by Joe Vasicek
Through the bulkheads behind him, the sound of running water mingled with the hum of the ventilation system. That would be the shower unit; Noemi was probably getting ready for the sleeping shift. He didn’t blame her; it had been almost eight hours since leaving Megiddo Station, and the FTL drive was almost primed and ready for the second jump. He yawned and returned to the catalog.
Marriage celebrations often last for weeks, with extended family members gathering together across long distances. Weddings are always extravagant affairs, with the parents of the bride spending upwards of an entire year’s income on the event. Dowries can also be quite high, especially among the well-connected elites.
Jeremiah smiled to himself as he logged out of the catalog. That was it—Noemi was only a passenger on his ship, nothing more. Whatever her father had done before handing her off, it was certainly not a marriage. The realization made him breathe a little easier, knowing where the boundaries lay.
The shower shut off, and the bathroom door hissed open a few moments later. Noemi was probably getting ready for bed. In a little while, he’d have to deal with the awkwardness of the sleeping arrangements, but for the time being he could focus on more important things, like setting the target coordinates for their next jump.
The energy reserves had built up enough to allow a maximum safe distance of .2 light-years, but Jeremiah bet he could push that up to .4. Cosmic dust was sparse in the Oriana cluster, and most of the rogue planets and brown dwarfs were safely charted. Still, he had to be careful not to push too far: long jumps on low reserves resulted in poor jump accuracy, potentially putting them light-years off course.
With the target coordinates plugged into the nav-computer and the jump drive only at eighty percent, Jeremiah yawned again and rose groggily to his feet. The jump could wait until the next waking cycle; they were in no hurry. In the meantime, his exhausted body hungered for sleep.
“All right,” he said aloud as he stepped into the cabin. “Time to—”
He froze just inside the doorway. Noemi lay face-up on the cot, not a stitch of clothing on her body. Her gaze met his, and she gave him a nervous smile, making no effort whatsoever to cover herself.
Cold sweat broke out across the back of Jeremiah’s neck, while his cheeks burned as if on fire. His hands began to shake and his legs went weak, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. The rise and fall of her diminutive breasts, the subtle yet inviting curves of her hips—
“Stars and c-constellations of Earth,” he stammered.
Chapter 3
The orange-yellow light of the Edenian sun cast speckled shadows through the leafy canopy as Jeremiah walked along the quiet garden pathway. The giant redwoods had been brought from Gaia Nova by the first settlers of Edenia II, almost eight generations ago. Legend held that their line was pure and unblemished by xenobiotic fusion, running straight back to Earth. In the lighter gravity of Edenia’s second world, they had grown to a towering height, almost brushing the top of the settlement’s dome. The trunks alone were as wide as pylons, and the cloven roots created dozens of dark, damp hiding places among the red-green ferns and wavy undergrowth.
Jeremiah closed his eyes and took in a deep breath of the thick, earthy air. The scent of mulch and humus filled his nose, while the warm moisture clung to his skin, refreshing his body with the purity of nature. It was a little piece of paradise—a seed of holy Earth, taking root among the stars.
At the sound of laughter, his eyes snapped open. A young blond girl smiled at him through the leafy ferns.
“Come and get me, Jeremy!”
With a grin, he spun around and gave chase. The girl squealed in delight and dashed through the undergrowth, running through the roots and around the massive trunks.
“You can’t run from me, Sarah—I’ll catch you!”
“Never!”
They ran to the edge of the dome, where the forest opened up to a grassy meadow before the giant glass wall. Beyond, the landscape turned to harsh, yellow wasteland. Dust and sand blew across the hazy yellow sky, while the craggy peaks at the rim of the crater stood like ancient sentinels. Jeremiah slowed, letting his sister escape while he stared at the timeless monoliths.
“Jeremy? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking out over the alien landscape. Strange, how so much barrenness surrounded even the tiniest sanctuary of life.
