“No, they won’t,” said Arjuna. “You may not want to admit it, Imala, but you’re a good captain. No, let me finish. You’re a peacemaker, which is what this crew needs right now. Anyone can stand up here and relay orders. But it takes someone with your gift for negotiation to keep everyone feeling at ease and valued. That’s crucial right now. Besides, I don’t think we should do anything to disrupt what the IF has ordered. Once we reach the outpost, we can make the case for a change, but I suspect that will happen organically anyway. You and Victor are in the IF now. They’ll likely send you elsewhere.”
“You’re both excellent captains,” said Mother. “But what the family needs right now is consistency and unity. If we give the captainship back to Arjuna some people will see it as a division among us. That leads to whisperings and mistrust and people taking sides. We should avoid that. Imala, you should remain as captain. Everyone supports you at the moment. And you never make a decision without consulting with Arjuna anyway. I know you don’t like the position, but I think it’s best if everyone stays where they are for now.”
“I agree,” said Victor.
Imala considered for a moment then nodded. “All right. Let’s gather the crew and read them the orders. I’d appreciate each of you sharing your thoughts during the council before we take a vote.”
They gathered the crew. There were a few people who thought they should break all ties with the IF and ignore the orders, but the vast majority listened to wisdom, and in the end the vote was in favor of heading for the outpost. A few hours later, once all arrangements had been made, they accelerated toward the coordinates.
When they finally reached a cruising speed, and it was safe to get up and move around again, Victor headed for the cargo bay where the Formic miniship was now anchored to the floor. He had hit the miniship with short-wavelength ultraviolet radiation a few days ago while it was still outside to kill off any microorganisms or bacteria clinging to its surface. Then he had sliced off the thrusters, left them adrift, and brought the small remaining piece, the cabin, into the cargo bay. Victor and Magoosa had gone over it with other chemical disinfectants since then, and now the whole room smelled like scented cleaner. Victor had received his fair share of complaints from the crew—the smell was so strong—but he thought it important that the IF get their hands on the ship.
He floated into the Formic cabin and imagined the five Formics inside it, tending to the mining slugs, piloting the ship, going about their day, doing their duty. How long had they lived in this cramped environment? A year? Two? The worms must have provided some food, otherwise where were the rooms to hold all the food storage? There was the issue of fuel, but Victor had concluded that they had landed on comets on their way in and mined any ice they found.
“Knock knock.”
He turned and saw Imala hovering in the doorway of the miniship. He had apologized a dozen times to her since the incident with the asteroid, but still there was an uneasiness between them that Victor didn’t know how to reconcile.
“Is this where you come to meditate now?” Imala asked.
“You could call it that,” said Victor, “although I don’t know what good it does. It’s all speculation now. What I can’t figure out is how they could travel so far and carry so little. There is barely room in here for a crew, much less for supplies. There was the big tank I cut away with the thrusters, but that must have carried fuel.”
“The crew didn’t have a wardrobe,” said Imala. “They fly in the buff. That’s one less thing to pack.”
“Good point,” said Victor. “Of course that means they’re nudists, which makes them even creepier.”
Imala smiled and pulled herself into the miniship. She paused at one of the worm habitats and looked inside. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a short, cylindrical tube floating in the habitat.
“Goos and I found it in here,” said Victor. “I think the mining worms used these.” He picked it up and rotated it in his hand. “It’s about the size of a worm. And the holes on the two ends are big enough for a worm to crawl in one end and out the other.”
“Yes, but why would the worm need it?” asked Imala. “It’s in a controlled environment. It doesn’t have to protect itself from predators.”
“Maybe the worm grows in here from a larvae stage. Maybe it can’t move along the surface of rock until its skin has callused and hardened enough for it to crawl. So the shell is a little incubator, maybe. That’s one theory anyway. Another possibility is that these are like spacesuits. You see this residue here at the two ends. I saw the ice worm excrete something similar. A thick mucous substance. It’s possible that the worm crawls in, covers the holes on both ends with the mucous membrane and seals itself inside. If it has water in its gut, maybe it could provide itself with its own supply of oxygen. So it’s a self contained habitat.”
“Yes, but what could it do sealed in a tube?” asked Imala. “It can’t work or chew through rock.”
“Maybe the mucus is thick and malleable,” said Victor. “So thick, in fact, that it could attach to the rock and create an airtight seal. Much like our own docking tubes. Then the mouth of the worm could extend and begin chewing through rock without exposing itself to the vacuum of space. It could excrete pellets out the other end the same way, through a mucous membrane. That way, a worm could start digging into rock as soon as the Formics land, even before the big cocoon has been woven.”
“Woven?” Imala asked.
“I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with someone on Lem Jukes’s staff he put me in contact with. A biochemist named Wila. She was desperate for a sample of the cocoon shell. I found a small piece of it stuck to the miniship from where I ripped it away from the cocoon. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I put the piece into the scanner bed and sent Wila the data.”
“And?”
“The cocoon is made of microstructures of silicon. The skeletal material is a silicate. The membranes are silicone. With other trace minerals woven in. The structures look alive, but the chemistry to support life just isn’t there.”
