Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [321]
“‘The weeping Pleiads wester / and the moon is under seas,’” I quoted. “And look, it is, down there, too.” I pointed over the rail, to where the trail of moonlight deepened, glowing in the water as though a twin of the moon itself were sunken there.
“When I left,” I said, “men were getting ready to fly to the moon. I wonder whether they’ll make it.”
“Do the flying machines go so high, then?” Jamie asked. He squinted at the moon. “I should say it’s a great way, for all it looks so close just now. I read a book by an astronomer—he said it was perhaps three hundred leagues from the earth to the moon. Is he wrong, then, or is it only that the—airplanes, was it?—will fly so far?”
“It takes a special kind, called a rocket,” I said. “Actually, it’s a lot farther than that to the moon, and once you get far away from the earth, there’s no air to breathe in space. They’ll have to carry air with them on the voyage, like food and water. They put it in sort of canisters.”
“Really?” He gazed up, face full of light and wonder. “What will it look like there, I wonder?”
“I know that,” I said. “I’ve seen pictures. It’s rocky, and barren, with no life at all—but very beautiful, with cliffs and mountains and craters—you can see the craters from here; the dark spots.” I nodded toward the smiling moon, then smiled at Jamie myself. “It’s not unlike Scotland—except that it isn’t green.”
He laughed, then evidently reminded by the word “pictures,” reached into his coat and drew out the little packet of photographs. He was cautious about them, never taking them out where they might be seen by anyone, even Fergus, but we were alone back here, with little chance of interruption.
The moon was bright enough to see Brianna’s face, glowing and mutable, as he thumbed slowly through the pictures. The edges were becoming frayed, I saw.
“Will she walk about on the moon, d’ye think?” he asked softly, pausing at a shot of Bree looking out a window, secretly dreaming, unaware of being photographed. He glanced up again at the orb above us, and I realized that for him, a voyage to the moon seemed very little more difficult or farfetched than the one in which we were engaged. The moon, after all, was only another distant, unknown place.
“I don’t know,” I said, smiling a bit.
He thumbed through the pictures slowly, absorbed as he always was by the sight of his daughter’s face, so like his own. I watched him quietly, sharing his silent joy at this promise of our immortality.
I thought briefly of that stone in Scotland, engraved with his name, and took comfort from its distance. Whenever our parting might come, chances were it would not be soon. And even when and where it did—Brianna would still be left of us.
More of Housman’s lines drifted through my head—Halt by the headstone naming / The heart no longer stirred, / And say the lad that loved you / Was one that kept his word.
I drew close to him, feeling the heat of his body through coat and shirt, and rested my head against his arm as he turned slowly through the small stack of photographs.
“She is beautiful,” he murmured, as he did every time he saw the pictures. “And clever, too, did ye not say?”
“Just like her father,” I told him, and felt him chuckle softly.
I felt him stiffen slightly as he turned one picture over, and lifted my head to see which one he was looking at. It was one taken at the beach, when Brianna was about sixteen. It showed her standing thigh-deep in the surf, hair in a sandy tangle, kicking water at her friend, a boy named Rodney, who was backing away, laughing too, hands held up against the spray of water.
Jamie frowned slightly, lips pursed.
“That—” he began. “Do they—” He paused and cleared his throat. “I wouldna venture to criticize, Claire,” he said, very carefully, “but do ye not think this is a wee bit…indecent?”
I suppressed an urge to laugh.
“No,” I said, composedly. “That’s really quite a modest bathing suit—for the time.” While the suit in question was a bikini, it was by no means skimpy, rising