Relax, Esther used to say. Let people get to know you! Don’t be so nervous and defensive all the time. If you’re not afraid of being rejected, then people are less likely to reject you.
Esther was telling the truth. Noemi knows how people avoid the loneliest among them. But if the trick to making friends is to stop being lonely, the paradox is inescapable. Bitterly she thinks it’s like telling someone starving to death that they can have all the food they want if they’ll just stop being hungry.
Only a few times in her life has she felt that maybe the famine might be over. Really, though, there was only one time she wasn’t utterly alone—one time a person understood her and cared for her—loved her, he said—
Noemi pulls herself out of the memory. Thinking of Abel hurts, for a thousand reasons but mostly because she knows she’ll never see him again.
Sparing Abel’s life was the one moment of religious grace Noemi has ever been granted, the one time faith became a living force inside her. She’d thought that if she ever had such an instant of profound connection, her questions about God would be answered. Everything was supposed to come clear. But it turns out not to work that way. She is still small in a vast cosmos, unsure what is right and good.
Try again, she tells herself, closing her eyes. Use the mantra Baz gave you.
It doesn’t help. Meditation brings her no peace, only reminds her how alone she is—and how afraid she is that the loneliness will endure forever.
“Will you want toast this morning?” Mrs. Gatson says it the way a server in a restaurant might speak to a customer. A new customer, not one of the regulars. Noemi has lived in the Gatsons’ home for nine years.
After Esther’s death, the Gatsons commissioned a portrait of her from an artistic neighbor. The drawing hangs on one of the walls, a soft sketch in pastels that captures her golden hair and blue eyes. But the silence she’s left behind expands to fill the house every morning, until it feels as though Noemi doesn’t have room to draw a single breath. This place will never completely feel like home.
Their house is a typical one on Genesis—bedrooms underground, general living space above, with large “windows” of translucent solar panels. Vegetables sprout from window boxes that line the perimeter of the one large common room, and herbs grow in long, skinny beams that stretch from floor to ceiling and divide the space into areas for cooking and eating, for socializing, and for work. Entertainment is found outside the home, unless a family is fond of music: Vids, books, and the like are kept in libraries, and pools and fitness equipment are at public gymnasiums. Noemi thought nothing of this until she went on her journey through the galaxy, along the worlds of the Loop, where she saw Virginia Redbird’s lab/hideout/opium den on Cray, Kismet’s luxurious resorts with their lavender seas and lilac skies, and the overwhelming, vibrant blizzard of activities and entertainment that dying Earth revels in to distract itself from its approaching end.
Once, hiding on an asteroid in the middle of a nebula’s rainbow cloud, she and Abel watched an old twentieth-century “movie” together, one with former lovers reunited unexpectedly in Casablanca.
If only I could see Abel one more time, she thinks. Without the weight of two worlds pressing down on us. When we could just… be.
“Noemi?” Mrs. Gatson’s smile is stiff at the corners, like a napkin starched into precise folds. Dark circles under her eyes hint at a sleepless night, and her voice is hoarse. Is she getting sick? Maybe she was crying for Esther; for the Gatsons, grief is private. They don’t share theirs with Noemi, and have shown no interest in helping with hers. “Do you want toast?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m distracted this morning.”
Mrs. Gatson’s more at ease once she has something to do and no longer has to look at Noemi directly. “No problems on base, I hope?”
Her foster parents know perfectly well that Noemi’s dealt with nothing but problems since her return. This is not a nice subject to discuss. The Gatsons only like to talk about nice things. When Esther was alive—so naturally, easily, genuinely good inside and out—conversations centered on her, and the sense of strain was less. Now every single chat feels like a test Noemi has to pass.
“Everything’s fine,” Noemi says.
Mr. Gatson walks in, and she startles. He looks terrible. He’s pale, visibly sweaty, and shambling along, his legs shaking. “Mary, I’m not—not shaking off that cold.”
Mrs. Gatson doesn’t go to him, but instead gestures to a chair. “I’ll get you some juice,” she replies, voice wavering.
“No, no, let me get it.” Noemi quickly pours a couple of glasses while Mrs. Gatson settles herself beside her husband. “You’re both coming down with something, looks like.”
“You might be next,” Mr. Gatson warns her. “Keep your distance and wash your hands, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.” Noemi gives him the glass and a smile. They do care for her, in their own remote way. They’d never want to see her come to harm.
But it will always be Mr. and Mrs. Gatson, never uncle and aunt, never any nicknames that would acknowledge they’ve spent as much time raising Noemi as her late parents did. They will never light up at the sight of her returning home. They’ll never hug her good-bye.
Mr. Gatson rubs his forehead. “Do we have any ginger tea?”
“I think we’re out, but I could go to the store for some,” Noemi offers. Until she receives her new assignment from Captain Baz, it’s not like she has anyplace more important to be.
“That would be good,” Mrs. Gatson says. That’s about as close as she gets to thank you. There is an unspoken
