Prologue and Chapter One

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Proverbs 16:25

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Famous Last Words

PROLOGUE

It wheeled in out of nowhere, a blue-white smudge of a galaxy so insignificant only God knew its name.  Capricious and quick, it barreled into a distant sector of the Orion Spur of the Milky Way and all Hades broke loose.

The larger galaxy tore a handful of stars off the dwarf, hurling them into deep space.  The collision churned up behemoth clouds of luminous green gas and blood-red dust that roiled and clashed across billions of light years, while deep in the billows’ fathomless, smoky wombs brilliant flashes announced the explosive births of massive, short-lived stars.  Stellar winds ripped through the quadrant like a million tornadoes unleashed, their charged blasts warping magnetic fields right and left.  Wrenched by irresistible but conflicting forces, gravity shifted and orbits bent.

Eran says it was utter chaos out there for an eon or two, but the uproar gradually subsided.  Our galaxy digested the pint-sized invader; local stars and planets spun slowly into new configurations.

It would have saved us all a lot of trouble, if evidence of this minor cosmic rearrangement had reached Earth a few hundred years sooner than it did.  Unfortunately, light can only travel so fast, no matter how cataclysmic the newsflash.  So in the end, events boiled down to this:  Five hundred years before the Alphas set out, their plan developed a serious kink.  Their carefully plotted course was rendered hopeless centuries before liftoff, because the stars they were trusting to guide them were no longer be where they appeared to be.

Yes, the Alphas launched themselves into one heck of a fix.

The other trouble started about four hundred years after that.

It started with me.

Ω

CHAPTER ONE

“Maybe she lost her best friend.”

“Not bloody likely.  We’re her best friends.”

My head snapped up, and I blinked my surroundings into focus.  The long, narrow room was densely packed with furniture, round tables for two in the center and booths running down both bulkheads, all of which were now occupied.  Tarrazu, a coffee house named after the proprietor’s favorite Costa Rican blend, had filled up while I wasn’t looking.  Eran was sitting across from me, elbow on the table, chin cradled in his hand, his expression mildly amused.  Luana stood to his right, smiling quizzically.  Then their remarks registered, and panic struck.  How long had they been watching me?

“She might be contemplating some late twentieth-century natural disaster,” he supposed.

Luana’s hair dropped like a glossy black curtain between us as she bent low for a better view of my face.  “Or a plague,” she speculated and straightened, laying her hand on Eran’s  shoulder.

He nodded.  “Whatever it is, massive loss of life was obviously involved.”

Mind reeling, I fumbled badly.  “What?  No, I … I …”

“A war,” Lu decided.  “I’ll bet that’s what it was!  She was tormenting herself over some horrible old Earth war like the one she told us about a while ago.  You know, Eran, the … what was it?  Oh, yes!  The Second Worst War!”  Eran’s lips twitched.

“World War,” I corrected absently, as my brain scrambled for purchase.  “It was the Second World War, Lu.”

“So that was it?  You were thinking about something disagreeable,” Eran pointed out, when I didn’t immediately reply.  He leaned back and crossed his arms.  “You were the very picture of dejection and despair.  Wasn’t she, Lu?”

“Oh, yes.  The very picture.”

Dejection and despair?  That about summed it up, I guessed.  I had come to the Club Deck in search of any distraction that would get me off the wildly spinning mental merry-go-round I had ridden for the past three weeks.  But, as they used to say on Earth, “Wherever you go, there you are,” and there I was, living proof.  Every question and all the vicious uncertainty I had hoped to escape had walked right in and sat down in this back-corner booth with me.  Watching other people laugh and chat like they didn’t have a care in the world only made me feel worse by comparison.  Within minutes, I had my elbows on the table and my face buried in my hands.

What were you thinking, Kai? I railed silently.  Why don’t you just take out a ship-wide advertisement?  Something subtle like, “Traitor to the cause?” I glanced around furtively, wondering how many other people had noticed my lapse.

“So what’s on your mind?” prodded Eran, drawing my attention back to him.  He and Lu knew they had caught me flatfooted and were relishing my obvious disadvantage the way only close friends could.  They were probably anticipating the usual snappy comeback.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have one.  “Kai-Lee?”

Still struggling to pull myself together, while inwardly cursing my carelessness, I instinctively blurted out a partial truth:  “Ella Fitzgerald.”  When Eran’s gaze sharpened and narrowed, it was all I could do not to groan out loud.  Get a grip, Kai, and get it now! I took a surreptitious breath to steady myself, determined to tread slowly and carefully from there on out.

“Ella Fitzgerald. The name sounds familiar, but ….”  Luana slowly shook her head.  “No, I don’t believe I know her.  Is she a Delta?”

