“Concessions.”
Elvox shook his head. “You’re a block of ice, Tivvers.”
“No, I’m an officer, and I’m your friend. This is going to cook your career if it goes any further.”
Elvox pushed past the unterloytnant and took the ladder down to the equipment bay. Tivvers followed, keeping quiet, trying to figure out what he was up to.
“I’m going to her ship,” he said.
“You’ve been staying here off and on to keep up appearances, right?” Tivvers said. Elvox didn’t answer.
On the concrete, walking to Nestor’s shuttle, he felt a sudden dislike for Kawashita. He envied the Japanese and his immediate access to Nestor. They were all so concerned with Kawashita, but he was little more than a freak.
Elvox shook his head vigorously. They’d have to leave soon. He’d have to make his decision. Nestor would take the Japanese to Earth for a visit, fulfilling her obligations as a guide and tutor. And Elvox? He couldn’t stand the thought of returning to normal duty. But lately the idea of joining Anna’s crew had seemed—as Tivvers would undoubtedly comment if he knew—a bit off the beam.
The last few days she had seemed more reluctant, preoccupied. Was that because of Kawashita? His thoughts were jumbled. Separation. Disgrace. Disgust. What the hell was he doing?
His bubble merged with the environment around the ramp. The russet-furred alter stood at the top of the ramp, arms folded. Elvox looked away from her animal femininity. She was one of the few that had stayed behind after another shuttle had picked up Nestor’s entourage. “Can I help you, Loytnant?” she asked, her beautiful voice incongruously human.
“I’d like to speak to Anna.”
The alter called Nestor to the intercom.
“Julio!” Anna’s voice, over the speaker, sounded tired. “Listen, things are really hell around here. We’re making all the final preparations. We leave in four days. Will you—be coming with us?”
“I don’t know,” he said, suddenly feeling unclean. “I’ll have to see you soon.” He couldn’t have told Tivvers about the offer. It would have meant cutting the last thin threads of respect still between them.
“I’ve got a lot of questions,” he said, looking down at the concrete.
The alter seemed to regard him with pity.
“Fine. Come tomorrow morning. I’ll have some clear time then.”
That night he was almost sick.
The next morning he was mad but still queasy. He said nothing to Tivvers as he left the lander, and Tivvers kept his counsel to himself.
It was time to have things out.
Eleven
“I have run out of things to see about the new Earth,” Kawashita said.
“There’s much more on the main ship,” Nestor said.
“I do not know if I’m prepared for Japan.”
“I haven’t seen Earth myself for fifteen years.”
Kawashita smiled. “A blink,” he said.
“Sometimes I think you enjoy being a Methuselah.”
“A Rip van Winkle, you mean.”
“Enjoy the hell out of it.”
Kawashita’s smile faded. “No. Not always.”
“I don’t see how you could have done anything harmful when you were alone for four hundred years.”
“Not to others who were real, perhaps—but they saw themselves as real. I felt a great deal for some of them, and what I did hurt them much. Some I had killed.”
“You were half-crazy.”
“No,” Kawashita said. “I was sane. I did everything with excuses. I had history to follow and did not have the strength to break loose. I wanted to create a better place, but—” He shrugged. “Perhaps later I can tell it straightly.”
Anna looked out the direct view port at the USC lander. “I think it must be impossible not to hurt people.”
“What will you do about him?”
She gave him a sharp look. “You see an awful lot,” she said, “even when you seem to look the other way.”
“Remember, I was a high-ranking official for many decades.”
“Don’t presume too much, Yoshio. You’re more responsible than a trained monkey. You’re still a human.” Her glare softened suddenly and she shuddered. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. That was unforgivably blunt. There’s a lot of poison in me, too.”
“He is very involved in you.”
“When I first saw him, I thought I could feel strongly, too. But it hasn’t turned out that way. Physically, in most other ways, he’s everything I want in a man…but there’s something weak in him. Not just weak, more…” She gestured the thought away.
“It is unwise to play with a man when you are not certain how you feel.”
Anna sparked again. “Dammit, this is none of your business!”
“True,” Yoshio said, his face impassive.
“I offered him a position on the ship. Now I don’t think he’s good for the job. Sometimes I’m a complete ass, and I don’t know why.”
“Maybe you are crazy,” Kawashita said.
“No,” Anna said, turning away. “I had my reasons. I did everything…with excuses. My shame.”
“It is not unusual for people to be hurt by loves that do not work,” Kawashita said. “It is a part of growth, not like betrayal.”
“Sometimes it seems very much a betrayal, though,” she mused. “Like giving promises without meaning them.”
“When the body rules, souls die. Loss of love is like grieving for the death of a person who never was.”
“I don’t love him,” Nestor said. “He may not even love me. Maybe my vanity is imagining it all.”
Kawashita shook his head. “Kill it quickly,” he said. “Don’t settle for anything but a mortal wound, a quick end.”
Anna avoided his eyes. But she understood what he meant.
Twelve
When she let him in, she wouldn’t look at him, and his insides seemed to turn to ice. He straightened himself and went to the cabin they had shared so often. She walked just behind him, robes swishing back and forth. She had lost some of her vitality. Elvox didn’t say anything until they were alone and the door was shut.
