(or, To You Guys, in 2000 Years)
Prologue: Dorado Bay, Shasta, Earth-1
“Why is it named Dorado Bay, Proctor Pham?” asked one of the three teenaged boys to the man who’d led them to this grassy, isolated hilltop near Shasta’s southern border.
Before them, the setting sun illuminated the vast bay, the strangely outcropped flatlands that surrounded it, and the high hills that dominated the peninsula on the other side. The long-severed remains of at least eight kilometers-long bridges that crossed over the bay were the most obvious evidence that this place once sustained an unimaginably huge metropolis the size of half a dozen Novosibirsks. Now, several fishing villages dotted the shores of the bay, all too poor for the government in New Berkeley to bother taxing, but none fated to ever grow much larger than it was. (Dorado Bay had enough water to support an actual city, but why?)
“Well, according to one Colonizer legend,” answered Pham, “the New World had a city so rich, it could pave its streets in gold. The Colonizers thought of this El Dorado as some sort of paradise.
“In Shasta, we call this whole place ‘Dorado,’ not just the bay. For a few years before the First Age ended two thousand years ago, it was close to paradise. Even as brother fought sister everywhere else, in these cities, men and women actually got along.”
“And the population was half and half,” piped another student.
“Half men, half women,” confirmed Pham. “Men could do anything back then.” That was probably the problem, he declined to add. “But then, that’s why we’re here, just us men. Now, let’s get settled.”
Fifteen minutes later, teacher and students had set up their tented camp for the night. More importantly, they had successfully set up the reason they’d taken the trouble to come here: a large radio the size of three loaves of bread, imported from Cascadia. Only a rig this large could capture the live signal from northern Ellenoi they wanted to hear.
A Puerta mission didn’t typically merit a news broadcast from anyone, but two people involved tonight had piqued interest all over the world. The Traveller was some Middle Western bureaucrat in her late forties, but it was the Mission Controller about whom Pham and his students really cared.
Eventually, as the sun finally gave way to a starry night, the live broadcast started (in Ontaran, of course). “Good evening, everyone. This is Adrian Gómez at Wausau Control. I will be providing communications for tonight’s sortie. I’d like to extend a welcome to our listening audience all over the world.”
There it was! For the first time ever, a man was running a Puerta mission. Eventually, Pham and his boys heard what they came to hear from him: “Ignition! Sortie 7AB8 launched at 2224 hours on the 26th day of Junio, in the year 2050 of the Age of Recovery. Launch code: four zeroes.”
“Adrian Gómez will live forever!” declared the third student, punching the air around himself.
“Only if this succeeds,” warned Pham. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if it failed.
Dade City, Florida, Earth-440
There wasn’t time for Jennifer Russell to get another close look at the three-centimeter-tall man – the Date – whose life she’d just wrecked. She’d repair some of the damage in a few weeks, but right now, there was only time to thank him and blow him a kiss.
As if to underscore the situation, an almost pleasant warning beep piped into her right ear. “Northside, Wausau,” followed a male voice whose accent she couldn’t place right away. “Ninety seconds to ignition.”
“Wausau, Northside,” she subvocalized. “Acknowledged.” To the day, 33 years had passed between her only other sortie into E440, the Dates’ homeworld, and the one tonight. Of course she never had to change her Girlfriend handle from “Northside.”
Lightly grasped between the index finger and thumb of her left hand was her objective, a wafer-thin, three-by-four-millimeter thing. Puerta Command could’ve sent a younger Girlfriend here to retrieve it. They might’ve even sent somebody Jennifer had trained herself, and that girl might have shown even more gentleness and (definitely) restraint. By the time that other Girlfriend realized that the item was not an electronic circuit, however, the mission would have been ruined. In fact, to Jennifer’s knowledge, only a few other women, all about her age, would’ve known to handle this wafer delicately.
With the precisely manicured nail of her left pinky, Jennifer tapped the wide metal band on her right ring finger. A small door opened at the top, providing a place for her to stow the wafer. Her second tap closed the portal, sealing the wafer inside.
