Rollback

Somehow, despite the fact that the Dracons had been part of the background of his life for four decades now, they’d never quite seemed real. Oh, he knew they were there — right there, right now, along his current line of sight. Indeed, perhaps at this very moment, there were Dracons looking this way, regarding Sol — which would be almost as dim in their night sky as Sigma Draconis was in Earth’s — and thinking about the strange beings that must be here. Of course, Sarah would say that the concept of a simultaneous "right now" was meaningless in a relativistic universe; even if Don could have spotted Sigma Draconis, the light he’d have seen would have left there 18.8 years ago. That discontinuity added to the unreal quality the aliens had always had for him.

But if they went ahead with what the Dracons were asking for, the aliens would go from mere abstractions to being here, in the flesh. Granted, the ones born on Earth would know nothing firsthand of their home world, but they would nonetheless be tied to it.

He closed up his datacom, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and began walking again.

Maybe because he’d been thinking about prime ministers earlier, it occurred to him that Pierre Trudeau had held that office when he himself had been in middle school.

There were many famous Trudeau moments, he knew: the "just watch me" response when asked how far he’d go to put down the terrorists in the October Crisis of 1970; giving the finger from his railcar to detractors in British Columbia; decriminalizing homosexuality and telling the country that "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation." But one that had always haunted Don was the famous walk in the snow, when Trudeau had wandered off, alone, to contemplate, weighing his own future against that of his nation. The great man had decided to quit politics that night, to step down as PM.

Trudeau had been twenty-four years younger than Don was now, but he’d been worn out, exhausted. Don, though, had lots of energy and more years ahead than he could really envision; those future years were also an abstraction, like the aliens around Sigma Draconis. Oh, one by one, the years would become concrete, but for now, they, too, didn’t quite seem real.

He made his way out of the field, moving from behind the vast dark form of the school, and continued his walk. Someone was coming toward him, and Don felt a little surge of adrenaline — an old man’s fear about how a late-night encounter might go. But, as the other person got closer, Don saw that it was a bald-headed middle-aged fellow, who looked quite apprehensive; to him, it was the sight of a twenty-something man that was frightening. Sarah was right; everything was relative.

She would do it in a heartbeat, he knew, if she could: she’d commit to help create, and raise, the Dracon children. And he also knew that he himself wouldn’t have all this extra time ahead if it weren’t for her. So maybe he owed this to his wife, and to McGavin, too, who, after all, had actually made it possible.

He continued along, and soon was approaching the convenience store. It was a 7-Eleven, one of countless such stores, all part of a vast chain. Don was old enough to remember when they really had been open only from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., instead of twenty-four hours a day. Doubtless, if they had it to do over, the chain’s management would have picked a less-restrictive name. But if a giant company couldn’t have foreseen what the future held, or that the time they had to deal with would hugely expand, how could he? But, even so, they had changed; they’d adapted. And, he thought, as he went through the sliding glass doors, coming out of the darkness into the light, maybe he could, too.

Chapter 40

When Don got back home, Sarah was in the en suite bathroom, getting ready for bed. He joined her in there, coming up behind her as she stood at the sink, and oh-so-gently embracing her from behind.

"Hi," she said.

"All right," he replied. "I’ll do it."

"Do what?"

"Look after the Dracon children."

Don’s grip was loose enough that Sarah managed to gingerly rotate to face him.

"Really?"

"Why not?"

"You can’t do it just out of a sense of obligation, you know. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"How can I be sure about anything? I’m going to live to be maybe a hundred and sixty. That’s terra incognita for the whole human race. I know as much about what that’s going to be like as — as I know about what it’s like to be a bat. But I’ve got to do something, and, as your grandson said to me this evening, it should be something important."

"Percy said that?"

Don nodded, and Sarah made an impressed face.

"Still," she said, "you have to really want this. Every child has the right to be wanted."

"I know. And I do want to do it."

"Yeah?"

He smiled. "Sure. Besides, at least I won’t have to worry about these kids ending up with my nose."