FOUR

QUALITY TIME

The cruise ship Caronia was three days from Southampton, returning from a two-and-a-half week excursion. The ship made stops in Corfu, Ibiza and Lisbon as part of its “Jewels of the Mediterranean” cruise. It was a tour package that only the most financially well-off could afford. The Caronia offered all manner of lavish amenities – in-suite hi-def entertainment centers, a putting green, hair salon, massage therapists -- but still retained a dignified splendor many other cruise lines simply didn’t offer. Each voyage carried far fewer passengers than the Caronia was designed to accommodate, ensuring that every tourist who spent their vacation on board it would have more than ample room to breathe.

Alec Parry, though, felt he was suffocating.

The young man leaned his elbows on the smooth railing that girded the Caronia’s verandah deck. He had taken off his sandals, feeling the equally smooth teak wood of the deck’s surface under his feet. The weather was mild and uninteresting that afternoon. He daydreamed of requisitioning one of the Caronia’s lifeboats in the dead of night, setting off to find an mystical tropical island populated entirely by attractive native girls and maybe a pirate or two.

He wanted off that bloody cruise ship.

A pair of headphones clung to his neck, and those were attached to a digital music player in Alec’s pocket. He slipped the phones onto his ears and reached into his pocket, feeling for the random play button. He didn’t care which of the thousand or so songs stored in the player would come up first. He just wanted to distract himself. More than anything, he didn’t want to speak to his father, Will Parry, who was more than certainly looking for him.

He would need to hide again, and was running out of new hiding places. He left his present location in search of more secluded environs. He had tried hiding out in some of the busier parts of the ship – a few of the onboard restaurants, and in one of the seating areas of the ship’s cabaret shows – but he was either thrown out or quickly found by his father. Alec didn’t want to resort to hiding in cramped, uncomfortable places, but if he wanted to be successful, he’d need to get creative.

Alec approached the outdoor pool area. A few people were splashing and sunning themselves, while others soaked in an adjacent Jacuzzi. He’d been there a few times during the trip; he tried hiding in the pool once, underwater, attempting to hold his breath for several short intervals to keep out of sight of his father. Alec wasn’t even sure if Will was looking for him, but he went through the entire trip acting as if his father was.

Too many people here, Alec thought. Can’t be seen hiding. That was something else to worry about. He knew his father had employed the help of the ship’s hosts to search for him, and those hosts would ask the passengers if they’d seen a boy of his age. There were only a few other boys on board, and few matched Alec’s physical description, so the chances of one of the them being mistaken for him were scant.

Alec nonchalantly fiddled with his music player, trying keep anyone from noticing him as he inched closer and closer to a deck chair storage area. He glanced around quickly, and pushed his way in. There was little hiding room in the cramped space, which was essentially a glorified closet outfitted with four dim service lights.

There wasn’t much chance to move or sit for that matter, but Alec was determined. He tried finding a comfortable position, pressing his back up against the storage area’s wall. He sank a bit, resting his knees on the soft padding of one of the folded deck chairs. He turned up the volume on his player and closed his eyes. He didn’t care if his father was worried about him, or if his father had stopped looking altogether. He didn’t care how he’d be found either, since he knew he’d be found eventually. He just needed to be alone for a while.

“Alec Parry. He’s my son. Twelve years old, dark hair, about this high.” Will held his hand in front of one of the Caronia’s hospitality hosts. This was the fourth time since they’d left Lisbon that Alec had gone missing, though Will was fairly hopeful that his son would turn up within the hour. He was just doing the responsible thing a father did whenever his preteen son couldn’t be found when he wanted to speak to him.

“Sorry, Mr. Parry. Haven’t seen the young man, but I’ll spread the word and keep the eyes open.”

Will half-smiled and half-frowned at the host, and nodded his appreciation. “Thank you. I’m sure he’ll show eventually.” The host gave Will a friendly, professional salute and left.

