The Citisle - Two days later
Ruth Rosenbaum did not sleep much after leaving the desert on the way to the Citisle. She stared out of the bubble window at the cloud-riven sky while the ‘copter descended slowly to the landing pad. An uncovered walkway led from there to the Citisle’s lower deck. Donald Wu waited on the walkway, his blue and red nylon windbreaker flapping like a flag. Ruth and Finnegan got out immediately, and ran to Wu. Springer got out of the ‘copter second, clad in a crimson jumpsuit emblazoned with the GFE logo. Hugh and Sam followed, hand in hand through the narrow doorway. Hugh slapped Springer on the shoulders, then looked over at Ruth. She stared solemnly over Finnegan’s shoulder. Windling emerged last, closing and dogging the door behind her. While Windling remained behind to fasten the aircraft to the deck’s mooring grapples, Hugh and Sam joined Ruth and Finnegan, who walked down together. Word of Torque’s arrest had been confirmed. Everyone was going home.
At GFE Australia, three weeks later
Falstaff’s meeting room seemed empty without its host. Samantha was standing just inside the doorway among the potted ferns. Ruth pressed her cheek against Samantha’s. Her eyes glistened.
“He’s really gone, isn’t he?”
Sam nodded.
Later, glasses clinked as Robertson busied himself with the liquor cabinet in the dining area. He passed out Scotch to everyone. Even Sam took a glass.
“It’s been almost a month now,” he said. “No change. The Sparrow is not answering. We sent the Kiwi into the battle area the minute we knew Advisor Station was taken out and they’ve been up there for the whole time. Jack was using a standard VacSuit. They can carry enough air for maybe two days, probably less…”
Jay paused to recapture his composure. “To Jack Falstaff, who saved us all,” he toasted. He drained the glass and Ruth followed immediately, the liquor burning in her throat. Finnegan drank next, then Sam, who coughed softly.
Hugh drained his in silence. “To Jack Falstaff, wherever and however he is,” he said. “And to Defender…” After the second toast, Ruth walked to the glass table where Samantha had set down a case.
“Time to open the present Jack left with his lawyers for us,” she said. “He apparently broadcast all his instructions to them from the Sparrow. It was his last communication.” While Springer was occupied turning the box, looking for a seam or latch, Ruth just stared out the far window, hiding her tears. Dark clouds drifted across the Australian desert.
“Found it,” Lew said. The box split at the center. A compact memory drive was buried in packing material wadded in the center. A short cable led to a hologram-projector. Springer carefully set the two units side by side on the table.
“Well?” Finnegan said. Hugh stepped over and touched a switch in the side of the memory drive. Suddenly, a faint glow shimmered in the air over the projector, brightening and resolving into the image of a study, where a man stood alone in the tiny library aboard the Sparrow. It was Jack Falstaff. His image flickered then became solid.
“Assuming that this is to be my parting comment, it is my wish that my friends, all of whom are probably here, would choose to continue the enterprises Finnegan and I have started. My dear old friend, I deeply regret the dishonor in my concealment of the Little Ones now in your care, and of other matters of grave concern I have just shared with Ruth. I’ve charged Jay with the Little Ones’ protection and patriation. I hope you will honor that arrangement. You will discover, however, that their enemies, the so called Others, are defeated, decimated, hopefully gone forever, and that our little friends have the hope of a future in their new homes. That rat bag Marius Torque will have a lot of explaining to do. With any luck, he is in custody by now. I left a ‘packet-of-interest’ with certain well-placed prosecutors. What a waste of human flesh. I had so hoped to see his…
“Well, in the sorry scenario for which I made this recording, I will have run out of options. I hate dead ends…” He smiled. “Ah, well. Any life worth living is a life with risk, or so my great, great grandmother taught me. I do hope to see you again someday. If not, well…that’s that…” The image vanished, leaving saddened faces staring at each other.
“Shit,” Ruth said. Outside, wind kicked up the desert dust. A windstorm was brewing.
In a Quebec condominium, one year later
The letter from Falstaff’s lawyers had arrived the week before. “Mr. Falstaff having directed that part of his trust funds be expended to repair the damage to Mr. Gael’s residence, you are or soon will be…”
Hugh and Samantha were invited to spend a weekend with Ruth and Finnegan in a condominium near Saint-Exupery’s Village. It was dawn. Sam had awakened to a sound, a strange, broken song, played on something like a cello made of ice. She had stepped outside the bedroom to the deck. Seeing nothing, she noticed that the sliding door to the living room was open. The ice-cello sound was louder there. She walked in to see Finnegan standing in the kitchenette where he had started coffee.
“What is that sound?”
“Our little refugee. The last of his kind,” he said.
“Oh. Of course,” Sam said.
“What the hell was that awful noise?” The question came from Ruth who had appeared in a white terry robe.
“Just Sandy,” Sam said.
“He’s in mourning,” Finnegan added.
“Good,” Ruth said.
Hugh entered the room. “God, what a racket.”
“What have you got there, honey?” Finnegan asked, looking at Ruth.
“An overnight fax,” Ruth said, “to the secure line. Here.” Ruth handed Finnegan a single sheet.
“It’s from Jack’s lawyer. Looks like ‘Toad Hall II’ is finally complete.” Finnegan looked up. “Dinner in Quebec anyone?”
