CHAPTER ELEVEN

Falia

 

Falia sat across from the First Engineer, Chereal, and felt a sprig of pity for the man. “You understand what we must do?”

Chereal sighed, the faint wisp of a smile etched across his cheeks. “We knew this day would come eventually.” He rubbed the palm of one hand against the back of the other, a nervous affectation Falia remembered the man having acquired when they were still young. Before the worries of the Universe had become their own. “I had hoped we’d find the answer in our lifetime,” he said.

Falia wanted to reach across Chereal’s desk and touch his calloused hands. Wanted to feel the unique coarseness of his flesh against hers. But they were not children anymore. Hadn’t been for many years. That would never change, even with everything coming to an end.

“As did I,” she said. It was the only consolation she could offer her old friend.

“I cannot help but feel that we’ve failed.”

“Only here,” Falia said, knowing her words would bring the man no comfort. She knew this because they brought her no comfort. “Somewhere, Chereal, we have succeeded.”

“Small consolation.”

“Agreed.” Falia nodded with a smile, knowing full well the effect it would have on the First Engineer. His posture slackened as tendrils of emotion radiated from her mind and crossed the gap to his. It wasn’t much, but it would ease the man’s mental anguish.

Their failure was her burden to carry. Not his.

“Please don’t, Faliana,” Chereal said, using a name few Lenoreans knew. “I’ve known you since you were a little girl determined to show the world she was the smartest and the strongest. Well, I concede that you are. In all the Dimensions, I would venture a guess that there are none quite like you.”

Falia diverted a stream of attention to regulating her body’s parasympathetic feedback. She could not reveal her emotions to this man. Not anymore.

“There is a time to be happy and a time to be sad,” Chereal said, rising from his chair. “You would allow me to feel the one, but deprive me of the other. If there were ever a time for sadness, I think this might be it.” He winked and took the empty seat beside Falia. “If ever there were a time to share the burden, this too, I think, might be it.” Chereal placed a heavy hand atop Falia’s.

A pulse of emotion accompanied the touch. Chereal lacked the strength to make Falia feel something she did not wish to feel, but Falia lacked the strength to say no.

“How long can the Temporal Freeze last?” Chereal asked, no longer evading the topic that had brought Falia across galaxies.

“Seven hundred and sixty-three years.”

“Ah, tis but a drop in the bucket,” Chereal said, quoting a line from the history books. Falia wondered if Aurora had given it to him. The computer spoke to him in ways unlike any other. His mind had bonded with Aurora’s in the way only a First Engineer could.

“It’s more than a single drop, Chereal. For you, it’ll be a lifetime.”

“But only a moment for you. For the others.”

She sighed and looked through the open window beside Chereal’s desk. The snowflakes continued their onslaught of the countryside. “How long have you been out here alone?”

“On Gamma Prime?” Chereal scratched his cheek and pretended he hadn’t memorized every second of his time on that planet. “Thirteen years now, give or take. But I wouldn’t say I’ve been alone. Aurora can be very talkative.”

To Falia it felt longer. Much longer.

Perhaps Chereal did not miss his people in the same way she would. Perhaps Aurora, the super-computer living beneath the ice-encrusted soil of Gamma Prime, offered all the company he could ever want. Falia diverted a substantial portion of attention to Chereal’s hand resting atop hers. For a moment it was as if time and distance had never stepped between them.

She felt his pulse through his palm. Strong. Steady.

“Will you return now that your business here is concluded?”

“Concluded?” Chereal chuckled in a way that used to make her blush. “My dear, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there remains an entire planet here to terraform.”

Nobody on Lenora dared correct Falia anymore. After spending so long propped on a pedestal, it became difficult to maintain any other perspective than from above. She appreciated Chereal for his ability to make her feel…normal.

“But to answer your question, Faliana, no, I will not leave Aurora. She’s treated me well all these years. I suspect she will treat me well for many more to come.”

Falia understood the motivations behind Chereal’s actions. She could not fault him. He had the most difficult mission of any Lenorean. He alone would remain.

The rest would enter a Temporal Freeze. There they would remain, away from time’s touch, until Chereal could find an alternative source of Eitr that would allow them to live again. Falia could not think of another way to prolong the inevitable collapse of Lenora.

A passive solution, but it was all that remained.

“When will you initiate the Freeze?”

“Tomorrow. Mid-day,” Falia said.

“So soon.”

“I dare not wait any longer. Our reserves of Eitr are dangerously low. The longer we delay, the less energy we have towards effecting a Temporal Freeze.”

Chereal nodded and squeezed Falia’s hand beneath his.

“The Oleidians have offered to shelter you,” Falia said. “You won’t have to be alone.”

“That’s kind of them, but I do not believe the Oleidians can offer me much that I do not already have, unless I am interested in adding rocks and pebbles to my diet.”

A single syllable of laughter slipped through Falia’s carefully erected defenses. It’d been so long since she’d laughed. It had a kind of therapy to it. It broke the tension and for the first time in years Falia began to hope.

Aurora ran a probabilistic analysis of the most likely outcomes awaiting the Lenoreans. She streamed those results through Falia’s prodigious mind, but it didn’t matter. Falia had diverted all her attention to that one moment.

Time stopped scurrying about and sat beside Falia as she cradled Chereal’s hand in her own. It made her think another seven hundred and sixty years, frozen like that, might not be so bad.