Poul Anderson - The Boat of a Million Years

She savored ordinariness for the rest of the day and evening, minute by minute, each presence and place, task and talk, question and decision, everything that she owned and that owned her. When the final lamp guided her and Barikai to bed, she was ready for his words: “I think best you sleep, truly sleep, this night and beyond.”

“Hold me until I do,” she asked of him. He did, with kisses. “Come not back too soon,” he said once, against her cheek. “That would be unwise.”

“I know—“ She drifted from him. j Opening her eyes after a time outside of time, she found she was crying. Maybe this had been a bad idea. Maybe she should not go back ever. Come on, old girl, she thought. Stop this. You promised Corinne you’d help her with that tapestry she wants to make. Uncoupling, she left the booth where she had lain but stood for a space more in the dream chamber, busy. Good habit, carrying a makeup kit in a purse. Sessions here did sometimes touch pretty near the bone. Well, she learned long ago how to cover the traces.

Svoboda was passing by in the corridor. “Hello,” said Aliyat. She was about to move on when the other woman plucked her sleeve.

“A moment, if you please,” Svoboda requested.

“Uh, sure.” Aliyat glanced away.

Svoboda didn’t take the hint. “Don’t resent this. I must try it. You should go in there less often.”

Anger quivered. “Everybody else says it. Why not you? I know what I’m doing.”

“Well, I can’t prescribe for you, but—”

“But you’re afraid I’m curling up in a ball and someday I won’t be able to uncurl.” Aliyat inhaled. Suddenly she felt like speaking. “Listen, dear. You’ve been in situations in the past where you had to go away from yourself.”

Svoboda paled a bit. “Yes.”

“I have a lot more than you. I know them pretty thoroughly, believe me. The dream box is a better escape than booze or dope or—“ Aliyat grinned—“closing my eyes and flunking of England.”

“But this isn’t that kind of thing!”

“No, not exactly. Still— Listen. What happened today pros that I got so furious that if I couldn’t go conjure a private world, I’d’ve had to scream and smash things and generally throw a fit. What would that have done for crew morale?”

“What was the matter?”

“Hanno. What else? We met by chance and he buttonholed me and, oh, you can imagine. He repeated the same tired noises you just did, about me and the dream box. He tried to say, very roundabout— Never mind.”

Svoboda bared a brief smile. “Let me guess. He implied you are a menace to relationships aboard ship.”

“Yeah. He’d like to pair off with me. Of course he would. Hasn’t gotten laid for months now, has he? I suggested what he could do instead, and walked off. But I was volcano angry.”

“You were overreacting; you, of all people. Stress—”

“I s’pose.” Faintly surprised at how rage and loss alike had eased within her, Aliyat said, “Look, I’m not addicted to dreams. Really I’m not. Everybody uses them once in a while. Why don’t you share with me sometime? I’d like that. An interactive dream has more possibilities than letting the computer put into your head what it thinks you’ve demanded.”

Svoboda nodded. “True. But—“ She stopped.

“But you’re afraid I might learn things about you you’d rather I didn’t. That’s it, nght?” Aliyat shrugged. “I’m not offended. Only, don’t preach at me, okay?”

“Why did you resent Hanno’s attempt?” Svoboda asked quickly. “It was quite natural. You need not have cursed him for it.”

“After what he’s done to us?” Counterattack: “Do you still have a soft spot for him?”

Svoboda looked elsewhere. “I shouldn’t, I know. On se veut—”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. A stray memory.”

“About him.”

Svoboda met the challenge. Probably, Aliyat thought, she wants to be friendly toward me; feels she has to. “Yes. Of no importance. Some lines we saw once. It was ... the late twentieth century, a few years after we—we seven had gone under cover, while Patulcius was still keeping his own camouflage. Hanno and I were traveling about incognito in France. We stayed one night at an old inn, yes, old already then, and in the guest book we found what somebody had written, long before. I was reminded now, that’s all.”

“What was it?” Aliyat asked.

Again Svoboda looked past her. The wry words whis-jjjered forth as if of themselves.

“On se veut On s’enlace Ons’enlasse On s’en veut.”

Before Aliyat could respond, she nodded adieu and hurried on down the corridor.

Once more Yukiko was redecorating her room. Until she finished, it would be an uninhabitable clutter. Thus she spent most of her private hours in Tu Shan’s, as well as deeping there. In due course they would share hers while Idle worked on his. It was her proposal. He had assented without seeming to care. The brushstroke landscape and calligraphy she earlier put on his walls had over the years been ween until they were all but invisible. However, she had a feeling that he would never especially have noticed their disappearance.

Entering, she found him cross-legged on the bed, left hand supporting a picture screen, right hand busy with a light pencil. He drew something, considered it, made an aikation, studied it further. His big body seemed relaxed and the features bore no mark of a scowl.

“Why, what are you doing?” she asked.

He glanced up. “I have an idea,” he said almost eagerly. “It isn’t clear to me yet, but sketching helps me think.”

She went around behind him and leaned over to see. His drawings were always delicate, a contrast to much of his work in stone or wood. This showed a man in traditional peasant garb, holding a spade. On a large rock beside him jiquatted a-monkey, while a tiger stood below. Through the foreground flowed a stream wherein swam a carp.

“So you are finally going to try pictures?” she guessed.

He shook his head. “No, no. You are far better at them than I will ever be. These are just thoughts about figures I mean to sculpture.” He gazed up at her. “I think pictures may not help us much when we get to Tritos. Even on Earth, in old days, you remember how differently people in different times and countries would draw the same things. To the Alloi, any style of line, shade, color we might use may not make sense. Photographs may not. But a three-dimensional shape—no ghost in a computer; a solid thing they can handle—that should speak to them.”

Tritos, Alloi, he pronounced the names awkwardly; but one needed better words than “Star Three” and “Others,” and when Patulcius suggested these, the crew soon went along. Greek still bore its aura of science, learning, civilization. To three of those in the ship, it had been common speech for centuries. “Metroaster” for “Mother Star” had, though, been voted down, and “Pegasi” was back in use. After all, nobody could say whether the Alloi at Tritos had come from there, or even whether it was sun to a sentient race.

Hanno sat mute through the discussion and merely nodded his acceptance. He spoke little these days, and others no more to him than was necessary.

“Yes, an excellent thought,” Yukiko said. “What do you mean to show?”

“I am groping my way toward that,” Tu Shan replied. “Your ideas will be welcome. Here, I think, might be a group—more creatures than these—arranged according to our degrees of kinship with the animals. That may lead the Alloi to show us something about their evolution, which ought to tell us things about them.”

“Excellent.” Yukiko trilled laughter. “But how can you, now, keep up your pretense of being a simple-minded fanner and blacksmith?” She bent low, hugged him, laid her cheek on his. “This makes me so happy. You were sullen and silent and, and I truly feared you were going back to that miserable, beastly way of living I found you in—how long ago!”