He reached out and pressed the touch-pad.
Ella appeared in the middle of the floor, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She was wearing a pale green gown, which Bennett was slow to recognise. A hospital gown, he realised with bewilderment.
“Joshua,” she said in a small voice.
“Ella?”
“I don’t feel well.”
He stared at her. She was no longer the impossibly pretty, elfin-faced creature the hologram usually projected. Her face was pale and elongated, her eyes large, staring.
“Joshua…” she said, a note of appeal in her voice.
“Ella, get up. Stop playing games.”
His mind was racing. The module had never done this before. Always Ella had been radiantly healthy, full of energy and optimism. Then he noticed her hair. It was thin, straggling. Her pale scalp showed through the threadbare tresses.
Bennett slipped off the bunk and sat on the floor beside her. More than anything he wanted to reach out, take her hand and comfort her. Emotion blocked his throat, hot and raw.
“I know what’s happening, Joshua. We can’t live for ever, can we?”
“Ella…”
“I’ve enjoyed our times together. We’ve had some good fun, haven’t we? All those talks. Your stories of space. And coming here, for my birthday. That was really good.”
“Ella. You’ll be fine, really. You’ll get better.”
She gave a weak smile. “Not this time, Joshua,” she said, staring at him. “You see we all must accept death, our own, those of the people we love.”
Only then did he begin to understand. He stared at her, tried to protest.
“You’ll soon be on your own, Josh. You must accept what is happening to me. Let go and lead your own life.”
She smiled and reached out, and Bennett lifted his own hand and reached for her, and their finger-tips met and meshed, and Bennett felt nothing.
As he watched, Ella’s narrow rib-cage ceased its steady rise and fall, and her mouth opened with a final sigh, and her head slipped to one side.
Bennett wanted to cry out, in anger and grief.
He stared. Something was appearing around the still, silent image of Ella. He made out the steady upward growth of plush pink padding, of polished rosewood. The hologram of the coffin soon enclosed the body of his sister, pale now in death.
As he watched, the coffin and the body burst into bright flame, which grew and flared and then died, and soon exhausted itself, guttering out to leave nothing.
He closed his eyes, too drained even to weep. He experienced a surge of anger, directed at the young boy he had been, the coward who had missed his sister’s funeral.
At last he stood, wondering how he might face Ten Lee, what he might say to her. He left his room and made his way down the corridor.
She sat on the floor of the flight-deck in the lotus position, the soiled soles of her feet upturned, thumbs and index fingers forming perfect circles. Her eyes were open, watching him.
He leaned against the wall, slid down and sat on his haunches. He felt unutterably weary, drained of all emotion. He tried to detect in Ten Lee’s pacific visage some trace of censure or compassion.
“What now, Ten?” he asked.
She lifted her shoulders in an expressive shrug, maintained her posture. “You have a choice, Joshua. We always have choices. It is the choices we make that determine how we regard ourselves.”
He shook his head wearily. “I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about, Ten. What choice do I have?”
“I made a copy of the old Ella program. You can have it, and resume your relationship with the hologram. Or you can leave it in my keeping to dispose of later. The choice is yours. I am saying nothing to persuade you one way or the other, and I will abide by your decision.”
He hung his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Then go, Joshua, and make your decision later,” and she closed her eyes and resumed her meditation.
After perhaps a minute, Bennett pushed himself to his feet and hurried down the corridor to the suspension chamber. His thoughts rang with her words, the need to decide. He knew what he should do, he knew very well, but the spirit was weak and habit was hard to break.
He lay down in his unit and closed his eyes, and oblivion claimed him.
This time, upon awakening, he was beset by images of flames, and beyond the flames Ella’s face staring out at him and calling his name. He reached out for her, towards her illusory fingers, but as fast as he approached her she seemed to retreat, smiling sadly at him.
He awoke in a sweat, her words ringing in his ears. He swung himself upright and sat on the side of the unit, massaging sensation back into his arms. As the minutes elapsed, so the images faded, became nebulous and increasingly more difficult to recall. He was left, as he made his way to the showers, with an elusive sensation of loss somewhere deep within him.
After showering he moved to the flight-deck, expecting to find Ten Lee there and not relishing the encounter. He found only Mackendrick, lying on the engineer’s couch. He looked frail; the months in the suspension unit seemed to have aged him, even though Bennett knew that the tycoon had aged not one second during the flight.
“Where’s Ten?” Bennett asked.
“In her room.”
Mackendrick eased himself into a sitting position and Bennett sat down on the end of the couch.
“How do you feel?”
Bennett shook his head. “I never realised how much suspension takes out of you. I feel like I’ve just had major surgery.”
“What happened to your body was even more radical than surgery, Josh. We were cryogenically suspended, maintained on a sophisticated life-support system for almost four months, and then revived. No wonder we feel like shit.”
Bennett smiled. “You okay?”
“I’ll live.” Mackendrick glanced at him and laughed. “For a little longer, anyway.”
Bennett saw that the old man was holding a pix; he’d been staring at it in silence when Bennett entered. Now Mackendrick passed it to him. The pix showed Mackendrick’s wife, Naheed, sitting on the porch of a big colonial house, smiling at the camera. Bennett passed it back.
“I miss her, Bennett. Even after twelve years. When we knew there was nothing we could do, I financed research into how the suspension units might be utilised to preserve life. Sustain terminally ill people indefinitely, until a cure was found. Of course it can’t be done. Oh, my scientists pushed the boundaries back a bit—the units can be used on trans-c flight for up to a year now, before living tissue starts to corrupt. Twelve years ago it was only six month, but that was a small gain. Nothing could be done to help Naheed, or the millions like her.”
“You never remarried?”
“Too busy, Bennett. Threw myself into my work. Never met the right woman. No one could replace Naheed. I suppose I shouldn’t have compared, but…”
Bennett found himself saying, “We can’t hold on to the past, Mack.”
“Suppose you’re right, but sometimes it’s the only thing to hold on to. Sita, my daughter…”
Bennett glanced at the old man. He was pulling something from the breast pocket of his flight-suit. He passed a second pix to Bennett. This one showed the head and shoulders of a young woman, presumably Sita, very much like her mother.
Bennett recalled that Mackendrick had said he was no longer in contact with his daughter.
Mackendrick was shaking his head. “When I said that the past is the only thing to hold on to, I meant that sometimes things happen, things that are hard to understand or believe. They leave you wishing that it might have happened somehow differently. You hold on to the past you knew before it happened.”