No Life But This (30 page)

Rose, on the other hand, looked like a cancer victim. Her clothes hung on her. She had lost almost all of the weight she had put on in the last year. Her skin was pale and sallow. Her hair had gone lank and brittle. Her eyes held deep shadows, as if she were bruised. I knew her skin was hypersensitive to touch
and she could hardly hold down a meal. She was developing a wheeze from the recycled air. Rose was dying. She could have hung on, wasting away, for a year, maybe more. But she would never thrive on the colonies. Even if she had wanted to, she could not stay.

Mr Zellwegger and I had already talked about it. Rose’s passage was already booked on a transport coming in from Titan in six months. But
there was no reason she couldn’t go back to Earth on the
Daedalus
. It had had its month-long maintenance check, waiting for another launch window, and now it was ready to take passengers back to Earth.

Tears filled her brown eyes, and she trembled in my arms. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

‘
You can’t change who you are,’
I told her.
‘You’ve hated this place from the moment you set foot on it.’

She turned around. ‘No! I didn’t come all this way to lose you now.’

My thumb caressed her lips. ‘I’m not going to let you die, Rose,’ I whispered. ‘You need to go home. You need the sun and the air and the earth beneath your feet.’ I filled her mind with pictures, memories of that beautiful paradise planet on which I had been born. I had never been so glad I had studied poetry. She needed words
to show her the truth. Words had more power than anything else in the universe. ‘You need to breathe in the scent of flowers in the springtime, and new mown grass in the summer, the decaying leaves of autumn and the spicy tang of the winter wind. You need to paint dreamscapes by natural sunlight. You need to hear birds singing in the morning and crickets chirping in the evening. You need to rejoin
your own time, to be with Annie and Mina and Bren. You need to cuddle up to your dog at night, and listen to cello music as you fall into your studio for hours. You need the chance to be yourself, to live your life, as you have always wanted. You need to go home, Rose.’ I kissed her cheek and whispered into her ear. ‘I need you to go home. I need to know you’re okay, somewhere.’ I kissed the tender
skin near her hairline. ‘And we both know, I’m not really me anymore.’

‘Yes, you are!’ Rose whimpered. She grabbed my face with both hands and stared defiantly into my eyes. ‘You’ve changed, but it’s still you.’

I shook my head. ‘
I don’t belong to you anymore. I belong to Europa. She’s swallowed me, and I don’t even think the same way. Look at you, so young, so wounded. All I do is hurt you.’

‘That’s not true. You’re Otto, and I love you.’

I looked at her.
‘Then go,’
I told her.

‘No,’ she said determinedly. ‘You’ve been telling me that I’m strong and I can make my own decisions. Well, this is one. I’m staying with you.’

Decide to waste away? To die? I knew I couldn’t let her. She knew it too, but she didn’t want to admit it. For a long time I let her mind remain still. Then, out
of the stillness, I made an offer. I meant it … but I knew what her answer would be.

‘Then I’ll come back to Earth with you.’

For a painful eternity of seconds Rose’s mind absorbed everything I had just offered. ‘NO!’ she cried. She wrapped herself around me so tightly I thought she would bruise herself. ‘No! I can’t let you!’

‘Then you know what has to be done,’
I told her gently. We were
in exactly the same position. She couldn’t live here. I couldn’t live there. Neither of us could let the other destroy ourselves. With a feeling like cracking ice, Rose knew I meant it. Her mental briars fell, dull and lifeless with defeat. For the first time ever, she couldn’t fight. She couldn’t fight this
at all.
I wished there was some other way. We both knew there wasn’t.

Rose looked up
at me through her tears. ‘You had this all planned.’

I couldn’t answer, not in words. It wasn’t that I had planned it. I simply knew what had to be. Like the
I
, who had had no concept of any being outside of itself, I knew there was only one path, and that was the one you were on. Even if you changed direction, even if you turned away from where you expected to go, you were still only and ever
living one life.

Your own.

Our paths had to be different. There was no other choice. There was no other life.

‘This totally burns,’ Rose muttered.

I chuckled. She was right. For a long time we stood in each other’s arms, trying hard to let go.

‘No,’ Rose said at last.

I closed my eyes, ready to go through the whole thing again. But she stopped me.

