by C. Gockel
Catharin sighed. “The answer is, we don’t know yet,” she said.
“We’re getting the picture, though.” Joe touched the telcon window, and it switched to a new set of double helices, differently and more subtly damaged than the first. “Eight-month-old fetus,” Joe said. “DNA’s been analyzed in the standard ways, and it looks normal. But it isn’t. Don’t ask me exactly how I know. Just say something feels wrong.”
Catharin stiffened, and color drained out of her face. She said, “Carl. Excuse us. Joe and I have to talk in private.” When the door closed behind Wing, Catharin whirled toward Joe. “How did you get that gene scan?”
He was surprised by the intensity in her voice. “I asked around in the Ship’s hypercomputer, followed one lead and another, offered one password and another, and voila. Did notice that it was pretty closely guarded. But I’m good at bending protocols without breaking them.”
“I was going to ask you to look at it . . . later.”
“Well, now you know what I think.”
“Do you know my next question?”
“If there really is a problem with the DNA, which you’re not admitting yet, your question is, could I repair this one too? Yes.”
Catharin slumped into the chair and put her face in her hands. A conscientious doctor, she must be tremendously worried about the child on the Ship.
“Doctor, you should take some of your own medicine. Relax.” He put his hands on her shoulders and gently massaged them.
She put her hands on top of his. “Let’s go for a walk.”
When they were out of the dome into the night, she reached for his hand. Electrified, Joe laced his fingers through hers. In silence, they walked hand in hand toward the edge of the mountaintop.
The sky flamed with stars. They stopped in a clearing in the pines. A rock loomed behind her, dark under a wide piece of starry sky overhead and a circle of dark trees, a backdrop for Catharin with starlight shining on her fair hair and light-colored clothing. “I’ve never seen light like this on a woman,” Joe murmured.
“You’ve never seen light like this,” Catharin answered, “because Earth didn’t have this many stars.”
“Your hair catches the starlight. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll take your word for that.”
He reached out to touch her hair, sought and found and pulled out a clip.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking down your hair, so you can see it.”
To his surprise, she let him. He disassembled the coiled braids. Free, her hair fell to several different lengths, the longest reaching her hips, one ringlet lying on her breast, and wavy locks that framed her face. Joe stepped a half step back to look at her, “You look like an angel in a renaissance painting,” he said.
Catharin laughed. “Very romantic, Joe.”
“Why don’t you wear your hair down more often?” he asked
“Because it makes me look too pretty.”
“Not just pretty. Beautiful.” He heard how it came out, rough with unmasked feeling in his voice.
She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him close.
Desire jolted Joe like an electric shock. With one hand curled behind her neck and the other on her hip, he kissed her, hard. And she held him hard and returned his kiss, force for force, passion for passion.
23 The Thirteenth Hour
Catharin went toward the Unity Base conference room in a startled daze. A single long braid hung over her shoulder. Joe had braided it for her before they came back inside, after holding a double handful up to show her that yes, the starlight did shine on it. Her skin tingled where he’d touched her, as if she’d dipped her hands and rinsed her face in starlight.
Wing hailed her in the corridor. “It’s just beginning! We were wondering where you were.”
Becca was testing the exploration drone from the conference room tonight. The drone was on the Ship, but its surroundings would simulate the upper atmosphere of Planet Blue. Catharin really didn’t want to miss the drone sim, but she’d waited until the last possible second to come in from Joe and the starry night. “Lead the way.”
Joe had gone back to Medical. He wanted to work, he said. He had an old cathedral to patch. Go with my blessing! she had answered fervently.
In the conference room, Aaron had settled into a chair to watch the telcon, his high forehead furrowed in concentration. Becca perched on a chair in front of the telcon.
Things happened fast for Becca with Joe too, Catharin thought. For the same reasons or different ones? Under the stars, it had seemed right to Catharin, and it still felt right, for an astronaut to fall in love under a night sky full of stars.
