The glass man flowed into a lotus position about two meters away from Keith. "You introduced yourself as G. K. Lansing."
Keith nodded.
"What does the G stand for?"
"Gilbert."
"Gilbert," said Glass, nodding his head as if this was significant.
Keith was perplexed. "Actually, I go by my middle name, Keith." A self-deprecating chuckle. "You would, too, if your first name was Gilbert."
"How old are you?" asked Glass.
"Forty-six."
"Forty-six? Just forty-six?" The being's tone was strange — wisful or perplexed.
"Um, yes. Forty-six Earth years, that is."
"So young," Glass said.
Keith lifted his eyebrows, thought about his bald spot.
"Tell me about your mate," asked Glass.
Keith's eyes narrowed. "Why would you possibly be interested in that?"
Wind-chime laughter. "I am interested in everything."
"But questions about my mate — surely there are more important things to explore?"
"Are there more important things to you?"
Keith thought for a second. "Well — no. No, I suppose there aren't."
"Then tell me about — about her, I presume."
"Yes, her."
"Tell me."
Keith shrugged. "Well, her name is Rissa. That's short for Clarissa.
Clarissa Maria Cervantes." Keith smiled. "Her last name always makes me think of Don Quixote."
"Who?"
"Don Quixote. The Man of La Mancha. Hero of a novel by a writer named Cervantes." Keith paused. ';You'd like Cervantes — he once wrote a book about a glass man. Anyway, Quixote was a knight-errant, caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unattainable goals. But…"
"But what?"
"Well, the funny thing is that #was Rissa who used to call me quixotic."
Glass tipped his head in puzzlement, and Keith realized that he couldn't discern the connection between the unknown and apparently unrelated words kwik-sah-tik and kee-hoe-te. "'Quixotic' means similar to Don Quixote," sam Keith. "Visionary, romantic, impractical — an idealist bent on righting wrongs." He laughed. "Of course, I wasn't content to love Rissa pure and chas-chime laughter. but I suppose I do have a tendency to take on battles other people let pass, or aren't even aware of, and, well…"
The egg-shaped transparent head tilted slightly. "Yes ?"
"Well," said Keith, spreading his arms, encompassing not just the forest simulation but everything beyond, "we did reach the unreachable stars, didn't we?" He grew silent, feeling a little embarrassed.
"Anyway, you were asking about Rissa. We have been married — permanently pair-bonded — for almost twenty years now. She's a biologist — an exobiologist, to be precise; her specialty is life that is not indigenous to Earth."
"And you love her?"
"Very much indeed."
"You have children." Keith assumed it was a question, but Glass's voice did not rise at the end of the sentence.
"One. His name is Saul."
!'Sol? After your home star?"
"No, Saul. S-A-U-L. After the man who had been my best friend before he died, Saul Ben-Abraham."
"So your son's name was — what? Not Saul Lansing-Cervantes ?"
Keith was surprised that Glass grasped human naming conventions. "Yes, that's right."
"Saul Lansing-Cervantes," repeated Glass, his head tilted as if lost in thought. He looked up. "Sorry. It's, ah, quite a musical name."
"Which you'd say is funny, if you knew him," said Keith.
"I love my son, but I've never met anyone with less musical talent.
He's nineteen now, and is away at university. He's studying physics,' that's something he does have an aptitude for, and I suspect someday he'll make quite a name for himself in that field."
"Saul Lansing-Cervantes… your son," said Glass.
"Fascinating. Anyway, we keep getting off the topic of Rissa. " Keith looked at him for a moment, puzzled. But then he shrugged "She's a wonderful woman. Intelligent. Warm, funny. Beautiful."
"And you say you are pair-bonded with her?"
"That's right."
"And that means… monogamy, correct? You couple with no one else?"
"Yes."
"Without exception?"
"Without exception, that's right. "A pause. "So far."
"So far? You are contemplating a change in this relationship?"
Keith looked away. Christ, this is crazy. What could this alien possibly know about human marriage ? "Move along," said Keith.
"Pardon?" asked Glass.
"Move along, move along. Another topic."
"Do you feel guilty, Keith ?"
"What are you — my bloody conscience?"
"I am just someone who is interested, that's all."
"Become interested in something else."
"I'm sorry," said Glass. "Where did you and Rissa first meet?"
"La Belle Aurore. The Germans wore gray; she wore blue."
"Pardon ?"
"Sorry. Another knight-errant hero of mine said that. We met at a party on New Beijing — that's the Earth colony on Tau Ceti IV. She was working in the same lab there as someone I had gone to school with."
"Was it — what is the saying? Was it love at first sight?"
"No. Yes. I don't know."
"And you have been married for twenty years? asked Glass.
"Just about. Our anniversary is next week."
"Twenty years," said Glass. "A blink of an eye."
Keith frowned. "Actually, it's considered quite an achievement to make it work that long."
"Apologies for my comment," said Glass. "Congratulations."
A pause. "What do you like most about Rissa?" Keith shrugged. "I don't know. Several things. I like that she is content with who she is. Me, I've got to put on airs — to sometimes pretend I've accomplished more, or am more sophisticated, than I really am. In fact, it's common among humans .who have attained a significant position to suffer from what's called "the impostor syndrome' — the fear that others are going to discover that they don't deserve what they've got. I admit to having a touch of that, but Rissa is immune to it.
She never pretends to be anything she's not."
Glass nodded.
"And I like her equanimity, her evenness of temper. If something goes wrong, I tend to swear and get upset by it.
She just smiles and does whatever needs to be done to set things right.
Or if they can't be set right, she accepts it."
Keith paused. "In many ways, she's a better person than I."
Glass seemed to consider this for a moment. "She sounds like someone you should hold on to, Keith."
Keith looked at the transparent man, perplexed.
Chapter III
A child's blocks. That's the image that had come to' Keith ansmg s mind two years ago, while watching Starplex's components being assembled at the Rehbollo orbital shipyards.
The giant ship was made up of just nine pieces, eight of which looked identical.
The largest piece was the central disk/shaft combination.
The disk was 290 meters in diameter and 30 meters thick.
The square shaft extended up and down from the center of the disk 90 meters in each direction, making Starplex a total of 210 meters tall.
A parabolic radio/hyperspace-telescope dish was set into each of the shaft's end caps.
The central disk actually consisted of three wide rings surrounding the shaft. First, stretching out to a radius of 95 meters was the vast space that would be filled with 686,000 cubic meters of salt water, forming the ocean deck. Second, twenty meters wide and ten decks thick, was the engineering torus. The final ring consisted of Starplex's eight mammoth cargo holds and twenty docking bays, their space doors arrayed along the disk's curving edge.