“Not exactly,” drawled Eran, scrutinizing my face.

I quickly looked away from him and up at Luana.  “She was a twentieth-century singer, Lu.  The ‘First Lady of Song?’  I played some of her stuff the last time we all mixed in my quarters.”  There.  Three complete sentences.  Much better.

Luana brightened.  “Oh, that Ella Fitzgerald!  She had a wonderful voice!  Kai-Lee, until you played those songs, I had no idea primitive music could be so pleasant.  I especially liked … she sang something ….”  Lu paused to nibble on a long violet nail; the lacquer matched her stylishly oversized linen tunic.  “Something about the moon being paper.  Strange superstition, don’t you think?”

“Strange super—”  I shook my head.  “Listen, Lu, Ella Fitzgerald didn’t actually believe—”  I broke off mid-explanation, belatedly remembering that people who tried to untangle Lu’s thought processes usually wound up snared in confusion with her.  Although I would have given my right arm for a good diversion right then, I wasn’t up to managing that one.

“Didn’t actually believe what?” Lu prompted.

“Never mind.”

Luana turned to Eran.  “Didn’t actually believe what?”

He shrugged.  “Search me.  I’m just a humble physicist, unschooled in ancient lyrical art forms.  Kai’s the historian.”

But I was ready when Lu turned back to me, neatly checking her renewed demand for clarification by pointing across the room.  “Look, Lu, there’s Ke-Ling.”

Luana’s attention, unshakable when she was painting but short-lived in all other circumstances, was easily redirected.  She craned her neck to search the crowd.  “Where?”

“There.  Over by the alcove.”

“Oh, yes.  I see him now.”

“I thought you wanted to ask him something about … uh … something about his Known Span theory.”

“I did?”

“Sure.  Don’t you remember?”  I stared pointedly at Eran.

“Telomeres?” he suggested helpfully.

“Yes, telomeres.”  I glanced back across the room, saw Ke-Ling stand, and injected a not entirely contrived hint of urgency into my voice.  “Oops!  Better hurry, looks like he’s about to leave!”

“Oh!”  Swept along by the suggestion that she had to act quickly or lose some not-quite-remembered, but apparently long-awaited chance, Luana rose on tiptoe and waved gracefully.  “Ke-Ling!  Ke-Ling, wait!  It’s me, Lu!  I want to …. It’s about your … ah ….”  She glanced uncertainly at Eran.

“Telomeres.”

“Right!  Your telomeres.  I wonder if you would explain,” she continued, threading her way through the tables, “well … what are they?  Exactly?”

Torn between guilt and almost giddy relief, I watched her close on her prey.  The Quingenti’s lead geneticist shot a hunted glance at the portal behind him but correctly judged it too far, rendering escape impossible.  His shoulders drooped; he pasted on a weak but polite smile; he even offered his arm so Lu could lead him to the table he had left a few short seconds ago.  Luana settled into her seat, gesturing animatedly as she talked, completely oblivious to the fact that Councilman Yan sank into the chair across from her with the resigned air of a man who knew he was in for a very long night.

In Lu’s wake a small, deep silence spun out.  It was like sitting in a back-corner black hole for two that swallowed every sound wave in the room—voices, acoustic guitar, everything.  I swear, I could feel Eran staring at me.  Resigned to the fact that I would have to do it sooner or later, I met his gaze.

He cocked his head.  “Known Span theory?  Unscrupulous, but effective, Red.  Now how about an explanation?”

“It’s just that I’m tired, and ….  Honestly, Eran, I love Lu, but you know how—”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand.  “I’m not talking about Lu.  Before that.”

My guard was back up in a heartbeat, but I thought I covered it nicely with blank bewilderment.  “Before?”

“Yes, Kai-Lee, before.  What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Stop repeating everything I say and tell me what’s bothering you.  You did rather resemble someone who had lost her best mate, you know—slumped alone in a dark corner booth, your head in your hands.”

“I told you, I’m tired.”

He nodded.  “Hence the dark circles under your eyes.  And I might have believed fatigue was all there was to it if when asked, you had simply said so.  But you said, ‘Ella Fitzgerald.’  Intriguing.  Your answer had all the hallmarks of a spontaneous response—up to and including the slightly chagrined expression that flitted across your face the moment the words left your mouth.  Ergo, you were probably telling the truth.  Given your demeanor when we found you, it obviously wasn’t the whole truth, which meant you were evading.  And that, said I to myself, isn’t like our Kai at all.  Well, one thought led to another, naturally—”

Under the table I wiped a damp palm against my tunic.  “Naturally.”

