Jacob woke up the next morning angry. He wasn’t sure at first what had seeded his anger or when. He’d slept most of the return trip, dozing on and off, losing himself in the vibration of the cruiser. The entire drive back he was numb. After the long day in Melville, he had nothing left. All that remained was a hollow space inside him—everything vital had been drained by disappointment. Arriving back at the house, he’d stumbled to bed with hardly a word.
That evening the customary nightmare was gone, replaced by an entirely new one—he was no longer pacing the streets of his old home. The scene had shifted to Melville. He looked into the sky. The moon was bright and large. He looked again: it was pink and cratered; it was Drake, not Duna. Why was it so close? It’s going to hit us. We’re going to collide. He looked even closer. There were people on the moon, little dark shapes crawling like insects, kicking up puffs of pink moon powder. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and without looking back, he ran. Now he was the one being chased. He didn’t try to see who it was. He didn’t need to. He could hear her voice behind him, as if she were leaning forward, whispering in his ear.
“I knew you would,” she said.
Over and over her words repeated as he ran an endless loop around the streets. A story that went nowhere, it was far worse than the usual nightmare, and he awoke in a dark mood.
The dream faded but his anger didn’t as he remembered LaPerle in the dressing room last night, remembered Delaney sitting quiet and dejected while Jacob had walked out and left her yet again. Jacob was mad at the man, but more so at himself. He hadn’t been there for Delaney back in Harmony when she floundered, and he’d sworn that, given the chance, he wouldn’t let it happen again, wouldn’t leave her to her misery. But here he was, making the same mistake all over again.
“We have to go get her,” he told Xander at breakfast.
“Don’t worry. You’ll meet up with her again. After last night, I don’t see her going to Earth any time soon.”
“I mean we have to get her out of there. We have to bring her back here.”
There was a long pause. Xander looked down at his breakfast.
“No,” he said at last.
“What?” Jacob cried, jumping up from the table. It had never occurred to him that Xander would refuse. The man had been so determined about helping Jacob visit Delaney, had such clear disdain for her handler, he couldn’t imagine why he’d hold back now.
“You heard me.”
“But you were there yesterday!” Jacob exclaimed. “You heard what she said. We have to save her.”
“Save her, huh? The princess in the tower?” Xander got up and went to the window. “Look, Blinder, I don’t mind bringing you into Melville to see your friend, but I draw the line at kidnapping.”
“It’s not kidnapping if she wants to come.”
“You don’t know what she wants. Neither does she. She was upset when you saw her. It was a bad moment. For all we know, she might have woken up this morning and realized things were pretty good after all.”
“You don’t believe that. You even said before that she seemed miserable.”
“Forget what I said,” Xander snapped.
“But you hate that man LaPerle, you said as much to Karl. Do you want him to win?”
“Win what? It’s not a game, Jacob. LaPerle’s nothing to me.”
“I guess Delaney’s nothing to you too.”
“Well, she is your friend.”
“Is this because of Karl? Or are you afraid?” Before Jacob could stop himself, he had blurted it out. Plopping down in his chair, he glanced nervously at Xander. There was a long silence.
“I left fear behind years ago,” the man finally replied, looking out the window. His voice was icy and his fingers gripping the wood of the windowpane were white. “I just don’t feel like having another Blinder around to take care of. One is bad enough.” He spun and glared down at Jacob. “I didn’t come out here to start a foster home. I came out to be alone. I came out here for some goddamn peace and quiet.”
He turned and walked out of the house, leaving the door open behind him. Jacob didn’t have to follow him to know where he was going. Sure enough, a moment later there was the growl of the cruiser’s engine firing up. He listened as its roar faded into the distance.
Jacob stood up from the table and walked out onto the deck. Reaching for the railing, he could see his hands trembling. Did that just happen? he wondered. His recent nightmares seemed more real than this moment. The last few weeks, he’d gotten used to the man, had gotten used to this place. He hadn’t thought Xander would turn on him. He had been fooled into thinking Xander didn’t mind having him around, that maybe he even liked his company. And now he had pushed too far, had drawn the truth from his host. He wasn’t wanted here. A sickness rose in him. This man was his only connection to the world. Where would Jacob go if Xander cut him off? How would he survive? The image of the skeleton in the grass flashed into his mind. Somewhere to the east, in the basin of a valley, the lonely bones still lay.