Will was on the other end of the boat from where Alec was, near the Caronia’s bow. He and Alec had maintained a reasonable facsimile of civility for most of the cruise, and that was a major step for the both of them. The hostility, more often than not, went from Alec to Will, with the father weathering many of the son’s outbursts and unkind words. Will knew he had to be patient with Alec, particularly on this trip. He knew Alec didn’t like the idea of being stuck on a ship for the better part of a month with his father, and no one else to talk to, and Will wasn’t sure how to make his son feel better about it. But Will knew he had to take this trip with his son. He knew it wouldn’t be the relaxing diversion it was for most passengers, and hadn’t approached this trip as such a thing in the first place. If he was to make progress in his relationship with his son, he may as well tour the Mediterranean while doing it.

No, Will knew that his son would reveal himself whenever he was good and ready. He gave up the search and headed back to he and Alec’s suite. It was the Caronia’s Carmania Grand Suite, a two-level duplex on the bridge deck with separate private verandahs. Will offered to take the living room portion of the suite and sleep on the couches, but Alec felt Will’s offer was just an obvious attempt to create the illusion of giving Alec some privacy. How nice of him to sleep in the couch. Does he want me to feel sorry for him? Why didn’t we just get separate rooms? Will purposefully booked them both in the same suite—he didn’t want there to be too much distance between them. Alec resented whenever his father tried to please him with expensive gifts, but upon seeing just how luxurious his half of the suite would be, Alec didn’t say another word.

Will swiped his keycard through the scanner on his suite’s door, and entered once the scanner’s light turned green. Will found his daemon Kirjava sunning herself on the private verandah that opened from Will’s half of the suite. Much to Will’s chagrin, there were many things he simply hadn’t yet brought himself to tell Alec. One of those things was the concept of daemons; that everyone had a daemon, and how one learned to see their own. He’d wanted to tell Alec when he was younger, but, frankly, there had never been the right time to do it. At least, that’s how Will felt. And it wasn’t that he thought Alec was incapable of understanding, but rather, as felt told himself time and again, for reasons reasonable and questionable, there was never a good time.

That would all soon change, though.

Will was planning on tell Alec all about daemons, and Lyra, and the angels, and the Authority, and the Land of the Dead – everything – and he planned to tell on this trip.

But, there were only a few days until they arrived in Southampton, and Will couldn’t procrastinate forever.

Will had left the sliding glass door open for Kirjava. His daemon was watching the spreading waves made by the grand ship’s wake, wondering what it would have been like to be a fish or dolphin daemon, if only for a little while.

Kirjava heard Will enter and trotted inside. Will plopped down on the sofa, nearly sighing to the point of total deflation.

“He’ll turn up,” Kirjava said to Will, as she nestled by his side.

“You sound as if I think he won’t. He’s only ever gone for a few hours, anyway.”

“Admit it, Will. You’re just a little afraid he’d go vanishing altogether, aren’t you?”

“I fear the thought of such a thing, but the probability of it is something altogether different. There’s only so many places he can be on this ship. I am a bit dismayed by the ineffectiveness of the Caronia’s crack team of hospitality hosts in finding him.”

Kirjava chuckled. “I don’t believe they’ve had any detective training, have they?”

“I should have inspected their resumes before we came,” he retorted. Will lay there, breathing deeply. He closed his eyes. “I’ve gone out of my way to give him room, Kirjava. I have, haven’t I?”

“Without a doubt, Will. But if he wants to feel like he’s being crowded, he’ll turn anything you do into something that crowds him.”

“Quite right, quite right.” Will yawned. He was surprised at how exhausted he felt. Stress could deplete the body of energy, regardless of whatever additional stimuli the body is exposed to in the meanwhile. And Alec was depleting Will of his energy something fierce. “I told him this morning that I wanted to meet with him for dinner.”

“Did he say yes?”

“He didn’t say no. He just nodded, I think, and said something about going to the pool. Of course, I checked the pool a while later, and he wasn’t there.”

“Right.”

Will scratched his chin. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t say no.”

All vacation, Will tried to strike the right balance between letting Alec alone and finding things for the two of them to do together. It hadn’t always gone smoothly. While in Corfu, Alec told his father he wanted to go windsurfing. Will told him he was too young go it alone. Alec protested, of course, making quite a scene. Will knew Alec probably could have done it himself without adult supervision, but what sort of a father would allow such a thing? So the two were at a stalemate. With only five hours or so before the Caronia would disembark from the island, Will suggested they take a short cab ride to the Byzantine fortress of Aggelokastro north of Corfu, hoping Alec might find such a thing interesting. Alec declined. Will even offered to browse the various shops and sights near the port with him, buying him anything he liked. Alec marched back to their suite on the Caronia, watching movies on his personal in-room entertainment center.

