No Going Back (17 page)

I forced myself to act as calm as possible as I said, “Why? I’m hardly a kid.”

She shook her head. “That’s not the point. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jon, but in just the not quite two years that we’ve known each other, little signs of age have started appearing on my face.”

“No,” I said, “I hadn’t noticed. You’re as beautiful now as when I met you.”

She smiled. “Thank you. I’m glad you think so—and I use every trick money can buy to keep looking the same. I’m five years older than you are, so I’m already at a disadvantage. The thing is, though, I can’t spot a single sign of aging on you. I’m sure they’ll come, but if I’m right, if you are aging slower than most people, then whatever in you is making that happen is something that might be able to help my father. We should look into it. Maybe they can even learn something that might help a lot of people.”

I forced a laugh. “I doubt it,” I said. “It’s almost certainly just genetics; people grow old differently.”

“You’re probably right,” she said, “but I’m sure you’d agree that with my father’s life on the line, we should look into every possibility of saving him, or even of buying him more time.”

I stared into her eyes as I said, “Of course. You wouldn’t be the woman I love if you did anything less.”

I knew how this would play out. They’d draw some blood, find the nanomachines in those cells, and then I would become their test subject. I might as well be back on Aggro. I didn’t know then that the nanomachines disassembled automatically outside my body unless I specifically ordered them to do otherwise. At that point, I hadn’t even figured out how to control them—inside or outside of my body.

She smiled. “Thank you. Tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“And about helping me?”

I hated that my last words to her had to be lies. Though it made me feel very little better, I stuck to a true but misleading statement. “You’re right. We would make a great team.”

She jumped up, hugged me, and kissed me. It was the only time I’d ever faked enthusiasm with her. “Why don’t we start working out the details tomorrow?” she said when we’d stopped kissing.

“I owe my bosses at least the day’s work,” I said. “How about I see you tomorrow after my shift? You could ask the doctor to come by then.”

She nodded. “I appreciate your integrity, as always. Sure, we’ll do that.”

She stood. “My father wants to spend more time with me tonight, before he heads to the clinic tomorrow. He’ll be thrilled that you’re going to be with me.”

I hadn’t thought I could feel worse, but now I did. “He will?” I said. “We haven’t exactly gotten to know each other.”

“He knows I love you,” she said, “and you love me, and you had the courage to stand up to him when most people in the same situation wouldn’t have dared. That’s enough for him.”

We walked to the elevator holding hands. I held her close to me. I ran my fingers through her hair and smelled it a last time. I kissed her and whispered in her ear, “I love you, Omani.”

As soon as I got home, I pulled my getaway stash from its hiding place under the floor under the bed. I packed what mattered most into a single large duffel bag, the same one I’d brought with me when I’d come to Haven a few years ago. I left everything else.

I took a taxi to the nearest launch zone and found a night shuttle carrying a cleaning crew on shift change to the Haven jump gate. I explained that we’d just buried my father and I needed to get away, make a fresh start. I bribed the foreman to let me tag along.

Once at the station, I told the same story to a ship’s quartermaster, who accepted a payment to let me ride on the three jumps they were taking. The Central Coalition was still forming then, so jump passage was far less regulated than it is today. Everyone was supposed to keep records, but of course people made mistakes, most of them accidental, some intentional.

As midnight was approaching on Haven, our ship jumped across space in an instant, and in that same instant I left for what I thought was forever the first woman I had ever loved.

23 days from the end

York City

Planet Haven

CHAPTER 22

Jon Moore

I
stepped out of the Little York Inn in full costume a bit before lunchtime, an old, heavy man in a fancy suit and a fancier exoskeleton. No one said a word or raised an eyebrow at the change in my look. If anyone noticed, and it was possible they did not, because a different crew was working than had been on when I’d checked in, I could not tell from their expressions. Given the room’s cost and the way the Exo salesman had spoken about the Inn, most of its guests had to be wealthy. The fact that in my searches of local publicly available data I could not find a single scandal tied to the Inn further reinforced its reputation for discretion. My transformation was almost certainly not the oddest thing this team had seen.

