Survey Ship

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to make love in free-fall,” Fontana laughed, turning down the DeMag units almost to zero; the reflex action of the twist sent her into a gentle somersault, and when Tea-gue pulled her toward the bunk, he overreacted and sent them crashing toward the opposite wall where they came to rest against the safety net guarding the door of the shower cubicle and its full gravity.

“What is that? Irresistible passion?” Fontana laughed, and the very reflex of the laughter sent them bouncing away from the bunk. Before long they were laughing so hard that Teague lay back, helpless, unable to do anything at all with her.

“So much for all the jokes about the delights of making love in free-fall,” Teague said, making swimming motions in the air toward the stud on the DeMag unit.

“I still want to try it,” Fontana murmured, but Teague said, laughing, “I like my women to stay in one place— not go bouncing across the room when I do this—” he demonstrated.

“You’ve given me a good reason,” Fontana whispered, and put up her face to him.

Moira slept at his side, but Ravi lay awake staring at the ceiling of the bunk, his mind on the huge window from the Bridge, opening on the vastness of the stars.

The face of the Night, the face of god, perhaps, the very Unknown itself, envisioned by the religious philosophers of my ancestors.

It’s too much, how can a human mind envision it?

And, irrationally, he thought; I envy Ching. She manages to face solitude without refuges like this. He looked, tenderly and yet with great detachment, at Moira, clipped under the safety net, her hair floating loosely around her as she slept. He knew, if Moira did not, that his immediate response to her had been a refuge, an escape from a vastness too great to imagine.

And yet somehow I must manage to face it. I have wondered about the spiritual truths of the universe. When I can look into that enormity which represents the Face of God, then perhaps I shall be able to contemplate the nature of Truth, the nature of God, the nature of the Universe.

Peake had dozed only briefly, and returned to the main cabin, sorting music, tuning his violin. He would have to face it sooner or later, the thought of playing without Jimson at the piano. Fontana and Teague came in together, then Ching, in fresh disposable uniforms — Peake had not thought of that, and felt a little abashed at his own rumpled one. Perhaps they should make a habit of turning up in clean fresh clothing for their daily music session. It would give structure to the rhythms of the day. There would be so little to do, strictly speaking, that rigid structure might defend them against any chance of boredom and apathy setting in. Moira came in, getting out her cello and laying it against her knee.

“Give me an A, Peake,” she said lazily, and he sounded it.

Ching tuned her viola. Teague began putting his clarinet together.

“I’m better with a flute,” he warned. “I haven’t worked with a clarinet for some time.”

“Is there any reason you can’t play a clarinet part on a flute?” Fontana wanted to know.

“Only the tone color,” Teague said dryly, “and the range. Come to think of it, I do have an alto recorder, which has about the same range as the clarinet.” He went to the shelf where the various woodwinds were stacked. Ravi came in, asking, “Do you want me to play second violin in this one?”

Peake said, “You can play first if you want to,” but Ravi shook his head. “The first violin part is too hard for me. I’m not that good.”

When they began to play, Peake realized that Ravi was not being modest, but telling the precise truth. He was not much more than competent, as they all were competent, having studied violin since kindergarten. Nevertheless, he was competent. Ching’s playing was beautifully nuanced, unemotional — but then, baroque music was not intended to be emotional; Peake suspended judgment until he had heard her playing some romantic music. He wondered if, being a computer expert, she would play Mahler or Schonberg or Mendelssohn in that same technically-perfect, unemotional way.

Moira was almost a virtuoso; he quickly discovered that she was a match for him. Perhaps they could play some violin-and-cello duets — and he flinched away from the thought. Was he so quickly disloyal to Jimson? When they finished the quintet, and Teague put away his clarinet — he had played only the first movement with the recorder and switched to the clarinet, saying it was a more flexible instrument — Ching, Moira, and Teague, with Ravi playing his drums, began improvising on a jazz theme, and Peake went to sit and listen, saying that the audience was also a valid part of a musical experience,

He listened to Ravi, who was as much a virtuoso on drums as he had been undistinguished on the violin.