At present, Will hoped to meet with his son for dinner at the ship’s Franconia Restaurant. Neither of them would have to say much to one another. Will wouldn’t ask his son what he’d been up to, as he knew that would only irritate Alec further, and he wouldn’t even scold him for going off like he did. Will only wanted to do something together that they both agreed to do, just so Will could say he’d tried and succeeded. And, maybe, if Alec wanted to open up a little, Will would be there to listen. But Will held out little hope for that. Trying to get his son at the same table as him would be challenge enough.

Alec, meanwhile, was losing his ambition to stay put. It was getting hot in there with the chairs and little air to breathe, and he’d heard all the songs on his player before. Grudgingly, he emerged from his hideout and ventured back onto the verandah deck.

Like his father and grandfather, Alec was a fellow whose interests and talents were diverse and plenty. Alec read assorted action and sci-fi novels, and liked football too (well enough to watch it on television, but not enough to try out for any school football team). He even had taken a liking to art in school – Will placed a few of Alec’s best watercolors on the living room wall at home. Alec also loved music, and had considered taking up an instrument, namely piano – until he discovered his father had played at one time.

He considered for a moment going to the ship’s computer learning centre and browsing the internet, but you needed to check in to do that, and who knew how quickly he’d be found then? He decided instead to revisit the ship’s library and book shop. He’d disappeared there a few times, and liked reading anyway. If his father found him there, at least he wouldn’t be accused of wasting his time in an unconstructive fashion.

Alec hid behind a group of three women who were entering the library at the same time he was. He made sure not to look over at the library desk attendant, even though he was curious to see if he was being watched. He soon lost himself among the aisles of bookshelves, quickly grabbing an oversized book to hide behind once he’d found a seat. The large book he’d selected was full of illustrations of World War II aircraft. Alec wished there were a few books that size on a subject he was more interested in, but none were available. Better find something to read while I’m behind this thing, he thought. Alec grabbed another book, this time an uncharacteristically dog-eared copy of Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. He’d read the first book in that series, Ender’s Game, earlier in the year, and had been meaning to read Speaker, the first sequel, for a while. Now was as good a time as any. Alec was struck by how tattered the book was, given the high standards he’d noticed in all areas of the ship. He found a corner of the library well-hidden from the main entry, and set about reading the one book as he hid behind the other.

* * * * * * * * * *

Twenty fives earlier, in the weeks after saying good-bye to Lyra Belacqua in the Botanical Garden in Oxford, Will Parry and Mary Malone had many difficult decisions to make. Will retrieved his mother from kindly Mrs. Cooper, who said his mother hadn’t been much trouble while he was away, and just where had he been all this time, but no, it wasn’t any of her business, and Will thanked her for her time and took his mother home. Mary set about clearing up all of Will’s difficulties with the local authorities, and then took stock of what remained of her research and her life. She and Will were now friends, and knew they would be for the rest of their days.

Mary knew that Will would have difficulty taking care of his mother alone, young as he was, and that he’d need a functioning adult presence in his life. After a bit of discussion on the matter, and a lot of consideration, Will and Mary both felt it would be best if she moved in with him and his mother. The idea seemed a little awkward to Mary at first, but she reminded herself that she’d be spending much of her time talking with Will about their experiences, and, happily, she wouldn’t have to pay much rent at the Parry house – certainly less than she’d been putting up each month for her own flat. There was plenty of room at the Parry house for her and her things, and above all, Mary didn’t really want to be alone.

One of the most important things that happened once she moved in with Will and Elaine was that Mary became a provisional legal guardian of Will, and only until he was legally an adult under British law. This was a necessity. After all, there’d be many instances where he would need to refer to an able-bodied and sound-of-mind adult figure for authorization to do certain things, and with Elaine in her present state, Mary filled the bill perfectly. Elaine didn’t say much about it, but what little she did perceive of the arrangement, she didn’t seem to mind. Somehow, she knew it was in Will’s best interest.

