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

—she believes —plus buzzed.

“So you worship her then? Speedy is your god?”

Her smile was thin, almost imperceptible, but it cracked her doleful mask. “Now you understand why I don’t want to go home.”

“But what about finding true love?”

“I have found it, Adel.” Sister pushed her bowl away; she had eaten hardly anything. “No man, no human could bring me to where she has brought me.”

—could we maybe try?—

—she’s not talking about that—

“So you’re never leaving then?” Adel carelessly speared the last spiralini on his plate. “She’s going to keep you here for the rest of your life?”

“No.” Her voice quavered. “No.”

“Sister, are you all right?”

She was weeping. That was the only word for it. This was not mere crying; her chest heaved and tears ran down her cheeks. In the short time he had known her, Adel had often thought that she was on the brink of tears, but he hadn’t imagined that her sadness would be so wracking.

“She says something’s going to happen… soon, too soon and I-I have to leave but I…” A strangled moan escaped her lips.

Adel had no experience comforting a woman in pain but he nevertheless came around the table and tried to catch her in his arms.

She twisted free, scattering thrush needles across the table. “Get away.” She shot off her bench and flung herself at the wall of the breakfasting room. “I don’t want him. Do you hear?” She pounded at the wall with her fists until the sconce shook. “He’s nothing to me.”

The Godspeed ’s head filled the wall, her face glowing with sympathy. “Adel,” she said. “You’d better leave us.”

“I want you,” Sister cried. “It’s you I want!”

Adel sprawled on the camel-back sofa and clutched a brocade toss pillow to his chest. He rested his head in the warmth of Meri’s lap but, for the first time since they had met, he wasn’t thinking of having sex with her. He was trying very hard to think of nothing at all as he gazed up at the clouds flitting across the ceiling of the Blue Salon.

Robman spun his coin at the tikra table. It sang through stacks of parti-colored blocks that represented the map of the competing biomes, bouncing off trees, whirling over snakes, clattering to a stop by the Verge.

“Take five, put two,” said Robman. “I want birds.”

“I’ll give you flies,” said Jonman.

“Digbees and bats?”

“Done.”

Jonman spun his coin. “It’s not just you, Adel,” he said. “Speedy picked Robman and me and Jarek too. Sister didn’t want us either.”

“Why would she want you two?” said Adel. “You’re yoked.”

“Not always,” said Meri. “Jonman was here a month before Robman.”

“But I saw him coming,” said Jonman. “Put ought, skip the take.”

“She didn’t disappear because of you,” said Adel.

—or you either —buzzed minus.

“Or you either.” Meri had been stroking his hair, now she gave it a short tug. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“I made her cry.”

“No, Speedy did that.” Meri spat the name, as if she were daring the Godspeed to display. She had not shown herself to them in almost three days.

Robman spun again.

“Speedy wouldn’t let her go out of the airlock,” said Meri. “Would she?”

“Without a suit?” Robman sipped Z-breeze from a tumbler as he watched his coin dance. “Never.”

“Who knows what Speedy will do?” said Adel.

“They’re wasting their time,” said Jonman. “Sister isn’t out there.”

“Do you see that,” Meri said “or is it just an opinion?”

“Take one, put one,” said Robman.

“Which gets you exactly nothing,” said Jonman. “I call a storm.”

“Then I call a flood.” Robman pushed three of his blocks toward Jonman’s side of the board. The tether connecting them quivered and Adel thought he could hear it gurgling faintly.

Jonman distributed the blocks around his biome. “What I see is that she’s hiding someplace,” he said. “I just don’t see where.”

Meri slid out from under Adel’s head and stood. “And Speedy?” Adel put the pillow on the armrest of the sofa and his head on the pillow.

“She’s here,” said Jonman. “She’s toying with us. That’s what she does best.”

“At least we don’t have to practice her damn play,” said Robman.

Adel wanted to wrap the pillow around his ears to blot out this conversation. One of their number had vanished, they were some fifty light-years from the nearest MASTA, and there was something very wrong with the cognizor in command of their threshold. Why weren’t the others panicking like he was? “Rehearse,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t practice a play. You rehearse it.”

Meri told the wall to display the airlock but it was empty. “They must be back already.”

“Have some more Z-breeze, Rob,” said Jonman. “I can’t feel anything yet.”

“Here.” He thrust the tumbler at Jonman. “Drink it yourself.”

Jonman waved it off. “It’s your day to eat, not mine.”

“You just want to get me drunk so you can win.”

“Nothing,” said Kamilah, as she entered the salon with Jarek. “She’s not out there.”

“Thank the Kindly One,” said Jarek.

Robman gave Jonman an approving nod. “You saw that.”

“Is Speedy back yet?” said Kamilah.

“She hasn’t shown herself.” Meri had settled into a swivel chair and was turning back and forth nervously.

“Kamilah and I were talking on the way up here,” said Jarek. He strode behind Meri’s chair and put hands on her shoulders to steady her. “What if she jumped?”

“What if? “ Meri leaned her head back to look up at him.

“Adel says she was hysterical,” said Kamilah. “Let’s say Speedy couldn’t settle her down. She’s a danger to herself, maybe to us. So Speedy has to send her home.”

“Lose your mind and you go free?” Robman spun his coin. “Jon, what are we waiting for?”

“Speedy,” said Kamilah. “Is that it? Talk to us, please.”

They all looked. The wall showed only the empty airlock.

Adel hurled the pillow at it in a fury. “I can’t take this anymore.” He scrambled off the couch. “We’re in trouble, people.”

—be calm—

—tell it—

They were all staring at him but that was fine. The concern on their faces made him want to laugh. “Sister said something was going to happen. This is it.” He began to pace around the salon, no longer able to contain the frenzied energy skittering along his nerves. “We have to do something.”

“I don’t see it,” said Jonman.

“No, you wouldn’t.” Adel turned on him. “You always want to wait. Maybe that was a good idea when all this started, but things have changed.”

“Adel,” said Meri, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“Look at yourselves,” he said. “You’re afraid that if you try to save yourselves, you’ll be fucked. But you know what, people? We’re already fucked. It makes no sense anymore to wait for someone to come rescue us.”

Adel felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder and another under his buttock. Kamilah lifted him effortlessly. “Sit down.” She threw him at the couch. “And shut up.” He crashed into the back cushion headfirst, bounced and tumbled onto the carpet.

Adel bit his tongue when he hit the couch; now he tasted blood. He rolled over, got to hands and knees and then he did laugh. “Even you, Kamilah.” He gazed up at her. She was breathing as if she had just set a record in the two hundred meter freestyle. “Even you are perfectly scared.” Her medallion spun wildly on its silver chain.