Not that she couldn’t foresee problems in falling in love with that particular man.
The telcon window showed the wide curve of a white-streaked blue horizon. At the bottom of the window, a bank of icons glowed and flashed. In the bottom right-hand corner was a bright string of downward-pointing arrows. “Aha.” Catharin pointed at the arrow-string. “Vertical speed,” she said to Wing. “The drone is falling only slightly slower than a rock right now because it’s where the atmosphere is high and thin.”
Catharin recognized Becca’s weather-flying mode: tense concentration on her face, relaxed but quick hand action. Instead of handling a control stick, she punched keys on the telcon to control the drone. “Is she flying the drone?” Wing asked Catharin.
“In part. There’s a time delay between Green and Blue, and that is built into the simulation.” Aaron moved his chair closer to Catharin to hear better. She said, “The drone flies itself—it’s a self-directing robot—but the remote operator, Becca, can take over. It’s a two-layer control scheme, autonomy and telepresence. Becca is nearly three seconds behind the conditions experienced by the drone, but she can anticipate and intervene at certain moments.”
Becca nodded briefly in agreement. She hit a key and the window divided into three parts, all three full of wide high sky and the tops of clouds. “Views to the front and both sides of the drone,” Catharin murmured. “It’s down in weather. It’s an aircraft now, not a rock.”
All three views had spidery lines superimposed on them. Information about the drone’s angle of attack, its attitude relative to the horizon, its heading, and so forth crowded the window. It would have been more legible with the information projected into the air around the telcon. “Doesn’t the telcon have a holographic mode?” Catharin asked Aaron.
Aaron laughed. “Our technology is all antiques, remember. Sturdy, proven technology works better when you’re far afield.” The flying craft descended into a wide sky valley between two hurricanes.
Joe had recently made remarks such as When’s Manhattan going to activate the holo mode? How long’s he going to tightwad with the holo? Joe, too, was under the impression that the conference room telcon was holograph-capable. Catharin could imagine his ire when informed otherwise. She made a mental note not to be the one to inform him.
Surely Joe could work around not having a state-of-the-art telcon. Becca was doing just that with aplomb, manually keying in control directions. She gave Catharin a quick smile. “I’m teaching the drone to play tag with a hurricane.”
A wall of cloud loomed ahead of the drone. This was file footage from Earth’s hurricanes, no less mighty than Blue’s, just fewer. The cloud barrier looked awesome, brilliant white on the crown, with a base of thick gray laced with lightning flashes.
“Here goes,” said Becca.
The drone dove into swirling mist that rapidly thickened and grayed. The string of arrows at the bottom right of the window flashed dramatically, down-arrows illuminating in sequence, fading as a string of up-arrows above them lit up, then reversing. The drone bounced like a ping-pong ball in turbulence in the cloud. Becca punched keys with tense concentration. The picture darkened almost to black, with erratic pale flashes of lightning.
“How big is the drone?” Wing whispered in Catharin’s
ear.
“Fifteen feet long,” she whispered back. “It’s no antique, either. It’s a custom-made modern flying machine.”
The drone broke out of the black cloud into dazzling sun. Becca sat back. “It’s a quick study too. By the third updraft, I didn’t have to give it any orders. Luckily the wings weren’t torn off in the first two. All make believe,” she added.
“Is Bix going to authorize a real encounter with Blue?” Catharin asked.
Aaron answered her. “It depends on these trial runs. I strongly advised it. We need a success in exploration.”
Becca spoke to the Ship. “Aeon, you’ve got a good little bird here. It can do the job.”
“You think we ought to go for Blue?” came Joel’s voice.
“Affirmative,” said Becca.
Catharin moved to Becca’s side to speak on the link. “Nothing would be better than scientific understanding now. More than ever, we need to understand Planet Blue,” said Catharin. “As things stand, it’s a blazing blue mystery that makes disasters happen.”
“You prescribe scientific understanding?”
“I do.”
