When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition) Page 14

  “Dead, I guess. Everyone dies, sooner or later.”

  o0o

  Some time later, when the fire had died down and most of the others were asleep, Reese and I wandered away from the group, going for a little walk by the stream. It’d gotten warmer, the wind dying down, the world growing quiet and... Hmh. Funny to call this thing a world. Still, it’s as much a world as Audumla ever was. As much a world as anyplace I’d ever been save Glow-Ice. Real worlds there. Inhospitable as hell.

  After a while, we came to a nice little pool, glittering by starlight. Flat surface, still like a mirror, shattering to ripples as Reese knelt and touched it with her fingers.

  “Warm,” she said. “Almost like a bath.”

  Surprising? Too damned easy to forget this was a plaything, not a place. Even in little Audumla, we were used to thinking the water of feral streams would be cool.

  Standing in front of me, Reese started to get undressed, watching me watch her, eyes invisible in the darkness, no more unfathomable. When she was done, a pale woodnymph in the ersatz night, she turned and waded into the pool, turned back and watched as I undressed, alone on the bank, then waded out to join her.

  The water was wonderfully warm, and soft, the product of some conditioning machine or another. When my face got down near the surface, I could smell a faint scent, similar to the smell of the heather, not quite the same. Reese rocked back in the water, bringing her legs to the surface, floating, head thrown back, looking up at the artificial sky, sky flooded with what seemed like ten thousand fake stars.

  I suppose I should have looked at the stars too, appreciating the artifice of the ecologarium’s builder, but, just now, all I had eyes for was the little black island of Reese’s pubic hair, floating not far away.

  There’s a purpose behind all this, you know that. Voice of experience, me talking to myself. Some women are aggressive, let you know what they want and when they want it. Others are... not shy, that’s not the right word. Some women want to feel as though you’ve decided for them, even though the decision is theirs alone. Women who guide you with hints, glances, nudges and looks...

  Is that what’s going on now?

  I drifted closer to Reese, watching her face, etched in shadows made by bright starlight. Peaceful, as if dreaming. But she knows I’m here. I put my hand on her thigh, just barely touching her, and waited for a sign. Nothing, Reese just looking at the sky.

  Well. That’s sign enough.

  Ran my hand underneath her, feeling slim buttocks floating weightless, as though I held her in the palm of my hand. Reese drifting gently, floating with her legs slightly apart. Just the position she requires in order to float like this, or another sign?

  Certainly a shift in her awareness now. You can feel that. Reese is aware of me—she has to be. Ran my hand up the inside of her thigh, skin so soft it was softer than the water, would have been like velvet suede if it were dry. Reese’s eyes turning toward me now, a half smile visible on her lips.

  Let my hand drift oh-so-slowly over to her vulva, let my fingers comb through crisp, wet human hair. Felt for the groove of her pubic symphysis. Yes. Here. And I can feel Reese changing her position to accommodate what I’m doing.

  There’s your answer.

  Listened to a soft sigh as I found the little bump of her clitoris, apparently already starting to swell, felt her muscles clench as I palpated it gently, back arching slightly, making her sink a little deeper into the water, surface rising around the sides of her face.

  OK. All she wanted was a little coaxing...

  I left off soft rubbing, letting my hand drift downward, feeling for the opening of her introitus. There. Right where you expected it. Put my index finger inside, feeling ridges of muscle, the slick albumin of arousal and...

  Reese squeezed my finger gently, where it lay in her vagina. “You know, I’m pretty good at sorting out relationships in a group dynamic, Murph. You’re... not.”

  A little confusion, startled at her words. At this point, when you’ve got your hands on a woman, if they talk about anything it all, it’s usually a confession of love. I said, “Uh...”

  She laughed. “Oh, I know you don’t have any trouble getting laid, Murph, but that’s just a consequence of your being so God-damned pretty! Come on, admit it: women come to you, not the other way round.”

  “Well...” No one likes being pegged, but... “Yeah. Right.”

  She grinned. “There’s a least two women in this group who’re being... well, shared.”