At long last, she had secured the diary that could clear her name back home.
All that remained was to check her purse and its contents. Everything that was in it when she arrived was in it now, save for two items.
Her favorite pumps, probably ruined now, had replaced the athletic shoes she now wore.
One of the Date transports that had been inside now sat fastened to the outside, in its own purpose-made pocket. Inside, Cory Gordon slept, anesthetized. Whatever he was dreaming, Jennifer cynically suspected that her body was part of it.
“Northside, Wausau,” piped in the man, following another beep. “Sixty seconds to ignition.”
“Wausau, Northside,” she quietly replied. “Got it. Permission to speak freely?”
“Northside, Wausau. “Granted, with the reminder that, as my superior, you needn’t ask.”
“Wausau, Northside.” With just under a minute left, Jennifer took one long, last look at Dade City, the brightly lit coastal metropolis that surrounded her in all directions. “Not even the holograms at the Nordok Library do this place justice,” she sighed. “It’s just so beautiful. No wonder the girls who come here these days behave so well.”
The fact that she was roughly 60 times as tall as its inhabitants only made her view of the city all the more poignant.
Out of the nearly one thousand parallel Earths where mankind is known to have existed, in only four has humanity made it out of the First Age alive. Obviously, one of them is E1, Jennifer’s home world.
In not a single parallel, she recalled, did Dade City ever live long enough to burn under nuclear skies, or sicken its way into oblivion. It always, always sunk under the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
(Momentarily, she thought about an even greater city—one so much closer to home—that burned every time instead of drowning. There’s a reason why, 22 centuries after its inception, “Flame Deluge” is spelled and pronounced they same way in every language still spoken on E1.)
Her old friend Janina had this theory that, for all the horrors their people had inflicted upon E440 in the past half century, they might have inadvertently allowed a fifth instance of humanity to avoid, or at least survive, the Flame Deluge and the Category Sevens. Only recently did Jennifer entertain the notion that Janina’s conjecture might be more than just cheap Gandian propaganda.
“Northside, Wausau. Thirty seconds to ignition. Are you all right?”
“Wausau, Northside, I’m fine,” she replied. “Just trying to imagine all these streets underwater in twenty years.” She slung her purse onto her shoulder, and stiffened up.
“Ten seconds to ignition,” intoned the male voice. (Blessed Abe, his voice was so, so husky!) “Nine, eight,…”
Ignition:
Jennifer’s training from 33 years ago—no, 35—kicked in, almost against her will.
Spin up:
First, the air started spinning rapidly around her.
Next, the sound of the emerging whirlwind ramped up, soon to deafen her if she didn’t pay attention.
After that, she felt her feet lift off the ground, finally opening the wide lanes of Thompson Avenue to traffic. Simultaneously, her angle of view plummeted, until she thought she was only half as high off the ground as before. In effect, her body was shrinking about its center.
(On the way over, the opposite happened. In the final stage, she emerged some 50 meters above ground, then “grew” until her high-heeled feet touched the ground. Pumps were such a bad idea for this!)
Transit:
It was when the “shrinking” stopped that the Confederacies all broke loose at once. She’d met too many inexperienced Girlfriends who forgot to close both their eyes and their minds at this dangerous stage. Helping them recover, or at least connecting them to the impressive amount of actual money involved in their long recuperation, was part of her day job.
Fortunately, as she closed her eyes, she could think about what awaited her at home in New Trier. Her secondary husbands were five Dates who chose to stay with her after the Church and its Order collapsed. Pleasant speculation about how they and Derella the cat would greet her lasted long enough to get her through the cacophony that lay at the heart of the trip.
Spin down:
She felt her feet touching the ground again. Milliseconds later, the other sensations had ramped down enough for reopen her eyes. Things were still spinning and swirling, but they already felt much more welcoming. The warm city lights underfoot were replaced by a cool, hazy glow overhead. Soon enough, the view above resolved into the bluish-white hexagonal-pentagonal lattice that constituted the lighted dome that sheltered the Transit Room.
