The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Ranger (in transit, Demarchy to Discus) + 2.40 megaseconds

Betha sat alone at the control panel in the soothing semidarkness, gazing at the endless bright stream of Demarchy television traffic, soundless by her own choice, that still trailed after them, two hundred million kilometers out. Caught in a spell of hypnotic revulsion, she marveled at the perpetual motion of the Demarchy media machine, wondered how any citizen—demarch?—ever made a sane decision under the constant dinning of a hundred different distortions of the truth. And remembering the mediamen on the field at Mecca, she should have known enough to believe Wadie Abdhiamal and let him speak…

She cut off the broadcasts abruptly and put the crescent of Discus on the screen. She saw the Ranger in her mind, an infinitesimal mote, alone in the five hundred million kilometers of barren darkness, tracing back along Discus’s path around the sun from the isolate swarm of rocks that was the Demarchy. She remembered then that they were not entirely alone. Expanding her mind’s vision, she saw the Demarchy’s grotesque, ponderous freighters loaded with ores or volatiles, crawling across the desolation; ships that took a hundred days to cross what the Ranger crossed in six. It was a barely bridgeable gap, now; and the survival of the Demarchy, and the Rings, depended on it. And someday there would be no ships…

But now, tracing the violet mist of the Ranger’s exhaust, she saw what might be three fusion craft, barely registering on the ship’s most sensitive instruments.

She cursed the Demarchy, the obsessive veneer of sophistication, the artificial gaiety, the pointless waste of their media broadcasts. Fools, reveling in their fanatical independence when they should all be working together; living on self-serving self-sufficiency, with no stable government to control them, no honest bonds of kinship, but only the equal selfishness of every other citizen… And their women; useless, frivolous, gaudy, the ultimate waste in a society that desperately needed every resource, including its human resources.

Fragments of conversation drew together in her mind, and she remembered suddenly what Clewell had said about crippled Bird Alyn. Perhaps in a sense they were a resource, sound and fertile women who had to be protected, in a society where radiation levels were always abnormally high; women who had let the protection grow into a way of life as artificial as everything else in their world… Perhaps the danger of genetic damage lay at the root of all the incomprehensible involutions of their sexual mores. Desperate people did desperate things; even the people of Morningside, in the beginning…

She turned slightly in her seat, to glance at Shadow Jack lying asleep on the floor, lost in a peaceful dream, a book of Morningside landscapes open beside him. She wondered, if those were desperate measures for the Demarchy, what must be true for Lansing. Her hand met on the panel, caressing her rings, as Wadie Abdhiamal entered the room.

“Captain.” He made the requisite bow. She nodded in return, watching him cross the room: the proper demarch, compulsively polite, compulsively immaculate. And as awkward as a child taking his first steps, moving in one gravity. His face looked haggard, showing the effects of stress and fluid loss. She remembered seeing him use his drinking water to wash his face on the Lansing 04, thinking that no one noticed… She brushed absently at her own hair. “Have you found everything you’ve needed, Abdhiamal?

Have you eaten?” He had not joined the rest of them when they ate together in the dining hall.

He sat down. “Yes… somethin’. I don’t know what.” He looked vaguely ill, remembering. “I’m afraid I don’t get along well with meat.”

“How—are you feeling?”

“Homesick.” He laughed, self-deprecatingly, as if it were a lie. He gazed at the empty screen. Rusty materialized on his knee, settled into his lap, tail muffling her nose. He stroked her back with a dark, meticulous hand; Betha noticed the massive silver ring on his thumb, inlaid with rubies.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled her pipe out of the hip pocket of her jeans, quieting her hands with its carven familiarity.

