THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES by Robert R. Chase * * * * Illustrated by William Warren * * * * Some mistakes take lots of time and patience to correct—if it can be done at all. i. I’ll never court another girl I’ll stick to rum and beer. “New York Girls” * * * * It was New Year’s Eve 2057 and Peter Frondelli was on top of the world. On his arm was Angelina Lamont, the gorgeous bounce singer, and on her left hand was the diamond ring she had tearfully accepted from him the day before. Although the wedding date was three months away, they had already started planning the merger of apartments and careers. Now they stood off stage in the club where Angee sang. It was her break: the time when she could sooth her throat with water and lemon, and her two side men, Shinichi Kanayama and Jose Candanosa, could show their jazz chops to the audience. “You have been holding back all day,” Angee said. “What is it?” She was looking out at the small stage, tapping her foot to Kanayama’s bass accompaniment. Peter, looking at the way her blond hair cascaded onto her bare shoulders, wondered again how he had ever been lucky enough to snag a woman this beautiful. His self-image was of a man too dull-looking to achieve ugliness. He actually had the sort of regular features that are often considered handsome, and with a different hairstyle he might actually have been considered so. Instead, he had a crew cut because it allowed him to ignore his hair. He was tall and in good shape from biking and tennis, but many who talked to him came away with the impression of a man only intermittently involved with his own body, that in some ways he viewed it as a distraction from things that really mattered. “I received an e-mail just before I came over. I have been selected for the Saturn expedition. Novak wants me to be his principal assistant in the exobiology section.” Conflicting expressions passed over Angee’s face as quickly as summer lightning. “Why, that’s ... wonderful. But I thought you had been passed over in favor of what’s his name, uh, Zimmerman?” “Josh died in a hang-gliding accident yesterday.” Peter grimaced. Zimmerman had been a fierce competitor but immensely likable for all that. His death left Peter shaken. “Novak needs to fill the slot as quickly as possible to have a full complement at launch.” “Oh.” Angee’s shadowed face was thoughtful. Peter put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. As usual, there was something akin to electric shock when his fingers touched her flesh. “I told them no.” “What? How could you? This expedition could make your career. It’s the sort of chance that won’t come again.” “I had not even met you when I applied to join the expedition. When Josh was chosen, I was actually relieved. I had already decided to marry you.” Angee looked thoughtful. “Why didn’t I know anything about this?” “I had to convince you that you were in love with me.” Then, with reluctant honesty: “I had to get enough courage to pop the question. “Anyway, it’s too late now. Five years is just too long to wait, or to expect you to wait. We have our wedding date. Professionally, there is more than enough work for me to do on Martian methanogens and the samples being returned by the cometary probes.” Angee might have said something, but the break ended and she went out to sing her second set. It ended exactly at midnight amid showers of confetti and popping corks. After that, things became hazy. Perhaps the goodnight kiss was a bit perfunctory. Perhaps they were both simply tired or feeing the effects of too much champagne. In any event, Peter woke at eleven the next morning. His head throbbed, his stomach signaled incipient rebellion. Perhaps that was why he did not at first see the envelope that had been shoved under the front door of his apartment. It was strangely lumpy. A ring fell to the floor when he tore it open. There was a note. DEAR PETER, I THOUGHT YOU A MAN OF VISION AND AMBITION, ONE WHOSE TALENTS AND INTELLIGENCE WERE DESTINED TO LEAVE THEIR MARK ON THE WORLD. I SEE NOW THAT I WAS WRONG. WE SHOULD END THIS NOW BEFORE WE MAKE ANY MORE MISTAKES. He was sitting on the floor without knowing how he got there. The world tilted around him. Throughout history, young men in a similar position have gone out and gotten drunk. Peter was already hungover, so he was ahead of the curve in that regard. Others have fled into war or exploration. As soon as he could control his voice, Peter called up the message from Vaclav Novak and accepted his appointment to the Saturn expedition. Some have been so disappointed in romance that they swore off women forever. Here, the last part of the twenty-first century, they had a previously unavailable option. The Neo-Victorian Age (called more darkly, by some, the Repression) was as fascinated by sex as the original Victorians had been. The plan to send a mixed crew of fifty, most of whom were not married (to each other, at least) seemed rife with possibilities, most of them bad. For those who wished to avail themselves of it, there was an alternative beyond frustration or sin. A simple biochemical fine-tuning, completely reversible, decreased certain hormone levels and tweaked others. To call it gelding, as some did, was certainly unfair, while “chemical castration” was even more so. Medical practitioners preferred to refer to it simply as the Treatment. It put certain urges into the background, making them fond memories rather than steadily increasing torments. If one of its side effects was an increase in weight, that was considered a plus for those using the hibernation chamber. A week later, Peter presented himself to Richard Beard, the physician in charge of the medical staff of the Roc. There he was poked, prodded, injected, and tweaked. After which he was put on a high-carbohydrate diet for a week and then put to sleep. On March 15, 2058, while totally unconscious and with a body temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit, Peter left Earth orbit on a five-year journey to go where no one, man or woman, had gone before. * * * * ii. June 15, 2058 Waking was a slow, painful process. Lips and mouth and throat were so dry that they seemed to have fused together into an impenetrable mass. He was simultaneously famished and nauseated. He let the attendants sponge his lips, prop him upright, and swing his legs off the bed because he had neither strength nor will to resist. “That’s it, Peter. You’re doing wonderfully.” It was more than just physical discomfort. He knew that something bad was lying in wait for him. He would remember it as soon as he was fully awake. Despite all the precise biochemical adjustments signaled by his embedded blood monitor, it did not hit him until he finished his first hour of physical therapy nearly an hour later. Angee! It was like moving wrong and reopening an old wound. In his last few moments of consciousness, he had wondered if the Treatment would do anything to dull this continual ache. It was now clear that it would not. Physical desire was indeed gone, but it left in its wake a void, a feeling that his insides had been yanked out. More than half the hurt was bewilderment. How could he have been so wrong? He had been so sure she would be pleased by his decision, that she would take it for what it was, proof of his commitment to her, to them as a unit. If he could miscalculate that severely... Then maybe he was a fool, deserving of her contempt. Work through pain. It was the one way he knew to diminish the sting. He put in an extra hour in the exercise room. The Roc was a long tube housing the ion drive, bisected by a disk that rotated around the tube with just enough speed that the outer ring generated approximately 1g worth of centrifugal force. The exercise room was located along this outer ring. When he could push himself no further, he showered, left the exercise room, and