Том Светерлич - The Gone World

“The answer might be here, on the Onyx ,” said Moss . “We need more time.”

“It’s too late,” said O’Connor. “The hanged men are here, the running men are here. People everywhere are looking at the sky, their mouths are filled with silver. The forests are burning, the snow is heavy. It’s too late, Shannon. It’s too late.”

Moss pulled herself along the lower-deck passageway, flying upward through the portal leading to the helm, thinking, Remarque . They murdered the Libra ’s commanding officer. The cockpit of the Onyx was identical to the Grey Dove ’s: a reinforced-glass canopy, two flight chairs nestled into a sea of controls, panels of switches and knobs. She thought of her mother. She thought of Cancer . Receding in the distance was her ship, the Grey Dove , the tether snapped.

“ Onyx , were you given new instructions?”

…RENDEZVOUS WITH USS CANCER, SET AUTOCOURSE FOR NAVAL AIR STATION OCEANA .

“ Onyx , can you belay that order?”

…NO. ALL RESOURCES REQUISITIONED FOR OPERATION SAIGON.

“ Onyx , can you belay the order to dock with the USS Cancer if you fly to Oceana?”

…YES.

The TERNs would be loaded to capacity, she thought. Two hundred souls. She thought of Cancer , an older ship, a ship that once had faulty O-rings before its overhaul. We would live like rats , thought Moss, and there would be nowhere to run, no haven, nowhere, there would only be one blind jump to the next, to far-future IFTs in unknown galaxies searching barren stars and infertile planets for safe landing, for any safe landing, until the food ran out or the recycling for the water malfunctioned. Everyone on board would kill one another, they would eat one another, drink one another, and eventually they would all starve, they would all die of thirst, or they would run out of oxygen. One way or another, they would all die.

Only a few hours of oxygen remained in her tank. “ Onyx , please reestablish life support,” she said. “And belay request to rendezvous with the Cancer . Continue to Oceana.”

An impulsive request, but she felt the burden of culpability, the belief that her actions had brought the Terminus here. She felt she deserved to die or never escape. Pushing through the hanging legs and arms of the corpses felt like swimming through a skein of seaweed. Driscoll was in the toilet, his lipless, toothy grin—she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see Durr’s revealed heart. She used the American flag as a cover to the upper-deck portal, to keep the blood out as the air began to circulate. When the Onyx had reached healthy oxygen saturation, Moss removed her helmet. She’d been expecting a smell of putrefaction, but there was none.

She left the lights on. She tried to sleep during her return to Earth, but her body tensed and her mind flitted with fear. Images darted through her thoughts. The hanged men, the running men, Nestor asking if she believed in the resurrection of the body. No, there is no God, this is the natural order. She imagined a snake flailing in the weightlessness of space until it curled toward itself to swallow its own tail. She thought of silver, swatches of silver swimming together, a school of fish. Njoku in the Pacific, reaching deep into a watery thin space and feeling a fish appear in the middle of his hand, the sensation of the fish slipping free…

Moss skimmed the surface of sleep and woke when she fell to the floor, the clatter of everything that hadn’t been tethered crashing down around her, the camcorder cracked to pieces, the tremendous thud, thud, thud of the bodies whapping the walls and floor. Earth’s gravity. She hurried to the pilot’s chair, strapped herself in, thinking of the wreck of the Libra , just before the misfire. Libra had burned and fallen in that long, dreamless night. The Onyx ’s cockpit was tinted, shading the incandescent smear of fire as it burned against the atmosphere like a struck match. They murdered Remarque , she thought . At one of the Brandt-Lomonaco space-time knots, Pacific jack mackerels were caught in a Gödel curve—a loop. She thought of Libra , her disorienting night in the brig, her experience of mutiny and the shipwreck that followed. Mursult’s letter to Durr had spelled out what Remarque had been attempting, a cascade failure to obliterate us all . A black hole.

“I can do what Remarque couldn’t do,” said Moss, piecing her thoughts together even as she said them aloud. Nicole had told her that Remarque had ordered mass suicide. That if the entire crew of Libra blinked, then the planet Esperance would go unfound. “My God,” Moss said aloud, to no one . “ Libra ’s a jack mackerel. I can do what Remarque couldn’t do.”

But what would come of it? she wondered. What would happen if she managed to breach Libra , if she somehow managed to cause a cascade failure?

She had been brought here, pulled across the river when she was pulled from the cross. Everyone’s mistake , she’d been told, is that we believe in our own existence . The falling star as it blooms. Patrick Mursult believed he could walk the Vardoggers, travel backward in time: Marian will be young. If he could walk backward in time…

When was terra firma? she wondered. It wasn’t here, it wasn’t 1997. 1997 was Libra ’s IFT. If she could cause a cascade failure, if Libra can blink, when was true terra firma? She imagined the thin space overwhelmed by the Terminus, imagined the Terminus reaching Libra , imagined the White Hole traveling Libra ’s Casimir line back to the point of its original launch, to terra firma. Marian will be young, five years old. Nicole, when she rescued Moss from the brig, had said that eleven years had passed . Ebullience rose through her like bubbles in a flute of champagne. If Libra blinked, then this IFT will blink, everything will blink. NSC ships would still comb the universe and distant time, would still sail Deep Waters, but Libra will have blinked in its future. Esperance will go undiscovered. There would still be a chance of that planet’s discovery, Moss realized, some chance of another ship happening on that planet, there would still be a chance of the Terminus, but only a chance . A possibility. But there can be other possibilities. Terra firma would be the date of Libra ’s initial launch, the moment just before Libra first used its B-L drive.

November 7, 1985.

“Courtney,” said Moss.

The Onyx cut through the whiteout squall, the ocean an undulating gray beneath the gusts, and skidded on the ice-slicked runway at Apollo Soucek. People broke through the barriers and swarmed the runway, chased the Cormorants as they taxied, insensible of their own safety in their desperation to flee. Moss saw bodies in the snow. She was still far from the terminal when a yellow truck the size of a bus cut across the runway ahead of her, sped toward her, to collide with her. What are you doing? she thought as the truck fishtailed on the slick surface. It was an anti-icing truck, the cherry-picker arm and hoses flailing wildly. The truck swerved and cut back and rammed the Onyx ’s front wheel.

“What the fuck?” shouted Moss, the Onyx now stuck in the wreckage of the truck. Maybe an accident caused by the ice, maybe the truck had slid into her, but she saw the first few people rush toward the Cormorant shouting. Others appeared, families, soldiers, surrounding the Onyx , trying to climb aboard. They want to get into this ship. They want to save themselves, take over this ship.