Starship Coda Read Online Free PDF

“You have quite a view from here. I’d like to take a walk to the end of the peninsula.”
    I escorted her from the ship, across the lawn, and through the alien ferns to the very tip of the headland. The ocean stretched, shimmering, to the distant horizon.
    I flapped at a dragon-fly that was hovering close by, aware that Sally was watching me closely. She sat on a rock and patted it. “Sit down next to me, David. Remember how we liked to sit side by side in the early days, staring out across the straits to the mainland…Ironic, wasn’t it.”
    I remained standing, staring down at her. I found a palm tree and leaned against it. “Ironic?”
    “That, years later, the straits would be where our daughter
    died.”
    Oh, Christ, I thought, here it comes…
    “I thought it wouldn’t be long before you brought that up,” I said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
    She held my gaze. “Not at all. I came to see you and…”
    “Yes?”
    “I wanted to ask you about the film.”
    “Which one?” I said. “There were three made, after all.”
    “Two of them were cheap trash—”
    “All three, in my opinion, were cheap trash.”
    “But the Carmichael version garnered resounding accolades.”
    I smiled, despite myself. It was odd to hear such words from the mouth of a child. I said, “Even Carmichael’s film got it all wrong.”
    She looked up at me, her tanned arms embracing her tanned legs, her eyes a startling blue. The sight of her wrenched at something deep within me, echoing subconsciously, perhaps, with buried memories of similar occasions with my daughter all those years ago.
    “I’m very interested in how you achieved…closure, David. How what you went through, here…” she indicated the bay to our right, “helped you overcome your guilt.”
    I stared at her, my expression set, determined not to give her the satisfaction of seeing how much her words hurt.
    When I remained silent, she went on, “The first film claimed that the Yall apparition entered your mind, altered something within… even erased the memory of our daughter’s drowning.”
    “Rubbish!” I said. “The Yall would never stoop to such an easy…”
    “And the second film,” she went on, “suggested that you, ever the hero, the Opener of the Way, after all, had no guilt to assuage. You did your best to save our daughter, jumped in after her and risked your own life, to no avail…But then that film was the worst of the three. While the Carmichael…”
    I wondered how much more of this I could take. I leaned against the tree, trembling.
    “I think of all three, the Carmichael came closest to the truth,” she said, “when it portrayed you as a washed-up failure, an alcoholic plagued by guilt at allowing our daughter to drown. Only the accidental fact that you bought the Mantis ensured your fame—it might have been anyone who came into possession of the ship and was called upon to ‘Open the Way’.”
    I shrugged. “And in that I agree. The Yall would have used anyone, in the circumstances—but I was far from a washed-up alcoholic, as you put it, or a failure.”
    “In the Carmichael film, David, you assuaged your guilt by saving the life of Matt Sommers, before the alien woman, his old lover, could shoot him dead. In that way you achieved some kind of closure…or so the film would have it.”
    I stared at her. “What does it matter how I ‘achieved closure’?” I sneered. “Surely you couldn’t give a damn?”
    “Of course I could!” she snapped, exhibiting unusual anger. “I want to know…because I have my own theory—”
    “And that is?”
    “I think that you’ve never got over what happened. You see, I think the guilt still festers inside you.”
    I pushed myself away from the tree and strode to the rocky drop three metres away. Far below the ocean shattered itself against the shore, over and over. I turned to the woman in the child’s body and said, “You’re quite wrong. I did get over