followed the always upwardly curving corridor to the elevator and then up three floors to his workstation. It identified his thumbprint and lit the screen, displaying his schedule. It was heavy with increasingly strenuous physical conditioning, which was the main reason for breaking his hibernation period in the first place. Then there were meetings with the exobiology staff. And there, in the upper corner, there was a blinking icon signifying an urgent message. He fingered it. DEAR PETER, WHEN YOU GET THIS, YOU WILL BE CLOSER TO THE ORBIT OF MARS THAN TO EARTH. THERE WILL BE NO WAY BACK FOR YOU UNTIL THE Roc RETURNS IN FIVE YEARS. SO I CAN ADMIT TO YOU NOW THAT I LIED. YOU TOLD ME WHEN WE FIRST STARTED DATING HOW MUCH YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO GO INTO SPACE FROM THE TIME YOU WERE FIVE YEARS OLD. THIS WAS YOUR CHANCE. I COULD NOT LET YOU THROW IT AWAY. I KNOW HOW STUBBORN YOU CAN BE WHEN YOUR MIND IS MADE UP. THAT IS WHY I SENT BACK THE RING. IT WAS THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER HAD TO DO. THAT USED UP ALL MY WILLPOWER, SO I PROGRAMMED MY PHONE NOT TO ACCEPT YOUR CALLS. IF YOU HAD MANAGED TO GET THROUGH, I WOULD HAVE BROKEN DOWN COMPLETELY. LIVING FIVE WHOLE YEARS WITHOUT YOU IS ALSO MORE THAN I CAN BEAR. I DON’T WANT TO GROW OLD IN YOUR ABSENCE. IF I CAN’T AT LEAST TALK TO YOU THIS WAY, THERE IS NO JOY IN EVEN BEING CONSCIOUS. SO I WILL BE HERE IN HIBERNATION EVERY DAY YOU ARE. I WILL BE AWAKE WHEN YOU ARE. AND WHEN WE SLEEP, WE CAN DREAM TOGETHER. I HOPE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FORGIVE MY DECEPTION AND CLAIM THE DESTINY YOU DESERVE. ALL MY LOVE, ANGEE Each member of the expedition had a bandwidth allotment. Most of this was supposed to be used for professional communications. Beyond that, there was enough for personal use for one fifteen-minute video message per week or effectively unlimited text messaging. (With a six-minute delay at this stage of the voyage, live conversations were already impractical.) Peter reread the message half a dozen times, trying to tease out tone and nuance. Finally, setting his mouth in a determined line, he called up the voice software and began dictating. * * * * Goldie blew up when Angee told her the plan. “So, just when your career is about to go into high gear, when I’m able to line up dates and recording contracts, you decide you have to take half the year off in quarterly increments for, what, the next five years. Wake up call for Miss Lamont: You are not in the Tokano and Sinatra category. The dates won’t wait for your convenience. If they can’t get you for the dates they have open, the clubs will get someone else. Any momentum your career might have had gets tossed away. “And why are you doing this? Because you drove away a guy who wanted to marry you, and now you’re afraid you’re going to grow old waiting for him to come back, supposing he will ever speak to you again. What am I not getting about this?” Goldie was more than an agent. In the four years they had worked together, she had become a surrogate mother, warning her away from the wolves in the business, providing dietary advice, even making sure that she got enough sleep so that she would not need the chemical enhancers that were still the crutch (and the entry to more problematic drugs) for so many performers. “I’m sorry, Goldie.” Angee turned her face away, feeling guilty about her agent’s anger. “I know everything you have done for me, and if you are saying that you don’t want to be my agent—” “Jesus Christ, kid, have you listened to a word I’ve said?” Goldie’s carefully dyed hair shook with emotion. Her lipstick made it look like she had taken a bayonet in the mouth. “That is not what I am saying. I want to be your agent. I want you to make a lot of money so I can make a little bit to keep body and soul together in my lonely old age. “Used to be, you weren’t just talented, you were smart. You caught the craze for bounce music at its beginning, saw its relation to swing, and started featuring pieces from everyone from Benny Goodman to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. That made the fans comfortable. Then you added songs that they might not have expected from the likes of Lennon-McCartney, Joni Mitchell, and Yoko Kanno. That kept them interested. “Next week you have your first live performance vid-disk coming out and will you be around to promote it? No. Why? Because you’ll be in hibernation dreaming about Prince Charming. You think just your career will melt away? How about Shinichi and Jose. You think they will just hang around waiting for you to wake up? They can’t! They have to take the gigs offered when they’re offered. They can’t just drop everything for you.” That hurt because it was obviously true. Good sidemen are almost beyond price. Angee knew this from having worked with the not so good. As she had been able to command bigger fees for her appearances, she had increased what she paid Shinichi and Jose proportionately. But Goldie was right. They could not afford extended layoffs. She could only barely afford it herself. “And here’s the final thing,” Goldie said. “Do you know what this is going to do to you physically? I don’t, because the human hibernation process is still experimental. Some of the researchers talk about the Saturn expedition as just an extended field test to prove it out for excursions into the Kuiper Belt.” “I will be in a hospital annex,” Angee said, “under the care of the people who invented the process. It will certainly be much safer than it will be for Peter and his crewmates.” “Not necessarily. Ever heard of bedsores? They’re not a problem in free fall. Back here on Earth, it’s a different story. Yes, they cradle you on a multisectioned air mattress that rocks you continuously, so that no one section of your skin is continuously under pressure. Still, there have been incidents. And settlements. “I haven’t even mentioned how you have to bloat up to survive three months without eating. You think your fans are going to like what that does to you?” * * * * In that respect, at least, Goldie had been wrong. You did not have to gain fifty pounds before they put you under. Instead, you were fitted with a gastrostomy port in your stomach. A watery, nutritious paste wormed its way through a plastic tube and into your digestive system. Despite Goldie’s fears, the system had worked as advertised. Angee woke three days before Peter’s scheduled resuscitation. Time enough to get her strength back to walk about the city without artificial aids. Almost time enough for her digestive system to become fully functional. She was walking to Holiday’s to meet the musicians Goldie (bless her!) had lined up for her when rain whipped out of the dull gray sky. That, and an absolutely irresistible smell enticed her into the coffee shop she was passing. NO ROBOTS, the sign on the door promised. ALL HUMAN STAFF. And so it appeared as she stepped inside, though some of the baristas looked so tired that the difference was not immediately obvious. Angee ordered a small cup and sipped carefully, not sure how her intestines would handle caffeine. Flipping open her notebook, she scrolled through a list of songs and began arranging titles, thinking how the sequence would first establish a mood and then build it, expand it, until suddenly the evening was over and the audience was clapping for encores. That’s what you hoped for anyway. A lot depended on not straining your voice and the capacities of your sidemen— The notebook chimed suddenly. A small but exquisitely detailed picture of Peter began flashing in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It made him look so far away, as if she were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. Angee raised her hand to the winking image. And stopped. Supposing he will ever speak to you again. Goldie had touched on her greatest fear. How badly could you hurt someone, even for his own good, and expect him to be forgiving? Peter’s calm, professional exterior was only the mask worn by a proud and passionately focused man. She stabbed the screen with her index finger. A message came up. There was no salutation. I THOUGHT WE TRUSTED EACH OTHER, THAT WE MADE DECISIONS TOGETHER. NO LIES, NO DOMINANCE GAMES. A PARTNERSHIP OF EQUALS. NOW YOU SAY YOU LIED, THAT YOU COULD NOT LET ME THROW AWAY THE BIG CHANCE FOR MY CAREER. