The Quiet Pools

scopes on Einstein, the new U.N. research station in polar orbit around the Sun.

Nowhere in the sky had they found the handiwork of intelligent life. Nowhere but on Earth had they found the signature of biological systems, past or present. Life, it seemed, was precious and rare, and the universe a lonelier place than many had once believed. Every indirect evidence, every reasoned analysis, said that Memphis might find a Venus, a Jupiter, if they were lucky a Mars or Titan, but no lush garden worlds, no alien Earth.

“We’ll go to Tau Ceti with a pocketful of options,” said the lecturer, “and write our own story as we go. If we find an interesting planet with an unfriendly climate, we might establish a research colony of a few hundred volunteers and then continue on. If the parameters are marginal, we could found a terraforming colony of up to a thousand inhabitants before leaving.

“And if they’re downright agreeable, we’ll likely all go down, keeping Memphis in orbit as a lifeboat for a few dozen years until a new generation comes along to carry on where we left off. Because you can be sure that some of them will inherit our wanderlust, and you can be just as sure they’ll think we’re as stuffy and settled as some of us consider our parents.” Laughter rippled through the room, self-knowing. “And they’ll have us as proof that it can be done. Won’t that be a moment to remember, when the first colony sends out its own colony ship?”

The question was answered by a swell of appreciative applause. Waiting it out, the lecturer smiled, nodded acknowledgment, and gave the thumb-in-fist salute. In a heart’s breath, the applause doubled, and scattered members of the audience came to their feet.

“I want to leave you with the best new picture of Tau Ceti, which we received from Einstein just this morning,” the lecturer continued as the applause faded. Above him, the Publook offered a dramatic image of a ghostly yellow star matted with the shadowy disk of one of its orbiting worlds.

“The best so far,” he said, as the applause picked up again, at first scattered, growing as he continued into an almost tribal drumming of hands. “But there’ll be better, and they’ll come from us. No one will know Tau Ceti better than we will.

“I’m glad for the pictures Starwatch feeds us. It’s amazing what additive digitizers and enhancers can do with a few photons captured ten light-years from their origin.”

He paused and swept the room with his smile. “But I’m looking forward to seeing Tau Ceti for myself, without benefit of technology. And if wishes are horses, some morning I’ll get to see it rise over a world that never knew life until you and I and the rest of the ten thousand arrived to make it our home.” He stepped down from his dais, signaling the end of the assembly, as cheers and whoops and defiant cries punctuated the fevered ovation.

How gently he plucked their strings, Tidwell thought as he sat in his seat, politely applauding. Yet how strongly they respond. Just a few months ago, Tidwell would not have wondered at the scene. He would have written it off to passionate emotion and a skillful orator—no more mysterious than a preacher exhorting his flock, or a revolutionary inspiring his followers. No different.

We shall be delivered. The message was the same. And perhaps the passions were also the same. A ready well of courage, of commitment, waiting to be drawn on. Missionary zeal, waiting for a moment in time. Had the speaker spoken knowingly of inheriting a wanderlust or merely reached for a resonant idiom? No matter. The idiom recurred in the words of many speakers.

There is only one history, but there are many historians. Where was the truth written? The fire was lit. Where did it burn? In the hearts of men? Or in the cold nucleic chemistry of their cells?

Floating in and out of consciousness, Tidwell heard a sound in the hall and then at the open doorway. He was asleep enough to be puzzled, awake enough not to startle. Looking toward the sound, he saw a moving shadow, heard a breeze, or was it a whisper? The door swung shut with a hiss.

“Who’s there?” he asked, rising to his elbows.

“It’s me, Thomas.” Softly, a woman’s voice.

The shadow became a shape alongside the bed. The breeze carried the faint scent of flowers and something more to Tidwell’s nostrils. “Miss—Malena—I am—”

A match flared in her hand, showing him the young girl’s face. The black chemise she wore showed him more, even in the flickering light. She touched the match to the wick of a stout red candle, then set the candle on the end of Tidwell’s trunk, which he had pressed into service as a nightstand.

He stared, and she smiled. “You told me to try and shock you.”

The airchair’s mounting bar silently telescoped upward and out over the bed, and Malena reached up and gracefully lifted herself onto the bed beside him. Her hand touched his hip, scalding him through the light sheet. “Have you ever made love with a woman like me?”

“No,” he said, too dumbfounded to challenge the premise of the question.

“Well,” she said with a flame-lit twinkle in her eyes, “I may not be as agile as some, but I’m not fragile, and everything else is just as you’d expect. I like to touch and be touched,” she said, her fingertips moving, burning a line across his abdomen. “I’ll need to hold on to you or the bed or my bar when I’m on top, or I won’t have any leverage. But we can take that as it comes.”

He reached out and caught her hand, firmly but not harshly. “Malena, this is—I’m afraid you expect too much from me.”

She brought his hand to her mouth and bit the ball of his thumb. Startled, he flinched and pulled his hand free, not in pain, but from the sudden charge of sexual energy, so alien and unfamiliar now.

“Please,” he said, “it has been years—”

“I know,” she said. She reached up for the bar again, and a moment later she was no longer beside him, but astride him, straddling his waist, the sheet still between them like a frail chaperone.

His breath caught, his hands shook. “Malena, please—you are a lovely girl. But how can I—you cannot understand the difficulty—”

Clinging to the bar with one hand for balance, she reached forward and pressed her other hand over his heart. She closed her eyes, as though listening intently, as though taking his measure.

“Let it back into your life,” she said gently, opening her eyes. “You’ve waited long enough, invented enough fears. You don’t have to hold yourself apart, Thomas. You have a right to permit yourself pleasure.”

What door she had thrown open he did not know, but he suddenly felt naked before her, and panic began to rise in his chest. She sensed it in an instant and caught his face in her hands.

“Just be with me,” she said gently, making him meet her eyes. “Just be here and let go of the rest. It will be all right.”

“I don’t know if I can—”

“Of course we can,” she said, touching a finger to his lips and sitting back with a little smile.

Tidwell closed his eyes and sighed away his quailing, then looked up and beheld her in the candlelight. “You are lovely,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said with a hint of a blush. Purposefully, almost theatrically, she slipped the thin straps of her garment off her shoulders, one at a time. A fetching wriggle, and her chemise slid down to bunch about her waist, baring her young breasts, her upturned nipples. Tidwell swallowed his breath as he admired her.

“Do you like them?” she asked softly.

His drawn breath an anticipatory sigh, Tidwell confessed, “Yes.”

Malena leaned forward, propping herself on her hands on either side of his shoulders, and lowered herself down to kiss him. Her lips were soft, yielding, melding, her taste the fresh-sweet peppermint of a too-recent brushing or candy.

“If you touch them, I can enjoy them, too,” she said as she broke away from the kiss.

By then, Tidwell had caught enough of her playfulness that he could take it as an invitation, not a critique. “You did warn me you would expect that,” he said, and reached for her.

Cooing happily as he caressed her nipples, Malena slid her body backward a few inches, until the bulge of his growing erection was trapped beneath her. She rocked her hips, rubbing herself against him, until the thin fabric barrier was velvet-slippery with their wetness, until Tidwell rose up, tore the sheet away, and took Malena to her back in an adolescent rush.

That was the first time: affirmation for her, release for him. The second time, with the knifelike edge of need