The Seeds of Time (63 page)

“I’m not often wrong about people.” A beat. “Why
did
you choose ‘Clio Finn’?”

“I liked the sound.”

Somewhere belowdecks the gentle thud of a cabin door closing, vents clicking, the rattle of a loose deck plate as a boot tread on the way to some ship routine. On the bridge, Ashe was waiting. She gestured the gun toward the sleeping cubicle. “Get the circuit board,” she said, her voice a hard crackle.

Tandy sighed deeply. “It’s not in the safe,” he said.

“Let’s open it anyway.” She followed him into the darkly shrouded sleeping nook, gun cocked. “Turn on the light,” she ordered, keeping well back.

Tandy flipped the light on, and pulled on the lamp arm. It swung open to reveal the keypad, which he poked his code into. The safe opened. She moved closer for a better look.

It was empty.

“You bastard,” she snorted. “You never trusted me.”

His eyebrow flew up. “Apparently with good reason.”

“I would have done nearly anything for you,” she said. “I trusted you.”

“So who’s been betrayed? Tell me that, Clio?”

The words cut, shifted the ice. “Where is it?” she growled. Too much time, she had taken too much time already. How long had it been? And she was no closer to her goal.

“It’s in the next cabin. Officers’ mess.”

That might be true. Likely it wasn’t here, in this cabin.

“Go.” She gestured him out.

In the corridor, Clio craned her neck to look onto the bridge, but saw only Singh’s knee as he sat his navigation post.

They entered the officers’ mess. A half-eaten Pop-Tart lay on a plate, crowned with a slab of congealed butter.

“Get it,” Clio ordered, freezing her heart against assaults of forgiveness, gratitude, and the habit of loving swine.

“Clio.” Tandy spread his palms. “I can see that I’ve failed you. I didn’t want to fail you. In fact, I wanted to help you, but I can see you can never forgive what I’ve done. But please … please, Clio, don’t use your hatred of me to give away the human race.”

Now that was ludicrous, if he only knew.
Human race
. A poor choice of words, Tandy, reminding me of the very reason I’m here. “Get it before I shoot you in the leg.”

Tandy opened the refrigeration hatch, taking out a brown paper bag. He put it on the table between them.

“Clio,” he said. “Don’t I
matter?
Is it your turn to say who matters and who doesn’t? Your turn to call judgment?”

The ice slipped again. She looked at him, seeing his face as it used to be, before the betrayals. “You matter. Even now, you matter to me. Never doubt that. Now remove it from the sack.”

He pulled out the long, wafer-thin, chitinous plate, with its crystals sparkling in a controlled fire. He pushed it to the middle of the table. Then, as she stared a split second, mesmerized
by the treasure, Tandy pulled put a pistol from the same bag.

“Don’t touch the board, Clio, don’t even make one move.” A smile creased one corner of his mouth, and fled. “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?”

“It was never going to be easy.”

“Clio, put down your gun, very slowly. You’re going to put down your gun and I’m going to reach over and take it.”

“You don’t have to decide anything. I’m going to decide for you, because you’re too tired.…” Rita moaned behind her. The sun hit his colonel’s bars, and a glint blinded her …

“Put down the gun, Clio.”

Tandy was standing snug against the table, while Clio had at least three meters between herself and the table. Maybe just enough room.

“You’re not going to kill me in cold blood, Clio.”

She lowered her gun to her side.

Tandy nodded slowly.

Then she dove, dove under the table, sliding underneath on her stomach while Tandy backed up to get his aim. But Clio was a fraction of a second ahead of him as she raised her gun arm just high enough to shoot point-blank at his chest. In the next instant, Tandy’s shot rang hopelessly wide, as he fell, staggering one step backward and crashing against the refrigeration hatch and sliding to the floor. From his seated position he slowly raised his gun to Clio’s head as she tried to rise from her belly-flop position on the floor.

His hand trembled as the light faded from his eyes. He squeezed the trigger halfway and then, looking at a point beyond her face, he lowered the gun to the floor.

