The Orthogonal Galaxy (46 page)

“
Just fine,” Blade assured
him. “So much to study anyways. And I got some sleep to catch up on
this weekend too.”

“
Ok, buddy,” Paol was
still hesitant to leave Blade, but he knew he had to spend as much
as time as possible catching up with his family. “I’ll see you
Sunday evening. You have my cell phone if you need anything in the
meantime.”

Blade nodded and waved
Paol on with the back of his hand imploring him to catch up with
his family in the parking lot. As he walked back to his room, an
odd feeling came over him—a feeling like maybe he did have a family
after all. At least there was a group of people who he felt had his
best interest and concern at heart, and that was enough for Blade.
His pace to his dorm room quickened, and his resolve to succeed on
the mission was strengthened.

After dinner, Paol and
Joyera left the boys in the hotel room watching a movie, while they
drove to a nearby park, and enjoyed a fresh summer evening
listening to the ducks splashing in the center pond which reflected
the antique gaslights of the park. While spending a significant
amount of time simply holding each other and considering the
misfortunes that came into their lives over the last year, they
also discussed matters of vast importance to the family.

“
Joy, Dear,” Paol
whispered after kissing his wife on the cheek. “Do you think I made
the right decision? I agreed to the opportunity without consulting
you, simply because I knew that I would have plenty of time to
change my mind before heading out into space.”

“
I think you said it
exactly, right, Love.” Joyera spoke in a soft yet reassuring voice.
“There are still six years that you will at least be away from
prison. In the meantime, we will be able to see each other on the
weekends.”

“
But you and the boys
won’t be able to come every weekend to visit, you know.”

Joyera sat up on the park
bench and looked intently at her husband. “The boys and I have
discussed this, and we agree that we need to move to Houston to be
closer to you.”

While Paol had wondered
about this option himself, he didn’t think it was a realistic
scenario. “But Dear, we have such solid roots in Seattle. And the
boys will leave all of their friends and activities
behind.”

“
There will be friends and
activities here, too. We just realize that there won’t be a
father—and husband—in Seattle. The boys will each be out on their
own by the time the mission is underway, and then I would be left
alone in Seattle.”

“
But your
family—”

“
You are my family.” She
reached up and grabbed Paol’s head in her hands to make sure that
he looked into her eyes. She was always a determined woman, and
Paol could tell that her resolve in this matter was stronger than
ever.

“
Besides, Warron will
clear your name within the next six years, and then you will be a
free man.”

“
And if he doesn’t?” Paol
spoke antagonistically.

“
Then all the more reason
to move here, so we can at least have the next six years with you.
And all the better for you, because that would be six less years in
prison. The way I see it, the worst case scenario is that you
remain here in your astronaut training program for the next several
years. The best case is that at some point your name is cleared,
and then if we choose to, we can return to Seattle. Either way, you
made the right decision in getting out of that prison,
Paol.”

Paol stood up and took a
few steps towards the pond with his back to his wife. After some
thought, he turned back to his wife. “Honey, I have to decide now
whether I am committed to this or not. It is all or
nothing.”

She shook her head. “I… I
don’t understand. You wouldn’t go through with the mission, would
you? I mean... you’re just waiting out your freedom here instead of
in prison.”

“
If Warron does clear my
name, I still have to go through with the mission. I can’t just
leave Blade to go back into the pen. I can’t abandon
him.”

In disbelief, Joyera took
a moment to process this unthinkable piece of data and responded,
“So, you would choose him over me? I don’t understand,
Paol.”

“
Joy, he has become like a
brother to me. He saved me from hell in that prison. His attitude,
humor, and intellect insulated me from pure torment. I to think of
what it would have been like had I been cellmates with the
‘Strangler’ or with Rall McHerd—a violent man I had only heard
about, but nevertheless suffered through a number of nightmares
because of.”

With a snort of disdain,
Joyera now stood on her feet and turned her back on her husband. As
she felt his hands on her shoulders, her closed eyes released a
tear down her cheek. “Joyera, you know I love you. Please don’t be
mad with me. Try to put yourself in my shoes. If Warron is able to
obtain my freedom, I have to make a choice between returning by
your side as we both want to, but I would have to do so at the cost
of my integrity to Blade. I would have to send him back to prison.
It is not an easy decision, but I think you can respect the fact
that there is a good man—a decent friend—a brother—who I cannot
stab in the back. I can’t use him as a stepping stone to escape
prison on parole and then ask him to go back there once I am
freed.”

“
But, they’ll find
somebody else to work with Blade.”

“
No, Darling. They are
extremely desperate for astronauts. You have to know how desperate
they are by digging up a pair of maximum security criminals to do
the job. They are really rolling the dice on us. If I am freed, and
I quit the mission, the entire effort is in jeopardy. Blade will
return to prison, millions of taxpaying dollars will have been
squandered, and the hopes and dreams of the world will come to
naught.”

She now turned to face
him. “Oh, so that’s what this is about? Becoming a hero to the
world? Gaining immortality in the history books? Paol, you probably
won’t even return—everybody is saying that this mission is
suicidal.”

“
No, no. Honey,” Paol
sighed as he saw the discussion heading in the wrong direction
entirely. “First, you’re allowing the media to convince you of
that. They want the public to think it is suicidal, because it
creates drama and excitement, and that’s what the media needs to
sell their lousy services. Further—I don’t care about being a hero.
I just want to sleep at night knowing I did the right thing, and
sending Blade Slater back to prison would be crushing to me—if not
to him. If you tell me that you would rather me go back and wait
for Warron to find the smoking gun in prison, then I need to do it
now, before this goes too far.”

