by J. S. Volpe
* * *
She awoke six hours later, sat up, looked around. Reynard sat at the round white table in front of the display panel, which he had turned on low, allowing just enough soft white light to filter in around the edges of the drawn curtain for him to play Twelve’s Delight, a variety of solitaire that utilized a deck of 144 cards.
“Hi,” he said as she blinked at him.
With a small frown, she looked down to check her clothes, then back up at him, her expression a little perplexed. “Um, hi.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I could get you something. The kyeta juice is especially good.” He nodded at a nearby glass that sported congealing traces of a green liquid on its interior and around its rim.
“No, thanks,” she said.
She climbed out of bed and came over to the table. After silently watching the ever-changing columns, rows, and crosses of the game for a minute, she sat down opposite him.
“You ever play this?” he asked as he drew a new card—the Purple Bird—and looked for a place to put it.
“No. Cards games aren’t really my thing.”
He set the Purple Bird on the Black Crown, then added both of them to the Fortune pile. Next he moved the Orange Door next to the Green Stone. This freed up the Silver Sword, which went atop the Blue Sphere, and those two, too, went into the pile.
With no more available moves in the layout, he drew another card from the stock. Yellow Heart. Perfect. He set it atop the Red Hand at the bottom of the only open column.
As he placed these two cards in the Fortune pile, Solace cleared her throat and said, “Can I ask you something?”
He tensed, knowing that when someone asks if they can ask something, the thing they want to ask probably isn’t good. He looked up to find that she was eyeing him with a sad, somewhat rueful expression.
“Sure,” he said, drawing another card. Gray Eye. Shit.
“Was that you in Nioedo? Back in the 7400s?”
That was exactly what he had been afraid she would ask. He hesitated, caught between the warring impulses of lying and telling the truth. Then he realized that the fact of the war itself, and the telltale hesitation it produced, was already the declaration of the winner.
“I thought so,” she said, and gave a faint sigh that was little more than a minute shift of her chest and shoulders.
Unable to keep his eyes on her, he dropped his gaze to the game and drew another card: Brown Star. Interesting.
“If you meant to hurt me, you succeeded.” She emitted a small humorless laugh. “You succeeded very well. You caught me at a…a vulnerable time. The man I’d been with for nearly a decade had died a few months earlier.”
“Oh. I…I’m sorry.”
She nodded, looking down at her hands, which sat folded on the tabletop. Her nails were plain and pink. She must have deactivated the nanites at some point.
“I hadn’t dated at all since then,” she said, “hadn’t even felt like it. Frankly I’d been a complete mess. I was finally getting over it, ready to move on, when you popped up, except of course I didn’t know for sure it was you. Either way…” Her voice trailed off. After a pause, she heaved another, deeper sigh. “I understand why you did it. I do. And I can’t really blame you. The thing with the T-mails—I’m sure that hurt you quite a bit, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. I knew it would hurt you, but…” She shook her head. “I had to. Some of the things you said…”
“Like what? I never could figure out why you disappeared on me like that.”
She shrugged as if it were unimportant now, as if too much time had passed for the answer to be meaningful. Which was true.
“It was just…some things you said struck a nerve. It made me realize we didn’t know each other half as well as we thought we did.”
“Does anybody?”
She stared at him for a long moment, giving the question more thought than he expected or even wanted. He was suddenly afraid she would say yes.
Instead of answering, she sighed once more and lowered her eyes to the cards arrayed on the table.
“I’m sorry I did that,” she said.
“You could have tried talking to me if you had a problem with something.” His gaze roved over her face as she continued examining the cards. He now found himself wishing she would have answered the question after all.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry too. About, you know, Nioedo. It was…cruel.”
She nodded, never raising her eyes from the table.
He watched her watching the unchanging layout a moment longer, then drew another card. Prismatic Book. Excellent. He placed it atop the White Tower, then added them to the Fortune pile. This unblocked the Yellow Crown, which he moved onto the Brown Star. Those two also went into the pile. There were only about two dozen cards left now. He was amazed he had gotten this far. This was the one game he had never won without cheating.
“Yeah, well, we’ve both hurt each other now,” he said. “Does that make us grown-ups finally?”
