Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

“We can’t hear you, Miranda,” said the Godspeed .

Sister tilted her head to the side and finished the speech. “You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want. Makes no difference. I’ll always be there for you.”

“Ferdinand,” the Godspeed murmured, “she’s just made you the happiest man in the world.”

Adel pulled her to her feet. “Darling, you make me feel so humble.”

“So then you’ll be my husband?”

“Sure,” he said. “My heart is willing…” he laid his hand against his chest, “…and here’s my hand.” Adel extended his arm.

“And here’s mine with my heart in it.” She slid her fingers across his palm, her touch cool and feathery.

“And,” prompted the Godspeed . “And?”

With a sigh, Sister turned her face up toward his. Her eyelids fluttered closed. Adel stooped over her. The first time he had played this scene, she had so clearly not wanted to be kissed that he had just brushed his lips against her thin frown. The Godspeed wanted more. Now he lifted her veil and pressed his mouth hard against hers. She did nothing to resist, although he could feel her shiver when he slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips.

“Line?” said the Godspeed .

“Well, got to go.” Sister twitched out of his embrace. “See you in a bit.”

“It will seem like forever.” Adel bowed to her and then they both turned to get the Godspeed ’s reaction.

“Better,” she said. “But Miranda, flow into his arms. He’s going to be your husband, your dream come true.”

“I know.” Her voice was pained.

“Take your lunch break and send me Stephano and Trinculo.” She waved them off. “Topic of the day is… what?” She glanced around the little theater, as if she might discover a clue in the empty house. “Today you are to talk about what you’re going to do when you get home.”

Adel could not help but notice Sister’s stricken expression; her eyes were like wounds. But she nodded and made no objection.

As they passed down the aisle, the Godspeed brought her fetch downstage to deliver the speech that closed Act III, Scene i. As always, she gave her lines a grandiloquent, singing quality.

“Those two really take the cake. My plan is working out just great, but I can’t sit around patting myself on the back. I’ve got other fish to fry if I’m going to make this mess end happily ever after.”

To help Adel and Sister get into character, the Godspeed had directed them to eat lunch together every day in the Chillingsworth Breakfasting Room while the other pilgrims dined in the Ophiuchi. They had passed their first meal in tortured silence and might as well have been on different floors of the threshold. When the Godspeed asked what they talked about, they sheepishly admitted that they had not spoken at all. She knew this, of course, but pretended to be so provoked that she assigned them topics for mandatory discussion.

The Chillingsworth was a more intimate space than the Ophiuchi. It was cross-shaped; in the three bays were refectory tables and benches. There was a tile fireplace in the fourth bay in which a fetch fire always burned. Sconces in the shapes of the famous singing flowers of Old Zara sprouted from pale blue walls.

Adel set his plate of spiralini in rado sauce on the heavy table and scraped a bench from underneath to sit on. While the pasta cooled he closed his eyes and lifted the mute on his opposites. He had learned back on Harvest that their buzz made acting impossible. They were confused when he was in character and tried to get him to do things that weren’t in the script. When he opened his eyes again, Sister was opposite him, head bowed in prayer over a bowl of thrush needles.

He waited for her to finish. “You want to go first?” he said.

“I don’t like to think about going home to Pio,” she said. “I pray it won’t happen anytime soon.”

—your prayers are answered—buzzed minus .

“Why, was it bad?”

“No.” She picked up her spoon but then set it down again. Over the past few days Adel had discovered that she was a extremely nervous eater. She barely touched what was on her plate. “I was happy.” Somehow, Adel couldn’t quite imagine what happy might look like on Sister Lihong Rain. “But I was much smaller then. When the Main told me I had to make a pilgrimage, I cried. But she has filled with her grace and made me large. Being with her here is the greatest blessing.”

“Her? You are talking about Speedy?”

Sister gave him a pitying nod, as if the answer were as obvious as air. “And what about you, Adel?”

Adel had been so anxious since the spacewalk that he hadn’t really considered what would happen if he were lucky enough to get off the Godspeed alive.

—we were going to have a whole lot of sex remember?—buzzed plus

—with as many people as possible—

Adel wondered if Sister would ever consider sleeping with him. “I want to have lovers.” He had felt a familiar stirring whenever he kissed her in rehearsal.

“Ah.” She nodded. “And get married, like in our play?”

“Well that, sure. Eventually.” He remembered lurid fantasies he’d spun about Helell Merwyn, the librarian from the Springs upper school and his mother’s friend Renata Murat and Lucia Guerra who was in that comedy about the talking house. Did he want to marry them?

—no we just want a taste—minus buzzed .

“I haven’t had much experience. I was a virgin when I got here.”

“Were you?” She frowned. “But something has happened, hasn’t it? Something between you and Kamilah.”

—we wish —buzzed plus.

“You think Kamilah and I… ?”

“Even though nobody tells me, I do notice things,” Sister said. “I’m twenty-six standard old and I’ve taken courses at the Institute for Godly Fornication. I’m not naïve, Adel.”

—fornication?—

“I’m sure you’re not.” Adel was glad to steer the conversation away from Kamilah, since he knew the Godspeed was watching. “So do you ever think about fornicating? I mean in a godly way, of course?”

“I used to think about nothing else.” She scooped a spoonful of the needles and held it to her nose, letting the spicy steam curl into her nostrils. “That’s why the Main sent me here.”

“To fornicate?”

“To find a husband and bring him to nest on Pio.” Her shoulders hunched, as if she expected someone to hit her from behind. “The Hard Thumb pressed the Main with a vision that I would find bliss on a threshold. I was your age when I got here, Adel. I was very much like you, obsessed with looking for my true love. I prayed to the Hard Thumb to mark him so that I would know him. But my prayers went unanswered.”

As she sat there, staring into her soup, Adel thought that he had never seen a woman so uncomfortable.

—get her back talking about fornication—minus buzzed .

“Maybe you were praying for the wrong thing.”

“That’s very good, Adel.” He was surprised when she reached across the table and patted his hand. “You understand me better than I did myself. About a year ago, when Speedy told me that I had been aboard longer than anyone else, I was devastated. But she consoled me. She said that she had heard my prayers over the years and had longed to answer them. I asked her if she were a god, that she could hear prayer?”

Sister fell silent, her eyes shining with the memory.

“So?” Adel was impressed. “What did she say?”

“Speedy is very old, Adel. Very wise. She has revealed mysteries to me that even the Main does not know.”