The sexy, foreign male voice that had come to her through her earphones now projected itself over the Transit Room speakers. “Northside, this is Wausau Control. Sortie 7AB8 concluded at 0027 hours on the 27th day of Junio, in the year 2050 of the Age of Recovery. Return code: four zeroes. Congratulations on a safe journey, Director Russell. Take a few minutes to regain your bearings, then proceed to the Checkout Room for inspection and decontamination.” The applause Jennifer heard from behind his voice wasn’t coming from just the staff. There had to be at least a dozen guests in the Control Room.
Wausau Base, Ellenoi, Earth-1
Once she did regain her bearings, the first thing Jennifer realized was that the trip across this Puerta left her noticeably more sore than her first had been. She wanted to blame her age, but knew all too well that the real culprit was latitude. Simply put, the laws of Puerta physics made travel from a base on the 60th-parallel easier and more comfortable from one from the 45th.
Her first trip, all those years ago, had been from the Siberian town of Mayskoye, a dozen time zones away from here on the 60th parallel. This time, Uranium City or Kangirsuk both had bases just as far north, and they were both just one time zone away. Unfortunately, a trip to either place involved blimps, trains, horses, and worst of all, a passport.
Wausau Base, on the other hand, sat on the 45th parallel north, still a usable latitude, but practically due north of home. Better yet, it was in the Commonwealth, meaning that she didn’t have to cross any national borders to get here. The trip here from New Trier involved only an easy train ride (with a transfer at Hononegah) to get her to Wausau City. A stallion named Secretariat (what kind of weirdo gives a horse a name like that?) rather cheerfully took her down the short final leg to the base. Convenience like that was worth a little soreness right now.
When she was ready to start the checkout process, a line of four hexagonal tiles, each two meters to a side, glowed green, forming a path from the central tile to the Transit Room’s main door on its south wall. This was a clear technical advance; the first time, she had to figure her way to Unloading out herself.
As she stepped on the tile in front of the main door, it slid open, revealing a two-meter-long detection chamber. She stepped in, stopped, waited for the lasers to do their job, and then stepped out into the Unloading Room. “Stage One report,” chirped the male voice over another set of speakers. “Extrinsic radiation absorption levels: nil.”
That bit was the same for Jennifer as it’d been the first time, but 33 years had brought quite a few changes to Unloading. For starters, this room was about twice the size of the one she’d used in Maskoye. On top of that, there was just the outbound door across from where she’d just entered. Small glass panels, no doubt meant to take handprints, flaked the outbound door on either side. Matching placards above each panel bore instructions on the checkout process. Jennifer had to pull her glasses out from her purse to read them. With the different locale, they were in her native Ontaran language, as opposed to the Siberian on which she’d first trained.
In place of the open conveyor belt that she saw the first time, three smaller portals appeared to the left of the outbound door, their lower edges all coming up to about her waist. The one closest to the central door was half a meter wide by a meter tall, trimmed in lightly stained oak. Across from it hung a sturdy, waist-high plank the size of a nightstand, and on the other side of that, a pair of very small doorways, trimmed the same pecan wood as the plank. As though their respective uses couldn’t be more obvious, each of these had a pictogram plastered next to it.
Just to get a rise out of the audience she knew existed, she bobbed her head, letting her long, exquisitely permed, honey-blonde hair bounce comically from side to side.
“And she’s off!” uttered a rather familiar voice from Control that didn’t belong there.
Jennifer placed her purse on the plank, then turned herself to face the camera through which everyone in Control was watching her. She kept bobbing her head from side to side. With the stupidest, most vacuous smile known to womankind, she sing-sang, “Hey, Wausau!”
As she’d hoped, the people in control started laughing. “Yes, Director Russell?” Adrian Gómez, the voice of Wausau Control, delivered the most deadpan reply.
“What does this little green button doooooo?” she said, delivering a famous line from a comedy that she hated, but everyone else had loved for over a decade.
Laughter filled the control room. Even Gómez stifled a guffaw.
