I was lighthearted as I told her these things, and she received them lightly. She knew them for what they were—not symptoms of madness, but only the bleak fantasies of a lonely child, seeking to make sense out of an incomprehensible universe in which he felt himself to be a stranger and afraid.
“But you escaped,” she said. “You found a place where you belonged!”
“Yes,” I said. “I escaped.”
And I told her of the day when I had seen a sudden light in the sky. My first thought then had been that my true parents had come back for me; my second, that it was some comet passing by. That light was a starship of heaven that had come to worldward in our system. And as I looked upward through the darkness on that day long ago, straining to catch a glimpse of the shoreships that were going up to it bearing cargo and passengers to be taken from our world to some unknowable place at the other end of the galaxy, I realized that that starship was my true home. I realized that the Service was my destiny.
And so it came to pass, I said, that I left my world behind, and my name, and my life, such as it had been, to enter the company of those who sail between the stars. I let her know that this was my first voyage, explaining that it is the peculiar custom of the Service to test all new officers by placing them in command at once. She asked me if I had found happiness here; and I said, quickly, Yes, I had, and then I said a moment later, Not yet, not yet, but I see at least the possibility of it.
She was quiet for a time. We watched the worlds turning and the stars like blazing spikes of color racing toward their far-off destinations, and the fiery white light of the ship itself streaming in the firmament as if it were the blood of some alien god. The thought came to me of all that I was risking by hiding her like this within me. I brushed it aside. This was neither the place nor the moment for doubt or fear or misgiving.
Then she said, “I’m glad you told me all that, Adam.”
“Yes. I am too.”
“I could feel it from the start, what sort of person you were. But I needed to hear it in your own words, your own thoughts. It’s just like I’ve been saying. You and I, we’re two of a kind. Square pegs in a world of round holes. You ran away to the Service and I ran away to a new life in somebody else’s body.”
I realized that Vox wasn’t speaking of my body, but of the new one that waited for her on Cul-de-Sac.
And I realized too that there was one thing about herself that she had never shared with me, which was the nature of the flaw in her old body that had caused her to discard it. If I knew her more fully, I thought, I could love her more deeply: imperfections and all, which is the way of love. But she had shied away from telling me that, and I had never pressed her on it. Now, out here under the cool gleam of heaven, surely we had moved into a place of total trust, of complete union of soul.
I said, “Let me see you, Vox.”
“See me? How could you—”
“Give me an image of yourself. You’re too abstract for me this way. Vox. A voice. Only a voice. You talk to me, you live within me, and I still don’t have the slightest idea what you look like.”
“That’s how I want it to be.”
“Won’t you show me how you look?”
“I won’t look like anything. I’m a matrix. I’m nothing but electricity.”
“I understand that. I mean how you looked before. Your old self, the one you left behind on Kansas Four.”
She made no reply.
I thought she was hesitating, deciding; but some time went by, and still I heard nothing from her. What came from her was silence, only silence, a silence that had crashed down between us like a steel curtain.
“Vox?”
Nothing.
Where was she hiding? What had I done?
“What’s the matter? Is it the thing I asked you?”
No answer.
“It’s all right, Vox. Forget about it. It isn’t important at all. You don’t have to show me anything you don’t want to show me.”
Nothing. Silence.
“Vox? Vox?”
The worlds and stars wheeled in chaos before me. The light of the ship roared up and down the spectrum from end to end. In growing panic I sought for her and found no trace of her presence within me. Nothing. Nothing.
“Are you all right?” came another voice. Banquo, from inside the ship. “I’m getting some pretty wild signals. You’d better come in. You’ve been out there long enough as it is.”
Vox was gone. I had crossed some uncrossable boundary and I had frightened her away.
Numbly I gave Banquo the signal, and he brought me back inside.
13.
Alone, I made my way upward level by level through the darkness and mystery of the ship, toward the Eye. The crash of silence went on and on, like the falling of some colossal wave on an endless shore. I missed Vox terribly. I had never known such complete solitude as I felt now. I had not realized how accustomed I had become to her being there, nor what impact her leaving would have on me. In just those few days of giving her sanctuary, it had somehow come to seem to me that to house two souls within one brain was the normal condition of mankind, and that to be alone in one’s skull as I was now was a shameful thing.
As I neared the place where Crew Deck narrows into the curve of the Eye a slender figure stepped without warning from the shadows.
“Captain.”
My mind was full of the loss of Vox and he caught me unawares. I jumped back, badly startled.
“For the love of God, man!”
“It’s just me. Bulgar. Don’t be so scared, Captain. It’s only Bulgar.”
“Let me be,” I said, and brusquely beckoned him away.
“No. Wait, Captain. Please, wait.”
He clutched at my arm, holding me as I tried to go. I halted and turned toward him, trembling with anger and surprise.
Bulgar, Roacher’s jackmate, was a gentle, soft-voiced little man, wide-mouthed, olive-skinned, with huge sad eyes. He and Roacher had sailed the skies of Heaven together since before I was born. They complemented each other. Where Roacher was small and hard, like fruit that has been left to dry in the sun for a hundred years, his jackmate Bulgar was small and tender, with a plump, succulent look about him. Together they seemed complete, an unassailable whole: I could readily imagine them lying together in their bunk, each jacked to the other, one person in two bodies, linked more intimately even than Vox and I had been.
With an effort I recovered my poise. Tightly I said, “What is it, Bulgar?”
“Can we talk a minute, Captain?”
“We are talking. What do you want with me?”
“That loose matrix, sir.”
My reaction must have been stronger than he was expecting. His eyes went wide and he took a step or two back from me.
Moistening his lips, he said, “We were wondering, Captain—wondering how the search is going—whether you had any idea where the matrix might be—”
I said stiffly, “Who’s we, Bulgar?”
“The men. Roacher. Me. Some of the others. Mainly Roacher, sir.”
“Ah. So Roacher wants to know where the matrix is.”
The little man moved closer. I saw him staring deep into me as though searching for Vox behind the mask of my carefully expressionless face. Did he know? Did they all? I wanted to cry out, She’s not there any more, she’s gone, she left me, she ran off into space. But apparently what was troubling Roacher and his shipmates was something other than the possibility that Vox had taken refuge with me.