Sunday evening I met Seiko at the dance. Several dozen people stood and mingled in the hall as a crisp, salty sea breeze wafted through large open doors. She looked radiant in a full-length white gown with matching gloves. Eschewing a hat, she wore her long brown hair pulled back and up, letting it explode behind her head in a cascade of tumbling, wavy locks. She smiled and nodded to me as I approached, trying hard to look spiffy in a black suit and white tie.
“Jason, you’re terribly handsome.”
“No match for your beauty.”
She took my hand and we leaned toward each other. Our lips brushed across each other’s cheeks while old man Wright, a Firster chaperone, kept his eye on me. We separated and Seiko laid her hand upon my elbow – she never violated decorum – and followed me onto the dance floor.
A volunteer band competently played a piece with an easy, stately tempo. Seiko and I followed our steps with comfortable practice. I remembered films’ dances where couples held each other in tight embraces, their bodies swaying like sensual metronomes. The Governing Council had approved nothing like that and so we danced in sensible, frustrating separation. Here and there, aged Firsters, each carrying a long thin red baton, moved among the dancers. I didn’t see them snap anyone’s shoulder for indecency, though old man Wright never seemed very far away.
Several songs sped by in a pleasant blur before Seiko stepped slightly back and I followed her to the table. A carafe of fruit juice waited for us, synthetic, as Nocturnia was still decades away from producing enough fruit to dedicate output for mere beverages. I pulled out her chair and she slid gracefully into place and then I took my seat, close enough for private conversation and yet distant enough to be ‘modest’.
We basked in a moment of silent happiness.
“I know what happened this morning,” she said. She lifted her glass, took a delicate sip, and fixed me with a low gaze from her brown eyes.
“You panicked.” She didn’t ask, stating it as a matter of fact. “I don’t know why, Jason, but I know.”
My face grew hot and I tried to hide my guilt.
“Everyone heard you agree to register but –” she paused briefly, a momentary hesitation that signaled her own internal struggle, “– I don’t want you forced into anything. I love you too much for that.”
“No one’s forcing me.”
Her smile was both understanding and sad.
“You’ve never been in a rush to get married, even as you are impatient for other things.” She blushed and for a moment avoided eye contact.
“I—”
“No, let me finish. If you want to put it off again, I’m willing to agree.”
Her pain and humiliation stabbed at me.
“I don’t know why you’re so shy about marriage, but I am willing to wait.”
She reached out and took me by the hand. I couldn’t recall when she had taken off her gloves and the skin-to-skin contact excited me. She held it there, and then with an eye toward the chaperones, quickly took back her hand and deftly slipped on her glove.
My heart pounded and blood roared in my ears as I stared, captivated by her dark brown eyes. I loved her. I smiled at her sight, her voice calmed me, and her laugh became the music of my life, and while she desperately wanted our engagement officially recorded, she offered me escape from responsibility. Grandma Kessler’s warning echoed in my mind, but I wanted to be responsible. At least I thought I did.
“No,” I said. “Let’s make it official.”
I reached into the suit’s breast pocket and pulled out my slate. My hand shook as I retrieved the device. I laid it flat on the table, stole a quick glance toward Seiko, and her smile, or my terror, set my heart speeding like an out-of-control orbital freighter.
I accessed the Administration’s registry and together we submitted to identification. Soon the marriage interface glowed on the screen. With a deep breath from me, we selected a date three weeks off, and placed ourselves on a waiting list for an artificial womb. After finalizing the arraignments and committing ourselves to the civil and criminal penalties for false and indecent intent, Seiko threw her arms around my neck and passionately kissed me.
Time passed in a delicious haze until a chaperone’s red baton smacked sharply on my shoulder. Blushing through her dusky skin, Seiko broke contact, and leaned back into her seat, giving Wright an apologetic smile. I tried to do the same, but in my direction the ass simply snarled, tapping me again with the baton before moving off.
