Steven McDonald - Steven E. McDonald

He giggled.

My ship, Weir thought, walking through the darkness. My rules.

The Event Horizon had its hooks in his heart, he knew that. He refused to accept the possibility that his wishes could be irrational. Far from it, in fact: his desires were in accordance with those of USAC, to retrieve the ship and resolve the mystery.

Miller was a madman, driven by a terror of the dark. He had no way of knowing what had happened here, what that bizarre log entry meant. For all Miller knew, or could know, the log entry had been an elaborate fake, hidden behind a blind of signal noise. On the basis of this, Miller was willing to destroy the Event Horizon. Billions of dollars had gone into the project, along with millions of man-hours and astonishing amounts of resources.

He walked through the darkness of the First Containment, into the separator tube. The sections spun around him, their vibrations feeding through his body.

He had poured his. life into this vessel, had dedicated the lives of many others to its development and construction. It would seem that the lives of its first crew had been sacrificed in the course of its maiden voyage, lost in the headlong rush of some kind of madness. The Event Horizon had been a story of blood and pain… his blood, his pain. Once she had vanished, he had been nothing, had had nothing.

Except Claire. Once she was gone, he had become a dead man, walking through the days. One day his body would have caught up with his mind and he would simply have stopped, shutting down like an obsolete piece of equipment. USAC had not been willing to fund another grand experiment in starflight, not without knowing just why the first one had culminated in tremendous and embarrassing failure without even basic telemetry to show for it.

He could not give them answers. They would not give him another chance. In the end it had been people like Jack Hollis who had kept him going.

The return of the Event Horizon had been his resurrection. He was not going to walk away and die again, spending his days as a zombie until his heart ceased beating.

He walked past an abandoned CO 2scrubber case, incurious. Let Miller do what he would….

He passed into the Second Containment, passing an open service duct, unable to recall if he had closed up the one he had been in. Perhaps not. It did not matter, anyway, not now. What mattered now was completing the jump, proving the point.

He walked down toward the Core.

He stopped, staring, his mind working without formulating anything.

“Oh no,” whispered, dismayed. “Peters….” Even in the gloom, he recognized her. She seemed to have fallen from a great height, considering the way her body was twisted. He looked up, seeing an open service access overhead, one that would have been accessible from the magnetic containment generator bay.

He went down to her, crouched down, tried to figure out what he should do.

Her eyes were open, black as a result of the fall, and she was not breathing.

There was a lot of blood, a lot of damage, and he doubted that she had lived long after the impact, if she had survived the fall at all.

Peters had been kind to him. He had no friends in this world, and he was always grateful for a little kindness here and there. She had shown him that.

He grieved for her son, back on Earth.

He stood up, looking down at Peters’ body, wondering if he should report this immediately, or let it pass. Miller would blame him, either way.

“Billy,” a familiar voice whispered.

Slowly, unwilling, he looked up.

Claire was standing before the Core, a pale reflection with eyes of milk.

Her hair hung around her as though immersed in water. She was naked, water dripping from her, and she was radiant with cold.

Weir stared, his eyes widening.

Reality blinked and time turned upon its head.

She lay on the bed, sapped of energy, drained of vitality, unable to function any longer. She stared at the wall, she had stared at the wall for hours. He could have gotten her off the station if he had wanted, taken her down Skyhook One and into the real light of day. He was dead though, and he had no compassion for her condition because she could not have saved him from the doom imposed upon him.

Weir looked frantically around. They were back on Daylight Station, back in his past.

He turned back to her. “Claire,” he said, but the reaction he had hoped for was not there. He walked toward the bed, toward her. “Claire, it’s Billy. I’m home….”

He reached out.

Reality blinked and there was the sound of water running.

He turned his head.

Claire stood in the bathroom, brushing her teeth with methodical strokes.

He glanced back at the bed, but it was empty, unmade, unwashed. He had hardly been there, working himself into a stupor as he tried to solve the mystery of the Event Horizon without the resources he needed.

These were moments in time.

He could not change them. He knew that, knew all of the theoretical physics behind the laws of the immutability of time. He had bent space between his hands, but time had mastered him.

He walked toward her, reaching out.

“I know I wasn’t there for you,” he said softly, slowly, despising this sudden flood of platitudes, hating himself with each word, angry at a universe that could be so cruel as to do this to him. “I’m sorry. I let my work come between us, but I’m here now, I’m here. If you could just let me hold you. I’ve been—”

Reality blinked, sweeping away his words, his thoughts, sickening him in the transition. His pulse raced,, and he felt the surge of adrenaline. Time was sliding beneath him, there was no time….

Claire sat on the closed toilet, carefully shaving her legs with his straight razor, her strokes fine and even. She had always been good at that, teasing him in the early days when he worried that she would cut herself.

Time was moving and he was growing frantic. If she could hear him, if he could touch her, stop her, anything…

“Claire, please don’t do this,” he said, trying to make her hear; she carried on, oblivious. “We don’t have to stay here, we can go somewhere else.”

Gentle stroke after gentle stroke, wanting, to look her best. He should have done this, should have said these words to her, should have taken the actions that would have made a difference. Earth was not the best place to live, but it would have been better than this. “Another place, anywhere you want to go, just don’t do this. I’ve been so—”

Reality blinked and he swayed on his feet, trying to keep up, trying to make it stop. More water was running, a bathtub filling with steaming water.

She sat by the tub as it filled, idly testing the water with her fingers.

“Oh God, Claire, no!” he screamed, but she did not hear him, could not see him. He seemed to be watching through glass, unable to go far enough to have an effect. “I’m pleading with you, please, please don’t…” Tears streamed down his face. He had not known he had so much emotion in him. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?“Not this, not again, please, I’ve been—”

Reality blinked and his soul twisted.

The razor touched her wrist, slid down and along. Blood flowed freely, like running water. Then the other wrist, harder this time, difficult holding the razor in the left hand, especially now.

The razor dropped to the floor.

Reality blinked and he was standing by the bathtub, looking down at her, her hair floating in a wreath around her pale face. The water had turned a deep shade of red. Claire was gone.

Gone.

He was alone.

He fell to his knees, weeping.

“I’ve been so alone,” he whispered, “so alone…”