IGMS Issue 22 Page 8

  And all I could think about was the clouding of the Link.

  I chanced a switch to ordinary radio. It too was jammed. In desperation, I tried a message laser. The beam lanced out towards where I knew Wanda should be.

  "Wanda," I broadcast to my flank-mate. "Resume parallel course with me. We're going to get the hell out of here."

  "How?" she replied, her thoughts muted by the ordinariness of the laser signal.

  "Just keep the laser communication open and follow me. Maximum pulse."

  We broke and ran, delta-vee ferocious, pulsing at the limit of our structural integrity. I felt my ship complaining around me, the internal sensors going from blue to green to yellow to orange. I indicated to Wanda a somewhat diffuse sector in the enemy fleet and lasered for her to get her antiproton gun ready.

  It took agonizing moments for both of our weapons to reach capacity, then we fired in unison, clearing a path through the Swarmer cloud approximately twenty kilometers wide. We pulsed like crazy, seeing the escape window begin to close almost as quickly as it had opened. I lasered to Wanda to drop behind me as I waited for my gun charge, then fired it again, re-opening the path.

  A particle beam lashed me but it was a glancing blow. Systems across my ship went red.

  "Rordy," Wanda said through the laser, "we're not going to make it."

  "We have to make it," I lasered back. "We're all that's left. Someone has to get out of here. Get to the transluminal boundary. Go find and tell the others who are left."

  "We can't abandon Eden," she said.

  "Eden will be fine," I told her.

  Then I sent across my trap door spider hypothesis, and she understood.

  "As long as they think some of us are still out there," I lasered, "they won't destroy Eden. Not yet. Not when they know there are people around who will come."

  Another particle beam bit me. Then another. These were smaller, from the littlest ships in the Swarmer line. I opened up with my antiproton weapon and re-cleared the corridor a final time. Most of me was red -- which meant dead -- and I wondered how much bigger I might make the hole if I simply dropped the antimatter containment separators entirely when I hit the demarcation point of the Swarmer line -- giving Wanda a great big hole.

  "No!" Wanda lasered, it was almost a scream.

  "It's the only way," I said to her.

  "Rordy --"

  I triggered the antimatter containment separators, and a huge, very-bright flash burned across my few remaining optical sensors. Not from the inside, but the outside. What?

  All my systems shut off.

  I opened my eyes.

  The sky was deepening to evening, and a small wave of water tumbled across my bare legs as I lay on the sand.

  "Hello," said a woman's voice.

  I turned my head, only to see Wanda's Edenite body.

  Memory loop. Must be. I closed my eyes and tried to shut it off, when the woman's voice said, "Rordy, it's me."

  I opened my eyes again, and sat up.

  "What . . . happened?"

  "I activated my transluminal reactor," she said.

  "Ships that go transluminal that close to a star, don't come back," I said.

  "We almost didn't," she said. "You were torn to shreds, and I wasn't going to last much longer either. I figured if we had to go out, why not go out with a bang."

  "Die on our feet?" I said.

  "Something like that," Wanda said. She smiled.

  "So how did we end up back here?"

  "I still had the coordinates for Eden orbit in my transluminal calculator. When I jumped, it fried the system, but the transluminal rebound took what was left of both of us and deposited us at one of Eden's lagrange points. Your ship was pretty messed up. I had to grapple yours to mine, then I soft-landed us both in a crater on one of Eden's asteroid moons."

  "The Swarmers will detect the Link and come looking for us," I said.

  "No they won't. I ordered a one-way core dump into our Edenite bodies. We're stuck here now, but we're both in one piece. Hope you don't mind."

  I shrugged. "Beats the alternative."

  Many minutes passed, and I watched the sky as the gentle waves lapped against my new body. A faint arm of the Milky Way slowly rose over the horizon and eventually the night sky filled with stars.

  "What do we do now that we're stuck here?" I asked.

  "Rordy, I think you were right. About the Swarmers not destroying Eden as long as they believe there are some of us left in the galaxy to snare. That means there's still a chance we can set humanity free. Still a chance to start over, get these people someplace that's safe."

  "It'll take an awfully long time," I said. "The Edenites can't even build or launch a bottle rocket, much less an orbital booster. We'll have to find a way to communicate without the Link and industrialize without tipping our hand."