I looked around the dance floor. Most of the couples were many years younger than Seiko and I, rushing into life, speeding toward a union that would bind them for the rest of their lives. Of course I had tried to put this off as long as possible, and Seiko had been engaged before. I had seen pictures; her parents had apparently adored Nathan and held onto every scrap and memory of their youngest daughter’s first fiancé. Space operations were far more dangerous than fighting the native biome and a mining disaster had ended that marriage before it had begun. Despite my prestigious posting in the Administration, her family measured me against Nathan and found me lacking.
“You’re not supposed to be sad,” she said, abruptly bringing my attention back to the dance floor.
I pushed the doubts down, trying to bury them.
“I’m not. I….” My voice hesitated before letting me continue. “I just don’t know how to win your family over.”
She reached out and stroked my cheek, the smooth fabric of her glove sliding across my skin.
“You’ve won me over. They’ll follow.”
I looked down at the slate. Now that we had officially registered, the news had flown into the colonial network, for family, friends, and four million strangers to absorb.
“Jason!”
Wolfgang Le cut across the dance floor, ignoring couples and chaperones, speeding toward us. I wanted to hide, Chairperson Jones’s ultimatum fresh in my mind, but Seiko waved, her white-gloved hand flashing like semaphore.
Wolf pulled a chair away from another table and sat down across from me.
“We’re registered.” Seiko’s high voice cracked with excitement. She shoved the slate in his direction. He glanced at it.
“Great.” His voice held very little enthusiasm. “You’ll be very happy.”
He leaned across the table at me. “I went to the theater, but it was closed up.”
“It’s on the schedule,” I explained. “A musical group is rehearsing tonight.”
Wolf spent as much time in space as the medical authorities allowed. Films were hardly an interest.
“Well, the network wouldn’t give me your location.”
“Privacy,” Seiko explained, though I rebelled at the accepted practice of considering a singles dance as something private. No hurt or anger tinged her voice; the joy of finally setting it officially in the colonial registry had softened her to his rudeness.
“I’m sorry.” Wolf didn’t sound apologetic. “I need Jason’s help and it can’t wait until morning. That will be too late.”
Not waiting for permission, he turned to me. “You’ve got to vote against the mothballing.”
I sighed, letting my shoulders sag. “It won’t do any good, Wolf—”
“It certainly won’t do any good if you vote for it. We need that network. I tell you, we gave up—”
I looked around for a chaperone because a married man was violating the dance’s rules, but of course now that I needed one they were all off swapping Firster stories.
“All the other Arks failed,” I said.
“We don’t know that. Just because the first generation didn’t find any signals doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there now.”
Seiko joined the fray. “He’s right about that, Jason.”
“And I’m right that one vote won’t make any difference.”
“I know you can’t sway the committee,” Wolf said, giving Seiko a thankful smile for her support. “But you can stop it from being unanimous. Look, we know that there’s a faction on the Administration looking to shut it all down. All they see in space are resources for building things, but it has to be more than that, we have to know what happened to the other Arks.”
“And what good would that do us? We can’t get to them and they can’t get to us. Hell, Wolf, it took the Ark centuries to get here.”
“I’m not talking about exchanging people, everyone knows that’s impossible, but ideas we can swap. Most of the other target systems are within a couple of dozen light-years—”
“Right,” I said. “And that’s a couple of dozen years by radio, not to mention the amount of power—”
“Power’s not a factor!” Anger crept into his tone. “Hell, even one small fusion plant would be enough. We can’t keep trying to scratch it out by ourselves. Together mankind has a better chance.”
“He’s right,” Seiko agreed. “There’s so much we have to fumble and figure out as we do it. If even one other Ark has succeeded—”
“Yes, but they didn’t. Look, it isn’t like the Founders and the Firsters did one quick scan and gave up. They searched the other targets for 30 years, and nothing. Not one signal, not one sign that any other Ark made it.”
Wolf scanned the floor, watching out for a chaperone.“That’s not proof, and you know it.”
“You can’t prove a negative,” Seiko said.