Mary felt sorry for Elaine. A pang of empathy went out for Will’s mother the first time Mary laid eyes on her, seeing her confused stare and her loving gaze at Will. Mary promised to help his mother the best she could, all the while not entirely sure of how to proceed with her own future. On a certain level, Mary felt slightly inconvenienced by the arrangement, but felt guilty over such thoughts, and thought no more of it.

Will was contemplating what to make of his own future, and how his mother and Mary would play a part in it. His task was to help build the Republic of Heaven in his own world, and the first thing he did was to clarify, for himself, exactly what that meant and how he would go about doing it. The concept of the Republic of Heaven was a place where everyone lived in the here and now, living life to the fullest, treating everyone with kindness and respect and dignity, ensuring the best life possible for all. He remembered, too, that there were more specific responsibilities he had been entrusted with. One of them was telling as many people as he could about the Land of the Dead, and how it was important for everyone, after they died, to tell the true stories of their lives to the harpies they would eventually meet in the afterlife.

That, Will realized, would be one of the thornier aspects of his work. He thought about more practical methods of building the Republic.

He felt that, no matter what course of action he’d take, something needed to be done that would benefit everyone in such a way that they wouldn’t object to, or even realize, what he was trying to do. Will lived in a world that wasn’t receptive to many of the commonplace aspects of Lyra’s world; no daemons, no witches, no talking polar bears. No knowledge of Dust. Will’s world was closed off to such things, and he knew that revealing even a little of it would be at best ignored and disbelieved, and at worst reviled and feared. What, then, would he do?

Will and Mary took full advantage of the fact that no one from their world could see their daemons unless they were shown how. After Will had visited the Land of the Dead with Lyra, he’d finally encountered his daemon Kirjava in physical form. The journey through the Land of the Dead had endowed him and Lyra with the witch-like ability to be away from their daemon for long periods of time, and tolerate being separated by great distances if the situation called for it. Despite this ability, Kirjava accompanied Will most everywhere he went. Mary didn’t have Will and Lyra’s special ability, but it mattered little, as no one could see her daemon, either.

After going over what was needed to start his work on the Republic of Heaven, Will knew he would need to take care of his own life first. Take care of his mother. Go to school. See to his own needs. Was that being selfish? No, it was living in the here and now. Building the Republic of Heaven. The right way to start.

And all the time he was thinking these things, he was trying not to think of Lyra. He’d only just seen her a short time ago, felt her lips against his, stood there in the garden with her tears intermingling with his own. He knew it would be a while before he could think of other girls, and would thankfully be too busy for it anyway.

Will returned to school. He attended Westgate, a co-educational secondary in the town of Slough. He knew that his future, and his mother’s future, depended on his success in school and beyond. He’d need to get a good job to support her. But he found, ironically, that her illness was becoming a serious distraction.

A year or so passed, and things hadn’t improved. Elaine became confused more easily; her speech, when she did speak, was disturbingly broken and random. Occasionally, Elaine did not even recognize Will. The money in his mother’s bank account was swiftly running out, and Mary, who had taken a short-contract consulting job for a local aerospace firm, did not have the resources to treat Elaine with any appreciable care.

“Do you suppose it’s the Specters?” Will said to Mary one evening after she’d come home from work. “I mean, if it is, perhaps one of the angels could help her out? But if it isn’t, if it’s something worse…what can we do?”

Mary had wondered the same thing. She could offer no better answer.

“The first thing we need to do,” she said, “is take her to see a doctor. Then we can worry about what needs to be done.” Will was glad Mary was with him, offering him not only friendship but another mind with which to solve life’s problems. Of course he had his daemon Kirjava, his very soul to keep him company, but Will had lived his life accustomed to human company, and that was something he and Kirjava knew would never change.

Having only consulted various medical books on the subject, Will and Mary assumed that, excluding the possibilities of Specters, Elaine’s problem was a variation of paranoid schizophrenia. They also noted in their own research that there was no single definitive method of diagnosing schizophrenia -- only several very good means of guessing, and that those means are usually correct in their diagnoses. Methods included analyzing answers to questions asked of patients suspected of being schizophrenic, observed and recorded behavior of the patient, and, most definitively, an MRI scan. Even then, MRI scans may reveal brain formations that can exist in non-schizophrenic patients.

