"Well, don't go shopping -- it's a long trip. Handmade, and meaningful."
Pax arrived at section two, as Kari asked, at the fallow Section 2. The internal lights were out and the glass was shielded so through either side beyond the visual line of the wheel, countless stars were in sight.
In the center of the great, bare field, Pax could just make out a white figure and a glowing light. As he drew closer, he was treated to a nearly mystical sight -- especially aboard a space station. There was Kari, dressed in a gorgeous white dress, standing beside a table laid out with well over twenty plates of different foods. The glow came from some sort of fire pit, which intrigued him the most. The flame was enclosed in a metal pit structure, attached to which was some sort of filter directly above the flames.
"How?" he asked simply when he reached her.
"Well, we had some old wood that I hadn't composted yet. I wasn't too worried about how much oxygen a little fire like this would take in all this space. I didn't want to set off any alarms or foul the glass, so I rigged up this chimney/filter thing to scrub any smoke before it hit our amazing glass up above."
"I'm impressed," said Pax.
"So, presents?" said Kari.
"Oh, yes," said Pax.
He held out the round, cylindrical object in his hand which was wrapped in simple cloth. She opened it with excitement and gasped upon looking inside.
"A scroll?" she said with excitement.
"Yep. Handmade. From papyrus, even. It's not easy, took me three tries -- but it turned out alright."
"This is a priceless gift," she said. "Just the material alone. I can't wait to see what's on it."
She unrolled the scroll from the top and read curiosity. At the top, in carefully drawn letters was simple text.
"The Prayers and Remembrances of Kari, Priestess of the Heavens."
Her eyes filled with tears as Pax explained.
"You see, I thought about writing down some ancient prayers to Inanna and Gaia, Ishtar or Ninhursag -- but I would have just been guessing at the important ones. I thought it was best left to you."
"Thank you Pax."
She kissed him tenderly and then crossed over to the table.
"Are you ready for your present?"
"Sure," he said.
She reached under the cloth covering the table and pulled out an item which truly made him gasp.
"A cricket bat!" he cried out.
She loved him more at that moment than ever before. In that moment, she saw exactly how he must have looked when he was ten years old when he'd gotten presents for holidays. His eyes were bright and excited, he could barely contain himself from jumping up and down.
"Not just a bat," she said slyly. "A ball, and wickets as well."
"Oh my god! Oh -- My -- God... or goddess, or whatever."
He scooped her up in his arms and twirled her around.
"I'm glad you like it," she said, kissing him fondly.
"I love it!" he cried.
"I could turn on the lights, we could play right now."
"No, plenty of time for that later. Tonight is about tonight, Midwinter's Eve."
"Okay, but let me show you one other surprise,"
She tapped a sequence on her wristcomm and lights came up on a huge area in another part of the section. Just starting to show were tiny tufts of green.
"No way!" cried Pax. "Grass?"
"Mm hmm, and I've had the droids rolling and smoothing it out. We're going to have the best park, pitch, field you ever imagined."
"Why stop there," said Pax. "Let's plant the whole thing. Let's build a park here. We can build up some hills, put in trees. The pitch, anything we want."
"Sounds like a plan," agreed Kari.
"Now, what's all this?"
"Surprisingly, we don't have a lot of records about Midwinter from the Akkadian and Sumerian records. The Druids and Nordic religious had their Yule logs -- but that isn't really where I live. What I do know is the winter solstice was a time of contemplation in Akkadia and Sumeria. Even today, rituals persist where people gather and have a feast of dried fruits and nuts and they stay up all night, contemplating the stars."
"We can certainly do that," agreed Pax. "Plenty of those here."
They stayed up through the night, feasting and drinking -- and sharing stories of their families and friends. It was the first time either of them had truly opened up since the catastrophe below. Both of them shed many tears, but they also laughed a great deal, too. As 'dawn' approached (meaning, the wheel was turning to expose their section sunward), they fell more quiet. Kari had brought large blanket and spread it out on the smoothed ground.
