“You too, I think,” he returned. “Not surprising, after what you’ve been through.”
His mind played it over, the flight through space, the message sent, the long curve inward again, the ship and the sophotect that she wearily let rendezvous. It had not been unkind, she told him; it took her aboard and brought her back to Earth, where Venator interviewed and released her. No bodily danger ever, but she could not be confident of that, and Kenmuir dared not dwell on what she must have suffered in her spirit, amidst emptiness and machines. “I hoped you’d come right away after I got home,”
she said.
Though he sensed no reproach, he winced. “I’m sorry. Been so damnably occupied—“ He had explained that before, in their short phone conversations and today when he arrived. “You’ll hear the details, as far as I can straighten them out in my head. Besides, well, I thought you’d first want to rest” in her land and on her sea, among her folk and merfolk. He had wondered, without asking, if that was why she proposed they sail out to talk in private. They could have gone someplace ashore. But here she wholly
belonged. Or was it that this change of setting might break his
tongue-tied hesitancy?Now she did smile, however tentatively. “Ah, bue-no, lawa, that’s behind us. The news that we’ll have our new country, we Lahui, this is what you and I can celebrate together. For openers.”
He had no reply.
She watched him for a time before she said, gently as the wind, “No? No. For favor, don’t misunder-stand.Tm not blaming, I’m not begging.”
He met her eyes. “You never would.”
“Something has happened.”
“Only in me.”
She deserved straightforwardness. “Tm going to Proserpina,” he said.
“I was … afraid of that.”
“Don’t be.” It was he who pleaded. He leaned forward and caught her hand in both of his. “Listen. It’s best. You’re young, you have your life and your world to make, I’m old and—”
“We could try,” she said.
“And lose those years for you? No.”
Her quietness abided. “Don’t play unselfish. It’s .unworthy of you. You’re returning to Lilisaire.” She drew her hand free.
“I’m trying to be realistic and, and do what’s right,” he said.
The waves lulled. The frigate bird cruised on watch for prey.
“This isn’t a complete surprise to me,” she told him. “He kanaka pono ‘oe. You’re a good man, an honest man. You can keep a secret but you haven’t got much gift for lying.” She looked to the horizon. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
Yes, he knew. She was too alive for anything else.
Nevertheless—He grinned at himself, an old man’s dry grin. In his expectations, she had responded fiercely, and it was not impossible that she could have lured him back to her. Well, maybe she had been feeling her doubts too. Maybe, no, probably she saw things more clearly and forthrigntly than he had known, more than he did. He should be relieved, not disappointed. But he was only a man.
Her concern burst over hirri: “You, though! Have you thought this through? You may well be the single Earthling—Terran—the single one of your race, away in that darkness with nothing but rocks and stars.”
When she spoke thus, he gained heart. “It’s space, Aleka,” he replied.
She sat meditative, toying with the helm, before she said, “I see. Always it’s called you, and this is the last way left for you to follow.”
He lifted his shoulders and dropped them, palms outspread. “Irrational. Agreed. But we—the Lunarians, and whoever’s with them—we’ll bring Proserpina to life.”
For whatever1 that would mean in the gigayears ahead. He felt no special involvement in them; being mortal and reasonable, he could not. Still, he would obscurely be serving Demeter Mother whom he would never know, and therewith give his life a meaning beyond itself.
That thought was more than his monkey vanity. ThejTeramind concurred. He didn’t know whether it would seek to conceal the migration to Proserpina from the Centaurians. He could imagine several tricks for doing so. Certainly the cybercosm was making sure that the tale of hide-and-seek within the Solar System would be soft-played, soon lost in background noise. There must be no monuments … It didn’t matter, Kenmuir believed. In the long run, it didn’t matter. When life is ready to evolve onward, it will evolve.