Fire with Fire(132)

Several seconds—or minutes—later (he could not tell), the compartment intercom toned twice: a priority message. “Folks”—it was Trevor—“if you’re still in your acceleration couches, you might want to stay there. We just received a communiqué from our hosts. Seems they’re ready to initiate shift. For those of you who’ve never experienced one, you might feel a little vertigo, so just make sure you’re seated or lying down. Fifteen minutes, they tell us. See you on the other side. Out.”

That reminder—about her impending discorporation—made Opal start away from Caine, who put his arms back around her. He tilted his head down until she could not fail to look him in the eyes: “Look: think of it this way. Your body is pushing around—sometimes destroying and rebuilding—electrons all the time.”

Opal shuddered. “Sorry, but logic doesn’t help. I’ve faced death a few times, you know. Getting too close to it on one occasion is what got me banished to the future. But here’s the funny thing: I always knew I wasn’t going to be killed. I have known—all my life—that I wasn’t going to die young, that I was going to outlive all my siblings and live on into advanced, and probably testy, hag-dom. But this—it makes me feel like I’m about to dissolve into nothing.”

“Well,” Caine said and his arms tightened a little more, “you certainly feel real enough to me.”

He did not expect what happened next: she pushed herself into him with a sinuous motion; her reluctant vulnerability sudden transformed into forceful wantonness. “You’d be surprised how real I can feel,” she said in a tone that sounded like fierce annoyance.

As Opal pulled herself against him, Caine imagined he felt various needs tightening her fingers—needs for love, for safety, for escape, for him, for release. But now, those separate needs were losing their distinctions, were fusing together into one impulse—

And Caine, as distracted as he was by her profoundly suggestive words and motions, finally understood where her tears had come from: she had wanted this to happen for a long time. And now, made desperate by a fear of imminent annihilation, that unfulfilled want had cracked the emotional container in which she kept herself, had started leaking out . . .

Caine stood away and extended a hand. “Come with me.”

She had risen and put her hand in his even before she said, “Where are we going?”

“To a therapeutic environment.”

She blinked. “And where on this tin-can would that be?”

He smiled, checked up and down the corridor, and led her aft. And as they approached the last door on the module’s central corridor, she understood: “The buoyancy tank? Now?”

“When better? You like baths; think of this as the ultimate bath.” He opened the door; a muted glimmer of moving water moiréd against the walls.

She seemed slightly more collected as she wondered: “Damn, is this even allowed?”

“Hey—I thought you were the bad-ass, maverick major.”

“Bad ass, yes: exhibitionist, no. How do we know that no one will—?”

“We just passed all their doors. Closed tight. Waiting for the shift. Lot of first timers like yourself. All probably a little anxious, and eager to hide it from everyone else.” Caine pulled off his T-shirt. “So this may be the one time we can indulge in a little—” he slipped into the water “—hydrotherapy.”

“Okay. Give me a sec.” She moved towards the changing booth.

“What for?”

“My grand entrance.” She slipped inside, but he still could see her: she didn’t bother to close the door. In a moment, she had shed her outer clothes. She primped for all of one second in the mirror, making sure her bra and briefs were trim and taut, showing off everything to its best advantage.

When she left the booth, she did not meet Caine’s eyes, but stepped daintily into the water on the other side of the tank and then waded across to join him. She leaned back against the rim of the tank, her body only a foot away from his. The water raised her breasts slightly. His arms—spread out to either side—suddenly felt very heavy. He felt the water lap against his side, shifted his body slightly, wondered if—oh Christ, stop thinking!

Smiling at his own awkwardness and tendency to overexamine everything—even this—he turned toward Opal.

She was not smiling.

And then, thinking became extraneous.





PART FIVE

EV Lacertae and Barnard’s Star

October, 2119





Chapter Forty

TELEMACHUS

Downing was tapping his lower lip meditatively with a compupad stylus. “So Mr. Thandla, you have confirmed our final position?”