Starborne (30 page)

There. Let them chew
on that for a while.

Noelle tires quickly as she pumps his words across the universe to Yvonne. The strain on her is all too obvious. Her shoulders sag, her head slumps forward, there is a tense flickering of the musculature of her face. There is more int
erference with the transmission today, apparently, than Noelle has indicated to him. And yet she goes gamely onward, until at last she looks up at him with a seraphic smile of relief, sighs wearily, and announces, “
That
’
s it. I think she
’
s got it all.”

“
Wh
at does she say?”

“
That she
’
s very sorry about Marcus. That she wishes us all better luck on Planet B.”

Is Noelle telling him the truth? For one wild moment the year-captain finds himself thinking that this whole business of instantaneous mental contact be
tween two sisters scores of light-years apart is nothing more than a fantasy and a fraud, that Noelle has merely been pretending to be sending his communiques to Earth and is inventing all of Yvonne
’
s r
e
sponses.

No. No. No. No.

An idiotic thought. He banis
hes it angrily from his mind. Noelle is incapable of such duplicity. And even if she were, she simply could not have managed to invent
—
to improvise, yet
—
all of Yvonne
’
s bulletins from Earth, the little details of ongoing daily life there, the occasional m
e
ssages from relatives of the members of the expedition. For example, the year-captain
’
s father, who is a painter. He works in archaic modes
—
angels, demons, saints, all rendered with meticulous realism. He lives near the southern tip of Africa, on a dry ro
c
ky promontory eternally bathed in hot sunlight and planted with grotesque succulent things native to the region. In the past thirty years the two of them have met only twice. They have never had much fondness for each other. And yet the year-captain
’
s fat
h
er, who is 130 years old, has quite surprisingly sent birthday greetings recently via the Yvonne-Noelle loop to his son, who is less than half his age. He has spoken of his recent paintings, his garden, the inroads time is beginning to make on his stamina.
How could Noelle have known any of that? The year-captain wonders what upwelling of stress within himself has led him to these absurd and u
n
worthy suspicions of the blameless Noelle. The failure of the planetary landing, he supposes. The death of Marcus.
No doubt that
’
s it. He
’
s been under great pressure. They all have. He resolves to get some extra rest once they have returned to nospace travel.

Assuming Noelle will want her usual nap after this demanding transmission, he starts to leave her cabin. “
Wait,
”
she says. “
Where are you going?”

“
The baths, I think.”
Spur of the moment: he hadn
’
t been planning on it.

“
I
’
ll go with you, all right? And then afterward, perhaps, we could go to the gaming lounge.”

He is puzzled by this. “
You don
’
t want to get some sle
ep now?”

“
Not this time, no.”
Indeed, despite her show of fatigue a few minutes before, she seems strangely full of energy now, not at all d
e
pleted as she normally is when she has finished transmitting to Yvonne. This despite the problem of the static
—
or because of it, maybe? He will never understand her.

But a good soak in the baths right now strikes him as a welcome n
o
tion, and if Noelle doesn
’
t feel like napping today, that
’
s entirely her own affair. She drops her clothing quite casually, with seemin
g inn
o
cence. As though she is completely unaware how provocative that might seem to be, with just the two of them here in her cabin like this. But in her eternal darkness she probably gives no thought to the effect that the sight of her nakedness might hav
e on others. Or perhaps she does.

He waits just a moment, an oddly tense one, to see what she will do next. Take him by the hand, lead him to the bed? No. Nothing at all like that. She really
is
an innocent. Calmly she opens the cabin door and gestures for
him to precede her into the hall.

They go down the corridor to the baths together.

Sieglinde, Huw, and Imogen are there when they arrive. The brawny Sieglinde is in the tepid tub by herself; beefy Huw and petite, gol
d
en-haired Imogen are sharing the hot t
ank. Huw and Imogen are a co
u
ple these days, apparently, at least some of the time, and this seems to be one of the times. She is stretched full length in the tub, all but su
b
merged, her head against Huw
’
s shoulder, her shining hair outspread in the water,
the pink tips of her small breasts rising above the surface. He is so much more massive than she is that she seems like a doll beside him.

Huw lifts an eyebrow as Noelle and the year-captain enter, one n
a
ked, one not. Public nudity is not an extraordinary
thing aboard the starship, and people sometimes come to the baths already undressed, but it is not a widespread custom. The year-captain wonders whether Huw is assuming an intimacy between him and Noelle that does not at all exist. The thought annoys him.
He is aware that there is much ignorant co
n
jecture aboard ship about his sexual habits, and he finds the furtive go
s
sip more amusing than bothersome; but he isn
’
t eager to enmesh Noelle, who m
ight be disturbed at finding herself the subject of such rumors, in these lascivious whisperings.

