Starplex

She deserved better, he thought. He exhaled, trying to force the worries out of himself with the escaping breath, and conjured up images of happier times.

Rissa had dark eyes that turned into upward-arching crescents when she smiled. Her mouth was small, but her lips were full—half as tall as they were wide. Her mother had been Italian; her father, Spanish. She had inherited her lustrous dark hair and his fiery eyes. In his forty-six years of life, Keith Lansing had never met anyone who looked more appealing by candlelight than Rissa.

When they’d first met, in 2070, he’d been twenty-two and she’d been twenty, with a wonderfully curvy figure. Of course, her body shape was changing in natural ways as she aged; she was still in fine condition, but the proportions had shifted. Back then, Keith couldn’t have imagined finding a woman of forty-four attractive, but to his infinite surprise, his tastes had altered as the years passed, and although two decades of marriage had doubtless dulled his immediate reaction to her, when he saw Rissa in an unusual way—in a new suit, or stretching to reach something on a top shelf, or with her hair swept in a different manner—she could still take his breath away.

And yet…

And yet, Keith was aware that time was taking its toll on him. His hair was departing. Oh, there were “cures” for that—imagine suggesting that something as natural as male-pattern baldness required a cure!—but to employ them seemed vain and foolish. Besides, middle-aged scientists were supposed to be bald. It was in the rule book somewhere.

Keith’s father had had a full head of dark hair up until he’d been killed at age fifty-five; Keith wondered now whether he’d used a hair restorer. But for Keith to do something like that would be silly.

He remembered Mandy Lee, a holovid star he’d been infatuated with as a twelve-year-old boy. Back then, nothing had been more exciting to him than large breasts on a woman, probably because none of the girls in his class yet had them; they were a symbol of the forbidden, alien world of adult sexuality. Well, Mandy—dubbed “the binary star system” by some wag at HV Guide—was famous for her physique. But Keith had lost all interest in her when he’d found out that her breasts were fake; he couldn’t look at her without imagining the implants beneath the swelling alabaster skin and the surgical scars (even though he knew, of course, the anabolizing laser scalpels would have left no marks at all). Well, he’d be damned if he’d turn his head into a fake; he’d be damned if he’d let people looking at him think, hey, the guy’s really bald, you know…

And so there they were, Rissa Cervantes and Keith Lansing: still in love, if not in the passionate way of their youth, in what was ultimately a more satisfying, more relaxing fashion.

And yet—

And yet, dammit, he’d just turned forty-six. He was aging, balding, graying, and hadn’t been with another woman since his three—such a small number!—awkward encounters in high school and at university. Three, plus Rissa—a total of four. An average of less than one a decade. Christ, he thought, even a Waldahud could count my partners on the fingers of one hand.

Keith knew he shouldn’t think about such things, knew that what he and Clarissa had was something most people never really achieved: a love affair that grew and evolved as they aged, a relationship that was solid and secure and warm.

And yet—

And yet there was Lianne Karendaughter. Like Mandy Lee, the very symbol of beauty in his youth, Lianne had exquisite Asian features; something about Asian women had always appealed to Keith. He didn’t know how old Lianne was, but there was no doubt that she was younger than Rissa. Of course, as ship’s director, Keith could easily access Lianne’s personnel records, but he was afraid to do so. For God’s sake, she might be as young as thirty. Lianne had come aboard the last time Starplex had passed by Tau Ceti, and now, as Internal Operations manager, she and Keith often spent hours together on the bridge. And yet, to his surprise, no matter how much time he spent with her, he always wished it were more.

He hadn’t done anything foolish yet. Indeed, he thought he had everything under control. Still, he’d always been an introspective sort; he wasn’t blind to what was going on. Midlife crisis, the fear that he was no longer virile. And what better way to dispel that notion than by bedding a beautiful, young woman?

Idle fantasies. Of course, of course.

He rolled onto his side, facing away from Rissa, tucking himself into a semifetal position. He didn’t want to do anything that would hurt Rissa. But if she never learned about it—

Christ, man, get a grip. She’d find out for sure. How would he face her after that? And their son Saul? How would he face him? He’d seen his son beam at him with pride, yell at him in fury, but he’d never seen him look at him with disgust.

If only he could get some sleep. If only he could stop tormenting himself.