47. Return

Bisesa gasped, staggered. She was standing.

Music was playing.

She stared at a wall, which showed the magnified image of an impossibly beautiful young man crooning into an old-fashioned microphone. Impossible, yes; he was a synth star, a distillation of the inchoate longings of pre-teen girls. “My God, he looks like Alexander the Great.” Bisesa could barely take her eyes off the wall’s moving colors, its brightness. She had never realized how drab and dun-colored Mir had been.

The softwall said, “Good morning, Bisesa. This is your regular alarm call. Breakfast is waiting downstairs. The news headlines today are—”

“Shut up.” Her voice was a dusty desert croak.

“Of course.” The synthetic boy sang on softly.

She glanced around. This was her bedroom, in her London apartment. It seemed small, cluttered. The bed was big, soft, not slept in.

She walked to the window. Her military-issue boots were heavy on the carpet, and left footprints of crimson dust. The sky was gray, on the cusp of sunrise, and the skyline of London was emerging from the flatness of silhouette.

“Wall.”

“Bisesa?”

“What’s the date?”

“Tuesday.”

“The date. ”

“Ah. The ninth of June, 2037.”

The day after the chopper crash. “I should be in Afghanistan.”

The softwall coughed. “I’ve grown used to your sudden changes of plans, Bisesa. I remember once—”

“Mum?”

The voice was small, sleepy. Bisesa turned.

She was barefoot, her tummy stuck out, fist rubbing at one eye, hair tousled, a barely awake eight-year-old. She was wearing her favorite pajamas, the ones across which cartoon characters gamboled, even though they were now about two sizes too small for her. “You didn’t say you were coming home.”

Something broke inside Bisesa. She reached out. “Oh, Myra—”

Myra recoiled. “You smell funny.”

Shocked, Bisesa glanced down at herself. In her orange jumpsuit, scuffed and torn and coated with sweat-soaked sand, she was as out of place in this twenty-first-century flat as if she had been wearing a spacesuit.

She forced a smile. “I guess I need a shower. Then we’ll have breakfast, and I’ll tell you all about it …”

The light changed, subtly. She turned to the window. There was an Eye over the city, floating like a barrage balloon. She couldn’t tell how far away it was, or how big.

And over the rooftops of London, a baleful sun was rising.