Michael Kube-McDowell - Odyssey

“No,” he said unhappily. “What else can you tell me?”

She hesitated. “I’m afraid I don’t know you as well as I let you think. We crossed paths in the spaceport.”

“If I’m a Settler drudge and you’re a Spacer topcrust-”

“Your captain was having trouble with Customs coming in and we were delayed going out by mechanical problems. We ended up in the same waiting area. We talked for a while.” She hesitated, then added, “You were funny. You made me laugh.”

“Did I talk about my family-my home-”

“You don’t remember any of it, do you? Meeting me-the O’Neill -”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” She hesitated. “Even so, I thought you’d be happier, knowing.”

“I’d be happier remembering,” he said, and was silent for a moment. “Anyway, it doesn’t seem to matter as much at the moment. I don’t know a thing about this David. At least I know a little about Derec. I think I’ll just stay Derec for the time being.”

“I didn’t tell you everything,” she said. “I didn’t tell you about-”

“Don’t,” he said. “If my name didn’t bring it back, nothing will. Save the rest. You’ll be able to tell me whether I’m remembering or inventing.”

“I know your memory will come back. It has to.”

He nodded absently, acknowledging her words without accepting them. “If you want to try to sleep, I’ll watch to make sure you don’t get restless and try to air-walk.”

Shaking her head, she said, “I can’t sleep without a pillow.”

Derec stretched out on his back and tapped his left shoulder with his right hand. “I have an unoccupied pillow available, no charge.”

He expected her to refuse the offer. But she crawled wordlessly to where he lay and snuggled against his left side, her head resting on his arm. Closing her eyes, she seemed to fall asleep almost at once.

They fit together easily, and, innocent though the embrace was, there was something pleasing about her closeness. Probably it’s just that she’s not talking, Derec told himself. He lay there looking up at the stars and listening to her slow, peaceful breathing until his own eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

David Derec, he thought just before sleep took him. It would be nice to have two names again-

They woke thoroughly chilled from their night on the exposed promontory, and the early rays of the rising sun did little to warm them. Despite the cold, Katherine quickly separated herself from him as though embarrassed by the contact.

“Let’s try the key,” she said nervously as she stood up.

Derec pulled himself up to a sitting position. “No hello? No good morning?” he said with a half-grin. But he reached for the key, lying an arm’s length away on the tile.

“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I had a bad dream that I’d like to rule out as quickly as possible.”

“What happened?”

“I was stuck here with you.”

Smiling, he stood and held it out toward her. “Do the honors?”

She quickly went through the activation sequence, then glanced up and met Derec’s eyes. “Ready?” she asked.

“What do we think of? Perihelion or the Station?”

“Perihelion first. I think we have to.”

He inclined his head in agreement. “Ready if you are.”

Her thumb went hard against the button, as though the vehemence with which she pushed it would speed their return. Light exploded against their retinas, the sunlight vanished, and they found themselves in the gray world of Perihelion once more.

“Now the Station?” Derec asked.

“How about Aurora?” she asked, her eyes glowing with excitement. “Wolruf said we could go anywhere with it. Why should we take ourselves back to trouble?”

“No,” Derec said. “First we go back to get Wolruf. I owe her.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” Katherine said anxiously. “We won’t be able to use the key again to get away, not for hours. They’ll have us locked up and it locked up by then, and we won’t have done anything for Wolruf. You could get help on Aurora-get a ship and go back for her.”

“How?”

“I have friends on Aurora-”

“The same ones that closed your account?”

She winced at the reminder, but was adamant. “More friends than we have on Rockliffe Station.”

“You’ll have to do the steering. I don’t have a clear enough image of Aurora in my head.”

“Happy to do it. Hold tight,” she said, and triggered the key once more.

Perihelion vanished on cue, but it was not the pastoral landscape of Aurora which replaced it. It took only an instant for Derec to realize that they had returned to the top of the tower that looked out on the great mystery city.

A heartbeat later, the same understanding impressed itself on Katherine. “Frost!” she declared, throwing her hands in the air and rushing to the edge with a vigor that alarmed Derec. “What went wrong?”

Derec looked past her to the nearer structures of the city. “Hard to say, since we don’t really know what happens when it goes right,” he said. “Obviously there’s more to controlling the key than just thinking about where you want to go.”

“But why here, then, a place that neither one of us knows?”

“I don’t know,” Derec said. “But it could be worse.”

“I’d like to know how,” she said, turning to face him and planting her fists on her hips.

“Well, just consider,” he said, stepping closer. “Whatever we are, we’re a long way from Rockliffe Station, and the way we left we’re not easily going to be followed. That means in one fell swoop we got away from Jacobson, Anazon’s robots, and the raiders. And as a little bonus we got away with the key.”

“Which we don’t know how to make work right. We’ve lost Alpha, we don’t know where we are, we have no ship, no money, no food, nothing but the clothes we’re wearing and that useless key.” It could not have been more of a tantrum of self-pity if she had ended it by stamping her foot.

“I didn’t say it was all good. I just said it could be worse.” Squatting on his heels, he stared at the key as he passed it from right hand to left and back again restlessly. “I can hardly believe what this thing does. For a machine this size to be able to transport matter ten feet, much less ten light-years, is the most fantastic feat of engineering-damn near magic. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to take it apart and see how it works. And finally I understand why everybody wants it. What I don’t understand is why someone tried to hide it.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked up. “Something Wolruf told me. The asteroid that I woke up on-it was artificial. Somebody meant it to be the final hiding place for this.”

Katherine was quick to pick up the implication. “As though it were dangerous, not just powerful.”

“Exactly.”

“Well-just think what a terrorist or assassin could do with it. Or an army where every soldier had one. Especially an alien army.”

“It’d be impossible to protect yourself against them,” Derec said, staring at the key again. “A lot of responsibility goes along with ownership of this thing. Maybe more responsibility than I want.”

“The monkey getting heavy already?”

Derec nodded. “On top of everything else, I still don’t know what I’m doing mixed up in the middle of this.” He looked up at her. “I suppose you think the pod was from the Daniel O’Neill , that I ejected in some emergency.”

“It’s the straightest line between two points.”

“I guess it is. But you know, there’s something that doesn’t fit in. Why did Monitor 5 think it was so important to give the key to me? Me, who’d been nothing but a nuisance to the robots up till then? It said something like ‘I found the key, Derec. You have to take it.’ How do you explain that?”