*
24. Space Bell
*
She didn't know what made her think of diving.
Nyota watched her instructor, who sat contemplating his own hands, and thought of immersion. The water she swam down into was dark but clear, and it seemed to arrive, fully formed and deep, from outside her own mind.
She, too, contemplated the Commander's hands. They were lit with an almost iridescent greenness, a color that, were he human, would suggest feebleness, sickness. But he was not Human. And his hands were strong. He could punch a hole in the desk without the slightest effort. He rested his palms on it, and the muscles in his hands worked softly as he pressed against the surface.
A memory came from deep down, sitting on her great grandfather's lap, hot dusty sun and his scratchy voice telling her about an ancient diving bell. Thousands of years ago. One of the first ways that Humans went beyond their life on the ground. The way he wove the story, it made her dream of a beautiful bell in the black sky, carrying her. A transparent shell. She curled up in it and rode the stars, dressed in the tall boots and shiny uniform of a space girl.
The Commander's nails were trimmed as carefully as academy grass, his fingers long and pale. She watched as he bent one and dragged it about two centimeters along the desk, an intimate impression on metal.
She realized she was not writing. One hand gripped her coffee and the other her own knee, and she stared, dumb and glazed. She wanted to impress him, and not in the same impersonal way that she wanted to impress everyone. She wanted him to really see her.
And he did lift his head to look.
*