IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAID that Milo Jetstream wasn’t a man given to morose thoughts and ponderings, but it would have been woefully inaccurate. He’d spent thirty-five years developing mystical abilities, safeguarding secrets and upholding inherent truths. Thirty-five years of being Superman could wear anybody down.
The False Prophet Buford was an unpleasant Kodiak bear. Alien technology was never supposed to have made it to the religious Right, whom Buford had realized as a potent resource. He had been cloned so many times everybody was pretty sure the original was somewhere dead and forgotten. While pocketed politicians were arguing about a pittance of stem cells, the Thoom and Pat Robertson were using secret labs to experiment on activating humanity’s dormant Methuselah gene. Outlive and outbuy your enemies was a tenet of all empires.
Outlive and outbuy. The key to being a survivor. The False Prophet Buford was effectively immortal.
Milo might not have known if he was up for this anymore but he was damned if anybody was going to find out. The Semper Fi and the Linda Ann had brought him around the world more times than he recalled; what kind of person didn’t make sure such friends got home?
After dinner he stayed aboard the Ann to work logistics with Quicho till both their heads spun. The others had retired to their respective ships and activities. Quicho’s absent-minded tapping against a bracelet on her wrist signaled the end of the night. She kissed his cheek good night.
He went above decks.
Milo watched the waters pass the side of the boat, one fist hanging over the edge.
He’d always thought the Blank needed its own borealis. The night, though, was palpably dark and quiet and full of stars, and that was enough.
Nights like these were nights of wonder.
He scanned the water for signs.
The wearied Jetstream stood alone at the railing of a fast ship moving very slowly. The earth was a huge golf ball of pocket dimensions, and he traveled now through the most famous and misunderstood of them all. That’s not something one puts on a resume as proof of employment.
All he had to do was soft-focus his eyes: there was Lolita, superimposed over the world, racing her skiff across ice floes as if even the muscles of her smile were invulnerable. She was a beautiful woman, big and always laughing.
Too much self-reflection, he thought. Too much self. He thought about the cruise ship. Grown men don’t launch themselves off liners in the middle of the night, yet he managed to find himself doing so on a regular basis. Launching. Catapulting. Vaulting. Milo was the elder brother, and Ramses would go by his lead, but there had to be a point when all was said and done that two brothers might retire to sending one another birthday cards and best wishes. Milo was forty. Ramses was thirty-six. Basketball players were put out to pasture sooner, and none of them had ever faced the Thoom.
Except Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Larry Byrd. But only once and only briefly.
Neon. A beacon of false light, and the irony was killing him on this decisive voyage to the False Prophet. But she was a beacon of something of which he wasn’t a part.
Was Milo Jetstream getting old?
That meant retirement. The normal world had 401Ks.
He looked across. The Semper Fi kept pace.
The normal might fall on occasion through the Blank…
But his crew actively sought it. There were three people on that sister ship sailing to the edge of the world, and each realized the crucial thing: if the sign said ‘Here There Be Dragons,’ Buford Bone was the dragon with the cracked rib.
Milo stared through the sloshings of the inky water below. This definitely had the feel of no turning back. He opened the fist. The tiny vial Lolita had given him a year ago dropped with barely a sound. It contained a frozen tear, one of hers from a night of raucous laughter at Maseef’s expense, laughter till she and her friend were on the floor with eyes wet. Saving it had been the act of a scientist never without her instruments and who didn’t believe in not having fun.
Who believed in the immortality of water.