Adel set his plate of spiralini in rado sauce on the heavy table and scraped a bench from underneath to sit on. While the pasta cooled he closed his eyes and lifted the mute on his opposites. He had learned back on Harvest that their buzz made acting impossible. They were confused when he was in character and tried to get him to do things that weren’t in the script. When he opened his eyes again, Sister was opposite him, head bowed in prayer over a bowl of thrush needles.
He waited for her to finish. “You want to go first?” he said.
“I don’t like to think about going home to Pio,” she said. “I pray it won’t happen anytime soon.”
—your prayers are answered—buzzed minus.
“Why, was it bad?”
“No.” She picked up her spoon but then set it down again. Over the past few days Adel had discovered that she was a extremely nervous eater. She barely touched what was on her plate. “I was happy.” Somehow, Adel couldn’t quite imagine what happy might look like on Sister Lihong Rain. “But I was much smaller then. When the Main told me I had to make a pilgrimage, I cried. But she has filled with her grace and made me large. Being with her here is the greatest blessing.”
“Her? You are talking about Speedy?”
Sister gave him a pitying nod, as if the answer were as obvious as air. “And what about you, Adel?”
Adel had been so anxious since the spacewalk that he hadn’t really considered what would happen if he were lucky enough to get off the Godspeed alive.
—we were going to have a whole lot of sex remember?—buzzed plus
—with as many people as possible—
Adel wondered if Sister would ever consider sleeping with him. “I want to have lovers.” He had felt a familiar stirring whenever he kissed her in rehearsal.
“Ah.” She nodded. “And get married, like in our play?”
“Well that, sure. Eventually.” He remembered lurid fantasies he’d spun about Helell Merwyn, the librarian from the Springs upper school and his mother’s friend Renata Murat and Lucia Guerra who was in that comedy about the talking house. Did he want to marry them?
—no we just want a taste—minus buzzed.
“I haven’t had much experience. I was a virgin when I got here.”
“Were you?” She frowned. “But something has happened, hasn’t it? Something between you and Kamilah.”
—we wish—buzzed plus.
“You think Kamilah and I… ?”
“Even though nobody tells me, I do notice things,” Sister said. “I’m twenty-six standard old and I’ve taken courses at the Institute for Godly Fornication. I’m not naïve, Adel.”
—fornication?—
“I’m sure you’re not.” Adel was glad to steer the conversation away from Kamilah, since he knew the Godspeed was watching. “So do you ever think about fornicating? I mean in a godly way, of course?”
“I used to think about nothing else.” She scooped a spoonful of the needles and held it to her nose, letting the spicy steam curl into her nostrils. “That’s why the Main sent me here.”
“To fornicate?”
“To find a husband and bring him to nest on Pio.” Her shoulders hunched, as if she expected someone to hit her from behind. “The Hard Thumb pressed the Main with a vision that I would find bliss on a threshold. I was your age when I got here, Adel. I was very much like you, obsessed with looking for my true love. I prayed to the Hard Thumb to mark him so that I would know him. But my prayers went unanswered.”
As she sat there, staring into her soup, Adel thought that he had never seen a woman so uncomfortable.
—get her back talking about fornication—minus buzzed.
“Maybe you were praying for the wrong thing.”
“That’s very good, Adel.” He was surprised when she reached across the table and patted his hand. “You understand me better than I did myself. About a year ago, when Speedy told me that I had been aboard longer than anyone else, I was devastated. But she consoled me. She said that she had heard my prayers over the years and had longed to answer them. I asked her if she were a god, that she could hear prayer?”
Sister fell silent, her eyes shining with the memory.
“So?” Adel was impressed. “What did she say?”
“Speedy is very old, Adel. Very wise. She has revealed mysteries to me that even the Main does not know.”
—she believes—plus buzzed.
“So you worship her then? Speedy is your god?”
Her smile was thin, almost imperceptible, but it cracked her doleful mask. “Now you understand why I don’t want to go home.”
“But what about finding true love?”
“I have found it, Adel.” Sister pushed her bowl away; she had eaten hardly anything. “No man, no human could bring me to where she has brought me.”
—could we maybe try?—
—she’s not talking about that—
“So you’re never leaving then?” Adel carelessly speared the last spiralini on his plate. “She’s going to keep you here for the rest of your life?”
“No.” Her voice quavered. “No.”
“Sister, are you all right?”
She was weeping. That was the only word for it. This was not mere crying; her chest heaved and tears ran down her cheeks. In the short time he had known her, Adel had often thought that she was on the brink of tears, but he hadn’t imagined that her sadness would be so wracking.
“She says something’s going to happen… soon, too soon and I-I have to leave but I…” A strangled moan escaped her lips.
Adel had no experience comforting a woman in pain but he nevertheless came around the table and tried to catch her in his arms.
She twisted free, scattering thrush needles across the table. “Get away.” She shot off her bench and flung herself at the wall of the breakfasting room. “I don’t want him. Do you hear?” She pounded at the wall with her fists until the sconce shook. “He’s nothing to me.”
The Godspeed’s head filled the wall, her face glowing with sympathy. “Adel,” she said. “You’d better leave us.”
“I want you,” Sister cried. “It’s you I want!”
Adel sprawled on the camel-back sofa and clutched a brocade toss pillow to his chest. He rested his head in the warmth of Meri’s lap but, for the first time since they had met, he wasn’t thinking of having sex with her. He was trying very hard to think of nothing at all as he gazed up at the clouds flitting across the ceiling of the Blue Salon.
Robman spun his coin at the tikra table. It sang through stacks of parti-colored blocks that represented the map of the competing biomes, bouncing off trees, whirling over snakes, clattering to a stop by the Verge.
“Take five, put two,” said Robman. “I want birds.”
“I’ll give you flies,” said Jonman.
“Digbees and bats?”
“Done.”
Jonman spun his coin. “It’s not just you, Adel,” he said. “Speedy picked Robman and me and Jarek too. Sister didn’t want us either.”
“Why would she want you two?” said Adel. “You’re yoked.”
“Not always,” said Meri. “Jonman was here a month before Robman.”
“But I saw him coming,” said Jonman. “Put ought, skip the take.”
“She didn’t disappear because of you,” said Adel.
—or you either—buzzed minus.