Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

But she didn’t mention Ciar and I didn’t think of him, until I got to the dance. Both Ennio and Ciar were standing at the entrance, looking out with anxious expressions.

The way their faces cleared when they saw me approaching did my heart good, but I soon saw that they were relieved for completely different reasons, as Ennio looked towards Ciar and said, “See, I told you she was fine. You and your paranoia.”

“I’m not paranoid,” Ciar said, in an urgent whisper. “And don’t talk about it here. And I have to show you something.”

Ennio lowered his eyebrows, as his features shaped into a frown. “You are insane. This is a dance. Nia came here to dance.”

I could see, past his shoulders, the dimmed lights, and couples gyrating to the convoluted strains of something that—from my classical music history—I knew should be a waltz, but wasn’t. Not quite. They called it the Cuddle Bug, but really, like the waltz in its time it was an excuse for young people to hold each other and spend time together in a form the population planners might otherwise find inappropriate in unmarried couples.

Ennio put his hand on my forearm to guide me inside, but Ciar was shaking his head, making his hair flop in front of his eyes. “Come. Forget the dance. This is more important.” His voice got louder, as he got more agitated, and I could see Ennio thought that if he were to refuse to listen to whatever Ciar had to say, Ciar was quite likely to cause a scene and then we’d all be investigated for—at the very least—antisocial activities.

“You just want to undercut my one chance to dance with Nia,” Ennio said, in the tone of someone trying desperately to turn the whole thing into a joke.

“No,” Ciar said. “No, this is important.”

And it was clear that to him it was. Not just a joke, not just a side pursuit, not just a way to take the shine off his rival. At any rate, I told myself, it was impossible that either of them was that serious about their rivalry. First, they were as good friends as two young men of their solitary temperaments could be. And second, suppose one of them won my hand. The other one could find a woman just as good looking and with as good prospects on any given evening, at the single women’s dormitory. Frankly, I thought the only reason they both courted me was because it allowed all three of us to spend time together, as we had since we’d started instruction.

I could see Ennio weigh all this too, and judge the anxiety in Ciar’s eyes, and the way he kept looking around wildly, as though sure he was being followed. And then a hint of resignation appeared in his eyes, as it had in our childhood, when we finally gave in to one of Ciar’s crazy schemes and investigated his mad suspicions—like the time Ciar had decided that the food in the cafeteria was made from the bodies of people who died and the entire thing with the recycler and converter was a cover up. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Let’s dispose of your insanity, shall we? What did you discover this time? Are they using school children for propulsion?”

But Ciar didn’t laugh or argue, he just shook his head, and his voice changed to a whisper. “I’ll go ahead. You don’t want to be seen with me. Or at least, we shouldn’t leave together,” he said. “I’ll go ahead, and then in ten minutes or so, meet me at the archive.”

“At the—” Ennio said.

“Where I work. You know very well where it is. I’ll leave it open for you.”

His being in his place of work after hours seemed strange enough. If he didn’t have a work order from his supervisor, he could get into serious trouble over it. His letting us in after hours was even more dangerous.

“He’s riding for a fall,” Ennio said, as he watched Ciar leave. “I wonder what’s got into him?”

“Isn’t it strange,” I said, “how we use expressions for things long vanished, things neither we nor anyone on board the ship could know about personally?”

Ennio gave me an odd look. “What are you talking about now?” he asked.

“Riding for a fall. None of us has ever ridden anything.”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ve ridden the ship our whole lives,” he said. “But that’s not the point. Don’t you go talking of old language now, or I’ll think both of you have gone completely insane. I wonder what he’s chasing?”

“Something related to those nursery rhymes, I think.”

Ennio made a sound that, without being a profanity, consigned the nursery rhymes and everyone who wrought them to the hells of the ancients. “You’re not going to marry him, are you, Nia?” he asked me, with a pleading look. “The man is my best friend, but sometimes I think he’s a half-wit. He does more thought transgression in ten minutes than other people do in their entire lives.”

I shrugged. “I’m not going to marry anyone,” I said. “At least not just yet. I have enough to support myself, and I enjoy living at my parents’ lodging. Why bother merging, when I can fly solo just as well?”

He gave me a wolfish smile that told me he wasn’t buying my answer, not for a second, then tugged on my arm again, gently this time. “But you do dance, don’t you, Nia? Come and dance with me.”

We did dance, in the dark, confined warmth of the great room of the bachelor’s quarters. I knew from visiting Ennio there—usually under close supervision—that this room was normally used for terminals for learning or gaming or any other leisure activities, but someone had cleared them all away, and dimmed the lights to the lowest setting and the large, well-lit room looked like a cavern, confined and close. The semi-darkness made the whole space more intimate, more …isolating, so that while you spun with your partner to the winding strains of the Cuddle Bug the two of you might well have been in the middle of nowhere, gloriously alone.

And the music was sensuous, I’ll give you that. The warm firmness of Ennio’s chest against mine was reassuring, his arms around my body were comforting. But as one set ended and another began, I pulled away, regretfully, and whispered to him, “Come on, we’d better meet him.”

“Nia,” Ennio whispered back, looking betrayed.

“Do you want to risk what he might do if we don’t meet him?”

“No …no. I guess not. I …oh, but he’s a pain.”

I smiled up at his annoyed expression. Perhaps he was courting me in earnest after all. Oh, sure, he could find a better bride around any corner and down any section corridor, but maybe he didn’t know that.

I’m a woman of machines and solid objects. I understand malfunctions based on some defective component, and I understand the logic of mechanics. I also understand humans aren’t always logical, which is why they are such bewildering creatures. And why I normally do my best not to get that involved with them. But sometimes I still have trouble with the idea that humans aren’t logical in their choice of a mate.

I’ve read the classic romances just as well as everyone else has, but the one thing no one ever explained to me was exactly why people did any of these things. And perhaps that was where I failed to understand Ennio. Maybe he was in the grip of one of those illogical convictions that only one woman would do for him, and that I had to be that woman. I don’t pretend to understand, but I was gratified by it anyway.

I gave him my arm, and we walked, in an ambling sort of way, as if we had nothing much to do, out of the room, out of the center, down a corridor, then down another, on a seemingly random path.

“People will think we are bundling,” I told Ennio. “But I get a feeling it’s better than their thinking that we’re meeting Ciar. I don’t think this time if we’re caught we’ll escape with just a severe reprimand, like the time we got into the kitchens to find out where meat came from.”