Naked Space

He's really only a boy, she told herself. What am I doing?

You let your attraction for him overpower your good sense, old girl, that's what you did, she admonished herself.

Yvone knew her undergoing recent age-retardation treatments was partly to blame. The massive youthful hormone flood which rushed through her system was apparently more than she could consciously control. The sight of his athletic dark brown body against the stark white of the beach towel had knocked her thoughts far beyond the bounds of just getting the story. She chided herself again for reacting like some inexperienced adolescent instead of the mature woman that she was, a woman who had lived for more than a century.

Yet, even in the midst of her guilt self-chastisment, Yvone felt that there was something irresistable about Alex. It was something beyond his body, an indefinable quality threaded through his personality, his mannerisms and way of speaking. And she had seen the affect she'd produced in him, had liked the way he'd openly admired her refreshed body. No pretense, no studied coolness, and something in her recently tweeked glands had automatically reciprocated those feelings. Had that been the way it was in her youth, attraction immediately met with attraction? She couldn't honestly remember.

In any case, all of that was merely a distraction to the fact that the man who held her in his arms was nearly as young as her own youngest child. What a mess.

"Alex."

"Umm?"

She moved her head on his lap so as to get a better view of his face. "I have something to tell you."

"What?" He stopped tracing the relief of her ear and began to stroke the hair at her temple. "Your hair is beautiful. Fine black silk. For that matter your body is beautiful. Your eyes, your mouth, your neck. Your breasts are epic, there's just no other word to describe them. And I love your nose." He touched the point where it hooked downward.

"Hush. You're not making my confession any easier."

He grinned down at her. "Okay. What is it?"

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to say that she was investigating the explosion of the Unrepentent for her newsnet. She even had a name for the piece, 'What killed Amboseli Mimms?' She wanted to tell him what a stroke of luck it'd been to find him here at Vicksberg. Interviewing him meant that Yvone's already huge reputation would increase tenfold, not to mention the fat asking-fee she could set for such a colosso scoop. Ilmoran Alexander Mimms, the poor little rich boy who had been in a starship explosion and lived to tell his tale.

Yvone knew enough about the super-rich to be aware of their extreme mania for privacy. She could understand their need to be out of the spotlight. After all, there were always groupies of the rich and powerful, the hangers-on, and the wannabes trying to grab a piece of the fortune, or to gain second-hand fame by being near them. She knew that, as a reporter, she was one of those people. It was in the very nature of her job to be a parasite, to snatch pieces of the newsworthy.

His voice brought her back to the moment. "What is it," Alex asked. He had begun to stroke her hair again.

She decided it was too far into the game to come clean. There was no reason to bring any of it up. She was on vacation. Leave it at that. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Your confession," he reminded her.

"Oh, yes. Well, I just had an age-reversion, recently. I thought you should know, I'm more than one hundred."

Alex shrugged. "I don't care. It's a relief. I thought you were going to tell me you were married to some psychopathic homicidal maniac who's insanely jealous."

Yvone laughed. "No. I haven't been married for a long time."

Alex looked down into her eyes, his grin lost for the moment. "Seriously, your age doesn't matter to me."

"Hmm. You know what they say about young men who make love to older women."

He traced the rise of her cheekbone with his fingers. "No. Why don't you tell me what they say."

"They say that such men are searching for a mother-figure." The moment the words were said she regretted them.

Alex only laughed. "My mother was nothing like you. How about if we get dressed for dinner. Oddly, I seem to've gained an enormous appetite."

She gave him a tender smile. "Me too, and something tells me we're gonna need all the calories we can lay our hands on."

###

For two weeks Yvone had watched him. She'd studied the way he ate, how he lifted and held his fork, the way he brought it to his mouth. How he chewed. She'd seen how his eyes sparkled when he was amused, the way his head tilted back when he laughed. And each time their glances had met she'd felt a quiet thrill go through her. Yvone knew she had a killer crush on Alex. She'd known it from the first.

And now, at the end of their time together, it seemed to her that the last few, precious days had been foreshortened. It seemed that time had passed too quickly, that they'd somehow been cheated of their due.

She sat on one side of the bed in her room, the room they'd hardly left for a fortnight, and watched Alex as he stood before a full length mirror. She could see his reflection and his expression was a sad one, as he dressed himself in his uniform of emerald green tunic and black slacks. Highly polished black boots were on his feet. He straightened the silver infinity button at his collar. The silver lieutenant bars at his shoulders glittered, having caught the sunlight coming through the windows. His many dredlocks fell straight down his back and were gathered by a black leather sheath between his shoulder blades. He tugged at the hem of his tunic so that there were no folds in the garment and he caught her gaze in the mirror.

"I love you," he said, deeply serious. "Come with me."

Yvone shook her head and lowered her eyes. "We've talked about this, Alex. Let's not go through it again. It's difficult enough to let you go. Don't bring anymore unhappiness into it. You promised."

He scowled. "I know what I promised. But if you truly--"

"Don't." She interupted and held up a hand, warding off his words. "Don't say it. As ridiculous as it is, I love you. You know I do. I can't go with you, though. You know that too. I have a life outside of this resort."

He turned from the mirror and went to her. He bent down on one knee and took her hands in his own. "How am I supposed to leave you?"