Jimson had loved to improvise, to take off on a theme and carry it to new heights where Peake could not follow him….

To Fontana it was obvious what Peake was thinking; he had agreed not to speak of those left behind, but could anything keep them from brooding? She came over and sat down on the arm of his chair.

“Still brooding over Jimson, Peake?”

“I suppose it doesn’t make sense,” he said, defensively.

“Considering that, within five years, Jimson will probably be governing a Space Station, and the probability of our surviving five years hasn’t even been computed yet, I wouldn’t think it made much sense to worry about Jimson,” she agreed.

“It’s just — I never even thought about what would happen if we didn’t both make it. I’m having to — to rearrange all my mental furniture.” He added, defensively, “You can’t expect me to — to change everything in my head overnight, just like that, just cut him right out of my life as if he’d never even lived!”

“Well,” Fontana said, “I know the books say it’s inevitable that you’ll mourn over the death of a relationship. I guess we’ve simply got to let you mourn. But I suspect that’s why they don’t encourage us to have relationships like that.”

Peake wondered how she had managed to say that without even a hint, in her voice, of you should have known better, but somehow she managed it, and it encouraged him to ask:

“Fontana, was it wrong of us to want to be together?”

“Wrong? How can I say? Unwise, certainly. They’d have separated you, anyway, after graduation. There was never even a fighting chance you could have made it together on to a Ship. A Ship’s company can be as few as four people; it would put an unholy strain on the other two, if the first two were a committed couple. There has to be room for outside commitment — sharing, affection, caring, with everybody on the crew,”

“Then why did they take me?” Peake flared, “since, unwise or not, I was committed?”

And suddenly Peake faced what he really felt. It was not parting from Jimson which had hurt too much. That parting had been inevitable, he had already known that, he had begun to suspect that the parting was already overdue.

“What hurts, is guilt,” he mumbled, “guilt that I was the one to go and he was the one to stay.”

And the memory still hurt, that moment when Jimson had flung it at him, Do you think they’re going to take a pair of queers? Against that memory he said, still defensive, “Then why in hell would they take me? I’m not going to fit in much better than one half of a — of any committed couple. It’s not as if I’d been the only homosexual in the Academy. There was Fly. And Duffy. And Janet.”

Fontana shrugged. “What can I tell you? I don’t think it made any difference, any more than I think they picked Moira because they needed a cello for the string quartet. Homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle option — there are years when it’s been a plus quality, when there was an all-male crew…. Survey Ship number seventy-two was all-male, and I think seventy-nine was all-female. There were a couple of other all-male crews, too. One year — I read this in psychology — there was a crew where the top seven just happened to be males, and they sent an all-male crew. Compulsive heterosexuality would have been pointless on a crew like that. No, with Jimson it was something else. He was — he was so damned defensive about it. Do you remember Duffy? He made a point of bragging that he’d never had a woman and never would. There are professions where that lifestyle could be an asset. But not on this particular Ship.”

“Then why did they take me?” Peake wondered, but Fontana had no answer. She said, “I don’t know, Peake. Maybe they supposed you were flexible enough to adapt, to — to live and let live. Or thought, maybe that you were strong enough to live that way. I just don’t know. But whatever they thought, they knew Jimson couldn’t — and since even I knew that, I guess it’s probably the best they could do.”

Slowly, painfully, Peake nodded. In his deepest despair, it would never have occurred to him to call himself — far less someone he loved — queer. He had loved Jimson without reserve, had not hesitated to define himself, at least in relationship to Jimson, as homosexual. But he had never thought that he would be thus defining himself for all time, and certainly he had never guessed at the reservoir of self-hate that had led Jimson to fling that insult at him — or at their love. And self-hate, he realized, would be about the most dangerous trait possible aboard a Survey Ship.

“I guess I really knew that all along. Thanks, Fontana.”