“What happened yesterday?” he asked, trying to be cheerful and casual. She smiled weakly and said everything had been worked out. Then she told him that Kawashita wanted to see Japan.
“Won’t be anything like what he remembers,” he said.
“Some parts are still preserved,” she said. “But he knows how different it will be.”
“What does he want to wander for? Why not just settle here and tend his property?”
She laughed a short, hard laugh. “There’s nothing here. Even his memories are falling apart with the stuff in the dome.”
“It’s just about gone now.” Elvox said.
“I hope we’ll part as friends.”
“I’ve never known anyone like you,” he said, almost in the same instant. “I’ve been wanting to—”
“Clarify,” she said. “All this should be made clear.”
“Yes.”
“A lark,” she said.
“Not to me.” He felt his eyes water and resisted the pressure. “Very serious.”
“We gave each other relaxation in a hard time.”
“That’s all?”
“And affection. I appreciate it.”
“What was so hard about it? You got everything you wanted.”
“Which turned out to be nothing.”
“You got me.”
“Julio, it isn’t—”
“It was,” he said. They were quiet for a few moments. “Given time.”
“Not for me.” And that was it. He had to salvage something, so he said, “Not expedient, hm? I couldn’t accept a position on your ship, anyway. I have better opportunities el
sewhere.”
“Of course.”
“I can see where you might have a lot of work to do. I’d only be in the way.” She did feel for him, Elvox thought, more than she was letting on—but something had come up. That was it. A stronger motive was making her back away. “Kawashita knows more, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll leave. I won’t even report it.”
“Report what?”
“The Waunters will never hear of it.”
“Jesus Christ, what are you talking about?”
He left the cabin, bumping past Kawashita on the way to the cargo lock. He gave the Japanese a wild, desperate glance, almost a question, then made his features blank and walked quickly down the ramp. He picked up his environment pack and pushed through the bubble. Nestor watched from the cargo lock, tears welling in her eyes, feeling like the youngest, cruelest child. She shrugged off Kawashita’s hand and ran to the left to go to the bridge.
Elvox gave terse orders and sent a quick message to the orbiting USC ship. “Our job’s done here,” he told Tivvers. “They’re leaving in a few days. Kawashita’s going with them. Everything’s okay, no problems, so why should we stay.” His voice was level. Tivvers nodded.
“There’s a lot of work to do before we go,” Elvox said.
Thirteen
Kawashita sat on the edge of the sleep-field, in the dark, thinking about what he had said to Nestor and what she had said back. She was a strong-willed woman but not cruel. Still, she could cause pain.
He held his hands over his eyes, though it didn’t make the surroundings any darker. He tried to count his fingers.
His daughter, in the world beneath the dome, had been a strong-willed woman, whose recognition of necessity drove her to court machinations, and finally to murder. Masa had held all the evil inherent in living packed tight in her small body. She had stopped him when he tried to step out of history. Their final contest had resulted in a slaughter so disgusting the kami had abandoned him.
For three years he had lived alone—with Ko, he knew, he had been alone—surrounded by the evidence of his folly. He could not force the scene to change. Everything necessary to keep him alive still operated, but nothing more.
Perhaps his plans had failed because of his eternal youth. He could not behave like an old man, no matter how much experience and wisdom accumulated in him, for his body always reacted like the body of a young man. In his years of loneliness he’d learned how to control some of those reactions, saving his sanity; but now the constraints were off. How should he behave in a culture where sexual proscriptions appeared to be few and far between? The encounters between the woman and the United Stars officer had bothered him because he didn’t have the courage—or the knowledge—to find his own companion. He still wasn’t familiar with protocol and social behavior to take such a risk.
He ordered the lights to turn on again and went into the lavatory to look over the equipment. Somehow the variety soothed him. It was so alien, so fascinating. But one piece still bothered him.
“How is that used?” he asked, pointing to the cylinder with the phallus and vagina. He had long since learned the voices weren’t human, so he wasn’t embarrassed to ask questions.
“It’s a device for solitary release, fantasy encounters, or noncontact encounters.”
“How?”
“A request is placed, and if the request matches that of someone else on the circuit, you may engage in a noncontact encounter. Holograms of each participant are projected around the tube, and the full sensations of sexual contact are mimicked. If you wish a fantasy encounter, you may select from a multitude of stored sequences. Solitary release can be achieved in several ways.”
He wrinkled his nose and left the lavatory. He wasn’t ready to couple with ghosts again. He ordered the lights out and activated the sleep-field. Despite a lulling vibration effect, he had a difficult two hours of restlessness before he slept.
In the morning Nestor chimed on his door to wake him in time to see the USC ship launch. “It’s going up in twenty minutes,” she said. “Since you’ve never seen a spacecraft launch before, I thought you’d be interested.”
“Yes, very much.”
“Let’s go outside. There’s no danger at this distance, and you’ll get the full effect that way.”
