A Million Suns

47 ELDER

SHE LOOKS SO SAD AND ALONE, SO ABANDONED — AND I’M the one who abandoned her, even though I’m still sitting by the edge of the pond beside her. I shouldn’t have kissed her. It’s like tasting dessert before supper is served; it’s only made me want more. But I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what it is about Amy. I couldn’t help it.

But I should have. With everything that’s happening now, the last thing I should be trying to do is kiss Amy. I need to focus on the planet — and she needs to figure out what she wants. I can see the questions in her eyes, the way she won’t quite name what’s between us.

Now she sits quietly, not meeting my eyes, her cheeks almost as pink as her lips.

Her lips.

No.

I look away from her. And her lips.

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

A beastly roar rises up in me, and I force myself to swallow it down. What happened? I can’t control myself around her, that’s what happened. I want her so much that it overrides everything else, every other thought in my head, every instinct, every restraint. My want is consuming — and I’m afraid it won’t just consume me, but her too.

“With the Shippers, I mean,” she adds when I don’t answer her. “When you told them about the planet.”

I frown. It’s obvious Amy would rather ignore everything that just happened — or I’ve scared her off between my frustration and impatience. Frex. I run my fingers through my hair, tugging at the strands, hard, trying to pull some coherent thoughts up through the roots.

“They’re running scans,” I say. “If everything indicates that Centauri-Earth is habitable, then we might begin planet-landing in a matter of days.”

Amy narrows her eyes. “Might?” she asks.

If she could, she’d land this ship right now. “Amy,” I say, warning already creeping into my voice, “we can’t just land the ship on Centauri-Earth. We have to make sure it’s safe.”

“Who cares if it’s safe?” she says, throwing up her hands.

“I care. And I care about everyone else on this ship.”

“It’s just going to take a couple of days, right?” she asks.

Maybe. If we’re lucky. “Of course,” I say.

“Okay, then,” Amy breathes. “I’ve been worried about… The sooner we land, the better.”

“It’s not all bad here,” I think, put off by the disgust in her voice.

Amy looks at me incredulously. “People are angry. Marae was murdered.”

“Without Phydus,” I say, “the people — they’re thinking… they’re doing…”

“Shut up.” There’s cold anger in Amy’s voice. “Some people are good. Some people are bad. Phydus doesn’t fix anything. It just hides the good and bad under a haze of nothing.”

“But—” I start, but I keep it to myself. But maybe it really is worth hiding the good if it distorts the bad, too.

Marae would have thought so.

“The water’s very still,” Amy says.

I don’t try to contain the disbelief on my face. Frex, really? We’ve gotten to the point where I can kiss her breathless, then we can talk about murder, and all she can comment on is the frexing pond?

“Aren’t there any fish?” she asks.

Fish. Frexing fish. We’re not painting charts on walls or setting up guards or trying to track down a murderer. I guess when it’s my people being killed, not hers, she doesn’t care so much.

“No fish,” I growl, standing up. “Not anymore.”

Amy looks up at me, questions in her eyes. “You’re really upset.”

“Frex, Amy, of course I am!” I shout. She flinches from my voice. “I’m sorry.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry. It’s just — yes. I’m upset.”

She reaches for my hand and opens her mouth to speak, but before I can find out whatever it was she wanted to say, a voice interrupts us.