more thinking of white rooms and going to sleep forever; but it was strange—it had no comfort. It gave us something to fear the same as born-men. Maybe we should have danced about the quarters in celebration; but no one mentioned it. Maybe some had forgotten. I think the only thing really clear in our minds was the dread that the horrid banging might start up again at any moment—at least that was the clearest thought in mine: that the hammering might start and the hull might be breached, and we might be face to face with what lived out there. I watched the game board, riveting my whole mind on the silences and the position of the pieces and the sometime moves Lynn and Percy made, predicting what they would do, figuring it out when expectation went amiss. It was far better occupation than the thoughts that gnawed round the edges of my mind, making that safe center smaller and smaller.
The game went to stalemate. We all sat there staring blankly at a problem that could not be resolved—like the one outside—and feeling the certainty settling tighter and tighter over the game, were cheated by it of having some sort of answer, to something. Lynn swore, mildly, an affectation aped from born-men. It seemed overall to be fit.
So the game was done. The evening was. Lance got up, undressed and went to bed ahead of the rest of us, while Viv sat in her lighted corner reading. I came and shoved my bed over on its tracks until it was up against his. Lance paid no attention, lying on his side with his back to me until I edged into his bed and up against his back.
He turned over then. “No,” he said, very quiet, just the motion of his lips in the light we had left from Viv’s reading, and the light from the bathroom door. Not a fierce no, as it might have been. There was pain; and I smoothed his curling hair and kissed his cheek.
“It’s all right,” I said. “just keep me warm.”
He shifted over and his arms went about me with a fervent strength; and mine about him; and maybe the others thought we made love: it was like that, for a long time, long after all the lights but Viv’s were out. Finally that one went. And then when we lay apart but not without our arms about each other, came a giving of the mattress from across Lance’s side, and Vivien lay down and snuggled up to him, not because she was interested in Lance, but just that we did that sometimes, lying close, when things were uncertain. It goes back to the farms; to our beginnings; to nightmares of being alone, to good memories of lying all close together, and touching, and being touched. It was comfort. It put no demands on Lance. In a moment more Percivale and Lynette moved a bed up and lay down there, crowding in on us, so that if someone had to get up in the night it was going to wake everyone. But all of us, I think, wanted closeness more than we wanted sleep.
I know I didn’t sleep much, and sometimes, in that kind of glow the ceiling let off when eyes had gotten used to the dark, I could make out Lance’s face. He lay on his back, and I think he stared at the ceiling, but I could not be sure. I kept my arm about his; and Percy was at my right keeping me warm on that side, with Lynette all tangled up with him; and Viv sleeping on Lance’s shoulder on the other side. No sex. Not at all. All I could think of was that sound: we had fallen into something that was never going to let us go; we clung like a parasite to something that maybe didn’t want us attached to it at all; and out there ... out there beyond the hull, if I let my senses go, was still that terrible chaos-stuff.
If this was death, I kept thinking, remembering my lady’s mad hypothesis, if this was death, I could wish we had not tangled some other creature up in our dying dream. But I believed now it was no dream, because I could never have imagined that sound out of my direst nightmares.
It came again in the night, that rumbling over com: Gawain came on the intercom telling Percy and
The game went to stalemate. We all sat there staring blankly at a problem that could not be resolved—like the one outside—and feeling the certainty settling tighter and tighter over the game, were cheated by it of having some sort of answer, to something. Lynn swore, mildly, an affectation aped from born-men. It seemed overall to be fit.
So the game was done. The evening was. Lance got up, undressed and went to bed ahead of the rest of us, while Viv sat in her lighted corner reading. I came and shoved my bed over on its tracks until it was up against his. Lance paid no attention, lying on his side with his back to me until I edged into his bed and up against his back.
He turned over then. “No,” he said, very quiet, just the motion of his lips in the light we had left from Viv’s reading, and the light from the bathroom door. Not a fierce no, as it might have been. There was pain; and I smoothed his curling hair and kissed his cheek.
“It’s all right,” I said. “just keep me warm.”
He shifted over and his arms went about me with a fervent strength; and mine about him; and maybe the others thought we made love: it was like that, for a long time, long after all the lights but Viv’s were out. Finally that one went. And then when we lay apart but not without our arms about each other, came a giving of the mattress from across Lance’s side, and Vivien lay down and snuggled up to him, not because she was interested in Lance, but just that we did that sometimes, lying close, when things were uncertain. It goes back to the farms; to our beginnings; to nightmares of being alone, to good memories of lying all close together, and touching, and being touched. It was comfort. It put no demands on Lance. In a moment more Percivale and Lynette moved a bed up and lay down there, crowding in on us, so that if someone had to get up in the night it was going to wake everyone. But all of us, I think, wanted closeness more than we wanted sleep.
I know I didn’t sleep much, and sometimes, in that kind of glow the ceiling let off when eyes had gotten used to the dark, I could make out Lance’s face. He lay on his back, and I think he stared at the ceiling, but I could not be sure. I kept my arm about his; and Percy was at my right keeping me warm on that side, with Lynette all tangled up with him; and Viv sleeping on Lance’s shoulder on the other side. No sex. Not at all. All I could think of was that sound: we had fallen into something that was never going to let us go; we clung like a parasite to something that maybe didn’t want us attached to it at all; and out there ... out there beyond the hull, if I let my senses go, was still that terrible chaos-stuff.
If this was death, I kept thinking, remembering my lady’s mad hypothesis, if this was death, I could wish we had not tangled some other creature up in our dying dream. But I believed now it was no dream, because I could never have imagined that sound out of my direst nightmares.
It came again in the night, that rumbling over com: Gawain came on the intercom telling Percy and
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