Starborne

Or almost touches. There is still a barrier, and Noelle is afraid to cross it. She waits there, looking outward,seeing the angel, actuallyseeing 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 parts 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 itself, 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 hear 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 as 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—

She pulls back, afraid. Still afraid. It is too much for her; she will be destroyed. She turns. Flees.

Finds a safe place, somewhere. Halts. Draws deep breaths.

Opens her eyes.

All about her is darkness, as usual. There are no flames anywhere near her. Everything is perfectly still. The angel is gone. She is in her own cabin, aboard the Wotan. Alone. Trembling. She has failed again.

I’m going to give it one more shot,” she tells the year-captain.

“But if the risk is so great—”

“I don’t know that it really is.”

“You said—”

“I said, yes. But maybe I was wrong. I’ll try one more time, and we’ll see.”

He is silent for a long while.

“You don’t want me to do it,” Noelle says eventually, in a completely neutral tone, nothing reproachful about it.

“I do and I don’t,” the year-captain says. “I’ve been the one pushing you toward this all along. And pulling you back with the other hand. I’m afraid of losing you, Noelle. We need to see what these things are, yes. But I’m afraid of losing you.” And he says, after another almost interminable pause, “You know that I love you, Noelle.”

“Yes.”

“And if something should happen to you—”

“Nothing will happen to me,” she says. “Nothing bad.”

This time as she enters the gray Intermundium she pauses before even beginning to search for the angel, and sends a shaft of thought across the light-years to Earth, to Yvonne.

She has had no contact of the kind that she once had enjoyed with Yvonne for months, nothing on the level of message-interchange. But she knows Yvonne is still there and trying to reach her, and in some indefinable way the link between them is still open, however clouded it is by the interference caused by the proximity of the angels. It is that link that Noelle attempts to widen and strengthen now.

Yvonne? Can you hear me? Can you feel me?

There is the hint of a hint of an affirmative reply. Only the hint of a hint, is all, but that is better than nothing.

Ride with me, Yvonne. When I want you to let me lean on you, be there beside me. Let me draw strength from you. I’m going to need you soon.

Does Yvonne hear? Does she know?

I love you, Yvonne. You are me. I am you. We are in this together.

Noelle thinks she feels Yvonne’s silent affirmative presence. Hopes she does.

And now. Now. Noelle moves deeper into the void beyond the ship. She can feel the force of the angel now, the vast godlike thing that waits for her out there.

Angel? Listen to me, angel! This is Noelle!

The angel is listening. The angel is waiting.

I am Noelle. I come to you in love, angel. I give myself to you, angel.

This time she holds nothing back. She yields herself completely, permitting herself no fear. Yvonne is with her. Yvonne stands beside her, lending her her strength.

I am yours, Noelle tells the angel.

Contact.

optic chiasma thalamus

sylvian fissure hypothalamus

medulla oblongata limbic system

pons varolii reticular system

corpus callosum cingulate sulcus

cuneus orbital gyri

cingulate gyrus caudate nucleus

— cerebrum!—

claustrum operculum

putamen fornix

choroid globus medial lemniscus

— mesencephalon!—

dura mater

dural sinus

arachnoid granulation

subarachnoid space

pia mater

cerebellum

cerebellum

cerebellum

* * * *