Survey Ship (10 page)

“I don't see any objection,” Teague said, “but there are going to be parts of the ship where we can't; I think we all ought to get into the habit of securing everything as if we were going to be in free-fall. Then we'll never have to stop and ask ourselves whether we have to.”

“I don't think that makes much sense,” Ching objected, but she stowed her viola in the racks and fastened the net over it. Fontana, helping Moira with hers, scoffed, “I don't believe a word of all that stuff about your voice, Moira. How did you manage to get through sight-singing class when we were all twelve years old?”

“Faked it,” Moira said curtly, “sang falsetto.”

Ravi leaned over her, lightly touching her hair. He said softly, "With a male soprano, one might be in — in some legitimate doubt about his fundamental nature, or the validity of his — shall we say, vital equipment?

It doesn't seem fair, does it, that a low voice in a woman should be the complete embodiment of sensuality — like yours."

“That's a common mistake,” said Fontana, and for a moment Ravi was irritated — his words had been addressed to Moira, not a part of the common discussion. Then long training and natural good nature triumphed, and he said, smiling, “I'm probably sensitive on the subject; my voice changed late and as a tenor my virility was in doubt until I was fifteen or so — I don't mean from the medics, only from the others in the class.”

Moira said, with a chuckle which reached only his ears, “You certainly have made up for lost time, haven't you, darling?”

Peake, who had heard Ravi's words but not Moira's, said, carefully securing a net around his violin, “There was a countertenor who gave a concert in Sydney; Jim-son and I had permission to fly in and hear him; it was the same week Zora left us. He had a voice which was pure soprano — higher than yours, Fontana. And he was a big, blonde, hairy-chested man, and we heard that he was married with five children or so — came from one of the thinly populated enclaves. Iceland, somewhere like that.” After he had spoken, he realized that for the first time he could remember, he had spoken Jimson's name without even a momentary twinge of that despairing guilt.

Had Fontana lanced that wound? Or was there some mystical awareness of the space, the enormous and widening distance between them, which made it, suddenly, seem as if Jimson were someone he had known a long time ago . . . ? Peake was not sure; he felt a twinge of regret at his own fickleness, but he recognized that as mere self-pity and grinned.

He said, “Music is hungry work. Seems to me it's dinner-time again, and then I'm going up to the Bridge
to check instruments.”

It occurred to Fontana that if this kind of musical session were scheduled regularly after a sleep period, it would painlessly evolve into the kind of daily shared meal that had been suggested; but she didn't say so, taking her small tray of food from the console and going to sit beside Teague. Ravi had settled down beside Moira, and Fontana, studying the pattern they made — the two couples, the two outsiders, Peake at one end, Ching beside the food console, studying the controls absent-mindedly as she ate — found herself wondering. There was no reason she and Teague, Ravi and Moira, should not have paired off that way, as they had done during the sleep period just past. But it did accentuate the separateness of the others. Like many women who come into contact with homosexuals, she wondered if it was amenable to change, if she would be the one who might possibly inspire him to change. Peake was attractive, certainly, with that graceful and rather endearing awkwardness, his surgeon's hands, solid with muscle and as steady on the violin as they would have been with a scalpel. Of course, Fontana thought, the ideal solution would be if he would pair off with Ching. But somehow she couldn't see it happening. Ching was too defensively self-sufficient. Any attempt to pair her off with Peake, simply because they were the two unattached crew-members, would certainly touch off that defensiveness, and make things worse.

Well, whatever their social patterns might be now, Fontana thought, they were sure to change within a few months or years; the six of them were going to be isolated for — at least — eight years, and there would be plenty of room for change, growth, experiment. She was fond of Teague, she had enjoyed giving him pleasure, but if he eventually moved on to one of the other
women, she wouldn't object too much. Somehow she didn't think it very likely they would settle down as three monogamous couples, and it probably wouldn't be healthy if they did. The intensive study of small-group social and sexual patterns which had been part of her psychological training told her that what they felt for one another now was, through necessity, a transitory thing and subject to change and flow; but did the others see it that way?

