Golden Fleece

Aaron’s eyes snapped onto the youthful cleric, and I imagined he saw multicolored afterimages playing across Delmonico’s black cassock. I realized then that Aaron had not been aware of Diana’s friendship with the Roman Catholic. Yes, Aaron, that’s right. Diana did have a life beyond your marriage, just as you did. Oh, her association with Delmonico was purely platonic, unlike your dalliance with your doctor. But it could, I suppose, have just as easily become sexual, once Diana had been released from the bonds of matrimony that to her, at least, did have some meaning. After all, it had been thirty-one years since Vatican IV, at which Catholic clergy had been freed from the burden of celibacy.

“That Diana had been bright goes without saying,” continued Delmonico. “None but the best were chosen for this mission. Every man and woman aboard is clever and well educated and highly trained and good at his or her job. To say these things also were true of Diana would be to state the obvious. So let me instead take a moment to remind us of those qualities Diana possessed that perhaps are a little less easily defined and, just maybe, a little less common among our number.

“Diana Lee Chandler had been warm and friendly, outgoing in a way that we don’t see much anymore. The cities of Earth are rough places. We’re brought up street-proofed, told never to talk to strangers, never to get involved, to hurry, heads down, avoiding eye contact, from one safe haven to the next. We watch centuries-old movies, black and white and grainy and two-dimensional, of people greeting strangers on the street and lending a helping hand, and we wonder how they possibly made it back to their homes or offices alive.

“Well, Diana refused to be toughened. She wouldn’t allow society to turn her into a cold and unfeeling machine. She had been a Catholic, but she never attended my services. Had she lost faith in the Almighty? I don’t think so, but I do know that she still had faith in her fellow human beings, something most of us have lost. She was a joy and a treasure, and I will miss her with all my heart.”

A couple of prayers were read. More kind words were said. A few people cried—including some who hadn’t really known Di at all.

After the ceremony, people made their way out of the Place of Worship. Some said a few words to Aaron, and he accepted them with slight nods of his head. Finally, after the crowd had thinned, Father Delmonico came over to where Aaron was standing, hands in pockets. “I’m Barry Delmonico,” he said, offering his hand. “I think perhaps we met once or twice before.”

Aaron dug his right hand out of his pocket and greeted Delmonico. “Yes,” he said vaguely, sounding as though he didn’t remember the meetings. But his voice quickly took on a warmth I seldom heard from him. “I want to thank you, Father, for what you’ve said and done. I hadn’t realized you and Diana were so close.”

“Just friends,” said Delmonico. “But I will miss her.”

Aaron was still clasping the man’s hand. After eight seconds, he nodded. “So will I.”

TWELVE

And that was it. Diana’s body was cremated, the ashes put in storage for our return to Earth. Had her death taken place on Earth, Aaron and his family would have sat shivah for his lost wife, waiting a week before returning to work.

But Diana was no longer his wife, and she had no family here to mark her passing. Besides, some work could not wait, and Aaron wasn’t about to let one of his underlings do what had to be done down on the hangar deck.

Wearing shirtsleeves beneath a heavy-duty radiation suit, Aaron worked at removing an access panel on Orpheus’s port side. His movements were less restrained than usual, more distracted, almost careless. He was upset, that was for sure, but he had a job to do. In an effort to cheer him, I asked, “Do you wish to place a wager on this evening’s football game?”

“What time is kickoff?” he asked absently.

“Eighteen hundred hours.”

The access panel came free, and he set about connecting his test bench to Orpheus’s guts via a bundle of fiber optics. Finally, as though from light-years away, he said, “Put me down for two thousand on the Engineering Rams.”

“You favor the underdog,” I noted.

“Always.”

The test bench was something he’d tinkered together thirteen months ago in the electronics shop with help from I-Shin Chang, Ram quarterback for today’s game. Unlike the units contracted for the project, this one was not peripheral to me. Oh, at the time they were designing it, I had suggested various ways they could interface it with my sensors; but they hadn’t seen any point in doing so, and back then there had seemed no need to press the issue. Now, though—well, I’ll cross that decision tree when I come to it.