Russian Spring (95 page)

That had been a glorious, and terrible, and infuriating moment for Bobby, the cheers, and the lights, and the cameras, Dad’s ashen face as they lowered the gurney from the plane, the mad dash wheeling him through the press of reporters to the helicopter, the microphones shoved in his face . . .

Too much had gone on too fast for Bobby to really have time to feel anything, and now, locked in an awful deathwatch in a hospital room in Palo Alto, he found himself almost wishing the press, with its noise and lights, would find this place and burst into the room waving microphones and cameras.

Anything to break this deathly stillness.

Franja stood beside him, numb and stony-eyed. Mom, who had long since cried herself dry, sat by the bedside. Dr. Burton stood at the other side of the bed, watching the life-signs monitors expectantly, a sunny blond vulture in medical greens. Sara hung back at the rear of the room, looking rather lost.

Dad lay in the bed, breathing shallowly, and Bobby tried to convince himself that his father was feeling no pain, that he was just finally slipping away into a dreamless sleep.

He had been conscious only three times on the trip back from the Moon, and, according to Franja, he had not really been coherent, babbling things she could not understand.

“But his face, Bobby,” Franja told him, “you should have seen it. I never saw him look so happy.”

Dad had been at the edge of death by the time they had helicoptered him to Immortality, Inc., but he rallied tantalizingly under intensive medical care, hanging on for three days now, neither quite dead, nor truly alive.

“If only we could blue-max him,” Burton had fretted. “But no, we have to wait for clinical brain death, it’s the damn law!”

And so the awful deathwatch had begun, and continued, and dragged, on, and on, and on, until now Bobby could only stand there, wishing for it to be over, wishing for his father to finally die.

“Sonya . . .”

Dad’s eyes were still shut, but they were moving fitfully beneath his eyelids like those of a man in a dream, and his lips were moving weakly, and out of them came a dry whispery sound.

“I’m here, Jerry!” Mom said, squeezing his hand.

Dad’s eyes slowly opened, swept weakly around the room, closed again. “I did it,” he whispered, “I walked on water.”

Bobby shot a glance at Burton, who nodded and departed. Then Bobby took Franja’s hand, and they knelt down by the bedside.

“Yeah, Dad,” he said softly, “you really
are
a bona fide citizen of outer space now.”

Dad’s eyes opened again and looked right at him for what Bobby knew would be the last time. And there was something in them, something brave, and crazy, and somehow satisfied, that almost let him make his peace with that.

“It’s okay, Bob,” Dad told him, as if reading his heart. “I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, it’s not the end, just the end of the beginning . . .”

“Father—”

“What a life you’re going to have, Franja!” Dad said. “You’re going to live in the golden age of space travel. You’re going to be one of the people who makes it all happen. Someday you’re going to sail one of our little canoes into the harbor of a great galactic city. I know it. I’ve seen it. It’s out there waiting for us, you and me, Franja, you and me. . . .”

Franja burst into tears. Bobby hugged her to him.

Father smiled. “You two go now, please,” he said. “I think your mother and I would like to be alone. Take care of each other. Let me remember you like this at the end.”

“Oh, Father!”

“Let it be, big sister, let it be,” Bobby said, and he led her away.

“Sonya . . . I want you to do something for me,” Jerry whispered, his voice growing dimmer with every syllable, his eyes closing heavily at the very end.

“Anything, love . . . ,” Sonya said, leaning closer. “Jerry? Jerry?”

Slowly Jerry’s head rolled over on the pillow toward her, slowly, even more slowly, he fought to open his eyes one last time. And then they were looking right at her, and were it not for what she saw there, she would have quite fallen apart.

But Jerry’s eyes were bright and strong, and his dry cracked lips were creased in a faint smile. “Don’t cry, Sonya,” he whispered. “I’ve been there . . . I’ve seen it . . . starships sailing through the darkness like great ocean liners toward cities circling far distant suns . . . that’s where we’re all going, Sonya, won’t it be grand . . . ?”

Sonya didn’t know whether to rage or to laugh or to cry.

Even now! Even at death’s door! Still her urban spaceman to the very end! Never had she loved him more.

She had always thought she had loved him in spite of this.

Now she finally understood that this was the heart of everything she had loved him for.

“Sonya . . . Sonya . . .”

“Yes, Jerry, I’m here.”

“I want you to do something for me.”

“Anything, love.”

Jerry’s eyes looked down at the hibernautika sitting by his bedside, back into her eyes. “Turn me off,” he said.

“Jerry!”

“Turn me off, Sonya!” he said much more strongly. “Let me go!”

“Don’t ask me to do that!” Sonya cried. “You know I can’t!”

“Sure you can, Sonya,” Jerry told her. “It’ll be just like going to sleep. Like Rip van Winkle. And I’ll wake up in a brand-new world.”

“Oh, Jerry,” she cried, despite herself, “how can you talk like that even now?”

“Because I believe it, Sonya.”

“You really believe it?” Sonya sobbed.

“Of course I do. I’ve seen it. I know it. This is the beginning of the golden age of miracles. Impossible dreams are happening every day. You’re the one who’s always telling me to read the papers, Sonya.”

“Oh, Jerry, I just can’t stand the thought of losing you!” Sonya moaned. “Is that so wrong?”

Jerry’s lips creased in a weak little smile that his eyes made absolutely radiant. “Then let’s not lose each other, Sonya,” he said. “Live a good long happy life,” he told her. “Think of it as a nice long separate vacation. But when it’s over—”

“Jerry—”

“—when it’s over, you come home to me.”

“Oh, Jerry!”

“Let them put you in the time machine too, Sonya. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“Oh, Jerry, Jerry . . .”

“Promise me, Sonya!”

“I promise, love,” Sonya said, willing to say anything to avoid saying the final good-bye.

Jerry sighed. He squeezed her hand one last time before his strength failed him. His head rolled away from her with a heartbreaking smile, and he stared at something he saw on the ceiling, smiling still.

“I’ve got a wonderful idea, Sonya,” he whispered. “Have them put it in our contracts. Let’s not let them wake us up for five hundred years. Let’s not wake up until we can take the grand tour together again, let’s begin our new lives with a long second honeymoon out among the stars. Wouldn’t you like to do that, Sonya?”

“More than anything else in the world . . . ,” Sonya said quite truthfully.

“Don’t you believe that we will?”

“Yes, Jerry, I do,” she lied.

“Then I’m ready to go there now,” Jerry said. “Time to pull my plug.” And he closed his eyes and spoke no more.

Sonya sat there by the bedside for a long, long time, listening to his agonized breathing falter away, watching his smiling tranquil face freezing into its final mask, crying and crying and crying, and waiting for some outside force to end this endless moment.

But nothing did.

Nothing would.

And somehow, she knew, nothing should.

Finally, she thought of the foolish promise she had made him, to join him five hundred years after this moment was ended, a promise that had been made without belief, but now, she suddenly knew, not without a commitment of the heart.

And that had been his parting gift to her, a gift that she now saw had been hers for the taking all along if only she had made the leap of faith to seize it.

You can walk on water, Sonya, but first you have to find something worth walking on water
for
.

He had always had a dream like that and she never had. She had envied him that, and loved him for it.

But now he had finally succeeded in giving it to her. She could accept his most precious gift at last. She could believe it. She could feel it.

She could see them sitting there with a foaming bottle of champagne, toasting each other in a sidewalk café in another City of Light on a planet circling a far-distant sun, and looking back on this moment with a warm nostalgic glow as their true betrothal of the spirit.

“Let it be right,” she whispered. “Let it be so.”

And she reached out a loving hand and tenderly pulled the plug.