25. The Martian sun hung low in the evening sky, a small, pale round disc above the canyon walls. I let my mind relax as the SEV bumped slowly over the stony surface. Everything was ready. The pod would take twenty-two hours to reach the worm which would then head for Deimos—an hour or so to get the worm to initiate the first course change from a circular to an elliptical orbit, its apoapsis touching the orbit of Deimos which the worm would reach in just under seven hours. Then a second course change as the elliptical orbit was converted into a circular orbit matching that of Deimos. Lastly a final adjustment to bring the worm into close proximity of Deimos itself. Total time about 30½ hours.
Cloe would initiate her own course change about two hours before the pod reached the worm, allowing her to reach the apoapsis of her new elliptical orbit at the same moment Deimos went past. That would give her ample time to put the Terra Nova into a crawling orbit around the satellite and get ready for an EVA. Mission wasn’t going to be able to do a thing about it. The remote control feature in each of the Terra Nova’s computers had been successfully jumped. Once Cloe had installed the hack code in their operating systems I tried activating the Terra Nova’s directional jets from the Hab computer. After a few minutes Cloe gave me the thumbs up. Nothing had happened. One down.
I gave Cloe the thumbs up back for her own course calculations which were spot on. Two short bursts from the Terra Nova’s main engine would bring the ship to within a few hundred metres of Deimos, with very little correction required after that. Two down.
Number three was the most interesting. About two in the afternoon I got a comm beep from Cloe.
“Message from Trinny,” she said.
“What does he say?”
“See for yourself. I’m sending it now.”
“Anything we need to worry about?”
“I suppose not. He doesn’t suspect anything. But have a look.”
“Everything OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Right. Just before we leave.”
“OK. Out.”
Once the AV message was downloaded I called Noema. “The reply from Earth.”
Offering her my chair I stood behind her and leaned over to press the Start button. Trinny’s face appeared, his expression inscrutable.
“Well, commander, to say your last message gave us food for thought would be a massive understatement. It changes not only our understanding of Noema but also of ourselves, of our history. We are grateful to Noema for having been so frank about her true nature and also for her desire to help us. If there is anything, anything at all she thinks she can do for us then we implore her to consider it. Despite the thousands of years between her civilisation and ours we are still of the same race. But if she can do nothing we understand.” There was just the slightest emphasis on the ‘she’.
“There seems to have been quite a return to religious faith on Earth. Noema’s message has had a significant impact on this trend—we made the report public by the way. Prayer gatherings, faith marches, things like that. People are waiting for your next report with great interest. We also look forward to hearing Noema again. Her words have helped a great deal.
“I have some personal messages for you from people you know. They are attached. You can play them once this message closes. Trinny out.” And the screen went blank.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“He speak with mouth but not with eyes. He hide something.”
“Yep. He wants to reassure you that they’ve resigned themselves to their fate, at the same time reminding me what I have to do. We go to the worm, I learn to steer it, I bring you back to give another report, then leave you here and go off to save mankind.”
“He speak the truth? All hear my words?”
“Probably. It can’t do any harm. If people are praying then they’re not making trouble.”
“Then it go as it should go.”
“I suppose so.”
“You are angry with them?”
“I’m tired of their attempts to turn me against you. When Cloe is with us then maybe we’ll have a little honest speaking at last.”
The SEV climbed the low rise, revealing its twin in the distance and the pod a short way off, its cord rising up into the sky until it faded from view. I still marvelled at it. It had been designed to land on Earth. Earth’s geostationary orbit is 35 786km above the planet’s surface. An elevator cord that long would weigh more than 6000 tons presuming it was made of carbon, was three feet wide and had thickness of paper. At its midpoint it would have to withstand a tensile stress of 3000 tons pulling in both directions.
