Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(52)

But Auri is gone now, and Magellan is a broken collection of circuitry in Finian’s bag. I set that memory aside.

“You must have seen some amazing places,” Nari continues, unaware of my momentary lapse in attention. “I mean, all those alien homeworlds. You said there are hippos on one, right? I can’t believe hippos beat me to interplanetary exploration.”

I am unsure why, but I find myself wishing to remove the note of regret from her voice. “This is still a wondrous time to be alive. There is so much to be seen now that will soon be lost.”

“Like what?”

“That book, for example,” I reply, nodding toward the display case. “What an extraordinary thing to hold in your hand.”

“I guess so?” Her tone suggests I am humoring her, but this is not so.

“A book captures a story within its pages. Not like a specimen pinned out lifelessly for display, but vivid and alive. A whole world lies within the cover, a life waiting to be lived by each new reader.”

“You still have stories in the future,” she points out. “Though that’s more poetic than I expected from you.”

It is, perhaps, more poetic than I expected too. “We still have stories,” I agree. “But they live in the ether. The book in that display case represents something we will never know. Something … permanent.”

“Stories never die,” she counters.

“They do not. But in a book, you always know where to find them again. They have a home.”

There is something in my tone, on that last word—as I speak of something that has not been mine since I was a child.

Home.

She hears it, and turns from the door to regard me thoughtfully. A question is about to push past her lips, so I continue.

“You have also seen many places that are lost to us,” I say, leaning in to study the screen. “Strange as it sounds, I have never even been to Terra.”

“What, never?”

“Never,” I reply.

“That’s … kinda sad,” she smiles.

“REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”

I look her over, noting the way the light from the tempest outside highlights her features. Black and mauve pulses, gleaming in her eyes.

I should be working more swiftly on a solution to our quandary.

But I am drawn back once more to the idea of … home.

“Will you tell me about a place from Terra that you have visited?” I ask.

“Gyeongju,” she says immediately. “It’s this really cool city in Korea with all these historical protections put on it by TerraGov. It has these tombs hidden inside its hills, really well preserved—it used to be the capital of the kingdom that was there before it was called Korea.”

I turn back to the console, unraveling a series of menus and studying their contents, pushing through the woolly thinking of fatigue.

“I had not taken you for a history buff,” I admit.

“I’m not,” she admits. “It’s where my halmoni lives—my grandmother. So, you know, my family visits there sometimes.”

There is something easier about Nari’s manner than there has been on previous loops. She is facing the door once more as she keeps watch, but I can see her profile, that dark energy illuminating her skin.

My disobedient mind casts itself back to our last loop, after Nari and Finian fell asleep and Scarlett made herself comfortable beside me.

“Nari Kim’s growing on me,” Scarlett admitted softly.

“Finian would suggest that you can get a cream for that sort of thing,” I had informed her gravely.

She’d snickered. “She’s growing on you, too, Zila.”

“Oh?”

Scarlett’s tone turned sly. “She’s … not tall.”

I rue the day I spoke to Scarlett Jones about my taste in women.

“Zila?”

Nari’s voice recalls me to the present.

What were we discussing?

Home.

“You have a large family, Lieutenant?”

“Oh yeah, huge. But my halmoni still likes us all to report in every week. I swear she’s got a schedule, and if you miss your slot … It took a long, long time to convince her I can’t phone home from a black-ops posting.”

“And have you visited her often, in Gyeongju?”

“Every year, until I enlisted. Now it’s more like every second year.” Nari sighs. “It’s great there. I mean, I’m always sharing a room with half a dozen cousins, because we’re trying to cram so much family into her apartment. But there’s always so much food—she makes the best doenjang stew in Gyeongju, plus a dozen little dishes on the side, and that’s for an informal meal—and one of my cousins is a tour guide on Jeju Island. They’ve got this fruit there—huuuuuge citruses called hallabongs. Stupidly juicy, they end up all over you, but they taste amazing. I took my ex-girlfriend with me once, and I swear the only reason we’re still in touch is that she wants me to bring her back a box of them when I visit. Anyway …”

She trails off, perhaps aware she has spoken at length. Or perhaps—I am not skilled at divining such things—attempting to gauge my reaction to the mention of the ex-girlfriend?