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LITTLE THAT MEANT TO ME COMPARED TO US? OR THAT I MIGHT BE THE ONE BEST ABLE TO VALUE MY CAREER? I AM GOING TO STOP NOW BEFORE I WRITE SOMETHING BOTH OF US WILL REALLY REGRET. Rain drummed on the glass, an irregular beat more suited to bebop than ballad. Angee did not feel the tears on her cheeks until a barista came by and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard, hon. He probably isn’t worth it anyway.” * * * * iii. “These are not the circumstances under which I wished us to have our first departmental meeting,” Novak said dryly. Peter wished he could see Novak’s face, but he was three quarters of the way across the chamber, his view blocked by half a dozen heads. Wedged sideways as he was by the crowd, there was no way to get a better view unless he jumped. This was not an entirely absurd idea. This close to the hub, centrifugal force created an effective gravity no more than one-third Earth standard. He could probably jump high enough to bang his head painfully on the ceiling, which was barely a meter above his head. On the other hand, there was nothing to grab, and he would definitely look silly bouncing up and down. Modern spacecraft had air-recycling systems, which made perfumes and colognes allowable shipboard. At the moment, the system in the chamber was close to being overloaded and these odors were obtrusively prominent. Still, those were the more pleasant smells. One of the less-publicized effects of free fall and near free fall was increased flatulence. All you could do was pretend not to notice it. “Captain Zhen assures me that this flare should end in no more than six hours.” The communal groan almost drowned out the end of Novak’s sentence. “Be grateful!” Surely the man was joking. “Some solar flares last for days.” The situation was made doubly frustrating by the fact that it should have been completely unnecessary. A magnetic field extended twenty meters out from the ship’s hull. It had been designed to withstand storms fiercer than this, as much to protect the electronics as the crew. Yet this was its first severe test of the voyage, and the Chief Engineer had declared that safety would be ensured through a belt-and-suspenders approach. Three “storm cellars” were situated around the hub of the wheel and until the magnetic field proved itself, they were mandatory shelters. Together they would provide more than enough space for all the passengers. Unfortunately, the alarm had gone off while all of Novak’s staff was assembled in the ship’s one large conference room and everyone had made for the nearest storm cellar. By the time it became obvious that this was a big mistake, the sirens had altered from preliminary warning to storm-in-progress. If the magnetic fields were insufficient, no one wanted to be outside while protons sleeted invisibly through the corridors. “Think of this as an excellent opportunity to get to know your colleagues,” Novak concluded. That brought scattered laughter from some, who, like Peter, thought they might be getting to know their colleagues too well. Peter peered about for one colleague in particular, Manuel Carreras. He had seen the astronomer briefly in the conference room and wanted to talk to him about anomalous spectrum readings he had made of Saturn’s rings, particularly the E-ring. Manny had to be within ten meters of him, yet all he could see was a mass of (mostly anonymous) bobbing heads. “You are Frondelli,” said an alto voice behind him. There was a trace of an accent he could not identify. “The youngest member of the expedition. I am Part.” She said it as if he should know the name. Peter racked his brain as he slowly turned, trying not to throw an elbow in the stomach of the man on his left, apologizing for stepping on the toes of the woman on his right. She was part of the medical staff, not the exploration team, he remembered. But she wasn’t a medical doctor either. She was a sociologist, studying the effects of long-term confinement under extreme conditions. And there was something else, something about a controversial book or series of articles published about twenty years ago. At title popped into his consciousness: Against the Repression. Was this the woman who had given the current age one of its names? He dimly remembered other titles that had been notorious for a time: Moral Tyranny, Sexual Immortality. He completed his turn and found himself pressed up against a woman only a few inches shorter than he was. A woman who could not possibly be the person he had been thinking of, since the author of Against the Repression had to be at least fifty, perhaps sixty, years old. Yet this woman, with her dark eyes and glossy black hair, looked hardly twenty. And that was the explanation, of course. No one on this expedition was that young. Even for the brightest, it took longer than that to get the necessary credentials and training to be chosen for this expedition. Therefore, he was looking on an example of the horrendously expensive rejuvenation treatments that had been pioneered in Shanghai. And this was indeed Andrea Part, social critic and revolutionary. “All of them,” Part said, speaking softly into his ear, “kept inside their laboratories for years at a time, the color bleached out of their skin by fluorescent lights—” There was a pressure on his thigh. “—until their flesh was as white as their hair, what was left of it.” On the inside of his thigh. “But we are not like that, are we? Our lives are not preserved in formaldehyde. Hot, red blood pulses through our veins. For us, no pallid passions fueled by grant applications or papers read to dozing colleagues.” Moving up the inside of his thigh, higher and higher. Part’s breath was hot against his cheek. The siren sounded again, this time in a set of descending tones. “And there we are,” Novak said, “even better than promised. The all-clear. Everyone’s safe now.” * * * * iv. From NYghtLife Online, August 21, 2058 “She stands alone in the spotlight. “All.” The word is spoken, almost as if it were the beginning of a Shakespearean soliloquy. “Or nothing at all.” The bass comes in behind her, almost inaudible yet crucial as a heartbeat. Her voice rises and falls as, one by one, the other members of the quartet join in. Yet even now, there is the sense that this is not so much a performance as a tormented declaration. It is a love song, not so much for a person, as it is an assertion of what love must be if it is to have any worthwhile validity. “It is an assertion which requires sacrifice and you can hear the pain in her voice. There is a reason for that. The reason is—” * * * * “Goldie!” Angee’s tracy interpreted her exclamation as a command and placed the call. “Mornin’, kid. You got some great reviews. When they weren’t jumping and jiving last night, you had them in tears.” “Goldie, did you tell the NYghtLife about my hibernation schedule?” There was an incriminating pause. “No! Well, not exactly. I mean, people want to know where you’ve been. They’re asking about why you’re not accepting bookings for the next three months. I didn’t want to offend anyone—” “NYghtLife has spread my private life all over their review!” “It isn’t really so bad,” Goldie said defensively. “There’s a lot of interest in your situation. And sympathy too. It’s very romantic.” “You make it sound like this whole thing is a publicity stunt.” Angee’s