No substance either natural or artificial had yet been created on Earth that could withstand such a strain. The problem with carbon nanotubes, graphene ribbons, diamond nanothreads and the other carbon-based structures that had been proposed was that it was simply impossible to manufacture them with flawless structures to the required length. Any imperfection in their molecular organisation translated into tensile weakness, and the more imperfections there were the greater the weakness until the cord became useless.
Noema’s people had solved the problem. Biotechnology could perfectly organise matter at the molecular level since it used molecular machines to do so, checking every atom in the process. Any imperfection could be immediately rectified, making the pod’s cord, which was composed of carbon, immaculate in its structure. The only drawback was time. Growing a 35 000km-long cord took decades, even centuries—bioengineering was not good at making big things in a hurry—but for the Wise that had never been a problem.
Leaving the SEV parked a short distance from the pod we walked to within a few metres of it and waited for the outer layer of leaves to open, anchoring the pod to the surface. A few seconds passed then the leaves opened, ramming their points into the ground. This I had realised was a safety feature to ensure that a sudden gust of wind did not move the pod during the few critical seconds people were boarding or leaving it.
The cord dealt with the more serious problem of vibrational harmonics, which would make the cable of a normal elevator resonate like a plucked string, by flexing strongly against naturally occurring oscillations, keeping itself motionless. I hadn’t yet asked Noema how the cord coped with the problem of rupturing by micrometeoroids, but, well, it obviously coped.
The inner leaves opened revealing the chair. We climbed up and stood next to it. The leaves closed recreating the travelling chamber and we waited as the pod rose upwards until the air pressure was near enough to normal. I pulled myself out of my suit first, then faced away from Noema until she had removed herself from her biosuit and was dressed in the plain white robe she had worn in the Hab.
”Ladies first,” I said, gesturing to the chair.
She smiled and took her seat. I sat on the floor before her and leaned back against the chamber wall.
“It crossed my mind,” I said, “That quite a few men might be tempted to take advantage of a woman in circumstances like this.”
Noema surveyed me for a moment then said, “Come. Down by here.”
I arose and advanced to the spot she indicated and crouched down next to the chair.
“Now put elbow on chair near my arm. Now hold my hand.” We had adopted an arm wrestling pose on the chair’s armrest.
“Now I push. Keep arm up. Ready?” I nodded.
She pushed. I flexed my muscles, moderately at first, then with all my might, but to no avail. In the space of a second my arm had been bent back level to the ground.
“Do again?”
“No, I’m convinced. I’d forgotten about your genetic engineering.” I stood up and resumed my place on the floor by the chamber wall.
“You also changed your eyes,” I said. “To see in the dark?”
“Yes. When Wise change our Strand they think of things we fear most—darkness, death, our weakness. They make woman strong but give man strength of many women. A man of our people not only bend your arm, he break it.”
“You tried to become supermen.”
“Yes.”
“That needn’t be a bad thing. With great power comes great responsibility.”
Noema frowned. “No. With great power comes pride that kill. I see your movies. Your people dream of such power but do not have it. Thank An for this.”
“But genetic engineering isn’t evil just because it can be misused. What’s so bad about immortality? Think of the good that can be done with a life as long as yours. We spend most of our lives getting old. From the late twenties we’re past our physical peak and then it’s all downhill. Wouldn’t people be....I don’t know....happier, more optimistic, if they knew they would have a youth hundreds or thousands of years long?” I laughed. “I wouldn’t mind it.”
“You not understand what it is to live ages I have lived. For you life is short. You say truth. Before half your life is past your body begin to become old. You try not to think of death, but it is there, it come. So it not matter how long life is. Thirty years, sixty years, ninety years, it is too short. What matter is what you do in time you have. This is great truth. You live to do something.”
“Do what?”
“That which An wish.”
“What does An wish?”
“I not know. He must show you. That which is good. Maybe you do as he wish and not know it. For many of your people I think it is so.”
“That could be true. Most people don’t have any interest in religion but many of them are still good people.”
“More than this. A man do good because he know it is right, not because it make him happy.”
“OK. He follows his conscience.”
