Garfield popped in, and we exchanged a few words. He wasn’t in any better mood. There would be no cheering up happening here today, not by anyone. He sat and watched the video window with me.
The time passed, almost unfelt. Eventually, Bullseye came around and slid across my view again, mocking me with this visible reminder of my fallibility. Nothing like a couple hundred thousand tons of ice to make a dent in a planet.
Nothing like a couple hundred thousand tons… I sat up, abruptly, frowning. Garfield glanced sideways at my unexpected movement. Maybe we’d been looking at this all wrong.
75. Reunion
Howard
January 2216
HIP 14101
Wow, and I thought the stage-fright was bad last time. I’d been staring at the inside of the cargo door for what felt like forever. By this time, Bridget would have given up and gone to bed.
I checked the time. Three seconds elapsed. Oh, for—
With a feeling akin to resignation, I ordered the door to open, and walked out of the cargo bay.
Bridget stood on her porch, waiting. She gave me a smile and a small, aborted wave as I turned in her direction. I walked toward the patio, cataloguing all the sensations I was receiving from Manny—the cool evening breeze, the slight unevenness of the front walkway, the brush of my clothing as I moved. And the disappearance of every inch of distance as I approached her. Like falling down a gravity well.
Finally, after a million years or so, I walked up the two wooden steps, stopped in front of her, and held out my hands. She took them and said,
“You’re looking good, Howard.”
I smiled—I’d checked in the mirror a few dozen times, and the smile looked normal—and replied, “It’s nice to see you again.” Bridget would be 57 by now, physically. She’d stopped dyeing her hair and was showing her natural gray. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, and an incipient double-chin.
I quite literally couldn’t have cared less.
76. Funeral
Bob
November 2220
Delta Eridani
I stood to one side as Archimedes hugged with Buster and his siblings, Rosa and Pete. Diana had died overnight. Peacefully, thank the Universe. Deltans didn’t cry as such, but their equivalent was just as heart-wrenching.
Diana was laid carefully into the grave, then Archimedes and his children each placed one white flower in her arms. As they stepped out of the way, the long line-up of descendants filed past and added more flowers.
Diana and Archimedes had done quite well with spreading their genes.
When the line-up was finished, thirty-one flowers formed a large bouquet in her embrace. The family filled in the grave, then placed several large stone slabs over it to protect it from scavengers.
When it was done, everyone but Archimedes stepped back. He slowly sank to his knees, leaned forward, and hugged himself. Uttering a low keening, Archimedes rocked slowly back and forth.
I popped into VR, shaking and taking deep breaths. Charlie would be fine for a few moments on autonomous control, and I was very close to losing it. I rubbed my eyes savagely, muttered a few curses, then popped back into Charlie.
The crowd was slowly dispersing, leaving Archimedes and his children to their mourning. I took the opportunity to look Archimedes over. I had only an estimate of his age from when I first showed up, of course, but I put him at about seventy, which put him slightly older than Moses when he passed away. And Moses had been considered ancient.
All of which meant that I would probably be attending another funeral soon. I vowed it would be my last.
77. Completion
Bill
April 2221
Delta Pavonis
It took a little over four years for the Others to strip Delta Pavonis.
It was an impressive speed, until you realized that exponential behavior was involved. They brought a huge complement of autofactories, which they used to produce equipment, which mined resources for the production of more equipment. At some point, they stopped building equipment and started loading the cargo vessels. Finally, they harvested most of the equipment they’d built. The fleet that left the system consisted of only cargo vessels and death asteroids.
Once they were gone, we moved in to examine the damage. The asteroid belt and any small moons in the system had been stripped, of course. What really hurt was the state of Delta Pavonis 4.
The Others hadn’t been concerned with ecological damage, obviously.
They’d left the planet a dirty ball of mud. All the green had long since faded to a dull brown. The blue of the oceans was replaced by a mottled grey, and the ice caps had either melted or been coated with dust and soot.
Every major city had been demolished. The lack of corpses was, in a way, a blessing. But it left a ghostly, empty tableau that would have been completely appropriate to any of a hundred post-apocalyptic movies.
I took it as long as I could, then I turned off the video feeds, put my face in my hands, and wept.
* * *
Jacques agreed that rehabilitation of DP-4 would take a long time, but he quite correctly pointed out that flying the Pavs to another system far enough away from the Others to be safe would possibly take just as long. We had a reasonable candidate—a wandering Bob had found a suitable colonization target at HIP 84051. At more than 40 light years from Sol, it didn’t even rate
a name. Just a minor designation in the constellation Ara.
I popped over to visit Will. “Hey guy. How are you holding up?”
Riker still wore a haunted look. Homer’s suicide had affected him more than anyone would have thought possible. With the perfect memory that being a replicant brought with it, things didn’t fade with time. The vengeance that he had extracted had helped some, but there would always be a hole in the Bobiverse.
He gave me a small smile. “Holding steady, Bill. You here about HIP
84051-2?”
At my nod, he continued, “It was on the discussion agenda, and when I brought up the circumstances, the UN voted to make it available to the Pav refugees. Honestly, I think it’s a little too far from Sol to be really attractive, anyway.”
I sat down and materialized a coffee, and took a moment to look around.
Will had long since given up the Star Trek motif, and he was going by his first name—um, I guess Number One’s first name, anyway—most of the time, now. That was the name that our relatives knew him by, anyway.
The VR resembled a housing unit on Vulcan, although I recognized some décor and paraphernalia from Original Bob’s apartment. I smiled to see the Limited Edition Spock plaque, signed by Leonard Nimoy, hanging on the wall.
“Life just keeps getting more complicated, doesn’t it?” I raised the coffee in salute.
“Suppose so.” Will stretched, then materialized a coffee of his own. “I’m beginning to think Bob-1 has the right idea. He’s been talking about going out again, once Archimedes is gone. Just point the ship and accelerate for a while.”
I sighed and nodded. We were, what, eight to ten generations deep in Bobs, now? Bob-1 had achieved a kind of legendary status. He rarely showed up at moots any more, and when he did, it was like a Shatner sighting. I felt a deep sympathy for him. He was the first of us to get emotionally involved with ephemerals, and until Jacques and the Pavs, his had had the worst outcome.