Julia opened the door. She was naked.

Or no, she wasn’t naked. She was wearing a dress, sort of, but only to her waist. The top half was hanging down in front of her, and her breasts were bare. They were pale and conical, neither full nor slight. They were perfect. When he was seventeen he’d devoted entire months of his life to constructing a mental image of Julia’s naked upper body based on forensic evidence gathered from furtive surveys of her clothed form. As it turned out he’d been quite close. Only her nipples were different from what he’d expected. Paler, hardly darker than the pale skin around them.

He closed the door again—he didn’t slam it, but he closed it firmly.

“Jesus Christ, Julia!” he said under his breath. Though he said it to himself more than to her.

A long minute passed. He spent it with his back against the bulkhead next to Julia’s door. He could feel his heart beating hard against the hard wood. Sure, he wanted something to happen, but not that. Or at least not like that. What the hell did she mean, waving those things around? What, was this a joke to her? He could hear her moving around in her room. He took a deep breath and knocked again, slowly. When she answered the door again her dress was fully on.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

“Sorry,” she said flatly.

She sat down on a little stool at the other end of the room, facing the windows. She didn’t ask him in, but she hadn’t closed the door either. Warily, he stepped inside.

Julia’s quarters were the mirror image of Quentin’s, but due to an irregularity in the ship’s plan, an errant staircase on his side, they were a little bigger, with room for two people to sit if one of them sat on the bed. Quentin sat on the bed. Light came from a glowing blue ball that bobbed up against the ceiling like a balloon that had lost its string, an odd casting of Julia’s that looked like a trapped will-o’-the-wisp.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I forgot.”

“What did you forget?” It came out angrier than he meant it to. “That your arms go in the sleeves? Look, it’s not like I don’t . . .” No good end to that sentence. “Never mind.”

He looked at her, really looked, for the first time in a while. She was still beautiful but thin, much too thin. And her eyes were still black. He wondered if the change was permanent, and if so what else had changed that he couldn’t see.

“I don’t know.” She stared out at the spray. “I forget what I forgot.”

“Well, okay, so, but now you remembered.”

“Look, I forget how things work sometimes. All right? Or not so much how but why. Why people say hello, why they take baths, why they wear clothes, read books, smile, talk, eat. All those human things.” She tugged her mouth to one side.