Toad Hall II, two days later
The large sedan negotiated the hairpin turn along a narrow road in a Quebec forest. It was a fine, gentle afternoon. The season’s first snow was falling among fir and spruce on either side of the car. The Rolls kicked up great clots of fresh mud while the sharp smell of wet dirt and trees blew through the partly opened window. Gael, Springer and Robertson got a two-hour head start, Hugh thought, but I wasn’t going to be rushed.
Ruth stared out the front window, her tears falling freely again. Sam reached forward and put a gentle hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” Ruth said. “I’m short on sleep, and I don’t want to face Finnegan’s cooking.”
“Nor do I.” The voice, like a bass viol, came from the other side of the back seat, where Sandy’s life-support module sat next to the window. An acutely uncomfortable cheetah sat between Ruth and the alien.
“You, at least, will be spared.” Ruth snorted. Then Schröd peered into the glass bubble with predatory interest.
“Why do I always feel nervous when he does that?” Sandy asked.
“Now Schröd,” Sam purred from where she sat, “I told you Sandy wouldn’t taste good at all.” Sandy produced a hissing noise and Schröd turned disdainfully away, looking over Ruth’s shoulder, pretending to occupy himself with something outside the window.
The Rolls accelerated at an open stretch in the road. Sun broke through the clouds, glaring against the windshield. Sam placed her hand on Hugh’s arm. “How much longer?” she asked.
“Any time now,” Hugh said. “Ruth, could you check the new map? This doesn’t look right.” Ruth retrieved the LitePage from the door sleeve. Their passage was marked by a white dot that on a scrolling map. A snaking green line marked the meandering course of the poorly maintained forest highway. A blinking point about three clicks ahead identified their destination.
“Two minutes at this breakneck pace,” Ruth said.
“English idioms still intrigue me,” Sandy intoned from the rear seat. “What is a ‘breakneck pace’?” the alien asked. Schröd snarled.
“Show me your neck, dear,” Ruth said sweetly, “and I’ll demonstrate.”
“Do I detect irritation in your tone, Rosenbaum?”
“Pretty perceptive for an alien,” Hugh said. “You may live a few more days yet.”
They approached a two-storey farmhouse on a hill, surrounded by the muddy remnants of a vegetable garden and low shrubs. Ruth peered out the window with renewed intensity. “This looks very familiar.” A large, covered stable was attached and several horses milled in an adjacent corral. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is on the outskirts of our old property.”
The Rolls continued past the corral, and rounded a copse of birch trees. There it was. Toad Hall II, totally restored, and re-landscaped. “How did they do it?” she squealed. The door to the Rolls was open and Ruth was running to the house before Hugh had taken in the scene and its implications.
The front door was open. Inside, Finnegan Gael and Wheels II stood at the ready, carrying a tray of snacks. Finnegan Gael hugged Ruth for a full minute, tearing up, then looked at his guests. “Jack planned for every eventuality,” he said.
It was the following morning, just at the break of first light, when Sam heard the shriek of her cat. She was out of bed heading for the door before Hugh was able to sit up. Pulling a robe about him, he stumbled through the moonlit bedroom into the hallway.
The lights were on in the dining room. Squinting, he saw Sam holding Schröd tightly about the neck. The large cat faced Sandy’s Life-support Module on the other side of the room. The glass bubble was askew; sand had fallen across the cowling of the LSM and was pooling on the wooden floor. The air smelled sharply of rotten eggs.
Schröd strained against Sam’s grip as the creature crawled across the dining room table, leaving a trail of scorched wood in its path. A cord trailed behind the little creature all the way to the LSM. Then Hugh noticed Ruth who was standing at the door to her bedroom, staring at the table with wide eyes.
“My apologies,” Sandy said. “I meant to finish this without such a disturbance.” Its voice came from a speaker recessed in the LSM. “I really had hoped to end this quietly.”
“End what?” Ruth asked, drawing her silk robe about her as she entered the chilly room. “…a midnight snack?”
“Ah, Rosenbaum. How fitting. I refer to ending this one’s miserable, isolated existence. Even with your generous sanctuary, my survival here is problematic at best, acutely unpleasant in any event. My home crèche is gone. I am abandoned. Now it is my days, Rosenbaum, that are numbered short.”
“What can we do?” Sam asked.
“My prospects of actually going home vanished with Jack Falstaff. So please release that wretched animal. It would be a merciful end for me and a real education for the cat, if it survives.”
“How long do you have outside your LSM’s environment?” Hugh asked.
“Hopefully, long enough to self-eulogize.”
“What are you talking about?” Hugh asked.
“I have been cut off from all of my friends and colleagues. Many are dead. Many are gone, never to return. The rest will hate me forever. I am a fish out of water, I think the expression goes…without any other fish…at least ones who love me.”
“We’ve all suffered losses, Sandy,” Ruth said.
“But we both have not equally experienced gains, have we now?”
“So you choose to die?” Sam asked. “Give me a break.”
“I can’t break you,” Sandy said, “whatever that expression means. I simply choose not to live under these conditions. It is one thing to spend time among your species, as an alien creature without friends, without any ties to my history. But now I am an individual cut off forever from my own kind. My history is amputated. I am cut off, cut out and reviled. No…reviled is too weak an expression. Oh, if I could only…”
Sandy’s eulogy never came.