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Only the Council windows face Earth. Its darkened orb is a reminder, not a view. The great public windows look out onto neighbouring space stations, carefully framed to disguise the distance between them. In the right light, they’re close enough to touch. None of the individual homes, schools, workplaces, myriad habitations of ordinary humanity have any windows at all. But there are privileges to being an Adair, and Devon’s windows look out onto infinite star-scattered space.
She tells Uly this is what being in a spaceship is like. The four-year-old loves to sit in the window seat and name the constellations. He tells her he can see the pictures in the stars. A lion and a dinosaur and ‘the one with the big mouth to eat you and claws as big as the whole station and poison’. Yale spoils him with his tall tales of brave explorers and starship captains. This week, Uly wants to be a pilot when he grows up, and her heart just can’t break any more, the pieces are too small.
She’d poured her energy at first into trying to design a station that would cure her baby of the Syndrome. Something was missing, she reasoned, and if she could find it, synthesise it, add it in… Couldn’t be done, the doctors said, and for all her determination, she’d started to believe them.
One evening, in a trance of fatigue and despair, she’d looked out those portal windows of her palace, and space had called. Before she was even truly conscious of the move, her designs became a coldsleep ship on the page before her. Plans had changed.
Yale’s slow tread pauses at the door. “Devon? What are you doing up so late?”
She looks up from the boxes around her, and has to squash a momentary spark of guilt at being caught up past her bedtime by her old tutor.
“Just finishing up,” she says with a smile, but it’s her business smile, and he knows her too well to be fooled. Of all the things she’s expected to be ‘the hard part’, this wasn’t one of them. She doesn’t consider herself the type for trinkets, but here they are, and the boxes aren’t filling themselves. She doesn’t understand why it’s so difficult.
“There will be plenty of time later, Devon.” He says gently. “You should get some sleep.”
“They’re just things, Yale. I need to do this.”
He kneels down carefully across from her, awkward in that position, and lays his hand on hers across treasures and scattered jewels collected over years of wealth and industry. She hasn’t touched any of them since Uly was diagnosed, they’re trivial baubles in the face of her desperation.
“It is not wrong to want something for yourself, Devon.”
“I have Uly, and you. The rest is just...”
“Memory”, Yale supplies, squeezing her hand.
She nods slowly, and squeezes back. After a long moment she pulls her hand free and begins to sort again.
With Yale at her side, it’s easy to spot the things she needs to keep. The little pendant chain she pulls aside is not the most expensive, or even the oldest. Her tutor gave it to her as a reward for completing her studies. “Because if you work hard enough,” he’d said, “the possibilities of what can be achieved are as many as the stars.”
Yale smiles as she picks it up, and excuses himself to go check on Uly.
Devon continues packing the boxes for auction. She would give up everything for Uly, that’s never been in doubt, but maybe it’s okay to hang onto her own memories for a little longer. When he’s old enough, she’ll share them with him.
Station light is gentle and diffuse, carefully calculated for optimum intensity while maintaining a serene, psychologically beneficial warmth. Devon knows when she’s dreaming - the light is always too bright. They’re on the plateau today, and all around them the world stretches out, the strange alien landscape she’s built herself from probe reports and satellite soundings and old pictures of Earth. She feels him wrap an arm around her, and isn’t surprised, because she’s never alone in these dreams. His voice is in her ear, familiar and rough, with the strange sensation of not quite hearing his thoughts. It’s her dream, she should be able to listen in if she wants – but even Devon Adair cannot control dreams.
“But the Project,” he whispers, lips against her ear, “you can control that.”
“Hardly control,” Devon contradicts. “Steer, maybe.”
“I thought Uly was going to be the pilot?”
She chuckles, the tension of the waking world spilling out of her. The slight echo of distance carries the sound away from them. She can feel the breeze catch at her hair in uneven gusts. Station airflow is steady, constant. If she was still designing, she could draw a lot from this landscape, but she’s got more important things on her mind than improving borrowed air.
“We’ve still got a long way to go before we fly out of here,” she tells him. “But the plans are finalised, we’ve started on the basic structural assembly.
“Does the Council..?”
“They’re not happy. But it’s private enterprise. They can’t stop me.”
“Good.”
Uly’s coughing fit echoes around the plateau, and the bright light dims.
“Devon, stay,” Sheppard urges, hand on her shoulder. “Yale will take care of him.”
