Page 2 of Collision!
She took a deep whiff of the perfectly golden disk, its sweetness overlaid with the tart scent of berries.“I can taste the love already.”
Her universal translator used the English word for taste since Elnd had no equivalent receptors; they consumed soundwaves instead.Maybe a relationship with an Elnd would be perfect because all the snacks would be hers.
She swung past the bar to grab a cup of tea and chatted with Remy who was helping Ikaryo serve.On Earth, Remy had been an aspiring pop star under a different name, and here on the Cosmic Connections Cruise, she’d basicallysummonedan elemental wave-particle, much like a star.Now she worked with an alien bartender in harmonious synchrony, supporting each other’s efforts like a dance.
And when they touched… Unlike their recital last night, they didn’t strike sparks on any wavelength visible to Mariah’s eyes, but she sensed it anyway.
It was so heartening to watch the separation between crew and passengers evaporating, all of them coming together—at first under duress, then moved by desire.
Feeling bad for the lonely figure in the corner, she took her waffle and tea—a bright green tea made with sustainable bactoalgae, how interesting—to the booth.
She smiled at him.“Company?”
“The Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency, LLC and Transgalactic Corp.”He blinked up at her.“Oh.You didn’t mean what’s my company.Please, of course, sit, Miss…Juraszczyk.”It was a valiant attempt at the pronunciation but he grimaced.“Apologies.I make it a point to know all our clients, but I don’t always have a chance to meet everyone in person.I should’ve relied on my translator.”
She chuckled.“Even tech has troubles with Polish,” she reassured him.“Mariah is fine.”
“Evens,” he said with a charming grin.“Much simpler.”
She raised one eyebrow.“I doubt it was simple opening an alien dating service to a closed world.Or discovering a love ghost.”
He looked down at his own half mug of green tea.“I confess, I’ve often made it harder than it needed to be.”
Before she could ask about his meaning, the captain took one long step up onto the stage beneath the resonark.
With all his golden fur barely contained by the silver uniform, he looked very much the regal lion—except for the piratical eyepatch.“Thank you all for coming this morning,” he said in his low, rumbling voice.“And for attending the recital.Last night, I told you the essentials of how we got here, but now that we’ve recovered somewhat, I want to explain what’s next.”
The speech he gave was probably important, but Mariah’s gaze kept wandering from his impressively captain-y presence to the anomaly hanging in her oversized knotwork.
Sometimes it seemed to spin, but she thought that was because its gently pulsing rainbow light wasn’t quite balanced, with some curves of the glowing sphere brightening while other places dimmed in almost imperceptible waves.
Maybe that subtle shadow was more wavelengths she couldn’t see?Or was there a flaw in the pattern?
She stared harder.Was the darker side widening?
“Miss Mariah?”
She jerked her gaze back to her breakfast companion.“I’m sorry, what?”She kept her voice to a whisper since the captain was still speaking while setting up a large-screen datpad on the stage stool.
Evens watched her as she’d been watching the resonark.“You seemed…mesmerized.”
Blinking rapidly a few times, she cleared the shadow that lingered over her vision.“Oh.No, I… I didn’t sleep well.I had a dream.”
“I’ve always believed in the power of dreams.”Evens smiled wryly.“Who else would open an IDA outpost on Earth?What was your dream about?”
“I don’t remember.”She frowned, as if scrunching her face would squeeze out the hazy imagery.“On Earth I kept a dream journal.But coming here, I decided I wanted to travel light.Lightyears, I suppose.”She forced a whispery laugh.
Just as well she had to keep it quiet so he wouldn’t hear the false note.
Had there been darkness in the dream?A feeling-memory of her heart racing?
“…And precisely because we are in this together,” Nehivar was saying, “we will vote on whether we continue on the path we all glimpsed last night.”
Evens scoffed under his breath, bringing her attention back to the meeting.“How can he sacrifice his authority like this?Wemustgo on.”
If the Kufzasin captain’s tufted ears caught the mumbled mutiny, he didn’t show any sign.“When the anomaly hijacked us, it set us on a collision course with a null cloud.While we were adrift, we learned its energy is resonating into spacetime, connected to…whatever awaits at the end of this journey.But the Zarnax Zone is dangerous, abandoned space.”His gold eye swept the salon, catching the resonark’s gleam.“If even one of us chooses to return to port, I shall so command.”
The salon was silent, except for the very faintest chime from the strange essence above, a hint of last night’s song echoing in a minor key.
