The Unearthing (21 page)

“Yeah. Tobacco or pot?”

“You have joints?” Laura fished a pack off of her desk and an ashtray from the floor by her bed.

“I bought a pack last night,” She said, the smile suddenly fading.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Last night…” Laura replied, “God, last night seems so far away…another lifetime.” Laura choked on a sob and looked at her mother.

“I guess it was another lifetime, wasn’t it?” She said. Bloom went to her, hugging her tightly. There were fresh tears from both. Mark was dead. He was
dead
. They hadn’t seen each other in months, nearly a year and the last time she’d spoken to him it had been concerning the New Mexico survey. She and Laura cried themselves out, holding each other. It was a short tear fall and Bloom knew that like rain squalls before a storm, the real downpour was yet to come.

♦♦♦

Bloom woke early the next day, still working on the strange schedule kept at Groom Lake: Eighteen hours of work for three days, two days rest and three more eighteen-hour work days. The days started at five in the morning. The sun wasn’t even in the sky and Bloom was taking her morning run. Forty-five minutes later, she was back at Laura’s, showering. The schedule helped. The routine helped. It kept her distracted, kept her from thinking, kept her from remembering how she’d loved him so much, yet how at the end of their marriage she’d found she just wasn’t
in
love with him. It had broken her heart to admit it and broken his more when she’d told him. They’d been together fifteen years; fifteen glorious years. She had been in love with him once and for quite a long time, too. They’d met while she was still a cadet and he was a sophomore at Colorado State. The sex had been good and he’d proved himself to be quite the conversationalist. What had started as a beautiful friendship had blossomed into love. But he had always loved her more than she loved him. She regretted it but that was the truth. She’d wanted him to mean more to her, especially since he’d given her Laura. But she hadn’t been able to. She didn’t love him enough to stay married to him but she loved him too much to lose his friendship. He felt the same and he’d found it easier to adjust to staying friends with her than she’d dared hope. She’d expected him to hate her but he couldn’t. He fell into his work and discovered that archaeology was indeed his one, true love. She missed him. Oh, God did she miss him.

There were grim tasks ahead of her that day. Echohawk’s remains (as if the saccharine objectification used by the funeral director could make them forget it was Mark’s body) had arrived and for the sake of formality the immediate family had to confirm his identity. After that the there were linxes to send more to reply to and other matters, other problems to deal with. The members of the Ship Survey Expedition were coming in and although it would be good to see them and therapeutic to hear eyewitness accounts of what had happened neither Laura nor Bloom really wanted to deal with them. But the business of dying was tedious one for the living and there were things that needed their attention.

♦♦♦

They went to the funeral parlour together. Laura drove and Bloom smoked, the tobacco hurting her throat but calming her. She wanted to quit before they had to clone her new lungs. Although when Mark had had the surgery three years back it hadn’t slowed
him
down. She laughed; a single “huh” and a smiled crossed her lips when she thought of his resilience, his determination to return to work.

“What?” Laura asked.

“I was just thinking of your dad.”

“Oh,” Laura said, smiling, “He was great.”

“He was.” They pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot and were soon inside. After words of consolation from the funeral director, words that Bloom knew were well meant but suspected were also well rehearsed, they were taken to see him. They went down a flight of stairs behind a door marked “Staff Only” and into a small room that was softly lit and tastefully decorated in mind of being comforting as well.

“Please wait here,” The director said, “I’ll bring his remains out to you in a moment.” Then he was gone through another door that whisked open silently, sliding into the wall. Laura drew closer to Bloom and her mother put an arm around her waist.

“You don’t have to be here; if this is too hard,” Bloom said.

“It’ll be just as hard for you.”

“Laura, you don’t have to live up to some standard—”

“I know. But I need to be here with you as much as I need you to be here for me.”

“I feel the same, baby,” The door opened again and the funeral director came out. Behind him one of his assistants wheeled out a utilitarian black plastic coffin used simply to transport the dead to the funeral home.

“Oh, God…” Laura whimpered. Bloom drew her closer, her daughter clinging to her.

“Whenever you’re ready,” The director said. Bloom looked at Laura. Her daughter nodded and Bloom nodded to the director. He turned to the coffin and worked some hidden latch. Bloom’s insides fluttered, a fearful anticipation spinning her stomach. The lid of the coffin opened and there he was. Mark had a sheet drawn up to his chin, his eyes closed, his skin pale with death. It was his stillness, his
inanimate
presence that got to her. Her throat suddenly closed painfully, her eyes hurting from the pressure of tears building up in their ducts behind them, her mouth tightening in an effort to keep her composure. This time, it was Laura who was bearing up better:

“That’s him,” She said, her voice raspy, hurting.

“Would you like a moment alone with the deceased?”

“Yes.” Bloom choked. The funeral director made his way from the room, his assistant preceding him.

“Just press this button,press thع he said, pointing to a small white push plate in the wall beside the door, “When you’re done.”

“Thank you,” Laura said. The director left and uncertainly, hesitantly, Bloom and Laura let each other go, approaching the coffin and Mark’s body with ginger footsteps.

“Oh Mark,” Bloom said. She ran her hand down the side of his face, the outside two fingers of her hand just grazing his cheek. It had been her gesture, her touch. Her sign of love to him, going back to the very first night they’d lain together. He’d looked down at her, his face flushed, his eyes full of affection and her arousal had been deepened by that look. She’d been moved…so moved by what she’d seen in his eyes that night. Looking at him now she began to understand he was gone…that he’d never laugh again…never speak again…never smile that cocky, boyish, “I’ll always abide” smile again…never make love to her again. She knew damn well that after the divorce he’d slept with other women. She’d slept with other men as well. But they both always knew they’d always been able to turn to each other when they were in need. They always knew the other person would be there. But not anymore. He was gone, he was gone.