  “So?”

  “So let’s make a little deal, you and I.”

  “A deal.”

  “Come on, Murphy! You’re not too dumb to figure this out!”

  I pulled my finger out of her and said, “No, I, uh, guess not.”

  I suppose we would’ve finished what we were doing, Reese and I, deal or no deal, shared women or not. She floated upright in the water, arms around me, and we kissed for a while, tasting each other, testing each other. I liked the way she felt against me, the way she rested her mons against one pelvic blade, grinding softly, like an earnest of intent. Liked the smallness of her, the way I could hold her just so...

  I seemed to forget her words, head filled with visions cast futureward, images of us together in a thousand places, mostly variations on a theme. Images of myself holding her off the ground, her slim legs wrapped around my waist as I thrust into her, she light as a feather and...

  Sudden loud voice, no voice I knew, breaking us apart, making us splash in the warm water as we floundered, confused.

  “What the hell...”

  Then the sky lit up dull yellow, no stars, no drifting clouds. Looking upward, I could see the surface of the dome, striated with delicate white lines, electronics that supported a world of illusion.

  Another shout, clearly the voice of Shelly, followed by a panicky gabble, several voices at once.

  Reese looked at me, dark eyes wide with alarm, then she said, “Shit.”

  We started wading toward shore, toward where we’d left our clothes. Before we could get in, someone came running over the crest of the nearest hill. Hibi, short legs pumping for all they were worth. She saw us, screamed something at us, run! I think it was. A ball of crawling blue fire came over the hill and hit her with a soft pop, bursting into a cage of electric blue snakes that writhed around her like so much blue lighting, then she fell, rolling to a stop by the side of the stream.

  More voices, loud, full of electronic distortion, someone shouting through a broken intercom.

  We got out of the water, running for our clothes, but it was too late. There were other people on the hilltop now, dressed all alike in crew uniforms, the pretty sky blue of Sky Blue Eyes, each breast bearing the red badge of Ship’s Security.

  Reese said, “Shit,” again and started to run.

  One of the men raised his wand and fired, wriggling ball of fire shooting across open space like Saint Elmo’s fire, streaking for Reese’s back. Not a thought in my head. No idea, no will, nothing for me to...

  When the ball was about to pass me I stepped into its path and that was that. Not even time to hope Reese would get away.

  Or to know exactly why I’d done it.

  o0o

  I awoke with a start, looking up at a pale green ceiling, at an embedded light fixture, muscles knotted all over my body, shivering and shuddering, joints creaking painfully. I’d never been shot by a stungun before and, as I lay there listening to my teeth chatter, I decided I might try to avoid this in the future... After a while, things quieted down, my skin crawling, as though I were being trampled by ants, fingers and toes prickling and tingling... When I tried to sit up, pain stabbed through my head, starting at the back and shooting out the middle of my forehead.

  When I finally did manage to sit up, Orb knows how many uncounted minutes later, I found myself in a standard medical examining room, walls racked with unfamiliar hardware, sitting on a hard leatherette bench, folded gynecological stirrups at the foo
t.

  I used to have fantasies about these things when I was a boy, imagining girls I knew from school stripped and strapped down, downy gates at my tender mercy...

  Reese.

  I got to my feet, wobbling a bit, and staggered to the door, which slid open to my touch.

  “Ah, Mr. Murphy!”

  There was an office outside the examining room. Not quite an office, I guess. Desks here and there. Modern freeze-frame equipment making me remember, with just a flash of longing, how long I’d been isolated from the DataWarren. But there was a gun rack over by one wall, long rifles neatly locked up beside a stack of stun wands.

  The man behind the desk, short fat, clad in sky blue with that malevolent red badge, said, “Glad to see you’re awake again.”

  “Uh. What’s... um.” I stood there, flatfooted, staring at him.

  He said, “Sit down, son.” Motioning to a chair beside the desk. “Sorry you got shot, kid, but you shouldna been trespassing. Hanging around with bums is never a good idea.” He glanced at the freeze-frame in front of him. “Company beaners’re gonna be pissed when they see the size of the fine we’ll have to levy. Hope it doesn’t land you in the shit.”