  Wanda said, "You were pretty fired up before about wanting to get the Edenites out of the stone age. This is your big chance."

  I said nothing.

  Wanda remained quiet for a time, both of us watching as the side-on disc of the galaxy drifted slowly overhead.

  "You were going to say something," I said quietly.

  "What?" she said.

  "I was about to blast a path for you through the Swarmer fleet, and you said my name. But I cut you off before you could finish."

  "It was nothing important," she said.

  I didn't believe her, but I didn't want to push it. So I beckoned for her to sit.

  She sat next to me with her chin on her knees. We'd barely known each other before Earth was destroyed, and had only the briefest of time to get acquainted before we'd been downloaded into our separate ships and sent into battle. Maybe this was an opportunity for us, too.

  "Well," I said, "if we had to be exiled somewhere, this place isn't too bad."

  "True," Wanda said.

  "Teaching these people the basics of math, chemistry, physics, engineering --"

  "It'll be fun having something to work on," Wanda said quickly. "Together."

  "Yes, it will," I said. And meant it.

  I turned to stare at her dark shape, the faint light of our galaxy shining on the water. There wasn't a whole lot to say, so I searched until I found her hand. I squeezed it. She squeezed back: a sensation that suddenly filled me with more true feeling than I'd had in a long, long time.

  Together, we began to make our plan.

  The Long Way Home

  by G. Norman Lippert

  Artwork by Nick Greenwood

  * * *

  Henry Spalding walked along the bumpy sidewalk of Beech Avenue thinking that it was amazing just how fast ten years could go by. Jake, his son, had been a baby when Henry's ex-wife, Stephanie, had moved them to the rusty little town of Buena Vista, Virginia, and Henry had followed, abandoning his manager's job at Blake Construction and taking what he'd expected to be a temporary shift as an assembly operator at the local Dana plant. Now, a decade later, Henry was still working the same shift, and Jake was nearly eleven years old. The wildly impetuous kid that had once trotted along hand in hand with his father had grown into an increasingly sulky young man. Henry tried not to think about it. He had learned as a child how not to think about things: it was how he got through life.

  The evening sun painted long tree shapes across the road as he turned onto Twenty-Third Street. The houses here were small and weathered, with dormers crowding their sagging roofs and tree roots pushing humps up beneath the sidewalk, reminding Henry of his childhood home of Clyde, Ohio. Of course, Clyde had been neater, with its immaculate old Town Hall and busy Main Street. By comparison, Buena Vista's half-empty downtown was a grungy ghost town. There wasn't even a decent bar, like the old Eagles Lodge back home on Main Street, or its lesser counterpart, the Clyde Piper. Henry didn't mind that. Lately, he preferred to do his drinking alone. He approached the house, his work shoes clumping on the wooden front steps.

  "Jake," Stephanie's voice hollered from inside. "Your fa
ther's here. Don't forget to put Sig on his leash."

  She met him at the screen door just as he reached for the handle.

  "He'll be around in a minute," she said through the screen. "He's out back with some friends." Henry saw the boxes behind her, stacked in the front room with handwritten notations on them: KITCHEN, J's BEDROOM, DEN.

  "You need a hand with any of those, Steph?" Henry asked quietly, nodding toward the boxes.

  "No. Greg's done a great job helping us get everything together. He's here now, finishing the upstairs bedrooms."

  No wonder Steph wasn't inviting him in. "You sure? I can carry some boxes to the truck."

  "We're not carrying them," Steph sighed impatiently. "The movers are coming on Monday. All we have to do is have it all packed, and we're almost done. Thanks."

  Henry hated talking to her through the screen door. "Are you sure? I could at least bring down the head boards and dressers --"

  "Henry, stop," Stephanie interrupted curtly. "I know this is how you show you care, by doing little jobs, but really, Greg and I have it handled. Just take your walk with Jake and Sig and try to get back before the mosquitoes get too bad."

