Starplex

Since she didn’t seem to be needed on the bridge, Rissa had gone down to her lab to join Boxcar. She was sitting in a chair; Boxcar was positioned next to her. They watched the data scrolling up the monitor plate rising from the desk in front of them. The Hayflick limit had to be governed by cellular timers of some sort. Since it was observed in cells from both Earth and Rehbollo, they’d hoped comparison genome mapping would help. Attempts to correlate across genetic platforms the mechanisms for timing body growth, puberty, and sexual functions had all been successful. But, maddeningly, the cause of the Hayflick limit remained elusive.

Maybe this latest test—maybe this statistical analysis of inverted telomerase RNA codons—maybe—

Lights winked on Boxcar’s sensor web. “It saddens me to note that the answer is not there,” said the translated voice, British, as all Ib voices were, and female, as half of them were arbitrarily assigned.

Rissa let out a heavy sigh. Boxcar was right; another dead end.

“I intend no offense with this comment,” said Boxcar, “but I’m sure you know that my race has never believed in gods. And yet when I encounter a problem like this—problem that seems, well, designed to thwart solution—it does make one think that the information is being deliberately withheld from us, that our creator does not want us to live forever.”

Rissa made a small laugh. “You may be right. A common theme among human religions is the belief that gods jealously guard their powers. And yet why build an infinite universe, but put life on only a handful of worlds.”

“Begging your generous pardon for pointing out the obvious,” said Boxcar, “but the universe is only infinite in that it has no borders. It does however contain a finite amount of matter. Still, what is it that your god is said to have commanded? Be fruitful and multiply?”

Rissa laughed. “Filling the universe would take an awful lot of multiplying.”

“I thought that was an activity you humans enjoyed.”

She grunted, thinking of her husband. “Some more than others.”

“Forgive me if I’m being intrusive,” said Boxcar, “but PHANTOM prefaced the translation of your last sentence with a glyph indicating that you spoke it ironically. It is doubtless me who is to blame, but I seem to be missing a layer of your meaning.”

Rissa looked at the Ib—a faceless, six-hundred-kilogram wheelchair. Pointless to discuss such matters with her—with it, a sexless gestalt that knew nothing of love or marriage, a creature to whom an entire human lifespan was a brief interlude. How could it understand the stages a marriage went through—the stages a man went through.

And yet—

She could not talk about it with her female friends aboard ship. Her husband was Starplex’s director—the… the captain they would have called it in the old days. She couldn’t chance gossip getting around, couldn’t risk diminishing him in the eyes of the staff.

Rissa’s friend Sabrina had a husband named Gary. Gary was going through the same thing—but Gary was just a meteorologist. Not someone to whom everyone looked up, not someone who had to endure the gaze of a thousand people.

I’m a biologist, thought Rissa, and Keith’s a sociologist. How did I ever end up a politician’s wife, with him, me, and our marriage under the microscope?

She opened her mouth, about to tell Boxcar that it was nothing, nothing at all, that PHANTOM had mistaken fatigue or perhaps disappointment in the latest experiment’s results for irony.

But then she thought, why the hell not? Why not discuss it with the Ib? Gossiping was a failing of individual life-forms, not of gestalt beings. And it would feel good—oh so very good—to get it off her chest, to be able to share it with someone.

“Well,” she said—an articulated pause, giving herself one last chance to rein in her words. But then she pressed on: “Keith is getting old.”

A slight ripple of lights on Boxcar’s web.

“Oh, I know,” said Rissa, lifting a hand. “He’s young by Ibese standards, but, well, he is becoming middle-aged for a human. When that happens to a human female, we undergo chemical changes associated with the end of our childbearing years. Menopause, it’s called.”

Lights playing up the web; an Ibese nod.

“But for male humans, it isn’t so cut-and-dried. As they feel their youth slipping away, they begin to question themselves, their accomplishments, their status in life, their career choices, and… well, whether they are still attractive to the opposite sex.”

“And is Keith still attractive to you?”

Rissa was surprised by the question. “Well, I didn’t marry him for his looks.” That hadn’t come out the way she’d intended. “Yes, yes, he’s still attractive to me.”

“It is doubtless wrong for me to remark upon this, and for that I apologize, but he is losing his hair.”

Rissa laughed. “I’m surprised you would notice something like that.”