“Yes. Conscience is law for his heart. Tell him what is good and what is evil. But where does law come from?”
“I don’t know. From society?”
“If your leaders command, you obey because they say what is right and wrong?”
I chuckled. “I see your point. We’re more likely to think our leaders have lost all notion of right and wrong. Society must suit us, not the other way round. Well then, from his upbringing? What his parents taught him?”
“I think not. A child obey his father but a man does not, and a man judge what his father teach him, if it is true or not.”
“So you’re saying conscience is An’s voice?”
“Conscience tell us we must obey law. Law come not from us, not from others. Come from above.”
The idea was intriguing but not entirely convincing. “Conscience just tells us that we’re supposed to do the right thing and that’s because we have to work together. Humans must live in society and contribute to the good of that society. It’s just natural, biological, nothing to do with a law.”
“You say it is from nature?”
“Yes. An animal looks after its young. A herd protects each member. But they hardly do that because they’re aware of a law they have to follow. They just do it from instinct.”
“Man eat man. You think that is good?”
“Cannibalism? Of course not. How can eating your own species benefit it? Eating other species, sure. The natural urge to do good only extends to your own kind.”
“Yet every creature that eat meat eat its own kind. You not know this?”
“....are you sure about that?”
“Yes it is truth. They all do this, some more, some less. For you it is evil thing. Your conscience say it is wrong. Why so if conscience from nature? For animal it is part of nature.”
“But if that’s the case then why doesn’t An give his law to animals? If we must follow our conscience and do good why don’t animals just do good all the time from instinct?”
“Because of curse.”
“What is this curse? You’ve spoken of it many times but never explained it.”
Noema did not immediately reply. I waited.
“Curse of first man. He and his woman turn against An.”
“Adam and Eve. So they were real?”
“Yes. I know first man. He tell me. Words for my ears, not for others.”
“The garden of Eden. The temptation by the snake. The tree of life. We all know the story.”
“My people all know story too, but that is not what he tell me. When An make first man no death in him, no pain, no sorrow. He is like An. But this in man only. Sickness, pain, death already in world. This is why first man and first woman in garden, to protect them. This why they have fruit, to keep death from them. But world outside is....crooked. Snake—why you think temptation from snake?”
“No idea.”
“Warning from An. Snake poisonous. It strike and kill. An let evil one tempt man but evil one must come as snake. Already first man see evil in world. He should not listen to snake.”
“Is that the reason the world was made crooked? To warn Adam about the snake?”
“No. World made crooked because An know first man and woman will sin. When he sin heart of man become part good, part bad. An see this. He make world like man.”
“You mean viruses, parasites, predators exist so that nature can resemble humans?”
“Yes. Man kill man, so lion kill goat. Man do harm to man, so disease in world. What man do world do. Like mirror.”
“Why?”
“Because when man sin he cannot be with An. But An not turn him away forever. He has hope. In world there is good so he not forget An is good. There is evil so his heart cannot be full, not here. Good and bad make him think not what is now but what will come.”
“So An made evil in the world so we wouldn’t get too comfortable?”
“Yes. Life only journey. Not home. Never we find home here. That is curse.”
“Why is it a curse?”
“Longer you live more your heart know it not find what it seek. You wish to be immortal? Live ages I have lived and you will not ask this question.”
She was right. I could only see life in terms of its brevity and immortality as a freeing from the weight of the ticking clock. But after that initial release what lay ahead in the endless centuries? Surely only what one made of it?
“If I was immortal would you be content?”
She looked at me full on with her great eyes. “I cannot make you immortal but I will be content if you are content. Our time will be brief. But I not look at years to come. An give us only what is now. I am blessed.”
“Then that is enough for me. I am content.”
