Starborne

Huw lifts an eyebrow as Noelle and the year-captain enter, one naked, one not. Public nudity is not an extraordinary thing aboard the starship, and people sometimes come to the baths already undressed, but it is not a widespread custom. The year-captain wonders whether Huw is assuming an intimacy between him and Noelle that does not at all exist. The thought annoys him. He is aware that there is much ignorant conjecture aboard ship about his sexual habits, and he finds the furtive gossip more amusing than bothersome; but he isn’t eager to enmesh Noelle, who might be disturbed at finding herself the subject of such rumors, in these lascivious whisperings.

“May we join you?” the year-captain asks, sliding out of his clothes. The question is routine politeness. Huw gestures grandly, and the year-captain and Noelle slip into the tub on the side opposite from Imogen and Huw. There’s no need for helping Noelle; she makes her way over the side of the tub as easily as if she were sighted. As they settle into the warm water the side of Noelle’s thigh presses up against the year-captain’s, though, which he assumes is accidental, the tub being as small and as crowded as it is, and Noelle’s sense of spatial perception not as accurate in water as it is where sound waves travel unimpeded. The year-captain automatically moves a couple of centimeters to his left; but a few moments later, as further positional adjustments are made by the occupants of the tub, he feels Noelle coming in contact with him again. It is hard now not to believe that this is deliberate, that all of this is, the suggestion that they go to the baths together, the casual stripping in her cabin, the nude promenade through the corridor. But why? Noelle is a beautiful woman, yes; highly attractive, even, and fascinating in her enigmatic cool dignity; but after all this time she still has played no role that he knows of in the pattern of sexual entanglements aboard the starship, and though she certainly seems to be offering herself to him now, the year-captain finds it difficult to accept the belief that she actually is. He prefers to look upon her as guileless and her present behavior as innocent. He continues to think of her as an asexual being, given over wholly to the bond with her distant sister and needing no other. Possibly she’s just in a playful mood just now, without any genuine erotic subtext; or perhaps she is experimenting with a new way of unwinding from the tensions of her message-sending. In any case he has no intention of responding to the invitation she seems to be extending, whether or not it’s real. As always, a sexual involvement with Noelle strikes him as a potentially explosive thing. He doesn’t think it could ever be the kind of coolly recreational coupling that his affair with Julia is. There were bound to be immense messy complications, somehow. Noelle is of vital importance to the voyage; so is he; he will not risk involving them in something that carries with it such a high probability of diverting their energies into troublesome areas.

Nevertheless, this time the year-captain allows his thigh to remain in contact with hers. It would be rude to pull away a second time.

“You spoke very well,” Imogen says to him, “about Marcus the other day. I was extremely moved. I think we all were.”

“Thank you.” It seems like a mindless kind of reply to make, but he can’t think of any other response.

“He was so difficult to get to know,” Imogen says. She and Marcus had been lovers for a brief time early in the voyage. Imogen is one of the ship’s metallurgists; she is also assistant medical officer. Everyone has odd combinations of specialties. “Even in bed, you know?” she says. “Right here in the baths is where it happened, the first time. We were just sitting side by side, the way I am with Huw now, neither of us saying very much, and then Marcus turned to me and smiled and touched my wrist and gestured with his head toward one of the side rooms. Didn’t say a word. And we got right up and went in there. Not a word out of him the whole time.”

Huw is smiling benignly, as though Imogen is merely speaking of having gone off with Marcus to play a few games ofGo. But quite possibly he doesn’t see much difference between the one recreation and the other, except thatGo requires heavier thinking.