Canticle Blue

20. Proposals

For the rest of the day, the team members could have almost competed for the chance to work near the Lillith. Toward that end, Elyse, Havilan, and Syl volunteered to finish cleaning the south channel in the Great Room.

As they began to lift tiles, Elyse teased Havilan, "So, are you going to fly the Lillith?"

He laughed. "I think you should fly it, and I could be your translator. Whenever you pushed a button, I could tell you what was going to happen. Not that I expect to be offered the chance to pilot anyway; but I would hate to be the first one to even put a scratch on it."

"By the racy look of the ship," she responded, "the Lillith probably wouldn't care about a scratch. Maybe we could just go sit in the pilot seats after awhile. If we ask Syl, I'm sure she'd say 'yes,' if we promised not to touch anything."

"Or release any of the tethers," he kidded.

She asked, "Even if we can get a pilot, how are we going to get the ship outside?"

"I've been wondering the same thing. Even if we clear the rocks from the big crater, we still don't know if the elevator is going to work.  Os is proposing to take it out through the sea tunnel, if it will fit. He's going to take measurements but he's almost certain that it would have to be repacked and moved without its pallet. We would have to make our own ballast using water or rocks. Or maybe we could volunteer to be the ballast."

She tried to visualize it. "Yes, we could tell our grandchildren about the time we got to be ballast when we were young and adventurous." Then she thought, Where did those words come from? Yet somehow they didn't seem out of place.

He was surprised by her wording too. He asked, seemingly out of the blue, "Do you pray?"

She was caught off guard by that. "I...think so. I mean, I talk to God in my mind." She was surprised to feel some discomfort talking about it, but she trusted Havilan. "Why?"

"Because I pray a lot—not that I would ever claim to be proficient at it. I always seem to find needs—or at least perceived needs—questions, and even longings. But, in all of what I thought I understood, I would not have known to ask for you."

She was stunned, and immediately wondered how she could be regarded so highly by anyone, especially Havilan. Then, suddenly it was as if a great reservoir of questions and hopes gave way to answers. She had wondered if there could ever be someone who was meant for her, if she was special enough for a higher power to arrange that. Her thoughts about it had sometimes gotten overly complicated, anxious, and even obsessive. She had asked herself questions for which answers were simply not forthcoming: How old would she have to be for that kind of commitment? Did she wait too long, or miss an opportunity?

Then, in Havilan, she had felt the stirrings of something much greater than platonic love. The risk to tell him had seemed very great. But now the solution a had presented itself, and she was overwhelmed by the realization, not only that someone could love her deeply, but that God did as well.

In keeping with what had been the lightness of their conversation, she felt a temptation to say, "I hope you are asking now." But she held her tongue with determination.

From somewhere Havilan continued. "Suppose there was this imperfect
couple—"

"Speak for yourself, please." Somehow the words got out, and she immediately regretted distracting him with humor.

But he wasn't deterred. "Okay, suppose there was this couple, and one of them was imperfect, and the other one was in well-meaning denial. But somehow they were perfect for each other, and there was a chance to do a perfect thing: they could get married. Maybe even in an airship..."

"Yes!" she gushed and hugged his neck. "Yes, they should do that, because it would perfectly fit the silly, imperfect, couple they are."

At that point Syl threw a whisper their way from across the channel. "Don't worry guys. I didn't hear that."

Over dinner that evening, Syl told the group, "We thought it would be nice to set up a globe-light 'campfire' near the Lillith tonight and gather around it for discussion and dessert. And, of course, for any stories you'd like to tell afterward. We have all the chairs and tables we need on the first level now." She gestured toward the sea tunnel. "Even the blue ghost will be welcome."

In preparation, she and Geddes covered the lamps near the Lillith. Then they made a circle of beach rocks near the ship, making use of the warmth of the south channel, and filled it with driftwood and blue globes. Once the team had surrounded it with chairs, they found it to be surprisingly soothing, as if the globes themselves were singing camp songs. The Lillith "sang along" too, bathed in waves of blue light and reflections.

As they settled into their places, Annibet said, "Tor and I spent a few hours looking at the ship's control systems once everything was open. We found that many of them were wireless, which made us wonder how information was getting from one place to another. Where the control mechanisms were accessible, we actually found that Canticle-Blue material was embedded in some of them, evidently in ways that made use of something beyond its luminous properties. Then we realized that, if the glowing material were reacting to an energy source or field to produce light, that it could be emitting lower frequency energy as well, like radio waves. We also found many small modules we couldn't identify, some of them partially open and glowing. Tor said one of them reminded him of a crystal radio." She smiled impishly. "He said—and I quote —'maybe it transmits C-waves.' How's that for a name? We also found what looked to be a recessed antenna above the piloting area. So now we're trying find a way to look at the waveform and frequencies. From those we could get some idea of how far its signals can be transmitted and how they are modulated."

Tor spoke with a deep voice and tried to act serious. "Yes, 'C-waves,' very mysterious. Or, at least we hope so."

Then in a normal tone: "I think we found the electrolysis unit that produces hydrogen. At this point we don't know what the designers did with the leftover oxygen from the the same process. We got a look at the seawater tanks. They could use some cleaning, if anyone wants to help me with that tomorrow. Then maybe we can try to produce some hydrogen on a small scale. But there's not really a need for it, so no hurry either.

"Another thing I wanted to mention: the inflated ballonet casings are surprisingly rigid, almost as if they had an internal framework. We know they don't, but we found that the shapes of the trailing 'wing' surfaces can be adjusted in flight. We think the controls are built into the pilots' steering columns."

Then Cian spoke. "I think Shil, at least in the form we see in the Lillith, has been collected and somehow integrated with normal matter." She held up the scrap of Shil that Annibet had found. "If you look at the cross section of the top layers, it appears to have been precisely fused with some kind of a prepared lattice. We're hoping to find some detailing of the process in the work-complex areas."

Syl was last to speak. "Now for my humble part of the meeting. This will seem like ancient history now, but after looking over all of the artifacts we found near the building remains on the ridge, both Geddes and I strongly feel that they predate the Per'sa colony here."

Then came hours of storytelling, the most popular of which was Syl relating her spacecraft dream. The team was so riveted by her story—which she skillfully infused with color and emotion—that afterward they found themselves staring intently at the blue globes in the campfire, as if they expected them to take flight at any moment.