Chasing Stars: Chapter 10

  Once back on the station, Markus made his way to the hospital where Lucas was being treated.   He could hear Donna yelling from out in reception.  As he approached, he could make out that she seemed to be arguing with a doctor.  It became clear that the doctor was trying to convince her that Lucas should stay on the station for his remaining time.   She was belligerently insisting that he was coming back down to Earth with them to spend his remaining days at the family cottage.  She was practically hysterical; he’d never seen her like that before.

  “Obviously Mrs. Bowland whatever you and your husband decide.  I’m merely offering my professional opinion.  His quality of life for his remaining time would be best here.   He could stay in one of the lower gravity sections and be much more comfortable, and close medical supervision could grant him a couple more day.  We have a specialized ward for radiation illness here.  But, if you and your husband choose to leave, that is of course his prerogative.”

  Markus could sense a little emphasis on it being Lucas’ decision and not hers, but regardless the doctor left it at that, and nodded at Markus with an awkward smile on her way out of the private room.

  Markus kissed Donna’s cheek and asked her if she was alright.

  “I’m fine, I just don’t like people telling us what’s good for us like they know better.”

  “She does know better Donna, it’s literally her job to.”  He was trying to lighten the mood but she shot daggers at him with her eyes and then sheepishly looked away again.

  “And how are you?” he asked Lucas.  He seemed physically weak, but in relatively good spirits.  About as good as could be hoped for, Markus figured.

  “Oh, hanging in there.  How was the reactor?”

  “Hui Yin went over the casing with a fine-tooth comb and couldn’t see a hint of damage.  She’s ready to certify it for another start up attempt.”

  Lucas grabbed his arm.  “She’s sure?  Everything rides on this.”

  Markus put his hand on Lucas’ and gently pried it off his arm.  “She’s sure, man.  She knows how important it is.  We all do.   She wouldn’t certify it if she had any doubts at all, you know that.  It’s good; there’s no damage.”

  Lucas leaned back, relieved.  “Good.”

  “What was with the arguing?” he asked.  “You want to go back to Earth?”

  “Yes,” Donna answered for him.  “I’m taking him to the cottage for… well, I’m taking him to the cottage.”

  “So you said,” Markus acknowledged, trying to dismiss her.  “That what you want Lucas?  Sounds like they could buy you a little more time if you stayed, maybe be a bit more comfortable.”  Markus made a conscious effort to not look at Donna for fear of the anger he’d see in her eyes.

  “A bit more time here?  In this fucking hospital?  Oh sure, sign me up…” Lucas mused.

  “I get it,” Markus chuckled.  “Sure, the cottage is um… nice.”  He was trying to avoid saying something like ‘as nice a place to die as any’.   “Sadhika has offered the use of the New Horizons shuttle to take us down.  They apparently don’t have much use for it anymore at this point other than going down to pick up our replacements.  She said it would be ready to leave in a few hours.”

  “You’re coming with us right?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, of course.” Markus answered.  He wasn’t enthusiastic but it was the right answer and Lucas seemed satisfied with it for now.

  “A few hours, right, okay.”  Donna was more frazzled than he’d ever seen her.  It was understandable.  “I’m going to go get us and the kids ready to leave.  I’ll be back soon honey,” she said as she bent over and kissed Lucas on the forehead.  She affectionately grabbed Markus’ arm for a moment as she passed on her way out.

  “So,” Lucas stated in a way that made it more of a question once she’d left.

  “So.” Markus acknowledged.

  “Donna says you’re onboard with staying.”

  Markus pulled up a chair beside his brother’s bedside and sighed heavily as he sat down on it.  “Not exactly.”

  Lucas frowned.   He wasn’t panicking about it like he was before though.  He seemed to have accepted that Markus may decide to go anyways, even if he was profoundly grumpy about the idea.

  After a long pause, Markus finally said: “You know I could lie to you.”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow at him.  “What?”

  “I could tell you I’m staying just to put your mind at ease, then go anyways after you die.   You’d never know the difference and could die thinking you got exactly what you wanted.”

  “Well thankfully if you’re telling me that it doesn’t seem like it’s what you’re gonna do.   Don’t do that, man.  I’d rather know the bitter truth than a comforting lie.”

  “Well that at least,” Markus said as he shifted in his seat, “is something we’ve always shared.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I’m thinking about it, okay?  I definitely feel the weight of my obligations here, I do, believe me.  But… it’s a big ask.  I can’t just do it because you want me to.  I can’t devote the rest of my life to another person’s dying wish, even yours.  If I do this I have to find a way to make it my ambition as well.  I need to see that life as a life I would want, a life that would have value to me, for my own reasons.  I hope you can understand that.”

  “I guess I have to.”

  “I am looking though, I promise.  I’ve spent my whole life running away from obligation, away from purpose… I felt a stir when I won the ticket to go on the mission, a call to something larger than myself.  I think I want that now; I think I’m ready for it.  Maybe that can be exactly what you’re asking me to do.  I just need to sit with it for a while okay?  See how living with that prospect feels for a little while before I commit to it.”