She shrugged that off. “I guess I’m crew shrink, at least by default, and I figured it might be healthier to talk about it now than waiting six months and digging it out like a festering sore.” She stood up. “Listen, you sing bass, don’t you?”

“I can, provided it doesn’t go too far below a low G — I never flattered myself I could sing Boris Godunov,” he said amiably, relieved at the change of subject. “Why?”

“There’s a mass in five voices by Byrd that I’d like to try. Ravi has a good tenor, and Ching’s voice is beautiful, when she’ll be bothered to sing at all. And I’d like to establish the principle of equal time for vocalists around here. Listen,” she said, raising her voice to include them all, “tomorrow, when we get together, can we try the Byrd Mass in Five Voices?”

“Fine,” Teague said. “The music’s in the computer, isn’t it?”

“I’ll play continue,” Moira said, “I don’t sing. I’ll play cello continue, or piano — I mean keyboard — or turn the music, or sit and be an appreciative audience. But I don’t sing.”

“Why not?” Ravi demanded.

“Because female tenors, in general, sound considerably less attractive than male sopranos — which probably isn’t fair, but happens to be a cultural fact. And I have a range of half an octave, all in the tenor register,” Moira said, loosening the strings of her bow, and storing it in the case. She slid it over toward the wall, then turned and asked, “I suppose we’re going to keep full gravity in here?”

“I don’t see any objection,” Teague said, “but there are going to be parts of the ship where we can’t; I think we all ought to get into the habit of securing everything as if we were going to be in free-fall. Then we’ll never have to stop and ask ourselves whether we have to.”

“I don’t think that makes much sense,” Ching objected, but she stowed her viola in the racks and fastened the net over it. Fontana, helping Moira with hers, scoffed, “I don’t believe a word of all that stuff about your voice, Moira. How did you manage to get through sight-singing class when we were all twelve years old?”

“Faked it,” Moira said curtly, “sang falsetto.”

Ravi leaned over her, lightly touching her hair. He said softly, “With a male soprano, one might be in — in some legitimate doubt about his fundamental nature, or the validity of his — shall we say, vital equipment? It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that a low voice in a woman should be the complete embodiment of sensuality — like yours.”

“That’s a common mistake,” said Fontana, and for a moment Ravi was irritated — his words had been addressed to Moira, not a part of the common discussion. Then long training and natural good nature triumphed, and he said, smiling, “I’m probably sensitive on the subject; my voice changed late and as a tenor my virility was in doubt until I was fifteen or so — I don’t mean from the medics, only from the others in the class.”

Moira said, with a chuckle which reached only his ears, “You certainly have made up for lost time, haven’t you, darling?”

Peake, who had heard Ravi’s words but not Moira’s, said, carefully securing a net around his violin, “There was a countertenor who gave a concert in Sydney; Jim-son and I had permission to fly in and hear him; it was the same week Zora left us. He had a voice which was pure soprano — higher than yours, Fontana. And he was a big, blonde, hairy-chested man, and we heard that he was married with five children or so — came from one of the thinly populated enclaves. Iceland, somewhere like that.” After he had spoken, he realized that for the first time he could remember, he had spoken Jimson’s name without even a momentary twinge of that despairing guilt.

Had Fontana lanced that wound? Or was there some mystical awareness of the space, the enormous and widening distance between them, which made it, suddenly, seem as if Jimson were someone he had known a long time ago…? Peake was not sure; he felt a twinge of regret at his own fickleness, but he recognized that as mere self-pity and grinned.

He said, “Music is hungry work. Seems to me it’s dinner-time again, and then I’m going up to the Bridge to check instruments.”

