Starborne (43 page)

“
Forces,”
Elizabeth says. “
I wonder, is that one of the categories of angels?”
She counts on her fingers. “
Choirs, Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers
—
Powers, that would be just about the same as For
ces
—”

The year-captain leans forward and says quietly to Noelle, “
Are you able to give us any kind of description in words of what you exper
i
enced?”

“
No.”

“
How far from the ship were you when you began to perceive them?”

“
I can
’
t tell you that either. Noth
ing makes sense out there. Certainly not distance. It
’
s all just one infinite featureless gray blur, just like what you say you see through the viewplate, but going on and on and on.”

“
Did they seem relatively close, at least?”
he asks.

Noelle turns the pa
lms of her hands upward and outward, a gesture signifying helplessness. “
I can
’
t say. There
’
s nothing like
‘
close
’
or
‘
far
’
out there. Everything is the same distance from everything else. I don
’
t know whether I was in the tube or out of it when I saw the
m
.”

“
And yet you could distinguish relative sizes, at least. These things were
big
.”

“
Bigger than me, yes. Much bigger. Immense. That was easy enough to tell. I felt enormous power. It was like standing at the edge of a g
i
gantic furnace. I could hear it roa
ring.”

“
One furnace, or many?”
Huw asks.

“
I don
’
t know. I just don
’
t know. Sometimes it felt like just one, sometimes I thought there were thousands of them all around me.”
N
o
elle gives them a faint, ashen-faced smile. “
You
’
re all trying to get me to put w
hat I felt into concrete understandable terms, but that just isn
’
t possible. All I can tell you is that I went out there and after a little while I felt something,
something
, very large, very powerful, a huge radiant source of energy. If that
’
s what angels
are like, then I encountered an angel. I don
’
t know what meeting an angel is supposed to be like. Or how important it is to call what I met by any sort of name. I only know that there was
something
out there and I think that it
’
s the something that
’
s inte
rfering with the transmissions.”

“
Will you want to try contacting it again?”
the year-captain asks ge
n
tly.

“
Not right now.”

“
I understand. Later on, though?”

“
Of course. I
’
m not going to stop here. I can
’
t. But not now
—
not
—
now
—”

Leon says, “
We should let h
er rest.”

The year-captain nods. “
Yes. Absolutely.”
He signals to the others, and they begin to leave. “
Come,”
he says to Noelle. “
I
’
ll take you back to your cabin.”

Ordinarily she bridles at being offered help in getting around
the ship. Not today, though. She gets slowly to her feet and he slips his arm around her shoulders, and they walk together down the corridor, slowly, very slowly.

He halts at the door of the cabin. He does not attempt to go in with her, nor does she invite
him to.

Softly he says, “
Was it very scary?”

“
Scary and wonderful, both. I
’
ll go out there and do it again when I
’
ve had a chance to rest.”

“
I don
’
t want you to harm yourself, Noelle.”

“
As long as I rest enough between each attempt, I
’
ll be all right.”

“
A
nd if you should make contact, real contact, and the power turns out to be too strong for you to handle
—
?”

“
Semele?”

“
Semele, yes.”

“
I looked the story up, you know. It
’
s in the myth section of the a
r
chives, exactly the way you told it to me, except that y
ou left out the part about Zeus hiding the baby in his thigh. But that isn
’
t important. Semele dies, yes. But first she gets to be the lover of a god. And the mother of another one. And she lives forever in the myth.”

“
That
’
s all well and good. But you mus
tn
’
t take any unnecessary risks.”

“
These are necessary risks. It has to be done.”

“
Yes,”
the year-captain says. “
It does have to be done, doesn
’
t it?
—
I should let you rest, now, Noelle.”

She goes inside. He closes the cabin door behind her and walks slowl
y up the corridor to his own room.

***

There is great general excitement and no little bewilderment over Noelle
’
s discovery outside the ship; but then a few days go by, and a few more, and she does not make a new attempt at reaching the angels. She is not
ready yet, she says. She must find ways of insulating herself against the immense magnitude of the force that she will encounter.

And so they wait, and discuss, and speculate, and wonder. What else can they do?

