“I know it’s not.”
Caleb tipped his face upward. He swallowed, hard, and said, “When I was a kid, my friends always talked about you. Some of what they said was true, a lot of it was total bullshit. The funny thing was, I felt bad for you. I won’t say I didn’t like the attention, but I also knew you didn’t want people to think of you like that. It kind of stumped me. Who wouldn’t want to be a big deal, some kind of hero? Then one day it hit me. You felt that way because of me. I was the choice you’d made, and the rest didn’t matter to you anymore. You would have been perfectly happy if the world just forgot about you.”
“It’s true. That’s how I saw it.”
“I felt so goddamn lucky. When you started working for Sanchez, I thought things might change, but they never did.” He looked at Peter again. “So now you ask me if I can just let you go. Well, I can’t. I don’t have that in me. But I do understand.”
They sat without speaking for a time. Around them, the ship was waking up, passengers rising, stretching their limbs. Did that really happen? they thought, their eyes blinking against an unfamiliar, oceanic light. Am I really on a ship? Is that the sun, the sea? How stunned they must be, thought Peter, by the infinite calm of it all. Voices accumulated—mostly the children, for whom a night of terror, abruptly and in a manner completely unforeseen, had opened a door to an entirely new existence. They had gone to sleep in one world and awakened in another, so dissimilar as to seem, perhaps, an altogether different version of reality. As the minutes passed, many of the passengers were drawn magnetically to the rail—pointing, whispering, chattering among themselves. As he listened, memories poured through him, as well as a sense of all the things he would never see.
Michael walked toward them. The man’s eyes darted toward Caleb, quickly sizing up the situation, then back to Peter. Shuffling his hands in his pockets, he said, gently, almost as if he were apologizing, “The supplies are all aboard. I think we’re about ready here.”
Peter nodded. “Okay.” But he made no move to do anything about this.
“Do you … want me to tell the others?”
“I think that would be good.”
Michael walked away. Peter turned to his son. “Caleb—”
“I’m all right.” He rose from the crate, holding himself stiffly, like a man with a wound. “I’ll get Pim and the children.”
Everyone gathered at the Nautilus. Lore and Rand operated the winch that hoisted Alicia, still strapped to her stretcher, to the cockpit. Michael and Peter carried her down to the boat’s small cabin, then descended the ladder to join the others: Caleb and his family; Sara and Hollis; Greer, who had rebounded well enough from the crash to join them on deck, though his head was bandaged and he stood unsteadily, one hand braced against the hull of the Nautilus. Everywhere on the ship, people were watching; the story had spread. It was 0830 hours.
The final goodbyes: no one knew where to start. It was Amy who broke the stalemate. She embraced Lucius, the two of them exchanging quiet words that no one else could hear, then Sara and then Hollis, who, of everyone, more so even than Sara, seemed undone by the weight of it all, hugging Amy tightly against his chest.
But, of course, Sara was steeling herself. Her composure was a ruse. She would not go to Michael; she simply could not bear to. Finally, as the various farewells proceeded around them, it was he who went to her.
“Oh, damn you, Michael,” she said miserably. “Why are you always doing this to me?”
“I guess it’s my talent.”
She wrapped her arms around him. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. “I lied to you, Michael. I never gave you up. Not for a day.”
They parted; Michael turned to Lore. “I guess this is it.”
“You always knew that you wouldn’t be going, didn’t you.”
Michael didn’t answer.
“Oh, hell,” Lore said. “I guess I kind of knew it, too.”
“Take care of my ship,” Michael said. “I’m counting on you.”
Lore took his cheeks in her hands and kissed him, long and tenderly. “Stay safe, Michael.”
He climbed aboard the Nautilus. At the base of the ladder, Peter shook Greer’s hand, then Hollis’s; he hugged Sara long and hard. He had already said goodbye to Pim and the children. His son would be the last. Caleb was standing to the side. His eyes were tight, withholding tears; he would not cry. Peter felt, suddenly, as if he were marching to his death. Likewise was he struck, as never before, by a sense of pride. This strong man before him. Caleb. His son, his boy. Peter pulled him into a firm embrace. He would not hold on long; if he did, he might not let go. It’s children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust. A few seconds, recording all he could, and he stepped back.