Idols (3 page)
“Cease from fear?” Doc translates. “I cannot be afraid. It is not within my parameters. I am merely noting that you do not seem to recall that accomplishing the task at hand requires you all to protect each other until you reach safety.”
“I’ll keep my eye on her, Doc. Don’t you worry,” Lucas says, squeezing my hand.
“I am still concerned that you appear to be moving out of optimal range for the communications relay Fortis is carrying. As in the colloquial expression, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”
“Is that so?” Lucas eggs Doc on, and winks at me.
“Quite. Although in my case, slightly erroneous,” Doc continues, so easily distracted by linguistics. “Seeing as I have neither eyes nor mind to speak of, per se. So perhaps the phrase more optimally would be ‘Out of range, out of ran—’”
Lucas answers by switching off his cuff with a flick of a finger. “Out of range,” he says, grinning. He pauses to think, then pulls off the cuff and rests it on a twisted cactus that juts into our path. “Sorry, Doc.”
I shake my head. “Oh, come on. He means well.”
Lucas takes my hand, smiling as we climb.
I can’t help but smile back. “And what if he’s right? If we’re gone when Fortis wakes up, he’ll freak. We’re not supposed to leave camp, remember? It’s too dangerous.” I can feel myself giving in even as I say the words.
“Maybe I’m dangerous.” Lucas winks.
“You?” I roll my eyes and he groans.
“Live a little, Dol. Doc will forgive us. We won’t be gone long, and three’s a crowd. And anyway, we’re almost there.”
He stops short, pulling me roughly in his direction. I stand tall, stepping up on a rock, letting myself stretch along the length of him, letting myself feel the weight of his strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders.
“I’ve wanted to do this since we left the Mission,” he says, burying his face in my neck. I wince as he bumps my tender jaw, and then I smile—because I’ve wanted it too.
I kiss the top of his head. “And yet you let a little thing like falling out of the sky stop you?”
He laughs. “Next time I won’t.”
I won’t, either.
And at this one moment, Lords or not, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
I slide down, leaning my head back against his chest. It feels safe, and I pretend for the moment that we are.
“You know, sometimes four Icon Children are two too many,” Lucas says. “At least, maybe this week they are.”
I look up at him. “Do you ever wonder if there are more of us out there? Than the four of us?” The words sound almost ridiculous the moment I let myself say them.
“No,” Lucas says. “But I do wonder what’s going on inside the head of the one right here in front of me.”
“This,” I say, laying my head back on his chest.
“There.” He says the word softly, and I almost can’t hear him. I look ahead and see that the sun is setting, as glorious as any sunset I have ever seen, even at the Mission.
More glorious. The most glorious.
Not a silver ship in sight.
From up here, the stretch of unforgiving rock and scrub and rubble expands in front of us, in long shadows of quiet purple-blue falling and fading across the red-dirt desert floor. I see the curve of the horizon, and I’m momentarily struck by the brief sensation that I’m standing on a spinning globe, hurtling through space.
Our planet. Our Earth. It’s dizzying.
It will be gone in a minute, I think. The sunset, and the feeling. For now, though, it is enough.
One thing is right, in a universe where everything else is wrong.
I smile, tilting my head back until I can look up at his face. “It’s perfect.”
“You like it? I had it made especially for you.” Lucas smiles. He almost looks shy. “It’s a present.”
“Is it?” I laugh. “Then I’m going to keep it forever.”
He smiles. “Okay. Hold on to it. Keep it where you won’t lose it.”
“I will,” I say.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers.
“Shut up,” I whisper back, teasing. “It’s beautiful.”
It’s true. This sunset—Lucas’s sunset, and now mine—is incandescently, infectiously beautiful. And it means we
have
made it to another night.
We are alive.
For now, it should be enough.
The sun slowly moves behind the horizon. Lucas nods, whispering into my ear. “See? That’s how it works. The sun goes down now, but it always comes up again.”
“Really.” I smile, arching an eyebrow.
“Really.” He smiles back. “Believe it.” He kisses my cheek, softly, avoiding the bruises. “And even when you can’t see it, it’s out there somewhere on the other side of the world, getting ready to come back again.”
Now he kisses my other cheek, so softly I shiver.
And my neck. “It’s going to get better.”
My ear. “Everything is.”
The warm pull that is Lucas overtakes me, and I don’t fight it. I have my gifts, and he has his. This is what he brings the world, this feeling. Sharing it and spreading it, to everyone he meets.
I give in.
Love.
Offering it to me soothes him as much as it does me, and I let myself feel it, take it.
