‘Mom, I—’
‘Don’t say it. You’ve said enough. All your words. That’s what they used to take you away from me. First those losers and chancers who surrounded you in Miami. They’re already turning you into a cult, you and your foolishness. A cult and a corporation. Do you know they already registered your image rights? That’s the kind of people they are. And now this.’ She turned and glared at Roberta. ‘These people with their manipulation and their fancy theorizing.’
‘Mom, it’s not just theorizing. I’ve been through it myself, the arguments. I think they’re right about what’s going to become of this world. The Cauterizing might work.’
‘I don’t care. Nothing justifies this, for me—’ Something seemed to break in her. She turned and blundered away.
Stan pursued her. ‘Mom. Mom! …’
Now Agnes came to Joshua, arm in arm with George, the homely elderly-appearing ambulant who had been her husband here – the copy of Lobsang who was going to be left behind here, in New Springfield, with Stan. Agnes was still wearing her pioneer gear, the uniform she had adopted on coming here to build a home on this doomed planet.
Agnes took Joshua’s hand. ‘It’s going to be a long ride home, isn’t it? You, me, Martha, Rocky. The other survivors of all this. It’s Rocky I feel for the most.’
‘Well, that’s you, Agnes. Always drawn to the damaged children.’
‘Isn’t that a good instinct? Believe me, the damage that’s already been done to that boy will haunt him through his life. Even after his death he’ll probably be vilified for his betrayal. There are precedents, you know.’ She turned reluctantly to George, still clinging to his arm. ‘But you – must you stay?’
He smiled, an elderly, elegant, kindly gentleman, wearing scuffed, sturdy frontier clothes, like Agnes’s. ‘Well, we’ve been through this, Agnes. I can’t take part in the Cauterizing itself. But I, with my long-lost brother, did contribute a great deal to the theory – to the mathematics. And since the operation is largely mathematical, I can lend a great deal of support to—’
‘It doesn’t have to be you. You have a spare.’ And Agnes glanced over at the second copy of Lobsang, the ambulant unit from the world of the Traversers. He, it, wore a modest coverall, that one sleeve sewn up. He stood apart from the group, utterly still, statue-like, younger in appearance than George, his face empty of expression. ‘He knows everything you do.’
‘Yet we’re not identical, and never can be.’
‘Why stay? For the science? You’ll be trapped behind the Cauterizing. You’ll never be able to report back. Never be able to synch, to download your memories into those big banks at your transEarth Institute or—’
‘There may be a way, some day. Why, Stella Welch and the Cowley science staff have seeded this world with probes and data-gathering equipment, with the same reservations in mind. You may as well measure what you can, even if you’re not sure you can retrieve the data. And besides—’ For a moment, a very human resentment twisted his artificial face. He said more thickly, ‘Agnes, this was our world. My world, my home, with you. Now it is threatened with destruction. I will be the only one of us homesteaders who can be present. I am not the man I was before I came here with you, Agnes. I have invested much of myself in this place – as did we all, the Irwins and the rest, the Poulsons before them. I must see this. I must remember. As best I can.’
Agnes took his hands in hers. ‘What about all you “invested” in Ben? You should have seen him when I left him, an eight-year-old boy alone in a cabin on a military airship, crying his heart out.’
‘There’s nothing more I could do for him. Nothing more I could say.’
Joshua said, ‘At least you’ll be out of reach of the prosecutors, after you’ve once again saved civilization as we know it.’
George grinned. ‘Even now, old-movie gags, Joshua?’
Joshua, giving in to an impulse, went over to the ambulant and hugged him. ‘In spite of everything I’ll miss you.’
‘Please, Joshua. Not in front of the Next.’
Agnes snapped, ‘Oh, you’re impossible, the pair of you.’
George glanced now at his Navy-issue watch, its presence on his wrist a symbol of a definitive break from the timeless ethos of New Springfield. ‘Please excuse me, there are final preparations …’ Gently he disengaged his arm from Agnes’s. ‘We’ll still have time before you go.’ He walked away.