She knew, of course, what the little green button above the plank did, as well as what the little red button next to it did. When she pressed the green one, the large portal opened, and out popped the front end of a stopped conveyer belt. Most of her belongings would go there. Just above the belt, a few small lidded boxes lay in cradles, places for items too small to safely ride the belt all the way to the Checkout Room.
But first, she had to take care of what she called “the coffin,” the little transport with an actual Date sleeping inside. Gently removing it from its outer purse pocket, she took a look. Cory Gordon was still asleep, but the anesthesia was starting to wear off. And something looked wrong with him.
Proceeding to one of the two small portals, she pressed the single blue button above it. This time, a small platform, thirteen centimeters long and seven wide, slid out. The place to put the coffin was clearly marked. Around it stood six columns as tall as the coffin was deep, each one holding the jack end of a cable. Unsure of what to do, she put the coffin in its slot. “Wausau?” she asked, her voice back to normal.
“Yes, Directorrrrrrrr,” Gómez answered with the sing-song cadence Jennifer had just used. The audience behind him sniggered. “Do you have a questionnnnn?” More laughter emerged from the peanut gallery behind him.
“I just need to make sure I heard correctly when you guys took me through the refresher course last week. Do the colors of the stripes on these little boxes tell me which wire is which?”
“That’s affirmative, Director.”
“Thank you, Wausau.” Surely enough, as she pulled each cable out, its color matched that of the stripe on its casing. Bobbing her head once more, she uttered a self-deprecating “duh,” to one more round of chuckles from Control.
Once she connected all the cables to the coffin, a team of medics who specialized in Date physiology would be able to monitor Cory’s vital signs. With the coffin connected and locked in place, Jennifer pressed the blue button again. A smaller conveyor belt rose to grab the entire platform, sending Cory on his way, and the portal closed for good. Cory would be decontaminated on a different path, one that led to the Immigration Section, where the medics (including, no doubt, other Dates) would tend to his needs.
Now it was time to take care of herself.
The first thing she did when she returned to the conveyor belt was remove her earpieces and her rings, which just had to make it across to Checkout. The four rings went into one cradle; the earbuds, into another. The first items to go onto the belt itself were the three unused Date transports, reminders of how horribly tonight’s mission could’ve gone, but didn’t. Then came her pumps with the twelve-centimeter heels, followed by the loose, flowery skirt she didn’t have time to don before final ignition. (She allowed a sigh to escape, at the sight of burn marks on the bottom of her shoes.)
With the smallest items off her person, and the largest out of her purse, she pressed the green button a second time, sending the things on the belt on their way, along with the cradled boxes. One by one, she moved the medium-sized items she’d ended up not using from her purse on the belt, and away they went, too. After the emptied purse itself and her eyeglasses went onto the belt, she pressed the red button. The belt moved back into the wall, and the portal slid shut.
To reach the Checkout Room, Jennifer pressed a palm against one of the glass panels. The door upward, revealing a short, dark hallway. Even though it had an official name, in practical conversation, everyone called it “the Sparkly Room.”
Sparkly didn’t have a single light fixture installed, so once its door closed behind her, she had to adjust her eyes to what initially seemed like total darkness. Eventually, however, she saw the tell-tale signs of the scintillator paint with which the walls, floor and ceiling had all been painted. The multi-colored specks that flickered about her came from all the voyagons that flew off her body and onto the surfaces of the hallway. (‘Voyagons’ were those exotic particles that all Travellers absorbed during their trips. Harmless as neutrinos, and easily removed with an ordinary shower, they sometimes indicated more serious doses of other kinds of radiation.) Amused as always at her sparkling anti-shadow on the walls, she proceeded to the end of the hallway.
Stepping on the unpainted plate at the end triggered the door to Checkout. It opened upwards, slowly enough for Jennifer to adjust her eyes to a chamber that was both brighter and more colorful than the Transit Room. After she stepped through it, she pressed another glass panel, closing the door more quickly than it had opened.