Perhaps I made a gesture, I don’t know, but Noema rose up from her seat and came and sat down beside me. I took her hands in mine as she leaned her head against my shoulder. Perhaps the heart can go through a lifetime and remain discontented, however let it find someone it can truly love—not with romantic play-acting, even less with sexual passion—but rather with tenderness and esteem, and its cup is full to overflowing. To think of the future was to be already dissatisfied with the present, and the present was all we had, a succession of moments, one after another, a blessing given and gratefully received. I could ask for no more. But I did have one question.
“Tell me, why did the first man ask you to keep all this a secret?”
“He fear that our people not understand. An make evil in world before man sin. Maybe they think An is evil. They not know An see what was, what is, what will come, all together. They understand only what they see.”
I smiled. “But you told it to me.”
She turned to me. “I hide nothing from you, Jason. Your people are strange. They have folly my people not have, but they have wisdom my people not have. I think you understand.”
“Past, present and future, all together. Outside time. I’ve had the concept explained to me. We call it eternity. Yes, I think I understand.”
I didn’t accept everything Noema said. Obviously not. You don’t believe something just because someone tells it to you, not if your core convictions are against it. A natural world made by An, a mix of good and bad because fallen man was a mix of good and bad—it sounded like mythology, or rather sheer fantasy.
But I didn’t reject it either. She had known the first man, but there shouldn’t have been any first man, just a gradual evolution of apes into ape-men into homo sapiens which had taken place all over the world and significantly in Africa. Noema had either lied or hallucinated, and those hypotheses were far more fantastical than the alternative that she had told the simple truth. Unwillingly I recognised that I was going to have to unlearn some cherished notions, however I wasn’t going to jump in like a fevered neophyte. Noema would have to prove her case. Adam and Eve, maybe, but a twisted natural order? That would take some convincing.
The hours passed slowly but we were hardly aware of them. Our conversation ranged from one subject to the next, wherever our interest took us.
“How did you make the antimatter for the worm?”
“Very long time. Worm make enough for first journey. It make more when it come near star.”
“Where do you keep it?”
“In place of darkness. Far side. Great ball at end of worm. Enough to go from one star to another star. But now worm is very old. It cannot make any more.”
I had read more than one feasibility study on using an antimatter drive for interstellar space travel. Most of the studies were schematic. Nobody spent too much time investigating antimatter for the simple reason that it was impossibly expensive to produce in the kind of quantities needed for a starship to bridge the vast interstellar gulfs in years rather than millennia.
An interstellar vessel that weighed as much as the Titanic—52,310 tons—would need five hundred tons of antimatter and an equivalent mass of matter to propel it at average of 20% of the speed of light so it could reach Alpha Centauri in 40 years. The antimatter would theoretically cost thousands of trillions of dollars to manufacture. Of course it would never be manufactured. In the real world humans are obliged to devote their time and energies to the more prosaic business of taking care of their immediate earth-bound needs.
The worm was about forty times longer than the Titanic and proportionally much wider. What was its mass? That depended on the proportions between living tissue, soil and rock in its composition. Rock has a density on average of 2.5 tons per cubic metre, soil 1.5 tons and muscle/fat about one ton. The worm was 4.7km long and 1.5km wide at its widest point. Assuming for the sake of argument that it was a tube with flattened ends its surface area would be the area of the tube itself plus the area of the two discs at each end, which came out at:
(4,700m x 1,500m x π) + 2(750m x 750m x π) = 22,151,100m2 + 3,534,750m2 = 25,685,850m2.
How thick were the walls? Taking a random guess of 30 metres including its protective rocky exterior and assuming an average density of 1.5 tons per m3 would give a weight of (1500 x 25,685,850 x 30) kg which came out at 1155,863,250 tons. Say a thousand million tons.