“Don’t be.” He shifted and Rusty muttered querulously, tail flicking. “Because you were right, Captain; and I made the right choice in comin’ with you. The Demarchy can’t be allowed to take your ship; nobody in Heaven Belt can… I’m not saying that because of what happened to me—” Something in his voice told her that was not entirely true. “I’ve known all along, from the first time I heard about this ship, that it would make too many people want to play God.” He looked up. “Even if it’s not my right, I’d still turn your ship over to the Demarchy if I had the chance— if I thought it’d save them. But it wouldn’t. The government is too weak, they’d never be able to keep an equilibrium now.” His fingers dug into the soft arms of the chair; his face was expressionless. “So I’ll tell you this. I’ll help you get out of here, however I can. Anythin’ I can do, anythin’ you want to know. As my final service to the Demarchy: to buy them a little more time and save them from themselves.” His eyes went to Discus on the screen. “If I’ve got to be a traitor, I’ll be a good one. I take pride in my work.”

She broke away from tracing his every movement, her face hot. “If you really mean that, Abdhiamal… I want your help, whatever your personal motives. I need to know anything you can tell me about the Ringers—especially I need the number and the locations of their distilleries. No matter how primitive they are, it’s going to take careful planning to steal anything from them with an unarmed starship… And as you say, I haven’t done very well so far at getting what I want. Strategy was always Eric’s—was never my strong point.”

“On the contrary. You outnegotiated us all, at Mecca.” Irony acknowledged her with a smile. “I expect I can give you reasonably accurate coordinates; I spent a lot of time in the Rings about two hundred and fifty megasecs ago, when we helped ’em enlarge their main distillery. As a matter of fact, I—” He broke off abruptly. “Tell me something about Morningside, Captain. Tell me about the way your people get things done. You don’t seem to approve of our way.”

She studied the words, trying to find the reason behind his change of subject; certain only that he didn’t really want an, answer but simply a distraction. And so do I. “No, I can’t say that I do approve, Abdhiamal. But that’s the Demarchy’s business, except when it gets in my way… I guess that you could say we emphasize our kinship—as fellow human beings, but especially as blood relatives. You already know about our multiple-marriage family unit.” She glanced up, away; his eyes made no comment, but she sensed his uneasiness. “Above it is our ‘clan’—not in the Old World technical sense, except that it tells you who you can’t marry—your particular parent-family, your sibs, your own children. All your relations stretch out beyond it… almost to infinity, sometimes. We all try to take care of our own; everybody on Morningside has relations somewhere… Except that a person who isn’t willing to share the work finds that even his own relations aren’t glad to share the rewards forever.

“The only formalized social structure above the clan level is what we call a ‘moiety’…” She lost the sound of her own voice, and even the aching awareness of Abdhiamal’s presence, in vivid memories that filled the spaces between her words with sudden yearning. Borealis moiety: an arbitrary economic unit for the distribution of goods and services. Borealis moiety: her home, her job, her family, her world… a laughing child—her daughter, or herself—falling back to make angel imprints in a bank of snow…

“Our industries are independently run, as yours are—but I suppose you’d call them ‘monopolistic.’ They cooperate, not for profits, but because they have to, or they’d fail. It works because we never have enough of anything, especially people. My parent family and a lot of my close relatives run a tree farm in the Borealis moiety… my wife Claire worked there too. Some families specialize in a trade, but Clewell and I and our spouses were a little of everything…” She remembered day’s end in the endless twilight, the family sitting down together at the long dark wood table, while their children served them dinner. The soothing warmth of the fire, the sunset that never faded from the skylight of a semi-subterranean house. The small talk of the day’s small triumphs, the comfortable fatigue… the welcome homecoming of a spouse whose job had kept him or her away for days or sometimes weeks. Eric, returning from the arbitration of a long-drawn dispute—

She saw Wadie Abdhiamal, sitting back in his chair in the control room of the Ranger. A negotiator… I settle disputes, work out trade agreements… Abdhiamal looked back at her with a faintly puzzled expression. She shook her head. Stop it. Stop being a fool! “I… I almost forgot—we have a High Council, too. It’s a kind of parliament, made up of ombudsmen from the various moieties, elected to terms of service. It deals with what little interplanetary trade we manage and the emergency shipments. It originated the proposal for our trip to Heaven. It doesn’t have much to do with our daily lives—”

“Then in a way you are like us,” Abdhiamal said, “without a strong centralized government, with emphasis on independence—”

“No.” She shook her head again, denying more than the words. “We’re like a family. We get things done through cooperation, not competition, the way the Demarchy does. Your system is a paradox: the individual has absolute control, and yet no control at all, if they don’t fit in with the majority. We cooperate and compromise because we know we all need each other just to survive… And considering the position the Demarchy is in right now, I’d say it can hardly afford to go on putting self-interest above everything else, either.”

