Chapter Forty-nine

The Homecoming

Malcolm Reed

Bloody hell, it's fucking cold! When we first fled to the desert, Liz and I expected scorching heat and burning sun all year round. We soon learned that deserts have seasons, too. It's winter in the Sonora, still dark in the wee hours of the morning just before dawn, and everybody forgets that the polar ice caps are the biggest deserts on Earth.

It's a five-kilometre walk from the junction where the train always has to stop – ten years or so ago the electronic controls on the points failed, and it was cheaper and easier to change it to a manual system than to install a replacement control box compatible with a system that went out of date twenty years before that. So every train that goes through has to stop and wait while the driver climbs down and laboriously pushes the lever over to change the points, and that, of course, gives me my chance; bidding farewell to my fellow-traveller (whose opinion of me when she woke from her drunken sleep wasn't improved by my polite refusal to fuck her), I wait till the driver's occupied, drop out of the railway wagon and slip underneath the couplings to slide into hiding on the opposite side, where the scrub crowds close to the embankment.

Apart from the cold – which isn't really all that bad, if I'm honest, at least not for late December – the light is my enemy. Even out here, the scanning satellites watch for comings and goings. I don't suppose that one ageing, poverty-stricken traveller in the middle of nowhere will attract that much attention, but caution has kept me alive this long and I'm not about to abandon it now. Now, especially, when I finally have within my grasp a life that I long for so much, I will do nothing to endanger that. However irksome it may be to wait a few more hours before I set out on the last leg of my journey, I will make myself as comfortable as I can and be patient.

Well. 'Comfortable' isn't exactly the word; the palo verde tree that provided me cover when I took off weeks ago has dropped its foliage, but the brittlebush, creosote, and ocotillos are putting out bright new leaves. The problem is, they're all quite low growing, and I have to wriggle along on my belly to get under them. But I finally sort myself out a reasonably suitable area and lie down. There's nothing to do but wait, so I may as well pass the time sleeping.

=/\=

By the time I wake, the sun is low and the desert is full of shadows. I know of old that images in this light are hard work to scan and crepuscular animals are on the move, so now is the time for me to travel. Night time, of course, is cooler, making for better travelling in the warmer months, but at this time of year, while it can get to the upper teens during the day and be quite tolerable if you're working and moving about, once the sun sets, it's bloody freezing; and I have to be careful, because now and again a pass will be made high above with thermal scanners, and anything human size will show up quite clearly if anyone happens to be looking in this direction.

The chances of that happening, however, are remote in the extreme. It's only a residual habit that makes me wander along as though I have no particular destination in mind, pausing to survey anything of even vague interest that I pass as though I'm hoping to find something to eat. If anyone is watching me they'll soon conclude that I'm not worth the effort; it's only people who clearly appear to have important business that get followed.

The delay makes me impatient, but I don't change, for all that. Whatever impatience I may feel, I'm not going to endanger Liz by giving in to it.

All the time, the fragment of that tune keeps echoing in my head: 'I'll be home for Christmas...'

=/\=

While we were waiting for news of the convoy, the team holed up in a timber yard. There were lots of bits and bobs of discarded stuff lying around, and I picked up a circular piece that was about the diameter of the palm of my hand. I don't know what sort of wood it was, but the knot in the middle of it reminded me of the centre of a wild rose, and ever since then, in idle moments, I've been carving the petals around it. It's in my breast pocket, and every now and then I put my hand up to feel it's still safely there. It's not very good, but I think she'll like it.

Time was when I could put a necklace of priceless Koladan diamonds around her neck with one flick of my finger, but I think she'll prefer this. She'll definitely prefer the man who gives it to her.

I set a rather wavering course across country towards the outcrop. There are few ramshackle houses here, and I investigate their yards before 'glimpsing' the light in the window of Grandmother's shack, and heading for it.

The last few metres are always a killer. Five kilometres aren't much to me even now, but across difficult terrain they're not nothing; though I'm so consumed with eagerness to see Liz again that I get a burst of renewed energy and it's as much as I can do to tread carefully up the slope.

'I'll be home for Christmas...'

I go to take the rose out and put it back again. That can wait till I've held her in my arms again, till I've seen for myself how lovely and rounded she is, till I've run my hands over every inch of her body again and sat and listened to her telling me about how her days have been. I bet she hasn't got much lap left now; that will piss Beans off.

'You can plan on me...'

I'm well early for the birth. Bloody hell, every time I think about it, it gives me the shivers, part dread and part excitement.

I cross the shelf to the door. Lamplight shines out of the window. She'll be in there, waiting to kiss me, to throw her arms around me. Though hugging's probably going to be a problem; good job I've got long arms.

By this time we've all got so used to the way the door drags a bit when you open it that I think there'd be a riot if I fitted a new hinge. I heave it open joyfully, waiting to hear her voice. "Well, where's that beautiful woman of mine?"

There's no reply.

At the other side of the room, there's only Grandmother, in her chair, with her hands motionless on a crocheted blanket.

She's always busy with something. I don't think I've ever seen her so absolutely still.

For a moment I think with a heart-stopping shock that she's dead. Then I see that her eyes are alive, filled with a monumental pity. Tears are sliding down among the wrinkles of her weather-beaten face.

I don't want to hear what she doesn't know how to tell me.

I must be dying. Pain like this can't leave you alive, can't possibly leave you breathing and aware.

I hear a sound, a long, bestial howl of grief and loss. I don't know who's making it, but I wish I was back on the bio-bed in Jupiter Station's sickbay, I wish I was pregnant and desolate and alone but for The Nice One. At least then she was still there, still alive to love me.

I don't even know I've fallen, pitched forward onto my knees, until I breathe in the sand grains in the mat on the floor and my weeping becomes choking; every day without fail Grandmother sweeps the sand out and every time the wind blows it finds its way back in. The noises are unhinged, horrifying; the pain is flaying. If I'd ever doubted whether I still had a heart, I believe it now, because something behind my ribs is being torn asunder, and I wish it was real, I wish it was happening, because then it would be over and at least there would be oblivion instead of this unbearable anguish.

A bottle is thrust into my hand, and I drink from it in gulps. Illegal liquor, almost without flavour, but as the kick hits you, you forget about tasting anything. I swallow it as though it's water and I'm dying of thirst, pausing every now and then to howl as the unbearable reality hits me again. Pack howling, the only voice I can find that comes even close to expressing what I feel: rising and falling, shattered, alone, calling across unimaginable distance for a voice that will never answer.

Somehow Grandmother gets me into bed. A double, box bed that I built for both of us, and now only I will ever lie in it again. I writhe in the covers that still smell of her, and clutch the pillow that her head will never rest on again. From a great distance I feel the caressing hands in my hair, on my face, and the tiny drip of tears on my skin. Grandmother is talking to me, broken words trying to comfort me when there is no comfort possible. I hear the words but they are meaningless; my brain is beyond comprehending anything but the fact that Liz is dead.

She's dead.