His sister slowed and walked over to him, peering out the glass to see what he saw. While she was distracted, he lunged and seized her by the waist. She shrieked and tried to get away, but he held on tight, laughing as they tumbled to the ground.
When they had finished playing, they lay on their backs to stare up at the Edenian sky. The orange sun dipped over the horizon, and the deep purple twilight faded until the stars came out in all their magnificent glory. Together, Jeremiah and his little sister picked out almost a dozen familiar constellations: Galileo, Armstrong, Sputnik, and Yuri, among others. High overhead, the New Pleiades shown brightly in the familiar sky, so close that he almost felt he could reach out and touch them.
“How much longer before you go out there?” she asked.
“I don’t know. A year, maybe two.”
“You shouldn’t go.”
He glaced over at her and frowned. “Sarah, you know I can’t—”
“I don’t care, Jeremy. I want you to stay.”
She sniffled to keep from crying, but her tears were irrepressible. They traced shimmering lines of moisture down her cheeks like fresh condensation on the inside of the dome.
“I don’t know,” he said, his body growing tense. “Dad is pretty set on me going. He wants me to take the Ariadne and—”
“Don’t go, Jeremy. Please don’t go.”
Her pleas cut deep into his heart. If he left Edenia to wander the stars, her chances of ever seeing him again were slim to none. Only deadbeats and failures returned to the stars of their birth; if he ever did come back, it would be a terrible admission of defeat. But to leave all of this behind—his family, his home, the beautiful, peaceful gardens of Edenia—he might as well cut out his heart and throw it into an incinerator, still beating.
At the same time, he couldn’t stay. Perhaps it was something in his blood, or some residual shred of the curiosity that had driven his ancestors from Gaia Nova, but deep down he knew that he would never be happy if he stayed. The stars were calling him, the same way they’d called the Patriarchs to leave the dying remains of Earth.
Did that make him unworthy, though? His mother had always taught him that the gardens were like a piece of heaven, an island of holiness in the void of outer darkness.
“The whole Earth was like this, once,” she had taught him as a little boy. “Green, pure, and full of life.”
“It was?” he had asked, eyes growing wide.
She nodded. “Yes. Earth was a holy place, but we defiled it, and so God cast us out.”
“Why?”
“Because we didn’t deserve it,” she had told him. “But even though He cast us out, He gave us a piece of it to take with us across the stars, so that when we found a place for that seed to take root and grow, we could build a New Earth like the one that we’d lost.”
A New Earth—and yet like a doomed star spiraling into a black hole, his heart still yearned for the lifeless void.
“Promise me you’ll stay, Jeremy,” begged his little sister. “Promise me you’ll never leave.”
“I don’t know, Sarah. Father—”
“Please, Jeremy? Ple-e-ease?”
“All right,” he whispered, knowing even as he said it that it was a lie.
“Really? Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Yay!”
With that, she scampered innocently off into the trees. A lump rose in Jeremiah’s throat, and guilt cut into him like a laser. One day, he would break his promise to her—and that would be the last day he’d ever see her.
And then he would truly be unworthy.
<
br /> * * * * *
Jeremiah opened his groggy eyes to the hum of the cockpit instruments. He blinked and yawned, shuddering a little as he stretched his still-sore arms. Barely twenty four hours out, and the dreams had already begun. Usually, it took at least a week before they really began to set in. The loneliness came next, followed by the sheer terror from the realization that he was light-years away from the nearest human being.
Sometimes on the longer voyages, he wondered if he was the only human in all existence and all of his memories of other people were just inventions of his own imagination. The vastness of space could have that effect, especially on solitary starfarers such as himself. He’d once heard of a young man who’d decided to activate his distress beacon and wait for someone to come to his rescue. He’d been out so deep that it had taken almost two standard years before anyone had picked up his signal. When help had finally arrived, they’d found him a hopelessly undernourished wreck, curled up in the pilot’s chair and babbling incoherently. His ship still functioned perfectly, but his madness had progressed so far that he was no longer capable of piloting it. He’d spent the rest of his life in an Outworld asylum, a babbling wreck to the end of his days.
