Here Be Dragons (26 page)

“Is that why you’re quitting?”

“I almost left once before, two years ago. When we…when I bought this house. It was easier this time. There’s nothing waiting for me back there.”

Ernest looked around the darkened kitchen, and the empty house.

“And what was waiting for you here?”

“A convicted terrorist. An illegal alien. And an unwanted guest.” Elena stood. “There will be a ticket waiting for you at the airport, back to Australia. The independents can have you back if they love you so much. I won’t call the police until tomorrow morning, so you’ll have until then to get out of my country. But you need to get out of my house right now.”

Ernesto stood also, face to the floor. He picked up the maps.

“Would you like to keep these?”

“No. And take your fucking fish with you. It stinks.”

He took his bass and his case, and walked to the door. Elena opened it and stood aside as he father walked through it.

“I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. But you can call the police anytime.”

“Start running.”

She slammed the door in his face.

Elena returned to the kitchen, and stacked the dishes in the sink. She had no broom, no dustpan. She plucked the glass from the floor carefully and dropped it in the can.

“Carajo!”

She sucked on the end of her finger and held it up to the last of the light. A tiny drop of blood squeezed its way out. Elena stood to look around the kitchen, but there were no towels, nothing to hold against the cut. Just a sheet of paper, lying on the counter, that her father had left behind.

Elena picked it up and ran her fingers over it. It was heavy paper, bonded, good quality. There was a seal in one corner, and she left a spot of blood on the other.

Now I, on this sixth day of October, the year two thousand and one hundred fifty two, by the power invested in me by Article Twenty Seven of the Basic Law of the Global Union, do hereby grant a full and absolute PARDON to Ernesto Gonzales Camacho, for the crime of which he was convicted upon the twelfth day of October, the year two thousand and one hundred thirty seven; and any penalty or disability which may result thereof; and restore to him all the rights and privileges to which he was entitled before said conviction.

It was signed by Jacob Erasmus. October 6 had been only three days before—the day before she had met the Prime Minister at Solstice Station.

“What the hell is this?”

Elena caught up with him on the third switchback. It was midsummer, and the sun was slowly settling in the west. It cast a bloody light on the road. She was breathing hard, and could feel her legs tremble beneath her.

Ernesto took the offered paper from her, and held it in both hands.

“I’ve applied every year, for the past fifteen years,” he said. “Fourteen times there was not so much as a form rejection. But last week, I got this.”

“Why would he do this for you?”

Ernesto read the words again, and she could see his lips move. He savored them.

“Because he believes that I’m innocent.”

Erasmus had held an ace in his hand—and he hadn’t played it. He had just done what he thought was right.

“Mierda. You’re a murderer.”

Ernesto squinted at her as the sun dropped behind him. He was only a shadow now, and though she had a few inches on him, Elena suddenly felt very small.

“Answer me seriously. When they came to you at the Academy, after I’d been arrested. Did you believe them?”

“You pleaded guilty, papa. You confessed. What was I supposed to believe?”

“Not then. Before that, before the trial. What did they say?”

“Public Affairs said that you’d been arrested. That three of your associates in the Alliance had bombed the Concordia on Union Day, and that you’d helped them. That you used your security clearance to get them inside.”

“And did you believe them?”

Elena didn’t answer. After a few moments, she could him began to shake. When he finally spoke again, his voice was trembling. Her father was crying.

“They didn’t let me speak to you. They said terrorists didn’t have civil rights. Even my lawyer couldn’t get a message to you on Phobos, they said it was a security risk. They cuffed me and beat me and threw me into a cell. Alejandra and I had never agreed about politics, and by that time we didn’t agree on much else. All we had together was you. She didn’t come, she didn’t answer. I wanted someone who loved me, someone who would believe me. Someone who knew that I never could have done such a thing.”

He began to sob, and she could barely understand him.

“My own daughter. Tell me you didn’t think I did it.”

“If you didn’t do it, papa, then why did you say you did?”