Abdhiamal blinked, as if her words had struck him in the face. But he only shrugged. “Needless to say, we don’t see ourselves in quite that light. I suppose your idea of cooperation is closer to the Ringers’ Grand Harmony.” There was no sarcasm in it. “They emphasize cooperation above all too, because they have to; they weren’t as fortunate as the Demarchy, after the war. But they have a socialist state and a strong navy; they get cooperation at the point of a gun. And that’s no cooperation at all, really; that’s why they’re anathema, as far as the Demarchy’s concerned. They don’t trust individual human nature, even it if is backed up by family ties.”

Betha struggled against a sudden irrational resentment. “It’s worked well enough so far. But then we don’t kill any stranger who comes to us in need, either.”

“Maybe you just never had a good enough reason, Captain.”

She stiffened. Apology showed instantly on his face and behind it, she saw a reflection of her own disorientation, the frustration of a stranger trapped in an alien universe. He was a man with no family… and now no friends, no world, no future. And she suspected that he was not a man who was used to making mistakes—or used to sharing a burden, or sharing a life… not Eric.

“I’m sorry, Captain. Please accept my apologies.” Abdhiamal hesitated. “And—let me apologize for my tactlessness after the general meeting, as well.”

“I understand.” She saw annoyance begin behind his eyes; stood up, not seeing it change into a kind of need. “If you’ll excuse me…” She moved away, reaching for an excuse, an escape. “I—I have to see Clewell, down in the shop.”

“You mind if I go with you?” His voice surprised her.

She hesitated, halfway across the room. “Well, I… no, why should I?”

He rose, setting Rusty down. The cat leaped away, rumpled, moved across the room to where Shadow Jack still lay asleep, his face buried now in the pillow. Rusty settled on the softness beside his head, one speckled paw stretched protectively over his curled fingers.

“Poor Rusty.” Betha glanced down. “She’s been so lonely since… She was used to a lot of attention.”

“She would have had all she wanted at Mecca.”

“She would have been worshipped. It isn’t the same.”

She went down one level on the spiraling stairway, waited for him on the landing. He took each step with dignified deliberateness, his knees nearly buckling and his hand on the railing in a death grip. He stopped with studied nonchalance beside her, peering down over the polished wood banister; the well dropped four more stories, piercing the hollow needle of the ship’s hull. The concentric circles of a service hatch lay pooled at the bottom.

“It’s good exercise.” Betha stood against the wall, avoiding the sight of the drop.

He drew back with an innocuous smile. The doorway in the wall behind him was sealed shut, the red light flashing, throwing their shadows out into the pit. “What’s behind this?” His hand brushed the door’s icy surface.

“That was the dayroom. That’s where everyone died when we took the damage to our hull. It’s not pressurized; please don’t touch anything.” She turned away from him, looking down at her hands. She went on down the stairs, leaving him behind.

She reached the machine shop on the fourth level, heard the rasp of a handsaw. “Pappy!” She shouted, heard the echoes rattle around the hollow torus of the shop.

“Here, Betha!”

She traced the answering echoes, began to walk, the gum soles of her shoes squeaking faintly on the wood. The irregular clack of Abdhiamal’s polished boots closed with her; she didn’t look at him.

“Jesus, Pappy, why in the world don’t you use the cutters to do that?”

Clewell looked up as they approached, on up at the nest of lasers above the work table. “Because it’s a hobby.”

“Which means you stand there for hours, breaking your back to do something you could punch in and get done in a minute.”

“The impatience of youth.” He leaned on the saw and the end split off the wooden block and dropped.

“Finished.” His hand rose to his chest; seeing her watching, he lifted it further to rub his neck.

“Smartass.” She looked pained, hands on hips. “I— uh, I thought you were going to check over my estimates on patching that hole in our hull?”

