Leaving
Murray Evans

 

It was almost time to leave.

Jonathon plunged his feet into the cool, damp sand, feeling it scratching between his toes. There was a typical off shore wind gusting across his face, his tanned features showing a vague mixture of emotions. His fair hair and loose fitting clothing flapped gently during each gust then settled down, out of place, his hair often covering his eyes.

But he had no need to move it. He was not watching the waves breaking against the beach, he was not staring out over the horizon. His gaze was not fixed on anything in particular; his mind wasn’t even paying attention to the signals from his eyes, there were other things for it to process. Deeper things to contemplate. Jonathon’s mind was watching the visions and happy memories of his home as they fluttered through in turn. Most of them were about friends.

The first one that came into his mind was Thomas. They had grown up together on the beach where he now sat. He could remember the long, hot days, paddling a ball between them, jumping over the waves to see who could go deepest before they couldn’t clear the crests… Thomas had always won, but he was almost six centimetres taller than Jonathon, it had never been the winning that gave the enjoyment, it had just been the friendship, the companionship.

Jonathon’s random gaze shifted and became fixed on a shuttle, skimming over the water towards the beach. He followed it for a few moments with his eyes, then the gaze once again became lost. There was little time left.

The next person that Jonathon thought about was the one that hurt him the most. It wasn’t the person that hurt him, she had never done that, it was the thought of never seeing her again that hurt. He didn’t think he could ever forget that curly black head of hair as he ran his fingers through it, or the sweet touch of those gentle lips, or even the feeling of her tiny hand in his. But did anyone ever forget their first love? Their first true love? He would miss Linda, he may even cry for her silently in the night as he had that morning, lying in his bed, realising what day it was.

His head tilted and rotated so that his eyes could once again collect the reflected light from the shuttle. He hated that collection of metal and plastic, cursed it, prayed that, if there were any real god, it would break the landing legs of the shuttle. But it was to no avail. The shuttle landed on the pad at the top of the beach next to the house. Jonathon knew that he would have to leave soon. He had no way of avoiding it. He wasn’t old enough to go out on his own, and in such a large universe, he wasn’t overly enthusiastic at the prospect either. His head drooped towards the sand, closely followed by his eyes.

They were looking now, studying the grains of sand. Lost in the variety of different shades of orange and yellow and white. He grasped a handful of the grainy substance and let it dribble out through his fingers, hoping that his memories would not do the same, especially those of Linda.

His mind drifted back to the petite figure, the deep brown eyes, the way her eyelashes curled when she ate something like sprouts.

He pulled his wallet out from the pocket of his shorts and opened it. There, protected inside sealed sections, were his three favourite pictures of Linda. He fingered through them, staring at them, lost in a sea of memories.

He jumped as a hand was pressed onto his shoulder.

‘You miss her already, don’t you Jon.’ Said a voice behind him. He knew it too well, it would have been one of the first voices he heard as he emerged from the womb. His mother.

She was crouched down behind him, glancing over his shoulder at the pictures in his wallet. Jonathon could do little more than nod. He knew there was no point lying to his mother, she knew him too well.

‘Is it time?’ he asked. He knew the answer, but he also knew the one that he wanted to hear. He wanted her to say that they had changed their minds, that the company hadn’t posted her to another location…but it was only wishing, and wishing had never solved anything,

‘Yes.’ He knew that behind him, his mother was putting on a sympathetic face. He sometimes wondered if it was real or not.

‘I know you’re leaving a lot behind here love, and I think I realise how you feel because everyone feels the same way when they leave, but… Well, I have a request for you.’

Jonathon cocked his head to show that he was listening.

‘I don’t know if you’d noticed, but your little sister really looks up to you. I was hoping that you could maybe put on a brave face to all this, to make her feel better, more relaxed. If it’s hard for us, can you imagine how hard it must be fore her? She doesn’t really understand what’s going on.’

Jonathon nodded, but did not agree. In his mind he thought. He couldn’t see how it could be harder for his little sister. She didn’t have the same understanding of what was going on, it was just a shift in her life; she could take it far easier than him. She didn’t have the same ties to this place, didn’t have the same friendships, wasn’t losing Linda…

‘Don’t worry dear. It’s not like you have to forget about her. This is the modern galaxy, you can always write to her. You can stay in touch.’

But it wasn’t the same. It could never be the same at distances of tens of light-years. There could be no physical contact, no direct communication. They would lose contact, either now, or slowly over time. It was unavoidable. And as for the chances of bumping into each other, years later, on the corner of some random street, in a galaxy of this size, what chance was there?