His shoulders slowed, and she could hear him once more.

“They had nothing on me. They interrogated me for days at a time, in shifts. They starved me, they froze me, they questioned everyone I ever knew, but they had nothing. I didn’t even know those men, we just knew the same people. They had nothing. Except you.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that. I was on Phobos.”

“Yes, at the Academy. Top of your class your first two years, a bright career ahead of you. But now, you were the bomber’s daughter. You were a ‘security concern.’ Did they tell you this part?”

Elena shook her head slowly.

“A government building had been bombed on Union Day, and they had nothing but five hundred victims and three dead terrorists. They were humiliated. They needed a victory. So I gave them one. And they gave me a deal.”

Elena shook her head again, but Ernesto talked over it.

“They knew I was lying, but they didn’t care. I was telling them what they wanted to hear. They reduced the sentence from life to ten years and exile. And they left you alone.”

He reached his hand out in the dark until it had nearly touched hers.

“I had to come back to see you. I know that it was worth it. I just wish that they’d let me see you before it was announced, so that I could tell you it wasn’t true.”

Elena stepped back.

“This isn’t true. None of this is. You’re lying.”

She could feel her heart beating against her ribs, and even high in the mountains trying to inhale was like breathing water.

“It is true, and you know it.” Ernesto smiled, hand outstretched. “You knew I could never do such a thing. You’ve always known it.”

“Yeah?” She stopped to take a breath and hated herself for it. “What makes you say that?”

“You kept my name, Captain Gonzales. I know you, Elena. You would never wear anything with blood on it.”

Elena tried to turn and walk away, and her legs gave out and she fell to the ground like a baby deer. Ernesto was beside her before she could even try to get up, and she shoved his hands away.

“What’s wrong?”

Elena turned her head away. They were high above the town, and the twisting peaks hid the city lights from view. Standing at the top of the hill, she could see every star in the sky. They were almost as beautiful as they were in space.

“Gravity. My legs aren’t used to holding me up.”

“Can you walk?”

Elena shook her head, and when he reached his hands out again, she didn’t try to stop him. She listened to his knees creak again, and he grunted as he lifted her. Ernesto carried his daughter back up the hill and into her home.

It was over an hour before Elena could even stand again. Another hour later and she was able to walk back up the stairs, her arm around his shoulders.

The house was almost completely unfurnished and there were no beds to found anywhere, but Elena retrieved some old blankets from an upstairs linen closet. They passed the master bedroom, and Ernesto walked inside before he realized that she had stayed in the hallway. Elena shook her head, and he took her hand and they walked downstairs with the bedding.

There was a working marble fireplace in the living room, but no woodpile, and she was damned if she was going to look for timber in the cold and the dark. They just spread the blankets on the floor. Ernesto re-grilled the fish that Elena hadn’t eaten, and brought it to her. And when she was finished, they talked.

She told him about her career as an officer in the Agency, and he talked about his work as an agronomist for the independents. Elena didn’t say anything about her relationship with Anne, and he didn’t mention his time in prison. There would be time for all that later.

“What will you do now?” Elena asked. “Will you try to get your citizenship back?”

“Maybe,” Ernesto said. “I could. That was beyond the Prime Minister’s power, but maybe the national government is too embarrassed to fight me.”

Elena smiled.

“You don’t feel guilty about getting help from the Global government?”

“Things have changed. We are the government, remember?” Ernesto laughed. “We used to talk about this day, but I don’t believe that anyone in the Alliance actually expected to see it. I’m sure some of them wish they still outside, throwing stones.”

“You could stay. Rebuild your political career.”

“Perhaps I could. I still have contacts here, those who didn’t leave the country after the Concordia. But I still have my work in Australia, and I can’t just abandon it. It’s not like the independents are growing more food than they can eat.”

Elena looked away, towards the windows and the Moon in the sky, before asking the next question.

“Have you really thought about contacting mama?”