"On Earth, we would have been watching in wonder as Venus transitioned from the evening to the morning star," explained Kari. "But here, we can simply look out at her brightness."
"Venus?" asked Pax.
"Inanna, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus -- the list goes on. Her name changed, but the bright star we now know is a planet has always been a woman -- has always been the goddess."
"Amazing," said Pax.
Kari's head was cradled on Pax's arm. She turned to nuzzle him playfully, kissing his neck and whispering in his ear.
"You know," she suggested, "it isn't documented all that well, but there are lots of hints that people would often bring in the new -- longer -- day in very special ways."
"Oh really?" asked Pax.
"Mm hmm."
"Well how about this?" asked Pax. "How about if we lay here and hold each other?"
"Are you sure you don't need more?" she asked.
"I'm sure, Kari. I'm well taken care of -- my dear friend. Let's spend today the way our souls were meant to -- like brother and sister.
"Okay, sweetie," she said with a smile. "That's... that's the sweetest thing I think you've ever said."
"Mmm..." muttered Pax.
He was already drifting off. Kari stayed awake for a few minutes longer, gazing down at his handsome face and giving a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess for blessing her with such a kind companion on their difficult voyage."
***
It seemed they were in the clear. January and February rolled by with no new outbreaks. The genetic engineers planetside felt like they were making good progress on isolating the markers for the four viruses that had ravaged the planet. Once isolated, they could transmit tests to the wheels for the Corps crew to validate that none of them were carriers. After that, it could be several years before effective vaccines could be developed.
Kari and Pax had been watching the grass closely. With the careful attention of the tender bots, it had come along well and by March 1st, their year anniversary of arriving at the station, they had their first Cricket match (if a two-person game could be called such a thing). They actually programmed four pruning droids to fetch the longer-hit balls and had a truly wonderful time.
It took Kari a while to get the hang of bowling with the straight-arm technique, but did have a good bat and was able to actually hit the first 'six'. After a couple of hours, they soon found themselves lying exhausted on the grass -- laughing contentedly.
"This is a good thing," Kari said to Pax. "It feels almost..."
She trailed off, unable to complete her thought.
"Almost normal?" offered Pax.
"Yes," she said, brushing away tears. "Is it wrong of me to feel guilty for having fun?"
"No," he said. "It's what we have to do -- it's what we owe them, to keep living -- it's the same they owe us."
Two days later, the next news hit. They had suspected something was happening planetside, mostly because the usual stream of encouraging news had slowed to a trickle. On the fifth of March they received notification of a special announcement which was mandatory viewing.
The screen lit up not to show the moon's commander or the acting planetary council, but a woman on earth with deeply pockmarked face which looked vaguely familiar. Once the name showed below, Kari recognized her from photos of Seepa Mehta, the
top genetic engineer left alive. The pictures they'd seen of her had been a striking Asian woman of middle years. It was clear she had been hit by the third plague, a pox virus with only a ten percent survival rate."My greetings to all out there," she said in a gentle and somber tone. "I send out this address to the planet, to the moon, but especially to our beloved members of the Agro Corps who have spent this past year in frightening isolation. The reason I single you out will become clear in a short while."
"As we are all painfully aware, we have all my great strides in isolating the markers for plagues A, B, C, and D. We now know the markers and believe it will take roughly five years of work before we have reliable vaccines. You might ask why it would take so long, and I would respond to you that these were not natural viruses with predictable patterns. Rather, they were engineered as weapons - and as such were meant to be hard to decode. These, however, are child's play compared to the affliction I am about to reveal."
"Though it is hard to remember now, you might recall a particularly virulent strain of influenza which passed through our population late last spring. At the time, we merely chalked it up as a very contagious, but cold-like flu with moderate symptoms."