Tears flowed more freely
now from Joyera’s eyes. “Paol, what do you want me to say? If I say
yes to the mission, I’ll lose you for twelve years at least and
maybe forever if anything goes wrong in the vast distances of
travel that you’ll be assuming.”

“
If you say no, then you
may only be able to enjoy seeing me through a thick glass window
for the rest of our lives.”

“
At least I’ll have hope
of seeing you freed.”

“
Will you? Do you think
you’ll still have hope in ten or fifteen years from now? The trail
to any evidence will have cooled too much to ever hope for. But I
do see one thing—”

“
What’s that?” She looked
into his eyes that were now moistened with emotion.

“
This isn’t an easy
decision for either of us. Should I go back to prison and hope that
something will happen soon? Or should I go on with the mission, and
not know for another 20 years whether we will be able to enjoy
together what remains of our lives.”

Joyera began laughing
nervously. “Do you know what is wrong with us women?”

Paol’s mind worked this
question at a million miles a minute. This was certainly a loaded
question, but then again when would he have the opportunity to have
a woman ask him that question ever again. But maybe he was being
tricked into something. In the end, he opted for the only safe
answer that he could give.

“
I didn’t know there was
anything wrong with women.”

With genuine laughter, she
bowed her head. “Nice try—do you really expect me to buy that?
Anyway, since you are unwilling to give an answer, I will. Women
fantasize too much about their happily-ever-after. All along, I had
convinced myself that we would move to Houston, wait a few more
months, have your name cleared permanently, move back to Seattle,
and live out our perfect little lives happily ever after. And then
when those unrealistic expectations are not met, our worlds are
shattered beyond repair.

“
But I have to accept that
there may be a different happily-ever-after for us, which is that
we move to Houston, enjoy our weekends together thoroughly for the
next six years, and become famously admired for giving up our
father and husband to the heroic service of his country and world.
I guess, sometimes in life, there are things larger than
ourselves—larger than life itself. I mean, what does our existence
on this planet mean unless we are engaged in bettering the world
for generations to come? Your efforts in learning about Earth2 will
be indispensable in gaining the knowledge we crave and need to
understand our universe better, and to progress—not as just a
self-centered all-important view of the universe that revolves
around us, but rather a universal community of beings who share the
universe with brothers and sisters that today we can only imagine
are out there.”

“
We don’t know that we’ll
meet anybody on Earth2, you know.”

“
You will, Paol—you
will.”

“
How can you be so
sure?”

“
We women may be
optimistic to a fault, but our intuition can’t be refuted. I’ve
always felt that there is something out there bigger than just
ourselves. Can we really be so egotistical to think that we evolved
as the only intelligent beings in the universe? In the vastness of
the galaxies, what makes our little solar system so much more
important than the trillions of other stars out there? Or—on the
other hand, if we really are created by an all-powerful God, can we
really think that he created trillions of stars just to populate
one little planet with sentient beings? Why would he waste his time
creating all of the other stars, planets and galaxies when one
little star called the Sun would do?

“
No, Paol—there are others
out there, and I should be less selfish to keep you to myself when
you have the opportunity to discover them for us. You should go on
this mission—but I want you to do everything in your power to make
it succeed. You are a great man, Paol Joonter—too great for your
efforts to fail and be in vain.”

Words escaped him, not
that they would have helped anyway, as he was too emotional at this
point to be able to speak. Instead, he chose to hold his wife close
to him. As he felt her head on his chest, he also noticed his
heartbeat, and in that heartbeat, he felt something
different—something that he had never quite felt before. He
realized that his wife was right—that his life was somehow meant
for something greater and that the inhabitants of Earth1 needed to
learn about Earth2. He was the man chosen—either by God or by
fate—to discover for his own race something of vast importance,
something so vast that it might even be paramount to the future of
Earth1.

24

It took months for Paol
and Blade to feel comfortable with their new routine. Going from
the prison to astronaut training was like night and day. They found
themselves exhausted before breakfast due to the torturous workout
of their personal trainers, but that was just the beginning, of
course. Flight simulation required intense focus and reflexes,
while the barrage of coursework took every last bit of
energy.

Naturally, they looked
forward to the weekends, where they could catch up on rest, and
more casually work through their physical routines and their
memorization and study. But the weekends just never seemed long
enough. Muscles were sore when the alarm went off on Monday
morning. Eyes were bloodshot from reading their iTexts and flash
cards. Headaches seemed as if they were simply trying to stretch
their brains faster than they could absorb it all. As a result,
they were thrilled to hear of their first flight field trip. Their
flight instructors would be escorting them to Nevada, where a range
of in-flight tests would take place. They would eventually need to
log hundreds of hours of flight experience before they could even
be considered as astronaut candidates. The week-long trip was
intended to give them the first couple of dozen hours under their
belt.

At an abandoned Air Force
base in central Nevada, the two students felt like visitors to a
military ghost town. The teachers, however, were familiar with the
location and knew that it had the best conditions for flying. The
weather was typically sunny and strong winds didn’t normally occur,
but if they did, they typically occurred around sunset, when the
instructors wanted new pupils out of the air anyway, since the
longer shadows could deceive pilots flying at near-mach
speeds.

Physon waited for Blade
with the flight instructors on the tarmac during a particularly
dry, hot day. His olive green flight suit simply did not breath
well, and he sweltered inside as evidenced by the sweat beading up
on his forehead just under the raised visor. As Blade came rushing
out of the barracks making the final adjustments on his flight
suit, Physon rolled his eyes.