“That must be frustrating,” I said.
“It’s not,” Jane said. “Not really. I like that we just talk. I like feeling that connection with her. She’s part of who I am. Mother and sister and self. All of it. I like that she visits me. I know it’s just a dream. It’s still nice.”
“I bet it is,” I said, remembering Kathy, who Jane was so much like, even as much as she was her own person.
“I’d like to visit her one day,” Jane said.
“I’m not sure how we’d do that,” I said. “She’s been gone a long time.”
“No,” Jane said. “I mean I’d like to visit where she is now. Where she’s buried.”
“I’m not sure how we’d do that, either,” I said. “Once we leave Earth, we’re not allowed to go back.”
“I never left Earth,” Jane said, looking down at Babar, who thumped a lazy, happy beat with his tail. “Only my DNA did.”
“I don’t think the Colonial Union will make the distinction,” I said, smiling at one of Jane’s rare jokes.
“I know they won’t,” Jane said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Earth is too valuable as a factory to risk it being infected by the rest of the universe.” She looked over at me. “Don’t you ever want to go back? You spent most of your life there.”
“I did,” I said. “But I left because there was nothing keeping me there. My wife was dead and our kid grew up. It wasn’t too hard to say good-bye. And now what I care about is here. This is my world now.”
“Is it?” Jane said. She looked up at the stars. “I remember standing in the road back on Huckleberry, wondering if I could make another world my home. Make this world my home.”
“Can you?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Jane said. “Everything about this world shifts. Every reason we’ve thought we had for being here has turned out to be a half-truth. I care about Roanoke. I care about the people here. I will fight for them and I’ll defend Roanoke the best that I can, when it comes to that. But this isn’t my world. I don’t trust it. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I know that I’m worried this inquiry will take it away from me, though.”
“Do you think anyone here cares anymore about who the Colonial Union thinks should run this colony?” Jane asked.
“Possibly not,” I said. “But it would still hurt.”
“Hmmm,” Jane said, and thought about that for a while. “I still want to see Kathy one day,” she eventually said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“Don’t say that unless you mean it,” Jane said.
“I mean it,” I said, and was somewhat surprised that, in fact, I did. “I would like you to meet her. I wish you could have met her before.”
“So do I,” Jane said.
“It’s settled, then,” I said. “Now all we have to do is find a way to get back to Earth without getting our ship shot out from under us by the CU. I’ll have to work on that.”
“Do that,” Jane said. “But later.” She stood and held out her hand to me. I took it. We went inside.
TWELVE
“Our apologies, Administrator Perrry, for the late start,” said Justine Butcher, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Colonial Jurisprudence for the Department of Colonization. “As you may be aware, things have been quite hectic around here recently.”
I was aware. When Trujillo, Kranjic, Beata and I disembarked the shuttle from our transport ship to Phoenix Station, the general station buzz appeared to have trebled; none of us had ever recalled seeing the station as jam-packed with CDF soldiers and CU functionaries as it appeared to be now. Whatever was going on, it was big. All of us glanced at each other significantly, because whatever it was, it almost certainly involved us and Roanoke in some way. We fanned out from each other wordlessly, off to our own individual tasks.
“Of course,” I said. “Anything in particular causing the rush?”
“It’s a number of things, happening at once,” Butcher said. “None of which you need to concern yourself with at the moment.”
“I see,” I said. “Very well.”