‘Now, come on. A brave face, just for your sister.’

Jonathon rose to his feet with his mother, and together they walked in a false confidence towards the waiting shuttle, its white paint and company logo glinting in the bright sunlight

They were soon out over the vast ocean, travelling twice the speed of sound towards a destination that was distant enough to be below the horizon. But even that distance was insignificant when compared to the distance they would be from their home in a few days. It scared Jonathon, to be so distant from what he knew. Here, on his green home world, he was accepted by the other kids, by his friends. Here he was one of the brightest in his school year. Here people knew who he was. Out there, beyond the blue atmosphere, there was no saying what it would be like. He could appear stupid next to his year group; he could be an outcast from their pre-established and inflexible social groups, destined to roam around an unfamiliar world alone and unknown.

He stared through his reflection in the window, out across the horizon to the distant peaks of mountains pushing their heads above the mighty waves, the first hint of land in over two hours. It was not a land that Jonathon knew, but it was one he was now sure he was never going to know. The Shuttle raced on, ripping through the sky, perhaps only a mere hundred metres above the ocean below, at over twice the speed of sound, it’s simple anti-gravity thrusters propelling it along towards a still invisible shore.

The first hint of their proximity to their destination came not much later. Down below them, a huge rooster tail behind it, was a wing-boat, or skimmer. Light rebounded from its salt water covered bright red paint and Perspex windows, two ancient jet engines belching thick fumes behind it as it bounced from wave crest to wave crest. Another memory brewed the sadness in Jonathon’s head, welling up tears which he forced back from his eyes.

Thomas’s father had owned a skimmer for a while. It had only been a small one, a single jet engine on the top of its bright yellow hull, but it had still been fast. Jonathon could remember the days when Thomas’s father had taken them –Linda, Thomas and himself – for rides in it. It had been quite crowded with all four of them sitting in there, but they had all managed to squeeze in. They had been the most exhilarating rides of his life. The skimmer may have only reached a couple hundred kilometres per hour, but the feeling of acceleration, the jumping from wave crest to wave crest, the g-forces as the machine had spun round when a wing was submerged into the water… It was a feeling that could not be matched by the anti-gravity thrusters of a shuttle, even if the shuttle was so much faster there were always suspension fields around the cabins that limited the feelings of acceleration which the thrusters produced, anything up to four or five G if required.

Jonathon slumped back into his chair, annoyed that some of his happiest memories were becoming his saddest, he sniffed back a tear. A brave face for his sister. Who would give him a brave face? Who was filling him with confidence that all would be well?

The mountains that had been just peaks, were now full size, and directly in front of the speeding shuttle. At the feet of these mountains was a giant flat plain on a raised plateau that stretched to fifty metre cliffs at the edge of the sea, and on this plateau was the busiest plot of land on the planet. The star-port.

As the shuttle approached, Jonathon could make out the features of the place. He could see rows of ten or more covered hangers, and all over the place there were parked ships. Some large, some small, and at least one military ship sitting on its own at the far side of the port. Jonathon recognised it instantly. It was the ship that belonged to the Imperial Ambassador for the system who was making a short visit to the planet. Jonathon had never bothered to learn all the different ship types, but he knew that the Ambassador’s ship was a Marauder. A Shamcorp designed Gunboat. He’d always found it strange that the Imperial ambassador didn’t have a ship made by the Imperial Shipyard, but couldn’t have cared less. He knew little of what happened in the space lanes, and had never had an intention of finding out. He was happy enough to forever remain on his home planet. It was far too dangerous up above the atmosphere for his liking. Many of the stories he had heard made his spine quiver.

The shuttle swung over one of the smaller landing pads near the main terminal buildings on the far side of the star-port then began a wide spiral over the pad before coming to a hover about five metres above it. Jonathon heard the landing legs of the shuttle lower, and he knew that they had also lowered rubber-covered wheels normally kept folded away. There was a slight jolt as the shuttle gently touched the landing pad and sank as the spring-loaded landing gear took its weight. It sat there on the pad for several minutes as men on the ground attached a small, yellow GV to the front landing leg. Then they were on the move again, as the GV pulled the shuttle along concrete paths towards the parking ramp. The shuttle finally came to rest again as it was pulled into a space between two other shuttles. A second GV, larger than the one that had pulled the shuttle, pulled up outside the shuttle ramp, now lowered to the ground.

