The Way Back (Champions of the Crystal Book 4)

Chapter 19: The Choice

There was a pause while Scotty digested this. "Tirqwin's explained it all to me, that I've had to be changed, and that's why I can't remember anything. I...was hoping I would remember you, when I saw you."

"But you don't." Sabrina said it for him.

"No. I wish I did." He cocked his head and looked at her closely again. "Do you look anything like our mother?"

Sabrina closed her eyes and shook her head. "Not very much," she managed to say after a moment. She looked at Tirqwin. "Didn't you give him the photos?"

"No. I thought it would be better to wait until you could explain them," Tirqwin replied. He drew the pocket-sized mini photo album out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She'd brought it with her from Earth, to help her remember. She'd never thought she'd be using it this way.

Taking a deep breath, she went over to sit beside Scotty and open the album. They went through the pictures in detail, with Sabrina explaining such things as why their parents' wedding photo was black and white and that the one of Aunt Euphrasia was twenty years old because she refused to have her photo taken since her hair lost its color. "She lives in London. Um, that's the capital city of—"

"The United Kingdom, yes, I know," Scotty said. "I've done a sleep learning class on Earth."

"Oh. Good."

"Who's this?" Scotty pointed to the picture of a strawberry blonde woman with deep blue eyes, standing on a beach and smiling.

"That's Cynthia. Cynthia Grayson. She was my best friend all through junior high and high school, until we had to move to England." Sabrina smiled. "She was the only one of my friends you ever liked."

"And who's that?" He had turned the page and was staring at the next photo.

Sabrina leaned over to look. "That's you."

"Really?" He peered more closely at the picture.

"Yeah. At your commissioning. That's your Air Force uniform."

"We didn't look much alike even then," he mused.

"No, not really. You look like Dad's side of the family. I look more like Aunt Euphrasia."

Scotty flipped back to the most recent picture of their parents, a family portrait taken two years before their deaths, and considered it. Sabrina was surprised and relieved that he seemed more interested in who looked like whom than in what had happened to them.

"Do you have a picture of Mara?" Scotty asked suddenly.

"Um, no. I didn't have my camera on Praxatillus," Sabrina said. "Khediva has to have a ton of holos of her, though." She looked up at Tirqwin. "Is there some reason he shouldn't go aboard?"

"No," Tirqwin said. "None at all, now that you've met. Would you like to go aboard Khediva, Scotty?"

"Aboard a Wayship?" Scotty's face shone with excitement. "Of course I'd like to!"

"Come along, then." Tirqwin led him from the room.

Sabrina sighed and relaxed a little. She hadn't realized how tense she was until that moment.

"All right?" Ford asked her, squeezing her shoulder.

"Yeah. I think so." She managed a chuckle. "Some things don't change: he'd forget everything the moment he laid eyes on a new toy. And by any standard, Khediva's the ultimate."

"True."

"He's all right, isn't he?" Sabrina asked suddenly, casting a pleading gaze at him.

"Yes, of course he is. They've run about every test they can think of; his cognitive abilities—"