“Stage Two report in two minutes,” said Gómez. This time, the voice came not from white speaker boxes, but from a combination screen that gave Jennifer a good look inside the Control Room. It was crowded, all right, with what looked like representatives from every nation north of the Zone of Silence. (Okay, maybe not every nation; Control couldn’t fit half that many people.).
Directly in front of the screen sat the beautifully sculpted, 180-centimeter-tall form of Adrian Gómez himself, relaxed in his mission-control seat. (Not even a lieutenant’s jacket could conceal a physique like that.) His skin and eyes had descended from old-school Scandinavia, but his facial features and nearly black, straight hair, complete with a tastefully trimmed beard and mustache, came from the Old Southwest. No wonder he’d completed his fatherhood course before he even turned 21.
Back in Checkout, in front of the combo screen mounted onto the western wall, there was a comfortable-looking couch. A light coffee table occupied the intervening space, with a few books stacked on it. “Wow,” Jennifer beamed, pointing her arms towards the screen. “The Puerta girls finally realized we needed a waiting room!”
That remark drew more chuckles from the peanut gallery.
By contrast, the east side of Checkout looked almost as sterile as Unloading. A conveyer belt passed through an indentation in the east wall that spanned the back half of the room. Jennifer could see her purse sliding out of the room through heavy rubber flaps, so this was the same belt where she’d put her stuff. The unindented front half of the wall housed two small closets, an open one for the temporary, government-issued clothing she’d soon wear, and a locked one containing the outfit she’d picked before the mission began. The southeastern corner of Checkout housed a small room where she could shower and change clothes. West of that, on the south wall, a closed doorway led out of Checkout and into the rest of the Puerta complex.
“Stage Two results follow,” said Gómez, as Jennifer took the temporary clothing from the open locker. “Personal-effect subsection: voyagon radiation levels register nil to nominal. Extrinsic radiation levels: nil. Extrinsic disease agents: nil.”
As Control broke out in applause, Jennifer took off her athletic shoes and put them on the moving conveyer belt.
“Passenger subsection: voyagon levels register below nominal. Extrinsic radiation: nil. Extrinsic disease agents: virus detected inside passenger chamber.” The audience groaned. “Immigration has registered the passenger as a patient. Expected stay: three days.” More groaning, followed by commotion.
That didn’t sound good at all. Jennifer stopped dead in her tracks, temporary clothes in hand, just short of the shower room.
“Engaging privacy mode in three, two, one,” announced Gómez, after which the video part of the combination screen went blank. No one in Control would be able to see Jennifer, nor could she see Control. “Can you hear me, Director?” he asked over the still-active audio channels.
“Affirmative, Wausau,” said Jennifer. This infection business irked her. She needed Cory alive.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m trying to keep calm, Lieutenant,” she seethed. “You’re running Control for my mission, and you didn’t bother to warn me about any epidemics on the 440?”
“Director,” stammered Gómez, his terror audible over the combo-screen speakers. “The initial readouts from Immigration didn’t indicate any disease outbreaks at the target site.”
“Young man,” growled Jennifer, now naked, “the year over there is 2017, Common Era. It’s still the First Age!” Then she took a deep breath to calm down. This mission isn’t just about you, Miss Russell! she reminded herself. Officially, it’s not even primarily about you. It’s actually about that promising young man you’re about to crush underfoot. Step back!
She needed two more deep breaths to regain her composure. “Okay,” she finally resumed, in a clipped timbre, “Did Immigration actually give you an epidemiological prep report before I got here?”
“Just a minute, Northside,” answered Gomez, his voice a little less shaky. Except for the shuffling sound of him going through a stack of papers, Control was dead silent.
“If it’ll help you calm down, Adrian,” she assured, “we should drop the formalities until you issue Stage Three.” It would certainly help her calm down.
“Thank you, Jennifer,” said Adrian, sounding relieved. “That means I can swear now, right?”
A little laughter returned to Control.
Jennifer gave herself a raspberry. “Can I take that as a ‘no,’ Adrian?”
“Damn it all to Houston!” he exclaimed, audibly pounding his desk. “I don’t have anything from Immigration.”
“Rookie mistake, Adrian. You were supposed to ask them for the current DVB.”