On the plus side it didn’t need to travel at 20% lightspeed. With a stable ecosystem and a crew that did not age it could spend centuries in space between one star and the next. Presuming it took two hundred years to reach Alpha Centuri at 5% lightspeed, the voyage for a Titanic-like vessel would require about 50 tons of matter/antimatter fuel. If the worm weighed a thousand million tons, it would require about half a million tons of antimatter and an equivalent amount of matter to complete the journey. A ton of liquid hydrogen occupies just over 14 cubic metres of space, which meant the worm would need 7,000,000 cubic metres of liquid antihydrogen. The antihydrogen would form a sphere about 240 metres wide. There would be no problem storing it on a vessel the size of the worm once it had been manufactured.
But how exactly had it been manufactured? Creating antimatter on earth is enormously expensive. Antiprotons and positrons have to be made separately, then cooled down enough to form antihydrogen. The process is terribly inefficient. The production of antiprotons and positrons is slow and few survive the cooling process, certainly not enough to power a starship.
I never grasped how Noema’s people had solved the problem. In particle physics they were streets ahead of our best researchers and in any case she did not have the specialised vocabulary to explain it to me. All I knew was that the worm had manufactured enough antimatter to get to Alpha Centauri where it created more using energy from the star, shedding its protective rocky coat and extending enormous bioengineered solar panels. Or at least that’s what it used to do. The solar panels were contained in the part of the worm that had aged beyond its ability to repair itself and were now dead or nearly so. The worm had made its last voyage.
“Tubal see this. Before we start journey worm make much antimatter. Enough to come to Earth and live long time after. But not enough to go to next world unless it go very slowly. But if it go slowly to next world it die before it arrive.”
“How long can it live if it doesn’t travel any further?”
“Two thousand years, maybe more. If it stay near sun it live longer.”
Enough antimatter to power the worm for two thousand years. And enough to turn it into another sun if rammed against matter all at once. The worm was potentially a bomb that would make any nuclear warhead look like a firecracker. I dismissed the thought. Come what may the worm was now my home.
26. I had forgotten how much I loved the forest. Standing in the cool, fresh air I gazed around at the vast, silent fountains of growth that flowed upwards around me, meeting above my head in pinnacles of translucent leaf through which the light filtered from above in washes of green and yellow. I stretched my arms above my head, glad to be free of the spacesuit I had worn for nearly a day. Noema looked at me with amusement.
“You happy you here again?”
“Oh yes. An astronaut gets used to living in cramped spaces but I think I’m beginning to lose the habit.”
She looked around slowly. “Tubal make trees grow thus. Always he think great things, things that show power. But here he do well.”
“Greatness and beauty, but somehow no pride or power in it.”
She glanced at me. “You understand.”
I smiled at her. “I can relate to it. An astronaut’s also used to not having any real power, doing what he’s told. But that’s another habit I’m getting out of.”
My spacesuit lay on the forest floor near the cavity down which the pod had disappeared a few minutes earlier. I had not bothered to bring a pack but I did have my tablet with me. I’m not sure what it was, an anachronistic sense of duty perhaps, but I decided I would continue producing my reports. I wanted to be happy in my mind that I had done my job whether Earth survived Ganymed or not.
Noema took my hand. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“To worm.”
I followed her between the trees and along the track that appeared in the undergrowth, excitement gradually mounting within me. Not merely because I was about to meet the mind of this enormous humanmade creature, but because in fusing my mind with it I would know Noema’s. All her memories would become mine. I would see her through and through, as complete a fusion of hearts as could ever be achieved. She had already seen my mind when she joined my unconscious brain to the worm in order to give me the dreams, but perhaps she had not seen all of it. Well, I had nothing to hide, nothing I was afraid of her knowing. I climbed the staircase with light steps. Let me see you Noema and love you all the way through.
As I write this knowing others will read it, it occurs to me to make one thing clear. I’m not giving coded language for sexual desire. When I fell in love with Noema I had no urge to have sex with her. Falling in love with someone means being filled with them and giving one’s heart to them as an individual whole and entire. The sexual component comes later, in its time and place, enclosed in the love and esteem of which it is an expression. I suspect it is those who are incapable of genuine romantic love who become obsessed with sex. Well, so much the worse for them.