“
May we join you?”
the year-captain asks, sliding out of his clothes. The question is routine politeness. Huw gestures grandly, and the year-captain and Noell
e slip into the tub on the side opposite from Im
o
gen and Huw. There
’
s no need for helping Noelle; she makes her way over the side of the tub as easily as if she were sighted. As they settle into the warm water the side of Noelle
’
s thigh presses up against
the year-captain
’
s, though, which he assumes is accidental, the tub being as small and as crowded as it is, and Noelle
’
s sense of spatial perception not as accurate in water as it is where sound waves travel unimpeded. The year-captain automatically moves
a couple of centimeters to his left; but a few moments later, as further positional adjustments are made by the occupants of the tub, he feels Noelle coming in contact with him again. It is hard now not to believe that this is deliberate, that all of this
is, the suggestion that they go to the baths together, the casual stripping in her cabin, the nude promenade through the corridor. But why? Noelle is a beautiful woman, yes; highly attractive, even, and fascinating in her enigmatic cool dignity; but after
all this time she still has played no role that he knows of in the pattern of sexual entanglements aboard the sta
r
ship, and though she certainly seems to be offering herself to him now, the year-captain finds it difficult to accept the belief that she actu
ally is. He prefers to look upon her as guileless and her present behavior as i
n
nocent. He continues to think of her as an asexual being, given over wholly to the bond with her distant sister and needing no other. Possibly she
’
s just in a playful mood just
now, without any genuine erotic su
b
text; or perhaps she is experimenting with a new way of unwinding from the tensions of her message-sending. In any case he has no intention of responding to the invitation she seems to be extending, whether or not it
’
s r
eal. As always, a sexual involvement with Noelle strikes him as a potentially explosive thing. He doesn
’
t think it could ever be the kind of coolly recreational coupling that his affair with Julia is. There were bound to be immense messy complications, so
m
ehow. Noelle is of vital importance to the voyage; so is he; he will not risk involving them in something that carries with it such a high probability of diverting their energies into troublesome areas.

Nevertheless, this time the year-captain allows his t
high to remain in contact with hers. It would be rude to pull away a second time.

“
You spoke very well,”
Imogen says to him, “
about Marcus, the ot
h
er day. I was extremely moved. I think we all were.”

“
Thank you.”
It seems like a mindless kind of reply to m
ake, but he can
’
t think of any other response.

“
He was so difficult to get to know,”
Imogen says. She and Marcus had been lovers for a brief time early in the voyage. Imogen is one of the ship
’
s metallurgists; she is also assistant medical officer. Everyon
e has odd combinations of specialties. “
Even in bed, you know?”
she says. “
Right here in the baths is where it happened, the first time. We were just sitting side by side, the way I am with Huw now, neither of us sa
y
ing very much, and then Marcus turned to
me and smiled and touched my wrist and gestured with his head toward one of the side rooms. Didn
’
t say a word. And we got right up and went in there. Not a word out of him, the whole time.”

Huw is smiling benignly, as though Imogen is merely speaking of h
aving gone off with Marcus to play a few games of
Go
. But quite po
s
sibly he doesn
’
t see much difference between the one recreation and the other, except that
Go
requires heavier thinking.

Imogen says, “
It was like that every time, the whole week that we we
re together. He was good, very good, in fact, but he never said a personal thing about himself, never asked anything about me. Friendly but distant: a mystery man. I liked him, though, I admired him, I respected his intell
i
gence, his seriousness. I believe
d that sooner or later he
’
d open up a little. And then one afternoon we were sitting in here together and Natasha was here too, and he turned to her just the way he had turned to me the week before, and that was that for Marcus and me. It was over, as sim
p
ly as that. But I always thought that Marcus and I would have a chance to get to know each other eventually, later on, maybe much later on. And now we never will.”

“
Such a waste,”
Sieglinde says, from the other tub.

“
A fine young man,”
says Huw. “
It ripped
me apart, watching him crack up down there. It ripped me apart.”

The year-captain nods abstractedly. This conversation is a necessary one, he supposes, part of the healing process for them, but it is making him uncomfortable. And the pressure of Noelle
’
s
bare thigh against his in the tub is having an unsettling effect on him.

“
They are very sad for us, the people on Earth,”
Noelle says. “
You know, they love us very much, they follow everything that we are doing with the greatest interest. The expedition to
Planet A
—
it was the only thing they talked about on Earth all week, my sister says. And then
—
to learn that Marcus had died
—”
She shakes her head. “
They are having memorial services for him today everywhere on Earth, do you know?”

“
How wonderful,”
Imogen s
ays. “
How good that will be for them. And for us as well.”

The year-captain looks at Noelle in surprise. That little detail, the thing about the memorial services, comes as news to him. Noelle had said nothing about that during the transmission meeting. Is
she still in contact with Yvonne at this moment, receiving a steady flow of reports of Earth
’
s reactions to the death of Marcus?