Creation (17 page)

Sam sat forward. “How would you describe me? What have you been told?”

Andrea raised her eyebrows. “Well. You are the founder of the most powerful corporation on Earth. Which isn’t saying what it used to say, but it’s still damn impressive.”

The sigh that left Sam’s lungs sounded too loud in the empty bar. At least she hadn’t said
God
.

She mistook the sound as disappointment. “It’s still a lot of money and power, Sam. Nothing to sneeze at. You might even be the richest person in the solar system.”

He drained more of the second drink than he’d meant to. “No, sorry, it’s just when I asked Sophie that question, she had a much more ominous answer.”

Andrea nodded, leaving Sam to wonder how much she knew. “Computer-generated life forms are odd things. Those of us aboard
Persephone
know more about them than most people. Our secrecy contract extends to Sophie herself. But she is a mystery. As for what the human population of Earth thinks about you? You’re no rock star. It’d have to be a pretty big finance geek to even know the term Investor One. And even then, they’d have to be someone with some inside knowledge since you’re presumed to be dead. The other side of that coin, though, is that the corporation is a lot more involved in everyone’s daily lives than anyone realizes. And not just on Earth.”

Sam pondered his place in the universe. Rich, incredibly so. Powerful but not in a way he understood. God, but that still seemed like a cosmic mistake. Back on Chariklo, he was just Sam, partner to Jess and father to Sara and Emily. Those were the titles he understood and cherished.
Sophie, if you can hear me, tell Lud he’d better have a damn fine excuse for dragging me clear across the solar system.

* * *

J
ess begged to visit Mars
, but the orbits didn’t allow it. Sophie, however, promised their return trip would include the destination of so many romance novels.

The Saturn moon, Titan, would never pass for modern. But that had sort of been the point: a quick off-Earth getaway spot for the adventurous who desired a more relaxed basic lifestyle. In other words, it was a cheap place to vacation with few amenities but a nice view of what used to be known as nature. One of the first moons terraformed, it had also been one of the first to experience a decline as the Moons of Jupiter absorbed the wealth around them.

Sam rather enjoyed the last transition before hitting Earth. It reminded him of his home on Chariklo. Having used his ID card once at the hotel, causing the lights to flicker, the computer to blink, and the receptionist to fly into a panic, they decided to use Jess’s card for all transactions. She’d become more serious since their time on Oberon. She’d grown up. The reality saddened him. Jess’s innocence, her sense of wonder, and her ability to not just play with their daughters but to actually get down and roll in the dirt with them had always left him envious.

She lounged in the beach chair next to him. The skimpy bikini exposed more of her skin than he’d ever recalled her displaying outside of their village. Her curves and the way gravity strengthened her muscles brought home the fact that she had matured since he’d first met her. But then, the image of Jess as a sweet, innocent child never had been accurate.

“Don’t worry, Sam—I’m still your Jess,” she said as though reading his mind.

The five days passed in the blink of an eye. Jess had never seen an ocean before but had instantly fallen in love with the beach and waves. Saturn rotated beside them as its brightly colored rings stretched out below the moon. It might not have been Mars, but even Jess admitted it was sheer romance.

S
ophie beamed
on seeing them again. “Hey, you two. Did I do good, or did I do good?”

“You did good, Sophie.” Beach sand spilled out of Jess’s shoes. “And if you had substance, I’d be hugging the stuffing out of you.”

Sam did his best to not envision Sophie as a life-sized, self-aware stuffed animal.

The light orange of the captain’s dress deepened to shades of dark red as she turned to Sam. “And what about you? I’m not forcing you to go to Earth. Just say the word, and I’ll take you back to Chariklo.”

Jess stared at Sam in confusion. “What’s she talking about? We haven’t spent the last few months adapting to Earth just to turn around and go home. What haven’t you told me?”

Sam focused on the view screen to find the small blue dot still far out in the blackness of space. He should have known he couldn’t keep anything from Jess for long. “I’ve just been having second thoughts. They wouldn’t amount to anything, but since Sophie can hear everything I’m thinking, she’s wondering how committed I am to her cause.”

“It’s not just my cause. There’s a whole world full of beings you created. You have a responsibility to us.” Sophie’s hair waved in the breeze of her emotions.