Once they’d finished with their own research did Will and Mary take Elaine to a neuropathologist. As Mary was now Will’s guardian, Elaine could be diagnosed as mentally ill without the fear of Will being taken away from her.

The neuropathologist, one Dr. Nigel Greenfield, performed the MRI scan. Once the results came back, he rang up Will and Mary and shared the results with them.

“It would seem from the scans that Elaine does not have schizophrenia. Though, I am afraid to say, my colleagues and I detected the earmarks of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease in your mother’s brain.”

Dr. Greenfield gave his condolences to Will, but reassured him with a litany of new treatments for Alzheimer’s, as well as a stack of pamphlets designed to help make his mother more comfortable.

What Dr. Greenfield did not provide, though, was a cure.

Will and Mary were somewhat relieved that it wasn’t Specters after all. Maybe the need to count leaves and stones and slats, as Elaine had exhibited for some time, was some innate action the brain told the body to execute when dealing with a threat it couldn’t seemingly handle: Tullio, the young man from Cittagazze, counted stones when he was attacked by a Specter; Elaine, it seemed, had Alzheimer’s to blame for the same action.

Dr. Greenfield explained further that the Alzheimer’s was causing her brain to physically resemble the brain of a child. It is understandable, he said, that Will and Mary thought Elaine might have had schizophrenia, since many of her symptoms resembled that of schizophrenic patients.

Drugs were prescribed for Elaine to treat the Alzheimer’s: aricept, exelon and reminyl, each to be taken a few weeks apart from one another on a trial basis, to most efficiently verify which of the three was having the greatest effect. Dr. Greenfield reminded them, however, that all the drugs would do is slow the progress of her Alzheimer’s, and not completely stop it. “They increase the amounts of neurotransmitters in the brain, but that’s all. And,” he added gravely, “the physical damage to Elaine’s gray matter has already be done.”

Will and Mary understood, and started the treatment themselves. When the drugs were administered, however, a horrifyingly unexpected result occurred.

Elaine’s confusion and panic became much, much worse.

Each time a small dose of the drugs was administered, Elaine flew into a frenzied state of panic, touching every wall of the Parry house, crawling and touching every step. She would remove and replace the eggs in the fridge, breaking most of them as she did so. She wailed incoherently, looking for a safe place to hide. Will and Mary could only wait for her to settle and try keeping her from injuring herself.

Why was this happening? Had she been given the wrong drugs? Mary made an angry call to Dr. Greenfield, and another to the chemists who had prepared the treatment, and learned that no, they’d been given the correct drugs and that they’d been supplied to Will and Mary in the correct dosage amounts. Mary hung up and told Will.

They stopped giving Elaine the drugs, and her panic attacks ceased immediately. They were now back where they had been a few months earlier.

While driving to work, Mary went over her and Will’s first conversation with Dr. Greenfield regarding Elaine’s condition. And the thing she remembered he’d said nearly made her swerve off the parkway.

…causing her brain to physically resemble the brain of a child…

…the brain of a child…

She turned around instantly, picked up Will at school (she wrote him a note excusing him early), took him home, and sat him down.

“That’s it!” Will exclaimed. “How could we not have seen it?”

Specters, Will and Mary remembered, had no effect on children; children, in fact, could not see Specters. Was it the Alzheimer’s that was actually staving off Specters that were plaguing her?

“It explains everything, Will! If she’s given the drugs, her brain functions more like a healthy adult brain! She’d be more likely to see it…or them…”

“But does that mean they weren’t bothering her before the Alzheimer’s started affecting her mind, or after? And why aren’t the Specters going after you or me?”
Mary paced the floor a bit. “Well, no one from your world can see Specters – neither of us can, and we can see our daemons!” Will and Mary’s daemons nodded in assent.

“Maybe it’s got to do with disease in this world,” Will ventured, “at least disease of the mind, anyhow. That is, people in our world just aren’t looking to see Specters or other things beyond their everyday comprehension; they’re not wired for it. Too many barriers in their minds. But if there’s something wrong with your mind…”

“Then maybe the Specters see that as a weakness! That makes sense, Will…I mean, if Specters just attacked any adults, we’d hear a lot more about people who just suddenly go all catatonic. They plague those with weakened minds. I wonder how many people have been attacked by Specters?”