  Greg and I. Henry hated the way she said it. There had been other men in her life since him, of course, but Greg was the one that made it all real. In less than a week they'd be gone, moved out of Buena Vista, and taking Jake with them. They were going to California, where Greg had gotten some big computer job. Henry tried to be glad for them. He was glad that Steph would finally have the security she'd always wanted, even if it wasn't him who'd be providing it. What he was really unhappy about was that, this time, he couldn't follow them. He had moved to Buena Vista to be near his son, and now they were leaving him here, like an unwanted dog.

  There were footsteps on the sidewalk behind Henry. He turned and saw Jake standing there, not looking at him. Sig's leash dangled from his hand. The dog grinned up at him and panted in the evening sun.

  "Hey, Jake," Henry said, clomping down the steps to join him.

  Jake mumbled something, but still didn't make eye contact. Henry took the leash from him. Sig, their old German Shepherd, immediately trotted ahead, leading them back out toward Beech Avenue. Henry and Jake followed.

  Henry no longer reached down for his son's hand. They simply walked together in silence.

  Cars and pickup trucks passed them on Beech. A sudden breeze shushed in the bushes and carried trash along the gutter.

  Henry finally asked, "So, you know anything about your new school?"

  Jake sighed harshly and pushed his hair out of his face. "Same crap, different city."

  A flare of dull anger lit Henry's thoughts but he pushed it back. Soon enough Jake wouldn't be using the word crap. Adulthood loomed over his son like a bomb. Henry pushed on. "You'll make new friends if you remember what I taught you. I bet they'll even have one of those half-pipes and stuff."

  "I haven't skated in like two years."

  The anger surged again, and this time Henry couldn't restrain it. "Why would you lie to me about something so stupid, Jake? I just saw you and those juvie buddies of yours skateboarding on the street not two days ago. You think I'm blind or something?"

  Jake blinked aside at his father, his brow darkening. "That's skateboarding. I was talking about roller-blading. I wasn't trying to --"

  "Call it what you want, it amounts to the same thing and you know it. You need to stop wasting your time on stuff like that and find something useful to do. Nobody ever got anywhere in life skateboarding in the street or mooning around on the computer all night and blowing off their homework."

  Henry saw the folded sheet of school work poking from his son's back pocket. He snatched it up and unfolded it before Jake realized what he was doing.

  "Hey! Give that back!"

  Henry shook his head as he peered down at the creased sheet of paper. It was a spelling test with a big apple printed on the upper right corner. Across the top, in red handwriting, was a teacher's note: 16 of 20 -- Not bad! The words were accompanied by a smiley face. The nape of Henry's neck bristled at the sight of it. He flipped the page over and stared at the back. It was covered with a large pencil doodle.

  "What's this?"

  "It's nothing!" Jake said, his face reddening. "Give it here!" He jabbed his hand toward the paper.

  Henry stared down at it. The drawing showed a ridiculously muscular man wearing armor, a horned helmet, and enormous fur-fringed boots. He was holding a bloody sword in one-hand and a severed dragon's head in the other. It was very good.

  Henry's first, irrational instinct was to crumple the drawing in his fists.

  "I know I shouldn't be wasting time in class, all right?" Jake admitted grudgingly. "You don't have to say it."

  Henry studied the drawing a moment longer. Finally, wordlessly, he handed it back to his son. Jake took it, folded it again, and stuffed it back into his pocket. They walked on.

  Henry fumed to himself. He didn't want to yell at Jake. All it ever accomplished was to turn the boy sullen for the rest of their walk. If only Jake weren't so damned moody. So goddamned odd all of a sudden.

  But of course, soon enough, none of that would be Henry's problem anymore. Other than the occasional phone call and summer visit. He shook his head bitterly.

  Sig turned the corner onto Alpine, following the familiar route they had taken so many times before. Henry had originally named the dog Siegfried. That had been before the divorce, when the world had seemed just the sort of whimsical place for dogs with quaintly absurd fairy-tale names. As a child, Jake hadn't been able to say the word Siegfried, of course, thus Sig had stuck, and what a cute story that once had seemed. The dog angled sharply to the side and lifted a leg beneath the street sign.

  "I was thinking we'd stop at Kenney's on the way back for a . . ." Henry began, but his voice drifted away as he looked up, toward the street sign that Sig was peeing on. The street sign was different. He frowned distractedly at it. The colors of the sign were different, but that wasn't the really odd thing. It was the street name.

