Spectral Velocity

by Margo Bond Collins

  Finlay’s gaze dropped to her mouth, and his tongue ran along his own bottom lip briefly. The simple gesture, probably unconscious, sent an arrow of heat shooting to the pit of Cybele’s stomach. “Yeah,” he said, his voice husky. “I think we should go make sure the nanites did their job last week. We don’t want those joints getting gummed up with the iron oxide.”

  “Sounds good,” Cybele responded, her voice trembling a little in anticipation. Although she was certain no one was actually watching them at that moment, Cybele still found herself trying to move casually through the environment, stopping to check various readouts as she would have on any other day that she and Finlay had worked together.

  Nonetheless, when they climbed into the narrow cabin, she couldn’t remember a single number she had pulled from the systems they had passed. She shut the door behind her with a trembling hand.

  Once they were inside, Finlay turned to face her, his gaze sweeping across her entire body, and his eyes turning a darker, almost stormy gray.

  “Nice full-body suit,” he said with a smile.

  “How can you tell? I couldn’t figure out if you looked a little different because of my suit or because you were wearing yours.”

  “It’s a combination,” Finlay replied. “That super sharp and visual edge when we look at each other?” He waited for her to nod before he continued. “That’s actually a touch of feedback loop between the two suits.”

  “A feedback loop, huh?” Cybele blinked rapidly, a number of lascivious possible comments crossing through her mind as she stared at Finlay’s open face. Apparently, her face was as open as his, if the slow grin spreading across his features was anything to go by—he either knew exactly what she was thinking, or he was coming up with the same possibilities himself.

  “So,” he said slowly, drawing the word out. He worried at his lower lip with his teeth. Cybele found her gaze drawn inexorably to his mouth. “What was it we wanted to find out about the suits?” Finlay asked, that smile of his lighting up his face.

  “I’m pretty sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cybele said primly.

  “Oh, really? Let me show you then.” Finlay wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist and slid her closer to him, pulling her up so that she was almost sitting on his lap, half turned to face him.

  “I think I might be remembering,” she whispered.

  As before, the touch of his skin—or even the simulation of it—against hers sent sparks cascading throughout her entire body, so sharp and sudden that if she hadn’t experienced something similar simply from thinking about the man when she was alone, she might’ve suspected a malfunction of the suit.

  Twisting a little more so that she practically straddled him in his seat of the controllers’ cab, Cybele wrapped her arms around his neck and wound her fingers into his hair. This time, the points of contact in the VR setting were mimicked by the suit. She could actually feel his body pressed against hers, not simply through her hands but at every point—the sensation of his chest pressing against hers, the slight scrape as she adjusted her arms, caused her nipples to tighten, sending almost painful tremors of desire flashing through every part of her body. Sitting up high on her knees, she tilted her forehead down to touch his.

  “Something like this?” she asked softly.

  “Oh, it’s definitely a start.”

  With his enormous hands, Finlay spanned her hips, exerting a gentle pressure designed to slide her down the front of him until she settled comfortably and tightly against him, the suit exerting pressure at all the points that his body touched.

  “And that’s even closer,” she whispered, before pressing her lips against his. This time when she ran her tongue across the inside of his bottom lip, the suit replicated the pressure, the heat, the slight dampness, everything. And when he slid his own tongue into her mouth to tangle with hers, it was everything a kiss should be.

  Even so, they were tentative at first, gently exploring each other through the kiss.

  It didn’t take long, however, for them to add their hands to the exploration. And this time, the fibers of the VR suits they wore transmitted every sensation. When the Finlay’s thumbs brushed across her nipples, Cybele found herself arching toward him, silently begging for more. And Finlay obliged, cupping her breasts with both hands, lightly squeezing the nipples until she gasped.

  “Do you have the sensors turned up as high as they’ll go?” Finlay asked, his gray eyes heavy lidded and smoky as he gazed at her.

  Cybele swallowed convulsively. “I do. You?”

  He nodded without speaking and bent his head to take one of her avatar’s breasts into his mouth.

  Their avatars both wore clothes—Finlay’s a dark blue work shirt and pants, Cybele’s a black shift tunic over white leggings, a simple outfit she had deemed appropriate for almost every occasion that she might encounter in the VR situation on another planet—but with the full-body suits’ sensors turned up high, it felt as if she were wearing nothing at all.

  “God, I want you,” he whispered as he dropped kisses into the valley between her breasts.

  Back in her training unit on New Terra, Cybele had gone through specific modules on appropriate ways to use the virtual reality—and inappropriate ways. Sexual interaction with other people was high on that list. If a pilot on a long, solitary journey or project needed sexual relief, there were a number of VR programs in the ship’s library designed to take care of that.

  With this declaration, Finlay made it impossible to ignore the heat that had been growing between them.

  That was the first time they had manufactured a serious malfunction that disabled the recording programs throughout the system.

  The first time their avatars had come together in the dark.

  Even without the porn-rated suits, the experience left Cybele trembling.

  Often, later, she dreamed of that night.

  When she woke, she found it difficult to remember which was the dream of the past, and which was the present.

