Still Amos watched. The screen was a simulation now, a view of how the stars would appear if the outside universe were there. He watched until he could no longer distinguish Bethel's star, Saffron, from the others. Then he switched off the viewscreen and rose wearily. It was always a wrench to leave his home, his people.
Think of what is to come. A week or so to Station SSS-900-C. He removed his robe and lay down on the narrow bed, yawning. The drugs that helped one make an easier transition always left him sleepy. Channa, he thought, and her image rose to delight his mind's eye. Her long, high-cheekboned face framed by curling black hair, teeth white in a smile of welcome.
He'd never imagined, at the beginning, that this makeshift arrangement would last ten years. They'd agreed then to steal twelve weeks from their lives each year so that they could be together. Half of that time he visited Channa, the other half she was with him on Bethel; allowing for travel time, that gave them four weeks together in either place.
He closed his eyes in pain. Four weeks. Just time enough to make each parting agony.
I was so sure she would stay, once she saw my home. Bethel rose before him. The stinging salty wind from the desert marshes, dawn rising thunderous over the sands. The warm sweet smell of cut grass in the river meadows… And she always wanted to live planetside.
Amos's mouth quirked. They had too much in common-both were prisoners to their sense of duty. Being reliable made one susceptible to the demands of others. He could not leave Bethel, not while they struggled to rebuild from the devastation the Kolnari had left. And Channa's commitment to her Station was equally strong; as was her friendship with Simeon, the Brain whose body the Station was. So much of her identity was tied up in being a Brawn, a calling to which many aspired but for which few were qualified. And from among those few, she had worked her way up to an unusually high and responsible position. She was respected in Central Worlds. She wielded power and influence.
But among his people, her profession was not understood, her strength and capability, her ambition had been disparaged. She was considered mannish, and his love for her was considered unnatural by many. Not a few of his worried followers had told him so.
He sighed and turned over, thumping at the pillow.
Ten years. He'd thought that if she did not come with him, that perhaps their attraction would gradually grow less. But that had not been the case. The attraction between them was as powerful, the parting as painful, the reunions as rapturous as ever.
Just as her dedication to the Space Station Simeon remained as strong as ever.
Simeon. There was the spur that galled his spirit; that one whom he esteemed as a brother should be his rival for the woman he loved.
Unfair, unreasonable, he knew. Simeon's twisted, non-viable body had been encased in a titanium womb at birth. A life-sustaining shell fitted with neural implants that would allow him to be connected to various housings-to the space station that became his body and his home. Channa was his Brawn, the mobile half of the team of which Simeon was the "brain."
Amos twisted around in the bed again.
His jealousy was baseless, but still, it tormented him. Simeon's love for Channa and hers for Simeon was, perforce, chaste. Simeon could never hold her, as Amos could, nor run hand in hand with her along a beach, nor… other things. And yet, Simeon had the greater share of her time, her company, the sight and sound of her that Amos himself yearned for.
In five years her contract will be finished. Then she would have to choose to renew it-or not. Amos smiled as sleep drifted in, as gentle as weightlessness. She is too full of life to choose more years among metal and machines.
"Is it true, my Lord, that when you return to Bethel you will at last choose a bride?"
Amos-Prophet of the Second Revelation, Hero of the war against the Kolnar and Leader of Bethel's Council of Elders-suppressed a violent start.
Not again! The Council must have been at her. He put his book aside reluctantly-Simeon had tracked down an original Delany-and turned his recliner to face her.
Soamosa bint Sierra Nueva, for her part, sat silently, dressed in a very proper, long-sleeved gray dress which covered her from throat to ankles. Her hair, amazingly blond for a Bethelite, was completely hidden now in a matching gray bag that framed her small face unbecomingly. Amos ran a list of the usual suspects through his mind. One reason I have lived so long is that I do not have an heir. There were many traditionalists on Bethel who loved the thought of a regency-with themselves pulling the strings from behind a minor's chair.
Amos considered his cousin, trying to see her as a stranger might. She is no longer the tomboy I once knew, he admitted reluctantly. She is a woman, a terribly proper one. He suppressed a sigh. I should have brought her with me earlier.
Bethel had become considerably less isolated since the Kolnari attack. Before that he'd been viewed as a heretic for wanting to open their planet to the universe-and he hadn't been heir, either. The Kolnari fusion bomb that destroyed the city of Keriss and the then-Council and Prophet had driven home his point about the dangers of isolationism quite thoroughly.
Soamosa licked her lips nervously.
"I do not wish to overstep, my Lor… cousin," she looked up at him with soft blue eyes and smiled shyly. "But it is true that the people wonder when you will take a wife. For ten years, they say, you have left us to go to this woman who is married to an abomination and still she has given you no heir. The people say it is a judgment and they are troubled, cousin."
Soamosa lowered her eyes and her head when she'd finished speaking. Her slender back was straight, her slim feet pressed together in their thick, homely shoes, her hands were folded modestly in her lap. She was the perfect picture of traditional Bethelite womanhood.
Perhaps a perfect candidate for the Prophet's wife. Amos wondered who had been in charge of her education these past few years, regretting his lack of involvement. There was too much to do, he protested to his creeping guilt, too many documents and summaries and reports…
Amos breathed a quiet, frustrated sigh. Ah, Channa, he thought, how you've changed me. Once, not so very long ago, I would have approved of such overwhelming self-negation. I would have been pleased at the way she distanced herself from her own opinions so as not to seem overbold. What would you advise me to tell her, my love?
He realized now, far too late, that choosing to bring Soamosa had been something of an error. Insensitive at best. No doubt his young cousin's mother had visions of an elaborate wedding ceremony with thousands of guests upon their return; her daughter would be the radiant bride, himself, the blushing groom.
He sat up straighter and spoke to her firmly.
"Soamosa, look at me."
Her lips trembled and her eyes were huge and shining when she looked up.
"I have told you that Simeon is neither an abomination, nor Channa's husband. He is my dear friend, and Channa, who is completely unbound, is the woman that I love. Do you understand this?"
A frown struggled to manifest itself and then her face smoothed.
Ah, Amos thought, such control. For one so apparently timid she's actually quite strong.
"No," she said firmly, "I do not."
"I do not owe you an explanation, little one."