Okay, back to the world's longest epilogue. Edits to follow, as soon as I've returned from buying my daughter a sketch book. It seems that I owe her.
Epilogue: Part 4
Tracy Island, more or less safe at home-
Scott dreamed; tangled amid pillows and sheets, drenched in nervous sweat. Back in Antarctica.
Again, the winds screamed, stabbing through tent walls that shredded like paper and fluttered away. Metal objects… his tools and tether… snapped in Scott's hands, brittle as Christmas ornaments. A rapidly closing hole in the ice rang with terrified screams until its jaws ground shut on the people within, and one after another, they fell silent.
He couldn't feel his feet, his goggles were iced-over too badly to see, but Scott began running anyhow, because someone had survived. Someone clung to a distant ledge, crying for help. Beneath him, the hungry glacier rippled and flexed like a giant water bed, pushing him further away from the trapped, despairing figure.
Scott plunged forward; fighting ice, wind and his own limits to reach the dying victim. Almost, he touched her gloved hand. She was holding something. A baby.
With joy… sudden, wild relief… Scott surged a few inches closer.
"Mom!" he shouted aloud, rousing himself from nightmare. Mom...?
His heart thudded in his chest as Scott slowly sat up, each jerky beat an explosion. He'd almost reached her.
Stunned, he had to sit there a moment in his boxer shorts, knees drawn up to his chest, while the picture windows dithered about how much light to let in. According to their sensors, he was awake, but not out of bed. Mixed signals. Finally, they altered their structure and tint slightly, filling his suite with a dawn-like, rosy glow.
Scott hardly noticed. So close he'd come to seizing her hand; to saving Mom and Gordon. In his dreams, anyway. In real life…
If he could have reversed time, Scott wouldn't have whined and pestered so much to go on that damn vacation. Then, yeah, the cable car still might have broken loose, but Gordon wouldn't have been there, so Mom could have used both hands to steady herself. Dad wouldn't have been too occupied with saving Scott to reach his burdened wife… and everything would have turned out alright.
His parents might still have wanted a divorce (they hadn't hidden the tension very well; not from their oldest son, anyhow,) but at least she'd be alive. He could pick up the phone and call her, maybe visit. She might be proud of him, even. That gaping hole and the other one, shaped like a red-haired baby brother, would be filled. Sure. Like he'd said… in dreams.
He wished he could talk to somebody, or that he remembered how to pray... but everyone else had problems of their own, and it was well past time to get up. He had brothers to check on and a debriefing to attend. Clumsily, Scott shoved away the messy, tangled emotions, and got out of bed.
"TV," he said aloud. Obligingly, the flat screen television glowed to life in the next room, filling his suite with other people's tidily scripted problems. Be nice, wouldn't it, if everything could really be solved in forty minutes, with commercial breaks for toothpaste and sports cars in between?
Mechanically, he got himself moving. Half listening to piped-in music and TV chatter, Scott visited the restroom, washing his face, brushing his teeth, and shaving in under five minutes. Then he showered and dressed; news and music following him out of the shower stall and into the main closet, where his olive-drab rucksack still hung on a varnished wooden clothes hangar.
Tracy, Scott A.
Maj USAF
…read the upside-down label. Scott stared at the green canvas bag for a long minute, remembering other times and places. Then he pulled it off the hangar, folded it up, and put it away on a high closet shelf.
Out in the kitchen, Grandma Tracy was bustling about, having been informed by the house computer that at least one of her grandsons had awakened. Although the wall clock read 1430, she was making breakfast, with all the windows open to a lightly-gusting sea breeze. Scott sniffed appreciatively as he entered the room. Something hissed and spattered in an iron fry pan, filling the kitchen with the heartening rumor of bacon and eggs.
"Hey, Grandma," he said, smiling at her inspired combination of vivid tropical shirt, work boots and long, denim skirt. Her cane rested against the marble countertop like an exhausted question mark. "Virgil up, yet?"
Grandma Tracy snorted.
"Hell, no. And I'll be headed up there with a bucket of ice water if he don't get that lazy butt in gear! It's three in the damn afternoon!" she grumbled, skillfully transferring a fried egg and four strips of bacon onto a clean china plate.
Knowing quite well what he wanted, Grandma fixed up a sandwich with two bread slices that popped, hot and fragrant, from the toaster. Poured him a mug of strong coffee, too.
"There you go. Don't say I never gave you nuthin'."