  I sat, splinters of pain fading throughout my head. “What about... my friends?”

  “Y’mean the bums?”

  My friends. “Yeah. Any of them get away?”“

  “Nope.”

  “Well...”

  He shrugged. “Look, who gives a shit?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Well, hell. The usual thing. We’ll keep ‘em on ice from now on. At each stop we make, we’ll try to sell ‘em off as indentured servants until we’re rid of the last one. Won’t take long, kid. Brig’ll be empty long before Sky Blue Eyes ever makes its way Solward again.”

  Sell them off. The casual way he said it made me feel numb, made me realize how little I really knew about the universe in which I lived. Audumla and Ygg. Telemachus Major. In the service of Standard ARM. Little more than that. I said, “Is there... anything I can do for them?”

  He looked at me strangely. “What d’you mean?”

  “Any way I can... get them off?”

  “Christ! You ain’t through shittin’ yellow yet, are ya boy?”

  I found myself getting very tired of the faux-tough way he liked to talk, a slack-bellied crewbull who’d probably spent most of his life sitting right here at this desk while his ship flew between the worlds. “Still...”

  He sat back in his chair, looking at me. “You can buy them all lounge-standby tickets. Then I guess we’d let ‘em go.”

  “How much?”

  He fished in the freeze-frame, then motioned for me to lean in and take a look. I poked at the converter and let it match things up with my private account figures, crossloaded from the Telemachus link when I came aboard. It said I had enough for 1.73 tickets.

  “Sorry.”

  I said, “I’ll pay for Reese.”

  “The scrawny bitch? Sonny boy, you could pay for a much better cunt than that!”

  Silence.

  Finally, he said, “OK. Your money. You go wait in the security access lounge while I thaw her out. It’ll be ten, fifteen minutes.”

  I got up and started to go, stopped abruptly and turned back. “What about Mr. Zed?”

  “The geezer? Oh, hell. He’s already gone.”

  I pictured him dead and run through the ship’s recycler. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Son of a bitch has held an all-worlds travel pass for the last three hundred years. We logged a trespass fine and let him go.”

  o0o

  There’s a saying I hear every so often, Time passes, and we are passed within it. Time has to pass, in your life, around your life, before you can understand what it means, but eventually I did.

  Sitting in the waiting room, waiting for Reese, I sat visualizing what our life together could be like—now all I remember is the hard pang of astonishment I felt when they brought her to me, still naked, short hair wet and plastered to her skull like so much matted black velvet, yellow bruises on her face, blue fingerprints on her thighs.

  She let me put my arms around her, seeming confused, silent, let me lead her away, getting her out of there as quickly as I could. I’m not even sure I thanked the angry-looking crew-woman who gave me a torn old blanket to wrap around her just before we went out through a hatch that led back into cargospace, back down the axial corridor to passengerland.

  I took her to my Standard ARM pallets, locked her into one of the control pods, then cut through the darkness to our old bus, where I picked up our gear, hers, mine, Trellis and Hibi’s, that fat armload of steaks we should’ve stayed to eat, brought it all back to the pod and...

  Found her hiding in the footwell of a control station, where a system engineer’s legs would one day rest, eyes shut, ratty blanket pulled tight around her, shivering. I tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t come out, get dressed, eat... nothing. Finally I shoved a pillow in to her and turned my attention to the meat, which was thawed, but still sealed up and fresh.

  Even the sweet smell of microwaving steak didn’t bring her around.

  Maybe nothing ever did.

  But time passes, one way or another.

  The next day she awoke, seeming her old self again, though the shadow never left her eyes. She ate, we talked, days passing, turning into weeks and months of their own accord. After a while she got willing to go bumming again, protected by the ticket of legitimacy I’d bought her. We made new friends, and never talked about Trellis, about Hibi.

  Maybe we thought of them. I know I did.