voice was getting higher and starting to quaver. “I am doing this for one person and one person only.” “Right. Right, kid. Your heart is pure. I know that. But remember what I said about the difficulty of getting you dates. We were lucky this time.” That was the simple truth. Goldie had booked an extended stay at Holiday’s and even assembled a trio, bass, drums, and reeds, which became a quartet when Angee accompanied herself on piano. It worked out better than she could have hoped. None of it might be available during her next period of wakefulness. “And talk about luck, I have you set up with a twenty-minute slot on DoriAnne’s afternoon show on the thirteenth. Her fans worship her. If only one in ten were to download your live album, it would send you to the top of the charts.” “Goldie, I’m going back under on the seventh.” “Oh. Yeah.” * * * * Peter had written his response to Angee’s message while his emotions waged a civil war within him. Then he waited. He did not at first realize what he was doing. He thought he was getting acquainted with the other members of the planetary team, finding his way around the Roc, or working out on the treadmill. But one day, while checking the most recent technical journal downloads, he realized that he had been waiting for a response from Angee and becoming ever more concerned as the days went by and no message appeared. Did I get her so angry that she has written me off? Or: Have I hurt her so badly she can’t bring herself to write? One question, though, was far worse than the others. He was convinced that he was the aggrieved party. Would anything he wrote seem like begging? Was Angee so important to him that he had to risk that sort of blow to his pride? The answer presented itself as soon as he allowed himself to ask the question. Yes, she was unquestionably that important. He could be angry with her without wanting to forever live in the desolation he had felt when she seemed to have walked out of his life forever. Peter blanked the screen, called up Angee’s e-mail address, and began to write. DEAR ANGEE, I’M SORRY—no, make that I AM VERY SORRY IF MY LAST MESSAGE SOUNDED what? Terse? Angry? Hurtful? I AM VERY SORRY IF THE WORDS OF MY LAST MESSAGE HURT YOU. I WAS ANGRY. Well, obviously. I WANTED TO MAKE A SACRIFICE FOR BOTH OF US. IT HURT TO HAVE THAT SACRIFICE REJECTED, EVEN WHEN I LEARNED THAT IT WAS DONE OUT OF LOVE. I REALLY, REALLY HATE BEING MANIPULATED, EVEN FOR MY OWN GOOD. THE QUESTION IS: DO I HATE IT SO MUCH THAT I AM GOING TO THROW AWAY THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME? NOT IF I CAN HELP IT. I HAVE CALMED DOWN ENOUGH TO REALIZE THAT YOU ARE MAKING SACRIFICES AS WELL, BOTH PERSONALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY. PLEASE ANSWER THIS. THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN BEING AWAY FROM YOU FOR FIVE YEARS IS THINKING THAT YOU WILL NOT BE WAITING FOR ME WHEN I RETURN. Peter read it over, considered several changes, and hit the send button. It was unsatisfactory and the best he could do. That done, he felt a curious sense of relief. He had done everything he could. Either Angee would respond in kind—or she would not. Nearly fifty minutes later, his screen buzzed at him and a flashing icon informed him that he had a message from Angelina Lamont. Peter frowned in confusion. His message had barely had time to reach Earth. The speed of light made it impossible for him to have a reply so soon. DEAR PETER, EVER SINCE GETTING YOUR LAST MESSAGE, I HAVE BEEN WONDERING WHAT I COULD SAY THAT WOULD MAKE YOU FORGIVE ME. I WAS AFRAID TO WRITE, FEARING WHATEVER I SAID WOULD JUST MAKE THINGS WORSE. NOW I HAVE DECIDED THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE THINGS WORSE. IT WOULD BE SO MUCH BETTER IF YOU WERE HERE AND WE COULD JUST HAVE EVERYTHING OUT. (YES, I DON’T NEED TO BE REMINDED THAT IT IS MY FAULT THAT YOU AREN’T.) ALL MY FRIENDS TELL ME THAT THE WORST THING TO DO AFTER AN ARGUMENT WITH A BOYFRIEND OR HUSBAND IS TO OFFER UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. THEY CAN HAVE THEIR LAUGH. SO. I WAS WRONG. FROM NOW ON, NO DOING THINGS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. WE TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING AND MAKE ALL DECISIONS TOGETHER. THAT SHOULD BE IT. LET ME KNOW IF I’M MISSING ANYTHING. Manny heard the eruption of noise down the hall and stuck his head in. “Are you choking to death,” he inquired, “or is that supposed to be laughter?” “I’ll tell you later,” Peter said. “I have a message to write first.” OK! I ACCEPT YOUR SURRENDER ON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT MINE. FROM NOW ON IT’S US AGAINST THE WORLD. * * * * Transcript: THE DORIANNE SHOW January 15, 2059 DORIANNE: “And now, a warm welcome please, for my very special guest, the sleeping beauty, Angee Lamont.” Audience applause. Lamont enters stage right, frowning at her introduction for an instant. She crosses the stage as the band does the usual five bars of guest intro music and takes her seat across from DoriAnne. DORIANNE: “It’s delightful to finally have you on the show. Right now you must be the most famous woman in the country, if not the world. You and Peter Frondelli are being compared to Romeo and Juliet, Abel and [slight pause while checking her right eye monitor] uh, Lois, and all the famous lovers of myth and history. And of course with Prince Charming and the Sleeping Beauty. “I think the most remarkable part of your story is the length of time the two of you must wait. Five years! I wouldn’t think anyone could keep a relationship going under those circumstances.” ANGEE: “I wasn’t sure myself, at first. Then I found that what I was doing was not really that uncommon. In the 1800s, the families of whaling ship crews would be separated for four years at a time. During the last century, soldiers in the world wars served up to five years or more without seeing their wives. DORIANNE: “But it must be so hard!” ANGEE: “It is, but hard is not impossible. It’s just hard. And there is another thing that Peter and I have come to realize. As difficult as this is, the idea of giving up on each other was just too painful to be considered. So you must not think that we—or at least that I am showing great discipline or virtue. Once I realized that I could not live without Peter, I just took the line of least resistance.” DORIANNE: “Peter Frondelli sounds like he must be an extraordinary man. Can you share any of his love secrets with us?” ANGEE: “No.” DORIANNE (shocked): “What?” ANGEE (smiling sweetly): “Peter is a very private man. One of the things I value most about him is that he pulls me out of the spotlight. When I am with him, I am protected in place of calm and quiet. “Beyond that, there are some things I share with no one else. Every woman, and most men, should understand that.” * * * * v. March 15,2059 It was odd, but after being nearly smothered by his colleagues in the storm cellar, Peter woke from each successive hibernation phase to a ship that seemed almost deserted. The reason was obvious. At any give time, half of the complement was asleep in the dens. As a result, there was an unprecedented amount of space and privacy for everyone who was conscious. Sometimes, going down the silent corridor to his cabin, he came close to feeling that the ship was haunted. Right now, though, after a twelve-hour stint with Manny trying to make sense of E-ring spectrographs, he was too tired to be anything other than grateful for the quiet. He was also too tired to realize that his cabin light would not come on until the door sealed shut behind him and he was in total darkness. There was a half-familiar scent and for one brain-fogged moment he almost believed that Angee was right next to him. “Your secrets are safe from idiot box audiences,” a low voice said, with an accent he still could not place. “But not from me. Awake