Time Enough for Tenchi, part 8: Time Enough for Returns
by Eaerth

The metal in the bay still rattled from the landing of
Ryoko's ship when she materialized outside it.  She was
almost as I remembered her.  A few years had passed for her
species in the 29 since I had last seen her.  She was still
an attractive, lithe woman, long legged and strong, but not
muscular.  She still dressed in hose and a loose-fitting
Juraian coat that did not conceal much.  Her angular face
and almond eyes still had the grim quiet anger they had held
the last years I had known her.  She looked maybe 30 years
old.  Most who saw her would be somehow frightened.

She looked across the bay and saw me.  Our eyes met, and
abruptly she turned away and stared at the side of her ship,
breathing heavily.  When several moments had passed, she
steeled herself, turned, and met us.

"Miss ... Ryoko," Oude said.  "I am glad you made it.  We
shall talk?"

"You are Oude?" she asked.  "Yes, then.  In private."

"I will be in this room," Oude said, waddling away.

Ryoko turned to Dr. Rosman.  "Takeshi," she said, bowing. 
"How are you doing?"

Rosman returned her bow.  "Lady Chancellor."

"Heh, yeah," she said.  "I will need supplies.  Food,
toiletries, if you can spare any."

"Aye, I think we can help you.  Will you need anything
else?"

"Just some time for my ship to heal.  We ran into galaxy
police near Proxima and she got a little banged up."

"Done."

"Thanks, Takeshi," she said and went to talk with the Tuvan. 
She said nothing to me, which I was thankful for.

				#

I didn't want to talk to her, but I watched her anyway.  I
didn't want to watch her either.  She was frightening.  She
hadn't changed.  You did not want to cross her, which I had
done.  She was punishing me by trundling a dolly loaded with
supplies over to her ship.  I felt like a boy of nineteen,
watching her.  I could hear the cold wind in the trees
around the shrine and my fists ached from pounding them on
stone.

Though no time had passed since she had left me, I wanted to
remember what she looked like and how she moved, so I
watched.

"Who's in the shadows there?" Ryoko called out.  "I won't
have spies."

I stepped into the light.

"Go away, Tenchi," she said.  "I don't want to talk to you."

"I need you to do something for me," I said.  I approached
her.

"Hah!  Fat chance."

"I need you to go to Washu's lab.  She stored it on Yumei
Five."

"Huh?  How do you know that?"

"I ... dreamed it.  I want you to bring me one of her lab
coats."

Ryoko peered at me.  "Tenchi, you're being strange.  I don't
have to put up with this.  Go away."

"Strange?  I suppose so.  But I wouldn't understand most of
her equipment.  It's all complicated and probably dangerous. 
And Washu didn't wear any jewelry or play with any ordinary
toys.  There's nothing I can associate with her, without
risking my life, except a lab coat.  She was so eager to
take them off in my presence, yet she rarely did.  It was
the only time in her life when she could be restrained.

"Almost.

"I need something to remember her by.  She was the first of
us to die, when she should have been the last.  She should
have lived forever, knowing science like she did.  She was
immortal.  That she died proved that this universe is
damned.  Washu will be forgotten now, but I must remember
her.  I loved her."

"Oh, I see," Ryoko said.  "You've gone crazy.  You must be,
if you think I'm going halfway across the galaxy so you can
remember your dear love Washu.  You're such a piece of shit,
Tenchi.  I see now that you always loved Washu, but you were
too much of a pussy to tell anyone about it.  So you strung
us all along, hoping, 'maybe it's me.'  I loved you but you
didn't care.  You were just waiting for me to go away on my
own.  Too bad it backfired on you."

"Of course I loved Washu.  But you have no right to be
jealous of my love for her, because I loved you too."  I
shouted the last, now that I was saying words I needed to
say for thirty years.  "You should have been happy that you
had my love and less concerned about who else had it.

