Return from the Stars (25 page)

"I have nothing to say, really. Except… I don't know…"

"What don't you know?"

"What is going to happen?"

I leaned over her. She looked into my eyes. Her eyelids did not flicker. Our breaths mingled.

"Why did you let me kiss you?"

"I don't know."

I touched her cheek with my lips. Her neck. I lay with my head upon her shoulder. Never before had I felt like this. I had not known that I could feel this way. I wanted to weep.

"Eri," I whispered voicelessly, mouthing the words. "Eri. Save me."

She lay motionless. I could hear, as if at a great distance, the rapid beating of her heart. I sat up.

"Could…" I began, but hadn't the courage to finish. I got up, picked up the lamp, set the desk right, and stumbled over something—the penknife. It lay on the floor. I threw it into the suitcase. I turned to her.

"I'll put out the light," I said. "OK?"

She did not answer. I touched the switch. The darkness was complete, even in the open window, no lights, not even distant lights, were visible. Nothing. Black. As black as out there.

I closed my eyes. The silence hummed.

"Eri," I whispered. She did not reply. I sensed her fear. I groped toward the bed. I listened for her breath, but the ringing silence drowned out everything, as if it had materialized in the darkness and now was the darkness. I ought to leave, I thought. Yes. I would leave at once. But I bent forward and with a kind of clairvoyance found her face. She held her breath.

"No," I murmured, "really…"

I touched her hair. I stroked it with the tips of my fingers; it was still foreign to me, still unexpected. I so wanted to understand all this. But perhaps there was nothing to understand? Such silence. Was Olaf asleep? Surely not. He sat, he listened. Was waiting. Go to him, then? But I couldn't. This was too improbable, uncertain. I couldn't. I couldn't. I lay my head on her shoulder. One movement and I was beside her. I felt her entire body stiffen. She shrank away. I whispered:

"Don't be afraid."

"No."

"You are trembling."

"I'm just…"

I held her. The weight of her head slipped into the crook of my arm. We lay thus, side by side, and there was darkness and silence.

"It's late," I whispered, "very late. You can sleep. Please. Go to sleep…"

I rocked her, with only the slow flexing of my arm. She lay quietly, but I felt the warmth of her body and her breath. It was rapid. And her heart was beating like an alarm. Gradually, gradually, it began to subside. She must have been very tired. I listened at first with my eyes open, then shut them, it seemed to me that I could hear better that way. Was she already asleep? Who was she? Why did she mean so much to me? I lay in that darkness; a breeze came through the window, and stirred the curtains, so that they made a soft rustling sound. I was filled, motionless, with amazement. Ennesson. Thomas. Venturi. Arder. What had it all been for? For this? A pinch of dust. There where the wind never blows. Where there are no clouds or sun, or rain, where there is nothing, exactly as if nothing were possible or even imaginable. And I had been there? Really? Why? I no longer knew anything, everything dissolved into the formless darkness—I froze. She twitched. Slowly turned over on her side. But her head remained on my arm. She murmured something, very softly. And went on sleeping. I tried hard to picture the chromosphere of Arcturus. A seething vastness, above which I flew and flew, as if revolving on a monstrous, invisible carousel of fire, with tearing, swollen eyes, and repeated in a lifeless voice: Probe, zero, seven—probe, zero, seven—probe, zero, seven—a thousand times, so that afterward, at the very thought of those words, something in me shuddered, as if I had been branded with them, as if they were a wound; and the reply was a crackling in the earphones, and the giggling-squawking into which my receiver translated the flames of the prominence, and that was Arder, his face, his body, and the rocket, turned to incandescent gas… And Thomas? Thomas was lost, and no one knew that he… And Ennesson? We never got along—I couldn't stand him. But in the pressure chamber I struggled with Olaf, who did not want to let me go because it was too late. How all-fired noble of me. But it was not nobility, it was simply a matter of price. Yes. Because each one of us was priceless, human life had the highest value where is could have none, where such a thin, practically nonexistent film separated it from annihilation. That wire or contact in Arder's radio. That weld in Venturi's reactor, which Voss failed to detect—but perhaps it opened suddenly, that did happen, after all, fatigue in metal—and Venturi ceased to exist in maybe five seconds. And Thurber's return? And the miraculous rescue of Olaf, who got lost when his directional antenna was punctured—when, how? No one knew. Olaf came back, by a miracle. Yes, one-in-a-million odds. And I had luck. Extraordinary, impossible luck. My arm ached, a wonderful ache. Eri, I said in my mind, Eri. Like the song of a bird. Such a name. The song of a bird… We used to ask Ennesson to do bird calls. He could do them. How he could do them, and when he perished, along with him went all those birds…

