“You’ve no kindness for me.”
“Hoy, this is nil time for hakkerie.”
“I meant no more than this, Mr. Leino: if it’s alone you’d be with your friend I can well come back later.” She did get up.
Startled, he exclaimed, “Stop. Please. I knew you kenned him before, but not that you. . – cared.”
She smiled most gently. “Aye, he was the quiet lad, was he not?”
Stillness; then, low: “Even when showing me, this voyage, how to handle firearms in combat, he took none of his many opportunities to grow familiar, though he well knew I’d have liked it. For he saw me now as Daniel’s woman, not his captain’s but his friend’s, which gives away much about him, doesn’t it?”
He flushed. “When did you first meet him?”
“Before I met Daniel. He came to the hospital, injured, as you may recall. We bantered amidst his pain. The world thought him humorless, but that was not true. Oh, he spun me the wildest yarn about the trouble he was having, him a Russian who did not enjoy chess. . . – After he got well, we met when we could, until I started spending my whiles in Eopolis with Daniel. We were never deep in love, Sergei and I, but he meant an oceanful to me.”
“And to me,” Leino said slowly, staring at where she stood in front of the dead man. “We were on jobs together in space, the kind where you trust your life to your partner. On Demeter we’d go backpacking, sailing, partying-” His talk trailed off.
She nodded. “What happens between man and man, no woman will ever truly understand; but precious it is.”
Half drunk, he threw at her: “What about man and woman?” She turned to brush fingertips across the countenance which had been Zarubayev’s. “That’s worse to find words for, however long and hard the poets have tried.” Her glance went back to Leino.” Indeed Sergei and I shared more than simple pleasure.”
Again it sought him who did not move. “They never realized,” she said, nigh under breath. “They took him for dour when he was only shy; but oh, the fun in him when once he felt at his ease! They took him for being practical as a machine; but I recall a night hie brought a telescope outdoors, and after we’d lost ourselves in the forever, he began to speak of the Others. He believed they cannot be ignoring of us as they seem to, but most have a care and compassion we are too small to feel-”
She broke off. “Well,” she said, “you don’t want me to maunder, you want to give him his sending from you. Goodnight, Martti Leino.”
“No!” He lifted a palm as if to block her. Please stay. I didn’t know anyone else was so near to him.” He rubbed a wrist across his eyes. “Forgive me.
May I ask what you were doing in here?”
“Nothing to mention.”
He insisted: “You were singing.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well, yes, I was that, a song, as we do in the Irish countryside. But it would be wrong to put on a show when such is not the way of my fellows aboard. Goodnight.”
He stretched an arm in her path. “Please, Miz Muiryan -Caitlin- please don’t go.”
Her green gaze met his blue. “Why?”
“Because, oh, I told you, we share a heavy loss and. . – they’re singing Side 87
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
Kipling songs in the common room- -What is yours?”
She dropped her lashes. “Merely an ochone. A dirge, you’d say.”
“Would you do it over?”
She regarded him for a moment before she decided. “Aye, since it is you who wish. He would have himself.”
They sat down on either side of the bed. The lamps flickered, sounds which drifted in from the wake did not seem out of place. Caitlin’s fingers evoked the “Londonderry Air.”
Oh, would the stars might mourn for this our comrade, Weep tears of light across a riven sky,
Or that the rain which falls upon his homeland Were bidding him a long and last goodbye,
Or at the least, a blossom drop to kiss him