No, Jacob thought. He would have asked me to leave if he’d wanted me gone. He didn’t mean what he said. He’s just angry, like he always gets.
He relaxed his grip on the railing and looked out. The day was hot. The sun shone, but the sky had faded from blue to gray as a thin layer of clouds had crept in overnight, turning the sun silver. Squinting, he could just make out the black sliver of Mixel Tower through the haze. Delaney was in that tower. Maybe she was looking through her window right now, looking straight at him without even knowing it, hoping for a way out. Before he’d been to Melville, before he’d seen the world of the Seers, he thought he could find her and they’d live happily ever after. Now he knew better. Even if he could sneak in to see her, LaPerle would never let him stay, and he couldn’t get her out on his own. He needed Xander to help him.
He went inside and collapsed into one of the armchairs. There had to be some way of getting Xander to change his mind.
All morning and into the afternoon he lingered in the house, trying to devise a plan. Like Delaney, Xander was stubborn. And right now, he was angry. The first thing Jacob needed to do was get back into his good graces. Then maybe he could convince Xander to help him.
Jacob suddenly realized that he’d done virtually nothing to help out since he’d gotten here. Not that he’d been asked—Xander led a spartan life, regimented and independent. Still, even in Harmony he’d had chores to do at home, whether it was washing dishes or sweeping the floor of their underground house.
He cleaned up from breakfast as well as his own lunch and then started looking around for something else to do. At first he thought about cleaning the house, but it wasn’t that dirty. Even so, he could at least sweep the floor.
Looking for a broom, he tried a door that was tucked around a corner under the staircase. He’d noticed it before and assumed it was a closet. He instead found a set of stairs leading down into the darkness of a basement. His thoughts of sweeping forgotten, he turned on the light and headed down the steps.
The basement was cool and spare, even more so than the floors above. The concrete walls and earthy smell reminded him of the underground buildings in Harmony, and when he closed his eyes for a second, he could have sworn he was home. There were a few metal cylinders lined up in the corner. On the face of one was a tiny, lit screen, and all of them had several lights and dials along the front, as well as wires and tubes running from them up into the ceiling. The machines reminded Jacob of the ghostbox. He shivered and looked away to the other side of the room. A pile of boxes lay stacked against the wall, neatly ordered, aside from one crate that sat alone, separated from its companions. It looked like all the others, but just gazing at it, Jacob felt a chill run down his back. It was that same prickling sensation he’d felt the day he’d found the body in the grass. He reached down to touch it. In the back of his mind, a tiny voice told him to stop, that he wasn’t meant to open this box. You shouldn’t even be down here, it said. But before he could listen, he’d popped open the clasp and lifted the cover.
He leaped back at the sight of the yellow creature with black beady eyes that looked up at him from the crate, and then he scrambled for the foot of the stairs. Only when he paused on the third step and looked back did he realize he’d left the cover open. For several seconds he waited, expecting the furry monster to leap out and give chase, but everything was still. Heart pounding, he slunk back toward the crate and popped his head up for a quick glance. The creature hadn’t moved.
Approaching tentatively, Jacob closed in on the box and inspected it once more. The creature had remained frozen, and as Jacob leaned in, he realized there was something different about it, something about the eyes—a kind of deadness. Reaching down, he felt the body and laughed with relief.
Jacob stroked the animal’s synthetic fur and gazed into its plastic eyes. He turned it over and noticed its hindquarters were dirty and the fibers along one back leg were singed. Overall, the animal had a burned scent, the smell of a fire that had died long ago.
Putting the creature aside, he returned to the crate. He had expected to find something different inside. Maybe weapons, like the ones he’d already seen Xander carry, or maybe armor, something to do with war. Instead, there were other toys inside—balls, a few other stuffed animals, toy ships and cars, small soldiers dressed in strange-looking armor—as well as clothes, none of which looked big enough to fit him. Like the first creature he’d found, the items had the same smoky odor, not nearly as pleasant as the smell of burning zephyr wood.
Rummaging through the box, he was delighted to find an instrument. No, there were two: a whistle with six finger holes and some kind of harp. He pulled the whistle out and examined it. The whistle was made of burnished wood with a marbled texture that looked like swirling water. As for the harp, it was a child’s toy. Still, plying his fingers across the strings, he discovered it had a decent sound. All it needed was a little tuning. He returned the harp to the crate and went back to examining the whistle.