sleeper.” Lips moved up the side of his neck and fastened on his mouth. A warm body pressed him against the wall of the cabin while hands deftly worked his coverall fastenings. “I don’t think you—” Peter began, or tried to. With an invading tongue wedged between his teeth it came out more like “I doan fink oo.” In fact, it was becoming unpleasantly difficult to breath. He raised his arms to push his assailant away, found his hands clasping warm breasts, nipples hard against his fingers. For a moment, curiosity nearly overcame caution. But then he continued resisting, impelled by the simple need to avoid asphyxiation. The hands that had been working his coveralls ripped open the clasps and plunged in. Warm hands grasped him eagerly and then paused. “You’re ... not...” The alto voice was puzzled, almost hurt. Peter tried unsuccessfully to stifle a sudden laugh. “No, I’m not.” “But you appear healthy in every way. Surely you’re not—” “The Treatment,” Peter explained soberly. “I had the procedure performed when I came on board.” “Why would you maim yourself?” Andrea Part asked. “Surely not to keep yourself faithful to that immature Earthside chanteuse. Sex is the zenith of existence, the whole point of life.” “Actually,” Peter said, “it’s a pain in the ass a lot of the time. Though I suppose that’s an unfortunate choice of words.” “It can be reversed,” Part said urgently. “It would only take a matter of hours down in sickbay.” Peter allowed himself to consider it for a moment. “No,” he said. “I think not.” Part’s voice hardened. “Then you are nothing but a pervert. I should waste no more time on you.” There was a rustling of cloth. The door opened, and a shadowed form in deck pants and open blouse, fled angrily into the corridor. Peter found the rheostat and turned it up. The room looked surprisingly normal after all the commotion. He himself was a bit worse for wear. His head throbbed with each heartbeat; his lips were bleeding where they had been bitten. There were scratches on his head and face. Various other parts of his body felt bruised. He staggered over to his medicine cabinet, feeling oddly guilty that he had not cooperated in a more satisfactory manner with his own rape. * * * * “You are so damn lucky, it’s sickening,” Goldie said. Angee looked up from the glowing mat that had been unrolled on the table. A three-month calendar spread across the surface. The square of each day displayed the venue in which she was performing and the group that was providing backup. Floating above the beginning of each gig was a rectangle representing the contract. By placing her finger on the rectangle, Angee could bring the contract in front of her and flip it open. The clever thing about this particular program was that the calendar appeared the same to both of them, though seated on opposite sides of the table, and by placing their fingers on the document at the same time, both could bring a copy of the contract in front of them. “—and I don’t think I go well with a big band, even though Marty Watanabe is one of the best. You know I do best in more intimate—what? Did you say something?” “I said you were sinfully lucky.” Goldie’s voice was sour. “I tell you that taking three month vacations is going to kill your career. Instead, it makes you a rare commodity and bids up your price. I tell you to be nice to DoriAnne and after you stand her up on her first invitation, you come on her show and tell her to screw herself.” “I never said anything—” “And what happens? Instead of your career being ruined, you spark an I Hate DoriAnne campaign that forces her to apologize to you. Who knew that so many people were so tired of her causes and video picks? We should change jobs and you become the agent, except that my voice makes chalk on blackboard sound like Nat King Cole.” Angee reached across to her friend. “Don’t talk that way. You are the only reason I am not starving. You have been setting up my dates, lining up musicians, and keeping the media away from me. “And those are the less important things. You are the only one I can really talk to. I wake up and you orient me to what’s happened in the world while I was hibernating. You reassure my folks while I’m asleep. You keep me sane while I’m waiting—” Her voice broke. Goldie took her hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, kid. I know it’s been tough. I’m just saying that for all that, things have been working out so well for you that I can almost believe in miracles.” “I’d throw it all away if it would get Peter back,” Angee said simply. “I know you would. And people ought to just let you alone to wait for him. But they won’t. They’ll pry and say and write whatever they think will attract an audience. If you don’t give them enough to fill their columns, they’ll make it up. “I don’t pay any attention to that.” “You may have to,” Goldie said unhappily. “The gossips are carrying a story that seems to have originated somewhere on the Roc. They are saying that Peter has just been using you for cover, that his real interest is in young boys.” She watched Angee apprehensively for her reaction. For an instant, Angee’s face was completely blank. Then she burst out laughing so strongly that she nearly fell off her chair. It took nearly five minutes for her to calm down sufficiently to speak again. * * * * vi. December 20, 2059 None of the pictures relayed to Earth did justice to Saturn. It had a subtle beauty, made impressionistic by upper atmospheric haze, nothing like the flamboyantly bruised visage of Jupiter. The rings stretched out to either side of the half-lit face, thin as a Euclidean line segment, dotted by moons. Only the curved shadows thrown on the northern hemisphere gave any hint of their real structure. Titan, which the Roc was orbiting, was on the other side of the spacecraft, but its absence was not much of a loss, since all that could be seen in wavelengths visible to the human eye was a dull, orange haze. “I heard the news,” Carerras said, clapping Peter on the shoulder. “Tough luck. How did Novak explain not making his number one assistant part of the Titan landing team?” “He had a number of explanations,” Peter said, not taking his eyes from the view port. “He said that they couldn’t risk the entire exobiology team on any given shuttle mission. And he said that by first refusing his offer to be part of the team, I forfeited my right to make the landing to the next in line.” “Punishment for insufficient enthusiasm?” Manny suggested. “He seemed very ill at ease,” Peter said. “He would not look me in the eye.” “Of course not,” Manny said. “It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with who’s sharing his bed.” Peter sighed. “Missing the expedition isn’t the big disappointment. It’s Vaclav. I was twelve years old when I read Vaclav Novak and the Caverns of Mars, the story of how he descended into one of those huge lava tubes, survived a tear in his pressure suit, and discovered the Martian archaea. He was my hero, the man I modeled my career after. I wish he were angry with me instead of just ... weak. “When I was in school and got depressed, I would go on a road trip. Didn’t really matter to where. Just to get away.” He cocked an eye at Manny. “Feel like a road trip?” “Uh, sure.” * * * * Captain Zhen was skeptical. “The Osprey will be used for transport to and from Titan’s surface. The Condor will be kept as backup in case the Osprey runs into trouble. Those are the only two craft with landing capability.” “We don’t need landing capability,” Peter said. “We want to traverse the E-ring and bring back samples. For that purpose a scout ship like the Auk will do fine. It’s what it was designed for.” “You don’t need the Auk,” Zhen said. “Just step outside. We’re in the E-ring now.” “Technically, yes,” Manny agreed, “but the part in which we are most interested is downslope, centered on the orbit of Enceladus. There are