‘We still have three days,’ she said. Her
voice was very small.

I blinked at her. Her forest pool eyes were red and shining with tears, and her hands were shaking. Then I kissed her, deeply. She was right, again.

Three days can be a very long time.

Three days later, Mr Zellwegger and I stood on the observation deck of Jove Station, watching the
Daedalus
as she disconnected from the space dock and began the long journey back to Earth. Rose had gone through the final gate two hours earlier, but neither of us had wanted to leave until we knew she was gone.

Mr Zellwegger had offered to abandon his plans of negotiation and travel with
her, but Rose had said no. He was needed here. She’d made her goodbyes to each of us separately. It was easier on her that way.

She’d kissed me as deeply as she could right before she entered the
Daedalus
. I knew she meant to keep that kiss in her mind as the stass overcame her. That kiss was intended to last forever.

Deep space travel is a slow ballet, and it was some minutes before the
Daedalus
was fully disconnected and far enough away from the space station that it felt like she was really gone. Mr Zellwegger and I had spent the entire time in silence. Neither of us had had anything to say. After being with the
I
, I no longer felt as though I couldn’t talk. Much of the time, I no longer felt any need to.

Finally. I turned away from the slowly dwindling image of the moonliner and turned
towards the Europa shuttle port. I had to go back today – I had to get back to the
I
within forty-eight hours or I began to get ill again.

‘Thank you, Otto,’ Xavier said behind me, and I turned back. He was still looking out of the window. It was possible he could see me in the reflection, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I’m … not very good at saying the truth about how I feel, particularly where
Rose is concerned. It’s very confused. But I’ve been very afraid that Rose would never move on without me. I’ve always thought of you as a mistake, one of my life’s greatest regrets. And in many ways, Rose is, too. But I think it could only have been someone as … extraordinary as you to help Rose through this last year. So maybe … maybe my two mistakes cancelled each other out. I’ve never believed
in fate, but …’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe you two were meant for each other. At least for this short amount of time.’ He sighed. ‘Rose and time, are …’ He trailed off. ‘Thank you for helping her,’ he said instead.

The heartbroken, tormented young man lurked in his face. He still loved Rose. Yes, like a brother, and yes, like a father, but that young man that he kept chained inside him loved her with
a hunger that would never be appeased. And it would have been so easy to let him loose. Rose was wounded enough that she would have allowed anything, and it was only his own strong sense of ethics that had kept him from allowing their relationship to turn pure poison. And it tortured him every day.

‘What about you?’ I whispered.

He looked at me then, surprised to hear my whisper. He shrugged.
‘I was meant for her, once, too,’ he said quietly, recognizing the honour of hearing my tiny voice. ‘Rose’s whole life has only been little bites of time. I didn’t have the power to change it when I was young. I don’t have the power to heal it, now. I can only keep it from getting worse.’ He looked into my eyes. ‘I think you’ve helped her to heal, in a way I never could.’

‘I wasn’t talking about
her,’ I whispered. ‘I know how you feel.’

He shook his head, an amused, condescending smile touching the corners of his mouth. He thought it was a platitude, that I imagined something that my own seventeen-year-old mind could never really understand. I reached for his hand. ‘
I know,
’ I showed him.

He made a sound, as if someone had punched him in the stomach, as I showed him what had happened.
How the screaming, tortured young man he’d been shackling had fled into my burning mind during the attack. He was still there, young Xavier, loving, missing, wanting Rose as his lover, railing against his bonds. Xavier pulled his hand away, backing off, his face pale as if he’d seen a monster. He looked uncertain for a moment, and then finally buried his face in his hands. I’d never seen such a
perfect image of despair.

I came up and took a hand from him, holding it before us as I stared into his eyes. ‘
You do not need to feel ashamed. Your behaviour has been exemplary. No one would expect you to feel otherwise. It is not your doing, that your childhood sweetheart was dropped into your lap at the wrong time of your life.’

‘It was the wrong life!’
both parts of him shouted at me, deep
in his mind.

‘There is no wrong life,’
I told him. ‘
This was the life you had.’

But it was still the wrong life. He still couldn’t sleep, fighting the longing for her. It
wasn’t fair!
And it wasn’t right – it so wasn’t right.