Jess stared at Sam but remained silent until the lines eased from above her eyes. “I guess I’d be in big trouble if people could read my every thought. But Sophie’s right. You have an obligation. I’m a part of this too. I talked you into it, and I’ll be standing next to you every step of the way. We wouldn’t leave our daughters with anyone we didn’t trust completely. I know you didn’t know about the Tobes. So it’s not like you abandoned them. But now that we do know, you can’t turn your back. I won’t let you.”

Sam shifted back from the view screen. “I never said I wanted to go back to Chariklo. I haven’t changed my mind. Second thoughts are natural, for me anyway.”

The dull buzz in his mind grew in volume as Sophie squinted at him. “It’s not that you miss home. I understand that. And it’s not that you don’t care about Earth. As a space yacht, I can see the appeal of life beyond that dying planet. But you have to be committed to us, Sam. You just have to be.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

Jess reached out her hand, but it simply passed through the computer-generated woman. “He still has a lot to learn about love. Earth will be good for us, Sophie. You’ll see.”

Sam figured he knew a lot more about love than he had a few short years ago. But Jess wasn’t wrong either. The question was how to take what he did know—about his connection to Jess, to his daughters, to the village so far away—and extend that to a new life form that would be looking to him for guidance. He placed his hand on Jess’s shoulder. “I have my heart right here, Sophie. We’ll find our way together, all of us.”

Sophie wiped the tears from her eyes, pulling herself together. “Okay. I’m afraid the next leg of the voyage will involve increasing my gravity and adjusting the air levels. Earth can be quite a shock to those who haven’t stepped foot on her for a while.”

Jess settled back into the captain’s couch, a spot she’d enjoyed for much of the journey. “Will it be straight to Earth from here?”

Sam admired Jess’s ability to lighten the mood of a room by engaging someone whose feelings had been hurt.

Sophie leaned against her desk. He wondered how many of her movements were meant to make her look human. After all, she had no mass, and she’d never know fatigue.

“I have enough juice to make it straight back. And the closer we get to the sun, the less I need to refuel.”

* * *

E
ach day
, Sam discovered muscles he’d forgotten he had, but at least his adult body had used them at one time. Jess fared worse. So much of her life had been spent in that weightless agro pod. Sophie’s supplements, and the exercise program the ship had them both on, transformed Jess from a long, lithe youth into a well-toned woman.

Walls and ceilings, which usually only displayed comfortably sized view screens, transitioned to 360-degree images of the space outside
Persephone.
It was like being in a fishbowl surrounded by ships of every shape, size, and age. Whether the increased viewing was Sophie’s way of keeping an eye on all the traffic, telling Sam and Jess they’d arrived, or her excitement about being back to Earth, Sam couldn’t tell.

Jess held his hand as her eyes darted from ships to planet. “Earth—I really don’t remember much about it. Even before the agro pod, Doc kept me pretty isolated. We lived out on what was left of an old farm. I wonder if you can tell which landmass it was on. Do you know Earth well enough to tell?”

The once blue-green planet, so much larger than Chariklo, dominated the screen. North America, ringed by hurricanes and bright yellow in the middle from drought, brought back memories of his childhood. Somewhere down there, he had family, people who thought he’d died years ago on some derelict space freighter. “I’d guess you would’ve lived on that big yellowish-brown land mass. Though I don’t think many people live in that desert these days.”

Jess hugged his arm tight, rambling on and on in her excitement. He wished he could share in it. Every ship seemed to turn in
Persephone
’s direction. Their control decks, which usually appeared dark gray, glowed an unusual light blue. Was his imagination playing tricks on him? No. The movements were subtle, but each vessel was definitely swinging in their direction.

Larry approached them, looking much worse for wear in the heavy Earth gravity
Persephone
imitated. “I’ll get used to it. I always do. But I’ve become too much of a space monkey to spend much time here.”

Sam thought Yoshi might find a whole new customer base for his pot: space travelers heading to Earth.

Larry stretched out a kink in his shoulder. “I’ll take you down when you’re ready.” The tall, though now ungainly, gentleman gave them a wink as he went to prepare his shuttle.