“I have. I did. Well, I tried. She didn’t reply either.”

Elena nodded silently, and Ernesto touched her hand.

“That was all a lifetime ago, nina. She has a new one now. And I don’t belong in it.”

Ernesto leaned onto his side, so that he could see the Moon also.

“And if I find the time, I might go into space myself. See what all the fuss is about. “

“You? In space?” She laughed.

“Is it true what they say?” he asked. “About the first time?”

“Most people do. Just have the bag ready. You’ll be fine.”

“Did you?”

“I’m not most people, papa.”

“And what about you? What will you do, now that you’re done?”

“I really haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” Elena said. “I spent half my life in the Agency. I don’t know what else there is to do.”

“You bought this house three years ago. What were you planning to do then?”

“I bought it with someone else. Someone who’s no longer with us.”

“I’m sorry, Elena.”

“I was too.”

“And what were the two of you planning to do?”

“Well,” Elena said slowly, “the first thing I was going to do was ask her to marry me.”

Her father, who had stuck with the Catholic Church through thick and thin, was quiet then.

“I hope you don’t regret asking.”

“My only regret is that I wouldn’t have been there to give you away.”

She kissed her father on top of his head.

“I still would have kept your name, by the way.”

“You could pass it on while you’re at it. We’re the last two.”

“We were going to adopt, actually. Anne and I.”

“Anne.” It was pronounced the same way in Spanish and in German. “Pretty name.”

“I thought so too. We hadn’t decided on any, of course.”

“I’ve always thought that
Gabriel
is a very beautiful name,” Ernesto said. “I’d like to see him one day.”

Elena laughed.

“Her, papa. Ships are girls. And maybe you will, one day. If I can arrange it with her new captain, whoever that will be.”

“I’d rather get the tour from you.”

Elena laughed again. She stared outside the window into the sky, where Jupiter was waiting, and spoke to it.

“How about a year from now?”

“Isn’t
Gabriel
up there now?”

“Yes, but not for long. I’m going to contact the caretaker tomorrow, and he’ll arrange to have your name put on the paperwork. Whatever you choose to do is up to you, but until I get back, this house is yours. We’ll figure out the rest then.”

“Are you going somewhere dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The edge of the map. I’m sorry about the timing, papa, but there’s a schedule to keep.”

“You didn’t seem to care so much about the schedule a few hours ago.”

“She was a captain too. Anne. She died with her ship, two years ago.”

“
Archangel.”

“It was supposed to be her only mission, one tour on the outside, and then she would join me here. We put our life together on hold, for a year. We made a sacrifice, and it turned out to be for nothing. Everything that we had built together was gone.”

“Is that why you’re going back?”

“No, that’s why I was leaving. But Anne never set foot in this house, and when I lost her, the
Archangel
project was all that I had left. I stayed to build
Gabriel
.”

Ernesto reached out and took her lightly by the jaw, and turned her face so that he could see it. He stroked his daughter’s hair.

“So why now?”

“If you could do it again, would you?”

“Of course I would.”

“That’s why,” Elena said. “I had someone to protect me. But not everybody is that fortunate. They don’t have someone to take the shot for them.”

“A year?” Ernesto asked.

“It’s how long Anne asked me to wait for her.”

“I waited fifteen years, Elena. I can wait another.”

She leaned forward and kissed her father on both cheeks. Then she tapped out a message on her bracelet.

I’ll take the mission if it’s still mine.

The reply came back almost immediately. Erasmus must have been waiting to hear from her.

Gabriel is yours.

They fell asleep that night in bags on the floor, in the dark. Elena heard singing in her dreams, and saw stars. When she awoke the next morning, her father was cooking breakfast.

The sun was already setting when her father had seen her off at the door of his new house, and they stood together in the doorway to watch it fall. Up in the mountains, when the sky was clear, she felt that she could almost touch it, and closed her eyes to feel its light on her face. Then it was dark, and her stars had returned.