No Going Back (18 page)

She towered above me. She lowered the bed until we were eye to eye.

She’d staged this show, so I waited.

After a few seconds, she laughed. “Still not a big talker.”

“I’m better than I was when I have to talk, but I don’t feel the need to fill the air. Besides, as I recall, you generally led us.”

“That I did,” she said, “though,” she paused, “not everywhere I’d hoped we’d go.”

I nodded. I had no idea how to respond.

“I thought for a long time,” she said, “about what I’d say if I ever got to see you again. After a while, I moved on, as one does, and I didn’t think much about you at all. With all of this,” she took in her bed and the machines with a twirl of her finger, “I decided I needed to see you again, and then the topic was back in my mind.”

“What’d you decide?”

She laughed the same clear, weak laugh. “The first thing I decided was that I wasn’t going to be one of those weak-brained people who begin their speeches by telling you how they didn’t know what they were going to say—but I already messed that up. Truth is, I made a lot of different decisions about what to say, but I threw out most of them, because I expect you already have some idea of how hurt and angry and disappointed I was.”

“Some idea,” I said, “but probably not a complete picture. No two people react the same way to anything.”

“True enough,” she said. “So why don’t we start with something you know that I don’t: Why did you run away like that? And, if you were going to run away, why didn’t you say so to my face?”

I’d rehearsed a lot of answers since Lobo had shown me her recorded message. I’d played through variations of the scene as I was falling asleep last night and again as I was showering this morning. None of them involved me telling her the truth, because I could no more afford that risk now than I could twelve decades ago. What I had come to realize was that once I removed the truth, I had almost nothing believable to say.

I’d finally decided that the one thing I could do was not lie to her.

“I can’t tell you,” I said.

She grabbed the railing beside her, pulled herself upright, and twisted slightly to face me more directly.

“Ms. Pimlani,” Randar said.

“I’m fine, Balin,” she said without looking at him. To me, she said, “Can’t, as in some force is preventing you, or won’t?”

“You’re right,” I said. “Almost all the time, when people say they can’t do something that is obviously within their power, what they really mean is that for whatever reasons, they won’t. I’m doing my best here to be honest, so the more accurate, more honest answer is, I won’t tell you.”

“Ms. Pimlani,” Randar said, “I’d be more than happy to help persuade Mr. Moore to answer your questions.”

“No, Balin,” she said, “that won’t be necessary. Also, though your offer is tempting, despite his appearance, I suspect Jon would prove to be a far more difficult subject to persuade than you might guess.”

Balin stepped closer to us. “I sincerely doubt that.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave us,” she said to him. “I’d like a little time alone with Jon.”

“My job—” he began.

“—is to protect me,” she said. “I know, and I appreciate how very good you are at it. I want this time alone with him, though, and your job sometimes also involves doing as I ask.” She stared at him.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be watching and listening on the security feed right outside.”

“No,” she said. “You’ll be watching. I’m going to turn off the audio so Jon and I can chat privately.” She leaned back into the bed and stared at him. “And don’t waste your time with all your controls; mine override yours, as you know. I’m also going to tell Jon to sit so the cams don’t capture my face or his; I don’t want the lip-reading software helping you.”

“This is so very contrary to our standard protocols,” he said, “that—”

She cut him off again. “I know, but I want a private conversation with Jon, and after more than a hundred and twenty years, I’m going to have it.” Her voice grew stronger. “I’m going to have it.”

Randar held up his hands and backed out of the room. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I pushed so much. I’ll be right outside if you want to call me, and I’ll watch to make sure he doesn’t try to hurt you.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft again.

When Randar had left the room and closed the door behind him, Omani pulled a comm from a tray on the other side of her and poked at a few controls. She showed me its display, which indicated that the door was locked and the audio muted.

“Fine,” I said, “though I really don’t have any answers for you.”

“Turn your chair around this way,” she said. She motioned with her right hand for me to put my back to the door. “And tilt my bed toward you a little.”

I did both and sat again.

“Good,” she said. “Now, we’re as alone as we’re going to be able to get.” She showed me the comm. The back of my head was in the center of its display. Her head wasn’t visible. “Agreed?”

“I have to trust you on that,” I said. “I have no way to confirm anything.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

I waited as she sucked some water from a tube that hung near her mouth.

“So I have two questions for you, Jon,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that old-man costume hot,” she said, “and what would it take for me to hire you?”

CHAPTER 23

Jon Moore

M
y surprised expression was genuine, even though my response wasn’t. “Omani, what game are you playing?”

She shook her head. “You may not age, but I do, so I value time a lot more than you do. I’m alive only because of these machines,” she waved her left hand toward the stacks of gear behind her, “and only as long as I stay connected to them. Think about how small most medical devices are. That I need this much sheer equipment ought to tell you the kind of shape I’m in. Anyway, if you insist on playing games, we can, but we can also save time and jump to the end of them and move on to something useful.”

I shook my head as if I were worried about her sanity. “You know I’m five years younger than you are, but I’m still old. Maybe the drugs they’re pumping into you have done something to your brain; I don’t know. What I do know is that you’re not making sense.” I stood. “Maybe I should be going.”

“Sit down,” she said. “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

I stared at her for a few seconds but did not sit.

“If you try to leave before I’m done,” she said, “Balin will stop you.”

I smiled.

“You might get past him,” she said. “I admit that possibility, though he’s more formidable than you might think. If you did, though, I’d have to discuss with him and a whole lot of other people everything I know about you, all of which I have—for now—kept to myself.” She smiled, the kind of smile a snake gives a rodent it’s about to eat. “Your choice.”

“There are other ways this could go,” I said. “I’ve never responded well to threats.”