“I’m sorry, Jennifer. While you’re showering, I’ll head over to Immigration and get tonight’s copy.”
“Good call, Adrian.” She beaned, like a mother watching her young child take a first step. “Maybe cut off the signal for now?”
“Also cat. Feel free to reopen the channel when you’re ready. Wausau out.”
This couldn’t be happening!
Nordpol would finally clear Jennifer’s name after reading the diary, but she should’ve never had to go to Dade City to get it in the first place. She had figured the why of the whole matter, and Cory Gordon, who honestly belonged more to this world than his native E440, was the how. If he died tonight, though, the who, the person who ran Cory, might forever elude her. She’d never be safe.
Once showered, she ran as much of her body as she could through the ultraviolet cleaners before donning the temporary government-issued clothes: a basic white bra (specialized to handle her augmented breasts), a basic pair of full-cut briefs (like the ones she usually wore, only even more institutionally white), a body-length gown festooned with monarch butterflies (the national symbol of the Commonwealth of Ellenoi), and...a pair of kitty slippers!
While she blew her shoulder-length hair dry, she debated which looked more ridiculous, the orange butterflies or the grey cat faces. If nothing else, that took her mind off her immediate troubles. Her perm was wearing off, making her hair look bad, too, so she pulled most of it back and, with a thoughtfully provided purple-and-scarlet barrette (national colors! Yaaaayyy!), formed a ponytail.
With nothing left to do but wait for the final Stage Three report, Jennifer sat down on the plush couch and reopened the channel to Control.
On the other side, about twenty women and men greeted her with applause.
Front and center, to Jennifer’s complete lack of surprise, sat her old, old friend Janina Terel’le, in Gó—ahem!—Adrian’s control chair. That cocoa skin of hers always glowed, but the heavily straightened hair was all new. A royal-blue, one-piece dress, with an old-gold belt made her look smarter than ever. (Of the two, Janina always had the better fashion sense.) “Hi, Jenny!” she yelped, waving her hands excitedly.
“Hi, Jenny!” chorused the crowd behind Janina, all grinning and parroting her greeting wave. The guests were looking more like who Jennifer thought they were: twelve other women and two men, each dressed in the color scheme of their home country.
“Um, hi, everybody!” waved back Jennifer, allowing a smile to escape her dark mood.
“Oh, dear Hatma, Jane,” she said. “In the 35 years I’ve known you, you’ve never had your hair straightened. Is it going to be alright?”
Everyone on the other end chortled. Janina just spread out her arms. “Hey, you had your hair mutilated for this mission. Solidarity, baby!” More chuckles followed.
“’Mutilated’ is right,” rued Jennifer, picking at a stray curl in front of her face. “So, what’s with this scheme to recreate the United States Senate?”
“Oh, honey,” answered Janina, “The moment Pochta Novosibirsk blabbed, ‘first male Mission Controller’ day before last, this went worldwide. And I mean worldwide, as in ‘they’re following in Buenos Áires and Cape Town and McMurdo City.’”
“Meaning the whole thing’s out in the open,” sighed Jennifer. Putting a palm to her face, she slumped back into the couch.
“Ah, cheer up, Jen! The people who oughta be scared now are the neo-Redeemers. They ran Cory, and now they’re gonna get exposed.”
A second later, Jennifer sat back up. “I suppose?” she asked, not really reassured. After an audibly deep breath, she changed the subject. “Now tell me about these would-be senators.”
“Sure,” Janina grinned, proceeding to introduce the others. From all over the continent, even Bajío on the other side of the Zone, fifteen nations had sent observers, including the only one that really mattered: the Union of Denali.
Hadn’t Little Rock sent anybody? she asked herself, only to see it immediately answered. The door into Control opened, and Adrian Gómez and the rest of the Control crew resumed their chairs. Janina rushed to scoot herself out of Adrian’s, but not before announcing, “And here’s Zarkia, Jen!”
“Is that true, Adrian?” asked Jennifer, puzzled. “I thought you were Sourian.”