“That’s not going to be you,” Jeremiah said aloud, trying to reassure himself. “You can handle this—pull yourself together!” Of course, some would say that his habit of talking to himself was a sign that he was already starting to go. But if it kept him from falling into the abyss, so be it.
He rose to his feet and stretched, working out the kinks in his body from spending the night in the pilot’s chair. It wasn’t a very comfortable place for sleeping, but at least it was better than the hard metal floor. He groaned and yawned again, stepping into the cabin.
Noemi was still asleep on the cot. She slept on her back, with her hands curled up in cute little fists above her head. She’d wrapped the blanket around herself, but it had fallen halfway off during the sleep cycle.
Jeremiah tensed, and his cheeks burned as he remembered walking in on her just a few hours before. Moving carefully so as not to disturb her, he pulled up the blanket so that it covered her again. She moaned and turned her head a little, but soon fell back asleep.
I could have had sex with her, Jeremiah realized. I could go for it right now, and she’d probably let me. Chills shot down his spine, and his heart raced at the thought.
Some starfarers had girls waiting for them at every port, and spent their sleeping cycles doing anything but. In the past three years, however, Jeremiah had never worked up the nerve to take a girl. It wasn’t for lack of desire—God knew he dreamed of it in the long lonely shifts between stars—but he could never quite shake the feeling that he didn’t deserve it.
With a soft moan, Noemi began to stir. His blood turned to ice, but he stood rooted to the spot, unable to leave. She yawned and stretched a little, arcing her back. Then, she opened her eyes and saw him.
“Whoa,” he said, raising his palms as she started. For a moment, he expected her to cry out, but she recovered surprisingly fast. Holding the blanket to her chest with one hand, she pushed herself up with her other and slipped her legs over the edge of the cot. For a long, awkward moment they just stared at each other, both unsure what to do next.
“I should go wash up,” Jeremiah said aloud, mostly just to fill the silence. “Here, let me—”
Noemi reached out and took his hand, stopping him. She smiled, only a hint of apprehension left over from the previous day. As she pulled him gently towards her, his body stiffened and his heart hammered in his chest.
“No,” he said, pulling back. He thought back on the last time he’d held her hand, when her father had presumably married them. If he slept with her now, it would be the consummation of that marriage, at least in her eyes. She would think he was making a commitment to her, which would make it that much harder when he dropped her off at Alpha Oriana.
As he hesitated, Noemi’s smile slowly fell, and she gave him a look as if to ask why he was waiting. She tugged on his hand again, but Jeremiah freed himself and took a step back, cheeks burning.
“Look,” he said, “if we’re going to do this, you’ve to to understand that we aren’t married.” She looked puzzled, so he made the sign of the cross and clasped his hands together.
“Married.”
Her eyes lit up and she nodded vigorously, but Jeremiah shook his head and wagged his finger. “No,” he said, “not married. Understand?”
Noemi froze, and her smile quickly evaporated. She looked up at him with a deeply wounded expression on her face, as if he’d told her that her mother had just died.
“Look,” said Jeremiah, “if you want to have sex, that’s great, I’m all for it—just don’t get the wrong idea, okay? We’re not married—I never promised you anything. Not married. Understand?”
She stared blankly at him, holding the thin blanket to her chest while her bare legs dangled over the edge of the cot. He clenched his fists and groaned.
“Forget about it,” he said, cheeks burning as he hurried off to the bathroom. If she was going to take it as a sign of commitment, he wasn’t going to mislead her.
After all, even one lie was far too many.
* * * * *
After a long, cold shower, Jeremiah dressed and stepped back out into the cabin. To his relief, Noemi was fully clothed, wearing the gray utility jumpsuit he’d given her the day before. As the bathroom door hissed shut, she greeted him with a nervous smile.