Jonathon’s mother was the first to leave the shuttle. She stepped onboard the second GV and Jonathon could see her speaking with someone through its window. She leaned out again momentarily and signalled for the rest of them to follow. It was her employers that had made all the arrangements for the journey and made all the payments. Jonathon decided that she must have been checking them on the GV, which he now realised, was a bus. He stood with his father and sister, and they all walked out of the shuttle and onto the bus, which the shuttle crew was now loading their luggage onto.

Jonathon’s mother sat down in the seat behind him when the bus began to move away from the shuttle. She tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards one of the rows of hangers. One of the doors was wide open and a fairly large ship was being moved out from it. Jonathon recognised the logo of his mother’s company painted on the hull next to the name. Arta.

‘See that Jon? That’s what we’re taking.’ She said, smiling to offer confidence and comfort.

‘What is it?’ Jonathon replied. He looked across at the ship. It wasn’t that big, the main hull was only about thirty metres wide, and it seemed to be only forty or fifty long.

‘It’s an Eagle. Not much I know, but it does the company proud.’

‘Eagle.’ Jonathon pondered. He was familiar with the ship type. He didn’t know what it looked like, he had never seen one, but he knew that Linda had a distant relation that owned one. He shook his head, everything had to remind him of her. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

‘I don’t really know. The system is about sixty light years from here and the ships scheduled to make several stops on the way. So, it will take a few days at least, but there will be lots of things to keep you occupied on the ship.’

‘Such as?’

‘Let’s just wait and see shall we?’

Jonathon shrugged, and continued to watch the ship which they were slowly approaching. They had moved it out onto a large landing pad at the end of the row of hangers, and it stood there waiting for them. He watched a few containers being loaded onto the ship by a group of utility vehicles and an oxygen tanker topping up the tanks on the ship. Oxygen was recycled pretty well on ships, but it was always a good idea to top it up again at each stop. Jonathon didn’t know much about space flight, but he did know that. The ship grew as they approached, and then the bus drove right up into the cargo bay, then stopped.

They were greeted at the bay doors by one of the ship's crewmembers. A woman about as old as Jonathon’s mother.

‘Welcome onboard the Arta.’ She said.

‘Thank you.’ Said Jonathon’s mother, shaking the woman’s hand.

‘If you’ll follow me I’ll show you to your cabin. Don’t worry about your luggage, we’ll handle that.’

The woman led them along a series of corridors, and then into an area that looked as if it was designed for passengers. She stopped in front of one of the doors and pushed a button with a key. ‘You should find everything you need in there, there’s instructions for the computer and any other thing you may need to use. Okay?’

Jonathon’s mother nodded.

‘Just one more thing, the commander intends to leave as soon as the ship’s ready, so that should be only five or ten minutes. You can watch the launch from the computer if you want. Would you like that?’ The last question was addressed to Jonathon in a patronising tone. He knew he looked young for his age, but people that spoke like that really annoyed him. But he ignored it, shunting it to the back of his mind to be complained about later, even if only to himself. He simply nodded and tried to look half excited at the prospect of seeing the ship launch, even if he would rather be seeing it from the out side, without the need for a camera.

The woman lead Jonathon and his family into what turned out to be a relatively spacious cabin. The first room was a living area. A computer terminal, a wall-screen (at that moment displaying a view of a beach, waves crashing on the sandy shoreline, a field of long grasses and wild flowers swaying in the background. Jonathon could just see himself running into the water holding Linda’s hand with a yellow wing-boat screaming in the distance…) and a couple of comfy looking red sofas. This room was further divided by a breakfast-bar to give a kitchen/dining area (the kitchen part of which could be said to be mostly redundant.)

Beyond this main room were two far smaller bedrooms, both containing identical furniture: a bunk bed, a small wardrobe and a bedside cabinet. It was hardly the lap of luxury, but for a ship it would have rated highly by most peoples standards.

The last room of the family sized cabin was the sanitation unit containing a dry washer and waste collection unit. The WCU was pretty much the standard over the whole galaxy, with very few people preferring the ancient eco-toilet, or the even more antiquated flushable toilet. However, Jonathon being a person from a predominantly wet planet, was slightly annoyed at the presence of the dry washer. He had always preferred the showers of his home. Dry washers were intimidating and, to him at least, unpleasant. He retreated from the SU and slumped into one of the large sofas, he could tackle the washer later.