The tide turned against me and I fell back to a more defensive position. “My vote’s not going to make any difference.”
Finally a chaperone began walking toward our table.
“No, it’s not,” Wolf said. “But the whole space community is working this vote. We have to make sure not one committee or subcommittee is unanimous. If the Administration sees that there is support then we might, just might, win an extension.”
Seiko locked eyes with me and said, “We can’t be alone. We can’t be the only one.”
“Fine!” I threw up my hands. “But if Jones gets me thrown off Cultural Dissemination I’m coming to you for a job.”
Wolf grinned and hurried away just as a female chaperone arrived.
“Mr. Le is married,” she said, her voice overflowing with disapproval.
“Committee business,” I said.
Seiko stood and I followed her onto the dance floor, but throughout the night my mind returned again and again to Jones and her terrible temper.
* * *
The chaperones watched closely as Seiko and I left the hall. The crowd flowed out in streams to the street, a river of formal attire moving under Companion’s red glow. The ocean’s smell carried strong from the bay as I escorted Seiko to the line of waiting cars. She kissed me on the cheek, and then along with five other single women climbed into a car. I watched the car move down the wide boulevard, deftly zipping in and out among the scores of network-guided vehicles, until I lost it in the flow of traffic. Looking back at the men chatting among themselves, gushing with gossip, I rejected joining them and decided to walk through the park before heading home.
My path meandered between low hills. The trees’ dark canopies of heavy drooping branches blocked most of Companion’s light and I used my slate to light my steps. Off to one side, perched atop a hill and lit by brilliant white floodlights, a replica of our Ark stood out stark against the night sky. It was a massive egg shape, white and held up by a single pillar. Glittering golden strands, representing the solar sail control cables, shot off from the narrow end, vanishing in darkness. Of course they hadn’t recreated the sails themselves, and so our monument in fact was the image of a crippled vessel. The Ark struck me as pretentious. A monument not to our ingenuity, but to our arrogance, to the egotism that mankind deserved survival.
The chilly breeze did nothing to cool my blood. I fantasized about Seiko’s soft skin, the touch of her lips, the strength of her fervent embrace, the sound of her voice lost in ecstatic pleasure, and my breath turned quick. Tired and frustrated, I activated my slate to summon a car.
A news post flashed across the screen. It told of another arrest, another group of idiots who thought they could avoid detection in our closely monitored lives. I scanned the details, curious if they had engaged in anything inventive. They hadn’t, just another bunch of adolescents trying to fabricate birth control devices without triggering alarms.
I understood the logic of the Administration’s position. Separating sex from procreation, even in a limited manner, risked sending the colony into a dwindling birth spiral. Back in the late twenty-first century, with a planet overburdened by excessive population, such a policy made sense, even if they had stumbled into it accidentally, but with humanity hanging on by a thread, a bare four million to rebuild the entire species, it was an unacceptable risk. Understanding the logic didn’t mean accepting it though, or denying that it chafed. I wanted to be something more than another father, to be more than simply a biological von Neumann machine.
On the nearest street the car waited for me and I climbed into the compartment. I hardly paid attention to the city as it flashed past, thinking about Seiko, about pleasures delayed, and inevitable responsibilities.
The musical troupe had been good to their word and the theater was in good shape. I walked through the various rooms, making sure everything was in order, then I set the security system and climbed the stairs to my apartment.
The Administration planned for the Director of Cultural Dissemination: Communal Media to be a family man and allotted space accordingly. I had a large apartment with spacious rooms, a master bedroom, three smaller bedrooms for children, a study, a family room, a front parlor, and an abundance of utility spaces. I adored it all.
In the bedroom, I stripped down to nothing, preferring to sleep in the raw – something that’d send those chaperones into hysterics – and programmed the fabricator for the next day’s clothing. Since I’d have to go and be physically present for Jones’s committee meeting, that required an actual suit and tie. I selected a solid gray suit with blue tie and set the fabricator printing, making sure the job would be ready by morning.