“Morning,” he said. “Sleep well?” From the way her expression failed to change, it was clear that she didn’t understand him at all.
He turned to the food synthesizer and keyed it to make breakfast. Only then did he realize that she’d made the bed, with the sheets tucked and the blanket neatly folded. The wall hummed slightly, and he noticed that the universal washer was running, with her clothes from the day before inside.
“Smart girl,” he muttered.
They ate on the floor again, facing each other with their legs neatly crossed. Noemi was careful not to meet his gaze, but when he handed her a bowl of the colorless synthmeal, their hands touched for a moment and he realized she was watching him intently. He looked up at her, but she glanced quickly away. An awkward tension arose between them, so thick that he could almost taste it.
It’s about last night, he realized as she started to eat. She doesn’t know what to expect anymore, and she’s afraid that if I reject her, she’ll have nowhere to go.
“It’s okay,” he said aloud, even though he knew she wouldn’t understand him. “I’ll give you safe passage; it’s not like, uh …”
The way she stared at him, hanging onto his every word as if her very fate hung in the balance—why should so much depend on him? Dammit, he’d never asked for this!
“Look,” he said, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re just a passenger on my ship. I didn’t ask to marry you, and I certainly didn’t agree to it. I’ll take you as far as Alpha Oriana, but after that, you’re on your own.”
For several moments, she stared uncomprehending at him. The pitiable look on her face made him clench his fists; he stood up and walked into the cockpit just to get away from her.
A blinking red light on the main panel caught his eye. With a start, he remembered the jump drive; it had recharged in the night cycle, and was now fully primed with the target coordinates already set.
He took his seat and brought up the main display. A cursory check showed that everything was operating exactly as it should. Wasting no time, he brought up the target coordinates and warmed up the drive, flipping the switch the moment it was fully primed.
Only then did he remember it wasn’t a good idea to make a jump right after eating.
For himself, it wasn’t too bad. His stomach sank a little, giving him a brief moment of nausea, but it passed soon after returning to real-space.
Noemi, however, took it much harder. A loud thump made him glance over his shoulder; she’d collapsed on the fl
oor, covering her mouth with her hands. Her skin was pale, and her stomach convulsed as if she were about to throw up.
“Whoa,” said Jeremiah, rising from the chair. “Are you—”
Without warning, she dashed over to the bathroom. It was probably just as well, because the door no sooner shut than the sound of coughing and retching met his ears.
“Sorry,” Jeremiah muttered, mentally kicking himself. He’d been out so long the jumps came as second nature, but she probably required some acclimation. Maybe they should cut down to shorter jumps, then. It would make the voyage a lot more tedious, but at least it would keep him busy.
“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning against the bathroom door. The sound of moaning met his ear, but it didn’t open, so he assumed she didn’t need his help. Besides, it was better to give her her privacy—God knew they didn’t have much to go around.
As he turned back to the cabin, his gaze fell on the dream monitor, dangling from its compartment in the ceiling. With Noemi busy and the jump out of the way, there wasn’t much else to do except plug into the virtual world for a few minutes. After all the stress of the past few hours, perhaps it would be good for him. Taking care not to upset the carefully made bed, he raised the upper half of the cot and lay back on it, pulling the dream monitor to his head. It took only a moment to fit the main pin into the neural socket at the base of his neck—
—and then he was on some sort of space station, walking along a wide, empty corridor.
He stopped and looked around. The clear glass ceiling revealed a black, starless sky, washed out by proximity to the system sun. The station circled around far above him, so that if he looked extra hard, he could see another corridor with skylights much the same, except upside down. The walls and ceiling were slightly off-white, yellowing with age, while grooves had been worn in the floor tiles from decades of foot traffic. The giant blue orb of Delta Oriana III, combined with the images on the door lintels and the faint smell of smoke, told him he was in a simulation of Megiddo Station.