  "George?" Henry read aloud, still frowning.

  "Huh?" Jake glanced back over his shoulder.

  Henry looked aside at his son, and then up at the sign again. He pointed at it. "It says George Street. Not Alpine. What's that all about?"

  Jake didn't answer. He didn't seem to care. A moment later, Sig tugged at the leash, finished with his business. They walked on.

  It was nothing, of course. Maybe someone from the Public Works department had just screwed up and installed the wrong sign on the wrong corner. Dumber things had happened. But still. Was there even a George Street in Buena Vista? Lots of small towns had a George Street. Clyde had had a George Street. Henry had delivered The Sandusky Register along it when he'd been a kid. But he'd never heard of a George Street here. It nagged at him.

  And then he saw the Dumpster. It was in the same place as always, up on the corner of Twenty-Sixth and Park, behind the now defunct Seventh Inning sports bar. Henry stared at it as they made their way slowly toward it, their feet crunching in the uneven gravel along the side of the road. There were words stenciled onto the Dumpster's side, words that Henry was pretty sure had not been there before. He read them with a strange mixture of disbelief and bemusement:

  CLYDE PIPER BAR REFUSE ONLY- 13 BRUSH ST.

  NO PERSENAL TRASH!!

  "Jake," he said, pointing with his left hand, "you see that sign? Up there on the Dumpster?"

  Jake looked at the Dumpster, and then up at his father, squinting. "Yeah. What about it?"

  "Has it always been there?"

  Jake frowned and shook his head. "I dunno. Probably. What's with you and signs today, Hank?"

  Henry nearly stumbled on the gravel. "What did you just call me?"

  "What? Nothing. Jeez."

  "What did you just say?"

  "I said what's with you and signs today? You all hooked on phonics or something?"

  Henry smiled, and then shook
his head. The smile turned into a bemused laugh. "I could've sworn you . . ."

  He didn't go on. Nobody called him Hank anymore. Especially not his son. It had been nearly thirty years since he'd last heard that name."

  As they passed the Dumpster, Henry turned to look back at it. He couldn't see the stenciled letters anymore. The Dumpster was huddled against the cinder blocks of the old bar, growing dim in the shadows as the sun dipped below the town's roofs. Sig turned into the narrow alley next to the bar. As he did, the streetlamps began to flicker on, pulsing alight along the entire length of the business district.

  Henry stopped in his tracks, his breath turning solid in his chest. His eyes went wide.

  "Jeez, Hank, what's with you?" Jake asked, stopping a few feet away and glancing back. Sig tugged at the end of the leash. Henry barely felt it.

  The business district of Buena Vista, Virginia, was gone. In its place, as solid and undeniable as the moon in the sky, was Main Street, Clyde, Ohio.

  The imposing but nonthreatening brick of the Town Hall dominated the far end of the road. The clock on its tower glowed like one benevolent eye. Next to the Town Hall was the red painted façade of the Five and Dime store, the natty glass doors of Wilson's Men's Shop, and the twirling red white and blue of Rusty's barber pole. It was all there, buzzing faintly in the orange glow of the street lights. The slant parking spaces were mostly empty, but the cars that were visible were strictly pre-Reagan models. There was a GTO, a Corvair, and even a rusty old Maverick. The neon light of the Clyde Piper Bar sign reflected on its hood.

  "Come on," Jake said, reaching to grab his companion's hand. "It's getting dark. If I don't get home, my mom's gonna have kittens. You act like you ain't never seen a flippin' rust-bucket Maverick before."

  He pulled Henry forward, and Henry came, jerkily, his eyes still fixed on the inexplicable sight before him.

  "I swear, Hank, you get any weirder, your old man's gonna nail you in a crate and send you to military school. Come on. You can borrow my Boba Fett card for the night if you want, but don't bend it all up, all right?"

  "Okay," Henry said, not really listening. They crossed Main Street, keeping between the glow of the streetlights, and ducking across the parking lot of the Clyde Twist-E-Freeze. A minute later, they angled down a residential alley. Neat, postage stamp backyards and gardens lined the way, all separated by chain-link fences and gates. Henry watched, speechless, as they tramped toward home.