unexplained oxygen spikes, traces of ammonia—” “An organic compound,” Zhen observed thoughtfully, “though in this case doubtless produced by inorganic means.” “Doubtless,” Peter agreed. Zhen rubbed her chin. “I have no pilots to spare.” “We don’t need a pilot,” Peter said. “Everything about the Auk is so automated that a real pilot would die of boredom. In any event, our intent is just to sweep through to the orbit of Enceladus on an elliptical orbit. Once we get the kick in the right direction, we just coast all the way in and all the way back.” Zhen snorted. “I am very surprised you have the time for this sort of sideshow. I was sure you would be part of Novak’s Titan expedition.” “So was I,” Peter said evenly. “I’m sure he has his reasons.” “I’m sure.” Zhen stared at him, then seemed to come to a decision. “I will have Lieutenant Lakhdar do a complete systems check of the Auk. You will submit a mission plan for my review. Then I will make a decision.” * * * * The E-ring was an anomaly in this arguably strangest of all planets in the Solar System. Its constituents were mostly microscopic and diffuse, more like a smoky haze than the pristine ice shards of the inner rings, mostly because there were some bodies a kilometer wide and a few as large as ten kilometers. Locating these and charting their orbits was part of Captain Zhen’s excuse for allowing the expedition. Peter and Manny had worked feverishly to prepare the craft in the final hours before launch. Under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Lakhdar, they had jury-rigged a series of externally mounted aerogel pallets to gather ring material for later examination. Now the Auk, its superconducting wires extended fore and aft to support the magnetic radiation shield, accelerated down Saturn’s gravity well. Titan dwindled above them. Rhea appeared on the starboard side and fled away aft. Dione approached from the port side, close enough that Peter was able to focus the ship telescope on its dazzling ice cliffs. Within the crowded confines of the Roc, it was easy to forget the fact that they were farther from humanity than any group of people had even been in all of history. In the Auk, with only Manny for company, the feeling of near isolation weighed in on Peter. He had time to appreciate the irony of his situation. Angee had taken a desperate gamble to get him on this expedition in hopes that it would make his name professionally. Instead, he would be a footnote to the expedition, the xenobiologist who never landed on Titan. And the reason would be, indirectly at least, because he was faithful to Angee. “Liar!” an inner voice accused. “The reason is you were so angry with her you had yourself gelded. The question is: Would you have been faithful had it been physically possible for you to be unfaithful?” Thinking back on it, Peter decided that there had been something distinctly off-putting about Part’s aggressiveness, something that seemed an attempt to mask desperation. “Yeah, I think so.” “My friend, you have a pensive look on your face,” Manny said. “Thinking how much I miss my fiancee.” Manny’s laugh lit up the entire cabin. “I regret there is nothing I can do for you in that regard.” They received news from the Roc on a regular basis. The Osprey had landed on Titan. Novak publicly announced his belief that Titan’s methane was biological in origin, just as he had shown the methane on Mars to be. Peter shook his head. There were good reasons for the consensus view that it was geological in origin. He doubted Novak could repeat past glory, though part of him still hoped he would. Whatever the origin of the methane, there was plenty of it. A surprise methane rain turned the plain on which they had landed into a shallow lake. Novak’s quick action was credited with saving several members of the expedition, including Andrea Part. “The media will love that,” Manny said. “But will Andrea ever forgive him for rescuing her?” Peter wondered. The Auk crossed the orbit of Tethys while the satellite was invisible behind Saturn. They swung in behind Enceladus, racing the moon into Saturn’s shadow. The hard darkness, that had seemed so close you could open the airlock and touch it, suddenly acquired depth. Stars appeared, spreading outward to infinity. Sharp, snapping sounds, which sometimes made the hull ring briefly, signaled the impact of microscopic ice flakes. “It is like the first time I drove up north in the winter,” Manny said. “Sleet blew out of the sky and pecked at my windshield. I had never seen such a thing.” “When I was going to school in Oklahoma,” Peter said, “I would get depressed sometimes, and then I would get in my car, find a long stretch of mostly deserted highway and drive for miles.” It occurred to Peter that he had been depressed on a fairly regular basis back then. Those mood swings had vanished after he met Angee. “Anyway, one spring night my drive took me into a mass of the hugest mosquitoes I had ever seen. They coated the windshield, making it impossible to—” There was a larger impact, not so much heard as felt through the deck and the chairs into which they were strapped. At the same time, something smashed into the forward view port, smearing its entire area. Cracks spiderwebbed its entire area. Peter held his breath, hoping the transparent sealant between the plates of the view port would fill in the cracks before the cabin’s air pressure blew them all into the vacuum. * * * * The Specimen Examination Room was near the hub of the saucer so items, preferably living, brought up from any of Saturn’s moons could be examined in something like their normal gravity. The room could be filled with water or a nitrogen-methane atmosphere or, as now, be kept in vacuum. Because of this, Peter and Manny had to conduct the examination in space suits. This was actually the second examination of this specimen. The first, begun minutes after the Auk docked with the Roc, had taken a full eight hours to remove the corpse from the aerogel in which it had embedded itself. Most of the room was dark. Spotlights trained on the specimen provided illumination for the work and for the cameras which were recording the examination, as well as relaying it throughout the Roc, and from there back to Earth. The remains resembled a white tent pole that shimmered with iridescence depending on the angle of the light. Wires attached to either end held it motionless, about shoulder high. “What we have here is two meters long and about three centimeters wide through most of that length,” Peter said. “Originally, the creature was longer. How much, we cannot say. The posterior end extended beyond the aerogel pallet and was lost.” “How can you tell?” a curious soprano voice asked. The earphones made it sound like the woman was right next to him, even though she might have been in the main auditorium, where the examination was being shown on an IMAX-sized screen, or even watching in her own cabin. “Excuse me?” Peter said. “How can you tell front from rear?” the questioner clarified. “Or even if those concepts have any relevance for a creature like this?” “Excellent question,” Manny said. “The honest answer is that we cannot be sure. However, we will show you why we think we know which end is which.” “The main body is wrapped in three extremely thin membranes,” Peter said. “We found it almost impossible to unwrap them without tearing. Luckily, Dr. Carreras came up with an alternative.” “This is an electron gun,” Manny said, displaying a device that looked like a prop from a cheap SF video. “I put it together in the repair shop to transfer electrons at short range, causing a buildup somewhat larger than the static charge you might get from scuffing across a rug. That is why the supporting wires are not grounded.” He pushed the tip of the gun under the edge of a flap and depressed the trigger. For an instant, nothing seemed to happen. Then