But things grew confused, I sank, I swam through the darkness. Right before I fell asleep it seemed to me that I was there, at my place, in my bunk, deep down, at the iron bottom, and near me lay little Arne—I awoke for a moment. No. Arne was not alive, I was on Earth. The girl breathed quietly.

"Bless you, Eri," I said, inhaling the fragrance of her hair, and slept.

I opened my eyes, not knowing where or even who I was. The dark hair flowing across my arm—the arm had no feeling, as if it were a foreign thing—astonished me. This, for a fraction of a second. Then I realized everything. The sun had not yet risen; the dawn—milk-white, without a trace of pink, clean, the air sharp—stood at the windows. In this earliest light I studied her face, as if seeing it for the first time. Sound asleep, she breathed with her lips tightly closed; she must not have been very comfortable on my arm, because she had placed a hand beneath her head, and now and then, gently, her eyebrows moved, as if in continual surprise. The movement was slight, but I watched intently, as if upon that face my fate were written.

I thought of Olaf. With extreme care I began to free my arm. The care turned out to be unnecessary. She was in a deep sleep, dreaming of something. I stopped, tried to guess, not the dream, but only whether or not it was bad. Her face was almost childlike. The dream was not bad. I disengaged myself, stood up. I was in the bathrobe I had been wearing when I lay down. Barefoot, I went out into the corridor, closed the door quietly, very slowly, and with the same caution looked into his room. The bed was untouched. He sat at the table, his head on his arms, and slept. Hadn't undressed, as I'd thought. I don't know what woke him up—my gaze? He started, gave me a sharp look, straightened, and began to stretch.

"Olaf," I said, "in a hundred years I…"

"Shut your mouth," he suggested kindly. "Hal, you always did have unhealthy tendencies."

"Are you beginning already? I only wanted to say…"

"I know what you wanted to say. I always know what you're going to say, a week in advance. Had there been a need for a chaplain on board the
Prometheus
, you would have filled the bill. A damned shame I didn't see that before. I would have knocked it out of you. Hal! No sermons. No solemnities, swearing, oaths, and the like. How is it? Good, yes?"

"I don't know. I suppose. I don't know. If you mean … well, nothing happened."

"No, first you should kneel," he said. "You must speak from a kneeling position. You dunce, did I ask you about that? I am talking about your prospects and so on."

"I don't know. And I don't think she does, either. I landed on her like a ton of bricks."

"Yes. It's a problem," Olaf observed. He undressed, looked for his trunks. "What do you weigh? A hundred and ten kilos?"

"Something like that. If you're looking for your trunks, I have them."

"For all your holiness, you always liked to pinch things," he mumbled, and when I started to pull them off, "Idiot, leave them on. I have another pair in the suitcase…"

"How do divorces work? Do you happen to know?" I asked.

Olaf looked at me over the open suitcase. He winked.

"No, I do not. And how would I? I have heard that it's as easy as sneezing. And you don't even have to say
Gesundheit
. Is there a decent bathroom here, with water?"

"I don't know. Probably not. There's only the kind—you know."

"Yes. The invigorating wind with the smell of mouthwash. An abomination. Let's go to the pool. Without water, I don't feel washed. She's asleep?"

"Asleep."

"Then let's blast off."

The water was cold, superb. I did a half gainer with a twist: a good one. My first. I surfaced, snorting and choking, I had water in my nose.

"Watch out," shouted Olaf from the side of the pool, "you'll have to be careful now. Remember Markel?"

"Yes. Why?"

"He had gone to the four ammoniated moons of Jupiter. When he returned and set down on the training field, and got out of the rocket, laden with trophies like a Christmas tree, he tripped and broke his leg. So watch out. I'm telling you."

