Gob's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

The ship climbed, but Gob did not know where to steer it. Below lay the ruined town. Above spread only black sky. Fluroess floated to the window and watched the dark close in. "The engines hold," said one of Potbelly's heads. "But hold toward what?" said the other. Gob pressed his small cone against the glass. The light touched nothing. No hills. No stars. No place that could be a home. He felt the old fear return, bigger now with the whole crew depending on him. Then his light caught a shape far below. Something pale rolled across the dead ground. It stopped. It turned. It was searching. Gob opened his mouth wide and poured a beam down onto it. The shape froze in his light, then rolled hard toward the climbing ship. A snowball. Not just any snowball. The same one that had carried him away in the first days, then handed him to the peppermint figure. "That one tricked you," Hoola said. Her hoop went still. "It fed you to the candy monster." Gob remembered the betrayal. But the snowball below was not fleeing. It was chasing. It wanted to be seen. "Let it close," Gob said. His cone held it steady. Potbelly swung the ship low over the ground. The snowball leaped and smacked the hull. It clung there, panting, eyes fierce. "I found you," it said through the glass. "I came back to find you." It pushed a shape against the window. A small striped bow tie, torn and dirty, pulled off a coat of red and white. Gob knew that cloth. The peppermint figure had worn it. "Why bring me this?" he asked. The snowball's face twisted. "He made me take you. I hated it. When the beams killed him, I was free. So I rolled. I rolled for days looking for your light." It pressed the torn bow harder to the glass. "I know where to go. I saw it while I searched. A valley the fleet never reached. Soil. No saucers. Dark and bare. The kind of dark your green thumb could fill." Gob's light flickered. Dark and bare. Those were the words he had chased his whole search, the place his parents had always wanted to find with him. But the snowball had lied before. Hoola crossed her arms. PomPom said nothing, waiting. Fluroess floated close to Gob. "Your choice, child," Fluroess said. "We steer where you point." Gob held the snowball in his beam and felt its face. No grin. No trick. Just a creature worn thin from rolling. He opened the hatch. Cold air rushed in. The snowball tumbled inside and settled on the floor, dripping. "Show us," Gob said. It rolled to the front window and pressed one side flat. "There. Follow the low ground. Past where the hills break." Potbelly turned the ship. Fluroess steadied the wheel. Gob opened his mouth and threw his cone far ahead, farther than he had ever reached. The light found a gap in the black. Below the gap lay open land, folded and quiet, with no saucers and no false sky. The ship dropped toward it. Gob's beam swept the valley floor. Bare dirt stretched wide, dark and empty, waiting. He felt the soil in his light the way he felt faces. Soft. Deep. Ready. His flicker surged bright enough to fill the whole cabin. Hoola laughed. PomPom finally smiled. The ship landed. The hull hummed down to quiet. Gob stepped out first onto cold ground. Fluroess and Potbelly came behind him, one head on each side, glowing warm. The snowball rolled out and circled the ship, keeping watch. Gob knelt and pushed his cone into the dirt. Then he reached into the pocket his mother had sewn and found one last seed, saved from before the fleet came. He pressed it into the dark soil. He opened his mouth and poured his light down onto the spot, steady, no longer bait for any beam, just light for a growing thing. A green shoot broke the ground. Then another. Fluroess added their glow beside his. Potbelly watered the row from a tank in the ship. Hoola spun her hoop over the seedlings. PomPom cleared stones. The snowball patted snow over the roots to keep them cool. Gob stood in the middle of it all, his family on one side, his friends on the other, his light spilling over a valley that was dark and bare no longer. He had searched the whole ending of the world for a place like this, and for the two who made him. Now he had both, in one spot, under his own small cone. The final darkness had come. And Gob had filled it with green.