"Washu doesn't deserve your hate.  She was a good woman.  I
deserve your hate, so hate me, but not her.  I loved her
like I loved all of you.  Washu was brilliant, Kiyone was
strong, Mihoshi was funny, Sasami was my best friend and
little sister, and you and Aeka were kin to each other,
though you wouldn't realize it; you both tried to be tough
but were so fragile.  You were all deserving of my love, so
you had it.  Except that you didn't want it.  You left the
day before I swore my love to you.

"But I suppose you stopped loving me months before.  One day
would not have made a difference.  I was too young.  There
is never time enough for youth, only for being old."

Time passed.

"It doesn't matter," Ryoko said, loading her ship.  "I've
never in my life been happy.  I've nothing to lose.  I've
never had anything to lose."

I turned and walked away.  When I turned a corner around
some equipment, I heard crying.

"Mihoshi?" I asked, moving to touch the crumpled figure on
the ground.

"Don't touch me!" she cried, slapping my hand away.

I started to leave.  "Wait," Mihoshi said, grabbing my pants
cuff.  Annoyed, I jerked my leg away and went to find
something else to do.

				#

"I don't know why I go along with this," I said over dinner. 
"You people are crazy.  Putting your life on the line to
depose an evil ruler, when you know that she'll just be
replaced by another despot.  Evil rises to the top.  It's
the natural order of things.  Oh, you might have a few years
of freedom, after the bloody escalation of course, but then
it'll be business as usual.  It's really not worth it.

"There's nothing worth going through so much trouble and
risking your life.  No amount of money, no lofty ideals,
nothing.  All things end in the same way.  They all end
badly.  It's pointless.  Nothing is worth this."

"What about love?" Mihoshi asked.

"Love is a gang rape," I said. "Everyone crowds around so
they can get it stuck in.  They say you really want it. 
They say you're always asking for it.  They'll force you to
beg for it.  But everyone just wants an excuse to take you
for everything you've got.  They want you deep, they want
you opened wide.  They want you so hard you cry with it. 
Crying makes everybody very excited.  And they want you to
remember it for the rest of your life."

As I spoke, I watched her face fall.  With each word, I
watched her become the unhappy Mihoshi she never shows to
anyone's face, and I watched her go beyond that, and it felt
good.  It felt good to bang against her happy illusion, to
tear it.  It felt good to break her spirits.  It felt good
to hurt her.

"It's best not to give people any openings," I said. 
"They'll use any and all they can find."

"Quite the charmer, Tenchi," Ryoko said.

I bolted back more sake.

"Damn Washu-chan for dying on Mars," I said.

"Doctor Washu Hakubi?" Rosman asked.  "She did not die on
Mars."

"*What?*"

"Washu died in warpspace, trying to reach a hospital.  On my
ship.  I was there when she died.

"Hmmm, it was about 30 years ago," Dr. Rosman continued.  "I
was leading the excavation of the Mars ruins.  One day, the
work shift was just starting.  Night was falling, and though
we'd set up a dome over the main work site, it was still
cold.  I started back to the tent to get a coat when I saw a
bright light in the distance, a strobe, outside the dome. 
It lasted about 15 seconds and was gone.

"I suited up for EVA and left the dome to investigate.  A
kilometre away, I found Washu.  She lay unconscious and
covered in blood.  Her blood, I knew, even though she had no
mark on her.  The blood had come through her skin.  She was
lying by a collapsed section of the Mars ruins recently
uncovered and recently destroyed.

"I carried Washu to our Medic but she was too far gone.  We
took off in my ship and jumped to warp, but we would not
reach a hospital.

"She woke up before she died.  She said, 'Rely... Leave
Mars.  Take your people away or you will all die.  Things
sleep in the city.  Take this.'  She put something in my
hand and she died.

"She gave me this."

Dr. Rosman drew an object on a cord from under his jacket. 
It looked like a broken piece of a statue, the texture half
of stone and half of ivory or polished bone.  The shape of
the thing twisted back upon itself, allowing the necklace
cord to be passed through, but I could not tell what it was
a part of.  Something about it reminded me of mandibles.

