“Daddy,” said the child on the floor, her own voice a tiny frightened echo of the voice on the comlog, “you never told me that I had a sister.”
“You don’t, little one.”
Rachel frowned. “Is this Mommy when she was … not so big? Uh-uh, it can’t be. Her name’s Rachel, too, she says. How can …”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll explain …” Sol realized that the phone was ringing in the living room, had been ringing. “Just a moment, sweetie. I’ll be right back.”
The holo that formed above the pit was of a man Sol had never seen before. Sol did not activate his own imager, eager to get rid of the caller. “Yes?” he said abruptly.
“M. Weintraub? M. Weintraub who used to live on Barnard’s World, currently in the village of Dan on Hebron?”
Sol started to disconnect and then paused. Their access code was unfiled. Occasionally a salesperson called from New Jerusalem, but offworld calls were rare. And, Sol suddenly realized, his stomach feeling a stab of cold, it was past sundown on the Sabbath. Only emergency holo calls were allowed.
“Yes?” said Sol.
“M. Weintraub,” said the man, staring blindly past Sol, “there’s been a terrible accident.”
* * *
When Rachel awoke her father was sitting by the side of her bed. He looked tired. His eyes were red and his cheeks were gray with stubble above the line of his beard.
“Good morning, Daddy.”
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
Rachel looked around and blinked. Some of her dolls and toys and things were there, but the room was not hers. The light was different. The air felt different. Her daddy looked different. “Where are we, Daddy?”
“We’ve gone on a trip, little one.”
“Where to?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. Hop out, sweetie. Your bath is ready and then we have to get dressed.”
A dark dress she had never seen before lay at the base of her bed. Rachel looked at the dress and then back at her father. “Daddy, what’s the matter? Where’s Mommy?”
Sol rubbed his cheek. It was the third morning since the accident. It was the day of the funeral. He had told her each of the preceding days because he could not imagine lying to her then; it seemed the ultimate betrayal—of both Sarai and Rachel. But he did not think he could do it again. “There’s been an accident, Rachel,” he said, his voice a pained rasp. “Mommy died. We’re going to go say goodbye to her today.” Sol paused. He knew by now that it would take a minute for the fact of her mother’s death to become real for Rachel. On the first day he had not known if a four-year-old could truly comprehend the concept of death. He knew now that Rachel could.
Later, as he held the sobbing child, Sol tried to understand the accident he had described so briefly to her. EMVs were by far the safest form of personal transportation mankind had ever designed. Their lifters could fail but, even so, the residual charge in the EM generators would allow the aircar to descend safely from any altitude. The basic, failsafe design of an EMV’s collision-avoidance equipment had not changed in centuries. But everything failed. In this case it was a joy-riding teenage couple in a stolen EMV outside the traffic lanes, accelerating to Mach 1.5 with all lights and transponders off to avoid detection, who defied all odds by colliding with Aunt Tetha’s ancient Vikken as it descended toward the Bussard City Opera House landing apron. Besides Tetha and Sarai and the teenagers, three others died in the crash as pieces of falling vehicles cartwheeled into the crowded atrium of the Opera House itself.
Sarai.
“Will we ever see Mommy again?” Rachel asked between sobs. She had asked this each time.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” responded Sol truthfully.
The funeral was at the family cemetery in Kates County on Barnard’s World. The press did not invade the graveyard itself but teeps hovered beyond the trees and pressed against the black iron gate like an angry storm tide.
Richard wanted Sol and Rachel to stay a few days, but Sol knew what pain would be inflicted on the quiet farmer if the press continued their assault. Instead, he hugged Richard, spoke briefly to the clamoring reporters beyond the fence, and fled to Hebron with a stunned and silent Rachel in tow.
Newsteeps followed to New Jerusalem and then attempted to follow to Dan, but military police overrode their chartered EMVs, threw a dozen in jail as an example, and revoked the farcaster visas of the rest.
In the evening Sol walked the ridge lines above the village while Judy watched his sleeping child. He found that his dialogue with God was audible now and he resisted the urge to shake his fist at the sky, to shout obscenities, to throw stones. Instead he asked questions, always ending with—Why?
There was no answer. Hebron’s sun set behind distant ridges and the rocks glowed as they gave up their heat. Sol sat on a boulder and rubbed his temples with his palms.
Sarai.
They had lived a full life, even with the tragedy of Rachel’s illness hanging over them. It was too ironic that in Sarai’s first hour of relaxation with her sister … Sol moaned aloud.
The trap, of course, had been in their total absorption with Rachel’s illness. Neither had been able to face the future beyond Rachel’s … death? Disappearance? The world had hinged upon each day their child lived and no thought had been given to the chance of accident, the perverse antilogic of a sharp-edged universe. Sol was sure that Sarai had considered suicide just as he had, but neither of them could ever have abandoned the other. Or Rachel. He had never considered the possibility of being alone with Rachel when …
Sarai!
At that moment Sol realized that the often angry dialogue which his people had been having with God for so many millennia had not ended with the death of Old Earth … nor with the new Diaspora … but continued still. He and Rachel and Sarai had been part of it, were part of it now. He let the pain come. It filled him with the sharp-edged agony of resolve.
Sol stood on the ridge line and wept as darkness fell.
In the morning he was next to Rachel’s bed when sunlight filled the room.
“Good morning, Daddy.”
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Where are we, Daddy?”
“We’ve gone on a trip. It’s a pretty place.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s with Aunt Tetha today.”
“Will we see her tomorrow?”
“Yes,” said Sol. “Now let’s get you dressed and I’ll make breakfast.”
Sol began to petition the Church of the Shrike when Rachel turned three. Travel to Hyperion was severely limited and access to the Time Tombs had become all but impossible. Only the occasional Shrike Pilgrimage sent people to that region.
Rachel was sad that she had to be away from her mother on her birthday but the visit of several children from the kibbutz distracted her a bit. Her big present was an illustrated book of fairy tales which Sarai had picked out in New Jerusalem months before.
Sol read some of the stories to Rachel before bedtime. It had been seven months since she could read any of the words herself. But she loved the stories—especially “Sleeping Beauty”—and made her father read it to her twice.
“I’m gonna show Mommy it when we get home,” she said through a yawn as Sol turned out the overhead light.
“Good night, kiddo,” he said softly, pausing at the door.
“Hey, Daddy?”
“Yes?”