Heart of the Nebula (49 page)

James nodded. “That’s good to hear.”

“
Of course, I expect that
the planetside folks will want to elect you to something—maybe
chief surveyor, or mayor of one of the settlements.”

“
Naturally.”

They walked in silence for a while. A light
breeze rustled the enormous leaves of the jungle canopy. Far
overhead, one of the floating algae pads drifted in front of the
sun, casting a pleasant shadow over the ground. They walked on.

That kiss before you
boarded the shuttle,
Deirdre wanted to
ask.
What did it mean?
Even though they were holding hands, though, she sensed that
it wasn’t right to broach the question. James was working himself
up to tell her something, and if she asked, it might cause him to
withdraw. Now of all times, that was the last thing he needed to
do.

“
I suppose you want to ask
me if I read the letter,” he said at length. “And the answer is no,
I haven’t. But I have it right here.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out
the envelope. Deirdre squeezed his hand.

“
Are you going to read it
now?”

“
If not now, when?” James
asked. His arm was stiff, his cheeks pale, but she saw in his eyes
a determination that would not be cowed. “Come on, let’s find a
place to sit down.”

He wants me to be with him
for this moment,
Deirdre realized.
He’s afraid of being alone when he finally reads
it.

“
I’m right here,” she said
softly, squeezing his hand to reassure him. He squeezed back, but
his palm was clammy.

* * * * *

Don’t do it!
something in James’s mind screamed.
Not now! Anytime but now!
Inwardly, though, he knew that Deirdre was right, and putting
it off would only make it harder.

They found a cluster of boulders on a small
rise near the perimeter fence. The jungle was a little sparser
here, and the rocks shielded the rest of the base from view. It was
a good place to be alone.

Deirdre sat on a rock in front of him,
taking care not to read over his shoulder. She put a hand on his
knee as he sat down.

“
Do you need a moment?” she
asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve had weeks to work
myself up to this. If I don’t do it now…”

“
You can do it, James,” she
said, smiling at him. “It’s going to be all right.”

Her encouragement strengthened him. He took
a deep breath and nodded, wondering at how stupidly hard it was to
follow through with this. How many times in his life had he looked
death in the face without flinching? Yet somehow, this letter
struck more fear in his heart than any of his military exploits
ever had.

His fingers trembled as he tore open the
envelope and pulled the letter out. The aged synthpaper felt dry to
the touch, and he unfolded it carefully. The sight of Sara’s
handwriting made his throat constrict, but he kept himself from
reading until it was laid out plainly in front of him.

“
It’s shorter than I
thought it would be,” he muttered. She’d only used half the
page—the whole thing probably amounted to less than three hundred
words.

Deirdre squeezed his knee. “Go on,” she said
softly.

He took a deep breath and read.

James,
the letter began,
I hope that when we
read this, we’re both together on Chira, laughing about how
paranoid we were. But just in case I don’t make it, I want these to
be my parting words.

His hands began to shake, and it took him a
moment to calm them enough to keep reading. He thought of what it
would have been like if Sara had been here to read it with them,
and they were both laughing at themselves just as she’d said. If it
weren’t for Deirdre’s comforting touch, he probably would have
stopped right there. But her presence gave him strength, and he
continued.

You have a stubborn sense of determination,
James, that I’ve gradually come to admire. It gives other people
strength and rallies them to do great things. At the same time, it
can be dangerous. No matter how much you look out for others, you
always seem to neglect yourself. I fear that your stubbornness will
destroy you.

If we do come through this together, I would
be happy to spend the rest of my life helping you to temper that
stubbornness. But if we don’t, James, I want you to let me go.
Don’t blame yourself for my loss. Find someone who cares about you
and commit yourself to her as completely as you would have
committed yourself to me. I want you to be happy, James, with me or
without me.

I love you, James, and I always will.
Remember me, but know that it’s okay to let me go. Don’t neglect
yourself. Be happy.

Love,

Sara.

A sob forced its way out of James’s throat.
He tried to choke it down, but it was like holding back a river
with nothing but his arms. His vision blurred with tears, and he
buried his head in his hands.

For how long he wept, he didn’t know. But
when the sobbing stopped and the tears no longer came, he felt like
a new man. It was as if he had been living on the other side of a
glass ever since waking from cryo, and now, the glass was
shattered, making everything more colorful, vibrant, and alive.

“
James,” said Deirdre,
rubbing his shoulders. She must have stepped behind him while he
was weeping. “Is everything all right? Are you okay?”

He took a deep breath and smiled. “Yes, Deirdre. I
don’t think I could feel any better.”

“
What did the letter say? I
mean, if it’s too private, I can just—”

He turned and took both of her hands in his,
effectively silencing her. “It’s okay,” he said. “She told me to
find a special woman and to be happy with her, just like she would
have been happy with me.”

Deirdre’s eyes widened, and her mouth parted
in shock. She looked down for a moment, then back at him, her
cheeks flushing.

“
Does that
mean…”

He answered by leaning forward and pulling
her gently towards him. Realization dawned on her, and she wrapped
her arms around him, pressing her lips against his. The warmth of
her embrace soothed his aching loneliness, and for the first time
in ages, he felt truly alive.

* * * * *

The next day, they ventured out from the
outpost to go for a hike. When they left the main road to follow a
trail made by some as-yet unknown species of large animal, Deirdre
worried aloud whether they were in danger, but James laughed and
pointed to the gun on his hip. It was the first time she’d heard
him laugh, and it sounded so honest and clear that she couldn’t
help but laugh with him.

