wanted it to be his child; he wanted to be part of my universe. He wanted, in short, to be my true love. But he wasn’t. That could never work.
Then Roberta got an infection and I spent twelve hours by her cot, panicking. Infant mortality is almost unheard of these days, but there are viral infections that can damage a baby’s brain and cause behavioural problems later in life. These are almost undetectable and untreatable; some say the Cheo himself had been virally infected as a child. So I lived through twelve hours of fearing the worst.
But it was just meningitis, easily cured. I breathed easy and hugged my baby. Hera, the woman from Hecuba who spoke that night in the Pirates’ Hall, was on nursing duties. She made me sit down and drink some tea and lulled me to sleep with a gentle mantra. When I woke Hera was cradling my baby. I didn’t mind. It seemed right.
That’s how it began. Hera, like me, had sworn a vow of celibacy. Sex was too traumatic for her to even consider. And neither of us had lesbian orientation. But I didn’t want a lover, male or female. I wanted another parent for my child.
I wanted someone to share my joy at Roberta’s first smile. I wanted someone who didn’t mind me talking to them for long long hours about the new little funny little thing my baby had just done. Puking on my nose! Rolling from one wall to another! Having a really big shit! These were moments to be savoured, but also to be shared.
I could see the Captain didn’t approve of my new intimacy. But it was a shared love of unique intensity. A triangular affair of baby, woman, and woman.
Hera delights me with her gentleness, and her wryly acid humour. She is a born home-maker, and has transformed our spartan cabin into an oasis of rugs and wall furnishings and burning candles. She cooks for me, we play checkers together. We quiz each other on galactic phenomena. We even train together. Hera is a fierce and agile warrior. I have learned much from her; and I believe she has learned from me too.
And together we have raised my baby, Roberta. She is the most perfect baby ever born. Sometimes she cries and cries but she always falls asleep when I sing to her. I imagine what kind of child she will be. I hope she has blonde hair, like my sister. And Rob’s grace, and sense of humour. I hope she’ll be my best friend. She’ll tell me everything, and I’ll listen to her patiently, and I’ll laugh when she tells me silly jokes. I’ll care about her and about her friends. And my only regret is the knowledge that she is unlikely to ever live to be a woman, and to have a baby of her own.
I have done my best to keep her safe. I made the Captain concede that when battle eventually commences, the youngsters will be in the rearguard. Let the old-timers like us be in the first wave to die. Let us be the cannon fodder, and spare the children for as long as possible. And the Captain agreed, reluctantly, to this. But I’m aware that it’s a small, and a worthless, concession. The odds are massively against us; our enemies are legion; and most if not all of us will die.
Yet I am desperate for my one and only child to live for at least a little while after I die. I want her to savour the pain of grief, the agony of losing me. I long for that moment, for only when I am mourned, will I truly feel I have completed my life’s journey.
Smile for me, baby. Let me wipe your poo. Let me hug you and kiss your sweet cheeks and watch you feed till you are bloated.
And then when you are a woman, or very nearly a woman, grieve for me, my baby. When the moment of my death comes, as it inevitably will, honour and lament my demise, in those precious minutes or even hours before you, too, have to die.
Brandon
“Captain?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“What did Alliea say to you?”
“She had a request. I granted it.”
“Good.”
“Not good. Fuck off, please.”
“You shouldn’t get so melancholy, Cap’n. It’s bad for morale.”
The Captain stares at me. “Brandon,” he says.
“Yes?”
For the first time ever in dealing with the Captain, I fear for my life. There is a rage in his eyes that is less than sane. But he visibly chokes back his berserker rage.
“Leave me be, Brandon,” he says wearily.
“Yes, Cap’n.”
Lena Are you brooding?
Mulling. Reflecting. What about?
About love. I fear the Captain is madly, dangerously, obsessively in love with me. What? I mean, oh yes, I’m sure you’re right.
He tries to hide it of course. He always speaks roughly to me, and he has perfected an ornately sarcastic style with me. “Yes, Lena,” he’ll say, “we are your humble servants, unworthy to polish your slightest witticism.” Or: “How can we serve to further exalt you, O beloved mistress, in a manner that leaves us even more abased than we already, most wretchedly, are?” It’s all sham, of course, a show of rudeness to conceal an inner awe and longing. Indeed.
It does get wearisome though. Recall how I played my new concerto to a selected audience in my cabin, an inspired piece created as a homage to superstring resonance theory. Yes, you…
Indeed, I devised my own scale based on the string resonances of atomic structure; the first note is electron, the second note is electron-neutrino, the third is up quark, and so on and so forth. The parallels I created between musical resonances and particle resonances are, I concede, a little contrived. But I do consider it to be a profoundly revealing musical artefact.
But for days afterwards, Flanagan kept humming the melody. “Dum dum dum dum DUM DAH DAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.” But it wasn’t meant to be a tune! It is a musical symbol of the hidden structure of the Universe. I found it to be magnificent.
Thank you. And for all the flaws of my composition, it is better by far than those interminable bluesy dirges he plays. Repetitive three-chord transitions, sung in a grating pseudo-labouring-classes voice. How utterly pretentious and pathetic is that! Very.
Indeed. But I have to keep reminding myself – Flanagan is a relatively unsophisticated human being. I, by contrast, have lived on Earth; I have mastered two dozen languages; I have attended classical concerts in Prague and Vienna and New York; I have seen at first hand the great paintings of Picasso, Beril, Marotti and xander P. I am a cosmopolitan woman of the Universe.
Am I not? Sorry. Yes, indeed you are!
Flanagan, by contrast, grew up in a cave, and has spent his life in the company of pirates. He’s quite widely read, I concede, but essentially he’s a philistine.
But curiously, this is the quality that’s beginning to attract me. His rough-hewn, artless, naive nature. I feel that he is clay which I could mould. I could make something special out of this shaggy-haired foulmouthed kidnapping fool.
And we do have a wonderful banterflow. He insults me daily, and I mercilessly mock him back. “You need a shave,” I tell him, with devastating irony. Or: “You’re such a clod,” I argue, with rapier-sharp wit. Or: “Oh shut the fuck up you patronising cs mf!” You observe of course, my mastery of rhetorical irony?
He does have an annoying smile though. More sneer than smile, really. And he constantly doubts my version of history. He argues that Heimdall was authorised long before my tenure as President of Humanity. He points out
