening claws vibrated through the deck. My holomaps showed the flyer riding under us, matching our velocity. I manipulated the claws until they nudged the small vessel, changing its velocity enough that it drifted in front of the racer.
"Blow it up," I told the racer.
The flyer exploded. Debris hurtled in all directions, some coming straight at us on the screens and deflecting away when it hit the protected hull. By the time anyone discovered the wreckage, it would be spread out over too much space for them determine that none of us had exploded with it.
And then it was done.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, overwhelmed by exhaustion as my adrenalin eased.
"Maybe I should take over," O'Neill said.
I managed to nod. While she took the controls, I released my exoskeleton and pulled out of it. Jaibriol and I floated over to the bunk. As we maneuvered onto it, the medweb slid around us both, securing our bodies. And finally we could relax, wrapped in each other's arms. Although I wanted to stay awake, we both slept, dozing and waking sporadically. When we inverted, my stomach rebelled, but this time the twisting lasted only an instant.
Some time later, I awoke to see O'Neill floating by the bunk.
"How are you doing?" she asked.
"All right." My voice sounded raspy, but I felt steadier.
"I put the racer on autopilot," she said. "It will be a few hours, ship's time, before we reach our destination."
Jaibriol stirred. "Where are we going?"
O'Neill took hold of a strut and drew herself down so she was eye level with us. "A planet called Gamma IV."
"What constellation?" I asked. Gamma IV was an incomplete designation.
O'Neill only said, "No one knows it exists except us, President Calloway, and the robot scout that found it four standard days ago—" She paused. "Four days and three months ago. Calloway intercepted the report before anyone else saw it. By now, she will have erased that record."
So. O'Neill wasn't going to reveal its location even to us. "Are there people on the planet?" All these precautions would do no good if someone recognized us.
"No intelligent species," O'Neill said. "A lot of wildlife and some beautiful areas, like the mountains where I'll put you down. That's all we know. We have no surveys." She motioned at the cabin. "I brought as much gear as I could manage without drawing attention. I also got you a solar powered EI with a library. Other than that, you'll be on your own."
What an understatement. True, as a Jagernaut I had survival training. My enhanced speed and strength would help, as would Jaibriol's strapping good health and his intelligence. But it wouldn't be easy. I supposed that had a certain logic from Calloway's point of view. What better way to keep the Highton and Imperial Heirs out of trouble than to set us down in an uncharted wilderness where all our energy would go into staying alive?
O'Neill cleared her throat. "If you wish—I can perform the ceremony."
"Ceremony?" I asked.
"The marriage." She hesitated. "You asked for one . . .?"
I rolled over to face Jaibriol. "Want to marry me?"
He smiled and pushed up on his elbow. "All right."
With that vastly romantic proposal done, we went over to the cockpit and brought up the library files, looking for a ceremony. Medline had several, mostly from Skolian worlds. Then one from Earth caught my attention. It came from the Maya Indians. I noticed because it scrolled up with the image of a woman who reminded me of my grandmother, with her large, dark eyes and luxuriant braid of black hair hanging down her back. The only words we found for it were in a language called Tzotzil. Since we didn't want an AI translating during our wedding, O'Neill made up Skolian words, keeping the spirit of the ceremony.
We needed three candles, a ribbon, thirteen coins, and two rings. For candles, O'Neill dug out penlights from a locker. She found a long string we could use as a ribbon, and she had a handful of coins in her pocket. The rings gave us the most difficulty. We finally took two fittings off a brace on the bunk. We were supposed to kneel at an altar, but since we had neither the altar nor the necessary g-forces, we improvised by floating near the bunk.
O'Neill turned on the penlights and gave us each one, keeping the third for herself. She spoke gently. "May these lights keep your future well lit." Then she tied the ends of the string together and slipped the loop over our heads. "May this ribbon join your lives together as one." She counted out the coins. "May your souls remain safe within you." Handing them to Jaibriol, she said, "Tell her, 'I give these to you, wife.'"
Jaibriol pressed the coins into my hands. "I give these to you, wife." Softly, he added, "It's all I have and I'm afraid it's borrowed, but I give it with all my heart."
I lifted his hand and pressed his knuckles against my cheek, sending us floating into a strut of the bunk. "Then you've made me a rich woman."