“We’ll take that under advisement,” said Joel. “Becca, ready for the structural debrief?”
“Ready.” The whole drone appeared on the window in wire-frame form, the grid shaded white and blue, yellow and red for different stresses on the aircraft’s structure.
“Joel agrees with us,” Catharin said to Aaron. “I can tell by the tone of voice. He wants to send it to Blue.”
“What Lary Siroky-Scheidt has in mind is more ambitious,” said Aaron.
Becca caught Catharin’s eye. “Get this.”
“He wants to send the drone down between hurricanes to land on one of Blue’s islands.”
“That’s it.” Becca leaned back tiredly. “We’ve debriefed it to death and said good night, and we’re still sure. It would have survived the flight. We can do it.”
Wing unsuccessfully suppressed a yawn.
“My, it’s late,” said Aaron. “Not yet thirteen o’clock, but high time to hit the sack.” He and Wing departed. Catharin felt no desire to follow suit. She still felt energetic, high on kissing Joe Toronto.
It was quiet and dark in the conference room, with only the sibilant murmur of an air blower and the telcon’s blue window, Becca profiled against it, to impress the senses, until Becca said, “It may not be thirteen o’clock yet, but it’s the thirteenth hour. You know that saying about the eleventh hour, meaning almost too late to change anything? Well, the thirteenth hour means it’s way past deciding time. Some things can’t be changed now.”
Catharin nodded. “It’s that way for Bix.” Not even Joe can make his DNA the way it was. But maybe close enough.
“Not just for Bixby.” Becca’s voice sounded low and shaky.
“What’s wrong?” Catharin asked in alarm.
“I felt awful yesterday when we went out in the Starhawk to find Wing and Tezi. After we landed at the river, I went behind the bushes to be sick, and that’s how come I saw Tezi.”
“Sick how?”
“Airsick. It’s been happening a lot. I don’t think I should fly anymore. Not alone.”
What Catharin was hearing did not seem real. Her voice felt disconnected from her. She heard herself say, “Let’s go to Medical. Now.” She rose.
“Wait, it’s not an emergency and won’t last that much longer. Oh, Cat, you look like I told you I’m dying, and that’s not what I mean.” Becca took a deep breath. “I think it’s morning sickness.”
Catharin had hoped and all but prayed to have this test result in her hands. But she had not expected it so soon, and not under these circumstances. They huddled in Catharin’s office. The doctor was not nearly as composed as she needed to be, not calmed by the ritual of steeping tea. “You’re definitely pregnant.”
“I’m sorry!”
“What for?”
“To do this to you!” Becca’s voice slid up toward shrill frustration. “I didn’t mean to!”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Why not? Please don’t be too understanding, I can’t stand it!”
“Honest, Becca, I’m just stunned.”
With an inquiring meow, Nunki woke up from her nap in the corner. Catharin snapped her fingers. Nunki jumped up into her lap. Stroking the cat, Catharin listened without interrupting the torrent of feeling on Becca’s part.
“Why me?? I know I’m healthier than many. So I intended to get together with Domino, and I thought we’d have a little one, but—! And I can’t tell Domino because it’s taken him this long to get to where he can say two words in a row about Joe without snarling!
“It wasn’t my idea. At least, not that this would come out of it. But it was what the dell had in mind!” Becca blurted.
Catharin paused with her hand in midstroke on Nunki’s back. “The dell?”
Becca nodded energetically. “I finally went back and had a word with it. In daylight. Words don’t work, so I played my flute.”
Catharin pursed her lips as she considered saying, Were you out of your mind? “Did you know that this is probably the first natural conception since we reached this star, certainly the first on Green? Unless you feel it wasn’t natural so much as supernatural.”
“No. I was ovulating; I know that because I was very interested in men that day. But I didn’t think once about contraception.”
“A number of couples have been trying very hard to conceive,” said Catharin, “in addition to others who are mainly interested in each other and not bothering with contraception. No one else has gotten pregnant. I’d have said the chances of any given couple conceiving were not much better than for Wimm and Eddy.”
