But Conrad was having none of that. If there was truth in what Feck was saying, it just made him angry. “There are other ways to serve. We've got people who like to play the heavy. Who've always played the heavy. Just send them in, and leave decent people out of it. If it needs to be done, put it against the immortal souls of the people who can't be corrupted, because they're already corrupt.”
“Do you need your soul?” Feck said, trying for a joke. “Aren't you immorbid? Judgment day is a long way off if you never stop to die.”
“Thanks. That's helpful. Look, I've been out here almost ten years, and I don't feel like I've made a difference. Not for the better.”
“Ten years is nothing, Conrad.”
“No? It is to me.” But Conrad felt the lie in the words even as he was saying them. He just didn't like what he was doing. It was as simple as that. He'd been bored as an architect those last few decades, though he hadn't realized it until the very end. But was boredom any worse than doing something you actually hated?
“Forget it,” he said. “When we get back to P2, I'm resigning my commission. There are a lot of jobs down there I haven't tried yet.”
That might've sounded like selfish whining, but Conrad was pleased to hear, in his voice, a quiet resolve that was empty of bitterness. Finally. But he added, “If I stay out here any longer, I'll be less valuable in the long run. I've got to keep my self-respect. We all do, or what's the purpose of our lives?”
“Good point,” Feck said, affably enough.
Conrad looked out the virtual window again, eyeing the stationary glints of orange-white sunlight on the surface of Element Pit. “You're a good man, Feck,” he said absently, with his brain halfway unplugged. “Probably one of the best I've ever known. Little gods, when did that happen?”
Money Izolo was both the engineer and the fourth mate, and when he came to the bridge to relieve Conrad, Conrad took the opportunity to catch the tail end of Xmary's sleep shift. Her cabin door knew to let him in, and he shrugged off his clothes and crawled into the bunk with her.
“Hi,” she said sleepily.
“Hi yourself,” he returned.
“What's wrong?” she asked right away, hearing something in his tone. She sounded more awake, and her body stiffened as if preparing to sit up.
“Just a bad day,” he told her.
She rolled over to embrace him, and as the wellcloth sheets pulled aside he could feel that she wasn't wearing anything either. She seldom did, when she was expecting him.
She had gone with a few spacemen in her time—had gone with all of them, really. But once Conrad had come back aboard, those temps and fill-ins had fallen away like dry leaves in a breeze. Or so it seemed to him now; he supposed the process had taken a couple of years. But when they had finally settled back into each other's arms again, they had fit perfectly, like the two halves of something broken, melding together again. Their early time together had been formative; she was a part of his character, and he imagined the reverse must be true as well.
This was a minor detail which had slipped his mind, briefly, during that conversation on the bridge. He had left her once, with consequences he didn't particularly care to repeat. Could he leave her again, knowing that the same thing would probably happen?
“You're all tense,” she said, feeling his back.
He nodded, agreeing with that. “I know. I just . . . I just hate this job. Nothing about you, nothing about the ship. It was good to get into space again. I think I needed that, deep down in my soul.”
Now she did sit up, pulling the sheets after her in the darkness. “You're speaking in the past tense. What's wrong?”
“I don't know. I'm not sure.”
“You're thinking of going back to P2?”
“Yeah.”
She digested that in silence for a while. When she finally spoke, what she said was, “I don't know that human memories were really designed for these long spans of time. I don't feel as though I've forgotten anything, though I'm sure the details of childhood fade as they move farther into the past. But I feel my life—I don't know—breaking up into portraits and vignettes. Time begins to seem less linear, more like a book of stationary pictures than a single long movie. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Conrad answered, because Bascal had told him much the same thing. Supposedly, this view was closer to the physical truth than the errant concept of “movement” through time. But then he followed with, “No. I dunno.” Because he couldn't see a connection with the things that were bothering him, and he vaguely resented her going off on a tangent like this.
But she continued. “You've been back onboard the ship for, what, about a decade? That seems like a continuous stretch of time, but when you're gone—not if, but when—it will all compress down to a couple of incidents. Whenever a period of time passes with nothing changing, nothing important, it goes into the log as one long incident. We remember it like a spring afternoon, or anyway I do.”
And here Conrad began to get the gist of what she was saying. But only the gist, the outlines, so he stroked her neck and waited for her to continue.
“When you left the first time, it seemed intolerable. In a good year, we would see each other for at most a few weeks, and I didn't want to live my life that way. But I don't think I understood. I don't think I really grasped how long life can be. We've had a spring afternoon together, yes, and perhaps we'll have a spring evening apart, and then a morning together, and then separate business again for a while. If we're going to live forever—and I don't think anyone really knows what that means on a personal level—we need to stop running our lives like morbid little tribesmen who'll be dead in ten years.”
“You're giving me your blessing to leave? Do I understand you correctly?”
She paused. “I think so. Yes.”
“You'll wait for me? For years, if necessary?”
She thought that one over, and said, “It depends what you mean by wait. I've never stopped loving you, though I haven't always liked you, or had you conveniently at hand when I needed you. When I see you again, none of that will be different. Age has its pleasant side, I would say. When next I see you, I won't really have to ask what you've been doing. It won't really matter. You won't have changed.”
“We'll fit like two halves of a broken plate,” he suggested, although the implications were rather sobering. Were they so inflexible?
“Yes! Good. But while we're apart, the edges may need to be covered. Our bodies require a certain amount of attention, and so do our spirits. And that's okay, because at the end of the day we'll still fit. Friendships of convenience may come and go, but the arc of our romance stretches on forever.”
For the second time in his life, Conrad contemplated this notion uneasily. “Forever” was an easy word to say, but living it was another matter. Didn't everything have an end, sooner or later? But Xmary seemed so earnest in the darkness, so pleased with her observation—with him and with the universe in general—that he couldn't bear to disappoint her.
“Forever,” he agreed, hooking his pinkie to hers to cement the promise.
And thus was sealed the fate of a ship.
Chapter eighteen.
Mursk wandering
Of course, Xmary could have come with him, or arranged to have a copy made. The possibility was certainly discussed, but even after these hundreds of years in the cramped confines of Newhope, she still claimed to have unfinished business there. Conrad suggested that it might be broadening for her to try some other jobs for a while, but she protested that she had eternity to do that, and needn't—in fact shouldn't—be in any hurry right now.