Scott wolfed his egg-and-bacon sandwich in three massive bites, not even bothering to sit down. Grandma was already working on another, though, cracking two more eggs into the sizzling pan.
Scot finished his coffee, then gave the old woman a hug, nearly causing her to scorch his second breakfast. A few birds… parrots, or something… called raucously from the nearby jungle. Grandma looked up at Scott through her bottle-thick glasses. Pushing the black hair off his forehead with a gnarled little hand, she said,
"You alright, Scotty?"
Loaded question. He was alive, and well fed. He had taken on a new mission. Dad was making an effort, and Grandma, John and Virgil were here, so… yes, Scott supposed he was doing okay.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, releasing his grandmother in order to accept another sandwich. "How 'bout you?"
She smacked him.
"Don't talk with your mouth full. You wasn't born in a barn, nor raised by wolves, Scott Aaron. Keep actin' like that, and folks'll suspect we've gone natural."
Then, turning away from Scott and the big stove, Grandma pressed a marked key on the kitchen wall comm and shouted,
"Teddy! Virgil Edward Tracy! Get your ass outta bed before I set the dogs on you!"
(Not that, here, they had any dogs. The entire quarrelsome, black-and-tan pack was back in Wyoming, at the ranch.)
An interrupted snore and a sleepily mumbled,
"Yes, ma'am… getting up, Grandma," came back through the comm's little speaker. No vid, though; Grandma had no wish to have her eyes insulted by sleep-mussed, half-naked young men.
To Scott, she snapped,
"Get you some milk outta the frigerator. Coffee'll perk you right up, but it don't do your bones no good, a'tall. Growin' boys need milk."
And then, in hesitant reply to his earlier question,
"I'm a damn sight better'n I was, Scotty. What's gone can't be replaced, but what's left is worth stickin' around for, I guess."
Scott by then had fetched two glasses from a teak cabinet and padded over to the brushed aluminum refrigerator for milk. One for himself, one for grandma. He wanted to ask if she missed granddad… or mention his dream about mom… but wasn't sure how she'd take being reminded. Too bad he couldn't involve her in a game of truth.
"I'm glad you're here," he told her, instead, handing over a brimming glass. "Nothing would be the same without you."
She took a small sip, then set down her milk to fiddle with his shirt collar, saying,
"People die, Scotty. Things change. Enjoy what you got while it's still around to be loved, is the best advice I can give. Don't never take no one for granted…. Just wisht I'd known that myself a little earlier, is all. Might be I'd a done some things different, then."
Scott nodded. He'd remember that.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, leaning forward and down to plant a kiss on her wrinkled forehead. "Thanks for breakfast."
'I love you,' he didn't say aloud.
A little later, at the infirmary door, Scott palmed the security scanner while balancing a covered tray, then walked on in. There was a pastel, plant-and-literature decked waiting room, which he passed without really seeing, and then the 7-bed med-lab itself, where his back had been healed by Dr. Hackenbacker and a truckload of computerized nanobots.
John was inside, shrugging rather gingerly into a clean black tee shirt. He looked okay; still a little pale under the patchy sunburn, maybe, but otherwise sound… except for being so thin.
"Hey," Scott called out, walking a little faster. Setting down the breakfast tray, he helped John to get that tee shirt over his still-tender left side. "Grandma sent along breakfast. She said to be sure you eat it, too, or she'll have Brains install a feeding tube."
"Okay," John responded, ignoring the proffered food.
"I'm serious," Scott told him, beginning to scowl. No wonder his brother's ribs had snapped; they stood out like an orphaned calf's.
"And I'm not hungry."
"Then fake it," Scott ordered, stepping into his younger brother's path, and angling hard for eye contact. "I'm not trying to be an asshole, John. I'm trying to keep you alive, and so is Grandma."
Right.
John changed the subject, but gave in, slouching over to lift the lid of his breakfast tray.
"I had a weird dream," he said, staring down at an artfully presented cheese omelet and toast triangle, with its companioning tumbler of orange drink.
"You, too, huh?" Not to be distracted, Scott picked up the napkin-wrapped fork and pushed it at his reluctant brother. "What about?"
"I don't know…" John looked up, then; all ice-blond hair, slight frown and peeling sunburn. "Some kind of… lawn-sprinkler type field strength algorithm. Only, not for intergers. For folded up, multi-dimensional spaces."
Scott blinked. Took a deep breath. Then, genuinely trying, he said,
"So… something like a sprinkler shooting wadded tin-foil balls, instead of water?"