I crawled into bed, switched off the lights and waited for sleep. My mind raced through the day’s events. For nearly an hour anxiety and tension chased sleep away. When I finally slept, black hair and deep blue eyes haunted my dreams.
* * *
I awoke before the alarm, always a bad sign. As I showered in a magnificent stall wide enough for me to stand with both arms fully outstretched and with a high rim so it could be converted into a tub suitable for a brood of kids, I thought about the woman with the black hair and amazing eyes. I imagined her there with me in the shower, the hot water running off her figure in sensual rivulets. Suddenly I ordered the network to change to cold water and icy daggers killed my ardor. I’d never see her again; it was best to forget her entirely. Even as fantasy I suspected she’d bring nothing but grief.
After the shower I dressed and ate a simple fabricated breakfast. Once I reached the office across the hallway, I activated the monitors and turned to the morning’s work.
I reviewed films in Jones’s secure archive that I wanted to screen for possible release. If I were totally honest with myself I’d admit that I didn’t care as much about the rest of the colony seeing these movies as much as I wanted them for myself. The records indicated that a lot of the later productions, once the industry had broken free from restrictive moral codes, explored forbidden topics with boldness and experimental styles. The films of Lynch, Jodorowsky, Fellini, and others gripped my imagination with an unbreakable hold, but Jones and her ethical straitjacket kept these treasures locked away. I dispatched a request to screen the films for historical and cultural education, hoping that some meteor of good fortune might strike.
On the security monitor I noticed Brandon trotting up the theater’s steps. He lived in the center city, rejecting a setup similar to mine at his broadcast facilities in favor of keeping close to both his and Nikita’s families. When he opened the office door the grin on his face was all I needed to know – he had already seen the official notification.
“Well, it took you long enough.”
“It would have been quicker without everyone pushing me.”
He crossed over with a few quick strides of his short legs and shoved his brown hand into my white one. The archives listed a number of films about race troubles, even racially charged murder, but here I agreed with Jones on the embargo. No one needed to risk that mimetic infection.
We shook hands for several long seconds with Brandon slapping me hard on my shoulder.
“Is Seiko moving out here, or are you giving up your isolated little nest?”
“We haven’t decided that yet.”
After reclaiming my hand I sat at my desk and pulled up Brandon’s agenda for the morning.
“I’m shocked,” he said, still not yet ready for work. “She should have made you sign off on everything last night.”
“I think that was her idea, but Wolf crashed the dance and upset her plans.”
He reached out, pulled a chair from his desk, and slid it next to mine. When he’d settled into it his expression grew serious.
“Wolf?”
“Yeah, he was there lobbying hard for the Deep Space Network.”
“He’s going to have to accept the inevitable. The Administration is killing it.”
“Well, the ‘spacies’ seem to think that even a symbolic showing of support might make a difference.”
He gave me an intense stare. “Tell me you aren’t considering voting to save it.”
I said nothing, but made a show of studying Brandon’s proposed broadcast schedule. Jones also limited our access to the broadcast mass media, but Brandon played it safe, rarely requesting anything from later than the end of the twentieth century.
“You’re not,” he said, refusing to let the subject drop.
“He made a good case for it.” I leaned back from the desk. “It didn’t help that Seiko jumped in on his side.”
“You resisted that woman’s most persuasive talents for over a year and in one night she talks you into backstabbing Jones?”
I grinned. “I like Seiko a hell of a lot more than I do that woman.”
“No argument there, but Seiko can’t throw you out into the wild.”
“Maybe we did give up the search too soon.”
He shrugged. “That’s not my field, but I do know if Jones sees you standing between her and perfect unanimity she’ll never forgive or forget.”
“I doubt she’ll toss me out over one vote.”
“If you were anyone else I’d agree, but Jason, you’ve been pushing her too hard.” He ran a hand over his tightly curled hair. “I’ve seen the titles you’ve tried to get released. She’s more than half convinced you’re some sort of hedonistic deviant. You can’t just hand her ammunition and expect nothing but shrugs and smiles.”