His fingers fitted instinctively to the holes. He’d spent so many hours holding an instrument just like this growing up. Every child in Harmony learned to play the whistle. It was one of the initial classes they took in school. He remembered playing in his first concert—five years old, twenty-seven of them packed together, puffing out the tune of some nursery rhyme, a cacophony of song that brought laughter from parents and children alike. He’d loved the sound of his whistle and had practiced every afternoon in his room before supper for the next several years, even accompanying his mother while she played the songs she’d taught him on the piano.
Putting the instrument to his lips, Jacob blew a tentative note. At first, he recoiled from the burnt taste, but the sound drew him back. He blew another note, held it, and listened to the breathy, whispered tone so pure he wished he could hold it forever. Even as his air ran out, its quavering had a sweetness.
An idea struck him. If there was one thing Jacob could do, it was play music. He could perform for his host, put on a concert of his own. Tonight he would surprise him with the gift.
But first he had to practice. It had been a few years since he’d played the whistle with any seriousness.
He started in, first with scales, running up and down the different sets with increasing speed until he could feel the quickness in his fingers once again. Then he advanced to some simple songs, beginning with the first he’d ever learned and moving on from there. Skipping from one tune to the next, it was as if he were growing up all over again. With each song came flashes of memory—the sound of a classmate’s laugh, the scent of a certain flower or food, the pang of a particular joy or fear. He lost himself in the progression. At one point he realized he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them, he discovered he couldn’t play without them closed—it just didn’t feel right.
Before long he’d run through the series of his childhood songs. They were nice, but he wanted something more, something that would really impress Xander. He started in on a sequence of melodies his mother had taught him during the last year before he’d abandoned the whistle for the piano and guitar. They were fairly intricate, inspired by classical pieces from ancient Earth, melodies of Bach, but imprinted with the modern sensibility of Harmony’s own musicians. It took him several tries, but before long he had a number of them down and now began running through them over and over.
With his eyes closed, the trilling notes of the familiar songs combined with the earthy scent of the basement in a wave that carried him away. He was no longer Jacob, the boy who could see. He had never left the dark comfort of his home, had never been terrified by strange dreams that spilled over into his waking life, had never been the subject of violence or scorn. Before long, he could hear the sounds of his mother’s piano. She was right beside him, her fingers flying with a speed to match his own, her notes cascading out and wrapping around his own tune, merging into a single song. He could hear her breathing, uttering the little sounds that often escaped her mouth as she played, unconscious accents to her music. A longing filled him. He had never missed anyone so much as he missed her now. And now she was talking, calling out the chord changes, calling out words of praise as he kept up with her ever-increasing tempo. She was calling to him once more.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The shouting jolted him from his song. For a brief second he felt that he was falling, before he snapped his eyes open and turned.
Xander was at the bottom of the steps. A darkness had fallen over the man’s face, making him look more fearsome than ever. He came toward Jacob with giant strides, though it seemed as if he were moving in slow motion. Jacob tried to move, tried to say something to ward off the man’s advance, but he was frozen in place, the whistle still gripped between his fingers, suspended in air before him.
Jacob braced himself as Xander loomed over him. The man snatched the whistle from his hands, threw it back into the box, and slammed the lid so hard Jacob jumped. Without looking at Jacob, he turned and stormed back up the stairs, slamming the basement door behind him.
For a long time, Jacob remained in the basement, trying to stop shaking. Sitting on the crate, he kept seeing the fury on the man’s face. Again that stunned, surreal aura swept over him. He was sure he’d discovered a way of doing something nice for Xander, but now things were worse than ever. He felt he should go up and apologize, but who knew what kind of state Xander might still be in.
There was no sound of footsteps on the floor above since the thunder of Xander’s boots leaving for the second time that day. So, after Jacob’s heart had returned to normal, he crept back up the stairs and opened the door a crack. He saw no sign of Xander and came out into the main room. As he went to the window, his heart surged at the sight of Xander’s cruiser sitting in the yard. He hadn’t left. He had to be close by. Jacob slipped out onto the deck, and looked around but saw no one.