the edge lifted itself and began to unfold. When it had swung thirty degrees around the main body, Manny found the seam of another wing and began to open it as well. A few minutes later, there were three wings being unwound. Peter worked on the side opposite Manny with his own electron gun. Each wing was roughly triangular. Even with the repulsion of the static charge, they did not extend straight away from the body but rather curved in a way that, to the artistic, might have suggested a breaking wave. “As you can see,” Peter said, “each wing has a concave and a convex side. Shine a light on the convex side and you see iridescent whiteness. If you illuminate the concave side, however...” Manny directed a flashlight beam at an inner flap. Peter heard murmurs of surprise in his earphones. “More than 99 percent reflective,” Manny said. “How much more, we have not been able to determine.” “Light sails?” Peter recognized Lakhdar’s voice. “We don’t think so. Even though the whole body is extraordinarily light and we do not know the wings’ actual area—” Peter indicated the torn edges. “—there does not seem to be sufficient surface for an efficient lightsail this far from the Sun. If we can move the lights around...” Manny moved a bank of lights in closer and adjusted their angle. “If we imagine those lights to be the Sun, we can see how the inner curve of the wings focuses the light along the body. We can deduce the reason for this by examining the interior of the body. To do this as noninvasively as possible, we use ultrasound. Manny, please display some of the images we took earlier. “There, you see that in overall structure, the main body is like a thick straw—” “—or an intestine that has been pulled straight, which probably gives you a better idea of its function,” Manny said. “I don’t see a mouth.” That was Jessica Levine, the xenobiologist who had taken Peter’s place as Novak’s primary assistant on the Titan team. “Good observation,” Peter said. “Neither do we. We sampled the interior with a hypodermic and discovered that it contains mostly water. My guess, and it is only that, is that E-ring snow impacts on the wings and is absorbed by them.” There were audible gasps, followed by a welter of clamoring voices. Peter grinned at Manny. Even if they received the Nobel Prize, it would never get better than this. Levine’s voice cut through the confusion. “You are saying these creatures actually live in space? Isn’t it much more likely that this one was hurled into the ring from an ice geyser and was already dead when you ran into it?” “Well, of course, with only one specimen to examine, we cannot say for sure,” Peter said. “And further study is definitely needed,” Manny added, because you must always say that further study is needed if you want to keep the grants coming. “But on the basis of the evidence so far, that seems the most likely explanation,” Peter said. “Just consider the reflectivity of the inner wings. They would serve no purpose in a dark ocean under a forty-meter thick blanket of ice. In the ring, however, they appear perfectly adapted to gather sunlight.” “Where radiation, if nothing else, would kill them.” Novak’s voice. It was the strongest objection. The life he had discovered on Mars had been sheltered in lava tubes and deep caverns. “Many, perhaps most, would be killed,” Peter said, choosing his words carefully, “but not necessarily all. For example, deinococcus radiodurans can reconstruct its genome without error even after it has been smashed into thousands of pieces by ionizing radiation. Most research into that bacterium has focused on trying to understand how it can do that. A more interesting question might be: Why has it evolved this way? There are very few spots on Earth where such an ability would provide a competitive advantage, but it is so obviously advantageous to an organism outside a planetary atmosphere that one might be forgiven for wondering if that is where the trait evolved.” Everyone seemed to talk at once. Some members of the audience were arguing with themselves more vociferously than with Peter or Manny. “Of course, this is only preliminary speculation,” Manny said quickly. “Of course,” Peter agreed. “But getting back to this intestinal structure. Earlier today, we sampled its contents with a hypodermic and subjected them to analysis. Most of it is water, as you would expect of a creature grazing on the ice particles of the E-ring. However, we also found significant amounts of ammonia and antifreeze glycoprotein. Together these do more than keep the creature from freezing solid. Our calculations indicate that when two of the wings focus sunlight on the torso, enough heat is produced to vaporize small amounts of water, enough to serve as a propellant. “So, though they look vaguely like manta rays, it might be closer to the truth to call them space squids.” There were more objections and questions, but there was something halfhearted about them. Peter and Manny were quite open about their own ignorance. Only the examination of more specimens would provide the answers they needed. There might be more expeditions in the Auk, but eventually the Roc would have to leave Titan, which seemed to harbor no life at all, and fall inward until it orbited Enceladus, a moon with such prodigious amounts of life that it could be hurled into the void. Everyone realized this. No one mentioned it. The last question of the session came from Captain Zhen. “How long will it take you to understand these creatures?” It was a question that took Peter and Manny by surprise. Peter took an intellectual step back in an attempt to gain perspective. “Why, the rest of my life, I suppose.” * * * * vii. July 17, 2062 They rehearsed that night in Angee’s apartment. Jose Candanosa had not been able to get in town until four that afternoon and had come over immediately, meeting Shinichi Kanayama on the way. It was good to have the old group back together. After the tour that had taken her to Tokyo, Paris, and Soweto, Angee would be back in a small club setting, with musicians she knew and who knew her well. Several times, they had only to start the first few bars of a song to know that they were perfectly in sync. After two hours, Angee felt confident that they had the set down for the next night’s performance. She went into the kitchen and came back with a platter of sandwiches and pitcher of lemonade. Shinichi was standing at the piano, picking his way through an unfamiliar page of music. Two bars in, he frowned, muttered something under his breath, and began again. This time it was noticeable that left hand and right hand were doing distinctly different syncopations, each hand running through a series of quick crescendos. “It’s not half bad,” Jose said. Angee startled, nearly dropping the lemonade and throwing the sandwiches all over the room. “So that horrified expression must mean that it’s your composition, which you do not want to show anyone just yet.” Angee nodded, carefully placing platter and pitcher on a table. “It’s just something I’ve been playing with. I thought Peter might like it when he gets back. It started with a dream I had about those creatures he found in the E-ring.” Shinichi pulled out another page. His brow glistened. His concentration made Angee think of a gymnast negotiating a particularly tricky routine. Now the chords changed slowly, melting into one another in a weightless, timeless fashion. Jose found the rest of the score. Purely instrumental sections alternated with parts for piano and voice. He whistled and shook his head. “Setting T.S. Eliot to music. Heavy stuff.” “It’s been done before,” Angee said defensively. “For poems about cats,” Jose said. “Not the Four Quartets, as far as I know. Who is publishing this?” “Well, nobody, I mean, it’s just for Peter, and most of my fans wouldn’t know what to make of it.” “We will publish it anonymously,” Jose