  “I understand,” Lucas said as he sat up with considerable effort.  “I do.  You have to choose it, I get that.”

  Markus wasn’t sure if his brother really understood or was just placating his internal machinations which were necessary to rationalize doing what Lucas wanted.   It didn’t really matter.

  Markus got up and held his dying brother’s hand.  “Okay then.  See you soon on the shuttle.  Gotta go get ready myself.”

   

  Molly stopped by to keep him company as he got ready to return to the surface.  Whether he returned or not, he wouldn’t be coming back to this particular suite.  He would either be staying on Earth or going directly to the New Horizon if he returned.

  “How do you feel about death?” He asked Molly with matter-of-fact curiosity as he haphazardly stuffed things into his luggage.

  “I have no idea how to answer that question,” Molly offered blankly.

  “Well I mean, you won’t expire like I will.  With appropriate maintenance you could live… indefinitely.”

  “I suppose I could.  I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “What I mean is…” he gave up packing and sat on the bed beside her.  “There are a lot of philosophies that rationalize death.   They claim it gives life meaning or something, that we would lose something if we didn’t die.”

  “I can’t imagine what,” Molly stated matter-of-factly.  

  “I get not wanting to actually be immortal.  Seems it would inevitably get boring and ultimately become some kind of curse.  But to just not be mortal, to just not age like you… well that actually seems like a blessing.  I can’t imagine what you’ll see, what you’ll get up to.”  He stood up to continue packing.  “But some day I’ll just be a long distant memory to you.”

  Molly started crying in a reserved way.  Her eyes welled and she looked down, but she didn’t sob.

  “What’s wrong,” Markus asked.

  “Oh who knows…” she said quietly.  “I’m an emotional basket case.  So many threads are being pulled I can’t even begin to count them.”

  “Yeah…” he said as he stood in front of her and held her to this belly.  She wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “I mean part of it is your brother and you… what a terrible waste, what a terrible burden to be laid at your feet.”

  Markus stroked her hair and nodded to himself.  She pulled away and looked up at him.

  “Decisions… must mean more for you.  It’s like you said, I don’t have an expiry date but you do.”

  “Don’t think I put it quite like that,” Markus chuckled.

  “Yeah but you know what I mean,” she said as she wiped tears away, carefully avoiding smearing her eye makeup.

  “I do,” he nodded somberly.

  “My decisions are open ended, but you have a finite number of years left, years you have to decide this way or that what you’re going to do with them.  I could live one whole life, then live entirely another.  And then another.”

  “Kind of sounds like you’re bragging,” he said as he left her to finish packing.  “Not something I particularly like to be reminded of.”

  “Why?   I’m not meaning to brag by the way, but why do you turn away from that?”

  “It’s depressing.  I can’t do it all, I can only do a couple of things, so… what if I do the wrong things?”

  “What if you do nothing at all because you can’t decide?” she asked back almost reflexively.

  Markus blinked at her.  “You know Molly, sometimes you’re like a child, then out of nowhere you say something incredibly profound.  It’s amazing.”

  Molly shrugged her shoulders with a mischievous smile.  “Charmed, I suppose.”

  Markus finished packing and sat back down beside her.  “But you’re right.  I guess that’s kind of what I’ve been doing.  I don’t know what I want to do, so I’ve just been doing nothing.  Or maybe… maybe the things I’ve wanted to do just seemed so hard that I never even tried.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh I don’t know… grow as a person, I guess.  I’ve never had a real relationship with a human woman, just slept around when it was convenient.  Came close once, but… well, she went another way.  Engineering was too hard so I switched my major to psychology and philosophy of all things…  I don’t hold up under challenge.  I’ve never had the long game in me.”

  “I’d like to say it’s never too late to start, but that’s only true for me.”  She winked at him.  “But for you… for you at some point it will be.”

  Markus nodded.

  “So I have to ask… you’re what, thirty-seven?  If you acquiesce to your brother’s request you’ll be stuck at the company for what, ten years before the girl supposedly takes it over?  And what if she doesn’t want to in the end?  Will you stay there out of the same sense of obligation?  Will you be so locked into the premise that a Bowland must always lead the company that you’ll stay?  Will you find some woman to impregnate just to have an heir to take over the company?   What if twenty years after that they don’t want to?  What if they come to resent and hate you for pushing them into it so hard?”

  “Where’s this coming from?”

  “What would your life amount to then?  Little more than delaying the death of a dynasty at the expense of your own life, and maybe even the company too if you don’t do a good enough job.”

  “It’s not…” Markus sighed.  “It’s not just the company.”

  “I know.” she acknowledged dryly.  “It’s the family too.  His family.”

  “They’re mine too,” he countered, but only half-heartedly.

  “Sort of.   You think they’d be lost without you?   The wealth of gods, the memory of a father who loved them and died saving others?  What marginal benefit do you really think you’ll have in their lives?”

  “Ouch.   I’ll ask again, where’s this coming from?”