  Mr. Zed turned up, ate dinner with us, told us stories about olden times as bad as anything you could imagine, while the months went on to become years. Long before then, Reese had crawled into my bedroll and let me make love to her, maybe too gently at first, a bit too tentatively, but it wasn’t long before the past seemed remote and times were good again.

  Until one day Sky Blue Eyes docked at an exostation of the Wolf 359 system and I got off, while Reese did not. I hung around the dockyard while they put a few old bums up for sale like so much frozen sausage, but no one bought any after all. Watched while they unloaded all the Wolf-bound cargo, including my pallet of Standard ARM construction gizmos, loaded up new shit bound for Ross 128, her next destination.

  Hers. Theirs. Sky Blue Eyes. My friend Reese.

  A chapter in a book closes, a new one opens. A book comes to an end and maybe there’s a sequel, maybe not. You can always find another book. Sometimes that’s best.

  Seven. So

  So.

  Was I in love with Reese? Was she in love with me? We never had the time to find out. Real life intervened in our story, shut down the splendid potential of that particular alternative plotline, and sent us will-nilly on our way.

  I hung around the exostation dockyard for a few days, waiting out the transfers, waiting, I guess, for her to change her mind, but they buttoned up Sky Blue Eyes, finished with her, closed the airseal, a much better grade of hardware than you ever saw back in the vicinity of the Centauri Jet, let loose the grapples...

  I stood watching out a cold, grimy old window, face pressed to frosty glass, breath waxing and waning like so much ephemeral fog, as the ship backed away, thrusters twinkling, a huge, near-featureless stone log at first, then smaller and smaller, turning, engulfed by darkness.

  Finally, the drive modulus’ exhaust lit up blue-white, washing away the dimmer stars, blue glow growing pale and ghostly before I turned away. If you live long enough, I told myself, you’ll see them all again, someday. Some fine day.

  I tried to picture that reunion, but could not.

  Another day and a night found me bobbing in low gee as I walked across the surface of an external platform, slow breeze ruffling my hair, walking toward a waiting insystem transport. We’re not far from a star here. Why can’t I pick it out of the sky?

  The flat surf
ace of the exoplatform came to an abrupt edge, dark sky beyond, sky cluttered with stars, all white, untwinkling hard points of light. All around the edge were workcraft, transports, people and things doing the business of Wolf 359. My transport, the crude paper boarding pass said Psillum Skytrails Flight 227, crouched on its tripod beside the abyss, her barrel-shaped fuselage lined with a hundred tiny windows, bracketed by two fat engines. Old fashioned engines, I saw, thermonuclear resistojets, and those two other pods, spherical, one fore, one aft, would be condensed hydrogen sponge matrices for the working fluid.

  Funny how we can’t stop being interested in the world’s petty details, even when the rest of life has gone grainy and gray.

  I got aboard and found the inside nothing but row on row of seats, most of them already taken by men and women, tired looking men and women dressed in a variety of gray and brown uniforms, none of them interested in me. Men. Women. A soft rumble of voices. I found a window seat down near the bottom of the cabin, in what was apparently the most unpopular section.

  It took another hour for the thing to fill up completely, more men and women, all the same, a few families with squirmy, whiny children. Once, a couple dressed in flame-colored finery, flowing, silky stuff, came through the hatch and stood blocking the entrance, looking down at us, man poker faced, woman with a look like she smelled something unusual. A crewman in teal green came through the forward hatch and led them away to somewhere else.

  Finally, a big fat guy who smelled a bit like fresh brie threw himself wheezing down beside me, grumbling under his breath. He gave me one long, suspicious look, then turned away, busying himself with the contents of a dusty tan duffel he carried in his lap.

  Outside, ground crew bustled about, mostly human beings in leatherette work clothes, a big turquoise robot that seemed to handle all the refueling tasks, covered with frosty condensation, shrouded in fog. The fat guy said, “You better stop looking out the window, pal.”

  Something pulsed hard through the structure of the ship, then blue-violet light blossomed outside, making me close my eyes and flinch away. Beside me, I heard the fat guy snicker and mutter, “Fuckhead,” as gentle acceleration pushed me into the seat.