The openly pleading look in his dark eyes almost broke her heart. "Oh, Alex. You're so young."

She pulled her hands from his and put her arms around him in a tight embrace. Her chin brushed his tunic collar when she spoke close to his ear. "I do love you. I can't tell you how much. And I can't tell you how much I'll miss you, how much I miss you already. But you have to go and live your life now. You have to find your path. I've found mine, you'll have to find your own, without me. At least for now. This is your time, baby. You're all fresh and green and you should taste everything in your own way without an old woman like me slowing you down. You're on your way to your first assignment, your adventure's just starting. We'll be together again, lots, maybe so much that you'll grow tired of seeing my face."

"Never," he said, with hard passionate conviction.

She caressed the sides of his face and then kissed him. "You have my code. You can mail me and tell me all about the exotic worlds you've visited and all the different people you've met and I can live them through you. But for now it's time for you to go without me."

He broke their embrace and looked into her eyes. "I'll never love anyone else," he fiercely said.

Yvone smiled a bit at that. "If I thought that were true I'd haul you off to a psych-tech. You're a good and decent and sweet man, Alexander Mimms. Those qualities will attract people to you whether you desire it to be so or not. Listen to me, my brave young officer, you'll fall in love again. That's as inevitable as the tides. And you'll find that each love will be unique. My happiness is knowing that I'm included in your life, sweetness. I don't require a promise from you which you can't possibly keep. I'll hold precious this time we've had and I flatter myself that you'll do the same."

"And what about you, Yvone?

Her brow pinched in puzzlement. "What about what?"

"What about you? Will you find someone to replace me?"

"No one can replace you, Alex. It's been a long time since I've felt for someone half as much as what I'm feeling for you now. A love like ours is something I thought I'd outgrown decades ago. You've given me a gift which I can't help but cherish. Don't worry about me. I have many friends and a very large family. I'm only alone when I want to be, like I said, don't waste time worrying about me."

"I can't help it." He squeezed her hands.

"Oh, stop being so sad. It makes you look like a stupid puppy. And get up, you'll muss your uniform."

"It's wrinkleproof material," he said. But he stood as she got up from the bed. They held hands and she kissed him softly on the cheek.

"Now go," Yvone said. She took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the door. "Go. Don't turn around."

After a moment of hesitation he went.

When the door had snicked shut behind him, Yvone dropped back to the bed, all her strength gone. For two days she had steeled herself for their goodbye. In her head she'd reheared her speech many times. She had been careful to keep her emotions from boiling over in front of Alex, but it'd all been an act. She hadn't felt in her heart the maturity she'd projected. The irrational part of her had screamed for her to go with him. Yvone had longed to cast off everything, every responsiblity, everything she'd worked to achieve for decades and to go with him.

But, she'd told herself that it was the height of lunacy to think that she could relocate to some backwater base station, away from her life, away from the action. And if she had, what would she have done there? She knew she couldn't share the life of a twenty year-old spaceman. She was more than five times twenty, it was a fantasy she couldn't quite make herself believe in.

But a part of her, and not just the romantic part, would forever wish that she could have somehow gone with him.

# # #

At the resort's spaceport Alex climbed into the shuttle which would take him and the others up to the transport in orbit around Vicksburg. There was an empty seat beside Olga, he silently sat down and strapped in. Surrounded by the excited conversation of the others, Alex's thoughts were turned inward.

"Well, if it ain't loverboy," Olga said, in a snide tone.

Through his misery, Alex scowled in warning. "Knock it off, Olga."

"Oh, why so sad, Alex? Don't worry, you won't go deprived. There're women with even bigger boobs all across the Galaxy."

He turned to her, ready with an angry retort. Alex knew that Olga had developed a dislike for Yvone, although he didn't understand why. It just seemed that the more time he'd spent with Yvone the sharper had become Olga's tongue. He had warned her off the subject of his affair more than once, but the woman seemed incapable of keeping her sharp and nasty comments to herself. Because of Olga's own free-wheeling sexual ways Alex didn't really understand how she could be jealous of the relationship he'd developed with Yvone.

In truth, Olga's negative attitude wasn't precisely one of jealousy. She wasn't upset so much that Yvone had managed to sweep Alex off his feet, but more because the two of them had formed something which had excluded her. Olga was mystified by the emotional mechanics of monogamistic love, despite her great experience and expertise in the physical side of relationships. With rare exception, emotional attachment obscurely threatened her. Alex intuited some of Olga's motivations, and the insight somewhat modified his response.

"Just don't screw with me right now," he quietly warned her.

"Sure. You got it. I just don't understand the attraction, is all. What'd she do, give milk with those things?"

Alex just barely managed to hold his temper. He forced himself to remember that the two of them had helped each other through some rough times. He reminded himself that they were friends. With all of that in mind, Alex's voice was rough but restrained when he spoke.

"It's against regs to strike a fellow officer, Olga, but you'd better hear me. The next smartass crack you make about Yvone, I'll do my best to beat the living shit outta you. Copy?"

Olga shrank before his anger. "Yeah, five by five. Take it easy. I was only kidding," she said, her tone hurt.

"You go too far sometimes." With that he settled back in his seat and closed his eyes as the shuttle lifted off.