“I did that too. They look good to me. But we can’t do anything about it now, while we’re at one gee.”

He looked at her oddly.

Abdhiamal stooped to pick up the splintered end of the block, rubbed its roughness, oblivious. “Say, what is this stuff? It’s fibrous.”

“It’s wood. Organic. From the trunk of trees,” Clewell said. “False-oak, to be exact. It’s hard, but it whittles well.”

“The floor, too? All plant fibers—wood?”

He nodded. “It’s easier than turning it into plastic. False-oak grows two centimeters a day out by the Boreal Sea.”

Abdhiamal’s hand caressed the etched metal of the tabletop; he glanced up at the cutters and the suspended protective shield. “Lasers?” His hand closed, empty, as he searched the room, loosened to point at the wide doors cut into the hull, opening directly onto space… at the electromagnets set into the ceiling. She saw him answering his own unspoken questions. “And what’s this equipment for, over here?”

Betha followed his hand, seeing in her mind red-haired Sean at work, dauntlessly clumsy; Nikolai patiently guiding. She looked away. “Repairing microcircuits on our electronics equipment.”

“You have your own fusion power plant… you really could reproduce any part of this ship right here, couldn’t you?”

“Theoretically. There are some I wouldn’t want to try. This was a long trip; we had to be prepared for anything.” Except this.

“God! If Park and Osuna could only see this place.”

“Who?” Clewell removed the wood from a clamp.

“They’re ‘engineers.’ ” Scorn lacerated the word.

“And what’s wrong with engineers?” Bethe folded her arms tightly against her stomach, raising her eyebrows.

“What’s right with ’em?” Abdhiamal made an odd gesture. “They’re a bunch of cannibals. They put patches on patches, tear one thing apart and use the pieces to hold three more together, and then they tear apart one of those—”

“That sounds resourceful to me.”

“But they gloat about it! They think it’s creation, but it’s destruction. If they’d only read something, if only they had any imagination at all, they’d know what real creation is. The thing we could do, once… nobody did them better. But that’s like askin’ for life in a vacuum.”

“Or maybe you’ve just got your priorities wrong, Abdhiamal! What should they do, torture themselves over the past because relics are all they have left to work with? At least they’re doing something for their people, not living at the expense of everyone else like some damned fop!” Betha jerked the piece of wood out of his hands, felt splinters cut her palm. She turned her back on his surprise, strode away through her echoing anger toward the door.

Clewell smiled at Abdhiamal’s astonished face. “Abdhiamal, you just told it all to an engineer.”

Abdhiamal winced. “I should never have gotten out of bed… two megaseconds ago.” He stared out into the vastness of the empty room. “I always seem to say the wrong thing to… your wife. I thought she was a pilot”

Clewell listened to Betha’s footsteps fade as she climbed the stairs. He wondered what fresh burden she had brought with her from Mecca—that showed in her eyes and her every action, and that she could not share even with him. “She was an engineer on Morningside, before she was chosen to captain the Ranger. Parts of this ship are her design; she worked on its drive unit.” He saw surprise again in Abdhiamal’s tawny eyes. “It’s the first starship we’ve had the resources to build since before the Low.”

“Low?”

“Famine… emergency.” Memories of past hardship and suffering rose in him too easily, drawn by the fresh memory of loss. A bruising weariness made him settle against the table’s edge. He set aside the wood; morbidly picturing his own body as ancient wood, storm-battered, decaying. He sighed. “On Morningside small changes in solar activity, perturbations in our orbit, can mean disaster. When I was a boy—in the last quarter of my tenth year—we went into a ‘hot spell’…” He saw the darkside ice sheet withdrawing, shattered bergs clogging the waters of the Boreal Sea. The sea itself had risen half a meter, flooding vital coastal industries; the crops had rotted in the fields from too much rainfall. He had watched one of his fathers kill a litter of kittens because they had nothing to feed them. And he had cried, even though his own empty stomach ached with need. Still, after all these years…“It took years for the climate to stabilize, most of my lifetime before our own lives got back to ‘normal.’ We’ve entered a High, right now, and Uhuru’s stabilized—they’re our closest neighbor; this flight was planned to send them aid, originally. That’s why we took a chance on risking the Ranger to come here to Heaven.” He felt the cutting edge of wind over snow on the darkside glacier, where the sky glittered with stars like splintered ice. “That’s why we can’t afford to stay here. Even if we go back to Morningside empty-handed, at least they’ll have the ship.”

