I am going to get it, and no one will have to know.

We'll pop the whole hospital, and make enough coin they won't even notice. They haven't so far. They're too busy to see anything.

I have to get it.

Am I willing to risk what I have now for a reminder of what will never come again?
I have to believe that I’m not. That I won’t.
Is it worth it?

I have to find him.

It’s not him. It’s a few cells. He’s not alive. I don’t need them. They are safer where they are.

Viable

Viable viable viable viable viable

“What does viable mean?” asked Em. Had I been speaking out loud? I don’t know. I was sitting in the nav seat, but when I looked at my work it was a mess, each impossible jump veering off toward Chongqing.
“Go look it up.” I said, hating myself.

Viable. Workable. Alive.

He is not alive. I have not wept for him since I left his ship, our ship, and plunged into the black. I have wept for myself, because he is not alive.

He is still Viable.

Mezaro, trapped in a web of scientific conversation, giving me information though he doesn’t know why, says that the materials located in most medical samples include complete cells and DNA, enough to test for genetic conditions and even clone individuals. Which is why they are highly guarded, because no one in charge wants a few extra Edward P. Furoughties running around. Because invetro fertilization requires permission.

But there is enough. It is possible. It is…

Viable.

...............................

A flag came up on one of my Govweb connections, one I had forgotten that I still had marked.

Ulysses Front.

My heart seemed to contract deep into its own folds, then sputter heavily back into action. A line of electricity coursed through me and it was a long moment before I could breathe.
I must have never taken the flag off of his name for all these years—figuring he’d never come up again, or figuring maybe…just maybe he would.
Ulysses has been gone for just over eight years, there is no reason for him to show up on Govweb. I explored the link, it is part of a huge bank of names attached to medical records that are being transferred to a new location. Surprising that the code would pick it up, but even more surprising that they’d be moving this record.
There is something archaic about med companies. They deal with the very basic, unchanging form of humanity: the body. But they also keep records. Extensive records from the moment of birth: genetic structures, developmental predictions, all the check-ins and illnesses and accidents, DNA samples.

Samples.

Remnants.

There is something left of Lys, more than his dust floating through the darkness, more than the memories and the life he gave to me. A refrigerated, viable piece of life in a tiny box in a huge bank of other boxes. I have one, too, somewhere back on Earth, attached to my old name and number.

The company is shipping the records to a new location, a bigger warehouse in a larger hospital in Chongqing-2. There it will reside, a tiny impersonal cell, until the ends of history.

Now that my heart has begun beating again, there is only one thought in my head. I can get it. I have to get it.

behind, ahead

Ulysses and I used to play a game called Imagine. It was usually when I was sleepy and he wasn’t, which happened quite frequently. The man only needed a few hours of rest a night, but during those hours a hull breach wouldn’t have woken him. Jamieson, who was a freerunner, had let his body take on its own cycle in the darkness. That man lived strangely, and was twitchy as cats supposedly are.
Lys would let me lie there as he rambled on, outwitting me in conversation, until he got tired of the poor sport I provided. Then he’d say something like, “What will Tambor be doing in twenty years?” and I would make something up and tell him about it. Whatever images were presented to my tired brain, I would describe to him. When nothing came I would shrug and go to sleep. Sometimes he would ask what our next job would be, who would hire us, or what the next repairs on the ship would be. I would tell him whatever it was I thought, glad to play the game with him. Glad to do whatever silly thing that man took into his head to do, glad just to be near him.

One night he said, “When you come to your senses and leave me blast end behind, who will you go and work for?”
I was barely listening, and I said rattled off a list of people I thought of, starting with “a legend” and ending with “a pink shirt man”. Where all the details came from, I don’t know, but Lys frowned and seemed to shrink a little, as he always did when he was upset by something. I wrapped my arms around him and asked what was wrong.
“It’s just that you’re usually right.”
“What do you mean?”
He turned to look at me with his calm lion’s eyes, and he almost looked...surprised. As if he saw something obvious and was startled that I couldn’t.
“You know more than you should” he said finally.
“I’m just smart, is all.”
“I’ll say. So when you talk about things...after me...I get worried.”
“Don't be worried. I'm half asleep and I’m making it up. Besides, I promised I won’t ever leave you. Until the end, right?”
“Until the end.” He said, and smiled, and I loved him, just as I did every time he smiled.

The only reason this scene has cause to present itself to my memory is because I still don’t understand what he meant. But he never brought it up, and I never saw it in his thoughts again, and I never had cause to ask.
But I was right, about everything I said. I never noticed until after I had left…Jamieson, the legend, Li, Cassinelli, Blackthorn, now Caban. A pink shirt?

When I try to see my next captain --a solitary game of Imagine...I don’t see anything at all.

a lesson

I was helping Em repair a console when Caban gave me coordinates for our next contact. I left the Sneak to her humming, wirecaps in her teeth. Since ceasing her constant chemming, she hums more often, in snatches of songs that sound far more classic than the advert tunes I would expect.
"Do you know how to fly?" I asked, knowing that she did. Newer ships than ours make it easy for anyone, and she has been out here awhile, presumabley not in a crate the entire time.
"Suppose so."
"Do you know how to navigate?"
"Suppose so."
"Ever flown a jump?"
"Nope."
"Want to?"

She popped up from the tangled guts of the console and came over, her eyes steady on the screen I was pointing to.
"There is the nearest Jumpspot. Both ends are monitored and metered, so you're safe knowing you won't hit anything on either end. Its faster, though, if we take one here."
"No spot there."
"There is if we make one. See, it will take us...here, and no Feds."
I showed her how to engage in and out of a Jump, and how to flash the scanners a second before arrival to make sure you don't hit a ship, an asteroid, or a planet. Space is full of moving objects, but the majority is easy to slide through unimpeded.
"The ship does most of the work, but not all of it. You are still the one steering. If something appears on the flash scan, wait one second before going through. But you never ever pull out once you've started going through. Its better to hit something than to have your ship sheared in half. We'd be floating in the dark before we knew we were dead."

She shuddered. I didn't tell her that I had done it before. Ice could show her the old track maps I know she has if Em gets curious. I didn't tell her about rifting, or firing in a missile first to clear the way, or backing out so it seems like you appeared where you hadn't, or how sometimes I didn't flash the scan because I didn't have to, because I already knew.

When it came time to jump, she did it well, especially with her chemmed-over reflexes. Young Navvers are always faster than practiced veterans, but they never get as far, and they die with far greater frequency. The thrill of a clean drop into nowhere is one of the finest in the Verse. When it was over and our ship hadn't torn apart at the bolts, Em looked up at me, and I could not tell if she spoke with incredulity, disdain, or simple curiousity.

"You get paid for that?"