Joan Vinge - Heaven Chronicles

She gathered enough strength, wearily, to perform the functional act of feeding herself one more time; even though her stomach was a shrunken, hard lump of denial. She slipped out of her cabin, confident that Chaim was not outside his own across the well, and let herself fall downward into the eating area. The Mother 's living quarters were spacious for two people, the ship having originally carried a crew of eight, and she recoiled from the emptiness of the commons after the womb-small security of her own cabin.

But as her eyes readjusted their scale she realized that she was not alone this time. Chaim balanced lightly on a seat at the near side of the wide, dull-metal table in the room's center. He turned as she entered, his face almost eager. She looked away from it quickly, not quickly enough, as her feet settled with a click onto the mirroring floor.

“Mythili—”

She moved away from him stubbornly, toward the food lockers. She pulled a can out of one and pushed it into the warmer without even looking at the label. “What are you doing here?” she said resentfully. She had redesigned her days almost unconsciously so that she ate and slept at nonstandard times, the better to avoid even the sight of him.

“Waiting for you.”

“Why? Is there some problem with the ship?” She half-turned, glancing back; the small, elusive fluctuation of energy intruded on her memory.

“Yes.” He straightened, balancing against the table, searching her face for a response. “With the crew, damn it!”

“What do you mean?” She flinched away from the anger in his voice.

“ Who do I mean. I mean us, for God's sake. You see anybody else on this ship?” He gestured, almost losing his balance. “It won't work like this. We can't go on pretending there's no one else on board. I can't, anyway. We're partners, like it or not; and we've got to face it or we won't survive. It won't work like this.”

“I know,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. The heated container of food popped out at her and she jerked back.

“Do you want it to fail? Don't you care whether we make it or not?”

“I don't know.”

“What?” he said, demanding, not asking.

She bit her suddenly quivering lips, held her face and body rigid against the counter. “Yes, I care.” Some part of her shouted silently that it was a lie, No, God, I don't give a damn; it's all useless — Her hand groped the air, reaching out to something nameless.

“Mythili … are you all right?” His anger faded as suddenly as it had come; his voice gentled, his concern reached toward her uncertainly, brushed her straining fingertips like a touch. “Can I help? Let me help, if I can …”

She pulled her hand in, pulled her voice together. “I'm fine!” The past and present fused into one inescapable cage of hot steel.

His silence lay as loudly as speech in the space between them. “I'm not fine,” he said at last, confessing almost defiantly to the weakness she would not admit. “It's like I've been on this ship all alone!” She didn't understand the peculiar vehemence of the words, didn't want to. “I see more of that damn lizard than I see of you! I know you've been avoiding me. But damn it, I haven't given you any reason to, have I?”

“No reason? What reason do I need except the sight of you!” She turned to look at him finally, brushing back her disheveled hair.

“What the—? What's that supposed to mean, for God's sake?” His face clenched.

“It means that every time I see you I remember what happened on Planet Two.” Feeling Siamang's rough hands tearing at her clothing; what he had wanted to do and almost done to her, before they had abandoned her on the lifeless surface.… “That it happened because you wouldn't help me, because you didn't have the guts to stand up to Siamang. You used me as a pawn to save your own life, and every time I see you I remember that!”

“Well, what the hell do you want me to do about it?” He held out his hands, but they were knotted into fists. “Do you want me to mutilate myself, so you don't have to see this—?” One hand leaped at his face, as if he really meant to dig his fingers into his flesh. “Do you want a stick to beat me with? Is that what you want from me? God damn it, Mythili, do you think there's anything you could do to me, say to me, think about me that I haven't done myself?” His hands dropped away. “But it doesn't change anything.… What happened on Planet Two happened. Yes, I was scared, I didn't want to die. I did the best I could—it wasn't good enough. I'd do anything to make it right; but there's nothing I can do! I wish to God you'd pressed the charges against me, and gotten it over with!”

“I don't know why I didn't!” Her voice broke under the weight of the lie, the knowledge of why she had never pressed charges, and why she could never let it go. She shook her head. “But I didn't. And if I didn't, I—I have to live with the consequences, I suppose. I have to face the fact that we are on this ship—together.” She clasped her hands around the food can like a holy offering refused, a useless prayer for understanding. She moved it stiffly to a magnetized tray and felt it click down on the surface; aching to feel the same stability seize her own life and hold it fast. “What do you want changed, then?”

His mouth worked. “I need to see a human face once in a while—yours will have to do, since it's the only one here besides my own. I'm not asking to share your body, for God's sake—” expecting a protest as her mouth opened, “—just to share my meals with you. That's all I want. You don't even have to talk if you don't have anything to say to me.”

“All right.” She nodded, surprised to feel an immense and inexpressible relief filling her. “I suppose that's fair enough,” knowing that it was both less and more than that. She carried the food she had heated to the table and settled there with it, not close to him, but not pointedly far away. Peeling back the plastic, she discovered a serving of unflavored green beans, and nothing more. She ate them in silence, feeling his eyes track every bite. A cricket began to chirp somewhere, reassured by the quiet. The sound filled her with a nameless longing. She took the container to the disposal when she finished, with no appetite left to make her heat up something more. Nodding selfconsciously, she pushed off, rising up like a bird, seeking freedom in flight.

“See you at dinner.”

She saw him at dinner, and three times a day-period from then on; oftener, sometimes, when he joined her in the control room as she fitted their trajectory to the Main Belt's fluid ballet. She brought a book with her to the commons, a shield against contact; although she only stared blindly at the pages while she ate her tasteless, haphazard meals. Dartagnan often brought the lizard, wearing it like jewelry, letting it creep slowly, impossibly, over his shirt. She tried not to watch it, to give him any unnecessary attention at all.

But somehow she found herself offering the book to him, to deflect his staring curiosity; and then, because she had, forced to discuss the implications of its tedious Old World essays on ecological adaptation. Although she was never certain whether he had any more real interest in the subject than she did, her appetite gradually returned, along with something like her old ability to speak without effort.

But still she found no enthusiasm or pleasure anywhere in herself, no more than a weary acceptance of things she could not change. And Dartagnan's appetite dwindled until he seemed to live on soy milk, and she saw him surreptitiously swallowing nameless pills. His face grew hollow; bitter brackets tightened at the corners of his mouth. She wondered whether he was sick, got an irritable denial when she tried to question him about it. She didn't ask again, but nursed a fresh resentment.