“He’s coming for you, Cara. Tlir’taya followed me into space, his mind chasing my ship and searching for the signature I had carried inside me, the signature of your soul glistening like a pearl inside his sickly shining head. All he can think of now is having you, of consuming you, of swallowing all the bits of you until they are nothing but bright spots scattered inside his greater darkness.”
She was sitting now, her legs curled underneath her. Somehow, she still felt safe, as long as he was here. But now she felt something cold, too, something that searched for her through the stars, its mind sharp and untiring while its body drifted in alien seas and dreamed the stolen dreams of their love.
“You came back,” she said a little time later. “You came back to me.”
His fists were balled up in his lap, and now he was staring at the ceiling. “God forgive me, yes. I couldn’t launch out there without seeing you one more time. And I think I have an answer, too. Last night while you slept, I took an imprint of your brainwave patterns and your body’s electromagnetic signature. If I’m right, I can use a tachyon emitter broadcasting those patterns to lure Tur’taya away from Earth, far out into space, somewhere so far away that he can never find his way back.”
“What makes you so sure it will follow you?” Cara heard her own voice ask, strangely distant.
Rafael’s eyes turned inward, questing, a worried frown on his brow. “I wish I could be sure,” he finally answered. “During the voyage to Earth, I studied the Hur’klee—their sensory organs, the characteristics of the tachyonic selves’ they project into space. I’ll amplify the recording and broadcast it from the ship as I travel. I can only hope that’s enough to fool him, to drown out your true mind-print and make him come after me instead.”
“And then?” she asked, reaching for his hand, hesitating.
Rafael sighed. “And then it will be done. Tur’taya will have lost.”
Cara listened for long seconds, sensing the lie but not knowing what it meant. Then she took his hand.
“Take me with you,” she said.
Rafael looked at her, and for the first time she saw that solid wall that is the will of a Captain. This was the side he projected to others, but never to her. This was the unyielding barrier no mortal could hope to puncture.
“I can’t, Cara. I can flee from this thing, and maybe 1 can outrun it if I push the tau far enough. I’ve commandeered the fastest available ship. But this is my responsibility.”
“We’ll take our chances,” she blurted. “Don’t leave me like this!”
She expected anger from him. It was actually a crime to speak to him as she had. But he only smiled sadly, smiled and shook his head. “Now I know why I love you, Cara Wainwright. It’s because you alone see me as a man, not only as a Captain. That is the greatest gift you could have given me.”
“A going away gift?” she asked, feeling hot pressure behind her eyes but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
“Cara, I couldn’t go on living knowing that I’d brought you into danger. And every minute that I remain brings the danger closer.”
She sniffed, pushing herself back into the couch a body’s width away from him. “So that was the only reason you came back, for the recording?”
His eyebrows drew together. For a moment his blue eyes looked almost gray, clouded with thoughts his mind was too disciplined to reveal. Then they were clear again, and Cara knew in that moment that she had lost him.
“I came back for the recording, Cara, yes. That is the best way for us to remember it.”
It was raining that morning, a cold rain that blew off the ocean and pattered dully against the roof. They stood on the front porch. His cab had hovered to a stop a few minutes earlier, its robot driver patient as the hills when Rafael told him to wait. Huddling under the edge of the roof away from the rain, they clung to each other and spoke in deep gazes of how it might have been, and also of how it was, which in the end is always more important.
“You showed me how to live my life for every moment,” she said to him, and that made him smile. But inside, she was crying, and even the terrible thing that stalked her seemed trivial beside the fact that she was losing him, she was losing her Captain, that he was flying away for the last time and neither one of them had the courage to admit it.
“Maybe I’ll make it back by Christmas,” he joked, wiping the raindrops from her face. “She’s a fast ship.”
Cara nodded once, but her eyes dropped from his face, and she, knew better than to believe in dreams. Her whole life had been a dream since meeting him, and now the dream was over, and the waking Sun was harsh and unforgiving.
“Remember me,” she whispered. She lifted up onto her toes and kissed him. His lips were moist but firm. His mouth spoke of a person inside him that was no Captain, no ruler of worlds or traveler among the stars. It was just him, just Rafael. And then she knew what all those girls in the market and on the streets could never know. To love a Captain was simply to love, and there was really nothing more to it than that.
“I’ll watch the stars every night,” she vowed. “And every time I look, I’ll know that I’m looking at you.”
Worry creased his face, and she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. She started to speak. He shook his head and turned away. Then he was moving, a stiff shadow cutting through the rain toward the cab, and she was watching, watching as the door slammed shut, watching his face in the window until the rain reduced it to an oval of warm colors and then to nothing at all, as the cab disappeared into the rain.
Cara went inside. After that, whenever it rained, she felt that same hot pressure behind her eyes, and sometimes she cried, and sometimes she laughed at the remembered joy of what it had been to love a Captain.
Years passed, and Cara handled the transitions of time with what grace she could, always living in that tiny village by the sea. Often she would sit on the balcony at night, watching the sea and the stars and wondering. Had Tur’taya found him in the end? Then why hadn’t it come for her? And if Rafael had prevailed, why was there never any sign from him? Did he have to go so fast in his flight from its alien love that when he slowed down again her life had come and gone, leaving only the buried ruins of the village to remind him of her?
Only one clue ever came to her, and it didn’t come until seven years later. She was sitting alone at an outdoor cafe when she spotted a man watching her from a shop on the other side of the courtyard. It was too far to make out details, and he was dressed in the common garb of the townfolk, but something about the intensity of his eyes beneath the shadows of his hood tugged at her. He radiated turmoil, as if two powerful forces warred within him. She got up from the table and paid for her meal, but when she turned back he was gone. It never happened again, and she was never certain it had really been him. The dreams had long since vanished. Only one tangible remnant of her Captain remained.
When she got home after the encounter, Cara went immediately to her jewelry chest and opened it. There, hanging from its chain, was the stone he had given her. It was glowing strongly, so bright it lit up the whole room. That glow brought it all back to her, how it had been to love a man who walked among the stars, the thrill of indescribable excitement but the fear that was almost as strong, that was sometimes stronger.
For the next few nights, the stone shone dimmer and dimmer each time she looked at it, and one day it ceased to shine at all. But Cara remembered it. Even after she had married a man and borne him two children, she remembered.