“Ah, that’s the man I’ve read about,” she said. “It’s good to finally see a little of him. The Jon I knew avoided conflict at all costs. You, you seem to seek it out. In any case, if anything happens to me while you’re here, the data I’ve accumulated about you will automatically find its way to a whole lot of people who will not be as nice to you as I’m being right now.”

I sat.

“Do you understand how the worlds work, Jon?” she said. She waved her right hand in front of her chest. “I don’t mean which governments rule which populations, or how planets elect members to the three planetary coalition councils. I mean how all the worlds really work, what operates behind the coalitions.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I had a fair handle on it, but maybe not. Regardless, what does this have to do with me?”

“Bear with me,” she said. “We’ll get you there.” She took another sip of water. “Damn machines and medicine leave me dry. What runs the worlds, Jon, is money, of course. Everyone with half a brain is at some level aware of that fact. What very few understand is how much of the money a relatively small number of families still control, even after all this time since humanity left Earth.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand.

“Bear with me for a minute, and I’ll bring this back to you,” she said. “Okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m always up for a nice bit of fiction.”

“No fiction,” she said. “When humanity finally accepted that we had only a few centuries left before we would have to leave Earth, because we’d ruined it beyond repair, we launched a generation ship. One. It crashed on Pinkelponker. Then, we found the jump gates, and we started planning our exodus. Those who’ve possessed money and power for long periods of time are never the first to take major risks, so they left the colonization of the first planet, Freedom, to those with less to lose. When Freedom worked out well, those same people were ready to go. That’s how Haven became the first nonEarth home of most of the richest families in history—including mine.”

“I’ve heard variations of this historical perspective before,” I said. “Even assuming it’s entirely correct, I’m still missing what this has to do with me.” I’d had time to accept that she knew I didn’t age and that she almost certainly had other data about me, data I’d rather no one had. What worried me right then was whether she knew about Pinkelponker, or Aggro, or my nanomachines.

“When we were dating,” she said, “the coalitions were still coming together. Our families were building their control, but while they were doing so, a lot of data was lost. That’s why I’ve never learned where you were trained or what you were doing before we met. I’m willing to believe you were telling the truth when you said you’d worked for some governments, because you really were a terrible liar, but for the most part, I don’t care anymore what you did before we met.

“After you left me, you managed to maintain a sufficiently low profile that I have no data about you for nearly a century. Well done, by the way.”

I said nothing. No matter how much information she had, I saw no profit for me in confirming or denying anything.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s get to the parts you will most definitely care about. Not quite thirty years ago, on a planet far from here, Jon Moore, a young man, early twenties, very mature for his age, joined the Shosen Advanced Weapons Corporation, the Saw, as a recruit. When he left, as was their policy they kept only the most basic relevant data about him. That data, of course, included a photograph.”

She sipped a bit more water.

“Had you then vanished once again,” she said, “I might never have learned you were still alive. Twelve years later, though, you got involved in a rather messy situation on a Frontier Coalition planet, Macken. Normally, what happens on a world that young doesn’t matter much, but you managed to attract the attention of some important officials of not only that coalition, but also two major megacorps, Kelco and Xychek. You also somehow ended up owning a neutered Predator-class assault vehicle, which is an unusual thing for an individual to own. Do I have your attention now?”

I nodded. “I’m listening.”

“Nobody involved in that situation wanted any of it public, so most of the records vanished. My family, like many of the families, has people who feed us information scattered around the various coalitions, so sometime afterward, they noted your name and flagged it to my attention. Names repeat, and though I remember noticing that you weren’t aging as fast as I was, I figured that after a century it had to be another person.

“About a year and a half later, though, a man with the same name made some enemies in the Expansion Coalition when he played some gangsters, a religious cult, and coalition troops against one another. Once again, it was in everybody’s interest for the data to vanish—but once again, it didn’t entirely go away.”

She leaned a little closer. “I sincerely doubt anyone else in any significant family even noticed, because, Jon, you’re just not that big a deal. Your name, though, meant something to me, and a lot of people who worked for me had heard it. So, the information wound its way to me. This time, I checked the photo, and it was you, just as I remembered you, not a day older, exactly the same.”

She settled back against the bed. “By the time I realized that fact, though, you’d fallen off the data trails again. I considered hunting you down, just for the satisfaction of it, but however hard your ego might find this to believe, I really did get over you and move on with my life a long, long time ago.”

That was the first thing she had said that I liked. I stayed silent, though.

“I’ve had children, buried a couple of husbands, and run our holdings for all this time,” she said. “Were you simply another old man living his life in other parts of settled space, we wouldn’t be having this talk. But you’re not. I couldn’t shake the fact that you never aged, though I actually came for a time to doubt that this other Jon Moore could be you. A year later, though, you managed to anger multiple coalition officials and kill a major scientist on Heaven, and by then parts of my body were beginning to fail.”

She coughed and drank some more water. “From what little I’ve been able to learn about you, you must have come close to dying more than once. You must have had to face the prospect of your own death. It’s not a pretty sight, but now I see it every day. My initial impulse was to track you down to learn what stopped you from aging in the hopes that you could use on me whatever it is you use on yourself, but then I as I gathered from the available data how many people you cared about were either badly injured or killed, I realized it was nothing you were doing. Had it been something under your control, you would have saved them. I came to accept that you’re a fluke, some sort of genetic miracle. I figure you live as you do to hide that fact.”

She stared at me for confirmation, but I again stayed silent.

“Fine, fine,” she said. She chuckled. “If I were younger and had more time, I might have tried to find you and persuade you to let some of the scientists who work in our various companies try to figure out what keeps you young, but I learned from my father’s death—he held out over a decade, you know, but they never found a cure—that research of that type takes longer than I have.”