Sight Unseen

by AnonYMous

  He was not, strictly speaking, the most gorgeous man she’d ever met. But he had extraordinarily appealing features, the kind that would make one turn to him first in a crowd of strangers, whether to seek help for a broken landglider or a broken nation.

  A burden-carrier. The rare breed who said yes to impossible tasks and succeeded somehow; the mythical hero who in more primitive times would have inspired humble petitioners to journey for months—years—to lay their troubles at his blessed feet.

  She’d once wanted to be that. Sometimes she still did.

  Her half of the platform rose first. There was an odd ticklish feeling on her face as she moved into the dance sphere. She closed her eyes instinctively.

  From the outside, the gravity-free interior of the sphere had looked watery, like an early morning sky that promised rain. But when she opened her eyes again, she was bathed in light that was the plush gold of sunset on an oxygen-rich world.

  A dodecahedron frame built of translucent struts provided anchors inside the enclosed space. She pushed off the nearest strut and sailed upward.

  Halfway across the sphere she turned around and let out the still-folded ribbon streamer she held in her hand. It jetted in her wake, a long white contrail. She would look very stark, she thought, a woman in black and white, receding and unsmiling.

  His loose-fitting tunic billowed about him, all tension and drama. The color of it, a dense, relentless white, metamorphosed into a hue that was warm and luminous in the golden saturation of the dance sphere.

  He let fly the red streamer—and not simply set one end free, as she had done, but impelled it forward in a great spiral that framed him as he glided toward her.

  She had several choices in how to proceed: she could lead him on a merry chase around the dance sphere; she could reverse direction on a nearby strut and meet him halfway; or, since his velocity was greater, she could continue on her current trajectory and let him catch up.

  She chose the last. A few seconds later, he was by her side. As he was about to sail past her, his right arm reached across her midsection. Forward momentum converted to angular velocity. They spun gently to the opening notes of a slow helix, revolving around each other, a wide red-and-white coil of ribbon streamers about them.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. He had lovely eyes, intelligent and empathetic. But she did not miss the determination beneath all that courtly sweetness: he was a man who achieved what he wanted. Peace, democracy, and now, her?

  But she failed to see what he could gain by marrying her. She had no pedigree, wealth, or connections—none that would matter to him, in any case. And though she was the most honored person on Pax Cara, compared to Terra Illustrata, Pax Cara was but an insignificant backwater settlement.

  They changed directions every time they came up against the frame of the dance sphere, and changed holds every time they changed directions. Occasionally she glimpsed the ballroom floor above her, the milling crowd of guests like stalactites; but she trained in a gyroscope regularly, so neither her head nor her stomach rebelled.

  “My name is Eleian,” he said, as if she didn’t already know.

  “Vitalis,” she replied.

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  There were other dancers inside the sphere now, dozens of them. Ribbons fluttered in their paths, bands of agate and tourmaline. They caressed her face, cool and swift as undersea creatures—or what she imagined undersea creatures must be like, since the oceans of Pax Cara were off-limits to the inhabitants of the planet.

  “Why do you wish to marry me, Eleian of Terra Illustrata?” she said, without further preamble.

  “Because you are brave and I admire courage,” said one of the most courageous men of her generation.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that he of all people did not see her for who she truly was. She almost wished he’d said he admired her looks instead; she was a pretty enough woman. As shallow a virtue as beauty was, it was honest to a degree, unlike her courage, or the lack thereof.

  “Do you have some sort of fetish?” She was no stranger to emotional fetishes, either her own or those of her admirers. “I’m sorry to ask such a question, but we’re speaking of the rest of my life here.”

  All sixteen days of it. She laughed, a short, dry cackle at her own morbidity.

  He shook his head. “The death you face holds no appeal for me—sexual or otherwise. I’ve come too close to death too many times; I’ve had enough.”

  She believed him. There were those who sought the excitement of living on the edge. But as far as she knew, after the tumultuous years of Terra Illustrata’s power transition, he’d led a hermit’s life, away from the glare of the limelight, and performed no further feats of conspicuous heroism.

  “Then why?” Why would anyone want to marry a woman whose only value was in her imminent death?

  “The Quiet Girl,” he said.

  The Quiet Girl was a documentary film about her, shot ten years ago, when she’d been seventeen. It had been produced as a summer project by a pair of student filmmakers and submitted to a Sector-wide vis-media festival on a lark. To the surprise of everyone involved, the film had been selected for inclusion at the festival; to their further shock, it had won the grand prize.

  The film’s subsequent dissemination had garnered Vitalis a degree of interstellar fame previously unheard of on Pax Cara. She’d turned down each and every one of the invitations to go off-world that poured in. Modesty, or at least the appearance of it, was an important part of her persona.

  But she had enjoyed it, the fame, and the adulation that had come with it.

  “What about The Quiet Girl?” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice.

  “I saw it when I was nineteen—and struggling with the course of my life. I had my own remote refuge. Our princely hold of Mundi Luminare was at peace. I did not need to involve myself in distant political turmoil. Moreover, I was afraid: I’d had little dealing with the darker side of life.

