Chapter 4
They stopped on the coordinates they'd always used to meet with the Elder and waited well over an hour before the little boy stepped out to meet them.
"Mr. Danziger, you came back!" he cried in innocent joy.
Danziger knelt to give the little boy a heartfelt hug. "How've you been, kid?" he asked genially. "I think you've grown!"
The boy chattered excitedly as he took Danziger by the hand and led him down into the caverns below. Alonzo followed, glad to see his friend acting relatively normal.
The caverns were all but empty, however, as they traveled deeper into the mountain. "Where is everybody?" Alonzo asked.
"Now that spring is coming, we're all moving out to the camp above ground," the boy answered. "There are still a few who will stay under, but there's plenty of work to do outside now."
"I need to see the Elder," Danziger explained. "Is he still under ground?"
"He is indeed, John," came the warm voice of the Elder. The man appeared before them, his eyes warm and full of wisdom. The three men shook hands, then embraced. Alonzo was taken aback a bit by the genuineness of John's open smile. He hadn't seen him this unguarded in a very long time.
"What can I do for you gentlemen?" the Elder asked.
John began to explain the vision he'd had over VR. As Alonzo listened, he could finally understand why John had to speak with Ellie again. "Can you show me how to contact her like you did your granddaughter?" John asked plaintively. "Would the Terrians mind?"
"Most of our friends are no longer in their winter sleep, John," the Elder began. "Only a couple are still hibernating, but I don't believe they'll mind one last dreaming before they awaken. Come."
The Elder led the way to the cavern ringed with Terrian beds. As Alonzo looked over the empty beds, he remembered how it felt when Mary had pushed him into one. He wondered anew and not for the first time where she was and how she was doing.
The Elder paused next to a sleeping Terrian and reached his hand up toward the Terrian's chest. "Put your hand on my shoulder and I'll lead you in," the Elder began.
"Mind if I tag along?" Alonzo asked, reaching his hand up to John's shoulder.
"Not at all," the Elder answered, placing his fingertips on the Terrian's still figure.
With a swirl of white, the three were launched onto the Dreamplane. Alonzo looked at John to see how well he was handling it. To his surprise, John's nervousness evaporated almost immediately in the face of the importance of his quest.
"I need to find Ellie," John began.
"Just hold her in your thoughts and she'll come to you," the Elder answered.
Alonzo stood waiting with them as John closed his eyes. Long minutes passed by with no change in the Dreamscape.
"Something's not right here," John said at last. "I get nothing. It's like she's not there."
"Try someone else," the Elder suggested softly. "Try someone who knew her and you very well back on the Stations. Someone who might also still be around."
As John closed his eyes, the Elder reached out to touch Alonzo's arm and shook his head solemnly.
"Les and Alex are gone," John murmured to himself. "That leaves Roby or Ellie's brother." He frowned a moment, then decided, "Roby. Ellie's brother never liked me."
Within moments, the Dreamscape swirled to admit a middle aged man. Alonzo had only met Gene Roby once or twice in passing over the years, but recognized him anyway. He'd always been good with faces and sleepjumping gave one a talent for seeing the younger acquaintance in an older face.
"My God," Roby exclaimed. "John Danziger, you crazy s.o.b. I haven't thought of you in twenty years! I have got to be dreaming!"
The mists of the Dreamscape swirled around them as Danziger and Roby embraced. "It's been a long time, I guess," Danziger said, feeling a good bit disturbed by the age of his old friend. Twenty-two years of cold sleep had a tendency to mess with one's perspective on things like that.
"You're telling me," Roby answered. "So are we going to hit all the bars and hit on all the women, huh? Just like old times?"
"Not just yet," John said. "Tell me about Ellie. How is she? Where is she?"
"God, John," Roby said with a deep sigh. "I haven't thought of Ellie in years either. That was such a godforsaken mess."
"What was?" John asked intently.
"The way the Station brass did you guys. No body knew for certain you were all dead. The news reports said the ship exploded, but rumor always had it that you'd escaped, barely," Roby reminisced.
"What are you talking about, Gene?" John began to get intense in his questioning. The Elder placed one hand on his arm.
"Calm yourself, John. You'll break the link," he instructed. "Go easy."
Alonzo could see the effort it took for Danziger to calm himself down.
"Fill me in, Gene," he managed to continue more gently. "Tell me what happened."
Roby began to spill a tale of bureaucratic nightmare and red tape that chilled Alonzo to the bone. When the crew and colonists of Roanoke and Jamestown had been declared dead, all their personal assets had been frozen. Within a day or so, all but Devon Adair's accounts had been freed of encumbrance.
However, since it had been Adair's open defiance of port authority that had led to the disaster, her personal finances had been seized and all transactions into or out of her accounts were locked down. After five years worth of legal battles, the surviving family members of the crew had managed to force payment of the crew salaries, but it had been too little, too late for Eleanor Moore.
Without his paycheck from Devon Adair, the cold sleep obligation plus his inherited debt payments had cleaned out his account in three years.
"John, we scraped together every penny we could from every corner we could scrape it," Roby said sadly. "We bought another six months onto her cold sleep contract out of respect for you and your girl, but it still ran out over a year before they finally settled all of it."
"What happened to Ellie, Gene?" John forced himself to be calm.
"She died when they pulled her out of cold sleep," Roby said sadly. "That's been nearly twenty years ago now. It still makes me mad to think of it. Shankin' bureaucrats. Sons of bitches." Roby began to fade away.
"Gene!" John called to him. "Wait, Gene!"
"Let him go, John," the Elder said. "You can't hold someone in a nightmare like that. It's just not right."
"But I saw her," John said wistfully. "How could I see her if she was dead?"
"Sometimes, John, we're just dreaming," the Elder answered as he pulled them away from the Dreamplane and back into the cavern.
Alonzo made a few attempts at conversation during the return trip, but to no avail. Danziger wasn't responding.
When they rolled back into camp the next day, they were met by Yale and Julia only. Alonzo had called in secretly over gear to ask for a little space.
"Are you guys okay?" Julia asked. But John wasn't talking.
"Yeah, we're fine," Alonzo answered for them both.
Back in his tent, John set down his knapsack and looked around. This was it, he thought to himself. This was all he had. No matter what managed to remain in his account on the Station, all he had was right there in a miserable tent on a miserable planet twenty-two light years from where Ellie had drawn her last breath eighteen years ago. She'd been dead for eighteen years and he never even knew it.
Outside, he could hear True and Uly playing some kind of game, but he couldn't face True. Not just yet.
He wandered out of the tent and aimlessly through the camp. Finally he ended up where he knew he was heading all along. He stood in front of Devon's sleep capsule, shaking with fury.
"See where you've gotten us, Adair! Look at yourself! Look at me! Look at Ellie! That's where your bullheadedness has gotten us," he yelled. He yelled at her more viciously than he'd ever thought of yelling at her before. "We are hell and gone away from home with nothing, Adair. Nothing."
He couldn't look at her anymore. He wouldn't dream about her begging him not to leave her behind. He refused to have any pity at all any more. Without a backward glance, Danziger left the Council ship, determined never to set foot in it again.