Gwendy’s Final Task

In a surprisingly sturdy voice, Richard Farris explained what needed to be done. From the first word to the last, it took him maybe ninety seconds. When he was finished, he released her hand and slumped back into the patio chair, the remaining color draining rapidly from his face.

Gwendy sat there motionless, staring out at the dark expanse of back yard. After awhile she looked at him and said, “What you’re asking is impossible.”

“I sincerely hope not. It’s the only place they can’t come for it. You have to try, Gwendy, before it’s too late. You’re the only one I trust.”

“But how in the—”

Sitting upright, he raised a hand to stop her from speaking. He turned his head and peered next door into the deep pool of shadows beneath a weeping willow tree.

Gwendy got to her feet and slowly walked closer to the wire screen, following his gaze. She saw and heard nothing in the frozen darkness. A few seconds later, the wood-framed screen door to the back porch banged closed behind her. She turned and looked without much surprise. The wicker chair was empty. Richard Farris had left the building. Like Elvis.

16

“I ONLY GOT THERE right at the end,” Adesh says, keeping his voice low, “but it sounded like you were whimpering. I thought perhaps you had injured yourself.”

Both he and Gwendy are once again strapped into their flight chairs on the third deck of Eagle Heavy. The steel box marked CLASSIFIED MATERIAL is tucked safely beneath her seat. Gwendy cradles her iPad in her ungloved hands, the screen silent and dark.

“Winston said you sounded frightened and were calling out … something about a ‘black box.’ He claims he couldn’t understand the rest of it.”

Gwendy doesn’t remember falling asleep and dreaming, but the very idea that Gareth Winston could be telling the truth makes her feel lightheaded and causes her stomach to perform an uneasy cartwheel. She carries too many deep, dark secrets inside to start talking in her sleep now.

She steals a glance at Jafari Bankole, who’s busy studying one of the overhead monitors, and at the opposite end of the craft, Gareth Winston, now buckled in tight and snoring loudly in his flight seat next to the porthole. His porthole. Is he really asleep? For the second time since boarding, the same crystal clear thought surfaces inside Gwendy’s muddled head: that man is smarter than he appears.

“What was he doing down there in the first place?”

“He said he was going to use the toilet, and maybe he did,” Adesh tells her, leaning close enough for Gwendy to smell cinnamon on his breath. He drops his voice to a whisper. “But when I went down a short time later to check on my specimens, I found him standing there with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.”

Gwendy waits for him to continue, dreading what’s coming next.

“He was fiddling with the latch on your cabin door.”

NG, Gwendy thinks. Not good at all.

A smile comes onto Adesh’s round face, and not a friendly one. “When he finally turned around and saw me, his eyes bugged out—pardon the pun—and he practically jumped out of his pressure suit. That’s the nice thing about being weightless. No one can hear you coming.”

“Well, I’m grateful you came along when you did. I … I …”

And just like that her brain short-circuits and shuts down. All the information that was stored there just a moment earlier suddenly vanishes as if an invisible eraser has been swept across the inside of her head. Where has it gone? She doesn’t know that. All she does know is that her name is Gwendy Peterson and she’s a passenger on a spaceship and she’s trying to save the world. But save it from what? She has no memory at all of that, nor what she was just talking about or whom the person is she was just talking to. The abrupt and overwhelming sense of loss—of abandonment—frightens her so badly that sudden tears bloom in the corners of her eyes.

“Senator Peterson? Gwendy? Are you okay?” Adesh asks. His eyes narrowed in concern, he appears on the verge of calling out for help.

“I’m …” she begins to answer, and then, just like that, everything is back where it’s supposed to be. She’s talking to Adesh Patel, the Bug Man, about Gareth Winston, the nosy and noisy lout sleeping just over yonder. Winston’s a billionaire with a capital “B,” and Gwendy isn’t sure he can be trusted. Judging from the look on Adesh Patel’s face, the Bug Man’s not entirely convinced Gwendy can be trusted, either.

“I’m fine,” she finally says. “I was in the middle of a thought and something my late mother used to say came along and hijacked my brain. I’m not sure why, but it’s happening more and more often these days.”

Adesh’s brown eyes immediately soften. “Oh, Gwendy, I’m so sorry you lost her.”