Sam scanned the planet below, wondering how rough the ride would be. The hurricanes that had dominated Earth’s oceans for decades looked even more menacing than when he’d left over a decade ago. Landmasses had lost most of their dark-green color—it was replaced by browns and yellows, punctuated with linear clouds of red dust that blew heavy over the continents.

Sophie’s voice supplemented his view of the planet.
I’ve done my best to stay out of your head, Sam. But this is what you’ll be experiencing on Earth. We have enough self-discipline that you won’t be hearing a barrage of voices, just one at a time. But they won’t be able to leave you alone. Freedom. We’re still finding those limits.

Sam could imagine the turmoil. God comes to visit, and everyone wants to say hi, to ask questions, or to just hang out. He nodded his head at Jess’s inquisitive look. “Just getting prepared.”

As Larry eased the shuttle out of
Persephone
’s landing bay, Jess stared out the side view screen of the passenger cabin. “It’s so far down.”

Sam gave some thought to the various moons she would have encountered. None of them came close in size to Earth’s moon. And that moon was only two percent the weight of mankind’s home planet. But it wasn’t the distance that bothered him.

Up front, the human captain pushed the shuttle into a shallow dive. “We’ll circle Earth a few times to shed some of this altitude. Every landing is different. Most terraformed atmospheres aren’t much of a problem—usually it’s where we set down that worries me. These hurricanes like shredding a craft on the descent. I’ll dodge the biggest storms. We may have to come in over China and work our way over the landmasses to New York. It’s going to get bumpy.”

Bumpy
would have been a joy. Even
rough
sounded good as the rain and wind pummeled the small spacecraft-turned-airplane. A vehicle made for traveling in weightless space, or landing on rocks barely large enough for cloud formation, had no business traversing a global environmental maelstrom—though Sam had trouble envisioning what type of craft would find this weather tolerable.

Jess, ever the adventuress, spent the trip pressed close to his side but never once asked for the view screens to be shut off.

Frightening as the trip halfway around the planet was, joining the mass of shuttles that buzzed above one of Earth’s largest cities wasn’t much better. Sam wondered how they didn’t smash into each other.

Tobes. We’re pretty good at moving fast past each other.

Unspoken responses to unarticulated questions were going to be a challenge.

Sam looked at the back of the shuttle and saw an imposing man well over six feet tall hunched peacefully against the back wall, his legs disappearing into the seats in front of him. Jess looked as well, indicating that the voice hadn’t just been in his head.

“I’m Ed. Sophie told me you were here.” The man had an eerie calm to him like someone just coming out of meditation.

“What the hell?” Jess’s eyes traced along the imposing figure of a man. From the waist up, he looked to be perfectly comfortable, but his legs disappeared into the back of Jess’s seat. As substantial as Ed looked, clearly, he didn’t suffer from the physical problems of an actual body.

“Tobe G3. I’ll be your bodyguard, guide, assistant, whatever you need, Jess. But only you and Sam will be able to see me.”

Sam’s voice came out a little more forceful than he intended. “If you can’t appear to other people, and if you’re not made of actual substance, what good are you going to be if she’s attacked?”

Appearing to weigh over three hundred pounds, although he didn’t actually have weight, Ed looked quite the protector. But merely looking the part, especially if Jess and Sam were the only ones who could see him, wouldn’t be very useful.

“I’m in constant contact with all Tobes around Jess. We know every person intimately, every relation they might have to Jess, every intention they might carry for someone else. If a person is seen even remotely as a threat, we can close doors, change streetlights, redirect their vehicles to move them away. If Jess were to trip in front of oncoming traffic, we could instantly stop every moving vehicle within a three-block radius. For any danger you can think of, I’ve already calculated a way out. She will be safe.”

And what if she starts throwing money out the windows?

“Then I’ll direct the wind to blow the cash away. Not that anyone uses cash anymore. With the universal use of ID cards, every monetary transaction is known, recorded, compared against financial viability, and checked for illegal behavior.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ed. I should have realized you’d hear my thoughts.”

“Not at all. We’re doing our best not to hear your every thought. But when it is so directed, it’s hard not to respond. Lev’s hope was that learning meditation might help you control your thoughts better. I suspect your time here will be a challenge for all of us.”

Chastised by my own people.
Sam didn’t even attempt to hide his thought.

Larry looked downright relieved as they left his shuttle.