“Five weeks ago I was on board the Deborah, traveling to Quantick. It’s a settled world at the far end of the former Enemy Domain. About as far from Earth as you can get.”
Judy sipped at her water, a picture of composure.
“That ugly little girl…”
Judy couldn’t stop crying. There remained that part of her that was always cool and objective; it stood to one side within her consciousness, examining the torrid waterfall of her passions, trying to pinpoint the source of this outburst. She hadn’t cried so violently even when her sisters had died; she hadn’t been so badly shaken when Frances, her best friend, had been nearly destroyed. What was it about the scene in the social room that had upset her so? Such a tiny matter. The girl was an ugly little thing, painfully thin with a deformed face, one eye lower than the other. Her protruding mouth was filled with crooked, irregular teeth. She clung tightly to her mother’s hand as she entered the room, trying to fade into the background, hoping not to be seen by the other occupants, lost in their games of Chess and Starquest, Dominions and Bridge. Judy had been sitting in the corner, having politely turned down an invitation to join a game of poker. Where was the sport in playing a game when she knew the thoughts and feelings of her opponents better than they did themselves? She had watched as the little girl was led across the room to an Aeon table. The two people already seated there passed a set of colored counters across to the new players. Nervously, the little girl accepted them. She sat down, clutching the large counters against her pigeon chest.
—At least she could walk, Judy. She could join in a game of Aeon. We’ve seen far worse, haven’t we? People at the end of life. People crippled by disease. And we’ve asked, why can’t the Watcher cure them? Come on, Judy, this girl wasn’t so badly off. Her brother just didn’t understand. Judy rolled herself up into a sitting position on the bed. “That’s not why I’m so upset, Jesse,” she sobbed. The shadowy figure that stood in her room tried to place an arm around her shoulder. She wriggled it off angrily.
—There are worse things than being ugly, Judy.
“It’s not that…”
But she couldn’t explain further because she was overtaken by another bout of racking sobs. She was being ridiculous.
The mother and girl had joined in the game. The two existing players were cracking jokes, teasing the daughter, making her smile. Judy had herself begun a conversation game with a husband and wife who were trying to construct an idea path from Kant to the resurrected fugue form. They were skillful players and Judy had needed to keep her wits about her in order to participate, and yet her attention was constantly drawn across to the four Aeon players, and the ugly little girl. Judy could feel something building up inside her, something unrecognizable and edged with danger.
“What is it, Jesse?” she had whispered to her shadowy brother, but he had made no reply at the time, merely frowned and tilted his head questioningly, not understanding her problem. Jesse sat by her bed now, rubbing his insubstantial hand across her shoulders. Still, she couldn’t stop crying. The moment was approaching again…
It was the end of the evening, and Judy’s conversation game had finished. Her partners shook her hand and headed off to bed. Judy had stood up and stretched, and yet still that sense of danger was bubbling up inside her. The Aeon game was ending. The mother and daughter were in the lead, and Judy caught the warm edge of emotion from the mother as she smiled across at the other two players, who were letting the little girl win. There was a bubble of kindness centered on that table that made Judy feel painfully happy inside.
And then it happened. The little girl, the ugly, nervous, buck-toothed little girl, had turned to look up at her mother and had given her such a smile of delight that, to Judy and her hyperaware emotional sense, it felt almost like the collapse of a small star. Such a feeling of warmth and kindness and contentedness and belonging flowing between the pair, two faces turned towards each other alight with something so essentially human.
And not knowing why, Judy had felt something dissolve inside herself and she had begun to stumble off through the corridors of the ship towards her room.
She had undressed and lain down in bed and drifted off into an agitated sleep where she had dreamt, as she did so often, of the hand reaching down from above to cover her face…. She had woken up crying. And she still didn’t know why.
On board the Eva Rye, the only sound was the clink of the knife on glass as Edward chopped potatoes. Judy’s gaze was lost in the shiny black depths of the dining table.
“I don’t understand,” said Edward.
“Shhh.” Edward flinched as both Maurice and Saskia turned to hiss at him.