Teague put his plate into the recycling machinery. He said, “Routine check, life support; I'll probably be doing it as a pure formality for years — I hope I will — but I'm going to check it every twelve hours, anyhow.” He headed for the sphincter lock which led into the free-fall corridor between the main cabin and the module containing Life-Support controls. Ching and Moira followed and Teague noticed Ching inching along the crawl-bar, clinging tightly. His own impulse was to let go, push off, and go soaring the length of the corridor; Moira had already done so, but Teague pushed up toward the bar, behind Ching.

“Are you afraid of free-fall, Ching?”

Her head made a tight movement that he knew would have been a nod, except that her neck was locked tightly against the failure of familiar gravity. She said in a small voice, “Yes, I am. I think I might be able to get used to it, except that we keep having to go back inside gravity. ... I never seem to settle down into one or the other.”

“But you're going to have to learn to handle it,” he urged gently. “Come on, trust me, I won't let you get hurt. Here —” he pried her hands softly from the rail, holding them in his own, and peripherally he noticed how very nicely shaped they were, and how soft and fine to touch. His arms were round her from behind, her slender body held against him. He said, "Relax,

don't fight it,“ and, holding her, pushed off against the rail, not too hard, floating gently down the corridor. He curled round her, protectively; she made a soft moan of protest, and he felt her tauten into a fetal circle of panic, but they came softly to rest at the other end. She drew a sharp, shaking breath, and he said softly, ”See? That didn't hurt you, did it? You could even get to like it, I should imagine — it's fun.“ He nuzzled his cheek against hers from behind, and said, ”It's like lovemak-ing — the secret is to relax completely and let yourself fly!"

The moment he had said it, he knew it was a mistake; he had not intended a genuinely sexual allusion or gesture, but, feeling Ching go tense in his arms, he knew he had lost her. She said formally, “I suppose I will get used to it sooner or later. Thank you, Teague.” The formal thanks somehow were worse than a protest, and when she freed herself from his arms, he knew she had never really been there at all. She slid through the sphincter, clinging tight against the new orientation of “up” and “down,” and lowered herself carefully to the floor. “I'm going through to the Bridge and check the computer,” she said, and wriggled through the sphincter at the far end, leaving Teague staring at his Life-Support consoles, frowning.

Well, I made a damn fool of myself, I might as well have saved myself the trouble.

But he put it aside to check the controls meticulously, then began thinking, again, about the pattern for his string quartet. He could compose a part of it on the computer, which would make an instant playback and printout of what he had written; but he supposed he would do a part of it, at least, the old-fashioned way, with music paper and stylus. Maybe he would do it all that way, not using the computer at all. Why not? He had plenty of time.

Later that day they passed through the orbit of Mars; the planet itself was far off on the other side of the sun, and they did not see it. The course they had set was far off the plane of the ecliptic; Peake double-checked it, with morbid care. At their present acceleration, coming too close to the asteroids could be fatal; even the smallest planetesimal, encountered unexpectedly, could strike through a vulnerable section of the ship and create difficulties — if not disaster. Peake turned round, checking on the location of the pressure suits which were stored near the sphincter lock of the module — as they were in EVERY module, without exception — wondering if there would really be time to get into them if they were holed by a miniature asteroid. Maybe. If it wasn't too big. If it didn't instantaneously destroy the module, crew and all. Had any of the Survey Ships met this fate? He knew they would be monitored, on long-distance telescopes, at least to the orbit of Jupiter, and perhaps beyond. But once past the orbit of Pluto, they were out of range of any Earth-monitoring, until they reached the colonies ... he turned to Moira, bent over the controls of her light-sails, and as if she could feel his glance, she raised her head and given him an uneasy smile.

He remembered that Moira was psychic; was she picking up on his fears? But after a moment he forgot it again, for she was bending over the machinery, crooning, it seemed, to the controls. They were all familiar with Moira's habit of talking to machinery, it was as much a part of their background as his own skill with the violin, or Zora's voice, or Teague's freckles.