During this time the ship continues to head t
oward Hesper
’
s Planet C, and Hesper continues to fill them with his usual torrent of optimistic details about their upcoming destination
’
s great potential as a settlement world. It is, he says, the large and impressive sixth planet of a large and impressi
v
e golden-red sun. It has, he declares, all the right properties of atmosphere and gravitation and temperature and such, and a crust that he is completely certain will yield a richly rewarding abundance of every useful element known to the universe. He bel
i
eves that Planet C has oceans and rivers and lakes, and a fine-looking moon just about as large as the moon of Earth, and a great many other outstanding features that will afford much comfort and pleasure to the lonely wanderers from Earth.

In Hesper
’
s min
d, it would seem, the
Wotan
has already reached Planet C and a successful surveillance mission has been carried out and now they have all shuttled down to its richly rewarding surface and are busily constructing the crude but charming buildings that will h
ouse the colony in its developmental stages. No one else, though, pays much a
t
tention to Hesper
’
s rapturous forecasts. The minds of the others are f
o
cused almost entirely on the angels that lurk somewhere all about them in the mysterious void outside the s
hip. “
Angels”
is still what everybody calls them, for lack of any better term.

But nothing more will be learned about the angels until Noelle is ready to make another try at speaking with them. And Noelle is not ready yet. She spends her time apart from ev
eryone else, emerging from her cabin only for meals, saying little when she does.

So they wait. What else, after all, can they do? They play
Go
and vi
s
it the baths and swim laps in the pool, and draw books and plays and music from the almost infinitely cap
acious resources of the ship
’
s a
r
chives, and indulge, as most of them always have indulged, in couplings and triplings and other sexual entertainments. And the time passes.

She keeps her distance even from the year-captain, which he finds very painful. Now
that he has broken through his ascetic forbearance, finally, he has no further interest in living a monastic life. He longs for her as intensely as he has ever longed for anyone or anything. But she has retreated into herself; and so does he. Julia lets
i
t be known that she is still available to him, and he thanks her warmly, but he doesn
’
t avail himself of her availability. Time passes. Like everyone else, the year-captain waits for Noelle.

***

At last she announces, with a show of outward confidence, tha
t she is ready to try again.

She is alone when she does, in her cabin, everything as before. Clo
s
es her eyes. Lets herself drift upward, outward.

The grayness.

She is in the tube. The infinite void of nospace. She extends herself across it until she has no
beginning, no end: she has become infinite herself, an infinite being in a universe of infinities. A streak of pure light. Which reaches out. Reaches. Reaches.

Angels? Are you there today, angels?

Y
es. She feels one almost at once, the immensity of it, the power. Goes toward it. Spreads her arms wide, lifts up her face to it, feels the warmth. The heat. That burning fiery furnace, roaring and hissing and sizzling and crackling.

She thinks
—
hopes
—
that
she has insulated herself this time against destruction, that she has found a way of channeling the overflow of e
n
ergy so that it will run down past her and dissipate itself harmlessly. She thinks so. Hopes so.

She is very frightened.

But she realizes that
this must be done. And she is aware that she stands at the brink of wonders.

Now. Now. The questing mind reaches forth.

Touches.

Or almost touches. There is still a barrier, and Noelle is afraid to cross it. She waits there, looking outward,
seeing
the an
gel, actually
seeing
it. Its vast cosmos-filling surface. An ocean of fire. The angel
’
s face is awash with hurricanes of unthinkable activity. Wild tongues of flame rise from it like bristling curls. The broad face is veiled in places, but where the veil p
arts she is able to see coherent fountains of power climbing through the turbulence, coming up from the angel
’
s depths, hot cells of fiery matter bigger than entire planets swimming up out of the core of the angel and gliding back down. At the surface its
e
lf, again and again, frenzied eruptions leap out across the firmament like daggers of energy stabbing at the cosmos.

And deeper within, behind and beyond all the turmoil of the surface, there seems to be a zone of shining stillness, like a wall separating
the flamboyant forces of the angel
’
s face from the calm, imperturbable core of the giant being. Noelle longs to reach that quiet core. But how? How? The roaring all about her numbs her soul. She can barely think in that great tumult.

Angel? Angel, do you h
ear me? This is Noelle.

Roaring. Hissing. Crackling. Sizzling.

Touch me, angel. But touch me only a little, touch me gently. Gently, please. Because I am so very small and you are such a giant.

A silence, a stillness. Then searing ropes of flame reach up a
s though to caress her.

Oh.
Oh
.

Around her the whole universe is aflame. The fire
—
the fire
—
that burning ocean
—
those grasping arms of flame
—
Noelle recoils from them, those writhing fiery strands that are reaching for her
—