She looked up sharply, blinking, surprised that he had made a joke, albeit a rather feeble one. Then she laughed.
“I think perhaps it does,” she said.
He moved the White Crown onto the Red Eye and added both of them to the pile. He turned over the last card in the stock. Prismatic Star. So that’s where it was. Figures it would be the last one. Still, he had been doing great without it. He set it next to the Green Sphere, then added both the latter card and the Red Bird beneath it to the Fortune pile.
As he looked for a new spot to place the Prismatic Star, he said, “I must say, it’s kind of a surprise that we wound up having this intimate little heart-to-heart.”
“How so?”
“Well, I mean, after Giv-Golos I half figured you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me ever again.”
She cocked her head and gave him a puzzled smile. “Why? Because of that ‘bitchy’ remark you made?”
“Uh, well, no. Because, you know…you found out. About me. What I do.”
She gawked at him a moment. Then she smiled as if he had said something endearingly ridiculous.
“What?” Reynard asked, squirming self-consciously.
“Reynard, I’ve known about that since Drell.”
Now it was his turn to gawk.
“You what?”
“Seriously, did you really think I wouldn’t hear about the guy who tried to con the government? It was all anyone could talk about for weeks. And given that the description of the culprit sounded quite a bit like you, and given also how you failed to show up for our scheduled meeting the very day the culprit was believed to have fled town…well, I mean, I’m not completely stupid.”
After gaping at her a moment more, he let out a little laugh. “Son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “That’s…” He froze, his smile dying away. “That’s why you’re always disappearing on me, isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth then paused, not sure what to say or how to talk about something she had always assumed to be understood but tacit.
“I’m sorry. It’s just…” She moved her shoulders in a vague shrug as she fished about for the right words. “I don’t know what to do with you, Reynard.”
He lowered his gaze and stared at the cards in silence for a long moment. When he looked back up, he had his coolest, cockiest smile affixed to his face, the smile of a man not a single thing in the universe could touch.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I wouldn’t know what to do with me either.”
She smiled back at him. He pretended he didn’t see something sad in her eyes.
As he returned to his game, scanning the remaining cards in search of the best move, he said, “We’ll be reaching Pompulop 9 in a couple of hours.”
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I should probably think about being on my way. I still have to pack.”
“Yeah.”
He shifted the Green Bird two spaces left, an action t
hat unlocked a whole sequence of moves he felt sure would win him the game.
But it didn’t. The shifting of cards to the Fortune pile stopped dead with only four cards left on the table. Reynard sank back in his chair with a groan.
“Problem?” Solace asked, amused.
“Stupid game,” he said. “It’s unwinnable.”
“Couldn’t you, like, go back a few moves and do them over again differently or something? I know it’s technically cheating, but I won’t tell anyone.”
“No, it’s not anything I did. Hell, I pretty much played a perfect game. It’s just the way the cards fell when they were dealt. See, I can’t remove either of these two topmost cards without one of the two underneath them. If the cards in either stack were switched around, I’d be fine, but…” He shook his head.
“Sorry,” she said, still looking amused. “Maybe the next game’ll be better.”
“Yeah…”
She rose. “I’d better go.”
He rose too, and walked her to the door. They stopped in the doorway, facing each other.
“Hey,” he said, “maybe we could actually stay in touch this time around.”
She winced. “I hate to tell you this…”
He sighed, grinning. “How did I know this was coming?”
“It’s just, my mission for the Outreach Society is taking me to GC229, which is way beyond the jurisdiction of the Intergalactic Senate. I’ll be out of reach of all standard com contact for at least two years.”
“Yeah, I figured it’d be something like that. I’d give you a com number you could reach me at, but…” He shrugged. “Well, I never keep the same com number that long. Occupational hazard.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, good luck with your mission.”
“Thanks. And thanks for…everything.”
She rose up on tip-toes and kissed him softly on the side of the mouth.
“Till next time,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
They shared one last smile, and then she turned and left.
Reynard stood there staring at the closed door for a minute, then walked slowly back to the round white table. After surveying the remains of the game, he started gathering up the cards to put them away.
12
Across the Universe
12013 A.C.