Temple fell, half stunned by the blow, at her feet. For the s.p.a.ce of a single heartbeat he watched her move slowly toward the round doorway, then he had clambered to his feet, running after her. He got his arms on her shoulders, yanked at her.
When she turned he saw she was crying. "I--I"m sorry, Kit. You couldn"t fool me about.... Stephanie. You can"t fool me about this."
She had more leverage this time. She stepped back, bringing her small, hard fist up from her knees. It struck Temple squarely at the point of the jaw, with the strength of Jovian-trained muscle behind it.
Temple"s feet left the floor and he landed with a thud on his back.
His last thought of Sophia--or of anything, for a while--made him smile faintly as he lost consciousness. For a kiss she had promised him another dislocated jaw, and she had kept her promise....
Later, how much later he did not know, something soft cushioned his head. He opened his eyes, stared through swirling, spinning murk. He focussed, saw Arkalion. No--_two_ Arkalions standing off at a distance, watching him. He squirmed, knew his head was cushioned in a woman"s lap. He sighed, tried to sit up and failed. Soft hands caressed his forehead, his cheeks. A face swam into vision, but mistily. "Sophia," he murmured. His vision cleared.
It was Stephanie.
"It"s over," said Arkalion. "We"re on our way back to Earth, Kit."
"But the ships--"
"All destroyed. If my people want to come here in ten thousand years, let them try. I have a hunch you of Earth will be ready for them."
"It took us five thousand to reach Nowhere," Temple mused. "It will take us five thousand to return. We"ll come barely in time to warn Earth--"
"Wrong," said Arkalion. "I still have my ship. We"re in it now, so you"ll reach Earth with almost fifty centuries to spare. Why don"t you forget about it, though? If human progress for the next five thousand years matches what has been happening for the last five, the parasites won"t stand a chance."
"Earth--five thousand years in the future," Stephanie said dreamily.
"I wonder what it will be like.... Don"t be so startled, Kit. I was a pilot study on the Nowhere Journey. If I made it successfully, other women would have been sent. But now there won"t be any need."
"I wouldn"t be too sure of that," said the real Alaric Arkalion III.
"I suspect a lot of people are going to feel just like me. Why not go out and colonize s.p.a.ce. We can do it. Wonderful to have a frontier again.... Why, a dozen billionaires will appear for every one like my father. Good for the economy."
"So, if we don"t like Earth," said Stephanie, "we can always go out."
"I have a strong suspicion you will like it," said Arkalion"s double.
Alaric III grinned. "What about you, bud? I don"t want a twin brother hanging around all the time."
Arkalion grinned back at him. "What do you want me to do, young man?
I"ve forsaken my people. This is now my body. Tell you what, I promise to be always on a different continent. Earth isn"t so small that I"ll get in your hair."
Temple sat up, felt the bandages on his jaw. He smiled at Stephanie, told her he loved her and meant it. It was exactly as if she had returned from the grave and in his first exultation he hadn"t even thought of Sophia, who had perished all alone in the depths of s.p.a.ce that a world might live....
He turned to Arkalion. "Sophia?"
"We found her dead, Kit. But smiling, as if everything was worth it."
"It should have been me."
"Whoever Sophia was," said Stephanie, "she must have been a wonderful woman, because when you got up, when you came to, her name was...."
"Forget it," said Temple. "Sophia and I have a very strange relationship and...."
"All right, you said forget it. Forget it." Stephanie smiled down at him.
"I love you so much there isn"t even room for jealousy.... Ummm....
Kit...."
"Break up that clinch," ordered Arkalion. "We"re making one more stop at Nowhere to pick up anyone who wants to return to Earth. Some of "em probably won"t but those who do are welcome...."
"Jason will stay," Temple predicted. "He"ll be a leader out among the stars."
"Then he"ll have to climb over my back," Alaric III predicted happily, his eyes on the viewport hungrily.
Temple"s jaw throbbed. He was tired and sleepy. But satisfied. Sophia had died and for that he was sad, but there would always be a place deep in his heart for the memory of her: delicious, somehow exotic, not a love the way Stephanie was, not as tender, not as sure ... but a feeling for Sophia that was completely unique. And whenever the strangeness of the far-future Earth frightened Temple, whenever he felt a situation might get the better of him, whenever doubt clouded judgment, he would remember the tall lithe girl who had walked to her death that a world might have the freedom she barely had tasted. And together with Stephanie he would be able to do anything.
Unless, he thought dreamily as he drifted off to sleep, his head pillowed again on Stephanie"s lap, he"d wind up with a b.u.m jaw the rest of his life.
THE END