I entered the same transport vehicle as before and told it to take me to the front gate of the Pimlani estate; no point in trying to hide that I was visiting. Lunch is a great time to arrive unexpectedly if the people you’re visiting are not likely to be entertaining guests, because some of the staff is usually on break then. Given that Omani was tethered to a set of machines for life support, I doubted she would enjoy having company for lunch.

As we approached the main entrance, I told the transport to slow. I turned on my comm and contacted Lobo.

“I’m here,” I said.

“Go slowly,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

I told the transport to make a slow loop around the estate, which given its size would take us a little while. The wall that surrounded the place looked basically the same as when I’d been here before, though now a second, three-meter-high level of largely transparent material sat atop the original permacrete wall. No one would be scaling this one.

When we were almost through with our circuit, Lobo contacted me.

“I’m in position with a view of the rear of the house. If that comm goes off or you say the word, I’ll come in hot.”

“Good,” I said, “though I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Are you sure you won’t let me monitor the conversation?” he said.

“Yes. I owe her privacy.”
And
, I thought,
I can’t let you find out how old I am
, something any conversation could easily make clear.

When we reached the gate, I identified myself.

A few seconds later, a man’s voice told me to come to the front of the house.

A man stood waiting outside the front steps as we pulled up.

I told the vehicle to stay until I returned and got out of it slowly. An old man wouldn’t hurry, and I welcomed the time to look around a bit. The man waited while I walked to him.

“Mr. Moore,” he said. “Ms. Pimlani has been expecting you—for quite some time, actually. How is it that you chose today?”

“And you are?” I said. I kept my voice low and soft.

“Balin Randar, head of security.” He didn’t extend his hand to shake mine, though I couldn’t tell if that was from courtesy to an old man in an exoskeleton or some feelings about me. “I attend to Ms. Pimlani personally as well as run her team.”

I chuckled. “Did she worry she’d need security with me?” I lifted my arms slowly. “Do I look like a threat?”

“She didn’t,” he said. “I did. I worry about everything and everyone who might hurt her. It’s my job.” He clapped his hand on my left forearm. “That exoskeleton packs more than enough power to hurt or even kill someone.”

I shook my head. “Not my intention, I assure you.”

“So I repeat my question,” he said. “How did you choose today?”

“I found one of her messages a few jumps away, and I came as quickly as I could.”

“Most people would have called for an appointment first.”

“Most people wouldn’t have the history with Omani that I do. This isn’t exactly easy.”

“Is that why you circled the estate the first time? Cold feet?”

I nodded.

He smiled, a thin smile that had little to do with genuine happiness. “I’m glad it’s not easy for you,” he said. “From what I understand, you deserve to suffer for what you did.”

I shook my head, as if that might help dispel the memories that were flooding over me as I stood on those steps again after more than twelve decades. “I do,” I said, “and I have.”

“Not as much as she did.”

“No, I suspect not.” I looked him in the eyes. “Here’s the important fact, though: She asked me to come. So, you can either take me to her, or I can climb back inside that transport and leave. I’ll stand for abuse from her; she’s earned that right. I don’t have to take it from you.”

Randar stepped closer to me, so close our noses were almost touching. “Ms. Pimlani saved my family when we were about to lose everything. She saved me personally when I was young and my temper tended to land me in trouble. I’ve worked for her my entire adult life. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”

I laughed. “Or what?” I said. “You’ll beat me up? Shoot me? Do you want to explain to her that you’re the reason she never got to speak to me?”

“I wouldn’t have to say anything,” he said. “I’ve turned off the security monitors on this part of the house. She would never know you’d visited.”

“Two problems,” I said. “First, she’ll get the message I’ve scheduled for delivery if I don’t make it back by this evening.”

His eyes widened a bit.

