Good spirits might not have lasted, but luck was with them: just as group morale peaked, the locker door opened and a loud voice began reassuring them that everything was fine. They managed to silence it before it could wake Colly, and emerged smiling together. Duncan had the grace to make his excuses and leave nearly at once. By the time Rand had finished seeing him out the door, Rhea had put Colly into her sleepsack and gone to their bedroom; he put the suite to sleep and joined her. He was quite tired; the only things he intended to do before sleeping were check to make sure their AIs were still sentient, and make sure that if there were any casualties, no one he knew was on the list.
But by the time he reached the bedroom, Rhea was more than halfway out of her clothes.
“Uh…” he managed to get out before the process was complete, and then she advanced on him like a cloud of electrons and protons. His own clothing was no protection at all. His next syllable was some five minutes later, and was even less spellable; he repeated it several times over the next few minutes, with increasing volume and decreasing period. The last iteration was a shout, which by then seemed to him to contain all the information the universe out there desperately needed to hear—until he heard Rhea shriek the message’s other half in harmony with him.
Before he fell asleep, he regained enough intelligence to compose a platitude, something along the lines of “Out of adversity comes fortitude.” Maybe… just maybe… Rhea was going to snap into it.
Talking work with Jay wasn’t as much fun as it had been; with four days left before the premiere of Kinergy (as they had decided to name the new work) Jay had too much else to do, Rand had too little else to do, and there was nothing to discuss together but things that might go wrong. And the incessant ego-struggles and other personal frictions among the dancers—but Rand hated that particular topic. He had himself pointedly chosen a field that allowed him to work alone when it suited him.
So he had no digression to propose when Jay said, “How’s it going with Rhea, bro?”
He decided to tackle it. “You know, last week I’d have said it was fucking hopeless. But it’s the funniest thing: somehow that flare emergency seems to have turned things around. At least a little, anyway. She came through it like a trouper, never complained once, never even frowned—and as soon as it was over, so was she: all over me. We haven’t had a session like that since… Jesus, I don’t know, but whenever it was, it was back on Earth. It felt… it felt like christening the Shimizu, christening space. Do you know what I mean?”
Jay nodded at once. “Ethan and I christened High Orbit that way, once.”
Rand winced away from the thought. Obviously the event had not cemented Ethan’s commitment to living in space very effectively. “I mean, it’s like when I first moved to P-Town. I’d never lived by the ocean, and I wasn’t sure if I could take that much horizon. And the storms, you know, the winds. And then we went through our first hurricane together, and it was hard, but when it was over I felt like, ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad; I can live here.’ Sitting in a radiation locker isn’t fun… but it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a singles bar. Maybe she’s going to steady down and learn to live here.”
“But it’s still that much up in the air, is it? With four days to curtain? You have to give Kate an answer one way or another the following week.”
“I know, I know. But it’s the kind of problem where you can’t push for an answer, no matter how urgent it is.”
“Well, all I’m saying is, if she bails out, don’t necessarily assume that you have to follow her—for keeps, I mean. Just because Ethan and I couldn’t make it work on a commuter basis doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Look at that Philip Rose and his wife—and he’s a writer, like Rhea. Quite a few spacers have made marriage with a groundhog work.”
“You really think it’s an option? After what happened to you?”
“Well, maybe not a great one. But it might be worth giving it a year and seeing how it works.” He seemed to start to say something, and then changed his mind. “I’m just being selfish, bro. Kinergy is a good piece. I like working with you; I don’t want to give it up. Losing partners is a habit I’m trying to break.”
Rand thought about it, and shook his head. “I hear you. But I just can’t see Rhea and I staying married that way. Besides, it’s not fair to Colly to yo-yo her that way, uproot her every three months.”
“There are other rotation schedules.”
“Doesn’t change anything. If Rhea goes, my choices are her—and Colly—or my work. So you can imagine how relieved I am at any hint that she might be willing to stay.”
Again Jay seemed to choose his words carefully. “Rand? Suppose she does go? Suppose the wild sex after the flare was just the bomb-shelter reflex to celebrate not having been killed after all? Suppose your choice is Rhea or the Shimizu: what then?”
“That I can answer concisely and with absolute certainty. The answer is, it beats the shit out of me.” He picked at a cuticle. “I really like this place. I really like this job. I really love working with you. But I really love Rhea and our kid. All I can tell you is, I’m praying it never comes up. And all hopeful omens are welcome.”
15
Assorted Terran Locations
19 January 2065
Hidalgo Rodriguez woke from a troubled sleep. His nightmares had been stranger and more unsettling than even a full gourd of wheero could account for. But opening his eyes was less than no help. He shrieked, and sprang to his feet even faster than he had on that distant childhood day in his father’s goat shed when he had learned empirically that a human sneeze means “Run for your life!” in Goat.
The shriek woke Amparo and the children; within seconds they were harmonizing with him.
Their homey familiar hovel was gone. It had been replaced, by something indescribable, almost literally unseeable. It was everywhere, on all sides, had no apparent openings, and no features that any of them could identify. The light by which they saw it had no detectable source. Their first and best guess was that it was some kind of magical trap.
This diagnosis caused Hidalgo to utter a bellow of what he hoped sounded like rage, and throw himself bodily at the nearest part of the thing he could reach. He did not really expect to break through, but he had to try. He struck hard with a hunched shoulder, rebounded and gasped. He had not produced an opening or even a dent—but part of the omnipresent… stuff… had suddenly became transparent.
A window…
Outside it Hidalgo saw the familiar landscape of his home region, with some odd alterations he was too busy to study. He grabbed up a rag, wrapped his fist in it, and smashed at the window. It emphatically refused to break. His hand was more equivocal; he swore foully.
His son Julio followed Hidalgo’s example, racing full tilt into the nearest wall to him. When nothing happened, he picked another spot and tried again. This time he was spectacularly successfuclass="underline" a door appeared in the stuff. He tested it; it worked just fine… and the entire Rodriguez clan joined him at high speed.
They stood outside the thing for a minute or so, all talking at the top of their lungs, none of them hearing a word—or noticing the sounds of similar loud “conversations” in the near distance.