“That explains why you found such massive amounts of silicon,” said Imala. “But how could the shell heal itself so quickly if it wasn’t organic?”
“Wila thinks another creature was healing it.”
“What creature? You were there, Vico. You didn’t see any creatures.”
“Wila thinks maybe they were too small to be seen. Like nanomaterial. Microcreatures that are embedded in the resin material, or which are anchored inside along the inner wall. Millions of them. They’d have to be anaerobic because they’d have to be able to survive in a vacuum. And they’d have to be anchored securely to the resin so they don’t get sucked out into space whenever there’s a hole. But somehow these microscopic bugs are sealing up the holes. Think of honeycomb. Bees build these incredibly symmetrical hexagonal cell structures using nothing but nectar from flowers, which the bees ingest, partially digest, and then regurgitate. Maybe these microcreatures do the same.”
“Wait, are you saying honey is essentially bee vomit?”
“Essentially. The point is, the activity we’re seeing from these Formic creatures appears completely alien to us, and it is. But we can also see echoes of this behavior in some organisms on Earth. An asteroid has far more material in volume and in variety than a flower does. Maybe these cocoon weavers use a mix of silicates and oxygen extracted from the rock to build the cocoon. Maybe the cocoon’s amber color comes from gold woven into its structure. Or maybe the framework is organic, and the microbugs simply weave around the framework. We don’t know exactly how it’s done, but Wila says there’s a pattern in the resin. It looks random to us, and from a macro view it is random. But on the micro scale, a dot of resin is actually thousands of individual strands of compounds woven and entwined together. That’s the word Wila uses. Entwined. She calls it the pattern of philotic construction. The creatures don’t assemble, they weave and entwine. They spin and crisscross and fly in and out of
each other, trailing microscopic strands of resin behind them. To us it looks as if the resin is growing out of thin air, but the cocoon weavers are actually ingesting the resin that’s there, and then weaving as they excrete it out the back, stitching up the hole in a matter of seconds. That’s the theory anyway. We’ve never seen these creatures. So we have no way of knowing if Wila is right.”
Imala took the tube and turned it over, examining it. “Why are the Formics doing this, Vico?”
“That’s why I wanted to keep exploring the asteroid. I think the answer is there somewhere.”
Imala shook her head. “I couldn’t let you do that. When you went in last time, when you were attacked, I thought I had lost you. I thought the one person I cared about was gone. And it was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Imala. It was mine. I’m the one who went inside. That was my choice, and it was the wrong one. I put you and everyone else on this ship in danger. And for what? To find some rock-digging worms? What good did that do us? I thought I could learn something of value, something that would help us win the war, and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve apologized twenty times already, Vico. Let’s move on.”
“I can’t. If the cocoon had blown, it could’ve harmed you as well. It makes me sick to think about it.”
“I’m alive, Vico. You’re alive. We’ve extracted the hydrogen from your lungs. All is well.”
“Is it?” Victor asked. “Because ever since I’ve been back, I’ve felt a distance between us. Like I’ve broken something. Like whatever we felt for each other before has dissolved into something else. Everything is formal between us now. I see you, and it’s awkward. I’m not sure if I should embrace you or shake your hand. It’s driving me insane. This isn’t how two people who are engaged to be married should act. Am I wrong?”
She hesitated. “You’re not wrong, no.”
“I feel like I’ve lost the one thing I care about, and I don’t know what to do about it. The noble thing, I know, is to end the engagement. To let you free of this. To remove that burden from you. I feel like the only reason we’re still engaged is because you’re too kind to simply tell me it’s over. You don’t want to hurt me, and so you’ve let it continue. I love you for that, Imala. Your compassion is one of the reasons why I was drawn to you in the first place. But you can’t marry me out of compassion. No one can sustain a marriage with that. I guess I’m saying this can’t continue, Imala. The way we’re existing right now, I can’t keep this up. I would rather be your dear friend and see you happy than be your fiancé and see you unhappy. I want to be the source of joy in your life, not the source of whatever it is you’re feeling right now. Regret, disappointment, sympathy. I don’t know what it is, but I know that’s not a marriage. If ending this is what you want, that’s okay.”
“So you want this to be over?” she asked.
“I want you to be happy, Imala. I want you to feel certain about the man you marry. I don’t want there to be a shred of doubt in your mind about that. And I want the awkwardness between us to end. I want us to be what we were before. Comfortable with each other. This limbo phase we’re in right now is killing me. If we have to end the engagement and redefine what we are to each other for you to be happy, then yes that’s what I want to do.”
“Do you still love me, Vico?”
The question surprised him. How could she doubt that?
“Is that what you think?” he asked. “That my feelings for you have changed at all?”
“Have they?”
