No Going Back (37 page)
Authors: Mark L. van Name
Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Space Opera, #Adventure, #Fiction
I took out my wallet and showed the man the tip I planned to give him. He stood a little straighter and paid closer attention when he saw the number. He pulled out his wallet and thumbed it to receive the tip.
“First,” I said, “none of this happened.”
“Nothing on my job ever happens,” he said. “It’s how our clients like it.”
I shook my head. “No, I mean that when you check your logs, you’ll find that nothing ever happened. There’s no record of any of this, no mileage on your vehicle, nothing. You received a call, you came here, no one showed, your firm kept the deposit, and you went back to the dispatch center. That’s it.”
He pulled out a comm and checked on the car.
“Interesting,” he said. He smiled. “Obviously, nothing happened here.”
I transferred the tip to his personal wallet. “As long as my friends never hear from you again, you’ll never see me again. If they do, I will have to come back. Are we clear?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Nothing happened, and I wasted some time waiting for a client who never showed.”
He turned and left.
As soon as his vehicle vanished from sight, I boarded Lobo, and we took off.
“Has anyone visited the statues?” I said.
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“Take us back there. If you spot anyone near it or think someone might be monitoring it, we’ll leave. I believe, though, that it’s too early for reinforcements to have arrived. They would expect the teams who came for us to have to spend some time tracking us down and extracting me.”
“I agree,” Lobo said. “Heading to the statues.”
“Now,” I said, “we talk.”
The beginning
In the Great Northwestern Desert and at the jump gate
Planet Studio
CHAPTER 48
Jon Moore
O
n the flight there, I told Lobo everything.
I started with growing up on Pinecone Island on Pinkelponker, and I told him about Jennie healing me. I talked to him about learning to fight and kill on Dump, about Benny, about escaping that island only to end up as an experimental subject in Aggro. I told him about my nanomachines and my age. I showed him the note I had found from Jennie.
For the first and only time in my life, I held nothing back.
We talked for so long that we chose to hide again among some weather sats in case someone came to the statues, but no one did.
Then, he showed me the recordings he had made for me. I was amazed at how much he knew and at what I learned about him. I was most amazed at my stupidity in underestimating him and thinking I had covered my tracks so well. I wondered how many others had been able to gain the same knowledge.
“No more secrets?” Lobo said.
“No more secrets,” I said. “A fresh start—for us both.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I suggest we now leave here.”
“First,” I said, “I want to see the recording. I want to experience it the way the next set of people from Kang or Pimlani will.”
“Okay,” Lobo said.
We were both talked out, or at least I was, so we rode in silence back to where we’d been just that morning.
I stepped out of Lobo. The sand and the wind had already covered all signs of our earlier visit.
I walked over to the recording beacon that sat on a metal rod we’d anchored deep in the sand. I touched the beacon.
A holo sprang to life above it. A vague black outline of a man stood there, no face or features, just blackness in the form of a man drawn in broad brushstrokes.
A voice began to speak, a voice that was part human and part metal, raspy and rough yet clear.
“Nothing remains of you in either the figure or the voice,” Lobo said. “No one can trace this back to us.”
“Good,” I said.
This is the simple message the voice delivered, what the voice would say to others who came to hunt us, what the voice would tell tourists and artists who visited to marvel at the statues and their gods above.
If you know what happened here,
if you have any sense of what transpired,
then know also that it was unnecessary, avoidable.
If you decide to follow the path of those who came here,
know that you are choosing the same fate, and
that it is unnecessary and avoidable.
Walk away, and live your lives.
I stared at it and at the desert beyond the dry lake, where not so many hours ago ships had crashed and men had fought, and men had laughed at the pain they caused, and men had died.
I looked then to the sky.
Somewhere in all the worlds, my sister still lived.
I would find her, and in doing so I would in some small measure repay her for all that she had done for me. I would also hope to learn why I could control my nanomachines outside my body but Lobo could not, why I didn’t age, all of it, at least all that she could explain to me.
I had no idea how long it would take, but now that I knew she, too, was not aging and that others would keep her alive so they could use her to help themselves, I knew I had time. We both had time, and I would find her.
“We’re coming for you, Jennie,” I said. “We’re coming for you.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
David Drake understands all too well what goes into a novel, and we occasionally commiserate as we work on our respective projects. This time, his sage comments at a few key points helped me stay between the ditches.
Toni Weisskopf, my publisher, tolerated a degree of lateness on my part in delivering the manuscript that was downright criminal. I am appalled at what I put her and the fine folks at Baen through, and she and they have my gratitude. I also must thank her again for believing in the series and helping give it what success it has enjoyed.
To everyone who purchased the earlier Jon and Lobo novels (
One Jump Ahead
,
Slanted Jack
,
Overthrowing Heaven
, and
Children No More
), I offer my deep and sincere gratitude; you’ve made it possible for me to get paid to live and write a while longer in the universe I share with Jon and Lobo.
My business partner, Bill Catchings, has as always both done all he could to encourage and support my writing and been a great colleague for over twenty-five years. This time, he went above and beyond in giving me the time I needed away from work to finish the book.
Elizabeth Barnes was also instrumental in supporting that time away, for which I am very grateful.
As I’ve done in the course of my previous novels, I’ve traveled a fair amount while working on this one, and each of the places I’ve visited has affected me and thus the work. I want to tip my virtual hat to the people and sites of (in rough order of my first visits there during the writing of this novel) Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts; Austin, Texas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Redmond, and Kirkland, Washington; Barcelona, Spain; Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs, Maryland; Washington, Virginia; Holden Beach, North Carolina; San Francisco, California; St. Louis, Missouri; San Jose and other cities in Silicon Valley, California; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; Asheville, North Carolina; Chattanooga, Tennessee; St. Petersburg, Florida; and, of course, my home in North Carolina.
As always, I am grateful to my children, Sarah and Scott, who continue to be amazing and wonderful young people despite having to put up with me regularly disappearing into my office for long periods of time, including during their Spring Break when I should have been spending time with them. Thanks, kids.
Several extraordinary women—my wife, Rana Van Name; Jennie Faries; Gina Massel-Castater; and Allyn Vogel—grace my life on a regular basis with their intelligence and support, for which I’m incredibly grateful.
Thank you, all.
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