"I'll try. Damned cold, this water. I'm coming out."

"Quite right. You could catch a cold. I didn't have one for ten years. The moment I landed on Luna I started coughing."

"Because it was so dry there," I said with a serious expression. Olaf laughed and splashed water in my face, jumping in a meter away.

"Dry, exactly," he said, surfacing. "A good way to put it. Dry, but not too cozy."

"Ole, I'm going."

"OK. We'll see each other at breakfast? Or would you prefer not to?"

"Of course we will."

I ran upstairs, drying myself on the way. At the door I held my breath. I peered in carefully. She was still sleeping. I took advantage of this and quickly changed. I had time to shave, too, in the bathroom.

I stuck my head into the room—I thought that she had said something. When I approached the bed on tiptoe, she opened her eyes.

"Did I sleep here?"

"Yes. Yes, Eri."

"I had the feeling that someone…"

"Yes, Eri, I was here."

She stared at me, as though gradually it was all coming back to her. First, her eyes widened a little—with surprise?—then she closed them, opened them again, then furtively, very quickly, though even so I noticed, she looked under the blanket—and her face turned pink.

I cleared my throat.

"You probably want to go to your own room, right? Perhaps I should leave, or…"

"No," she said. "I have my robe."

She pulled it tightly around herself, sat up on the bed.

"So … it's real, then?" she said quietly, as if parting with something.

I was silent.

She got up, walked across the room, came back.

She lifted her eyes to my face; in them was a question, uncertainty, and something else that I could not define.

"Mr. Bregg…"

"My name is Hal. My first name."

"Mr … Hal, I…"

"Yes?"

"I really don't know… I would like… Seon…"

"What?"

"Well … he…"

She could not or did not wish to say "my husband." Which?

"He will be back the day after tomorrow."

"And?"

"What is going to happen?"

I swallowed.

"Should I have a talk with him?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

Now it was my turn to look at her with surprise, not understanding.

"Yesterday you said…"

I waited.

"That you … would take me away."

"Yes "

"And he?"

"Then I shouldn't talk to him?" I asked, feeling stupid.

"Talk? You want to do it yourself?"

"Who else?"

"It has to be … the end?"

Something was choking me; I cleared my throat.

"Really, there's no other way."

"I thought it would be … a mesk."

"A what?"

"You don't know?"

"I understand nothing. No. I don't know. What is that?" I said, feeling an ominous chill. Again I had hit upon one of those sudden blanks, a mire of misunderstanding.

"It is like this. A man … a woman … if someone meets a person … if he wants, for a certain period of time… You really know nothing about this?"

"Wait, Eri. I don't know, but I think I'm beginning to. Is it something provisional, a kind of temporary suspension, an episode?"

"No," she said, and her eyes grew round. "You don't know what it is… I don't exactly know how it works myself," she admitted. "I've only heard about it. I thought that that was why you…"

"Eri, I'm completely in the dark. Damned if I understand any of this. Does it have…? In any case, it is connected in some way with marriage, right?"

"Well, yes. You go to an office, and there, I'm not exactly sure, but anyway, after that it's … it's…"

"It's what?"

"Independent. So that nothing can be said. No one. Including him…"

"So it is, after all … it is a kind of legalization—well, hell!—a legalization of infidelity?"

"No. Yes. That is, it is not infidelity then—no one speaks of it like that. I know what that means; I learned about it. There is no infidelity because, well, because after all Seon and I are only for a year."

"Wha-a-at?" I said, because I thought that I was not hearing correctly. "And what does that mean, for a year? Marriage for a year? For one year? Why?"

"It is a trial."

"Ye gods and little fishes! A trial. And what is a mesk? A notification for the following year?"

"I don't know what you mean. It is … it means that if the couple separates after a year, well, then the other arrangement becomes binding. Like a wedding."

"The mesk?"

"Yes."

"And if not, then what?"

"Then nothing. It has no significance."

"Aha, I think I see now. No. No mesk. Till death do us part. You know what that means?"

"I do. Mr. Bregg?"

"Yes."

"I'm completing my graduate studies in archeology this year…"

"I understand. You're letting me know that by taking you for an idiot I'm only making an idiot of myself."