AND THE CHILD HOME FROM THE WARS

Right now, I’m a fraud. I do not want to have killed anyone or anything. I do not want to die like a soldier and end up in Fiddler’s Green. I want to die the death of a dreaming child.

Someday, if God will honor a solemn request, I’d like us all to join up at Disneyland in Anaheim. A great big reunion of old enemies, old friends, old warriors. We’ll meet in the parking lot, where I last saw my aunt Carrie, before she went off to die in the Middle East, and stroll between the ticket booths and up the steps, past the flower gardens, to climb aboard the old-fashioned steam train …

But first, I’d explore the train station and listen to the conductor’s ghost—a balding mustached guy from a really old western, speaking behind a window, probably wearing a vest or an apron … telling us where we need to go next to have fun or just relax. “This way, boys and girls … to the happiest place on Earth!”

So sappy it’s painful.

We’ll shake hands and talk, and then just sit in silence before strolling to the other rides, the other celebrations. The restaurants. The gift shops.

Silly idea.

Silly ideas keep me going.

WE HAVE THREE packages with us, cargos of life and death. We still have the egg, which is humming along happily in its battery-powered box. Borden is being quite protective. I think she may be making plans for her career after the wars.

And we have two bodies. We made bags from shed membranes around the terminus of the tree, using strips of cane, like natives on an island. Best we can do. We’re bringing home Bilyk and we’re bringing home Sudbury.

Tak helped us wrap them up.

Both of them.

We board the last transport, a Hawksbill, where we are met by a young, capable-looking pilot, whose name, we are told as he greets us at the portal, is Lieutenant JG Robin Farago.

“This has got to be the weirdest assignment ever,” he tells us, then helps us move the box and the bags into the storage bay.

“Where are you coming from? What the hell kind of ship was that?” Farago asks. “I never even saw it—just got orders and instructions—and there the hangar was, and here you are!”

“What did you deliver?” Tak asks as the others wordlessly head to the couches to settle in, to lock themselves down and rotate.

“I have no idea. Transport command said all the ships were full! I wasn’t allowed to look back. But when I did—our passenger deck was empty. What the hell kind of operation is this?”

We pull out of the hangar, and after that, even we can’t see the Guru ship.

I’ll take it on faith that it’s off to the sun.

I wonder if I will ever know.

The Earth is brown and blue and green and white, all swirled and touched with reflected gold. As we break atmosphere and the couches grow tight, I think back on the people we started with.

I’m still alive.

So many aren’t.