Noema glanced back. “You want to go faster?”
“Yes,” I said.
“A little slower we still get there. No good to fall and die now.”
I reduced my pace a little.
Halfway up the handholds recessed in the wall of the vessel I paused and looked behind me. Below and above me the great tube of forest spread away until it reached the narrow aperture that separated it from the vast, dark canyon beyond. It felt almost familiar, the forest my home, the darkness beyond a place of remembrance, of things done long ago that could not be undone but that lived no longer in the present. Yes, I could live my life out here and be happy. I turned back and resumed my progress.
Before long we stood by the door at the end of the russet-lit passage.
“Were you inside when I first came here?” I asked.
“No. I am in forest. I wait for you to come down.” She laughed. “You climb trees to come here. Thank An you not fall to ground.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time. How do you open the door?”
“Only mariner can open. Worm must know your hand.” She placed a palm gently against the glowing surface. A moment passed then the door quivered slightly before splitting into many segments that curled back and away, like petals opening on a bud.
“Security measure,” I murmured.
“Tubal do this so no-one come in except him. When he make me mariner I can enter.”
Beyond the doorway lay a cavity that reminded me immediately of the interior of the elevator pod. Roughly spherical in shape and lit by the same russet-green glow, it had nothing in it except a chair—more a settee, wide enough to accommodate two people. On the backrest of the settee were two indentations, about the height of a sitting person’s head. I approached the settee and examined the indentations.
“Why two?” I asked.
“Tubal make it so. One for him and one for Harran. When time come he will make Harran mariner.”
“Couldn’t the people have forced Tubal to open the door and made someone else mariner instead?”
“No. Mariner must show new mariner to worm. Otherwise worm reject new mariner. Worm only accept mariner it know and who he want to show to it. If Tubal not wish it nothing they can do.”
“I understand,” I said. “What now?”
“You sit.”
I complied. Noema sat next to me.
“Now move hair away from back of head.”
She parted her tresses and turned away from me, revealing a bald circular patch about five centimetres in diameter. Instinctively I felt the back of my own head. After the wound there had healed I had paid no further attention to it. I realised now that the hair had not regrown over the injury. I hesitated then pushed my hair up and away from the hairless area.
Noema turned back to me. “Good. Now do this.” Holding her parted tresses she leaned back until her head was pressed against the backrest. I did likewise. The opened doorway was now in my field of vision. I could no longer see Noema.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Keep still. Wait.”
For a few seconds nothing happened. Then I felt a tingling at the back of my head, a sensation of some slight movement there. And then....
“Good Lord,” I said.
It was happy. It danced around its mistress like a vast, shaggy dog. It paid no attention to the stranger. Its mistress had said the stranger could stay so it did not eject him from its mind.
Come, come, come, she said.
It was in a frenzy of delight.
For some time the play went on. It was a familiar game—its mistress showed a warm spread of affection then retired, becoming seemingly distant. The trick was to match its own display of love with that of its mistress and not be left alone in mock confusion. In the end it won, never suspecting that it was always allowed to win. Its mind had no guile. Come see, come see, come see.
Noema’s mind drifted near mine. Don’t be afraid, Pet him.
I quelled my feeling of timidity and touched minds with it. In an instant I was surrounded by a vast awareness, my thoughts, the recesses of my memory probed, not roughly nor gently, but with a kind of careless curiosity. It became obvious to me, almost as soon as my mind blended with its consciousness, that it lacked intelligence. It had no interest in my thinking as such, just the fact that I was an entity separate from itself that possessed emotions and memories. I lost my reserve. I’ve always liked animals.
There’s a good girl, I thought. What shall I show you? I searched through my past. See here’s my dog Snoopy.He loves me scratching his back. I relived the memory, the happiness in giving pleasure to a dog. See, playing fetch. The fun of tossing a tennis ball, seeming to throw, holding back, watching the dog’s excitement mount. Do you like that? Do you like to play? I felt an affectionate nudge in my mind and then it drew away. Clearly it did like to play, but it would need to know me better first.