“I’m not as stupid as you seem to think I am, and I’ve worked jobs like yours. Second, and more importantly, do you want to live with the knowledge that you stopped her from getting a chance to finally yell at the man who walked out on her all those years ago?” I shook my head. “I’ve lived for a great many years with a great many regrets. My advice to you is not to add to your own.” I shrugged. “Your call.”

He stared at me for a few more seconds, then turned and said, “Follow me. I’ll take you to her.” He looked back over his shoulder. “I’m not like you. I don’t let her down, and I don’t play games with her. I told her you had arrived the moment you cleared the front gate.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I followed him inside. I had never paid much attention to most of what was in the house, so I couldn’t tell how much it had changed, but the elevator was definitely new, now transparent and providing a great view of the grounds as we rode up. The foyer outside the office felt the same, though no security cameras were visible. I assumed they had simply updated to more recent and smaller cameras and other sensors.

“Wait here,” Randar said. He entered the office. The door was much thicker than I’d remembered; perhaps they’d rebuilt that wall with a great deal more armor than it had in the past.

He returned a few minutes later and beckoned me to follow him. “I tried to talk her out of seeing you,” he said, “but I failed.”

“So you don’t know why she wants to see me, either,” I said.

He glared at me. “No, I don’t.”

We walked through what had been the library with its row after row of bookshelves. Now, though, it looked more like some wood fetishist’s interpretation of an open-office enterprise. Several five-meter-long, oval meeting tables, each surrounded by chairs, all in an almost white wood with a rich, wavy grain. Smaller, round meeting tables, each with four chairs, all of a black wood that could have been bits of moonless night polished to a high sheen. Desks of red and tan and golden and silver wood, each with a matching chair.

All around the room, scattered under windows and among the furniture, fountains crafted to look like waterfalls stood on meter-high pedestals. Rugs in earth tones protected the floor under each one, catching the mist that fell from them. I recognized many of the fountains from the park Omani and I had frequented. I loved the sound they made, but my heart filled with guilt at the sight of them.

The room within the room at the end of the space, the place that had once been her father’s office, now had a wall of the same light wood as the oval tables. An old-fashioned, hinged door barred our way. The lock on it looked new and strong.

Before he opened it, Randar faced me and said, “You shut up, listen, do what she says, and leave. Anything else, and exoskeleton or not, you might have an accidental fall on the way back to your vehicle. Accidents are among the leading killers of the elderly.”

I shook my head and smiled. I wondered what this old-man version of me looked like to him. “I believe I understand you. Now, isn’t she waiting?”

He swung the door inward, entered, and stepped to the side.

I followed him and stopped in the doorway. Directly across from me, sitting up in a bed with supporting struts that resembled those of my exoskeleton, was Omani Pimlani. I’d never stayed around anyone long enough to have a strong sense of how very much people change with age, but my mental images—all I had—of Omani were so very different from the person in front of me that it took me several seconds to reconcile the two. Bald and so gaunt her arms looked thinner than my wrists, she could easily have passed as a corpse were it not for her eyes. Alert and focused directly on me, they were the large, strong, beautiful eyes I remembered, not as dark as they had been, but still compelling.

“Now that you’ve gotten a good look and the shock is starting to wear off,” she said, “why don’t you come all the way inside?”

I forced a smile. “No shock,” I said. “It’s just been a long time. I wanted to make sure it was you.”

She laughed, a clear but weak laugh. “You were never a good liar. That’s one of the things I loved about you.” She pointed to the floor next to her. Between the three towers of machines that stood next to her on my right and the three desks and chairs that they’d pushed against the wall on my left, the room was a bit crowded. “Balin, please bring Jon a chair so he can sit next to me.”

He never let his gaze wander from me as he did as she asked.

“Thank you, Balin.” To me, she said, “Balin here takes great care of me. Now, Jon, sit, please. People our age need to rest when we can.”

As I did, I angled the chair so I could keep an eye on Randar while mostly facing Omani.