Visser’s voice followed Trevor’s: “Might the gravity be natural? Could we have already shifted, and come out near a planet?”
Caine felt a sudden flush of embarrassment for Visser, was glad that Le Mule did not jump down her throat. It was fairly common knowledge-even for someone who had been asleep for fourteen years-that you couldn’t come out of shift near a planet. The proximity to a gravity well would deform the ship’s re-expression pattern and-pffffftttt: you came out as a whole lot of nothing. And as for the possibility that they might have felt a shift…
Caine toggled his own comm link. “I doubt we’ve experienced shift yet, Ms. Visser. You feel a little jolt when you shift. Not painful, just a start-like when you wake up from a falling dream.”
Movement at the entrance to his stateroom caught the corner of his eye: Opal, in a low-cut T-shirt and shorts. Which looked very fine on her. Caine tapped the commlink which was dragging awkwardly at the neckline of his own tee, rose, smiling-but then saw that her face was as rigid as a mask. He moved past her, closed the door, and steered her toward the acceleration couch in which he had been sitting. She didn’t resist or speak.
He sat down next to her, put a hand on top of hers. She clutched his fingers so quickly and so tightly that he almost cursed. “Opal, what’s wrong?”
Without looking at him, she spat words. “You heard that braying jackass, Le Mule. Shifting is just a nice way of saying that we’re going to be torn into trillions of tiny, subatomic particles.”
“It is a pretty strange concept,” Caine started agreeably.
Opal shut her eyes. “It is suicide.”
He studied her face, started at what he saw there. “Why are you crying?”
She blinked, looked even more surprised than he was, and yelped out a short laugh. “What? I’m what? Crying?”
Caine only nodded: clearly, this was more than just fear.
Opal waved an airy hand. “Oh, that’s nothing. I was just-”
Caine reached out and drew her close slowly, gently. She exhaled and put her arms around him. She was in that position, unmoving, for so long that he wondered if she might have gone to sleep. “Opal, are you-?”
She let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m-God, I’m such a coward.”
“You?” He held her back to look at her. “You? This is a joke, right?”
“It’s this whole shift business.”
He doubted that, but asked, “What about it?”
“Well, the mere thought of being shredded into subatomic particles-didn’t it scare you, the first time?”
Caine shrugged. “It couldn’t: I was in cold sleep. And by the time they woke me up, I had already been through three shifts. I guess some part of me accepted that if shifting was going to kill me, it would have already done so. But instead, here I am.” He smiled.
And then, she was grabbing his head in both hands and was kissing him. He also felt her shaking, as if she had started crying again, but a moment after he began to respond-eagerly-she stopped trembling. And by that time, he had stopped thinking.
Several seconds-or minutes-later (he could not tell), the compartment intercom toned twice: a priority message. “Folks”-it was Trevor-“if you’re still in your acceleration couches, you might want to stay there. We just received a communique from our hosts. Seems they’re ready to initiate shift. For those of you who’ve never experienced one, you might feel a little vertigo, so just make sure you’re seated or lying down. Fifteen minutes, they tell us. See you on the other side. Out.”
That reminder-about her impending discorporation-made Opal start away from Caine, who put his arms back around her. He tilted his head down until she could not fail to look him in the eyes: “Look: think of it this way. Your body is pushing around-sometimes destroying and rebuilding-electrons all the time.”
Opal shuddered. “Sorry, but logic doesn’t help. I’ve faced death a few times, you know. Getting too close to it on one occasion is what got me banished to the future. But here’s the funny thing: I always knew I wasn’t going to be killed. I have known-all my life-that I wasn’t going to die young, that I was going to outlive all my siblings and live on into advanced, and probably testy, hag-dom. But this-it makes me feel like I’m about to dissolve into nothing.”
“Well,” Caine said and his arms tightened a little more, “you certainly feel real enough to me.”
He did not expect what happened next: she pushed herself into him with a sinuous motion; her reluctant vulnerability sudden transformed into forceful wantonness. “You’d be surprised how real I can feel,” she said in a tone that sounded like fierce annoyance.
As Opal pulled herself against him, Caine imagined he felt various needs tightening her fingers-needs for love, for safety, for escape, for him, for release. But now, those separate needs were losing their distinctions, were fusing together into one impulse-
And Caine, as distracted as he was by her profoundly suggestive words and motions, finally understood where her tears had come from: she had wanted this to happen for a long time. And now, made desperate by a fear of imminent annihilation, that unfulfilled want had cracked the emotional container in which she kept herself, had started leaking out…
Caine stood away and extended a hand. “Come with me.”
She had risen and put her hand in his even before she said, “Where are we going?”
“To a therapeutic environment.”
She blinked. “And where on this tin-can would that be?”
He smiled, checked up and down the corridor, and led her aft. And as they approached the last door on the module’s central corridor, she understood: “The buoyancy tank? Now?”
“When better? You like baths; think of this as the ultimate bath.” He opened the door; a muted glimmer of moving water moired against the walls.
She seemed slightly more collected as she wondered: “Damn, is this even allowed?”
“Hey-I thought you were the bad-ass, maverick major.”
“Bad ass, yes: exhibitionist, no. How do we know that no one will-?”
“We just passed all their doors. Closed tight. Waiting for the shift. Lot of first timers like yourself. All probably a little anxious, and eager to hide it from everyone else.” Caine pulled off his T-shirt. “So this may be the one time we can indulge in a little-” he slipped into the water “-hydrotherapy.”
“Okay. Give me a sec.” She moved towards the changing booth.
“What for?”
“My grand entrance.” She slipped inside, but he still could see her: she didn’t bother to close the door. In a moment, she had shed her outer clothes. She primped for all of one second in the mirror, making sure her bra and briefs were trim and taut, showing off everything to its best advantage.
When she left the booth, she did not meet Caine’s eyes, but stepped daintily into the water on the other side of the tank and then waded across to join him. She leaned back against the rim of the tank, her body only a foot away from his. The water raised her breasts slightly. His arms-spread out to either side-suddenly felt very heavy. He felt the water lap against his side, shifted his body slightly, wondered if-oh Christ, stop thinking!
Smiling at his own awkwardness and tendency to overexamine everything-even this-he turned toward Opal.
She was not smiling.
And then, thinking became extraneous.
Part Five
EV Lacertae and Barnard’s Star
October, 2119