Abdhiamal nodded. “I see. I told—your wife, Captain Torgussen, that I’m willing to do all I can to help you get back to Morningside—for Heaven’s own good. The way things seem to be goin’, your remaining here is goin’ to tear Heaven apart, not pull it back together again…” For a moment Clewell was reminded of someone, but the image slipped away.

He considered Abdhiamal’s words, surprised—more surprised to find that he believed them. Have we found an honest man?

“What’s that?” Abdhiamal said.

“Bird Alyn.” Clewell heard the faint, halting music rise from the hydroponics lab. “Betha taught her some chords on the guitar; I taught her a few more songs, while we were—waiting.” He heard Bird Alyn strike a sour note as she strummed. “I don’t know if Claire would have approved, but the plants seem to appreciate her sincerity.” He smiled. “It’s not what you sing, or how, but how the singing makes you feel.”

Abdhiamal smiled politely. His glance touched the scarred surface of the table, the floor, searched the room again; the smile grew taut. “You know, I sometimes have the strange feeling that I’m livin’ in a dream; that somehow I’ve forgotten how to wake myself up.” A trace of desperation edged into his voice.

“Bird Alyn said the same thing to me. Except that I think she meant it.”

“Comin’ from the Main Belt, she probably did… Maybe I do too.” Abdhiamal cleared his throat, and oddly embarrassed sound. “Welkin, I’d like to ask you a personal question. If you don’t mind.”

Clewell laughed. “At my age I don’t have much to hide. Go ahead.”

Abdhiamal paused. “Do you find it—hard to take orders from your wife?”

Clewell straightened away from the table. “Why should that make a difference to me?”

Abdhiamal looked at him strangely. “Frankly I never met a woman I’d trust to make my decisions for me.”

Clewell remembered what he had seen on the monitors of Demarchy society, saw why it might make a difference to Abdhiamal. “Betha Torgussen was chosen to command the Ranger because she was the best qualified, and the best at making fast decisions. We all agreed to the choice.” He tightened the jaws of a table clamp, not sure whether he was amused or annoyed. “Answer a personal question for me: What exactly do you think of my wife?” He watched an instinctive reaction rise up and die away before it reached Abdhiamal’s lips. An honest man…

“I don’t know.” Abdhiamal frowned slightly, at nothing, at himself. “But I have to admit, she’s made better decisions since I’ve known her than I have.” He laughed once, looking away. “But then she chose space, instead of…” His eyes came back to Clewell; the frown and confusion filled them again.

“Why doesn’t the Demarchy have women in space? My impression of Belter life was always that everyone did as they damn well pleased. Men and women.”

“Before the war, maybe. But now we have to protect our women.”

“From what? Living?” Clewell picked up the piece of wood, shifted it from hand to hand, annoyance overriding amusement now.

“From radiation!” It was the first time he had heard Abdhiamal raise his voice. “From genetic damage. The fission units that power our ships and factories are just too dirty. In spite of everythin’ we’ve done, the number of defective births is twenty times as high as it was before the war.”

Clewell thought of Bird Alyn. “What about men?”

“We can preserve sperm. Not ova.”

“You’ve lost more than you know because of that war.” Abdhiamal stood silently, expressionless. Clewell unstrapped the leather wristband that had been a parting gift from one of his sons, and held it out. “Do you recognize that symbol?” He pointed at the design enameled on a circle of copper, as Abdhiamal took it from his hand.

“Yin and yang?”

He nodded. “Do you know what it stands for?”

“No.”