  “I was inclined toward cowardice until I watched your story. Your determination and wisdom shamed me. And you faced certain death, whereas I faced only the possibility of bodily harm.”

  Stop, she wanted to say. Stop. That girl no longer exists.

  But she listened with a stark hunger.

  “And whenever I thought my courage might fail me, I would watch it again. I can recite word for word what you said near the end of the film: ‘I’d have liked to live a thousand years. And yet I can’t say I regret being chosen for the Task. I live more incandescently because of it. And I’m not afraid to die when I have lived so.’”

  She had put on The Quiet Girl within the past year, hoping to find a renewal of courage in her unquestioning bravery of old. But all she had felt, as she’d watched herself give that little speech, had been a numb despair.

  He brought them into a closer spin. “It would be a privilege if you would accept my suit and allow me to share your days.”

  Her days. All sixteen of them, unless she managed her escape.

  The summit took place on a palace-class Intergalactica liner moored approximately half an astronomical unit from Terra Antiqua, the primary moon of which hosted the largest transit nexus this half of the Sector. And while getting into the summit was difficult, getting out was less complicated. The liner was equipped with hoppers, in case princely staff needed to run errands planet-side, as the liner itself could hardly be expected to house engagement mementos that would appeal to every taste.

  One of those hoppers could drop her off on Terra Antiqua’s lesser moon, where she’d purchase a dozen new identities and a new face at the black market. After that, she could go far away, out of the Sector, out of this arm of the galaxy altogether, to places where people had never heard of Pax Cara—where she would never learn what happened to it because of her desertion.

  Practical, executable plans. They did not include room for a husband, let alone one who expect
ed to watch reverently as she marched to her doom.

  “I’m deeply honored by your proposal, Your Highness,” she said. “Especially as I have admired you from afar for many years. But I’m not looking for a worshipper.”

  “I do not recall saying that I planned to worship you, my lady,” he said. “But I am willing, when we are alone and unclothed.”

  Something in her thudded: an unexpected careening of desire.

  In her late teens, she’d been a hedonist who’d overdosed on all the pleasures of the senses with the abandon of, well, someone about to die. Her lovers had been many and varied—fucking incandescently, as it were.

  Then a strange restlessness had taken over her, followed by an insidious belief that the Pax Cara Event was not her true purpose in life. That there was something else she must do, a task of such mind-boggling significance that her soul would be ripped apart if she did not set out on it.

  Yet she had no idea what it was, this monumental mission.

  Of course it had been only her mind playing games with her, but the mind made its own reality. She tried to reject the notion of this other purpose as a dangerous self-indulgence, as cowardice in camouflage. But like a tenacious parasite, it refused to go away.

  Slowly she’d begun to doubt everything about her destiny as the Chosen One: when all the pretty words had been stripped away, what was it except crude human sacrifice? Then doubt had metastasized into fear and anger.

  In the early days of her crisis, she’d fucked more, not less. But the mellow, happy feelings produced by a solid orgasm had vanished. After a while she’d lost all ability to concentrate during lovemaking. If anything, her inner turmoil became starker and more suffocating when she went through the motions of coupling out of politeness—she could scarcely order her lover(s) to leave when she’d been the one who orchestrated the encounters in the first place, in the hope that sex would lighten her heart and lift her mind out of the dark bog that had begun to swallow it whole.

  It had been years since she had last lain with anyone.

  “I’ve never pictured you as a lover of women, Your Highness,” she said.

  He was a saint. And saints didn’t copulate, did they?

  “Nothing to it,” he said. “It isn’t all that difficult.”

  She chuckled, another unexpected reaction. She hadn’t found anything funny in a very long time. “I’m afraid I’ll need a greater assurance of your proficiency, sir.”

  “And how may I grant you this greater assurance, my lady?”

  “A personal demonstration would be the most straightforward means, Your Highness,” she said, mimicking his mock-serious tone.

  He smiled. She had never seen him smile, not in person, not in all the pictures of him available on the subnets. For a moment she was lost in the power of it, the sheer aura of nobility he radiated. Then his lashes lowered, his smile turned inward and secretive, and she wanted him with a force her increasingly apathetic body could barely stand.

  No, she didn’t want him, only his saintliness. She wanted to ruin it, to ravish him until his equanimity, his dignity, and his courage all lay in tatters.

  Or maybe just his virginity. He had no more slept with a woman than she had with a fish.

  “You are aware, are you not, my lady, that there is a strict no-fraternization policy in place for the duration of the summit?” he said, still smiling.

  “And you seem very glad of it, since it will excuse you from any personal demonstration.” She pushed away from him—and let him pull her back until she was encircled by his arms, their eyes locked. “Truly, I expected more candid answers from one so universally esteemed as you, sir. You’ve never made love to a woman, have you?”

  “No,” he admitted, his gaze steady.

  Steady and all-seeing, a part of her thought, for no reason she could name.

  “What about men? Or the rock gazelles that must abound near your mountain fastness?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she said. “I’ve seen pictures of rock gazelles and they are both beautiful and lissome.”

  “I prefer solitude, much as I may pine after the noble gazelles.”