John once more glanced his way, smiling this time. Fork pausing halfway to his mouth, he said,
"Yeah. Sort of. But each one folded uniquely, affecting the forces generated within the various 'tin foil' spaces. You'd just set the algorithm's parameters to code for what you want, including dark energy. Useful, if it actually works."
The fork load of omelet completed its journey. John ducked his head before chewing the small mouthful, hardly knowing how to eat in public without a book on his lap. There were magazines in the waiting room, though.
Scott went and fetched a computer catalog from the wall rack, brought it back and set it on the examination table beside his brother. A good thing, too, because John had gotten no farther than that first bite.
Knowing that his brother could read, listen and eat at the same time, Scott waited until the right page was found and the fork began moving again. Then he said,
"I had sort of a nightmare. I was back at the Pole, again, only everything broke on me, and I couldn't save anyone."
Not even mom.
Without looking up, John replied,
"Just your subconscious, hauling out the trash, Scott. Apparently, you got scared."
"Yeah. Guess that's what happened."
It had sure felt like more at the time, though.
By a minor miracle, attributable to whichever gentle saint handled fussy eaters, John finally finished his breakfast. Carefully tidying up, he looked over at Scott and asked,
"Why did you and Virgil lie about the way I broke my ribs?"
"To keep your sorry ass out of trouble with dad, Stupid. Not going to tell, are you?"
John shook his head.
"No," he decided aloud. No sense having their father mad at everyone.
Scott still wanted to talk, like they were a pair of ants, rubbing antennae and exchanging foraged crumbs. John had that beautiful algorithm dancing in his head, though; he wanted to be left alone to consider it, to mentally roll around like a tom in catnip.
Then TinTin scampered into the med-lab, with Virgil in tow. Great; it was a damn party, now, and all because of a few broken ribs. You'd have thought he was the first man in history to injure himself…!
Suddenly unnerved, John shrugged his way out of a noisy-tight hug and ducked Virgil's back-slap. Too many people, too centered on him. He felt the abrupt, panicky need to do something dumb, like punching somebody, or counting backward in order-of-magnitude leaps from (1700 + 320i)…
TinTin did a strange thing, then. She looked at him, her almond eyes going wide, and backed quietly away. Taking Virgil's right hand, the girl tugged him over to the window, pointing outside and saying,
"Virgil, regard! There are many birds in flight, today. Are they not beautiful? From the mainland, peut-etre?"
…And that left only Scott, who gave him a funny look. One of those complicated, hard-to-classify, facial things that wasn't sad, scared, happy, angry, satisfied or surprised. And, dammit, 'none of the above' was his least favorite response.
To make things manageable again, he said,
"I've found a place to set up my telescope."
"Oh?" Scott replied, accepting the change of subject.
"Yeah. Up the north side of the mountain. Tonight, I'm going there to try a Messier marathon. Some of the objects will be out of sight, given our latitude and the season. Ought to have good seeing, though."
It was funny, but Scott usually figured things out in a hurry… like when not to push.
"As long as there aren't any clouds?" his dark-haired brother inquired, settling back against one of the treatment beds.
"Yeah. Or too much off-gassing from the generators. That gets in the way."
John felt much improved, now; off the microscope stage and back to normal. Better yet, Scott had shifted again from indecipherable, to smiling.
"Well… I don't know if I can stay up very late, but tell me if you'd like company. I can bring a sleeping bag and camp out."
Ken Flowers had used to do the same thing, falling asleep long before John was through spotting and cataloging deep-sky objects. Present… but not in the way. Except for the one time, when his friend had dropped a cigarette and nearly burned himself alive in his sleeping bag. Then, John had had a fire to put out and burn cream to administer. But Scott didn't smoke much, so…
"Okay. I'll be headed up around 0100. I'll call you."
Another smile.
"Sounds like a plan, Little Brother."
TinTin had crept back, by this time. She stood there looking sort of sad, but no. Two bystanders were too many. Maybe another time.
They left the infirmary together, John lagging behind with his head in the numbers. TinTin skipped along between Scott and Virgil, chattering like a small bird. For all of her, school might burn to the ground, or Tahiti vanish from the map, and good riddance. She wished to remain here, avec les trois freres. For in truth, she was beginning to love them.
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Later still, in the office; observed from without, and subtly guided-
"Gentlemen, have a seat," Jeff Tracy commanded, settling himself behind the desk for a very long talk.
