Edge of Infinity by Jonathan Strahan Page A

he woke, she was sitting up, looking at him. The softness had left her face again, but she was still beautiful. He smiled up at her and reached out to weave his fingers with hers.
    “Will you marry me?” he asked.
    “Oh, please.”
    “No, really. Will you marry me?”
    “Why? Because we’re about to get into a war that’ll kill us and everyone we know and there’s nothing we can do to affect it one way or the other? Quick, let’s do something permanent before the permanence is all mined out.”
    “Sure. Will you marry me?”
    “Of course I will, Sol.”
    The ceremony was a small one. Voltaire was Caitlin’s maid of honour. Raj was Solomon’s best man. The priest was a Methodist whose childhood had been spent in the Punjab, but now spoke with the faux-Texan drawl of the Mariner Valley. There were several chapels in the research centre, and this one was actually quite lovely. Everything, even the altar, had been carved from native stone and then covered with a clear sealant that left it looking wet and rich and vibrant. Lines of white and black ran through the red stone, and flecks of crystalline brightness. The air was thick with the scent of lilacs that Voltaire had bought by the armful from the greenhouses.
    As they stood together, exchanging formulaic vows, Solomon thought Caitlin’s face had the same calm that it did when she was sleeping. Or maybe he was just projecting. When he put the ring on her finger, he felt something shift in his breast and he was utterly and irrationally happy in a way he didn’t remember ever having been before. The UN fleet was still three weeks away. Even at the worst, they wouldn’t die for almost a month. It made him wish they’d done it all earlier. The first night he’d seen her, for instance. Or that they’d met when they were younger. In the pictures they sent to her parents, he looked like he was about to burst into song. He hated the images, but Catlin loved them, so he loved them too. They took their honeymoon in the hotel right there in Dhanbad Nova, drying themselves with towels and washing with soaps that had been made in the image of luxury on Earth. He’d bathed twice as much while they were there, almost feeling the heat of the water and the softness of his robe as magic, as if by being decadent he could pass for a Terran.
    And, by coincidence, it worked. Whatever negotiations had been going on behind the scenes paid off. The UN ships flipped for their deceleration burn early and burned twice as long. They were on their way home. He watched the announcer on the newsfeed tracking the orbital mechanics of the voyage out and back. He tried to imagine what it was like for the marines in those ships. Out almost all the way to the new world, and then back without ever having seen it. Over half a year of their lives gone in an act of political theatre. Caitlin sat on the edge of the bed, leaning in toward the monitor, not taking her eyes from it. Drinking it in.
    Sitting behind her, his back pressing against the headboard, Solomon felt a ghost of unease pass through him, cold and unwelcome.
    “I guess permanent just got a lot longer,” he said, trying to make a joke out of it.
    “Mm-hm,” she agreed.
    “Sort of changes things.”
    “Mm-hm.”
    He scratched at the back of his hand even though it didn’t itch. The dry sound of fingernails against skin was drowned in the announcer’s voice so that he felt it more than heard it. Caitlin ran a hand through her hair, her fingers disappearing in the black and then re-emerging.
    “So,” he said. “Do you want a divorce?”
    “No.”
    “Because I know you were thinking that the rest of your life was going to be kind of a short run. And if... if this wasn’t what you would have picked. Anyway, I’d understand it.”
    Caitlin looked at him over her shoulder. The light of the monitor shone on her cheek, her eye, her hair like she was made of coloured glass.
    “You are adorable, and you are my husband, and I love