  Chapter 6

  After that night, when there was little work to be done, they often loaded a VR program of the galaxy and plotted their escape together—tracing out the routes to the known habitable planets, working to come up with solutions to the problem of the Gotha plague contagion.

  “The Rapunzel-320’s microbial production suites could produce enough to keep us safe for a lifetime,” Cybele argued. As the Rapunzel-320 completed the transfer, the two of them reclined on a slight hill—designed to appear to cradle their VR-suited bodies perfectly as they stared up at the night sky.

  “And if we have children? What about them? What if the Rapunzel were to break down? We’d have limited resources for repairs, and the Gotha plague is a long, slow, miserable death.” Finlay had been counting off the problems on his fingers as he enumerated them but stopped when he glanced over and saw Cybele’s face.

  “Children?” she asked in a low tone.

  He shrugged. “Maybe? I guess I’ve always assumed I’d have children. Didn’t you?”

  She nodded, hoping the VR suits didn’t perfectly transmit the image of the tears standing in her eyes. “Sure.”

  Children. How had the thought never occurred to her?

  Finlay was already changing the subject, but she promised herself she’d check the databases for information about children born to first-generation Gotha carriers. She hadn’t studied carefully enough to be sure, but her memory suggested that their survival rate wasn’t good. It wasn’t an issue now—not with generations of Gotha survivors behind them—but if Finlay passed the disease on to her, it could become a problem.

  Assuming any of this was more than an elaborate fantasy.

  “What about Hawking-1016?” Finlay asked, zooming in on a particular quadrant of the night sky. “There’s a habitable planet there.”

  “Have you seen the new lights obscuring that third quadrant?”

  “You mean the Eastern Stars? Yes. Wh
at do you make of them?”

  A wave of dizziness swept over Cybele, and she held one hand up to her forehead before shaking her head to dispel the feeling. “I don’t know. My sensor readings of them don’t make any sense. What about your people?”

  Finlay paused. “Our scientists are calling them reflections from a cloud of stellar dust passing between us and the Hawking planet.”

  Wait. That didn’t make sense.

  Did it?

  Cybele sat up, pushing her palms against the grass, shaking her hair out so it fell to her waist. The cool, simulated air brushed against her cheek, soothing her. “Yes. Stellar dust. That must be it.”

  As she spoke, the dizziness passed entirely.

  * * *

  Finlay was distracted the next time they met for their VR work session. After he had made the third mistake in as many minutes, Cybele asked him what was wrong.

  Without answering, Finlay pulled up a control panel in front of him, and in a series of rapid motions—too fast for Cybele to follow, and almost too fast for Finlay’s hands, it seemed—he began changing the parameters of the program.

  Within seconds, the VR program was reporting a loop back to headquarters, in case anyone should be paying attention there. As far as anyone in the control booth might know, Cybele and Finlay were continuing to carefully feed the pump line into the water system.

  “I think something… weird… is going on,” Finlay said, his voice low and urgent.

  “Weird how?”

  “I’m not entirely certain, but I think it’s something they don’t want you to know about.”

  “Me in particular? And who are they?”

  “I don’t know. Not exactly.” Finlay shrugged, but his shoulders were tight, and his hands trembled above the readout, ready to knock them back into real recording time with very little notice. “People working above my pay grade, for sure. My boss. Her boss. Maybe all the way up the chain, possibly through the entire government.”

  Why do you think they’re trying to avoid me seeing something?”

  “Because they’re very careful to work on it only when the Rapunzel-320 is precisely on the other side of the planet. Every time we finish a round, and you leave, the Witch comes in and checks—not on your work, but on your route. Oh, she disguises it as checking to see when you be back, but we all know there’s something more to it.” Finlay’s voice trailed off.

  “And what’ve you noticed while I’m gone?” Cybele prodded.

  “I’m not entirely certain. But whatever it is has about half the department in a very quiet uproar as they work on it. I think it must be a weapon.”

  “Why would Old Earth need a weapon? Particularly one that is so top-secret.” She shook her head, puzzled. “New Terra is four years away by all our current means of travel. And Old Earth doesn’t even have much of a space program. Just a few shuttles maintained in case any kind of disaster ever causes someone from the surface to need to come up to the ship.”—Even though they both knew that such a trip would mean exile from the rest of humanity forever, for both the traveler and whoever was manning the ship at that point.

  “And yet they have some of our world’s best spaceflight theorists wandering around the buildings late at night.”

  That was the only warning they had.

  * * *

  The next week, as the Rapunzel-320 slipped into geosynchronous orbit over Finlay’s city, the computer’s voice woke Cybele from a deep sleep. “Shuttle-docking procedure initiated at terminal D.”

  Shuttle-docking procedure?

  Blinking sleep from her eyes, Cybele shook her head. Her feet thunked to the floor beside her bunk. “Who’s trying to dock?”

  “Currently unknown.”

  Cybele had never loathed the precise, impersonal female voice of the computer as much as she did right at this moment. She stood and began struggling into her clothing. “Where did the shuttle originate?”