It occurred to Fontana that if this kind of musical session were scheduled regularly after a sleep period, it would painlessly evolve into the kind of daily shared meal that had been suggested; but she didn’t say so, taking her small tray of food from the console and going to sit beside Teague. Ravi had settled down beside Moira, and Fontana, studying the pattern they made — the two couples, the two outsiders, Peake at one end, Ching beside the food console, studying the controls absent-mindedly as she ate — found herself wondering. There was no reason she and Teague, Ravi and Moira, should not have paired off that way, as they had done during the sleep period just past. But it did accentuate the separateness of the others. Like many women who come into contact with homosexuals, she wondered if it was amenable to change, if she would be the one who might possibly inspire him to change. Peake was attractive, certainly, with that graceful and rather endearing awkwardness, his surgeon’s hands, solid with muscle and as steady on the violin as they would have been with a scalpel. Of course, Fontana thought, the ideal solution would be if he would pair off with Ching. But somehow she couldn’t see it happening. Ching was too defensively self-sufficient. Any attempt to pair her off with Peake, simply because they were the two unattached crew-members, would certainly touch off that defensiveness, and make things worse.

Well, whatever their social patterns might be now, Fontana thought, they were sure to change within a few months or years; the six of them were going to be isolated for — at least — eight years, and there would be plenty of room for change, growth, experiment. She was fond of Teague, she had enjoyed giving him pleasure, but if he eventually moved on to one of the other women, she wouldn’t object too much. Somehow she didn’t think it very likely they would settle down as three monogamous couples, and it probably wouldn’t be healthy if they did. The intensive study of small-group social and sexual patterns which had been part of her psychological training told her that what they felt for one another now was, through necessity, a transitory thing and subject to change and flow; but did the others see it that way?

Teague put his plate into the recycling machinery. He said, “Routine check, life support; I’ll probably be doing it as a pure formality for years — I hope I will — but I’m going to check it every twelve hours, anyhow.” He headed for the sphincter lock which led into the free-fall corridor between the main cabin and the module containing Life-Support controls. Ching and Moira followed and Teague noticed Ching inching along the crawl-bar, clinging tightly. His own impulse was to let go, push off, and go soaring the length of the corridor; Moira had already done so, but Teague pushed up toward the bar, behind Ching.

“Are you afraid of free-fall, Ching?”

Her head made a tight movement that he knew would have been a nod, except that her neck was locked tightly against the failure of familiar gravity. She said in a small voice, “Yes, I am. I think I might be able to get used to it, except that we keep having to go back inside gravity…. I never seem to settle down into one or the other.”

“But you’re going to have to learn to handle it,” he urged gently. “Come on, trust me, I won’t let you get hurt. Here—” he pried her hands softly from the rail, holding them in his own, and peripherally he noticed how very nicely shaped they were, and how soft and fine to touch. His arms were round her from behind, her slender body held against him. He said, “Relax, don’t fight it,“ and, holding her, pushed off against the rail, not too hard, floating gently down the corridor. He curled round her, protectively; she made a soft moan of protest, and he felt her tauten into a fetal circle of panic, but they came softly to rest at the other end. She drew a sharp, shaking breath, and he said softly, ”See? That didn’t hurt you, did it? You could even get to like it, I should imagine — it’s fun.“ He nuzzled his cheek against hers from behind, and said, ”It’s like lovemak-ing — the secret is to relax completely and let yourself fly!”

The moment he had said it, he knew it was a mistake; he had not intended a genuinely sexual allusion or gesture, but, feeling Ching go tense in his arms, he knew he had lost her. She said formally, “I suppose I will get used to it sooner or later. Thank you, Teague.” The formal thanks somehow were worse than a protest, and when she freed herself from his arms, he knew she had never really been there at all. She slid through the sphincter, clinging tight against the new orientation of “up” and “down,” and lowered herself carefully to the floor. “I’m going through to the Bridge and check the computer,” she said, and wriggled through the sphincter at the far end, leaving Teague staring at his Life-Support consoles, frowning.

Well, I made a damn fool of myself, I might as well have saved myself the trouble.

But he put it aside to check the controls meticulously, then began thinking, again, about the pattern for his string quartet. He could compose a part of it on the computer, which would make an instant playback and printout of what he had written; but he supposed he would do a part of it, at least, the old-fashioned way, with music paper and stylus. Maybe he would do it all that way, not using the computer at all. Why not? He had plenty of time.