"I have kept it with me," Rosman said.  "It seemed
important."

				#

"Dinner with the Rebel," they should call this, it was so
like a picture.  It was the same every night.  Empty sake
bottles ring the painting's subject, who is slumped over the
table like a vagrant in a biting snow, drinking.  Mihoshi
hovers anxiously about him.  Sasami looks on disapproving. 
Ryoko's presence is the only disturbance in the frozen
moment.  She also drinks.

Ryoko acted relaxed.

"He's really putting it away, isn't he?" she said to Sasami. 
"Should they be letting him drink this much?"

"People complained," the girl answered.

"Oh really."

"First night, he started ranting in his sleep.  He woke
everyone up.  They'd rather him..." Sasami looked at me. 
"...like this."

I hadn't been able to fall asleep sober for years.  I
couldn't remember what it was I shouted in my sleep, but it
was probably what you would expect.

I reached into my Salvation Army coat for my photos of
Minami.  They slipped out of my fingers.  "I'll get that,"
Mihoshi said, standing and bending over.  Her elbow knocked
a half-full bottle over, spilling wine on me.

"God damn it, Mihoshi!" I shouted, standing up, jerking back
angrily from the table.  "Hm?"  I looked around for her.

Mihoshi sat on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest,
arms over her head half warding, half shielding.

"Mihoshi," I said.  "Come, Mihoshi, I would never hit you. 
Let me help you up."  She was shaky, getting to her feet. 
"It's all right."

I got my pictures and used my coat to wipe up the table. 
Then I retreated again, thinking, looking at Minami.

"Who's she?" Ryoko asked.

"She's his ex-wife," Mihoshi said.

"Oh?  How did he drive her away?"

"She slept around a lot and then left him," Mihoshi answered
with typical tact.

"Why the hell does he keep pictures of her, then?"

I looked up, met Ryoko's eyes.

"I don't stop loving people," I said.  That ended the
conversation.

I drank.  Ryoko drank.  Sasami left.  Mihoshi stayed at my
side.  Time passed.

Eventually I passed out.

				#

"...my newest project.  As you can see," Washu said, "the
nano-robots in this vat will eat anything and everything,
even the fabric of space itself.  If set loose, they will
feed and reproduce and never stop."

"And what would that do, Washu-chan?" I asked.

"Why, destroy the universe of course!" she said with a long,
drawn-out laugh.

"Oh, come on, Washu," I said.  "Er, Washu-chan."

"Huh?" she said.

"You're the greatest genius and brilliant mad scientist in
the universe..."

"Thank you!"

"...and you are justifiably feared throughout the galaxy,
but being crazy doesn't mean being stupid.  Destroy the
universe?  For fun?  If you want me dead, there are better
ways."

"No," she said. "But don't you think it's amazing, Tenchi?
... No. No, you're right."  She pressed a button.  "Strange. 
I didn't really think about it that way.  I didn't think it
through.  I thought you'd be impressed."

"Nanomachines terminated," a quiet female voice said.

"I'm amazed that you could come up with such difficult
inventions, Washu-chan," I said.  Unbelievable.  She had
destroyed an invention because I asked her to.  Being run
out of the university and arrested couldn't do that, but for
me she said she didn't think enough.  I should have told her
how much I loved her then.  Instead I said, "Really.  But
you don't need to actually invent something more
world-shaking each time just to prove that you're a genius. 
I trust you."

"Honestly?  Trust is not a typical response among people I
interact with.  That's very interesting."  Washu somehow was
tall enough to look me in the eyes.  "I was right about
you."

A happy song drifted in from part of Washu's lab.

"Why do I want a thing I daren't hope for?" Mihoshi sang. 
"What can I hope for?"  *CRASH* went a tray of valuable
instruments.  "I wish I knew."

"Oh, hi guys," Mihoshi said.  "Sorry, uh, I tripped.  I
guess I wasn't watching where I was going."  She scratched
her head.

