Page 16 of Collision!
“About a dream.”
“About the way my dream felt exactly like the moment when the resonark manifested as Remy and Ikaryo were singing, when it seemed like everything in the universe was connecting.”
She held her breath while she watched him.Because the only thing more revealing than telling someone about a dream?Telling them it was a dream about them.
As the silence lengthened, she desperately wished the bar had something with real bite.She’d enjoyed the synthequeur cocktails—all the fun colors and flavors with none of the alcohol risks—but now she would’ve happily blamed a buzz for her tongue’s babbling.
Or anything else it might do…
She tried to shift it to something thatwasn’ta fixation on kissing.“You never told me whyyoucame here tonight.”
His silence lingered for another beat before he said, “As much trouble as it was to get sensor readings on the anomaly, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”Then, with what seemed like heavy reluctance, he added, “I may have had a dream too.”
About what?Her?Oh, how she longed to ask.But even an entire Coke bottle of pure Everclear would not loosen her tongue enough for that.
“Or maybe it was a subconscious simulation cascade,” he continued evasively.“And since I didn’t come to the recital, I have no comparison to that.But I’ve left a new sensor at the bar to track the shadowlight activity, so we need to go now.”
As he slid out of the booth, he hefted her moon-face tote to his shoulder.She couldn’t even protest because the strap was already anchored over the longer spiny scales there.
Following meekly, she carried their empty bottles to the bus tub at the bar.Suvan pointed out a shoebox-sized cube.An array of lenses like spider eyes was aimed at the resonark which pulsed with cosmic innocence.She realized the cube had been under his arm when he’d appeared in the salon, but she’d been too busy looking athim.
“Good night, resonark,” she murmured as they headed for the door.“Sweet dreams, if you have them or remember them.”
Suvan glanced briefly over his shoulder then down at her.“You think the waveform is affected by pleasantries as it is by the harmonic resonance of music?”
She shrugged.“No idea.Maybe I’m remindingmyselfit’s a good night.”
In the nighttime illumination of the corridor, his pale eyes seemed bigger, and for the first time, she noticed subtle occlusions within, like the shattered refractions of flaws inside a clear quartz.
“Is it?”he asked.
A quiver of…something prickled across her skin.Was he teasing?Flirting?Or being an impassive engineer?
She wasn’t feeling quite bold enough to ask.“I have some ideas for a new pattern.That’s a good enough night for me.”
He paced beside her toward the stateroom hallway.“Was the knot pattern around the anomaly different in some way from what you usually do?”
“Different from what?”She chuckled as she winged out one elbow to point at the myriad stitches in her knitwear.“Most of my patterns end up not being what I intended.When I found out about the IDA, I admit I was also excited about maybe ending up with someone to wear all the weird-sized sweaters and socks that come out of my needles if I get distracted.”
He was quiet for a few steps, although she was getting used to his measured silences so she waited.“You took the ticket for this cruise because you wanted a date—and a mate.Was there no one on your Earth?”
Again she couldn’t quite decipher his tone: curious or judgmental?“Maybe there was, somewhere.But I felt like…Ididn’t belong there.”She forced another laugh.“I guess all along I was knitting my way to somewhere else.”
He rumbled under his breath.“To this ship.”
“I found a business card that was a logo of a crescent moon, a contact number, and the words ‘Love awaits.Cross the cosmos, and find your forever.’Who could resist?By the time I made it through all the closed-world secrecy around the Big Sky IDA, I was already half in love.”
Abruptly, he stopped.“With whom?”
“The possibilities,” she clarified, as she turned on her heel, having overshot him.
He grunted again before waving her on, as if she’d been the one to stop.“How many possibilities do you need?”
He’d already stomped a few steps ahead of her by the time she pivoted again.“For me,” she murmured, “just the one.”
Maybe he would’ve responded, but the oversized device on his wrist clanged, a harsh sound in the quiet hall.
“Chief.”The captain’s distinctive growly voice was strained.“You aren’t at the engines?”
