cool. A blustery wind rocked back and forth between the fleshy trunks of the purple trees. The guests were as chilled as the wine. They clutched their glasses with one hand, and warmed the back of their arms with the other and did their best to make conversation. Mike Stone tried to make conversation. Milena had forgotten how stiff he could be. He bent forward from the waist and shook people’s hands and could think of nothing to say except ‘Thank you very much for coming,’ or ‘I suppose you’re all famous,’ or ‘I’ve always wanted to act.’
He had worn his astronaut suit to the wedding. He liked his astronaut suit and saw no reason ever to wear anything else. The pockets were full of astronaut gear — microscopes and multipurpose DNA capsules. He explained them at great length to Cilia, who used every particle of her acting ability in looking rapt with fascination.
Halfway through the party, Milton the Minister died.
‘The two of you alone together up there in space,’ Milton was saying. It was his way of congratulating them. ‘It must have been a real Battle of the Bulge.’ His eyes closed and his smile spread, as if he had finally made the perfect Milton joke. An expression of peace settled onto his face. Then he fell forward into the calamari salad and overturned the table of refreshments.
Mike had a first-aid kit in the pouches of his overalls. He slipped a pulse injector into Milton’s ear to keep his breath and heartbeat going while Milena, Moira Almasy, all the Terminals, called for the Consensus. It came in the form of the new police, the men in white, the Garda.
They came with a chopping, juddering sound as if something were cutting the air into slices. Something predatory descended from the sky onto the pavements of Marsham Street. It was the first time Milena had ever seen a helicopter. It was made entirely of metal and resin, and it gleamed like some hungry insect. Mike swept Milton up and carried him past the Garda, his wiry limbs moving with a robotic smoothness. He lowered Milton into the bubble of the beast and the Garda trooped back inside it, and with a whirlwind of air, the thing lifted off, and was gone.
The death and the helicopter shook Milena. Many things had happened over the last year to shake her. She found her teeth were involuntarily tap dancing and the cold seemed to rise out of her own bone-marrow. Milena was cold inside. Milena asked to be taken home. The party was over.
It was a cold, cold boat ride back to the Slump, through little, lapping, grey waves. Milena curled up against Mike Stone to be warmed, and she still shook. She didn’t know it was fear. She only knew that soon her husband might want to make love, and that she did not. She only knew that she had never told him she could not accept sex from a man. Paradoxically, the fear made her turn to him for comfort.
She was still afraid walking back into her little lacquered boxes. She showed him each of the rooms, puffing up pillows, folding in shutters, lighting the alcohol lamps. In the darkness in the corners, the truth still waited, unsaid. Whenever I get into this kind of trouble she thought, it is because I have been dishonest. What happens next? What happens now?
‘Play some music, Mike, if you’d like to,’ said Milena. Her back was to him.
Mike Stone said nothing. He stood in the centre of the bamboo box, his back rigid, his hands clasped behind him, uncertain what was to come next.
‘You don’t feel like it?’ Milena asked him, gently. She often found herself thinking of him with kindness.
Still smiling his engineer’s smile, he shook his head. He went and sat very tidily on a Pear, hands folded in his lap.
‘Do you want to do anything special?’ she asked him. Now what could you possibly do that was special on your marriage night?
‘Doesn’t seem that there’s too much to do. Your friends are very nice. They tried very hard.’ He looked down at his hands, and his smile broadened ruefully. ‘I don’t think Cilia’s terribly interested in self-directed mutation mechanisms.’
‘Just say that it means the Bulge can grow chicken meat out of itself,’ she told him, sitting next to him. ‘That’s all they want to hear. They just want the excitement.’
‘I don’t find outer space exciting,’ he said, simply.
‘You must be the only one who doesn’t,’ she said.
Come on, Milena, she told herself. Begin, Milena, begin, say it quickly, the dishonesty can be killed, the knot can be cut with single word of truth. She sat with him on the Pear. ‘This is going to be a… ah… a strange kind of marriage,’ she began, and was stopped, as if by a virus.
He nodded, tamely, in agreement. ‘I can’t get an erection,’ he said. Milena wasn’t too sure that she heard correctly.
‘Sorry, Mike?’
‘I’m impotent,’ he said, quite directly, without, now, a trace of embarrassment. ‘I’m afraid that our conjugal relations are not going to be entirely existent.’
Milena could hardly believe her luck. She hoped she could keep the relief out of her voice. ‘Mike. I want you to know how much I appreciate this. Your telling me, I mean. The important thing is the marriage. Physical satisfaction is not the main thing.’
After all these years of doing without it anyway.
‘I didn’t think you liked sex either,’ he said. ‘I had a pretty good idea that you were the sort of girl I was looking for.’
Milena was less sure she was pleased by this.
‘You were obviously a very, very nice person who was not physically attracted to me, or to men in general.’ His expression really was rather tender. ‘I like cuddles.’
Milena could feel herself blushing furiously. She felt that she had been caught out in some way. She discovered that both hands were on her cheeks, feeling how plump and hot they had become.
‘I hope I didn’t mislead you,’ said Mike Stone. ‘I tried very hard not to play the tooch knave,’ he said.
The very idea of Mike Stone playing tooch knave restored some of Milena’s humour. Playing tooch? On what, Mike, the violin? ‘Mike. I never thought you were a knave.’ Her hands were lowered from her face. ‘Did I mislead you?’ she asked.
‘Not for a moment,’ he said, obviously thinking that this would reassure her.
‘I’m scared,’ she said. It was an explanation. She surprised herself by saying so.
‘Of what?’ he asked.
‘These days? Of the dark. I’m scared of the dark, since Thrawn. Isn’t that funny? Thrawn used light. I should love the dark. And I’m scared of… of the viruses and what they’re doing… and of… of you.’
‘That’s understandable, I am pretty weird,’ said Mike Stone. He meant it. ‘I can’t say for sure if I’m scared of anything at all.’ He meant that, too. He shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything that scares me. There are just some things that I can do and some things that I can’t. I’m always amazed by the things you can do. You seem to get people to do things just by talking about what’s got to be done. You seem to be able to talk to pretty near anybody. That’s because you’re frightened. I think you can do all that because of the fear. I do the best I can without it.’
‘You’re not, are you? Frightened?’ She saw what he meant. She had thought it was fear that made him stiff and awkward. She was beginning to see now that it was instead a quality of precision, like a watch, exact and unselfconscious.
‘Only because I don’t feel there’s anything to lose. If I can’t do something, like talk to people, there’s no shame. I tried. I did my best. If I can do something, there’s no shame. I did my best.’
I’m going to like you, thought Milena. I’m going to like you more and more. I don’t think this was a mistake, after all.
‘I’d like to go to bed,’ he said. ‘I’d like to hold you. You always look cold these days. I’m very hot. I have very hot feet.’
‘I knew someone else who had very hot feet,’ said Milena. It had been so long since anyone had held her. She looked up at him. In fear.
We could of course spend time cooking a meal that neither of us wants to eat. He could get out his violin, and I could comment on his playing. But the tension would remain. There would still be this to face. To do anything else would be an evasion, a dishonesty. And so this must be faced, even in fear, and I do feel fear. Prissy, obsessive, severe, that’s what Cilia said. Am I still those things? I don’t like this. It makes me feel estranged from myself, as if I have to give myself up. It makes me feel alone and exposed, an orphan.