I push out of my mind the competing thoughts. That we are lost, with no support in sight. Hunted in the desert. No plan in place to take down another Icon.
I wish that for once Doc was right, that it was somehow possible to forget what lies ahead of us.
But somehow, at this moment, Lucas accomplishes the impossible. I feel him relax, letting the sun warm him, even as it fades away.
Enjoy it while we have it, what little we have.
Coming from Lucas, this sunset means everything.
I tilt my face toward the last bits of shared warmth, toward Lucas and the sun. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am.” He touches my cheek again, his voice growing low, urgent. “Dol—”
I need you.
He doesn’t dare say the words, but I feel them. They are as real to me as the cold evening breeze on my face.
He needs me like food and water. Like sunshine and rain. Like—
Like Ro and I used to need each other.
I push that thought out of my mind and lean toward Lucas. He takes my face in both hands, holding on tight, as if I were as solid as the red desert rocks that surround us. A sure, steady thing. An incontrovertible fact, or a long-held truth.
With a look, I ask permission to be closer to him. Closer than physically possible.
He nods, and I go in, looking for one moment in particular. I find it burning bright in his mind, and when I reach for it, in a flash I am back in the cave when we first met.
But this time, I am Lucas. This time, I see us—the story of us—through his eyes.
I don’t see the details clearly, but the feelings are so powerful they almost drop me to my knees. I see the moment he first looks at me and feel the shock—then a flood of warmth.
The explosion of intense curiosity, wonder, and attraction.
The shared ocean of us.
I don’t know what else to call it.
I have wanted to go there for a long time, but only now had the courage to ask.
And this is now my favorite memory, his love at first sight.
It’s not just a gift he has. It’s a miracle.
He is more certain of me than I am of myself. Which makes me only more certain of just one thing.
Lucas needs me.
Lucas needs me now, and I need him.
He kisses me so hard it feels like I might break open. And as I kiss him back, I wonder if that might not be such a bad thing. If sometimes, some kinds of breaking can fix things.
Everything.
His kiss pushes me back against the rock and my body dissolves into his. In his arms, it feels like the sun is rising and setting all at once—and then a wave of warmth comes over me and I can no longer think of anything at all.
Only Lucas.
Because I really am the luckiest girl in the world. And even when I fall out of the sky he catches me.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: First recorded response from Perses, establishing first contact. Perses says “hello.”
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
HAL2040 ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 05.16.2042
HAL::PERSES
//lognote: {PERSES communication attempt #251,091};
sendline:
salve mundus;
return:
…… 01110011 01100001 01101100 01110110 01100101.……;
//translation note:
message received: salve (binary);
sendline:
γει
ά
σου κ
ό
σμο;
return:
…… γει
ά
σου…… salve..… hello;
return:
…… 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111..… hello;
com protocol handshake exchanged;
uplink established;
comlink access granted;
sendline:
Hello;
return:
hello;
sendline:
Who are you?;
return:
who..… you..…;
return:
you..… me..… i;
return:
i am.…… nothing;
return:
i am.…… beginning and end;
return:
A and
Ω
;
sendline:
………… alpha and omega?;
sendline:
query: Beginning of what?;
return:
life. home. new home.;
sendline:
query: End of what?;
delayed response;
return:
…… life. home. new home.;
comlink terminated;
//lognote: comlink terminated by PERSES;
“Are we interrupting something?
Snake, anyone?
”
I pull away from Lucas as Ro thrusts a pointed stick with a dead snake speared on it between us, his face streaked with dirt and grime. Tima is only a few steps behind him, stumbling and tired. Her hair is still covered with dust. She looks like a gray ghost.
“Interrupting? Yes,” says Lucas, though in his mouth the word becomes a curse. “As a matter of fact, you are.” I feel the warmth inside him dissolve at the sound of Ro’s voice.
As always.
I push myself free from the rock and stand tall in the dirt. I won’t let Ro see me squirm.
“My bad. So, snake?” Ro counters, grinning without a trace of humor. The long, dead rattler dangles off Ro’s stick, almost all the way down to the dirt at his feet. This time I squirm.
Lucas ignores him.
Tima blinks at me, embarrassed. “Sorry. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. We didn’t know where you were. Doc picked up something weird on the comlink. Fortis says we need to move out.”
“And,” says Ro, wiggling the stick toward her.
Tima jumps back, rolling her eyes. “And Ro found—this reptile—wrapped around his feet and decided to call it dinner.” She eyes the rattlesnake uneasily, scanning the ground around us. “Now we should go. Before the whole rhumba shows up.”
“The rhumba?”