“And there has to come a time when we stop deferring everything to senior committees. This isn’t what our ancestors had in mind. A population of meek and mild people doing whatever they’re told.”
“There’ll be time for that later, but not now. Not when there’s barely two million adult humans left in the universe. Right now we have to do what’s necessary for survival, everything else is expendable. That means setting aside the niceties of some sort of noble democratic experiment. We have the system we need and you shouldn’t be trying to get kicked out to some bush-burning gang.”
I scoffed. “It’s not going to come to that. Jones doesn’t like me, but I do my job and I do it damn well. She can’t crucify me, not over one vote.”
He shook his head. A bemused and sad smile played at the corner of his lips.
“You’re too certain for your own good. Come on, let’s get to work.”
We spent hours planning out communal and broadcast entertainment. A majority of the work detailed things on Brandon’s side of the cultural indoctrination. With the vast number of hours everyone worked planting Earth’s ecosystems, few had the luxury of communal events, preferring to enjoy their entertainment at home. I still fought for public screenings. A shared sensation remained something unique for social learning. Finally it came time for the committee meeting and we summoned a car.
Committee offices occupied a small section of the lowest level of the Governing Council Building. While churches, museums, and community centers ringed Founders’ Park, the Administration building sat atop a bluff overlooking Landfall Bay. Sunlight reflected off the wind-driven and choppy waters in shards of brilliant light. A copse of pines, the oldest Terrestrial trees on the planet, circled the Administration campus, filling the air with their rich scent.
Brandon and I were neither the first nor the last to take our seats at the far end of the great curved meeting table. He gave me one last look, silently pleading with me to not provoke Jones’s ire. Only 10 minutes late, all 50 members of the Subcommittee for Cultural Reclamation: Mass Media had taken their seats and Jones called the meeting to order.
We shoveled our way through the meaningless, meandering minutiae that everyone else found terribly fascinating. I listened to reports covering text media and the usual complaints that far too much of Earth’s literary history remained sealed away, reports about the social media and the very limited forms allowed by the Administration lest public morals be utterly destroyed, and reports concerning educational media’s eternal conflict with our broad base of religious instruction. Current Affairs was the only department more tightly controlled than Mass Media.
The afternoon dragged on before Brandon and I gave our reports, dry lectures of numbers and sociological surveys indicating our effectiveness in cultural reclamation. Only when all the usual material had been covered, discussed, debated, and, of course, never resolved, did the meeting turn to extraneous matters.
“One last item,” Jones said. She stood from her seat at the table’s center, a stern figure in a dark blue suit with red accents. She gazed around the room, but her eyes lingered on me.
“The Governing Council is considering a proposal to mothball the Deep Space Network and reclaim those resources for vital projects planet-side.”
She made no attempt at neutrality.
“They have asked that all committees and subcommittees poll their members on an advisory basis. I don’t need to remind the members that in 80-plus years the DSN hasn’t found a single bit of evidence that any other Ark succeeded, or that Nocturnia’s ecosystem continues to be tenacious and deadly. I know my position.”
She again singled me out with an intense glare.
“By a show of hands, all in favor of keeping the DSN active?”
Brandon’s hand shot up. I hesitated, stunned and humbled by his display of friendship. A fraction of a second behind him I raised my own. A wave of confused looks spread around the table. Here and there a hand joined ours until 11 members voted with us.
Jones didn’t hide the anger in her voice.
“And those for decommissioning?”
Thirty-six voted with Jones, a majority but very far from the signal she had hoped to send to her own bosses.
As we walked down the steps to the waiting cars Brandon whispered, “You owe me.”