I quietened my thoughts and watched as it gambolled around Noema. Gradually its exhilaration transmuted into an eagerness to please. It is so like a dog, I thought. I wonder if it was created from one?
No, came Noema’s thought. From a dolphin.
The most intelligent of the mammals. Well that made sense.
Show me, show me, show me.
Until then my physical eyes had seen the doorway before me. Now the scene faded as another picture filled my sight, Mars below me and then, looking closer, the SEVs and further across, the Hab. It took me a while to realise that the worm’s mind was not moving from one object to another, but that Noema was filtering the enormous load of information fed to it from its eye and passing on to me whatever took her interest.
The Terra Nova, I thought.
In a moment the ship came in view, suspended near Deimos. I became aware of its movement, the path it traced around the moon, the fact that it was in a stable orbit that would not change significantly for several hundred years. The worm’s powers of calculation, all entirely instinctive, were incredible.
How long to get there? I wondered.
I sensed the distance between us and Deimos, the speed of the moon and our own speed. I felt the power of the antimatter drive, how long it would take to rise up away from Mars and reach Deimos. I had a time, down to the last second. Everything was going to plan. Cloe would soon be safe. I felt relief.
You are kind. It is good to see.
She suffered much. I cannot take away what happened to her but she will not be alone any more.
I bring her here too.
I’m not sure she would want that. I think....she prefers some of her thoughts to be her own.
It troubles you?
We are one and hide nothing from each other. Cloe, I think, will come to be the same. But it will take time. We must see how it goes with her, not rush anything. Yes, we will be gentle with her. I think all wish to be as I am. I know you to your depths and you know me. Who can be happier?
My own tide of love rose to meet hers. Our minds were one, our love stronger for being utterly truthful and, in that truthfulness, simple. I am for you and with you and nothing can lie between us. Lovelier, fairer than words can tell, heart of my heart, my Immortelle.
Ah, you use words, even here. But they are beautiful.
See how full my heart is. It must come out somehow. When we leave the worm I want to kiss you.
Do we not kiss now? See how my heart too is full and how to be with you here is a joy I have never known. Jason, my love. To have waited all these years was not wasted time.
I have waited too. It was good that I did. I have lived long enough to know truly that I can give my heart to you. See, I fear nothing, I hold back nothing.
Time passed. Our thoughts became fewer and simpler, our affection stronger and deeper. The mind that bonded ours together snuggled up close, sharing in our love and becoming part of it. It was not jealous and soon settled in the recesses of my consciousness as a puppy curled up in the warmth of a sleeping child.
My heart lay in an unutterable peace. I could have stayed there forever.
If we did not need to sleep, nor eat, nor move, we could stay forever. But even Tubal could not make it so.
How long do you stay here?
Sometimes many hours. I listen to the voices of your people. I look at the stars. I play with the worm.
How long have we been here now?
More than two hours.
We must go to Cloe.
Yes. Come. We go, we go, we go.
The worm was eager to please. Rousing itself it felt for the antimatter drive and stretched it into activity as one stretches stiff muscles. It was then that I sensed its age. The drive was ancient, possibly damaged and imperfectly repaired, but still serviceable. Gradually the vast bulk of the worm turned and began to climb away from Mars towards Deimos. It would take a little less than seven hours to reach it.
In the meantime I remembered that I had not yet had breakfast. I tried to suppress the thought before realising with a touch of annoyance that Noema had already seen it. I felt her amusement.
We eat now. We can come back later.
A few seconds passed and then her mind and the mind of the worm faded from my consciousness. The doorway appeared before my eyes again. I glanced to my side. There she was. I took her hand in mine.
“You are a wonder,” I said. She smiled.
“And now I’m going to do what I said I would.” And I kissed her.
She arose, holding my hand. “Come, I make you breakfast.”