Clio scrambled into a crouch, but he lay utterly still, his gun still in his hand, and a small hole in his breast pocket slowly unfolding into a full, red blossom. Kneeling beside him, she waited as his pupils dilated to fill his irises, two dark holes to the depths of his mind, where the Metal Dominion had incubated, and now lay cooling in death.

She spoke softly:
“Clio
was the muse of history,
Colonel. The Greek muse. I thought you’d guess that. There were several muses, but Clio was the one that was best for Dive, the one that knew about history, about going back. I never told anyone before.”

His eyelids fluttered, once. Then he was gone.

Clio latched the mess-room door behind her, darting a glance down the corridor to the bridge. Singh’s knee just visible, as before. She clutched her pistol close, and crept forward. At the hatchway she ducked through onto the bridge.

Voris, Hocking, and Singh were bound and gagged. She nodded at Ashe and held up the sack. The room flickered mutely, perhaps shocked into silence, like the brain seeing the fatal cells’ first encroachment. On the pilot’s console, the main release switch controlling launch-bay systems pulsed hot.

Ashe looked at her a long moment, then turned to Hocking. “Do it,” he said. Ashe reached over Hocking, toggled the comm, all decks, and removed the captain’s gag.

A line of sweat on Hocking’s nose glowed from the reflected console lights. He leaned into the mike. “This is the captain. All crew will stand down and retire to science deck. Petya will report immediately to the bridge.” He looked up at Ashe.

“Repeat it.”

“This is Captain Hocking. This is an emergency. Petya will report to the bridge. Crew and all army personnel will abandon stations and retire to science deck.” The echo of his voice from all decks rippled back to the bridge in exaggerated booming, like the Wizard in Oz, behind his curtain. Hocking looked over at Clio as though he might heave himself out of his chair at her.

Ashe toggled the switch off. Above her gag, Voris’
eyes were round and wide, kept in bounds only by the thatched line of eyebrows pressing down.

Clio met those eyes. But no time for talking, no time to say,
My act of courage, this time, Meg. My act of courage
. Clio looked away, found Commander Singh’s stricken face. He stared down at the navigation console.

Ashe broke the silence. “Now listen,” he said. “Clio, Petya, and I are leaving. If we are impeded in any way, people will get hurt.” He turned to Singh. “We’re taking the captain with us. We’ll leave him in the lander when my ship meets us. Fire on us, he dies too.”

The slap of heel on metal announced Petya on the ladder from mid-decks. His head appeared in the hatchway. Though his face was placid as ever, he froze in place. Clio crouched down next to him. “We’re leaving this ship, Petya. We have to leave. Don’t be afraid.” Ashe gestured her down, then turned to loosen Hocking’s bonds. Clio started down the hatch ladder as Petya retreated.

At the bottom, Petya said, “Leaving the ship?”

“We’re going home with Timothy, would you like that?”

He nodded.

“Good. Because we have to leave, Petya. I’m a prisoner here. They’ve kept us prisoner all these years, Petya, you and me. It’s time to leave.”

Hocking clattered slowly down the ladder, still gagged but unbound, followed by Ashe. Above them, a vent released a sigh of warm air, full of the oily fragrance of ship’s body.

“Let’s go,” Ashe said. He looked into Clio’s eyes. “Is Tandy dead?”

“Dead. Yes, he’s dead.”

Ashe nodded, searching her face.

“I shot him,” she said.

He motioned to Petya. “You first,” he said, indicating the ladder to crew deck, and Petya lumbered up the rungs. Ashe nodded for Clio to follow.

She stopped a moment. “What if the universe splits now? We’ve stolen the fire. It could split now, Timothy.”

“We haven’t stolen the fire yet, Clio.” His face was all business, as he turned her around, urging her up the ladder. “Hurry.”

Directing Hocking up first, they scrambled up the hatchway ladder, emerging on the long tube of the crew deck. Ashe hurried them along, guiding Hocking with a palm in his back, pushing him to keep pace. Hocking’s eyes watched the doors, hoping, perhaps, that this once his commands weren’t obeyed, that Tandy’s crack force, or what was left of it, would burst through to bar the way to the launch bay.

