Damon Knight - Orbit 14

“It would never show. You couldn’t help but be beautiful.”

“Maris . . . sweet Maris.”

He felt her hand clench in the soft weave of his shirt, move in caresses down his body. Angrily he pulled away, sat up, half his face flushed. “Damn—!”

Stricken, she caught at his sleeve. “No, no—” Her eyes found his face, gray filled with grief. “No . . . Maris . . . I—want you.” She unsealed her suit, drew blue-silver from her shoulders, knelt before him. “I want you.”

Her hair fell to her waist, the color of warm honey. She reached out and lifted his hand with tenderness; slowly he leaned forward, to bare her breasts and her beating heart, felt the softness set fire to his nerves. Pulling her close, he found her lips, kissed them long and longingly; held her against his own heart beating, lost in her silken hair. “Oh, God, Brandy . . .”

“I love you, Maris ... I think I’ve always loved you.” She clung to him, cold and shivering in the sunlit air. “And it’s wrong to leave you and never let you know.”

And he realized that fear made her tremble, fear bound to her love in ways he could not fully understand. Blind to the future, he drew her down beside him and stopped her trembling with his joy.

In the evening she sat across from him at the bar, blue-haloed with light, sipping brandy. Their faces were bright with wine and melancholy bliss.

“I finally got some more brandy, Brandy ... a couple of years ago. So we wouldn’t run out. If we don’t get to it, you can take it with you.” He set the dusty red-splintered bottle carefully on the bar.

“You could save it, in case I do come back, as old as your grandmaw, and in need of some warmth. . . .” Slowly she rotated her glass, watching red leap up the sides. “Do you suppose by then my poems will have reached Home? And maybe somewhere Inside, Ntaka will be reading me.”

“The Outside will be the Inside by then. . . . Besides, Ntaka’s probably already dead. Been dead for years.”

“Oh. I guess.” She pouted, her eyes growing dim and moist. “Damn, I wish ... I wish.”

“Branduin, you haven’t joined us yet tonight. It is our last together.” Harkane appeared beside her, lean dark face smiling in a cloud-mass of blued white hair. She sat down with her drink.

“I’ll come soon.” Clouded eyes glanced up, away.

“Ah, the sadness of parting keeps you apart? I know.” Harkane nodded. “We’ve been together so long; it’s hard, to lose another family.” She regarded Maris. “And a good bartender must share everyone’s sorrows, yes, Soldier—? But bury his own. Oh—they would like some more drinks—”

Sensing dismissal, he moved aside; with long-practiced skill he became blind and deaf, pouring wine.

“Brandy, you are so unhappy—don’t you want to go on this other voyage?”

“Yes, I do—! But . .

“But you don’t. It is always so when there is choice. Sometimes we make the right choice, and though we’re afraid we go on with it anyway. And sometimes we make the wrong choice, and go on with it anyway because we’re afraid not to. Have you changed your mind?”

“But I can’t change—”

“Why not? We will leave them a message. They will go on and pick up their second compatible.”

“Is it really that easy?”

“No . . . not quite. But we can do it, if you want to stay.”

Silence stretched; Maris sent a tray away, began to wipe glasses, fumbled.

“But I should. ”

“Brandy. If you go only out of obligation, I will tell you something. I want to retire. I was going to resign this trip, at Sanalareta; but if I do that, Mactav will need a new Best Friend. She’s getting old and cantankerous, just like me; these past few years her behavior has begun to show the strain she is under. She must have someone who can feel her needs. I was going to ask you, I think you understand her best; but I thought you wanted this other thing more. If not, I ask you now to become the new Best Friend of the Who Got Her.”

“But Harkane, you’re not old—”

“I am eighty-six. I’m too old for the sporting life anymore! I will become a Mactav; I’ve been lucky, I have an opportunity.”

“Then . . . yes—I do want to stay! I accept the position.”

In spite of himself Maris looked up, saw her face shining with joy and release. “Brandy—?”

“Maris, I’m not going!”

“I know!” He laughed, joined them.

“Soldier.” He looked up, dark met dark, Harkane’s eyes that saw more than surfaces. “This will be the last time that I see you; I am retiring, you know. You have been very good to me all these years, helping me be young; you are very kind to us all. . . . Now, to say good-bye, I do something in return.” She took his hand, placed it firmly over Brandy’s, shining with rings on the counter. “I give her back to you. Brandy—join us soon, we’ll celebrate.” She rose mildly and moved away into the crowded room.

Their hands twisted, clasped tight on the counter.

Brandy closed her eyes. “God, I’m so glad!”

“So am I.”

“Only the poems . . .”

“Remember once you told me, ‘you can see it all a hundred times, and never see it all’?”

A quicksilver smile. “And it’s true. . . . Oh, Maris, now this is my last night! And I have to spend it with them, to celebrate.”

“I know. There’s—no way I can have you forever, I suppose. But it’s all right.” He grinned. “Everything’s all right. What’s twenty-five years, compared to two hundred?”

“It’ll seem like three.”

“It’ll seem like twenty-five. But I can stand it—”

He stood it, for twenty-four more years, looking up from the bar with sudden eagerness every time new voices and the sound of laughter spilled into the dim blue room.

“Soldier! Soldier, you’re still—”

“We missed you like—”

“—two whole weeks of—”

“—want to buy a whole sack for my own—”

The crew of the DOM-428 pressed around him, their fingers proving he was real; their lips brushed a cheek that couldn’t feel and one that could, long loose hair rippling over the agate bar. He hugged four at a time. “Aralea! Vlasa! Elsah, what the hell have you done to your hair now—and Ling-shan! My God, you’re pretty, like always. Cathe—” The memory bank never forgot a shining fresh-scrubbed face, even after thirty-seven years. Their eyes were very bright as he welcomed them, and their hands left loving prints along the agate bar.

“—still have your stone bar; I’m so glad, don’t ever sell it—”

“And what’s new with you?” Elsah gasped, and ecstatic laughter burst over him.

He shook his head, hands up, laughing too. “—go prematurely deaf? First round on the house; only one at a time, huh?”

Elsah brushed strands of green-tinged waist-length hair back from her very green eyes. “Sorry, Soldier. We’ve just said it all to each other, over and over. And gee, we haven’t seen you for four years!” Her belt tossed blue-green sparks against her green quilted flightsuit.

“Four years? Seems more like thirty-seven.” And they laughed again, appreciating, because it was true. “Welcome back to the Tin Soldier. What’s your pleasure?”

“Why you of course, me darlin’,” said black-haired Brigit, and she winked.

His smile barely caught on a sharp edge; he winked back. “Just the drinks are on the house, lass.” The smile widened and came unstuck.

More giggles.

“Ach, a pity!” Brigit pouted. She wore a filigree necklace, like the galaxy strung over her dark-suited breast. “Well, then, I guess a little olive beer, for old time’s sake.”