They followed the trail to the top of a
mountain ridge, climbing up until the jungle fell away, leaving
nothing but grass, boulders, and the hardy, wind-stunted shrubs
that grew in clumps along the rocky terraces. The wide open sky and
magnificent vistas gave Deirdre an awful sense of vertigo. She
clung to James for support, but he didn’t seem to mind.

At length, they reached a spot where the
ridge leveled out. “Look at that,” said James, peering out at the
rugged wilderness landscape that surrounded them.

Deirdre stopped clinging to him long enough
to get a good look. From where they stood, they could see almost a
hundred kilometers in any direction. The hills rolled before them
like wrinkles in a towel before dropping off sharply into a sea of
unbroken blue water. Mighty waves crashed on the rocky cliffs,
while swarms of avian creatures flew between the dozens of massive
algae pads that drifted lazily over the ocean.

“
It’s incredible,” she said
softly. “I never thought a world could be so beautiful.”

“
Welcome to your new home,”
said James, putting his arm around her waist.

“
Our new home,” she
corrected him.

They lingered for a few moments before
finding a rocky cleft in which to have lunch. The salty sea breeze
wafted up to them on the ridge, while the singsong cries of the
avian creatures mingled with the distant crashing of the waves.

“
Is this where you hoped to
bring us when you set out from Karduna?” Deirdre asked, settling
down between a pair of boulders where she felt more
secure.

“
No,” said James, squeezing
in beside her. “We just wanted to get away from our enemies—to stay
alive. We never dared to dream of finding a world like
this.”

“
And now that you have,
what’s next?”

He looked at her and smiled. “We start over
again—together. This world is a clean slate, and we’re free to
write the story of our lives on it.”

His smile made her feel warm all over. He
leaned over, and they kissed. In the sky overhead, the golden arc
of the planet’s rings traced a wide, unbroken path to the unknown
shores just waiting to be explored beyond the horizon.

Author’s Note

FRIEND:
I was never fully convinced that James felt he
had closure

ME: I see

FRIEND: But I was satisfied with the thought that he
would get it sometime after the story ends

he’s still young, so he’s still maturing

even at the close of the novel

ME: yeah

hmm

interesting

This was the online exchange that planted the seed
that eventually became this book.

It happened with one of my first
readers for
Bringing Stella Home,
about a year before I published it. At the time, I was still
pursuing a traditional book deal, though the self-publishing option
was on my radar. The conventional wisdom for writing for a
traditional publisher was that your book should be a “stand-alone
with series potential,” and that was what I was doing with
my
Gaia Nova
books. Writing a
direct sequel to
Bringing Stella Home
was a bit of a risk, but the idea captivated me so much that
I decided to do it anyway.

In particular, I wanted to put
James in a position of leadership and responsibility. In
Bringing Stella Home,
he’s basically on
his own. Danica takes him in, but he still does things his own way,
which leads them to clash with each other quite often. Part of that
is due to James’s personality: he’s a determinator who will stop at
nothing to accomplish his goals. But when you have a responsibility
over people besides yourself, things become more complicated
because you have to weigh in the needs of the group, or the needs
of the individuals within the group.

As I outlined the book, one scene in particular
stood out to me: the rescue at Zeta Nabat, where he goes back to
save the girls who willingly sacrificed themselves for the good of
the whole. The ethical dilemmas presented in that scene really
fascinated me. Was it right to risk the lives of everyone to go
back and rescue those girls? Did it negate their sacrifice? In that
particular situation, when some of your people willingly sacrifice
themselves for the good of the whole, what would be the right thing
to do? Of course, there was no question in my mind what James would
do—he would go right back for them, shouting “damn the torpedoes”
as he went. But what would be the ramifications of that, and how
would he pull himself out of it?

With that scene firmly fixed in my
mind, I started with a generic “five years later” scenario after
the end of
Bringing Stella Home
and
wrote my way toward the confrontation. The idea for the exodus in
the nebula actually came from my original outline for
Desert Stars,
where I intended Jalil to
find another girl and basically join a colony of refugees for a
“pioneer trek in space” type story. It made a lot more sense for
the people of the Colony to do that, though, especially with the
Hameji breathing down their necks.

All of the stuff about the General Assembly of
Citizens came at least a year before Occupy Wall Street became a
thing. From the beginning, the Colony was supposed to be a perfect
techno-democracy, where every decision is put to a general vote,
using futuristic technology to expedite the process. When I started
seeing General Assemblies with the Occupy movement, I immediately
realized that people were going to think I pulled that idea from
there. But I came up with it on my own—and really, if you look at
the way the two are organized, they aren’t the same thing. Not even
close.

There were a few other things I threw into the first
draft, some of which didn’t work so well. I knew the story needed a
romantic subplot, so I tried to turn the thing with Sara and James
into a love triangle by introducing Kyla. That ended rather poorly,
and actually nearly destroyed the book. James isn’t the sort of
person to be caught up in a love triangle: he’s very direct and
very honest, both with himself and with the women in his life. It’s
not in his nature to cheat or play games—or to be very indecisive,
for that matter. But it took me at least three drafts to figure
that out.

I finished the first draft in May 2011. It was
abominable. Still, I was a fairly new writer, and was following the
advice to not worry how bad a story is, but to finish it and worry
about fixing it later. This was a case where the standard advice
was wrong—very wrong, in fact. I knew that what I’d written was
bad, but I had no idea how bad it was. Turning it into something
good would take three more drafts and several years.