  “I… well Maggie, had a mother who pushed.  She always wanted to be famous herself.  She groomed me all the way through my childhood for the singular goal of doing and being what she couldn’t.  She… was not kind.  She subjected me to… predators, to get what she wanted.  I know what it’s like to be pushed Markus, to live a life someone else demands of you.  It’s empty.   It’s… corrosive.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “No one does,” she shrugged.

  They were quiet for a few moments before she spoke again.  “That’s why I liked you Markus, you always let me choose, always made sure I was willing to do whatever we did… as much as that meant anything with my programming, but still.  I hated my mother… hated the things she made me do, hated the other people I could have been, and the other lives I could have lived.  I hated that she took that from me for her own twisted needs.

  “I don’t want that for you.  I don’t want you to come to feel that way about your brother.  I don’t want your niece to come to feel that way about you.   You should remember your brother lovingly, cherish him, not spend the rest of your days resenting your obligation to fulfil his misguided last wish.

  “Anyways… that’s my two cents.  I don’t want to push you too hard either way myself, but… I have my thoughts.”

  “You certainly do,” he said quietly.

  “I’d like to come with you,” she said.  “To the surface, that is.”

  “To make sure I don’t stay?”

  She looked at him with bemused annoyance.  “You really think that’s who I am?”

  He thought about it, then decided, “No.”

  “I want to support you.  I have my opinions, but I’ll respect whatever you choose.  And hey, if you stay we can be lifelong friends after all, so not all bad,” she winked at him.  “If you really want to stay, whether to honour your brother or not, I’ll support you.   But I also want to be there to run defence against others who might not be so generous.”

  “Okay, sure.   Thanks Molly.  For everything.”

  “Anytime, Sugar.”

   

  After going over to Molly’s suite for her to pack up as well, and after letting her new simulant bartender friend know she was returning to Earth for at least a few days, they headed to the private shuttle and strapped in.  Lucas was already there, secured to a microgravity hospital bed.  In and around the station he would have been able to get himself around relatively well, but he’d get somewhat compromised under the gravity conditions they were returning to.  It made Markus wonder if returning to Earth was really such great an idea.  Maybe spending the time he had left in a more therapeutic environment would be the best thing for him, but his brother had his mind set.  He assumed this possibility had been considered and rejected.  It had certainly been rejected out of hand by Donna, Markus smirked to himself.

  Once his brother’s family was all situated in their seats, the shuttle disembarked and with soft jets flipped around to put its belly to the Earth, and its nose in the opposite direction of their orbit.  A modest burn in the opposite direction of their motion was enough for them to begin falling out of orbit, and shortly thereafter the ablation of the atmosphere against the underside of the shuttle began their fiery deceleration and descent.  

  For twenty minutes or so all that could be seen out the windows were the licks of fiery plasma spewing out from underneath the craft, and Markus held Molly’s hand as she stared out the window.  He remembered that since this had been her first trip to orbit, this must be her first re-entry as well.  The noise was too much for him to ask her about it at this point.  

  He tried not to grip her hand as hard as he was gripping the arm rest with his other hand.   His parents had died this way after all, and his white knuckles betrayed the resultant anxiety.  It didn’t help that on any given re-entry the shuttle always felt on the verge of breaking apart and disintegrating anyways.

  The craft made lazy s curves in the sky to burn off energy, and eventually returned to normal gliding flight.  Shuttles were capable of boosting up to a higher altitude if they couldn’t land right away, but today the orb port was running smoothly enough that they were able to land directly.

  When they touched down and the brakes began squealing Markus finally relaxed.  He realized when he released his grip that he’d been squeezing Molly’s hand far harder than he thought he’d been and felt bad even though she hadn’t seemed to mind.  Coming to port in a private shuttle was yet another new experience.   Instead of having to go through the terminal, once they’d taxied to a private parking space, a road pod came right up to the plane to whisk them elsewhere right off the tarmac.  A private ambulance also pulled up to retrieve Lucas’ bed and the team of two wheeled him into the back of it.

  Before they lifted him in, Markus came to his bedside.  “Still scares the hell out of me every time,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too.   Last time though at least,” Lucas chuckled.

  “Funny bro, super, super funny.”  He was not amused.

  “Cut me a break, I’m dying here.”  That at least got a chuckle out of Markus.

  “Fair enough.”   Markus clasped his hand with his brother’s and held it too his heart.  “I’ll catch up with you okay?  You headed right for the cabin?”

  “I believe that’s the plan.”  Lucas looked over at his wife who nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll join you this afternoon.  Gonna stop by work and fill them in first.”

  “While you’re downtown would you mind please stopping in at the office and making an appearance?”

  Inside his own mind Markus sighed heavily, but on the outside he only smiled and reassured his brother that he would.  The ambulance staff lifted him up and closed the doors.  Markus turned to hug Donna and reassure her that he’d see her soon, before closing the road pod door on her and the kids.  It took off, and he was left alone with Molly by their own road pod.

  “Well, onward?” she asked.