“My sisters and I were all born there, but then Souria blew up, and the family fled to the border camps on the James. Mama was an engineer, fortunately, so she was able to find work in Yetteville. That’s how we turned into Zarkians.”
“Thanks for clearing that up. I take it you’re ready to issue Stage Three?”
“Affirmative, Northside. Would everyone please resume their original seat?” Adrian’s tone had now turned utterly official. “This is Wausau Control, back for one final transmission tonight. Following are the results of the Stage Three inspection.”
Silence fell everywhere.
“Personal-effect subsection: All items cleansed. Radiation and disease-agent levels read zero. All items to be returned to the Traveller upon final clearance.” Behind
Adrian, a little applause began, only for him to advise, “Please reserve reactions until the entire Stage Three announcement has been completed.”
After a few seconds of silence, Adrian continued. “Passenger subsection: Passenger confirmed to have contracted a local virus, identified as Zika-2016. Infection confirmed as the result of mosquito bites sustained on E440. Containment probability: one. Passenger currently experiencing severe fever and respiratory issues, but expected to recover fully within 72 hours.”
From the Control Room, everyone could see Jennifer pumping her fists triumphantly back and forth. She kept her lips sealed, though.
“Traveller subsection:” Adrian continued. “Residual voyagon level: nil. Extrinsic radiation dose: nil. Extrinsic disease-agent level: nil.”
Both rooms suddenly erupted in cheers.
Adrian was still “on the clock,” but everyone else in Control hugged each other in celebration. On the other side of the screen, Jennifer leapt out of the couch and screamed. She sprinted across the room to the second locker, which Adrian had just unlocked.
“Silence, please,” Adrian called. “Final disposition still to be announced. Silence, please.” Only after the Control Room fell silent did he make one last announcement: “Traveller cleared for final release at 0159 hours on 27 Junio 2050.”
In Control, the cheers returned, louder than ever.
“Effects staff,” ordered Adrian, “please return Northside’s effects into her possession.
“Jennifer Melinda Russell,” he then announced, “at age 48 years, 88 days, you are now officially the oldest human to successfully complete a sortie to a parallel Earth. Congratulations, Director Russell.”
In the same moment, Jennifer grinned and shook her head. “No, no, no, Adrian Gómez!” she said. “We’ve had the Puerta for over 200 years now. In all that time, no man had even tried to run a mission control. Yet you pulled this off tonight, and just one shot got past you. This night is yours, young man, not mine. Northside out,” she concluded, shutting off the combination screen.
Let him experience the joy tonight, she decided, as she started pulling her preselected outfit from the newly opened locker. What she really felt was relief: relief at the realization that she might still escape this nightmare with both her freedom and her life.
In the privacy of shower room, away from the prying eyes of the world, Jennifer Melinda Russell finally allowed herself to cry.
Epilogue
“Residual voyagon level: nil. Extrinsic radiation dose: nil. Extrinsic disease-agent level: nil.”
From the southeastern shores of Valdosta Bay to the northwestern Arctic coasts of the Union of Denali, from New Berkeley to New Glasgow, the scene repeated itself. Small, isolated groups of men who had been listening to the broadcast suddenly jumped in glee. They hugged each other. Most of them even kissed. They shouted, quietly in the East, moderately in the Middle West.
But in the West, they screamed at full throat.
At the Dorado Bay hilltop camp, where the clock had only just struck midnight, Pham and his students yelled loudly enough for people to hear in the bayside villages below. After a few minutes, the four of them grew tired of celebrating. They sat at the fading campfire, silent.
Something occurred to Pham as he looked at the moonless sky. “Boys,” he asked, “Do you remember what I told you about how men actually landed on the moon?”
“In the year minus 131,” chirped the third student, in their native Salishi. “‘One small step for a man…’” he continued, reciting the centuries-old quotation, in its original Late English.
Pham repeated it, this time in Salishi, and then completed it: “One giant step for mankind.”
“That’s what Adrian did just now, isn’t it?” asked the first student.
“A giant step for men,” accurately declared the middle student.
END