Starborne

“When we make the course change,” he says, “are we going to be aware that anything special is happening, and if so, what?”

“Nothing will be apparent,” Julia tells him. “Nothing that we can feel, anyway. You mustn’t think of what well be doing in terms of acceleration effects. You mustn’t think in terms of any sort of phenomenological event that makes sense to you.”

“But will it make sense to you?” he asks.

“It’ll make sense,” Julia replies. “Not to me, not to you, maybe not even to Sieglinde and Roy. We don’t need to have it make sense. We only need to have it work.”

“And it will.”

“It will. It will.”

Well, then, it will. The year-captain sends for Noelle.

“It’s time to let Earth know about the course change,” he tells her. “We’re going to be redirecting the ship toward the star of Planet A a little later this day. Our first planetary surveillance mission is getting started.”

Noelle nods gravely. “The people at home will find that news very exciting, I’m sure.” She says that in the most unexcited way possible, as if she is reading it from a script she has never seen before, and not reading it very well.

The year-captain’s last few encounters with Noelle have been uncomfortable ones. That odd business of having her face pop so vividly into his mind like that, just as he was settling into the home stretch with Julia, was still bothering him the next time he saw the actual Noelle, and evidently she was able to pick up traces of his discomfort — from his body odor, maybe? from some edge on his voice? — for she had said, at once, “Is something wrong, year-captain?” Which he had taken pains to deny. But she knew. She knew. She never missed a nuance. It was hard, sometimes, to banish the suspicion that she could read anybody’s mind, and not just her sister’s. Most likely not; most likely she simply had greatly heightened senses of smell and hearing to compensate for the one sense that was missing, as was so often the case among the blind. The suspicion lingered all the same. He disliked holding on to it, but it was difficult for him to discard it. And he hated the thought that his mind might be wide open to hers, all his carefully repressed and buried cowardices and selfishnesses and hypocrisies and, yes, shameful lusts on display, waving like ba

The uneasiness between them had not diminished in the ensuing days. He found it disturbing in some way to be alone with her, and she was disturbed by his disturbance, and that was upsetting to him, and so if went shuttling back and forth between them in infinite regress, like a reflection trapped between two mirrors. But neither of them ever said a word about it.

“Is this a good time for you to try to send the message?” the year-captain asks.

“I can try, yes,” she says, a little hesitantly.

The interference has been growing worse, day by day. Neither Noelle nor Yvo

Her deepening solitude must be frightful. The year-captain often yearns to extend some sort of comfort to her that would take the place of the ever more tenuous contact with her sister: to sweep her into his arms, to hold her close, to permit her to feel the simple proximity of another human being. But he does not dare. He is afraid of giving offense, or perhaps of frightening her. And he is afraid, also, of certain upwelling inchoate emotions of his own. He has no idea how far things might go once he lets them begin, and he fears letting them begin.

Noelle’s classic beauty no longer seems quite so marmoreal to him. He has started, since the time that that apparition of her intruded on his lovemaking with Julia, to admit to himself the existence of a feeling of something as uncomplicated as desire for her. Why else had she entered his mind at that moment in the cubicle, if not that hidden feelings, feelings to which even he himself had had no access up till now, were begi

But he keeps his distance. He does not dare to touch her. He does not dare.

“Tell them,” he says, “that the transverse journey across nospace will take approximately four and a half ship-months, after which—”

“Wait. Too fast.”

“Sorry.”

She seems to be shivering. Some part of her mind, he knows, is linked to a woman essentially identical to herself who happens to be some twenty-odd light-years away, even as she seems to be focusing her attention on him. Who is more real to her, the identical twin far away on Earth, or the odd, edgy, troubled man just a hundred fifty centimeters distant from her in this cabin aboard this starship?

“The transverse journey across nospace,” he says again, and waits.

“Yes.”

“Will take approximately four and a half ship-months—”

“Yes. All right.”

“After which the Wotan will have reached the vicinity of—”

“Wait. Please.”

A ripple of something not much unlike pain crosses her face. This is hurting her, this unclarity, the effort of maintaining the weakening link to Yvo

“Go ahead,” Noelle says. “Now.”

“Will have reached the vicinity of the G-type star which—”

“Wait. I’m sorry. It’s bad today.”

He waits.

They finish sending the message eventually. Noelle seems to be at the verge of tears by the time they are done. Her breath is coining in ragged bursts. Her dusky, lustrous skin has taken on a ghostly subcutaneous pallor. But after a moment she manages a sort of a smile.

“Yvo

Indeed, at the next transmission Noelle learns from Yvo

The year-captain is pleased that the news from the Wotan is having the appropriate beneficial psychological effect on the citizens of the home world. But he knows he must clarify the actual situation, and quickly, before their unrealistic expectations become embedded so deeply that it will be difficult for them to deal with the possible, even probable, disappointment that awaits.