“Imala, you are the smartest, wisest, kindest, most levelheaded person I know. Everything you do, everything you say, is right. It’s precisely what must be done and what must be said. I usually don’t realize it until after you’ve acted and spoken, because what I want to say and do is different sometimes. But my ideas are always less right than yours. Always. I value your judgment more than anyone’s, your friendship more than anyone’s, your counsel more than anyone’s. I look forward to talking to you, being with you, watching you from afar every chance I get. There is a sense of wonder about you that I have never seen in anyone. I dream about you constantly. I’ve thought about us being intimate a thousand times. Yes, I’ll admit it. I tell myself I need to have good Catholic chivalrous thoughts, gentlemanly thoughts, but I fail in that regard every single time. I want to eat my meals with you, brush my teeth with you, fold laundry with you. And if that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. But I would be miserable, Imala, utterly completely miserable if we were together and I knew you didn’t feel the same way.”
She put the tube back in the habitat and was quiet a moment. “I do feel the same way, Vico. But sometimes I want to wring your neck. You going in that cocoon, that terrified me more than anything I’ve ever experienced. And the fact that you went in despite me begging you not to, that hurt.”
“Imala—”
“No, let me finish. Because I need to say this. It hurt. It made me feel like you didn’t value what I wanted, what I considered important. I know you needed to do it, but I felt betrayed. I know that’s silly and selfish of me. But it’s true. That’s what I felt. Betrayed.”
“I was wrong, Imala.”
“No, you weren’t wrong, Vico. It needed to be done. There are bigger things at stake here than you or me or anyone on this ship. And I didn’t have that perspective. I’m not sure if I do even now, but it’s the right one to have. So you’re wrong about me being always right. I’m not. But that’s not what I learned from the experience. What I learned was that I saw a life without you in it, and it terrified me. It made me realize that that’s not a life I wanted. I’ve been standoffish ever since because I’ve had to figure things out on my own. I’ve had to acknowledge that I may lose you in this war. And if that happens without me ever being your wife, I think it would be the greatest regret of my life.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think we should get married. As soon as possible. We have four months until we reach that outpost, and when we get there, I suspect they’ll send me one way and you another. When we part, I want it to be as husband and wife. Not as friends who mutually love each other, not as a betrothed couple who may or may not be wed someday. But as one.”
He stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Do I sound insincere?”
“You never sound insincere. I just … this isn’t what I expected. Thirty seconds ago I thought we were breaking up. Now we’re getting married. Are you sure? You had reservations before. And all I’ve done since then is reinforce those reservations. I don’t want us to get married because it’s the practical thing to do, or because the IF has set a time line for our travel. I want us to get married because it’s what we both want to do. This war is going to end someday, and when it does, you’d be stuck with me. Is that what you want?”
She smiled. “Yes. It’s what I want.”
He laughed and embraced her and it didn’t feel uncomfortable in the slightest.
* * *
They held the service a week later at the helm because there was no room in the cargo bay. Mother sewed Imala a dress, sacrificing a lot of other garments for the fabric. In the end, the dress had about five different shades of white, but it looked more like a unique fashion choice than one made out of necessity. Victor owned no suit, but the men on the ship had scrounged together their best garments and offered up what they had. A pant here. A vest there. A pair of polished boots from this person. A white shirt from that person.
Victor paused outside in the corridor before the ceremony and looked at himself in the steel reflection in the wall. “How do I look, Goos?”
Magoosa regarded him with a discerning eye. “Older. I’ve never seen you comb your hair before.
Victor’s hair was slicked to one side. “I comb my hair, Goos.”
“No you don’t. You’ve usually got it pulled back in a band or something until you get annoyed with the length and shave it all off.”
/> “Imala won’t let me cut it.”
“You see?” said Magoosa. “That’s why I’ll never marry. I refuse to let a woman control me.”
Victor laughed. “Imala doesn’t control me, Goos.”
“That’s what they lead you to believe. They seduce you with their female wiles, and the next thing you know, you’re wrapped around their fingers.”
“Thanks for the expert advice, Romeo. I’ll keep my guard up. Speaking of wrapping around fingers, do you have the rings?”
Magoosa held them up. Victor had designed them himself. The bands were iron, platinum, and gold braided together. All metals the family had extracted from asteroids.
“Good. Thanks for being my best man. I appreciate it.”
Magoosa stood a little taller, smiling.
“Vico?”
Victor turned and found Edimar behind him, looking somewhat distraught.
“I know this isn’t a good time,” said Edimar, “but we have a situation here.”
“What situation?” Victor asked.
“The asteroids. The ones the Formics have occupied. They’re moving. Well, a few of them are moving. The ones we know about and are tracking are moving. There are about eight of them. The Formic miniships have turned on their thrusters and pushed the rocks out of their orbits.”
“Pushing them where?” Victor asked.
Edimar shook her head. “Hard to say this early. But they’re all moving inward. And these are only the ones we know about. There are likely thousands of others. They could be moving as well. I don’t know.”
Victor considered for a moment. “Come with me,” he said.
She and Magoosa followed him to the single women’s quarters where Imala was getting ready. Victor knocked and Sabad cracked the door open.
“You can’t come in here, Vico,” Sabad said. “Imala isn’t ready yet.”
“This is kind of an emergency,” Victor said.
“It’s all right, Sabad,” Imala said, opening the door wide. Victor stared at her in wonder. Her hair was up and laced with flowers from the ship’s garden. The white dress fit her perfectly; the bottom hem had ornate strings tied to her feet to keep it from billowing up in zero gravity.