“It stands for Man and Woman. On Morningside, that means two equal halves merging into a perfect biological whole. A spot of white in the black, a spot of black in the white… to remind us that the genes of a man go into the creation of every woman, and the genes of a woman go into the creation of every man. We’re not men and cattle, Abdhiamal, we’re men and women. Our genes match; we’re all human beings. It makes a lot of sense, when you stop to think about it.”

“Odd—” Abdhiamal smiled again, noncommittal. “Somehow I didn’t think yin and yang would have been a part of Morningside’s cultural heritage.”

“Your people and ours, all came from the same Old World in the beginning. In the beginning yin and yang didn’t mean much to us. We had a lot of symbols to separate us, then. We just need one now.”

“Yin and yang and the Viking Queen…” Abdhiamal murmured; his smile turned rueful. “And Wadie in Wonderland. Why were there more men than women in your—family?”

Because it happened to work out that way. Clewell almost answered him with the truth. He paused. “Son, if you have to ask me why a marriage needs more men than women, you’re younger than I thought you were.” He grinned. “And it’s not because I’m slowing down.”

Abdhiamal drew back, disbelief ruffling his decorum. He held out the wristband.

Clewell shook his head. “Keep it. Wear it… Think about it, when you wonder why we’re strangers to you.”

Betha reentered the control room; Shadow Jack and Rusty still lay head-to-head on the grass-green rug. She moved quietly past them, sat down at the control board, and pulled Discus into focus on the screen, a small silver crescent like a thumbnail moon. All that mattered now, and nothing else. She would get this ship home; this time they would succeed. Nothing must get in the way of her purpose, no man, living or dead, no memory…

Her torn hand burned. She pressed it down on the cold panel, leaving a spot of blood. Her mind crossed three light-years and half a lifetime to a factory yard on the Hotspot perimeter, where she had burned her hand on hot metal, inspecting the ideal made real. She had gone outside to see her first engineering design passing in sequence on the assembly line—unbearably silver in the blinding noon light, unbearably beautiful. She was in the third quarter of her twentieth year, fresh from the icy terminator. The golden rain of heat, the battering flow of parched desert air on this, the perimeter of total desolation, dazed her; pride filled her with exhilaration, and there was a certain student-worker… She waited for him to stand beside her and tell her that her design was beautiful. And then he would ask her— Rough gloves caught her arms and turned her back, “Hey, snowbird, you want to go blind?” She saw Eric van Helsing’s adored, sunburned face laugh at her through the shield of his helmet, as she caught the padding of his insulated jacket. “They always said engineers were too quirky to come in out of the sun. You’d better go back.”

“For a social scientist, you haven’t learned much about motivation, Eric van Helsing.” Angry because he had ruined everything—and because, like a fool, she had waited for him—she pulled away, almost ran back across the endless gravel yard, escaping into the cool, dazzled darkness inside the nearest building. She stood still in the corridor, fighting tears, and heard him come through the doors behind her…

Someone entered the room; Betha smelled the scent of apples. She looked for Claire’s smooth moon-round face and golden tangled curls… found Bird Alyn again, thin and brown and branch-awkward: a dryad in a pink pullover shirt and blue jeans, with flowers in her hair… Bird Alyn, not Claire, who tended hydroponics now.

Shadow Jack stirred as Bird Alyn dropped down beside him, her freckled cheeks blushing dusky-rose. Betha turned back to the screen, hiding her smile.

“…like some apples?”

“Oh… thanks, Bird Alyn.” He laughed, self-con-scious. “You always think of me.”

She murmured something, questioning.

“What’s the matter with you? No! How many times do I have to tell you that? Get out of here, leave me alone.”

Pain knotted in Betha’s stomach; she heard Bird Alyn climb to her feet and flee, stumbling on the doorsill. Betha turned in her seat to look at Shadow Jack; kneeling, he glared back at her as he pushed himself up.

“Maybe it’s none of my business, Shadow Jack, but just what in hell is the matter with you?”

“There’s nothin’ the matter with me! You think everybody has to be like you? Everybody isn’t; you’re a bunch of dirty perverts!” His voice shook. “It makes me sick.” He went out of the room. She heard him go down the steps too fast.

