Get off the Unicorn

"Not far enough." Niall spaced the words out. "And let us not speed home, c-v drive operative or not. I'm in no shape to face debriefing. In fact, I'm going to avoid it if at all possible." But his grin was Niallnormal as he raised the hot coffee in a toast.

"That is good!" Helva said with mild surprise at the taste.

Niall blinked. "What did you say?" He leaned forward. "You tasted that?"

Inexplicably, she had savored the coffee taste in his mouth.

"Yes, that coffee tastes good," she said again after a very long thoughtful silence.

"Well!" Niall scratched his nose. "How d'you like them apples?"

"You haven't tasted me apples yet."

Niall took a deep breath that he exhaled in a long chuckle, all the while regarding the tendril of steam writhing up from the coffee container.

"Helva, we didn't complete the recombination?"

"I think," Helva spoke slowly, trying her thought out loud, "that the time limit flipped us back right at the critical moment." She felt reluctant to examine her reaction to that interference. She knew with that part of her which was Niall, just as he knew with his fractions of her how perilously close they'd come.

"I wonder—would we have withdrawn at all from Beta Corvi had the fusion been complete?" Niall laughed softly, his eyes brimming with amusement. "Hey gal, into which one of us would we both go? Hell, you're pint-sized and so am I, but who'd've been us? Or would we have been stuck in the shell? Say, what was going on down there with that character who kept pushing you? And pulling me? Oh, that was them? Fardles, did we damned near get stuck with that Colmer bitch?" His dismay dissolved in a weak laugh of relief, and then he sat, a long time, while the coffee cooled, just staring contentedly at her panel. She knew that he, too, was mentally probing to estimate the extent of their meshing.

"I suspect it will take all our lifetimes to figure it out."

"Quite likely."

The prospect daunted neither.

"Hell, we can't wander off like this," Niall said after a long, long period of mutual introspection. He shoved himself out of the couch, lobbed the old coffee into the disposal chute, and went for another.

"So they altered the shielding?" he asked, leaning against the counter. "Is there a separate inhibitor? Or is that the alternation in the shielding? And did you grasp what the crot are cuy particles? Breslaw is going to want to know something more specific than that they're dangerous."

"He suspects that…"

"And inconvenient if the Corviki catch us making/ exhaling them?"

"I think their warning should be deterrent enough. There is a black core within the drive-isotope that didn't previously exist. There is more of that same black stuff in a specially shielded container in the supply bay. It's radiating a purple shade."

"Hey, Helva, did you actually sort out the personalities of Kuria, Prane, and Chaddress. What'n'ell do we tell Dobrinon?"

"As little as possible. No, they were there. At least I was aware of a Kurla-Prane core, but only because it was a strong combination."

She saw Niall wince with a regret that she shared.

"We don't, do we, tell him about that in us?"

"Never! I shouldn't like to have to explain something that is so personally subjective."

"Like tasting coffee?"

"Among other things. Dobrinon would take us apart to find out which facets of you got into me in the reassembly."

"Gal, we are together!" He enunciated each syllable with a jab of his finger. "But no one, not any one, gets any chance to dissect our feelings. Right?"

"Right!"

Then his face dissolved into a smile, part malice, part pure self-delight, part utter triumph.

"Yeah, gal, have we got a thing going together!" He shook his head and slapped his thigh. "Hell, yes! By anything that's been left holy, Helva, there's nothing we can't do now. C'mon, gal, pour on that power. Cycle that crotty drive to get us back to Regulus yesterday. Scatter us cuy particles where we may. We're going to buy the body corporate forever free of dear Railly."

If stars had ears, they'd have heard the vast halelujahs ringing from the partnered ship.