He decided not to look any further and went back inside. Pacing the room, he tried to think of the words to say to Xander when he returned, fighting off the urge to just gather his few possessions, head for Melville, and take his chances there.
The afternoon hurried away, dusk crept in the windows, and still Xander didn’t come back. Going out onto the deck, Jacob paused in the twilight at the familiar scent of burning zephyr wood and saw the glint of Xander’s fire through the trees. Go now, a voice told him. Go talk to him.
He headed down the stairs and, crossing the yard, entered the path through the trees. His legs felt numb, and he took slow steps toward the fire, steps that became slower the closer he got. But at last he reached the clearing, came into the circle of the fire and sat down at his usual spot, silent. Xander never raised his eyes from the flames. It was as if Jacob were invisible, coming upon this man for the first time, unnoticed. It reminded him of his last days in Harmony when he had moved unseen among the people, watching them go about their lives, his neighbors never knowing he was at hand.
One minute passed into the next, piling up, weighting down the silence until Xander’s voice broke the stillness.
“It was my last campaign,” he said. “Fighting had broken out in a Mixel system. We’d been stationed there for a couple years—most of us had families there. My wife, my two boys—Mixel had set us up in some nice quarters. We’d fought some skirmishes in different parts of the sector, but business was slow and we all had lots of time at home. We were uneasy about the fighting once it got close, of course, but nearly all of it had been confined to orbit; things were peaceful on the ground.”
He paused. Jacob could feel him struggle to continue.
“My platoon was topside, packed in shuttles on our way to raid a freighter, when we heard the news. By the time we got back, our settlement had disappeared. Barracks, residentials, everything bombed. Where our families had been was nothing but a pile of rubble.”
Jacob gasped. It was as if, for the slightest moment, he could see the wreckage—the broken stone, the twisted metal. Then the image faded, leaving him with nothing but the memory of the singed bear in the basement and the odor of acrid smoke that lingered over all the toys, just the faintest echo of destruction.
“I’m sorry,” Jacob whispered. He didn’t know what else to say. But now he knew what Karl’s cryptic words of consolation had meant, not to mention Xander’s stormy reaction that first night at the fire when he’d asked him about his family.
Xander snorted in disgust. “It was Mixel that did the bombing. They’d gotten word that the enemy had established a base on the surface and were determined to get rid of it. But it turned out to be a setup. The other corporation had sent a false report, disguised of course, and at the last minute hacked in and changed the bombing coordinates.”
“They’d really do that?”
“Well, that was Mixel’s story. Whatever really happened, Mixel screwed up—even if their story’s true, they could’ve reconned the base to see if the report was accurate, or sent in a company for a ground assault, or had better ship security when they launched the attack, or a million other things. But they were in a rush and wanted a clean sweep.”
“So what did you do?”
“What could I do? Mixel came to all of us who had lost our homes and families and offered us a deal—land rights in any Mixel colony, along with immediate retirement and full pensions if we didn’t push for an investigation. They’d do anything to avoid the bad press and even more to prevent the trade sanctions that would follow. The writing was on the wall, so we took the deal. We’d all seen enough in our careers to know that when Mixel wants something, they get it, one way or another. That’s why I’m here on Nova Campi. After all that, the only thing I wanted was to get away from the world, and this was the farthest I could go.”
“And those things in the crate?”
“I spent two days picking through the wreckage. That was about all I could find that was worth keeping.”
“You didn’t find them?”
“No, I found them,” Xander murmured. He cleared his voice and for the first time looked up at Jacob. “Sorry if I scared you before,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have opened that box.”
Xander shook his head. “It was just hard seeing you with that whistle. That was Marty’s—my older boy. He’d be nearly your age now. I told my wife he was too young to learn to play an instrument, but she wouldn’t listen. Said he’d grow into it.”
“It’s a nice whistle,” Jacob offered.
“It sounded nice. You can keep it if you want. You play pretty well.” He threw another log into the fire.
“I play okay, but not as good as Delaney. Almost every day when she’d come over for lessons, I’d just lie on the couch and listen to her and my mother play. Usually piano, sometimes harp or violin. It didn’t matter. It was enough just to be around her.”
Xander looked down at the dwindling flames. “You wouldn’t think so, listening to you talk in your sleep.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always sound terrified of her.”