O'Neill peered at her notes. "Actually, you say, 'I receive them, husband.' It's the first time you call each other husband and wife."
"I receive them, husband." I glanced at O'Neill. "Don't I give him anything?"
She studied her notes. "It doesn't look like it. You give the coins to whoever marries you."
That seemed rather redundant, given that they were hers to start with. But I offered them. "Thank you."
She smiled. "Keep them. For a memory." She pulled the rings out of her pocket, the motion bumping her against a brace on the bunk. Lifting Jaibriol's hand, she slid a ring onto his fourth finger. Then she handed him the second ring. "You may give it to your bride."
Jaibriol put it on my index finger, where it fit best. It felt odd; I rarely wore jewelry. But that was all right. I would get used to it.
"If I were a priest," O'Neill said. "I would read Mass now. But since I'm not . . ."
"We understand," I said.
"I guess that's it, then." She unhooked a node pad from her belt. "As Captain of this ship, I pronounce you married." She extended the pad toward me. "You both have to sign."
Jaibriol visibly tensed. "If a record exists, someone might find it."
"If we don't make this record, it's not legal," O'Neill said. "I'll give it only to President Calloway." She offered us the pad again. "Why get married if it doesn't mean anything?"
"It means something to us," Jaibriol said. "That's what matters."
"No. She's right." I smiled wanly. "That's how they used to end wars, right? Marry off the children of the opposing forces. And think of our children, if we have any. Illegitimacy will weaken their position. If something happens to us, that may mean a lot more than we can imagine now."
Jaibriol glanced at O'Neill. "Only President Calloway will see this document?"
She nodded. "Unless you ever have reason to ask her for it yourselves."
He let out a breath. "Very well."
So we both signed. And then we were married.
Jaibriol stood with me, both of us looking at the evening sky. Long after O'Neill's ship had dwindled to a speck and disappeared, we continued to stand there, as if by not moving we didn't have to acknowledge we were alone and cut off from the rest of humanity.
Finally Jaibriol sighed. He glanced at the entrance of a cave in the hill next to us. "We ought to set up some sort of defense." He motioned at the heavy forest. "In case anything is out there."
I nodded. "Yes. Of course."
But after we walked inside the cave, we just looked around. The feeble light from our hand-lamps revealing a rocky cavity not much bigger than the cabin of the racer. Crates, boxes, barrels, and bundles lay in piles, as well a neutrino transmitter. We had set up an electrified screen, but we otherwise hadn't done much with the supplies.
Jaibriol took a blanket from a pile. "Let's go outside. Just for a while."
The thought of escaping the dark cave appealed to me also. "All right." I slung the laser carbine over my shoulder and clipped on its power pack.
Outside, we reset up the screen to guard the cave entrance. Then we looked around. A forest of soft-needled trees surrounded us, thinning out to the west into a scorched clearing where the racer had landed. To the north the trees also thinned, opening into what looked like another clearing.
We went north, taking in the feel of the land, and came out onto the apex of a cliff. Peaks spread out as far as we could see, towering slopes that plunged down into valleys and sheered back into the sky, all carpeted by forest. Vertical cliffs showed here and there, their nude faces making patches of white in the otherwise unbroken green. Above the mountains, the sunset burned like red fire lapping against the low clouds. Straight above us the sky had darkened, letting stars wink here and there. In the east, the ragged wedge of a broken moon hung above the peaks.
"It's beautiful," Jaibriol said softly.
"Yes." Beautiful. Wild. Unknown.
After checking the area, we sat on the edge of the cliff with the blanket wrapped around us and the carbine resting on our knees. The wind whispered across our faces while shadows darkened the mountains. More stars appeared, one by one, then tens of them, then hundreds and thousands.
Jaibriol leaned his head against mine. "Home."
Home. It felt strange to say. We had lost so much; everything we knew, everyone we loved. And despite all that had happened, I knew Jaibriol loved his father. But in exchange for those losses, we had gained the hope that someday we, or perhaps our children, could make a difference in the unending war between our peoples. No guarantees existed, no promises, no certainties.
But the hope was there.
We sat together, warm under the blanket. Soon we would return to the cave to make love and sleep and gather our energy for tomorrow, and the tomorrows after that, as we learned to know each other, preparing not only to survive, but to heal for the future, for that day when we might leave here and resume our heritages.
For now, we were content to sit together and watch night unfold.