An End (41 page)

Eight was there. Mirror after mirror, but no true

Crucifixion.

The bubble was bigger than a destroyer, and at its center they gently, gingerly removed my clothing, affixed bindings to my arms and legs. Whistler was always in good cheer. I was silent except for breathing, heartbeat, whispers between

I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. I felt her, knew. There with me. Tears wept for me. But I couldn’t fight. The restraints were painless.

This is Machine. This is your forever home.

Walkway withdrew and the painter and ghosts left the chamber. A heartbeat echoes from walls miles apart.

The bubble sea began to flood from the bottom of the chamber. Slowly, faster, faster. I strained at first against that tide, closed eyes and mouth and held breath until my temples throbbed, lungs screamed out, but in the end it was useless. I resigned myself to that. I opened my eyes in the shimmer of phased glass and took a breath and saw

Machine glistening with the churn of phase, preparing for the beginning of an exile and

Whistler’s corvette departing from Machine’s hangar and

Berard’s lesser galleon flying at it and

Berard’s ship itself blinking from the system to escape and

the lesser galleon crushing Whistler’s corvette against Machine’s phased hull and

bodies spinning off into space, erupting and

destroyers on Catalyst target trajectory and

i felt

her

safe, for now, in Berard’s galleon, running away

and

Machine began.

The shudder of a million phase drives, each and every particle of my being dissembled, wrapped in warm viscous glass, ripped apart and placed tenderly back together, that tickle, that annoying tickle everywhere, everything. A vessel the size of

I faded into the stars, into tomorrow and yesterday on a path into uncertainty. All I knew was that we were going far, going fast, going away from Lilith, away from Earth, into the deep Outer. No aliens, no robots, no things that go bump in the night, but ultimate terror at the realization of my isolation. This was the beginning of my forever exile, ordered by a woman now a child, ordered out of spite and frustration because I tried to stop her from ending a species.

Stretched out far beyond body, mind, soul, stretched beyond that vessel of glass and rock, metal forged from planets and asteroid belts. One with everything, yet solitary in that void.

Memory and desire, an ocean of scattered, shattered images: arch of eyebrow, line of nose, colors of eyes: forevers and hands, long lithe fingers, tips tracing my cheek. Lips. And. Smoothness of cheek: hers. and philtrum, the way the lips part, the way lip to gum to teeth: smile. Neck. Collar bones and the space between breasts, the skin above her heart, precious, accelerated heart, that weapon that I denied, that weapon I loved. Love. Will

Screaming, crying out, but there was no one.

Given years to ponder eyes, given decades to wonder in those eyes: futures. One. and I

How much of myself did I hold in that stillness between our gazes?

long-winded, esoteric. self-indulgent

but what more do I have?

I remember memories not my own. Coffee and marbles and cigarettes. Discussions of subjunctive case, sub-human species, something about a pillow, cheek-biting, and robots that complained about films.

I know now that Berard ordered one of his galleons to ram the Whistler corvette. Ultimate sacrifice by men I never knew, never will. They died to save my Lilith, to save the

The shudder of a billion phase drives. Decentralized soul. Faster than light, out and north, as the stars go, toward that single wish. Sense of nonsense, the mind expands to embrace, yet there is no one there, no one forever out there.

Felt her fading, that touch... That touch faded. Until. lost.

Alone: screaming because I didn’t know how to stop.

c:\ format c.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

i think she’s perfect.

when she’s here, i’m really here. when she leaves, a part of me leaves with her, that splinter of my eternal being that has hidden within her beautiful heart forever, and has finally returned after so long away. we resonate as one.

i know that someday we won’t have this distance dividing us, these difficulties keeping us apart. i know each time that i look into her eyes that this time it is forever. i am patient. i can’t imagine a lifetime without her, now that i’ve found her.

she fell asleep in my arms, and i followed her willingly, but not before studying every inch of her face, impressing each line around her ancient eyes, the bullethole dimple, the shape and feel of lips, the arch of eyebrow, the warmth of exhalation. so warm under that comforter, bodies curled together, limbs intertwined. i felt her breathing regulate, saw the flicker of her eyes behind closed lids, fell asleep with the girl i love in a perfect moment of peace.

this is nothing like i’ve ever known, and i can’t wait for our next moment.

i see forevers in her eyes.

Shudder of a trillion phase drives, and I realized the depth of my loss.

I knew that Mother would send someone else to get Lilith. The loss of Whistler and my ghosts wouldn’t stop her. She’d make someone else, send them in a faster ship, hunt that galleon down. She’d take her time, do it right this time. She had me out of the equation now, but her daughter was still loose. The most important piece of the jihad was somewhere between stars and times. I thanked Berard, hoped he knew. Hoped he’d take care of Lilith for as long as he could. I knew that Mother would get her eventually; I just had to find a way to escape from Machine before it was too late.

my silence is my self defense

Machine eventually severed my restraints, allowed me to swim free. There was nowhere to go; I was no threat.