Becca’s face fell. “That slim?”
“That slim.”
“That’s a thin thread to hang the future on.”
“I know. You’ve handed me hope on a silver platter tonight. So I’m certainly not angry.”
“The future is one thing, the present is another. It wasn’t fair, because Joe’s yours, and I’ve got a good one of my own. How can I make it up to you?”
“Do you need to hear whether I’m jealous? No. Joe is mine if I want him. And I do.”
Relieved, Becca rearranged herself to a less tight, tense position. “Did you know that Alvin’s been taking bets the two of you would get together?”
“No, I did not know that.” It did not improve Catharin’s opinion of Alvin.
“What Joe and I did played hell with his odds, and he was cussing and fussing for a couple of days.”
“I wouldn’t count on logical odds around here,” Catharin said flatly. “Whether or not there’s anything supernatural going on—and I, for one, doubt it—the probable and the improbable are not what they were back home. For example—Becca, if you feel you want to make anything up to me, just let me confide in you. And don’t tell anybody else.”
Becca was wide-eyed with interest. “Sure.”
“A series of in-vitro fertilizations have been done on the Ship. Most failed, which fueled my pessimism. One, however, is eight months along, gestating in a volunteer birth mother.”
“What does that have to do with screwball odds?”
“Both parents were astronauts. In stasis twice.”
Becca sucked in a breath. “You and who else?”
“Joel. I never imagined that it would work.”
“Maybe it was what the stars had in mind?” Becca suggested with a twist of a smile.
“I’m not ready to believe in astrology. Out of curiosity, what did you play in the dell?”
“A Methodist church hymn. ‘All Creatures of Our God and King.’ It says, ‘Thou flowing water pure and clear, make music for thy Lord to hear.’ It was my way of . . . of telling the dell that I worship God and it should do likewise and not impose its ideas on us, and it listened to me.”
When Catharin raised an eyebrow, Becca insisted, “Not when I talked out loud, which just made me f
eel silly. Words don’t belong there and just scatter on the wind. The melody, though, sank in as though the ground was acoustical tile.”
Catharin briefly wondered if pregnancy had made Becca irrational. But what she had said, though illogical, was perfectly in character. And Becca was quite rational enough to know how strange it sounded. She had turned pink.
Thoughtful, Catharin stroked the contented creature in her lap. “I don’t understand. It would be hubris for me to say otherwise. It was hubris enough to experiment as I did with conception.”
“You had to know the worst, right? And the worst wasn’t as bad as you feared.”
“One researcher suspects a problem.” Catharin grimaced with the irony of expressing it that way. “I’ll level with you—Joe thinks there’s a problem. If that’s so, it wasn’t bad enough to prompt miscarriage. Perhaps it will show up only after birth, and the child will suffer, unless Joe can come up with a cure. Whatever your dell did was less blatant than what I’ve done, don’t you think?”
“I’m not blaming you,” Becca said. “Does the birth mother have any problems?”
“A violent disaffinity toward anything that smacks of peppermint. As long as she stays away from minty flavors and odors, she feels fine.”
“And I get a disaffinity for flying! I was wondering,” Becca ventured, “about medicine for nausea.”
One word rang in Catharin’s mind. Thalidomide. Catharin shuddered, recalling that piece of medical history, how a drug meant to ease morning sickness mangled the unborn child. “I don’t know what effect known medicines have on our bodies, after the slight but pervasive changes caused by stasis. It might not work—or might harm you or the embryo.”
Becca sighed. “I had a feeling you’d say that. That’s why I pushed for going ahead with the drone. It’s something useful I can do from the ground.”
“You can do the job even better if you control the drone from the Ship.”
Becca pointed out, “Quarantine’s still on. Now Bix wants you to watch for odd illnesses in the people who got dosed with river water, and the people who rescued them. So I can’t go back up.”