Betha sat very still, clutching the chair arms, wondering where she would find the strength to rise… Rusty sidled against her legs, mrring. Stiffly she reached down, drew the cat up into her lap; hanging on to meaning, to the promise of a time when Heaven would be no more than one of countless stars lost behind the twilight “Rusty, you’re all the things I count on. What would I have done without you?”

Rusty’s rough, tiny tongue kissed the palm of her hand twice in gentle affection. “Oh, Rusty,” she whispered, “you make misers of us all.” Betha got to her feet slowly and looked toward the empty doorway.

Shadows moved silently over the tiles, moist and green, like the waters of a dream sea. Bird Alyn sobbed against the cold hexagonal tiles of the seat-back, touched by the fragile fingers of a hanging fern. “… not fair, it’s not fair…” Her love was an endless torment because it fed on dreams. He would never touch her, never stroke her hair… never love her, and she would never stop wanting his love.

She heard him enter the lab, and the sob caught in her throat. She pushed herself up, eyes shut, wetness dripping off her chin.

“Don’t cry, Bird Alyn. It wastes water.” Shadow Jack stood before her, hands at his sides, watching her tears drip down.

She opened her eyes, saw him through lashes starred with teardrops, felt more tears rise defiantly. “We have… plenty of water, Shadow Jack.” Misery coiled inside her, tightening like a drawn spring. “We’re not on Lansing; everything’s different here!”

His eyes denied it; he said nothing, frowning.

She turned away on the bench. “But I’m not… I know I’m not. Why did this happen to me? Why am I so ugly, when I love you?”

He dropped down beside her on the seat, pulled her hands, one crippled and one perfect, down from her face. “Bird Alyn, you’re not! You’re not… you’re beautiful.” She saw her image in his eyes and saw that it was true. “But—you can’t love me.”

“I can’t help it… how can I help it?” She reached out, her wet fingers brushed his face. “I love you.”

He caught her roughly, arms closing over her back, and pulled her against him. She struggled in surprise, but his mouth stopped her cry, and then her struggling. “…love you, Bird Alyn… since forever… don’t you know?”

Her outflung hands rose to tighten on his shoulders, drawing him into her dreams, joy filled her like song—

“No—” He pulled back suddenly, letting her go. He leaned against the cold tiles, gulping air. “No. No. We can’t.” His hands made fists.

“But… you love me…” Bird Alyn reached out, astonished by disappointment. “Why can’t we? Please, Shadow Jack… please. I’m not afraid—”

“What do you want me to do, get you pregnant!”

She flinched, shaking her head. “It doesn’t have to happen.”

“It does; you know that.” He sagged forward. “Do you want to feel the baby growin’ in you and see it born… with no hands and no arms, or no legs, or no— To have to put it Out, like my mother did? We’re defective! And I’ll never let it happen to you because of me.”

“But it won’t. Shadow Jack, everything’s different here on the ship. They have a pill, they never have to get pregnant. They’d let us…” She moved close, stroked the midnight blackness of his hair. “Even one pill lasts for a long time.”

“And what about when they’re gone?”

“We… we’d always have… memories. We’d know, we could remember how it felt, to touch, and kiss, and h-hold each other…”

“How could I keep from touchin’ you again, and kissin’ you, and holdin’ you, if I knew?” His eyes closed over desperation. “I couldn’t. If I was never going to see you again… but I will. I’d see you every day for the rest of my life, and how could I stop it, then? How could you? It would happen.”

She shook her head, pleading, her face burning, hot hopeless tears burning her eyes.

“I can’t let go, Bird Alyn. Not now. Not ever. I couldn’t stand what it would do to me… what it would do to you. Why did we ever see this ship! Why did this happen to us? It was all right till—until—” His hands caught together; he cracked his knuckles.

Softly she put out her own hand, catching his; fingers twined brown into bronze. Because of this ship their world would live… and because of it, nothing would ever be right in their lives again. She heard water dripping, somewhere, like tears; a dead blossom fell between them, clicked on the sterile tiles.

Betha left the doorway quietly, as she had come, and silently climbed the stairs.