Her face was drawn, not only from what she saw among the stars, but what she’d faced when she’d returned.ĭr. Thirty years later, they were the barest seams, hidden among the faint wrinkles. The scratches on her cheek were still fresh. Naomi had lifted her chin, her posture ramrod-straight in her pressed, stiff suit, her short hair only beginning to grow out again.
It must have all seemed so loud, so messy, after so long breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, seeing nothing organic except for the plants she had grown in her greenhouse. Naomi had stood surrounded by the polished wood of the courtroom, all warm browns compared to the white metal of the Atalanta.
#GOLDILOCKS LIPS TRIAL#
The whole world had been desperate to hear her statement, to put her on trial as much as the others. Even there, she’d said as little as possible. I’ve watched the recording of the court testimony. I don’t know what she thought about the expanse before her, if it changed her understanding of humanity and our place within it. Twisting out to gaze at the stars, their reflections shimmering across the gold-lined visor of her helmet. The silence but for her own breathing and the crackle of the comms.
Her bulky spacesuit, the tethering cable an umbilical cord back to the ship. Over the years, I’ve often imagined Naomi up there, floating alone, curled up like a white comma against a black sheet of paper. Others will judge the choices she made, what she risked, how close she came to utter destruction. You might be able to come close, she told me once-she was always complimentary about my writing-but you’d never really know what it was like. They could use all the pretty language they liked. Whenever I asked her to tell me what happened up there, Naomi would say no one who has been to space could ever describe it to someone who hasn’t. Naomi Lovelace has never given an interview. 'You stupid to be down here alone and you fuckin loco to be down here at night alone.In thirty years, Dr. 'What you doing down here, amigo?' he asked, gripping Bobby's shoulder with the tattooed hand. Make the bad boys hang around Mallory's Saloon look like good boys.' You don't want to mess with boys like that, chico. 'The jefes in the long yellow coats,' Dee breathed. Hands grabbed Bobby's shoulders and held him. 'Hey, cabr��n' the guy said-laughing, but not in a nice way. This time the winkle had lasted longer, but it was going now, all right. His ability was fading again, as it had on the day Mrs Gerber took them to Savin Rock shortly after they left McQuown's stand at the end of the midway, it had been gone. 'I have to go to The Corner Pocket,' Bobby said.īobby tried to look into the newcomer's mind and saw only dim shapes. 'You stupid to be down here alone and you fuckin loco to be down here at night alone.' 'You got any money, t��o?' asked the third guy. 'He look like a pansy uptown boy to me,' said the one who had called Bobby cabr��n and putino. Inside the pawnshop an old man with a pair of glasses pushed up on his bald head looked around, annoyed, then back down at the newspaper he was reading. Make him pay his way across Diablo turf.'ĭee grabbed him and spun him against the door of a pawnshop so hard that for a moment Bobby thought he had decided to go along with his corner-boy friends after all. 'We just gonna shake this little guy out a little. 'Hey, Dee,' said the boy who had pulled Bobby's hair. 'I know Boris Karloff but I don't know no fuckin Ted,' Dee said. He was listening so hard that he walked into a guy without even seeing him. Bobby didn't think he was anywhere close yet, but he kept listening for him. Eventually he'd call another cab and come to collect his money. Maybe after the library closed he'd get a bite to eat, kill a little more time that way. If he had been Ted, he would have gone someplace like the Bridgeport Public Library where he could hang around without being noticed. but he might not be lucky.Īs he went, he tried to tune his mind outward and pick up some sense of Ted, but there was nothing. He couldn't hear their mind-voices, but did he need to? They were probably going to beat him up and steal his money. Bobby could smell their spicy aftershaves, their hair tonics, his own fear. It was like being surrounded by Harry and his friends, only worse. The second guy grabbed him again, not so gently this time. Bobby pulled free, but the fourth guy pushed him back at the second.
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