“And no one would ever know it. They’d just think their illness took a sudden turn for the worse.”

“But there’s a difference with your mother, isn’t there, Will? If it is Specters that are plaguing her, then doesn’t that mean her illness not only attracted the Specters to her, but are keeping them from completely destroying her at the same time?”

Will shuddered at the prospect. What his mother must have gone through for so long. Must be going through now. He and Mary realized the painful truth of Elaine’s situation: if her Alzheimer’s continued unabated, she would most certainly die within a decade or sooner; but if the dosage of the drugs were to increase, she might be made totally vulnerable to a successful Specter attack.

“They’re just waiting for her to cave in. Like circling vultures, they are.” Will wanted to vomit. “I suppose it is Specters that make her count leaves and bricks and things. Damn them all.”

“We don’t know if Specters are really part of it yet,” said Mary, attempting to echo her words from before they knew of Elaine’s Alzheimer’s. But she and Will both knew there could be no other answer. All they needed was absolute confirmation. For that, they would need additional help.

An angel.

After a short period of intense concentration, the angel Xaphania appeared before Will and Mary. Their daemons stepped back knowingly. They’d seen this angel once before. Elaine also seemed to see the angel and, to everyone’s wonderment, didn’t appear particularly shocked by her presence; in fact, her face displayed a look of comfort and relief.

“Hello, Xaphania,” Will said. “Thank you for coming,”

“It is good to see you again, Will. And you, Mary.” They all knew they could not spend much time on small talk. After their greetings, Xaphania turned to Elaine and took a few steps towards her.

The angel froze. She was visibly distraught.

“You were both right,” said Xaphania, having obviously heard Will and Mary’s thoughts on the matter. “There is a Specter within your mother, Will. And there are several near by… I can’t see them… but I can sense them.”

Will needed to be held. He wanted to hold his mother, but feared the unseen Specter within her. But what had he to fear? He’d not been harmed by them, and she was still his mother, no matter what horrific damage had been incurred upon her by the disease and the evil entities. He looked at Xaphania, silently asking her if it would be alright from him to go to his mother. The angel nodded, and Will embraced his mother fiercely.

“Can you stop them?” Will pleaded to Xaphania. The angel sat down and told Will and Mary all that she could.

“Perhaps one of them, yes, but it seems as if the Specters are bent on destroying your mother. She’s been such a challenge for them. They’ve become obsessed with trying to bring her down, I feel. Even if I destroyed one of them, it would need to be outside your mother’s body. Attempting to do so otherwise might injure your mother further.” Will understood, though Elaine did not. She simply stared at the shimmering figure in the recliner across from her.

Xaphania went on. “And, assuming it is possible for the Specter to be removed—“

“Exorcised,” said Mary, unthinkingly, though no one seemed to mind her very accurate outburst.

“—from Elaine’s body, there would be several more there to take its place. And I can’t stay with your mother forever, nor can any other angel.”

Will let go of his mother. He knew Xaphania and the angels in charge couldn’t be guardians over his mother until her death, and he didn’t expect them to be, either.

“So the question is,” said Mary, “how do we make the Specters not want Elaine?”

No one spoke for a moment. Then, Xaphania made the point that whatever it was that had attracted the Specters to her in the first place would need to be eradicated. “You would need to remove the disease from her mind, completely,” said Xaphania. “But I myself can not precisely say how.”

Will boiled with frustration. It wasn’t fair. The Alzheimer’s was enough of a burden on his mother, and himself – why did it need to be complicated by Specters? Did they know somehow about his father, and him, and the things they had done? Was it all connected? He didn’t know, and he didn’t know if it even matter. He just wanted to save his mother.

“But,” Xaphania said to Will, knowing this thoughts, “I did not say it was impossible to do such a thing. All I can do is to guide the both of you, nothing more.”

Will looked at Xaphania, as did Mary, feeling with a spark of desperation. “What do you mean by that?” asked Mary.

“Your research, Dr. Malone. Did you destroy all of it?”