declared. “Or under a pseudonym. The Roc trio, perhaps.” “It’s not for a trio,” Shinichi said seriously. “You want to score this for orchestra, don’t you?” Angee gave a quick nod. “I’ll tell you the whole story as we eat.” * * * * “...what we’ve done has been good,” Angee said, a note of defensiveness still in her voice. “We have kept the standards fresh and showcased some new composers that otherwise rarely gets a hearing. But I found myself wanting more. I wanted the feeling I had the first time I heard Gershwin’s Preludes, or heard Coltrane transform a simple, sappy tune into something so new and strange that it seemed I was suspended somewhere outside the Solar System. I didn’t know anyone who was doing just what I wanted, so I started composing myself. A few bars, then a few pages. I never thought I had the talent to succeed. “And what could I do with the result if I did succeed? It would leave most of my fans bewildered. Goldie would have a heart attack if she knew I was doing this.” Shinichi looked at Jose. “We are good at keeping secrets.” “How much time do we have?” Jose asked. “I am up for the next two months, then asleep for three months. A month after that, Peter will be home.” “Six months,” Jose said, “but only three with you. We must get to work.” * * * * December 29, 2062 “I need a favor,” Peter said. “A couple of favors, actually.” Dr. Beard frowned. “There is little that I can do for you. You were warned repeatedly that two hours of intense exercise every day were required to maintain minimal fitness levels, and that three or four hours were preferable for anyone wanting to minimize difficulties on returning to Earth. “On the way out, your discipline was exemplary.” This was said in the tone of a disappointed teacher. “While in the Saturnian system, however, not only did I have to put you on report repeatedly for falling below the two hour minimum, but much of the time you were in free fall on your collecting expeditions. Under such conditions, muscle atrophy and bone loss were inevitable. “Realizing this two weeks ago, and also realizing that we would soon be back home, you then did one of the few things that could have made things worse. You began to overexercise and pulled a hamstring.” Peter grimaced. There was nothing to say in his defense because everything Beard said was true. While in orbit about Saturn, he had wanted to use every waking moment either studying Enceladans in their natural habitat or analyzing their remains in the Roc. There simply had not been enough hours in the day. The trip home should have given him plenty of time for the lab work, but then he had to deal with hibernation every three months. “All very stupid of me,” Peter agreed. “Tomorrow we enter Earth orbit. We are supposed to undergo extensive medical checks, taking up to a week, before being allowed to shuttle to the surface. The problem is, the day after tomorrow, a friend of mine will be premiering a composition for voice and jazz orchestra. I want to surprise her by being there. I need you to help me do that.” Beard stared at him. Peter stared back patiently. “She is very beautiful,” Beard said unexpectedly. “Was that, with her other qualities, worth throwing away your career?” “I threw away nothing,” Peter said. “My career seems pretty much assured.” “Now, yes,” Beard said. “But when you ... made a certain enemy, that was not the case. Will you answer my question?” “What? Oh yes, absolutely.” Beard smiled. The effect was almost shocking, like morning sunlight illuminating the depths of a cave. “I will have to pull strings with my colleagues in HEO Medical. But yes, I think I can help you. And there is one specific procedure you will need.” “Ah, yes,” Peter said. * * * * The cab set down gently on the Kennedy Center’s newly refurbished landing pad. “You may debark now,” the cab told Peter. “Please indicate if you need extra assistance.” Cab sensors had somehow registered the exo-skeleton with which Beard had fitted him, though it was mostly concealed beneath his recreation suit, and decided he was an injured war veteran. “I’m fine, thank you.” And, indeed, the almost silent motors in the exoskeleton augmented his muscles sufficiently for him to swing out of the cab, stand on the tarmac, and walk with something like his normal stride toward the roof entryway. He stopped as he reached it and turned to survey the Potomac below and the city beyond it. The January air was crisp. Now and then, snowflakes stung his cheeks. If the front came through as expected, he would have to take ground transportation back to his apartment. He inhaled deeply, savoring dozens of subtle scents he had forgotten while on the Roc. Then he turned and took the escalator down to the box office. He had been hoping to slip into the audience unrecognized, but his luck ran out as he picked up his ticket. The face of the girl handing to it to him lit up with astonishment. “Dr. Frondelli! I saw the name but told myself it couldn’t be you. The crew isn’t due down for a week.” “This is a surprise for Miss Lamont,” Peter said, “or at least it was supposed to be. I see that I’m already late.” “Just by a few minutes,” the girl said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you a chair backstage. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell my boyfriend. This is all so romantic, and I get to be here at the end.” “That is not why we did it,” Peter said, a bit more stiffly than he intended. “I know,” the girl said solemnly. “That’s what makes it all so sweet.” * * * * Peter sank gratefully into the chair. Despite padding, the exoskeleton was chafing in spots. Beard had programmed it to assist him, but not to do all the work. Making Peter provide a proportion of the muscle power that increased every day would make him stronger and eventually complete his adjustment to one gee. Right now, it made him exhausted. He sat in darkness, the only light being that which spilled over from the stage. Standing where she was, Angee would not be able to see beyond the first two rows. It was one reason she preferred playing clubs. There you could see your audience, make contact with them, feel the electricity of a good performance build. Here she would be half dazzled by the footlights. Peter stared at her, wondering if she looked different than the last time he had seen her. Happier, certainly. Older? Hard to say. For all the time they had spent in hibernation, it had still been five years. Maybe there was just additional confidence, a deeper maturity. He could hardly imagine that the woman he had known when he left would have performed, much less composed, the work unfolding before him. As much as they had stayed in contact through e-mail, it would take some time until they really knew each other again. If they had ever really known each other in the first place. There was a screen behind her, just barely visible from this angle. Dots winked into being, extended into lines that curved, then connected into a series of semi-abstracts ... a fish, jumping from the waves, morphing into a bird, surrounded by stars, a man (floating in free fall?), an Enceladan, then the two of them revolving in a microgravity pas de deux, until they came together and merged.... * * * * Warm lips pressing his. The trace of a scent that had once been so familiar and which he had missed for so long. Strands of hair brushing across his forehead so lightly that they almost tickled. A sigh. “You fall asleep during my most important performance. I should feel insulted. I suppose I’m lucky you’re not a critic.” Peter opened his eyes. Angee’s smile filled the world. “My apologies. It has been a tough ... five years.” Angee’s eyes dropped and saw the exo-skeleton poking out from a sleeve. Her expression sobered. “Yes, it has. Sometimes, when I slept, I would dream of you and cry when I woke. Kiss me again, so I can feel how good it is to be awake.”