Starborne

Instead of answering, she turns the tank nozzle toward him and douses him with a foaming spray of hot water. Paco, more amused than annoyed, snorts and bellows like a breaching walrus and rises with a powerful thrust of his elbows, launching himself toward her, catching her around the middle, pulling her down into the tank and pushing her head under water. Elizabeth thrashes about in his grasp, wildly wigwagging her lean delicate arms, then frantically kicking her long frail legs in the air as Paco, roaring with laughter, upends her. Heinz, who is elongated and lean, with a sly ever-smiling face and a slippery, practically hairless body, glides forward and jams Paco under the surface with her, and for a couple of moments all three of them are splashing chaotically, forming an incoherent tangle of writhing limbs, the pale, thin Nordic Elizabeth and the stocky, swarthy Latin Paco and the gleaming, beautiful Teutonic Heinz. Then they bob to the top all at once, laughing, gasping merrily for breath.

Paco and Heinz and Elizabeth have been an inseparable triad for the past month and a half. The lines of attraction run among them in every direction, though not with uniform force: Elizabeth for both of the men in equal strong measure, Heinz being pleasantly fond of Elizabeth but fiercely passionate about Paco, Paco drawn strongly to Elizabeth by some sort of attraction of physical opposites but — somewhat to his own surprise — captivated by Heinz’s easy self-confidence and omnivorous sexuality. So far the relationship has demonstrated remarkable three-sided stability, but, of course, no one expects it to last indefinitely. The voyage has really only just begun. Couples and triples will form and break apart and reform in new configurations, on and on and on, just as is the fashion on Earth but probably with greater rapidity, considering the limitation of choice in a population that at the moment numbers just fifty in a completely enclosed and utterly inescapable environment. Up until now none of the relationships that have formed aboard the Wotan has lasted more than about seven weeks. This one is approaching the ship record.

In the aftermath of the wrestling match they sit facing one another along the edge of the tank, unable to stop laughing: one will start and set off the other two, and around and around it goes. Elizabeth’s pallid meager body is rosy now from the underwater frolic; her flesh glows, her small breasts heave. Paco studies her with a proprietary air, and Heinz amiably contemplates them both as if planning to spread his long arms about them and pull them in again.

The air in the small, brightly lit room is warm and steamy. A voluptuous abundant torrent of warm water splashes down from the fountainhead set in the tiled wall. No one worries about water shortages aboard the Wotan: every drop, urine and sweat and the vapor of everybody’s breath included, is rigorously recaptured and purified and aerated and chilled and recycled, and not a molecule of it ever goes to waste. The baths are Roman in sensuousness if not in scale: the room is compact but elegantly appointed, and there is a hot tank, a tepid one, and a frigid one, something for all tastes. Up to nine or ten people can use the baths at the same time, though in practice a certain amount of exclusiveness is afforded those who are in any sort of bonded relationship. Three small rooms adjacent to the tank chamber have beds in them. Much of the ship’s erotic activity goes on in those rooms.

Elizabeth says in a serious tone, when the three of them are calm again, “I don’t deny that I’m attracted to him. And not just for his body, though he’s certainly a handsome man. But his mind — that mysterious, complicated, opaque mind of his—”

“The mind of a mystic,” Paco says with unconcealed contempt. “The mind of a monk, yes.”

“He’s been a monk,” Elizabeth retorts, “but he’s been a lot of other things too. You can’t pin him down in any one category. And I don’t think he’s as ascetic as you seem to believe. The Lofoten monastery isn’t famous for vows of chastity.”

“Oh, he’s no ascetic,” Heinz says. “I can testify to that.”

Elizabeth and Paco whirl to gape at him. “You?” they say at the same time.

Heinz chuckles lazily. “Oh, no, not what you’re thinking. He’s not really my type. Too inward, too elusive. But I can see the passion in him. You don’t have to go to bed with him to know that. It’s there. Plenty of it. It streams from him like sunlight.”

“There,” Elizabeth says to Paco. “Ice outside, maybe, but fire within.”

“And,” Heinz continues, “I’m quite certain that he’s been sleeping with somebody on board.”

“Who?” Elizabeth asks, very quickly.