Behind him Ravi said, and he was looking at Moira too, “She talks to them — the sails, I mean — like a mother to her starving baby.”

Peake's mouth twitched. “She comes from one of the rich countries. Probably never saw starving babies,” he said, but the picture was in his mind, clear, from his third or fourth year; he had come from one of the last enclaves on Earth where famine was still recurrent, and he had lived through one of them. So, he remembered, had Ravi.

“Why were we the lucky ones, I wonder?” he said to Ravi. “I was four years old, I remember, the baby died, seven babies in our village died, others never were the same ...”

They had spoken of this before. Not often. Ravi, his mind filled with pictures of dark faces anxiously bent over dying children, said grimly, “I remember. The answer they give us at the Academy, that we were survivor types, brilliant enough to pass Academy tests, that never satisfied me somehow. We lived. So many died, and then we were taken out and pampered, given everything — how could we possibly have deserved it?” Ravi looked out at the panorama of the stars. He said, not really to Peake at all, “I can't believe it was the will of God that we should live and they should die, that God would be concerned with anything that small, and oh, God, it looks so much smaller out here . . ” and he stared as if he could somehow wrench
an answer from the unyielding, endless points of light out there.

Peake said, lapsing into a dialect long forgotten, “We paying for it, man. With out lives. With losing everybody.”

Ravi thought, What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul. . . and he thought, our souls have been taken from us by the Academy training, and I am being sent where I have no chance to find mine . . . and he remembered that a scant few hours ago he had been blocking all of this out by frantic sex with Moira. Somehow he would have to retrace his steps, think about what and who he was . . . what had Moira, and sex, to do with this struggle in his mind? Or were he and Moira both a part of a Cosmic whole, all part of God ... he had read something of Tantra, where the sexual partner was loved and worshipped in the place of God. The idea, and the juxtaposition of the two ideas, confused and annoyed him. He had been brought up to be very casual and guilt-free about sex, and now he wondered if this was simply a part of the altogether soulless and atheistic Academy training.

Peake, at least, had not known casual sex, but a deep and intense love. Perhaps Peake, at least, knew what it was to love and revere a partner as if that partner were a part of God. Like many strongly heterosexual men, Ravi found it difficult to understand the impulse which had brought Peake and Jimson together. He began, with a mental shyness strange to him, to think about it. No one who had watched them together could doubt that it was a stronger impulse than most of the easy and casual heterosexuality in the Academy. It showed most strongly when they were playing together, violin and piano; whatever was between them, perhaps they had been able to achieve that ideal of
finding God in one another, without even the physical lure of opposite sexes.

I envy them, he thought, surprised at himself.

And then he began to think about Peake; the one of them who had known that kind of love, and the one of them who, because of what he was, was alone, with no chance of finding that kind of partnering again.

He will be alone, all during this voyage, and after having known a kind of love none of us has equaled.

Peake was one of them, and it occurred to Ravi, suddenly, to wonder if he could endure to see Peake completely alone all during this voyage. Did he and Teague have some kind of responsibility, since all of them were close as in — Moira had said it — one of these arranged marriages, to lessen Peake's loneliness?

I am his friend; his partner, even, in navigating the Ship. Could I, if he needed me, be his lover too? The thought scared Ravi a little, and he turned and looked surreptitiously at Peake, who was studying the vast view beyond the lenticular window.

“Doesn't it make you dizzy?” he asked.

Peake shook his head. “No,” he said, “I like it.”

Moira raised her head from studying the sails (a taut and twitching triangular corner against the stars], and said with a flick of sarcasm, “I am sure the Universe is happy at your approval.”

Peake was too dark to display a blush, but he lowered his head with a sheepish grin, and Ravi felt a sudden deep tenderness. He knew, suddenly, that he loved Peake too, and whatever happened, he wasn't going to let him suffer in the years to come.

But he knew, too, that he was going to go on having sex with Moira just as long as she was in the mood!