Ethan nodded. His mouth was tight-lipped. The silver eyes fixed on Dave.
“One thing I’ve learned in my long existence,” said the peacekeeper, “is patience. Trust that the intelligence that summoned me here and allowed the journey has a purpose. I do. If you believe anything, now is not the time to let it go.” He directed his gaze to Jefferson. “This body and its systems need rest. Is there anything else?”
“No,” Jefferson answered. “That’s all.” He returned to his seat and found himself staring at nothing, but thinking of the progress of his life and what it had meant. He couldn’t crack up now, that was for sure, and weighing too much of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in his past might crack him, so he would put those things aside, try to blank them out, and go on as any man must…from where he was.
Silence ruled on Number 712.
The bus went on into the fitful dark. Rain fell again, but not hard enough to overpower the wiper. Mile after mile, the distance rolled away.
Olivia slept, and dreamed of sitting with JayDee on the balcony of her apartment. JayDee took her hand, and he leaned his head close and said quietly There’s a way out of this, Olivia. There must be a way to fix things, to make things right.
Do you believe that, John? her dream-self asked. Do you really believe? He squeezed her hand and smiled, and his blue eyes glinted with not a dirty yellow sky but one that was clear and clean, and something about his face seemed much younger than she remembered.
Oh my Olivia, he said gently, you may rely on it.
Twenty-Six.
The sun was coming up, a slash of red to the east beyond the Rockies.
Number 712 was sitting on the interstate at the exit to Utah State Highway 191 south. Hannah had pulled them over after another gas stop short of the Utah line. It had been an isolated station with an uncracked diesel tank, and unlike the last stop they’d had the luxury of time to fuel the bus to its capacity. Hannah had told Dave she was tired and needed sleep, and it would be best to continue on 191 at dawn. He didn’t argue, because he needed sleep too, but he’d gotten very little of it. Ethan had awakened after about an hour and told Dave he could rest soundly, that the trackers weren’t close enough to be alarmed and he’d let everyone know if that changed.
Olivia had slept, and so had Nikki and Jefferson. Dave had drowsed for awhile and then jerked himself awake as if he were about to fall into a bottomless pit. He figured another hundred miles, give or take, to the White Mansion. Then who knew if there was even a road up the thing. Highway 191 was a four-lane and looked totally deserted from where he sat, not a single abandoned car or truck on it as far as he could see. The morning light reddening the sky showed a vista of what used to be called a western paradise, a land of low scrub and crimson rocks, distant mesas and mountains rising in the distance, arches and cathedrals of stone standing as they had for eons. It could be the surface of another planet, torn and shaped by ancient cataclysms. What a creation Earth was, Dave thought. He’d never stopped to think much about it before this war had begun, because making a living got in the way of philosophical appreciation, and he was never inclined to that, but Earth was an amazing world. From warm seas to frozen tundra, from lush grasslands and pine forests to the red rock mountains that rose from the plains along Highway 191, it was an incredibly diverse creation. And all the life it held…stunning, when you really considered it. Maybe when you lost something, Dave thought, it became that much more valuable. The life forms that would die or be malformed under this alien poison…probably in the thousands. So even if Ethan could stop the war, which Dave couldn’t imagine even as powerful an entity as Ethan being able to do, what would be Earth’s future? It looked to him like continued wrack and ruin. The world was never going to be able to recover from this.
He realized that Ethan was awake and was staring silently out a window. If the alien was reading his thoughts, there was no response.
He doesn’t know either, Dave thought. Do you? he asked, but still there was no reply. You may be a hell of a lot more powerful than us and know secrets of the universe and all kinds of shit that would knock us to our knees…but you’re not sure of anything either, are you? You’re just groping in the dark, like any ordinary human. Like this with the mountain…you don’t know what’s there because if this is a test for humanity you’re being tested too. Is that what Life really is, Ethan? A test designed by some alien we think of as God? That would be a fine laugh on the race of mankind, wouldn’t it? All the centuries of struggle and misery and everything people have had to go through, and at the end they find out whether the teacher gives them a passing grade or not?
“Centuries also,” Ethan suddenly said, “of invention, perserverance, and in many cases genius. Your race seems to always find a way to push through obstacles. That’s why you’re still here.”
“What?” Jefferson had awakened and was squinting in the morning light. “What are you talking about?”
Ethan said, “Dave and I are having a conversation.”
“Oh,” said the preacherman, and he looked puzzled, but he didn’t ask anything else.
The others began to awaken. This morning Ethan noted that Olivia was hollow-eyed and haggard. She was still mourning John Douglas, could not accept the fact that he was gone. She was also mourning the loss of the human boy known as Ethan Gaines, and maybe she’d let herself feel motherly and protective of him, so that loss was doubly painful. He could not pretend that any part of the boy was left in this shell. What could he say to soothe her that she would understand? Nothing, so she must be allowed to grieve her way to finality.
When everyone was awake, they took turns going outside the bus to relieve themselves, which Ethan had already of course observed through the boy. It was an interesting process, but in his experience all species had the need for elimination. Almost alclass="underline" the half-flesh, half-robotic soldiers of what the humans called the Cyphers did not, they absorbed and recycled any wastes from the nutrition that fueled them, and he knew of three more civilizations that were machine-based, but on the whole all shared this need. He participated in it when his time came.
Afterward a jug of water was passed around, which Ethan in his true form did not need but knew it was vital to keep the body going. Dave opened up a couple of cans of pork ’n beans, a jar of peanut butter, and some stale crackers, and that was their breakfast.
The sun had climbed toward eight o’clock, but yellow-tinged clouds were closing in and the light was dimming. Ethan tried to speak to Nikki, to console her however he could, but she turned her face away from him, and he realized it was useless. She, too, had to work through her grief—what seemed in her mind to be a world of grief—and he was helpless to give her any comfort. He took his seat, knowing that everyone on the bus needed him and counted on him, but he was a strange intruder to them nonetheless and they were all, as Nikki had put it so truthfully, “creeped out.”
At last Dave regarded the deserted stretch of Highway 191 again, and he said, “Hannah, let’s move on.”
She started the engine and guided the bus off I-70 onto the road to the White Mansion.
“Ethan?” Jefferson said. “The trackers still there?”
“The Cypher tracker is nearly overhead. The Gorgon ship is…” He paused to get a correct reading on it, calculating distances from its harmonic signature. “Seventy-two miles to the east, at an altitude of…I would say…between forty-seven and forty-eight thousand feet. It’s keeping its distance, but also keeping its tracker on you.”