Mary didn’t understand why the angel had brought her research up. “Well, I smashed some items in the lab, and erased the lab computer’s hard drive…”

But she had backups of her research at home, as well as the original copy of the program she’d written to translate the Dust’s conscious energy into text on a computer screen.

“No, not all of it, I suppose,” Mary said.

“That is good to hear,” the angel said. “because you will need it to save Elaine Parry.”

Xaphania then turned to Will. “And you will need to study harder.”

The angel explained, as Will and Mary had suspected, that there was no choice but to not only find a way to drive out the Specter, but cure Elaine Parry of her Alzheimer’s.

“Is that what I’m going to have to do? Study medicine?” Will was unsure he’d be able to follow such a course of study.

“Learn all that you can, Will. You will need learn everything there is to know about the human mind, and how it is affected by your mother’s disease. To be successful, all the learning you must do will take you beyond your current schooling.”

“What does that mean? Am I supposed to visit the library after school and study?”

“I think she means you’re to become a neuropathologist, Will,” said Mary, a little unsure that that was Xaphania’s true meaning.

“I can’t say whether you will need to achieve the status of a doctor who specializes in brain disorder, but I do know you must follow a path that could lead you to that destination.”

Will shook his head. “Are you saying…what? I have to study myself silly, get into med school, and then maybe drop out? And from that, I’m supposed to find a cure?!”

“Your studies will only be part of the solution,” the angel calmly went on. “The knowledge you accumulate will help your mother. Mary’s work will be the other part of the solution.”

“Am I to rebuild the Cave, then?” Mary had a hard time believing the angel’s words. “At Oxford, we were barely scraping together the funding we needed just to maintain the machine! And most of the equipment was there before I even come onto the project. Where am I supposed to get everything I need?”

“You will find a way. Very soon.”

And with that, Xaphania vanished, leaving Will and Mary with their jaws left open and their heads spinning madly.

Will was conflicted as never before. He wanted to help his mother get better, of course, but the startling news – or were they orders? – that Xaphania had given them seemed impossible to achieve.

If there was no other way, then there was no other way. And in his heart, Will knew it wasn’t going to be enough to simply care for his mother; he had to make her better. To bring her back. He’d dreamed all along that he’d somehow cure her, but once he’d heard Xaphania tell him yes, that’s exactly what you have to do, the fear of failure became overwhelming. He wanted to run from his new burden.

But Will knew he couldn’t do that, nor would he ever. He’d never betray his mother, the woman he would gladly die for, whom he loved so dearly. In some way, Will told himself, I’m doing this to help build the Republic of Heaven. I’m making this a better world, not only for my mother but for Mary and myself, and where better to start than with someone you love more than anything in the world? Will vowed he would do everything he could to make his mother’s time left on Earth the best it could possibly be.

Mary was working out what would need to happen for she and Will to launch their two-pronged attack, and she came to an undeniable conclusion that they were going to need money. An obscene amount of money. If Will were to achieve the level of neuropathological knowledge Xaphania claimed he would need to save Elaine, he would need to pay to get into the right medical school; he was too old to attend any Preparatory Schools, and even with a scholarship or two, he would have to rely on money from a supplemental source. There was also the business of acquiring the proper equipment for Mary. She’d need to reconstruct the main Cave database, set up a new detector and amplifier, and hope that the speech software she’d written would work with whatever mismatched parts she could get her hands on. And of course, Elaine would require care in the meantime while Will and Mary struggled with their hefty assignments.

They knew what needed to be done. Now, they needed the means with which to do it.

As it turned out, Will had the answer to all their problems, wrapped up in a sock, lying patiently in his bottom dresser drawer.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alec was roughly seventy pages into the book when his stomach started to growl. He hadn’t eaten any lunch, and despite the decadently copious snacks available in the ship’s many eateries, he’d skipped having a snack as well.

He’d passed the point in the book where the character Novinha, a young woman living in a human colony on the planet Lusitania, had recently lost a family member, and requested a figure known as the Speaker for the Dead to come and tell the life story of her slain loved one. Alec thought of his mother, Emily, and the eulogy given at her funeral by his father Will. He remembered listening to his father’s tearful words, and for a brief moment wasn’t angry at his father. But that feeling passed with time, and Alec went back to blaming Will for his mother’s death, even to that day.