Jacob hesitated. A part of him didn’t want to even think about his recurring dreams, let alone talk about them. But there was another part of him that did, that hoped that in the telling, the mysteries behind the dreams might be brought to light.
And so before he knew it, he began describing the dreams to Xander. He told him about being back in Harmony, about the habitual chase, the strange images and variations, and worst of all, the final confrontation at the end.
“Seeing those hands reaching out around her throat, the fire everywhere, it makes me sick. Why would I want to hurt her? Or her me? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Dreams never do,” Xander assured him.
“But these are so real—the fire in her eyes, the expanding head just like that projection at the concert, the fact that she looked the same in my dream before I ever saw her in real life. It’s as if my dreams have come true. Not exactly, but close enough. Too close. It scares me.”
“It’s just a coincidence, Jacob. Reality and fantasy mix in nightmares. I know. I have them too.”
Maybe Xander was right. After all, last night’s dream had been different. It was still a nightmare, but there was no doubt in Jacob’s mind that Delaney’s accusatory voice chasing him through the streets of Melville was a product of his guilty conscience and his imagination working against him.
“Forget about your dreams,” Xander said. “No point worrying about things you can’t control.”
“Maybe if we can be together, the nightmares will stop.”
Xander didn’t respond. Taking a stick, he stirred the collapsing remains of the fire, darkening the clearing.
Looking up through the opening in the trees, Jacob could see the outline of a ship passing low overhead, dragging a trail of light across the stars.
“What kind of ship is that?” Jacob asked, pointing at the sky.
“That’s a trader’s craft, a smaller one,” Xander said. “Lots of them make their way to Nova Campi. Mixel has their own fleet of cargo liners, but they’ve got plenty of freelancers working on the side.”
“What’s it like?” Jacob asked.
“What, riding in a ship?”
“Being in space.”
“It depends. It can be beautiful. It can be boring. And sometimes, it can make you feel lonelier than you’d ever thought you could feel.”
“I remember the first time I saw a ship, the night before I ran away from Harmony. It looked so peaceful up there in the sky, so far away from anyone’s problems. I just wished I could be on that ship. It didn’t matter where it was going, I just wanted to be up there.”
“Maybe you will one day. Some people are drawn to space. They wouldn’t want to be any place else.”
“I wish I had a place like that, where I fit in, and things made sense.”
“You and me both,” Xander said.
He got up and headed for the house. Jacob watched him disappear and thought once more about the story Xander had told him. He took one last look at the fallen embers, their red glow already starting to fade, and then followed Xander from a distance.
* * *
They hardly spoke at dinner and went to bed soon after. It took Jacob a long to time to doze off. He kept seeing Xander picking through a pile of smoldering rubble. Finally, he gave in to sleep, and then to his recurring nightmare. It had a new intensity. Never before had the tunnel seemed so dark, never before had the fire from Delaney’s eyes burned so hot. As the fire overwhelmed him, Jacob awoke to find himself soaked in sweat, the sheets drenched. Taking the blanket folded at his feet, he slipped out of bed and curled up on the floor, wrapping the blanket around himself. For the remaining hours of the night, the burning sensation lingered. He slept fitfully and was grateful when morning finally came.
Hearing Xander get up and go downstairs, Jacob rose and got dressed. He felt woozy at first, but by the time breakfast was ready he was better, last night just a memory.
Breakfast was as quiet as dinner had been, and Jacob started to worry that Xander had fallen back into anger. All morning the man was withdrawn. When Jacob spoke to him, he acted as if he’d barely heard him, taking his time to respond and, even then, saying little. When he left the house after lunch, Jacob debated whether to follow, but Xander returned a few minutes later.
“We leave in five minutes. You’d better get ready,” he said.
Jacob froze. “For what?”
“We’re going to Melville.”
He gave Jacob a smile, then turned and went back outside.
All the darkness Jacob had felt the last two days—the anger, the fear, the homesickness, the regret—all of it washed away in an instant. He grabbed his jacket, and was headed for the door, when he suddenly stopped. He was sure he knew where Delaney was, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He turned and went up the stairs, down the hall, and into his room, where he slid open the top drawer of his bureau. The drawer was empty but for one item, the only thing of value he possessed. He grabbed the finder, put it in his pocket, and left.