“We cannot thank you enough, Zedock Wartimer, friend of the Tarsi.”

“My pleasure. You don’t know how good it does me to see you all again. Every night since you left I’ve wondered what in the hell happened. Then when it all went down and Alastor called all the Fulcrum stations back, I assumed the worst. Now, here you are, and I could even hug the Mendraga.”

“Why don’t you let me out of those cuffs then,” Thresha responded.

“Thresha, ease off the old man. He’s a friend,” Letho said.

“Well, that’s easy for you to say, considering you aren’t being taken into custody. And if this is how your friends treat friends, I would hate to see how they treat enemies.”

Letho considered reminding Thresha that the one who had sired her was their greatest enemy, but instead he opted for silence. Ultimately it proved a wise decision, as Thresha went back to staring blankly at the stone walls and the industrial materials that had been fastened to them to make them livable. Cheap plastics, alloys, and fiberboard tiles abounded. It was all a rather cloying pastiche, and the fifty-hertz whine of the fluorescents above was the icing on the cabin fever cake.

Zedock followed her gaze. “Looks a lot like the Fulcrum station, don’t it? Least the parts we lived in. You aren’t the first to notice that.”

“Yeah. Maybe they hired the same architect,” Letho said, chuckling to himself.

Zedock’s eyes twinkled at this. “Boy, I have so much to tell you,” he said.

At this Bayorn smiled and placed a hand on Letho’s shoulder. “We will go now. I would like to take Deacon with us, to administer Tarsi medicine. We will help him pass through this dark time, just as we did for you, not so long ago.”

“Yippee! More drugs!” Deacon shouted to no one in particular. “Captain, take me to the head promontory, so that I can evacuate my irritables!”

Maka chuckled and patted Deacon on the chest like a baby in need of a burp. Then they turned and began to head down the stairs into the welcoming cavern below.

Moments later, a cadre of soldiers arrived, wearing garb similar to that of the Fulcrum stationinspectors Letho had once tussled with.

“Sir, requesting permission to take custody of the prisoner,” the lead soldier said.

Letho’s stomach lurched as the moment that he had feared arrived. Numerous scenarios ran rampant in his imagination. He saw Thresha snapping her restraints and then the necks of the guards. He saw Zedock withering under her necromantic kiss, and last, he saw Saladin bringing an abrupt end to the drama, the final chords punctuated by the wet percussion of her severed head bouncing across the floor.

But none of these things happened, and the panic response released him, freeing Letho to see things as they truly were.

“Can I trust you lads to be gentlemen?” Zedock asked. “I know I’m asking a lot of y’all, but I need you to get her to a cell safe and sound. Can I count on you to do that for me?”

If he had asked them to tether an anchor to the moon and haul it back for him, the response would have been the same:

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Letho was in awe, and perhaps a little jealous of the outward respect the soldiers showed Zedock. How could a man inspire such all-encompassing loyalty in others? Letho had experienced this same loyalty himself; he had been ready to fight a war with a formidable alien race for this man, only shortly after meeting him.

Letho’s eyes turned to Thresha’s, and he was a little surprised to see that she was looking at him. He had that preternatural itch that said she had been doing so for some time.

“It’s okay, Zedock,” Thresha said, though her eyes remained locked with Letho’s. “I’ll be a good girl. Think you can fetch one of those pigs for me?”

“That all depends, m’lady,” Zedock said with an antique flourish that would have been outdated even a thousand years before. “Can you consume the aforementioned swine in an inconspicuous fashion?”

“You bet I can,” she said, licking her lips. Letho caught a glimpse of the feeding snake that lived behind her teeth, and his stomach soured.

“Well then, little lady, your wish is my command. Just try to make it last a meal or two, if you could. People ‘round here like their bacon.”

****

“So what was he like?” Letho asked.

“My pops? He was a hard-ass. He once backhanded me at the dinner table for talking back to him. The fact that I was right and he was wrong didn’t even enter his head-space.”

Letho’s and Zedock’s jaws had been loosened by the whiskey that had aged well beyond the advertisement on the bottle, and Letho’s belly was full of some old leftovers that Zedock had scrounged up for him and his mates. It was a veritable buffet of semi-fresh foodstuffs and stale bread. Letho slurped the juice left behind from a bowl of beans and then looked at Zedock, who had begun to stare deep into the middling distance where the videodocs of lost memories always seemed to play. Zedock reclined in a beaten cloth and plastic office chair, his boots propped on a formica desk that doubled as a meal prep counter. On the stone wall beside him, a galaxy of quartz stars glittered, and layer upon layer of stratified sediment told the planet’s ancient story.

“I’m not quite sure he ever liked me, though by honor and duty he was expected to love me,” Zedock said. “And on some level, I know he did. But I can still feel his hand on my cheek. He had big hands, Letho, like a giant’s.”

He paused, kicking his boots down from the surface of the counter, which groaned in appreciation. He extended his own hand, palm toward Letho, fingers splayed. Letho placed his hand against Zedock’s, felt the sandpaper vibrance of his skin, and surveyed the difference. Against Zedock’s hand, Letho’s hands were those of a child. Zedock’s father’s hands must have been enormous. Letho pictured a stumpy, paunched man, with hands twice too big for his own body, and chuckled. Zedock, taking notice of the considerable difference between the size of their hands, chuckled as well.

“Well, Letho. As my pops said, it ain’t the size of the vessel that matters, but the motion of the ocean. ‘Course that doesn’t seem to apply to you so much, since you seem to be able to make your own waves, despite what the ocean itself is doin’.”

They each withdrew their hands, and a comfortable silence settled upon them. After a moment, Zedock withdrew one of the Black Bears. It was Letho’s—he recognized the markings in the patina of the gun as one recognizes the wrinkles in one’s own skin. Zedock placed it on the cot near Letho, wheezing as he bent forward.

Time hadn’t been all that kind to Zedock. His skin hung like brittle paper, shot through with wrinkles and patches of discoloration. His eyes still sparked with fierce intellect, but they seemed to be perpetually floating in a soup of tears, as though he were constantly on the verge of crying.

“Thought you would like to have that back,” Zedock said, patting the gun, “but I didn’t want to dress Saul down like that in front of everyone. I’m sure you understand.”

“Too bad he didn’t extend that same courtesy to that soldier,” Letho replied.

Zedock sighed heavily, took a kerchief from his pocket, and dabbed beads of sweat from his forehead. “Maybe he was a bit hard on that kid, but this ain’t a world where you can be soft on people. Soft people get killed, Letho.”

“I’ve noticed. But you didn’t treat him that way. You can hold someone accountable without cutting them down.”

“You’re right. But you have to know that his heart is in the right place.” Zedock sighed, and his brow became furrowed. The skin around his eyes wrinkled in a way that gave Letho the impression that the age marks had in part formed while pondering this very issue.

“So, your son, huh? How’d that work out? How did I never know you had a son?”

Zedock’s eyes widened at the word “son,” and then he wiped away what appeared to be a tear at the corner of his eye.