The woman was going over the final formalities with his parents as Jonathon sat there. He kicked off his shoes and brought his legs up onto the sofa beside him, leaning his head on his hand, which its self rested on the arm of the sofa. The image of the beach on the wall drew his attention. There were footprints in the sand. They weren’t the well-defined prints you would get in the wet sand near the edge of the water, but they were footprints. Thousands of them. Pits and ridges carved out by the pattering and trampling of large and small feet, from large and small animals, from humans to birds and lizards. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of beings that would perhaps never have the need to leave.

But the view was gone, just soon enough to block out the memories rising like a toy boat in a well slowly filling with water. It was replaced by a far more human vista, something that was natural only in that human hands made it. The ship, the Arta, filled the bulk of the screen, green hull gleaming in the bright mid-day sun, cleared of all moorings and obstructions, all people cleared to a safe distance.

Four points of light shone at each of the major corners of the ship, vaguely purple in colour, blurry and undefined, the colour only really visible towards the edge of the glow. This glow became more shaped, like a projected beam, reaching a few metres from the hull, pointing downwards and slightly angled towards the corner of the hull that they were nearest to. Without rising or falling, the landing legs were retracted into the hull of the ship, and it drifted slightly in the wind, a motion that was corrected by two of the purple emanations becoming more angled to the side. The purple glows became brighter, more intense, but still undefined. The ship rose, slowly at first, the front rising faster than the rear. And there, at a point where the ship was getting to an angle of about forty-five degrees, a stronger glow broke out from the rear of the ship, and it burst forwards and upwards. The camera that the view was coming to the screen from was looking upwards at an ever increasing angle, until the point where the zoom could no longer keep up with the accelerating ship as it disappeared beyond the scattered clouds.

After a few moments the view shifted to look down upon a world that Jonathon knew he would never return to. In the brief instant that it took to look at the whole of the screen, Jonathon had seen more of his world than he had ever seen in his whole life. But this view, however epic, did not satisfy Jonathon. It lacked the beaches, the grains of sand, the faces of the people… of Linda.

But it was no use thinking of her, and however long her face lingered in his mind, what may linger longer would be the decision they had made. To say good bye, once and for all. To admit to them selves no chance of being reunited. They had released each other with a final embrace, a few tears, and a mutual agreement to turn around and never look back. It didn’t mean that they had to loose contact, it did mean that the bond became just a friendship, even if it didn’t feel like it. It was better that way, ending the romance before the distance could end it more painfully.

A fair fraction of an hour past while Jonathon just sat on the sofa, the woman from the ship’s crew long departed and the rest of the family settling in for a few nights stay. Jonathon maintained his view of the screen, watching the dark side of his world pass below, collections of light indicating the only cities on the planet.

The ship sped on, up towards an orbit that allowed it to catch the largest construction in the system, a giant ring two kilometres in diameter. A gate through the fabric of space to any place in the universe where there was another such ring. Light years of distance travelled in the space of a few hours rather than decades. The moment that they past through was the moment when everything went dark. The screen, the room lights and a distant hum that had not been noticed by anyone before. Jonathon felt a hand take his.

‘Don’t worry Jon, mummy says this is meant to happen.’

His world was gone from him. That was it.

They spent perhaps hours in that darkness, migrating eventually to the bedrooms and the sanctity of slumber, little realising that it would be engineered that they would not wake up until they had arrived at their destination. When they finally rose from their beds, there was little time before they were ushered out of their room and along corridors towards the exits of the ship.

Jonathon stood holding his sister’s hand at the edge of the shuttle’s cargo bay, the large doors wide open. He looked out into unfamiliar territory. A huge room, larger than any he had ever seen before, like a massive hanger, with two further ships parked in it along with the Arta. It rose to a dome above his head, several placed the walls were windows, and he could see people looking down. Some were at tables eating, it looked like there was a restaurant. The people up there looked so normal. There were no outrageous fashions, no one seemed to be dressed up in strange silver clothing and only a few were in ridiculously short skirted dresses, and there were no cult-like robes, no indication of a strict social ladder that had to be obeyed. Everybody was just normal.

He went with his sister back towards his parents, his sister ran off and jumped up onto Jonathon’s father. They all boarded a little bus, perhaps an indication that the room outside the ship was even larger than Jonathon could tell. He followed the rest of his family up the aisle and sat behind them all. He hadn’t expected other people to follow them onto the bus, and was going to move to next to his sister when a girl his age sat down next to him. She was dressed in a little dress, and her eyes seemed to beam out at him.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Ena.’

‘Jonathon.’ He said.

‘Have you been here before?’

Jonathon shook his head.

‘Oh! You have got to let me take you to the beach!’

 

 

Copyright © 1999 Murray Evans
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"