‘
You’ve been a paragon, compared with me,’
I told him. ‘
And I have the power to make it right. I robbed you, stole your life, first just her memories, and then your own.
And what I did with it was unconscionable. So now, my unwitting friend, I return it.’
I opened my mind and gave him every moment that I had spent with Rose as him. It was only a few days, a few precious, deeply confused hours. But they were his, and he had earned them with his patient reserve. I hadn’t.

I didn’t give him every moment with Rose. The times with only her and me were private. But
every kiss, every touch, every caress that I had felt as him I gave back to him, as the proper owner. He groaned, swaying, as the screaming young man in his subconscious sighed with relief. If I hadn’t been in contact with the
I
, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I wouldn’t have had the clarity, the surgical precision to cut those memories out and give them so completely. But I did, and he deserved
it.

I let go his hand, and he opened his eyes. ‘Why?’ he whispered.

I shrugged.

‘You should hate me.’

I smiled for him. My own limited expressions were back, but I think I’d kept his smile. It was easy. I shook my head. ‘When I think on it,’ I whispered, ‘you’re probably the closest thing I’m ever going to have to a father.’ I tilted my head at the irony. I tapped my head. ‘You’re always going
to be in here. It’s only fair.’

He reached for me, and hugged me, as I’d seen him do with Bren. ‘I’d be honoured,’ he said softly. Then he turned away, his eyes shining, to watch the tiny moving dot that was the
Daedalus
, and Rose.

I headed back to the Europan shuttle alone. Xavier was scheduled to head down to Ganymede, to oversee what the conditions were there. He suspected trouble. I did
not envy him his diplomatic role.

I had a hard enough time playing ambassador to the
I
.

The flight back to Europa was uneventful. I was the only passenger, though apparently there were some Geemos in the cargo hold on their way from Ganymede. We really had to do something about that colony. I sat in one of the observation bubbles, watching my pearly blue moon turn to a red-streaked glacier landscape.
I thought about what I would write to Rose, to greet her as she woke up from stasis en-route to Earth. The thought pleased me. She had to live apart from me, but she lived. And so did I.

As we approached the elevator housing I turned my gaze from the fierce boiling presence of Jupiter, and turned to look up at the Sun. It was too far away to damage my retinas. I couldn’t see Earth from here,
not without a telescope, but I knew she was somewhere in that direction. I felt a tinge of regret. I’d never really appreciated her beauty before. I’d spent all my life dreaming of Europa, gazing up at the sky, thinking of some other place as my home. Why had I done that? I’d missed so much.

Earth. The blue skies and the feel of the wind. Her rolling oceans and the sound of the trees. Birds and
beasts and the natural rhythm of life. My Rose. The birthplace of humanity. The paradise planet. Where most of my DNA had originated. The planet of my origin.

I’d never see her again. I touched the glass, as if I could reach her. But it was impossible.

I closed my eyes. I had Europa now. I
was
Europa. I had to let her go.

I had no life but this one.

The many years it has taken me to drag this particular book up out of a very tumultuous time in my life have of course been punctuated by a lot of people who have been invaluable in its research. Dr Joanne Holland helped with all the cellular research which almost instantly ended up on the editing floor because it didn’t forward the plot, but at least I personally know what’s
actually happening with Otto on a medical/cellular level, so that’s got to have resonated in the text somehow, yes? Samantha Lawler of CalTech, introduced to me by my wonderful mathematician cousin Claire, told me everything I know (and much that is pure theoretical speculation) about Europa, and anything that is now inaccurate is entirely my own fault. Jordan Bouray suffered through more versions
of this absurdity than anyone apart from my editors, and his unfailing faith has been baffling. I can’t acknowledge my wonderful partner Tom enough, for insisting that I was right the first time, and that Otto really needed to go properly insane. And all those wonderful people in life and on the internet – writers and clever clogs and everyone else – who filled Quin with quips and sarcasm which I
could never have thought up on my own. I don’t know which bits of what Quin said originated with me, and which bits with others (I think Quin quotes Greg House at least twice, but I don’t remember where) but I do not claim to take credit for all of Quin’s cruel cleverness. Thank you everyone.