  “You prefer solitude to such an extent that you have never undertaken the most fundamental human deed. Why give it up for me?”

  “To know you as I’ve always wanted to, but never had the chance.”

  She hadn’t heard words as perfect in a long time. And he spoke with the lyrical beauty of stars falling. Mere syllables acquired such depth and luster, as if they were long-buried gemstones at last faceted and set in gold.

  “No,” she said. Now they were facing the same direction, their arms around each other. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but he was a good bit thinner than she’d supposed. The slenderness of his waist, the angularity of his hipbone—he must be of a naturally very slim build. “But do know that I would have loved to make love to you.”

  Their eyes met again. His pupils dilated. His breaths became irregular. So he was capable of feeling desire—desire for her, at least.

  Her vanity was much gratified, but a new doubt skittered across the surface of her mind. Dilated pupils or not, his gaze remained clear and empathetic. Where did that empathy come from? And what was it for? If he truly believed her as brave and selfless as he’d proclaimed her to be, then shouldn’t he be regarding her in awe, rather than human understanding?

  “Would you give me a chance if you could have your cake and eat it too?” he asked softly.

  “Didn’t you just remind me of the no-fraternization policy?” Her tone was more arch than she intended.

  “There is a way around it, a sanctioned connubial assay—a trial marriage from which you could walk away the morning after.”

  She snorted. “If there is such a thing, why haven’t I heard of it before?”

  “The last one granted was over two hundred standard years ago.”

  “And you plan to accomplish the improbable and obtain one for us?”

  “I already have. It needs only your accord to become effective.”

  She laughed out of pure astonishment. Then realization hit her. “Did you arrange for me to come here?”

  The invitation had been entirely unexpected. Who would want a marriage that lasted half a standard month? But she had not looked too deeply into the matter: her entire escape plan had crystalized the moment she’d scanned the invitation.

  “I can’t say I arranged for it, but when asked, I did say you are the only one I would consider marrying.”

  Had he been anyone else, she’d have deemed his action a close relative of stalking. But he was Saint Eleian of Terra Illustrata, whose true motive she still did not understand. “What’s in it for you?”

  “The ultimate prize: a life lived incandescently.”

  She scoffed. “You will have to do much better than that. You’ve lived your life more incandescently than anyone else I can think of.”

  “Fine, then. I am the most admired man of my generation. There are only four women in this Sector who are worthy of my hand. One is old enough to be my grandmother. Two are married. So that leaves you.”

  That made more sense, but still nowhere near enough. Before she could ask her next question, however, the slow helix came to an end.

  “The two of us will lead the exit,” he reminded her, linking their hands together.

  “Which style of exit should we perform?”

  There were as many varieties of exits as there were dances. Some elegant, some athletic, some spectacularly suicidal.

  “This is my first time in a dance sphere,” he said. “So, the simplest.”

  They leveraged off each other and pushed apart. She found purchase on the dodecahedron frame and collected the long white ribbon that came in after her.

  A bevy of princesses joined her—she felt like a raven in a flock of macaws. At the opposite pole of the dance sphere, the princes’ dress uniforms were no less resplendent. Eleian stood out in his celestial white, a seraph amon
g gaudy mortals.

  Then he launched himself from the frame and dove toward her. Around her the princesses sighed, a collective release of breaths. Vitalis had always been drawn toward men who exuded sexual charisma. He did not radiate any such, but the sight of him mesmerized her all the same.

  She remembered the subcast she’d once seen of him, standing alone and unarmed before the steps of parliament. He’d evinced such valor and resolve that the mercenaries who had come to storm the place, with air and artillery support, had not dared to open fire. Because to harm him would have incited the wrath of an otherwise cowed populace, who loved his courage and goodness with the desperate hope of the perennially downtrodden.

  How many mortal women had the chance to lie with an angel?

  Briefly she was ashamed of the lewd direction of her thoughts—very briefly. Virgins, after all, were meant to be deflowered.

  She leaped up and joined him midair. Together they calibrated their trajectory until they centered their exit at the aperture.

  She landed lightly on her feet. He struggled with his balance. But she held firmly onto his arm and he wobbled only once.

  The light outside the dance sphere felt dim and misty. The entire ballroom appeared muted, like a holovision tuned to only half the usual saturation of color. For a moment his complexion, otherwise a lovely bronze, seemed wan and grey, the kind produced by extreme ill health.

  She did not have a chance to examine him more closely; they had to vacate the landing platform to make room for couples exiting after them. Attendants had formed an avenue beyond the carpeted ramp that led off the landing platform. They walked arm-in-arm down the avenue, as if on a royal promenade, until all the couples in the dance sphere had exited and lined up similarly.

  The partners turned to face each other. Now his color looked more normal—her eyes must have adjusted to the light. They joined hands in the traditional end-of-dance salute.

  “If tomorrow morning you do not wish to remain married to me, you leave. What do you have to lose?”

  What did she have to lose? Time, for one. There was a nine-hour gap between the end of the ball and the beginning of the next day’s festivities. Her escape would be noticed that much sooner if she waited until morning.