“—and I came to the rather belated realization that you haven’t quite been yourself for some time.”

“Not quite myself,” I echoed weakly, but he took it for a question.

“Oh, I doubt anyone else has noticed—the changes are subtle, and no one knows you as well as I—but you’ve been keeping to yourself more.  Granted, you’ve always been prone to prolonged bouts of preoccupation, but you’re usually fully present once you finally come up for air.  Lately, you never quite emerge, even when you’re with the rest of us.”  He paused, then added softly, “And it suddenly dawned on me … I couldn’t remember the last time I heard you laugh.”

Momentarily at a loss, I stared at him.  One the one hand, he was backing me into a corner I was frantic to avoid.  If I hadn’t been able to work things out for myself yet, I didn’t have a hope in Hades of explaining them to him.  On the other hand, it seemed like I had been waiting forever for a chance to spread my newfound gospel.  Or expose my neurosis.  Take your pick.

In short, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I finally found my tongue.  “What do you want me to say?  That I’ve got the blues?  What if I have?  Everybody feels blue sometimes.”

“The blues?  I love it when you talk archaic.  All right, absolutely.  Everyone occasionally gets, as you say, the blues.  Mood swings, as we all know, are fairly predictable imbalances we nip in the bud with a quick visit to an adjuster.  We psycho-supplement and move on.  You haven’t.  Why?”

Because they didn’t have a pill for what ailed  me.  Oh, drugs would definitely take the edge off—and wasn’t that a tempting prospect?  But they would also blunt my ability to come to grips with the truth that had broken over me like a tidal wave that fateful night, and I was pretty sure I had to come to grips with that truth—not to mention its deeply personal implications—or fall slowly to pieces.  Contrary to conventional Colonial wisdom, I mused morosely, emotional equanimity wasn’t the end-all and be-all it was cracked up to be.  What good is a smooth ride, if it doesn’t get you where you need to go?

But I couldn’t tell him that, not unless I told him everything, and that I wasn’t ready to do.  I tunneled my fingers through my hair.  “Look, I really am exhausted.  Can’t we talk about this some other time?”

“After you pick out all the comfortable bits and string them neatly together?”

Not a bad idea.

“Come on, Kai-Lee, talk to me.”

“It’s late and ….  Listen, it’s complicated, all right?” Complicated? I scoffed silently.  Try apocalyptic.

“No doubt.  The ability to complicate even the simplest matter is one of your many gifts.”

“I haven’t completely worked it out myself.”  Hadn’t even come close.  I was still trying to understand how the truth had eluded me for so long, only to sneak up on me when I least expected it.  As a historian, I had always been able to pick a thread out of the past, follow its twists and turns, and identify the triggers that set this particular group on that particular course—those short, sharp turns of events that launch the arrow of time toward the heart of an altered destiny.  So why hadn’t I foreseen the hard left that would irrevocably change my own life?

“Two heads,” Eran reminded me, dragging my attention back to my current predicament.

I stared at him, barely resisting the urge to pull out my hair.  He wasn’t going to back off!  I recognized the mulish set of his jaw.  His assistants dreaded that expression, knowing it meant a marathon lab session under close supervision for however long it took to unravel whatever knot he had run into.  Unfortunately, I was now the hapless knot in question.

He took my hand. “Remember me?  Your favorite nursery mate?  Bosom chum?  Lifelong confidant?”  Stroking a thumb across my knuckles, he waited.

My heart softened as I stared at our joined hands.  His was so much bigger than mine, with long, strong fingers.  I lifted my gaze to his face.  The high forehead, straight nose, narrow mouth and long, rounded jaw were features I knew almost as well as my own.  Eran and I had grown up together.  Tall and lean and raw boned, straw-colored hair falling over his forehead no matter how many times he raked his fingers through it … this was my most intimate companion—lover, friend, and brother, all rolled into one.  He had always been unfailingly on my side.

Common sense was within a few dewy eyed seconds of crumbling—I was that close to spilling my guts—when the survival instinct kicked in and pulled me up short.  What in Hades was I doing? I eyed Eran in exasperation.  Blast the man, he knew exactly which buttons to push!

Pressing my lips together, I shook my head slowly.  “I can’t talk about it.  Not tonight,” I added, and stood.

He frowned up at me.  “If not tonight, when?”

“I don’t know,” I said, backing up a step as his concerned, implacable gaze tried to bore a hole in my resolve.  “Soon, maybe.”  Afraid of what might happen if I stayed any longer, I quickly turned to go, leaving him with a muttered, “I’ll call you,” neither of us believed.

Kathy DiSanto, 2009, all rights reserved