Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [111]
“Kim,” he said, “I know this is a special circumstance, and I don’t want to read more into it than what’s there. But I want you to know that, when we go home, wherever we go from here, I’m not going to want things to go back to being the way they were.”
It was the moment she’d both feared and hoped for. “I don’t think we ought to make any decisions like that out here,” she said.
“Why not? Or is that a no?”
They were sitting on their impromptu bed, both in underclothes. A Nelson adventure was running, full-masted naval warships blazing away at one another. They’d turned off the sound and reduced the images so that the vessels simply floated in the middle of the room.
“No, it isn’t. I just don’t think we should rush into this.” She wondered why she was saying something so at odds with what she was feeling.
“Okay,” he said.
“Solly, let’s let it go for now. Enjoy what we have.”
“Okay.” He looked unhappy.
“I mean, hey, how long’s Ann been gone?”
“Seven years.”
“That’s how long you waited to make your move.” She was surprised at her own sudden anger. Where the hell had that come from?
Solly said nothing for several moments. Then he excused himself and left the room.
Goddamn it. A lover’s quarrel.
It hadn’t taken long.
18
We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.
—CHANG WON TO, Mind and Creation, 404
Never go to bed angry.
They slept together that night as they had every night since Raven. But the lovemaking was perfunctory, reserved, cautious. One might almost say politic.
“Are you okay?” she asked, when they’d finished and lay quietly, aware that the tension had not eased.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. Solly, I don’t want you angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.”
And so it went. The odd thing was she’d never seen him this way before. She’d known him to sulk, to take offense, and even on occasion to turn cold. But there was something deeper here, a degree of resentment that both surprised and hurt her.
It might have been that he also regretted the lost years, and that he was holding her responsible. Being bottled up in the ship didn’t help. Everything was too closed in. There was too much solitude.
In the morning things were better. He apologized and agreed that of course they should wait, should not rush into commitments that maybe neither of them was ready to keep.
During the days that followed they supplemented their impassioned evenings by creating love by proxy, staging romances in which their alternate selves indulged in exotic exploits. But only with each other. No outsider was permitted to join the party.
The climax of the first phase of the flight came during the late afternoon of March 7, the thirty-ninth day. The Hammersmith’s automatic systems warned them that transition into realspace was imminent. They’d been waiting in mission control, drinking coffee, full of anticipation for the hunt.
“Five minutes,” said the AI.
Kim brought the harness down over her shoulders.
“Zero hour,” said Solly. “Good luck.”
The ship was always alive with the sound of power, of ongoing maintenance, of life support, of the engines even when they were in an inactive mode, which was most of the time. Kim had quickly become inured to it and heard it only when she deliberately listened for it, or when the tone changed. Now, as they approached their destination twenty-seven light-years off Alnitak, the jump engines began to build and power flowed through the walls.
Kim’s eyes drifted shut. She imagined herself going home with the evidence, showing Agostino proof that an encounter had taken place, calling press conferences, accepting the congratulations of the world. A thousand years from now people would still speak in hushed tones of the flight of the Hammersmith.
The real challenge, she suspected, would be to create a second meeting.
It all seemed very promising, and she was luxuriating in the glory to come when the jump engines took hold and they crossed back out into realspace.
“Okay,” said Solly. “That’s it. We’ve arrived.” He brought the forward view up on the overhead