* * *
I got back to the theater and unlocked the security system in time for Maria and Patrick’s arrival. They saw to routine tasks while I began loading the evening’s performance. That night’s film was another western from the mid-twentieth century but this one I liked more than others of that simplistic genre. High Noon doesn’t fit neatly into the Manichean style so often displayed by those movies. The townspeople abandoned Marshall Kane to the killers and after fulfilling his own sense of duty and honor he returned the favor, abandoning his office. It didn’t hurt my fondness for the film that I thought Seiko looked like the actress playing Kane’s former love interest.
The network indicated that Jones had released the file and it was ready for display. Naturally nothing we presented was an actual film, but a high-quality digital reproduction. With its dense storage the Ark had contained nearly a complete record of human arts, sciences, and literature, enough for centuries of rediscovery. More than once I had argued the colony needed to create its own arts, that without them we’d never truly rediscover our culture, but the Administration refused to allocate the resources.
I scanned the monitors as people arrived. This crowd trended a bit older than our average. I took the credit for that due to my synopsis. While many of the westerns passed the smell test as children’s fare this one was definitely adult material. Men checked their hats and coats and the women, elegant in their long dresses, conversed with each other, filling the lobby with charm, decorum, and stupefying conformity.
The door slid open and she stepped inside. Her black hair fell in a long tumbling wave over a strapless white dress. I couldn’t spot any makeup and still her skin appeared flawless, her lips radiant and red, her eyes dark, mysterious, and smoldering. Again she eschewed gloves, her arms bare from shoulders to fingertip. A slit running up the side of her long dress flashed her thigh as she walked, calm, confident, and fully in control. She studied the lobby’s reproduction of marketing posters as the men, to the horror of their wives and fiancées, studied her.
I buttoned my coat and straightened my tie without realizing that I had stood. Brandon was right; nothing good could come of this, nothing but trouble. Mustering my last reserves of will, I forced myself to sit and continued working on the introduction, but my gaze repeatedly returned to the monitors. I threw myself into the work and ordered a hot black coffee from the fabricator, wishing that like so many movie characters I could numb my desire with something stronger, but unmarried colonists were allowed only non-intoxicating beverages.
People, in small groups, began filing into the auditorium, slowly draining away the lobby’s crowd. I stood ready to face the audience, made sure of my appearance, and started out. I stole a glance at the monitor. She stood in the nearly deserted lobby, a perfect face and figure. I debated waiting for her to take her seat; it would be so much simpler to avoid any contact, but she moved from display to display. The biblical epics like Ben-Hur and Samson and Delilah held most of her attention. I abandoned waiting and left the office.
I emerged from the concession stand where Maria worked, studious and dependable. Patrick for once had no eyes for her, instead focusing all of his teenage lust on the mysterious woman. In my chest a spark of jealous rage ignited and I stomped over to the young man.
I put fire in my voice. “Are you looking for a citation?”
He leapt, pulling himself erect, and with visible reluctance pulled his stare away from her.
“No, sir! I was—”
“I don’t care what you thought you were doing! I will not have that sort of thing going on here. Go down and check the fabricator lines.”
Making sure that the substrate lines were clear was a smelly, foul job and I enjoyed giving him the task.
He slunk away and I turned toward the auditorium doors. She smiled approval of my heavy hand, and that thrilled me. Then she moved to the auditorium herself. I reached the door slightly ahead of her, and with a flourish I pulled it open and held it for her.
With a husky contralto voice she said, “Thank you…?”
Ignoring every definition of wisdom and unable to stop myself, I said, “Jason.”
“Pamela.”
She smiled and my heart surged as though someone had pumped me with amphetamines.
“You’re a true gentleman, Jason.”
As she stepped past me her perfume wafted on the air, a light flowery scent that carried a hint of endless summers. Momentarily, her deep blue, nearly violet, eyes stayed with mine and held me with affection.
I followed her into the auditorium. She walked past several available seats, taking a center one near the front. She sat, demurely crossed her legs, her arms on the rests, and never once did her eyes leave me. I stumbled and muttered through my prepared remarks, unable to ignore her. Finally I finished my worst introductory performance and fled back to my office.