But she can’t not go when Uly needs her, and she drifts away, the dream sinking into dust beneath her.
Yale is already at Uly’s bedside by the time Devon gets there, gently patting his back with his human hand, and checking the readouts.
Devon has the medication ready, but Uly gets himself under control, giving her a wide, if somewhat sleepy smile.
“’m okay, Mom, don’t worry,” he assures her over the hiss of the respirator. The lights and readings don’t reflect his confidence, but slowly they begin to settle back to what passes for normal in a Syndrome child. So many of the dials have a baseline that’s already in the red.
He lies back down against his pillows, but he’s wide awake now, and restless, thinking too hard again. Devon waves Yale back to bed and takes his place at the bedside.
“What’s on your mind, champ?” she asks.
The four-year-old puts on his best serious face. “Are you gonna put me in coldsleep for a hundred years? Until we get there?” he asks.
“Twenty-two light-years, Uly. You won’t notice, though, you’ll be asleep. Like you should be now.” Devon chides.
“And when I wake up, you’ll be old as Yale!”
“I’m going to be in coldsleep with you. So will Yale. We’ll all wake up just the same age as we were when we went to sleep.”
“Can I sleep in your bed?”
Devon sighs. This is a terribly bad idea. All the medical failsafes are attached to his own bed, built into the bedhead, the walls, the special temperature-controlled blankets. Nevertheless, she scoops the tube-covered little boy into her arms and carries him back to her bedroom, touching her forehead to his. The immuno-suit is cold on the outside, but Uly swears it’s warm where it touches his skin. Too warm, sometimes, for his chill little body, and too cold in the midst of his fevers. But it keeps him safe and it keeps him alive, and Devon will take any chance, any chance at all that keeps that small heartbeat going next to hers as he nestles against her.
“When we get there, you have to give me twenny-two light-years of birthday presents, ’kay?”
“I’ll give you a whole world.”
There’s no sound except the suit’s medical hum. He’s already asleep.
The Adair residence is a private place, mysterious to most of the people on the stations. Devon wasn’t big on social events even before Uly’s diagnosis. This is the most people she’s had in the complex in over five years.
She sits in front of the starlit window, facing down the vid recorders. She’s taken the interviewer on a tour, walking the audience through each of the luxuriously appointed rooms, but now it’s time for business. Yale is standing just behind her chair in silent support. He’s coached her on this speech, it’s vital to the next stage of the Project. The Council has been steadily blocking her from selling off her business assets, citing obscure corporate regulations, compliance terms, economic forecasts. But they’ve underestimated how far she’s willing to go for her son. And there’s not a damn thing the Council can do in the face of a private enterprise.
She looks down at Uly on her lap, in full view of the broadcast, takes a deep breath of over-cycled station air, and begins.
“I have an ulterior motive for giving this interview. This apartment, our home, is for sale – well, auction really. As are many of the contents.” She waves to the gaping windows looking out across the stars, to the antique wood furniture, the hydroponic fern (too scruffy to be plastic), paintings and sculptures, the wide floor empty of everything but carpet, itself as big as some whole domestic units.
“But. Why?” asks the interviewer, struggling to hide awe at the prospect. “Are you saying you’re retiring?”
“I am,” Devon confirms, smiling down at Uly. “As you may have heard, I have a higher priority in my life these days.”
“A... temporary hiatus, then,” the woman says, with what she probably considers tact.
“My child is going to live,” Devon says as calmly as she can. “Live and thrive and flourish. On planet G889.”
“G-8. Uh?” The interviewer stutters, confused, and flicks on her gear, looking for help from her production team. This wasn’t part of her script.
Devon doesn’t give her time. “After a two-year research phase, I am pleased to announce that the Eden Project is now ready to launch into phase two. A coldsleep ship is being built, which will take Syndrome-affected children and their families to a new world, to a cure.”
On the coffee table off to the side, her gear lights up with incoming messages. But the Council can’t stop her, not here, in the public eye. Not this time.
She continues, letting the swell of triumph colour her tone. “All funds from the sale of our home will go towards moving these sick children to a new home, a place where they can be well.”
Uly stirs in her lap, smiling at the vid recorder and trying not to cough. The lights blink steady and green all along the immuno-suit dials. Just the thought of the planet is making him better. She feels Yale’s strong hand on her left shoulder, squeezing gently in subtle approval. At her right shoulder, she feels - she could almost sense her other guiding light, her dream, smiling down on her. Calling her home.