Her imaginings of seeing him again and reality differed in yet another way. Of course she had expected him to have changed, but there had to be more than just time between the image in her mind and the man sitting less than a meter away.
His hairline had retreated to the back of his head, only a few discouraged strands of his lank black hair remaining on top. That happened to a lot of men, but most cared enough to have it replaced. Where once his face had been round and glowingly robust, now it was pared down to the austere bones underneath, fatigue chiseled into every hollow and line. His gray eyes had retreated into their sockets, bruised-looking bags under them. He had also lost a lot of weight, which left his broad, blocky body looking rawboned and starved.
The change was so radical that when she’d seen him appear in the shuttle’s airlock her first thought was that he’d been sick. He had the look of someone with something relentless and unforgiving gnawing at his insides.
But holding him close again, feeling the warmth of his arms around her and his face snuggled against her breasts had brought back such a rush of sensation and memory her knees nearly buckled under her. It was like coming home after far too long out in a place cold and comfortless.
In some ways he was still the sweet man she remembered. Yet in others he had become a complete stranger. Although he seemed genuinely glad to see her, there was a subdued air about him, a guarded remoteness that gave her the uneasy feeling that he was hiding something.
Or maybe he was just afraid she’d break his heart again.
That wasn’t going to happen. If there was a problem, she’d deal with it. Now that they were together again, nothing could come between them.
Ella seemed to come back from some far-off place and gave Marchey a smile. “I know I’m repeating myself,” she said shyly, “but I’ve really missed you, Gory.”
“Me too,” Marchey agreed. He had never really stopped loving Ella. The worst of the symptoms might have subsided over the years, but the condition itself seemed to be incurable.
He’d known that seeing her again might put him at risk of a major reinfection, and tried to convince himself that he’d developed emotional antibodies that would keep him from finding her as attractive as he had in the old days.
One look at her had blown that theory all to hell.
He knew Ella wasn’t all that beautiful by most men’s standards. She was almost freakishly tall, and thin to the point of emaciation; less than forty-five kilos of lean flesh and pale, almost translucent skin spread over more than two meters of angular jutting bone. Her long, narrow face wasn’t the sort to launch a thousand ships; it was rescued from being plain only by big white-lashed eyes of an unusual bottle green.
Still, something about those impossibly long crane-like legs, those tiny cupcake breasts, that body with every muscle and bone as starkly evident as that of an anatomy illustration, those big green eyes, even the pale austerity of her face turned in his heart like a key in a lock. It always had, and it seemed it always would.
He’d lost her once. Watching her eat and listening to her talk and catching tantalizing tastes of her scent, he wondered how he could have let himself gamble with losing her again.
This was not a new line of reasoning. The long, labyrinthine trip out to Ixion Station had given him plenty of time for doubts and second thoughts.
The place Ella had chosen to live was not exactly an easy one to reach. The big wheelhab named Ixion Station hung halfway across the barren gulf between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, pacing the latter. Only twice a year would a passenger-and-supply transport make the long journey into the vast emptiness beyond the orbit of Jupiter’s settled moons to visit. The UNSRA labs, observatories, research and training facilities—along with the small but thriving society that had grown up around those installations—rated no more than that as yet.
While it was a jumping-off point for the first tentative explorations of Saturn’s mysteries, as yet only a few were allowed to make the leap. Settlement on the moons of that ringed world was so sparse and austere there was nowhere for them to go. Yet.
Someday that would change, and the trickle would become a steady flow. Until then Ixion remained humankind’s farthest flung permanent outpost.
If getting to Ixion was difficult, arriving was disconcerting. Cut off as they were, the Station’s inhabitants treated the transport’s arcing flyby and the shuttleloads of goods and personnel it brought them as a cause for celebration. Nearly everyone dropped what they were doing, turning out to greet the new arrivals and hurling themselves into an almost desperate round of partying they called ShipTime.
This meant that Marchey’s first glimpse of the place had been the sea of upturned faces filling the receiving bay. The people below laughed and clapped and stamped their feet. They whistled and hooted and waved, treating him and his fellow passengers like visiting celebrities.
The shuttle stewards had warned them beforehand, so he knew they weren’t there to greet him, specifically. That had helped a little, but already apprehensive about the prospect of seeing Ella again, the welcome had made him feel like he’d been suddenly thrust onto a stage under a blazing spotlight. At any moment the rowdy throng below him might demand that he sing or dance. That he amaze them.
And he could have, if he’d wanted to. How did it go?
Observe carefully, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll see that I’ve got nothing up my sleeves…
Then he’d seen her, sudden panic nearly sending him fleeing back into the shuttle.
“I’m just so glad you really came,” Ella continued, her low husky voice sliding liquidly into his thoughts. Her face was so serious. He knew she had more riding on this than she was saying. Well, so did he.
He made himself smile. “So am I,” he agreed, neatly managing to lie and tell the truth with the same three words.
Her invitation had taken him by surprise, as had his spur-of-the-moment decision to take a break from his frustrating, fruitless search for a permanent place to practice.
It had been the act of a man grasping at straws. She was his last tenuous link with the sort of life he’d led before his idealism and dedication had led him to join the Bergmann Program.
Her green eyes sought his, a glint of desperation in them. “Sitting here like this, you and me together again…”
She bit her lip. “It’s so much like before. That’s—that’s what I’ve dreamed of. It’s what I want for us, Gory. For things to be the way they were before.”
“We had some problems,” he said carefully.
She dismissed them with a careless flick of one thin hand. He saw that her nails were bitten to the quick. “Then things will be better.”
“Maybe… but you know our work can still get in the way,” he said, reminding her of their earlier relationship’s greatest obstacle, and taking a halfhearted swipe at being honest about the one it faced now.
Total dedication to your vocation took the best of what you had to offer, leaving only sloppy seconds for the one you loved. Theirs had torn them apart and driven them in opposite directions. Ella had begun her journey outsystem and up the ladder, at last holing up out here at the edge of nowhere.
He had certainly found his own extremes. She hadn’t been able to accept how much of himself he gave to medicine then. And now?
Nobody else did. Why should she be any different?
First emptying his wineglass, he crept up a little closer to the matter.