Page 223
Caleb was watching his face closely. “How old were you?”
“Twenty, twenty-one? Just a kid.”
“But he didn’t come back. He’d been taken to the Haven.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that. Seven nights, Caleb. That’s a lot of time to think about killing a person, especially my own brother. At the start, I wondered if I actually could. Our parents had died, Theo was the only person I had left in the world. But as the nights passed, I came to understand something. There was something worse than killing him, and that would be letting somebody else do it. If the situation were reversed, if I had been the one taken up, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I didn’t want to do it, believe me, but I owed him that much. The responsibility was mine and no one else’s.” Peter gave his words a moment to sink in. “That’s what this is like, son. I don’t know why it has to be me. That’s a question I can’t answer. But it doesn’t matter. Pim and the kids—those are your responsibilities. You were put on earth to protect them till your last breath. That’s your job. This is mine. You need to let me do it.”
Aboard the Nautilus, Michael was issuing instructions to the crewmen who would assist in launching her. The hull had been wrapped in thick rope webbing; a steel boom and a system of blocks would be used to lift her from her cradle and lower her over the side. Once she was in the water, they would cut her free, raise the mast, and set sail for New York.
“He’ll kill you,” Caleb said.
Peter said nothing.
“And if you succeed? Amy can’t leave. You said so yourself.”
“No, she can’t.”
“So what then?”
“Then I live my life. Just like you’re going to live yours.”
Peter waited for his son to say more; when he didn’t, he put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “You have to accept this, son.”
“It’s not easy.”
“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.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 223 (Reading here)
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 230
- Page 231
- Page 232
- Page 233
- Page 234
- Page 235
- Page 236
- Page 237
- Page 238
- Page 239
- Page 240
- Page 241
- Page 242
- Page 243
- Page 244
- Page 245
- Page 246
- Page 247
- Page 248
- Page 249
- Page 250
- Page 251
- Page 252
- Page 253
- Page 254
- Page 255
- Page 256
- Page 257
- Page 258
- Page 259
- Page 260
- Page 261
- Page 262
- Page 263
- Page 264
- Page 265
- Page 266
- Page 267
- Page 268
- Page 269
- Page 270
- Page 271
- Page 272
- Page 273
- Page 274
- Page 275
- Page 276
- Page 277
- Page 278
- Page 279
- Page 280
- Page 281
- Page 282
- Page 283
- Page 284
- Page 285
- Page 286