Clio linked arms with Petya, who, like Hocking, dragged his feet. With her other hand, Clio clutched the paper bag against her side. Then back down the corridor, retracing their path, this time with the treasure in hand, the return from the cave and the monster slain.

Clio and Petya reached the loading-bay hatch first, and Petya stepped forward to crank the hatch, swinging it open. Then he stepped back.

“I can stay here?” Petya asked.

“No,” Clio said. “No, Petya, we have to hurry.” She pressed on his shoulder to turn him toward the hatchway.

He retreated a step.

“This isn’t a game, Petya. Let’s go.”

He stared back, setting his lower lip.

Clio looked to Ashe.

Ashe said softly, “What’s the matter, Petya?”

“I can stay here?” he repeated.

“Don’t you want to come with Timothy and me?” Clio said.

In answer, Petya turned from them and walked down the corridor to the second-to-last cabin door, his quarters.

Clio bolted after him. “Petya! We don’t have time to fetch anything! Please.” She pulled on his arm. Like coaxing a stump from the ground.

He turned around, looked down from his six-foot-two height, to a point on her collarbone.

God. He was going to clam up. Clio pulled her hand through her hair, fingers tracing a shaking path.

“Petya,” she said. “We’re in great danger. Remember when we ran from DSDE, across the field, the night they came for us, and we had to run so hard? We have to run one last time, Petya.” She tugged on the rooted stump again.

“No toasters,” he said.

Clio’s voice flew upward. “Toasters?”

He looked down into her eyes. “Toasters. Car radios, computers. Things that break. Plants don’t break?”

“Sure they break! Everything breaks, Petya.” Clio looked around to find Ashe approaching them, Hocking in tow.

“You’ll miss your machines?” Ashe asked.

Petya nodded.

“But we have to hurry, Petya,” Clio said, trying to push past all this with words.

Ashe’s eyes were forest dark. “You want to stay here, Petya? Is that it?”

Clio turned on Ashe. “Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! Don’t try to tell him what he wants!”

“But
you
can tell him what he wants?”

Clio began to hurl back a response, stuffed it. She turned back to her brother. “Petya. Do you want to be apart again? We could be together.”

Ashe laid a hand on her arm. “Clio. Don’t.”

Petya looked now at Ashe. “You could stay here?”

Ashe shook his head back and forth in a narrow arc describing the range of choice.

Petya faced Clio. “I could stay here?”

Clio could barely see him now, as he stood there, all blurry. “Do you want this, Petya? Because it’s forever. Later, you can’t change your mind.”

“I can decide?” He looked at her for permission. Would live with what she said. Would obey.

“Yes,” she whispered. “You can decide.”

The ship waited in drafty silence as though holding its breath.

“I’ll miss you?” Petya said.

Clio moaned. Heard herself saying, “No, no …” And then Ashe was behind her. A gentle pull on her shoulder.

Clio stepped up to embrace Petya. She spanned his torso with her arms, pressed her flesh against his, flesh of her family, of her span of days, of her span of heart. She pushed away at last, looking up at him. Said: “Yeah, I’ll miss you too.” Ashe was pulling her away, everything was pulling away, flying off from the center. “Miss you more,” she said, still backing up.

“Will not!”

“Will too.” She felt the hatch jutting against her back, and Petya stood by his door, the yellow plaid of his shirt all collapsed into formless buttery grey.

Ashe helped her through the hatch. Halfway through she turned and looked at Petya, still there by his cabin door, and he said, “Will not,” smiling.

She smiled back. “I love you,” she said. She felt a hand on her shoulder, pushing her through the hatchway, while part of her struggled to stay in the safe old place, while everything conspired to squeeze her out, whispering, move on, move on.…

Hocking clambered through the narrow door, and then Ashe. He slammed the hatch door shut, and as he threw home the bolts with his right hand, for a moment Clio saw
through
his hand, or thought she did. But the next moment, as she looked in alarm at Ashe, he was solid as ever. Then she felt Ashe’s arm around her shoulder, turning her to the waiting, open hatchway of
Sun Spot
.