The brass-colored, bullet-shaped lander rested on its extension pads, flat belly toward them, bottom ports showing the motion of several men in the control center. The Perfidisian planet was giving a bright send-off, with skies almost blue and sun almost bright enough to warm the air. All they required were skin suits and breathers, and as environmental fields would have “dulled the effect,” Nestor subjected him to the slight discomfort of suit up.
The ports were opaqued, and a sharp klaxon warned of imminent takeoff. The ground vibrated underfoot, but he couldn’t see a thing. He knew the landers weren’t powered by chemical-fuel rockets—he’d read the manual and understood at least that much. But something, he reasoned, had to boost them up and out. He thought it would come from the bottom, so he kept his eyes trained there. The ship began to glow all around. The concrete beneath it hissed and popped as it expanded. With a sustained whine that grew louder and deeper at once, the lander rose slowly for ten or twelve meters, then more rapidly. It vanished with a scream, leaving a plugged sensation in his ears.
“What do they feel inside?” he asked when the noise had died.
“You’ll see,” Nestor said. “Nothing drastic, so don’t worry. But you’re going to experience a lot of new feelings before this week is out.”
Kawashita nodded. “That is something I think about but am not sure what to think.”
“Frightened?” Nestor asked.
He shook his head. “What is there to be frightened of?” he asked. “It’s been a long time since anything frightened me.”
Fourteen
“It’s as big as the Perfidisian ship,” Kawashita said, looking at the image of Nestor’s vessel on the lounge screens. “And it has teardrop shapes on struts…just the same.” His voice was shaky.
“No coincidence. It’s a practical design for ships built to travel through higher spaces. Don’t ask me why, though. I leave that to my engineers.”
“I’ve never seen the stars so clear before.”
“Give us magnification two thousand on the nine-W-nine-N square,” Anna requested. The screen fogged, then cleared, and a bright wreath of gas appeared, surrounded by the stars of the galactic disk. “That’s the Lily, a supernova remnant. Beautiful, no? And valuable. She has a few planets still, one of them the stripped core of a gas-giant. United Stars has a mining operation on that world—Kiril, what’s the name of the Lily’s mining planet?”
“Amargosa,” the pilot answered through the intercom.
“Amargosa strained the supernova cloud of quite a sampling of superheavy elements, all useful in warper-ship technology. But her surface is made of solid hydrogen. The central city has to be isolated by thermal shields. I’ve never been there—USC has never invited me—but someday I’d like to see it. Back to full screen. Now look just beyond the shadow of the ship—see that ring of stars? They’re surrounded by fields of radiation so intense they can’t be approached through normal space. And if a ship tries to get to them through higher spaces, she’s never heard from again. We suspect it’s an Aighor stronghold, but we don’t know whether Aighors are still there. The Centrum is negotiating with them right now to find out what’s going on. It could be dangerous to have a phenomenon like that in our midst and be completely wrong about what it is.”
“There is so much to see,” Kawashita said wistfully. “In the beginning I thought perhaps I was dead. The dense region of stars—from Earth, it is still called the Milky Way?”
Nestor nodded.
“In my Japan there were stories about the Milky Way. It wa
s called Heaven’s River. On one side was a woman weaving, on the other a lover who could cross the river only on the seventh night of the seventh moon. And some thought that when you died, you crossed the river to become a star. I crossed Heaven’s River, yet I didn’t die. Can I expect much more out of life after a miracle like that?”
“Don’t see why not,” Anna said. “You didn’t get to do much sight-seeing along the way.”
Kawashita shook his head and grinned. “I wonder whether you have much poetry in your soul.”
Anna mirrored his smile, a particularly ambiguous response. “Women don’t need to be poets, not as much as men.”
“In Japan some of the best poets were women. The men were too busy with wars and politics.”
“Well, maybe I’m a man at heart. My poetry lies in what I do. My ambition is to give other people reasons to be poetic, and time to do it in. In return, I have a certain amount of freedom to do and be what I please. I’m not dry inside, though. I’m just not very good at putting my thoughts into words.”
The pilot interrupted. “Docking in three minutes. We’ve already had six requests for matched quarters with Yoshio.”
“Well?” Anna asked the Japanese.
“Matched quarters?”
“Is there anyone you’d like to share a room with?”
Kawashita thought it over for a moment, then shook his head back and forth once, quickly. “Not yet.”
Anna nodded. “He’s not taking offers yet.” She turned back to Kawashita. “You know, that means they’ll accuse me of keeping you to myself.”
“But we have not—”
“Gossip doesn’t feed on truth. Don’t worry, though. It can’t tarnish my reputation any more.”
“I apologize for inconvenience.”
“Docked.” the pilot announced.
“Not at all,” Anna said. “Welcome to my home away from home.”
Only a small portion of Anna’s entourage had come to the planet’s surface with her. The rest had stayed in their various quarters, laboratories, and studios, going about life as though nothing unusual were happening. A few came to the lander bay to meet the boarding party, and among them was one of the furred tecto alters Kawashita had seen before. She kept her gaze on him and he was confused. Nestor took him by the arm, introduced him around, and led him out of the bay. “We call it Peloros. One of my more extravagant tools and toys.”