Laura touched his shoulder gingerly, before pulling away. She could gain no comfort, no solace from touching him, from seeing him. It only served to remind her that her father was gone. They’d never debate politics of philosophy again…never discuss archaeology, or her love, art history again. Gone were the summer fishing trips, the Kings games, the long, written linxes he’d send her from his digs, the long linxes she’d write him, talking about work, about school, about life in general. They’d been close. She’d always felt closer to her mother, having become an army brat and moved from base to base, but Laura and her father had formed a distinct friendship as she grew up. He’d accepted her as and treated her like an adult, never once the condescending patriarch. She was happy with the arrangement, her mother being the one she could turn to for parental comfort and guidance, her father the one who was a friend and an advisor of sorts. Now that was over. Now he was gone.

“Why?” she sobbed, crying again. It was a broad question. Why was her daddy dead? Why now? Why like this? Why couldn’t she keep from crying? Why did she want to stop crying at all? She looked at her mother who looked at her. They’d been alone with their grief. Now, they needed each other, again.

When they’d recovered, the downpour over but the storm not quite done, they summoned the funeral director again. He explained that his assistants would prepare the deceased and told them when visiting hours would be. They thanked him, took his platitudes in stride and then left, heading for their next promise to be kept at the airport, with the SSE. Bloom knew that she’d had her hard cry now. There’d be more tears of course. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow night as well. She knew the flood of emotions would come again at the funeral, but she also knew that the deluge, the painful storm of tears, of acceptance of loss was done. Mourning was now becoming healing. Cold comfort, but it was nonetheless something to cling to, in the ocean of tears.

“We have a little time before their plane touches down,” Bloom said, “Do you want to have a coffee and something to eat first?”

“Yeah,” Laura replied, “God knows I could really use a cigarette.”

“Know somewhere with a smoking area? In
this
town?” Los Angeles’ antismoking bylaws were notorious, making it illegal to smoke anywhere besides someone’s home or car. There were few exceptions to the ban.

“Oh, yeah,” Laura said, “I know a place.”

♦♦♦

The boarding ramp pulled away from the jump plane and it taxied out to the launch field. The surviving members of the SSE sat together aboard the plane. Everyone was silent, talked out. There was nothing new to say, no new emotion left to express with regards to Echohawk’s death and it was still far too soon to really change the topic without seeming forced. James looked out the window as the plane finished taxiing. Below, struts were coming up from the launch pad and connecting magnetically to the underbelly of the jet. The landing gear was then retracted and the plane readied for launch. All this was audible inside the plane as a series of thunks and thuds. A moment later the horizon outside James’ window tilted sixty degrees as the plane was elevated into launch position. The humming cycle of the plane’s powerup for takeoff was heard. The FASTEN SEATBELTS sign stayed on and with a thunderous roar the plane launched into the sky. In less than an hour they’d be in Los Angeles. James watched as the Ship retreated away beneath them, still dominating the horizon even as the jump plane reached its low-earth orbit cruising altitude and levelled off. As the plane banked he watched the Ship retreat across the horizon; he got an impression on what it must have looked like in flight. James wasn’t just leaving behind the Ship; he felt as though he were abandoning Echohawk’s life as well. It felt wrong to be going, as if in their departure from this place they were making the Prof more dead. The man had died in his arms. James had never seen anyone die before. He hoped to never see anyone die again. One minute Mark Echohawk had been laughing, smiling, alive. In the next he was meat; all traces of the man he’d been were gone. James was still trying to make sense of it. He thought he’d felt…sensed
something
when Echohawk died, but he couldn’t be sure. Was it some spiritual fare thee well, a comforting goodbye from the great beyond? Or was it James’ own hysterical mind, trying to cushion the blow of Echohawk’s death and the inevitability of his own? He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure. James had been raised Catholic; raised to believe in the afterlife. He’d also been raised to believe that a faithful person should have no doubts, especially when someone died. And yet he had doubts. He had nothing but doubts. James looked to his faith when Echohawk died and had found it lacking.

♦♦♦

They met the flight from New Mexico under the scrutinous eye of security and a not too small and always-hungry division of media. The World Ship Summit had arranged for both transportation and accommodation in Los Angeles for the SSE, but running the gauntlet at LAX, even with the assistance of security, was daunting. In their exuberant haste to report the facts, several media outlets identified Bloom and Laura as “...Persons unknown, accompanying the Ship Survey Expedition on their way to meet with Echohawk’s surviving family members.”

Only INN had the facts straight on the identities of the two women during those crucial first moments when news broke. Further to that only INN and a handful of other news organizations had the good taste to restrict their presence in the airport to the officially set-up media zones.

It was agreed, for the sake of their privacy, that Bloom and Laura would accompany the SSE to their hotel; Laura refused to return to her apartment once Bloom threatened to use her sidearm on any reporter so tasteless as to assault the sanctity of her daughter’s privacy at home.

They were together in the sitting room of one of the small suites the World Ship Summit had arranged for the SSE’s accommodation in Los Angeles. James and Peter sat across from Bloom and Laura. Aiziz, Kodo and Andrews stood to either side of the group, drifting in and out of focus on the narrative going on in front of them, at times wanting to hear what was being said, at other times wishing not to have to hear it, at all.

“I want you to tell me exactly what happened,” Bloom said, intently, calmly, trying to be clinical, analytical. She tried to pretend that Mark’s life was just another plane crash; that the specifics would lead her to some insight, to some understanding of what had happened and why. Peter took a breath and hesitated.

“I still don’t really know what happened,” He said, “It was like the guy appeared out of nowhere. We never even saw him coming…we were all pretty out of it and just trying to get back home.”

Laura shuddered and suppressed a sob.

“Laura, you don’t have to stay, if—”