“Yes, doctor,” Helen said. “Thank you so much.”
She walked out, but stopped and turned at the door. “I’ll get you something for your headache and let the Captain know you’re awake. He wanted to know the minute you were up.”
Helen came over to the bed. She bent over, kissed me on the forehead, and then pinched my arm.
“Ouch!” I rubbed my arm. “What was that for?”
“That, my dear, was for taking off without letting us know about your plan.” She pinched me again. "And that’s for sending Mohamed and me that dreadful email. You scared us half to death.”
“I’m sorry, really. But I knew you’d try to stop me.”
“You’re damned right!”
That was the first time I had ever heard Helen swear.
“You put William at risk and you almost got yourself killed,” she said.
There was a knock on the open door. I turned and saw a man with a dark, Hispanic complexion standing there. His thick black hair was tinged with silver. Like the doctor, he wore a jump suit, but his was blue with a white stripe down each sleeve.
My heart rate skyrocketed when I saw William standing by his side. He ran over to me, hugged me, and buried his head in my chest, sobbing.
I wrapped my arm around him and said, “Hey, bud. It’s okay. The doc said I’m going to be fine.”
We held each other for a few minutes. His sobs began to subside. I looked up and saw Mohamed smiling and Helen wiping her eyes.
William let go and took a step back. He dried his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he said, “I knew you’d be okay, but that stupid message you sent me…”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, but things weren’t looking too good and I wanted to make sure I had a chance to say goodbye… just in case.”
“What’s all this talk about goodbye?” the man in the blue jumpsuit asked.
I looked over. He approached the bed and held out his hand. I shook it.
“I’m Captain Ramos and you must be the guy who almost plunged the last civilized society on Earth into total chaos.” A broad smile broke out across his serious face.
I wasn’t sure what to say. “That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to stop them.”
“Well, you stopped them alright. The Council got the hell off this island as soon as those messages started flooding the IICN. And speaking of the IICN, that was a pretty impressive engineering feat. Five of my best communications technicians couldn’t get the network back up. If it wasn’t for your friend, Jin, I wouldn’t have been able to send out a message to let everyone know that a new list was in the works. I almost had a riot on my hands.”
“Jin… he’s okay?”
“If I was injured half as much as he was, I don’t think I’d be able to walk, much less fix a network system. But he did it. He’s a tough son of a bitch, that’s for sure. That’s why I asked him and his family to join us on the Mars colony. We need more people like him.”
The doctor returned and walked over by my bed. She used a syringe to inject something into the IV bag.
“There,” she said. “That should help take the edge off of that headache of yours.
"What about Jin’s hand?” I asked.
"Oh and don’t worry about that,” the doctor said. "I’ve already started to regenerate his fingers.”
“Thank you… for Jin, I mean.”
She nodded.
Looking back at the captain, I asked, “So you put together a new list?”
“Yes,” he said. “My executive officer is finishing it up now. I hope you don’t mind, but we started with the list that you had originally submitted to the Council. We found it on your data mat.”
I smiled. “No, I don’t mind at all.”
“We’re still tweaking the list, but I think that your suggestions line up pretty well with our requirements.”
I began to feel more relaxed. I wondered if it was the medicine or hearing all of the good news. But the feeling was short lived.
“Wait! They’ll be coming here. They’ll attack us!”
“Easy, Mr. Atherton,” the captain said. “Who are you talking about?”
“Them… the pirates,” I said. “Shannon said they were going to attack Lohifushi, but when she finds out about the new list she’ll attack here. I know she will. She’s crazy!”
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” the captain said.
“Yes,” Helen chimed in. “That nice man, Pun, took nearly the whole MDF over to Lohifushi. The pirates where there and they were not expecting a visit from Pun.”
“And Shannon?” I asked. “Was she there?”
The captain answered, “We don’t think so. Nobody fitting her description was found, but some of the pirates managed to escape back to their mother ship. Luckily, with the information you sent out in those messages, it wasn’t hard for my men to locate them.”
“And?” I asked.
“And… well… my men discovered a new use for the shuttle’s plasma ejection engine. It turns out that if you invert the polarization of the plasma coils it results in a pretty significant backfire. By significant, I mean that my men turned the mother ship into a new reef.
I wondered if Shannon was on board the ship when it was destroyed, but somehow I doubted it. She was a survivor. And the thought that she could still be out there somewhere sent a chill through me.
“Thanks,” I said. “At least those of us staying behind won’t have to worry about the pirates for a long time.”
I looked at William, suddenly worried that he might not be on the list. As if the Captain had read my thoughts, he said, “And don’t worry about William. He’ll be going with us too.”
A mix of emotions swirled inside of me. I was going to miss that kid, but I was so relieved that he would get off this dying rock and have a chance for a better life. I looked at the captain and the doctor. I could tell they were good people. William would be in good hands up there. Suddenly my eyes began to well up with tears and I said, “I’m really glad to hear that.”
“He earned a seat,” the captain said. “I was impressed with William from the moment he tried to give me your friend’s data mat. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.” William smiled and the captain continued. “I had the opportunity to spend some time with him over the past two days, and he told me about how the two of you had figured out how to hack in to a Chinese quantum computer and program it to decrypt the messages. Initiative and innovation like that are the exact qualities we are looking for, so I feel pretty lucky to get him.”
“You mean us,” William said.
I raised an eyebrow and the captain said, “Yes, of course. It turns out that William is also a pretty tough negotiator. He only agreed to go with us if you came along. He said that you were partners or roommates or something. Anyway, what do you say, Mr. Atherton? Will you join our team?”
As I waited for the lump in my throat to go away, I struggled with what to say. William leaned forward.
For twelve years, I’d waited impatiently for death to free me from this prison so that I could be together with my family again. I closed my eyes and pictured Kelly and the girls. I saw them as they had looked on the day that they said goodbye to me before my trip to India.
They smiled. Their smiles ignited a light within me, a light that burned away the shroud of guilt that had covered my heart for the last twelve years.
“Well?” William asked.
I opened my eyes and looked into his eager face. I wondered what he’d look like as a man. Kelly and the girls would understand if I went with him. William was part of our family now.
“Well,” I finally said, “How far are you guys with the terraforming? Is there any place to fish up there yet?”
Everyone smiled.
“We have several thousand lakes and the beginning of two oceans, but we’re about five years out from fishing,” the captain said, “But I’ll tell you what. I used to be a pretty fair angler myself once upon a time. So when we get back I’ll push the biology team to thaw out some of those frozen fish eggs and see what it would take to stock a lake for us. How’s that sound?”