“Paola and I designed it,” Donna said. She was quick and nervous, with generous eyes and a small mouth and short blond hair.
The final design showed a long white gown covered with tiny glass beads, glittering magnificently in a rotating light unseen beyond the projection. “A ceremonial gown,” Theresa said. She stepped into the projection.
“My turn,” Paola said. Theresa adjusted it for the smaller woman.
“It’s for when we find our new Earth, after we do the Job,” Paola said. “The first Wendy to step on the planet will wear this. The wedding of the children to the new Earth.”
Martin had heard nothing of these plans and he found himself suddenly filled with emotion. “It’s beautiful.”
“Glad you like it,” Theresa said. “Do you think the Lost Boys would like an outfit for their first step?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He had never given much thought to that time. Then, “We’d love them. Will everybody wear them?”
Donna looked at Theresa. “We were only making one…”
“Martin’s right. Everybody will want them,” Theresa said.
“Then we’d better plan more,” Donna said. “A good excuse for more parties.”
They tried a few more fittings, then Theresa made her farewells.
Martin escorted Theresa down a shadowed hall. They passed Rosa. She edged around them with a furtive nod. Martin wondered when he would have to talk with her, deal with her; she had few friends and no lovers. She was slowly opting out of their tight-knit society.
Theresa said, “It would be nice to make a gown for her,” looking back at Rosa. “She needs something, Martin.”
“I know.”
Theresa took his earlobes in her fingers, pulling him lightly down to kiss her. “We’re alone here,” she said. “You’ve been very patient. Talking to everybody… It must have been difficult. Ariel can be tough.”
Martin looked up and down the corridor. “Let’s go… to my quarters,” he said between her kisses.
“Why?” she asked, teasing with her hips.
“Because I’m shy. You know that.”
“Somebody will see us?”
“Come on.” He tugged her hand gently as he led the way.
“It’s because you’re Pan, isn’t it?”
“Theresa…”
“All right,” she said wistfully. “Nothing adventurous for a Pan’s lover.”
He frowned, then pulled her toward him and unsnapped her overalls. “You’ll make me do anything, won’t you? Shameless,” he said into her ear.
“Somebody in this dyad has to be adventurous.”
He kissed her while mulling over that word, dyad. They certainly were that; he had not called their relationship such, reserving the word for what he and William had had, but what he felt for Theresa deserved it more.
“Wedding dress,” he said, holding her high to suckle.
“For all of us,” Theresa said, eyes closed, grinding her hips against his stomach. “Lower me.”
“Not yet. Not until you say I’m adventurous.”
“You’re adventurous.”
Martin heard something, a breath or a rustle of cloth, and turned to see Rosa coming back. Her quarters were somewhere near here; they were in her path. She looked both sad and embarrassed, reversed, laddered back around the curve.
“Sorry,” Theresa called after her. “It’s your hall, too, Rosa.”
But she was gone. Martin lowered Theresa and made a face.
“You were right,” Theresa said, chagrined. “She’s so shy… she didn’t need to see us. But it’s nothing to do with your being Pan.” She pulled up her overalls. “Your quarters,” she said.
He lay beside Theresa in the darkness, awash in an abandonment he had not known in some time. He was free of care, loose in body luxury, all demands satisfied or put aside where they would not nag. Theresa lay still, breathing shallow, but she was not asleep. He heard her eyelids opening and closing. Long, languid blinks. Such sated animals.
“Thank you,” he said.
She caressed his leg with hers. “You’re so quiet. Where are you?”
“I’m home,” he said.
“Thinking about Earth?”
“No,” he said. “I’m home. Here with you.”
And it was true. For the first time in thirteen years, here in the darkness, he felt at home. Home was a few minutes between extreme worries and challenges; home was a suspension outside any place or time.
“That’s sweet,” Theresa said.
“I love you.”
“I love you, Martin. But I’m not home. Not yet.”
He pulled her to him. The moment was fleeting and he wanted to grab it but could not. Temporary, ineffable. Not home. No home.
Martin entered the nose dressed in exercise shorts, neck wrapped in a sweat towel. He had just worked out with Hans Eagle and Stephanie Wing Feather in the second homeball gym when Hakim signaled that they might have enough information to make the next decision.
The Dawn Treader’s long nose extended a hundred meters from the first homeball, a slender needle only three meters wide at the point. Hakim Hadj and three of the search team—Li Mountain, Thomas Orchard, and Luis Estevez Saguaro—kept station in the tip of the nose, surrounded by projections.
Transparent to visible light, the tip of the nose revealed a superabundant darkness, like an unctuous dye that could stain their souls.
The remotes, four thousand tiny sensors, had departed from the third homeball two days before, returning their signals to the Dawn Treader using the same point-to-point “no- channel” transmission their weapons and craft would use when outside the ship. Within a distance of ten billion kilometers, information simply “appeared” in a receiver, and could not be intercepted between; hence, no channel. The effective rate of transmission was almost instantaneous. The children called the no-channel transmissions noach.
Moms, ship’s mind, and libraries were unresponsive to inquiries on the subject of noach; it was one of the tools bequeathed without explanation.
With the remotes, the “eye” of the Dawn Treader had expanded enormously, and was now nine billion kilometers in diameter, nearly two thirds as wide as the solar systems they studied.
Hakim pushed through the haze of projections and glided toward Martin. Li Mountain and Luis Estevez Saguaro watched, fidgeting with their wands, but controlling their enthusiasm enough to let Hakim take charge.
“It’s even better,” Hakim said. “It’s very good indeed. We have resolution down to a thousand kilometers, and estimates of energy budgets. The nearest system is inhabited, but it’s not consuming energy like a thriving high-tech civ should. Still, it’s the most active, and it’s where we might expect it to be.”
Hakim’s wand projected graphics and figures for Martin. Assay fit very closely indeed. “We’ve been looking through the stellar envelopes and we’ve put together a picture of the birthing cloud in this region. Shock-wave passage from a supernova initiated starbirth about nine billion years ago, and the supernova remnants seeded heavy elements along these gradients…” Hakim’s finger traced a projected purple line through numbers describing metals densities, “metals” meaning elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. He jabbed at a clustering of numbers. “The Buttercup is right in this gradient, right in this magnetic pool, to receive the only dose of exactly these proportions.” Red numbers bunched within a dip in the galaxy’s magnetic field, where gases might collect, waiting to be condensed into stars. “No other star system within a hundred light years matches the Buttercup’s assay.”