"Mihoshi!" Washu shouted.  "Mihoshi, how do you do it?  I
can figure out everything in the universe but not you.  The
lock on the door was triple-encoded.  The code and the
combination change six times a minute, at irregular
intervals, based on the revolution of an atom that only I
know about, because I invented it.  And still you get in.  I
even coded the lock with *your* DNA to give you a massive
electric shock if you touched it."

"Hey!" Mihoshi said.

"Heh heh heh," Washu chuckled.  "I even had a camera up to
catch it when it happened.  But here you are.  How, tell
me?"

"Oh, I don't know, I just pushed some buttons on the lock
thingy, my cell phone rang, it was Kiyone, you know, she's
so good, always looking after me, for some reason she wanted
to know exactly where I was and what I'd done all day, who I
talked to, and I said just the Chief, why, and she screamed
at me, I think she's a little stressed lately, maybe--"

"Damn it Mihoshi, shut up!" Washu said.

"Then the door opened," Mihoshi finished.  "So I came in.  I
was looking for Tenchi."

"Why, does Sasami need something?" I asked.

"No, I was just looking for you.  Say hi or something.  I
was bored.  Oh, and I want to show you--"  Mihoshi reached
in her purse and broke a glass shield with her elbow.  A
klaxon sounded.

"Warning, waste containment breach," the female voice said.

"Out!" Washu ordered.  "Take her out of here!"

"Come, Mihoshi," I said, taking her by the elbow.  "Let's go
someplace where you won't cause the end of life as we know
it."

The door slammed shut behind us when we left the lab.

Mihoshi hummed.  "Exciting, isn't it?" she said.

I sighed.  "It always is.  Let's find you something to do. 
What was that song you were singing?"

"That's American music.  You like it?"

"Yes, very pretty."

"Good.  I'll tell you all about it."

				#

"You're amazing," I said.  "How did you do that, Mihoshi?"

"I just touched it and it burned out.  I don't know," she
said.

We entered the darkness.  The lights weren't working, so the
only illumination came from the open door and the glowing
eyes of hundreds of LEDs on instruments and machinery.  I
could barely see.

A figure waited in the shadows.  It stepped closer.

"Ryoko," I said, "how did you get in here?"

Ryoko gave me a thin smile.  "I'm the best thief in the
galaxy.  Give me a little credit."

"Why did you come here?"

She held up two photos, one of Minami, and one of Minami and
her husband, Tenchi.

				#

I woke up from my doze on the table.  I had fallen asleep on
my pictures, and now they were gone.  I looked around,
frantic.  She wasn't here.

"Mihoshi, where's Ryoko?"

"She took off a while ago in her spaceship.  Why, what's
wrong?"

"She took my pictures.  My Minami."

I slumped in my chair.

"We will meet again, one day Ryoko," I said.

---------
Coming up next: the thrilling (or not so thrilling) 
finale to series one.

The names of Tenchi, Washu, Aeka, Sasami, Ryoko, Mihoshi,
and Kiyone are copyrighted and probably trademarked by AIC
& Pioneer LDC.  I don't claim any ownership over them.
Beyond the names, this story has just about nothing to do
with the series.  I hope you don't feel cheated.

Completely unrelated stuff, such as my comic, "Kevorkian 
Won't Return My Calls," can be found at my website.
http://eaerth.isfuckingbrilliant.com/ is the redirect.

The email address on this post has been spam harvested and
at least one of the spammers has the Klez virus, so I'm
getting that mailed to me too.  If you send anything there, 
there's a good chance I won't even notice it when I check 
email (once every couple months).

If you have any comments or questions or anything, check the
website.  I used to put my real email address here at the
bottom, but the website redirector has lasted two years, 
which is longer than any email service I've signed up with 
has lasted.  Sorry for the extra step, but if you'd tried 
to send a message to the old address at the bottom of this
chapter and gotten a bounce, you'd understand why.