I collapsed into my chair, my forehead slick with a thin coat of sweat. I pulled my tie loose and let out a heavy sigh. Every time I closed my eyes Pamela’s face floated in my vision, her seductive eyes, the smile on her face, and her expression an unmistakable invitation.
“Nothing but trouble,” I reminded myself. I switched on a monitor and brought up a photo of Seiko. She smiled back at me, happy and full of trust, a trust I simply could not allow myself to violate. With the last traces of willpower I’d ever show, I resisted turning on the auditorium’s security monitors for another glimpse, futilely resolving to leave Pamela out of my life.
The hour and a half running time passed far too quickly. When the question-and-answer session arrived my emotions raged in total war. The thought of another glimpse of her sent my blood racing throughout my body, but guilt and shame weakened my knees, and left my stomach a twisted, cramped knot.
With my knees quaking I gripped the banister as I navigated the steps down. Ignoring Maria and Patrick, I moved to the auditorium and down to front and center. I turned and faced the audience; Pamela met my eyes with an inviting smile.
While others asked the usual questions, she sat silent, her gaze fixed on me. My stomach tumbled with every blink of her lashes; my head swam with every fidget in her seat that flashed her perfect white calves. I stumbled through answers, simultaneously relieved and disappointed that she hadn’t asked anything. We neared the end when her hand rose.
“I have a question about the Helen Ramirez character.”
I nodded for her to continue.
“Her history is fascinating. She was lover to the film’s villain, then to the hero, Will Kane, and finally to the deputy, Harvey. Despite all this sexual activity there’s no indication of any children. Do you think it’s possible that this movie is implicitly endorsing a pro-contraceptive ideal?”
The rest of the audience shifted in their seats and a gasp ran through them like a wave crashing on the shore. Pamela didn’t show the slightest embarrassment, maintaining eye contact with me throughout her question’s taboo subject. She had really been paying attention. Underneath the story of a good man standing up for his code and honor while everyone else cowered, quite a lot of sex had been hinted at, something I had already ‘explained away’ when I had convinced Jones to clear it.
“That’s not how the Administration interpreted the character or her storyline,” I said, launching into my completely fabricated version of the film’s backstory. “Given the historical state of contraception when the story is set it’s much more likely that her character is barren. This places her outside of a desirable choice for a wife and hence Marshall Kane’s marriage to the fertile and morally superior Amy.”
Pamela’s bemused expression indicated she believed none of my ‘explanation’, but she didn’t challenge me. A few more questions straggled in and then the audience began exiting. She lagged behind and I foolishly stayed instead of seeking my office’s safety.
“I’m not sure I agree with that reasoning,” she said as we walked up the aisle. She was so close our elbows nearly brushed with each step. I should have walked farther from her, keeping her at a respectable distance, but I had no ability to resist.
“Well, your interpretation is a little biased by our times. Here on Nocturnia,” I continued, “we’re very concerned about birth rates, fostering the growth of new families because it is that or extinction, but when this film was produced the Earth’s population had already passed more than one billion people. Personally, I think the love triangle is there simply to heighten the dramatic tension and we need to be careful not to interpret it through our own sexual mores.”
We reached the lobby. Maria worked closing down the fabricators, but Patrick watched us with open jealousy. I slid open the door for her and she stepped across the threshold, but stopped and turned to face me. The wall shielded her from everyone else and our eyes met. She reached out, taking my hands in hers. Her gloveless fingers moved across mine, a soft, innocent touch that inexplicably aroused me.
She explored my ring finger and said, “Not married?”
“En-engaged,” I stammered.
She frowned, and I couldn’t help but stroke her fingers in return, noticing her equal lack of a wedding band.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she said. She leaned forward, her perfume washed over me and I struggled to hide my growing erection. Her lips came close, but I managed to step back and avoided the kiss.
“No,” I said as gently as possible. “I’m engaged, very happily engaged.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“But I wish I wasn’t,” I confessed.
Pamela turned and fled into the night, not even pausing to summon a car.