I cleaned up and floated out. “Have fun, Charlie. It’s a moving experience.”
I floated and clambered over to the last escape ship, with its thirty coffins lined up in dim red light. Was this the last thing I would ever see? I could think of more pleasant scenes.
Diana helped me hook up the orthotics, with a lubricant that contained a muscle relaxant. It was easier than the last time, coming back from the last battle. I suppose they had learned something over the centuries.
A slap on my left leg numbed it from the groin down. I knew this was the last one, the shunt that would replace my blood with a slippery polymer.
“Wait,” Marygay said, and she leaned over the coffin and held my face in both hands, and kissed me. “See you tomorrow, darling.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, and just nodded, already getting dreamy.
——————————————————————————–
Chapter nineteen
I didn’t know that five of Teresa’s gang had a change of heart, and joined my pod at the last minute. I was already in the strange space I would occupy for the next twenty-four years.
All five ships were ejected from the Time Warp simultaneously, so they would have a chance of arriving back home within a few days or weeks of one another. A difference in thrust down in the seventh or eighth decimal place could make a big difference in arrival time, multiplied over twenty-four years.
We basically pointed our noses in the direction of Middle Finger and patiently ate away velocity for ten years. At some point, for one instant, we were absolutely still, with respect to the home planet. Then for seven years we accelerated toward it, and flipped, and for another seven years slowed back down.
Of course I felt none of this. Time passed quickly–far too fast to be almost half as long as my life–but I could tell it was passing. I was neither quite awake nor asleep, it seemed to me afterwards, but floating in a kind of sea of remembrance and fantasy.
For many years, or year-long days, I was obsessed with the notion that all of my life since the Aleph-null campaign, or Yod-4 or Tet-2 or Sade-138, was being lived in the instant between a fatal wounding and death: all those billions of neurons basking in their last microsecond of existence, running through a finite, but very large, combination of possibilities. I would not live forever, but I wouldn’t really die as long as the neurons kept firing and seeking.
Coming awake was like dying–all that had been real for so long slowly fading into blindness and deafness and the chill numbing that had been my body’s actual state for decades.
I vomited dry air, over and over.
When my stomach and lungs were tired of that, a tube inside my mouth misted something sweet and cool. I tried to open my eyes, but damp pads held them gently shut.
Two delicious stings as the orthotics withdrew, and the first motion of my limbs, if you count a twig as a limb, was a fast erection in reaction to warm blood. I couldn’t move my arms or legs for some time. Fingers and toes made satisfying crackly sounds, coming to life.
Diana lifted the pads from my eyes and pried the lids apart with dry fingers. “Hello? Anybody home?”
I swallowed thin syrup, and coughed weakly. “Is Marygay all right?” I croaked.
“Resting. I just woke her a few minutes ago. You’re second.”
“Where are we? Are we here?”
“Yes, we’re here. When you’re able to sit up, you’ll see good old MF down there, looking cold as a bitch.” I strained, but was only able to rock a few inches.
“Don’t knock yourself out. Just rest for a while. When you get hungry, you can have some ancient soup.”
“How many ships?”
“I don’t know how to hail them. When Marygay gets up, she or you can give them a call. I can see one.”
“How many people? Did we lose any to SA?”
“One. Leona; I’ve kept her frozen. There might be disabilities among the others, but they’re waking up.”
I slept for a couple of hours and then woke to the low murmur of Marygay’s voice on the horn. I sat up in my coffin and Diana brought me some broth. It tasted like carrots and salt.