  “Trajectory suggests the origin of the shuttle is the planet Old Earth, which we are currently orbiting at a distance of—”

  “Pause, computer.” She didn’t need to know her position relative to Old Earth. She needed to know what the hell a Old Earther shuttle was doing trying to dock with the Rapunzel-320.

  The surprise had finally woken her up completely, and she left her quarters to head toward terminal D.

  In the outer corridor, however, she paused.

  If this were someone from Old Earth, it was her duty to block the shuttle from docking—and if she couldn’t, she had the authority to turn her weapons on it.

  But what if it were Finlay?

  All I have to do is ask. No matter how hard she tried to force herself, however, Cybele couldn’t find her voice enough to pose the question.

  Nor could she bring herself to fire upon a Old Earther shuttle.

  That left only quarantine and separation. Assuming there was anyone on the shuttle, at all. She inhaled deeply.

  Only one way to find out.

  As she marched resolutely toward the docking terminal, she found herself examining the Rapunzel-320 as if with new eyes—even the exposed piping couldn’t keep the white walls of the outer corridor from seeming entirely sterile and cold.

  * * *

  Cybele marched through the hallways, making her way toward the terminal. Although she did her best not to think of who might be waiting there at the end for her, she couldn’t help but wonder. Part of her hoped it was Finlay. But that would mean something terrible had happened, either down on the surface, or with Finlay himself. She hated the thought of that almost as much as she hated the thought of someone else entirely showing up, intruding into her solitary life.

  She found her step slowing, almost without her own volition, as she got closer to the terminal hatchway.

  What should I do if someone is actually there? Do I let him in, or do I send whoever it is back?

  The real danger wasn’t even to Cybele or to the mystery passenger of the docking shuttle.

  The danger was to New Terra.

  And that was the possibility that Cybele had never allowed herself to truly consider.

  If Finlay came to her and infected her, she would never be able to go home again.

  The Gotha disease was deadly, yes. But it was controllable. Cybele would survive. However, she would never again be able to leave Old Earth. She would be a pilot who had been grounded. A space traveler bound to one planet. All her life she had wanted to travel among the stars. Her willingness to lose eight years of her life, to come home only two years older to a planet that had aged 10 years while she was away, never bothered her because she believed she was destined to spend her life traveling. She had already said goodbye to everything that mattered to her on New Terra. She fully intended to take another berth out on the next outgoing ship, take the next available assignment.

  Finlay seemed to understand this. In all their discussions of ways to be together, he had never once suggested that she consider staying behind.

  It wasn’t even certain that their governments would allow her to emigrate. In her heart, Cybele knew that was the real reason they were never supposed to fall in love.

  She paused at the hatch leading to terminal D.

  If I open it, everything changes.

  But if I don’t open it, and nothing ever changes, I’ll always wonder what might’ve been.

  With new resolution, she entered the code that released the seal—after tapping in the numbers that would flood the other side with air.

  Chapter 7

  On the other side of the hatch, Cybele waited inside the ship-side containment area of the airlock. She could see a matching space through a portal in the sealed doorway that was the last bastion of germ filtration between her and the shuttle that had just docked.

  She could see only a portion of that shuttle. Whatever it was, it used metals much like the ones she was used to, so it was almost certainly either New Terran or Old Earth-based. When the door slid open, Cybele’s entire body tense
d up.

  The figure that stepped through the open hatchway and toward the door separating her from it was encased in a space suit and helmet designed to withstand a total lack of gravity and atmosphere. From this distance, she couldn’t tell who it might be. When the shuttle’s door had opened, the Rapunzel-320 had turned on emergency lights, so she could only see a little in the dim red lighting.

  “It’s okay,” Cybele muttered to the ship, fighting the urge to stroke its walls as if it were a nervous animal. If she opened the panel in front of her, it was likely her ship would send out a full-blown distress call, both to the Old Earther government and to her own—particularly if Gotha germs were detected.

  As the figure reached the panel, Finlay pressed his face plate up against the window, his hand splayed on the glass beside it.

  He didn’t speak.

  He didn’t have to.

  They both knew the stakes, knew what would happen if they went through with this.

  * * *

  The first time they discussed stealing the Rapunzel-320 and running away, they had just finished dropping the pipe into the water supply and were waiting companionably for it to finish sending its load of microbial world-savers.

  “What will you do when you get back to New Terra?” Finlay asked. It was the first time he had brought up the reality that their VR interludes were far from permanent.

  “I guess it’ll depend on what the fleet wants me to do for them next.”

  “I thought the officers who took on the Old Earth duty could muster out when they got home. One and done, and all that.”

  Cybele glanced around the virtual simulation. Originally, those in power had deemed it a waste of resources to create a detailed environment for the pilots and the ground crew to work in. It hadn’t taken long for the first pilot to lose his mind. The fleet psychologists and psychiatrists had said it was akin to being in a permanent sensory deprivation state. The government employee on the ground side had no trouble. He or she simply completed the duty, then went home—even if “home” was the one inhabitable area of an otherwise crumbled infrastructure, it was still part of a community. But for the pilots, a work rotation was the closest they came to human interaction, and having that interaction take place in a simulated environment that matched their expectations of the real world allowed them to better focus and take care of themselves psychologically.