Alec decided he’d need to eat at some point, cursing his biological functions and their secret conspiracy to reveal his location. He wanted to check the book out, but that too would leave a trail. He creased the corner of page seventy-two, and placed the book between two other less raggedy books. He knew it would be easy to find if he wanted to read more later.

Will was taking full advantage of the onboard masseuse service, located in the European spa on C deck. He hadn’t had a massage all trip, or, for that matter, in several years, and once the masseuse had started softening his back muscles, he knew he’d been long overdue.

Lying on his stomach, Will went over in his mind the large steps he would soon undertake. He didn’t want to think of such things, not when his muscles were untying themselves so nicely, but his relaxation allowed to think with a clarity he’d not enjoyed in some time, either.

He had to tell Alec tonight. Everything.

Please, Alec, come to dinner tonight. I don’t know when else to tell you. Will had tried to tell Alec many times during the trip, and even before, but for one reason or another, Will couldn’t bring himself to do it. There’ll never be a perfect time, I know that. But some times are less imperfect than others.

After his massage, Will tipped the masseuse and wobbled up the steps to the Lido Deck. He stretched his arms in the warm early-evening weather and rested his hands on his hips. Turning to his left, Will spied a young man from the back, sitting at a table of the open-air Lido Café. He’d found Alec.

He wanted to call out to him, but knew that that might shoo him away. Instead, Will crept up on his son, while trying to seem like he wasn’t creeping at all.

“Hey there, son,” said Will softly but firmly, giving Alec a jolt. His son sagged in his seat a little as he munched on a raspberry croissant.

“Looks good. I haven’t had one of those yet,” said Will. He pointed to a chair at the table. “May I?”

Alec shrugged and focused on the croissant. Will didn’t ask what he’d been up to, even though he was curious. He drummed his fingers on the table a few times, thinking of what to possibly say next. Well, there’s nothing you can say that’ll please him…nothing pleasant, at least.

“So, are we on for dinner tonight? At the Franconia? Since we’re in the grand suite, we get one unhurried seating, you know.”

Alec chewed some more. “What’s that,” he said without really asking.

Will wasn’t sure himself. He figured it meant they could just walk right in and take a table, but the wait for a table on a ship not filled to capacity didn’t seem like much of a threat. “Don’t quite know, really. Probably just some fancy phrase they use…”

Will trailed off, sensing that his line of conversation was headed nowhere. He had to get Alec’s attention somehow. Make him want to be there.

“Alec, I’ve got some things to tell you, tonight. Important things. About me. And about you.”

Alec stopped chewing. He glanced warily at Will, wondering if his father was only saying that to make him do what he wanted.

“What things,” said Alec, mouth still full of pastry and raspberry filling.

“Well, I know you’ve had a lot of questions about your mother, and me, and my past. And I’ve never really told you, because I didn’t think you were ready.” No! That sounds like an insult, Will. “I mean, I didn’t think you wanted me to tell you.”

Alec sat up, admittedly curious. Will was getting his son’s attention.

“Why did you think that?”

“I don’t know, I just did.”

Alec looked back at the table, and resumed being angry with his father. So, his father had some things to tell him. So what? Why couldn’t he just tell him now?
“Why do we have to wait until dinner? What’s the big secret?”

Will stammered. He wasn’t sure. No; he was sure. Will wanted time to prepare; to have a moment he could look forward to, that he’d planned, when he could do it. Not here. Not in the open, not at the spur of the moment. And he wanted Alec to be in the right state of mind, too. And he tried telling his son all of this. Alec just shrugged.

“Alright, I guess,” Alec said. “What’ll there be to eat?”

Will smiled a bit. “Oh, most anything you like, I’m guessing, but I think the special will be something with steak involved.” Will swiftly produced a menu for that evening to prove it; Alec liked steak rather a lot, and he wanted to show Alec he wasn’t just mentioning steak as something to entice him into coming.

Alec looked at the menu and nodded. “What time,” he said.

“Seven-thirty,” said Will. “And we don’t have to dress up or anything like that.”

His son finished the croissant and shrugged again. “Fine, I guess.” He put his headphones back on and left the table.

Will sat there for a moment longer, and quickly left to find a spot where he could hide his face. He couldn’t be seen weeping in public.