Leave, urged a voice inside her head. Run away. Live out what’s left of your life and let it go.
Then she heard her own voice say, as if from a far distance, “I’ve come such a long way.”
“It will change you,” he warned.
“Will it release me from life?”
Dorn glanced down at Humphries, still muttering darkly, then returned his gaze to Elverda.
“It will change you,” he repeated.
Elverda forced herself to her feet. Leaning one hand against the warm rock wall to steady herself, she said, “I will see it. I must.”
“Yes,” said Dorn. “I understand.”
She looked down at him, still kneeling with Humphries’s head resting in his lap. Dorn’s electronic eye glowed red in the shadows. His human eye was hidden in darkness.
He said, “I believe your people say, Vaya con Dios.”
Elverda smiled at him. She had not heard that phrase in forty years. “Yes. You, too. Vaya con Dios.” She turned and stepped across the faint groove where the metal door had met the floor.
The tunnel sloped downward only slightly. It turned sharply to the right, Elverda saw, just as Dorn had told them. The light seemed brighter beyond the turn, pulsating almost, like a living heart.
She hesitated a moment before making that final turn. What lay beyond? What difference, she answered herself. You have lived so long that you have emptied life of all its purpose. But she knew she was lying to herself. Her life was devoid of purpose because she herself had made it that way. She had spurned love; she had even rejected friendship when it had been offered. Still, she realized that she wanted to live. Desperately, she wanted to continue living no matter what.
Yet she could not resist the lure. Straightening her spine, she stepped boldly around the bend in the tunnel.
The light was so bright it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to her brow to shield them and the intensity seemed to decrease slightly, enough to make out the faint outline of a form, a shape, a person . . .
Elverda gasped with recognition. A few meters before her, close enough to reach and touch, her mother sat on the sweet grass beneath the warm summer sun, gently rocking her baby and crooning softly to it.
Mamma! she cried silently. Mamma. The baby—Elverda herself—looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.
And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.
Something gave way inside her. There was no pain; rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.
Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.
“I love you, Mamma,” she whispered. “I love you.”
Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.
The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.
“Are you all right?”
Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.
“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.”
Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.
The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.
“Where is Humphries?”
“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”
“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said.
“That will not be possible,” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Humphries awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact they will not allow it to be destroyed. Humphries may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”
“The artifact will affect them—strangely.”
“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”
“Humphries will not be pleased with you.”
He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.
“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby.”
“What could he have seen?”
“What he most feared. His whole life has been driven by fear, poor man.”
“What secrets he must be hiding!”