He wasn’t the best conversationalist. I’d ask questions that he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. He’d give answers that I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe. He had faith in Mother’s plan. He was friendlier than Gary.

I found numbness in those years.

Wondered what she was doing, if she was safe, if she’d been captured, if they had made the final attack on the “alien” homeworld. I didn’t know at the time that my father’s fleet had been the first wave, and that as a result of his discovery and attack, the “aliens” had hidden a star and half of their planets in a systemship. I didn’t know at the time that fate would bring our paths together in a very palpable collision.

I know now that during those vague and silent monthsyearsdecades, Whistler and ghost Nine caught up with Berard’s galleon, fought the crew to the death. They found Lilith on the bridge, about to activate the destruct sequence. A heart breaks to think that she would take her own life. A heart breaks to know that I took her life with my own hands, and she lays here in my arms, blood now tacky brown, lips parted as if she wants to say something, but eyes closed in sleep, eternal sleep. I’ve killed her.

Mother’s plan had changed. She no longer wanted a trusted angel to oversee the jihad. She got greedy. She wanted her daughter back, and she wanted to go to find Hannon and kill him herself in a ship named War, with a painter, a cowboy, a ghost. She wanted vengeance. She was dying, as she is now, each moment growing a little younger, feeding from this desert plain, the silver within my dying body, the silver that whispers to her even now:
purpose. completion.
an end.

kissing the life into something that’s already died

When she reached to activate destruct, they shot off her hand.

Precious cargo: Catalyst. Maire was a jealous mother. She wanted her little flower returned.

Slipping into madness. Strength through calm, confidence. No room for weakness, emotion, showing that emotion. The weak show emotion. The most poignant struggle: devotion to what seemed a lost cause, drowning within phase and something so much more. Never gave up hope, although voices commanded from the space behind eyes. Grasped to that which was ineffable: memory, cherished memory. Wound. To wound. Me.

Would I have taken my own life, given something more than a bubble, an ocean, a Machine voice?

Hold on... So tightly to those memories, of the moments, the sighs, the

To know that I killed her... To know that a fragment of me shot her hand off. Did he love?

How the work suffers for lack of clarity. How these final moments seem so trivial, not a fitting testament at all to a love that spanned decades and souls and something so much more than words. Ours is the story of a plague; we were the lost soldiers; mine are the tainted lips; ours is the broken love, spreading this contagion through the night. It is almost over.

The child looks younger.

Frantic now because I can feel its grip tightening. Silver. Suffocation. Crawling. It whispers.

They shot off her hand and took her home. They left Berard’s vessel to collapse upon itself.

I can only imagine her fear, her confusion. Going home to a world now dead, now empty of all life except the child sleeping at its center, the machines she made in those centuries, hollowing out the planet to create Guerra, and a cowboy named Hank. Fictional character, but she made him real. Twisted mind of a broken child playing god: let’s build a cowboy.

Lilith went home to meet the mother she’d only known through dreams, through whispers at night, through that tickle at the base of the skull. Role-reversal: child becomes adult, adult becomes child. They fed on one another, fed on this war created by silver. One died as one lived.

I miss her. She’s right here in my arms, in my heart, but I miss her. For the first time in so long, that touch is gone.

Let me fall; let me join her soon, but not before vengeance. Please give me strength.

Whistler and Nine safely transported her home to a dead world, a dying parent. Maire and Whistler and Nine and Hank and Lilith, all strapped into Gary, turning Earth inside-out in his departure, killing our home that we barely knew, feeding from the entire system to fuel his journey beyond light. Maire knew the target, knew even then: a systemship within which Hannon had hidden a star, a dying god, the last remnants of his species.

They flew.

I remember Machine’s capture, the collision and scraping. I remember the draining bubble, torches cutting into my prison, that tug of language behind the eyes as they lifted me out.

i don’t feel worthy of her sometimes. i’m trying to learn, but it is difficult. she is beauty beyond beauty, kindness beyond kindness, that soul and those eyes that i’ve felt and seen for so long and now with whom i’ve finally been re-united.

she sees beauty in things that i’ve taken for granted for years.

i’ve never felt that complete: arms around my girl, in that place, in that moment.

i saw beauty in the forever we share.

The child speaks to me without words, begging. Begging. Time is paused; this weapon

The truth I saw finally in Hannon’s eyes, the lifetimes he saw in mine. He’d found me, or maybe I found him, drawn together between stars and times by the ineffable, inexplicable. Our paths intersected and it was the way it was supposed to be.

Moments of proof and realization.

Maire’s attack on god, that clandestine infection of the host body, the release before her exile... The infection had spread to every world in Hannon’s system. Immediate, deadly, certain. This was a different silver, pure from the lumbers, pure from Maire’s time on the edge of the system. Will we ever know where it came from?