"We have since learned more. We now categorize it as Plague 1A. What we didn't know was the true damage which been done. 1A had a diabolical payload which has just begun to be evident. Since November, our average birthrate per capita has gone down over sixty percent with a frightening number of stillbirths. At first we blamed it on side effect from the other plagues, but then we examined the surviving infants and saw a peculiar marker in their blood which we were able to correlate with nearly ninety-nine percent of the adult population. "
"We then examined the babies and found the disturbing signs I am about to share with you. They are sterile. Most have been born with no internal sexual organs or if they are present, the testes and ovaries are improperly formed and will never mature correctly. This is not an aberration, or a trend -- this is in over ninety-nine percent of the children. Further, the virus is so prevalent we have found new infections in all healthy babies within the first month of the child's life."
"I say this without false modesty... I am one of the top five geneticists who has ever lived. Even for me, 1A is nearly indecipherable. If I am lucky enough to find a cure for 1A in my lifetime, I will be lucky. It also has a natural mutative property so even when I do find a cure, I cannot assure it won't change properties and evade any vaccine I can provide. 1A is pervasive, strong, and amazingly adroit at achieving its obvious goal -- the elimination of the human race. 1A is pervasive on the Earth and on the moon. I truly have little hope of finding a true cure."
"However, we have our wheels. We have our beloved, nurturing wheels that have already proven to be the salvation of mankind and may do so once again. It is my proposal that the wheels be moved into closer proximity, with five colonies of twenty wheels locked together. Your population is untainted by the disease which has quite nearly spelled our demise. The only thing I can tell you with any surety is all of these infections must have a host to survive. You and your children will not see the earth again, but some day -- when you have grown into thousands and the childless children of earth have grown old and died, you will be able to return once more to the loving arms of Gaia -- may she bless you."
The screen went blank. Kari and Pax sat in dismal silence. Though the human race had suffered numerous blows, they had endured it. Now, however, it was entirely final. The earth was gone.
Pax rose first and went to his room. After a few minutes, Kari went to him and lay down on top of him.
"Hold me, Pax," she said, kissing him softly. "Just hold me for a little while."
"I'll hold you as long as you want, Kari," he said.
They stayed nestled in each other's arms and eventually fell asleep.
In the morning, Kari awoke to see Pax up on one elbow, staring down at her.
"I had a dream," she said softly.
"What about?" asked Pax.
"I can't tell you -- but I'll tell you this. We can't do anything for the next couple of weeks. No sleeping together, no pleasuring -- you can't touch yourself either."
"Okay?"
"You'll see why. I'll be sleeping in my room, but trust me. I have my reasons."
On the evening of the 21st, the spring equinox, she had told Pax to meet her at a pre-appointed place, the fountain in Section 3. Pax arrived at the pool wearing, as he'd been told, a white robe and nothing else.
He had to catch his breath at the image awaiting him. Kari was also dressed in pure white -- this time a robe. Her hair was braided and wrapped around her head in a sacred pattern she'd taken from an image found on ancient Akkadian pottery. Around her neck was her favorite piece of jewelry composed of lapis lazuli beads and pearls. Her skin glistened with olive oil pressed from trees in Section 4 and her eyes were lined with a charcoal pencil she had created from the cinders left from their Midwinter celebration.
Beside her was a table with a large pitcher of beer made from the barley Pax had planted. This was a double-strong batch, containing over fifteen percent alcohol.
Pax approached solemnly, taking his cue from Kari.
"Drink, oh shepherd," she said, offering him a glass she poured and held to his lips.
Once he had taken several droughts, she also took a drink from the same glass -- polishing off much of the glass. She filled the glass again and repeated the process -- then once more, so both of their heads were more than a bit light.
"This is the day of life," she explained, taking his hand and sitting with him beside the pool. "For today, I am Inanna. She lives in me. You are the Shepherd Dumuzi, my chosen. Let us be festive and rejoice in a renewal of life."
"We meet beside the waters as they pour into the earth. The ancient Sumerians made no distinction between the word for water and semen. The ancients gathered in places such as this, where the waters of Enki poured and churned into mother earth, mixing with her and bringing new life each season in the fields.
She removed her robe and Pax gasped at the beauty of her glistening, naked body.
She smiled and stepped toward him, releasing the belt on his robe and pulling it off of his shoulders.
"I have prepared myself for thee, oh Shepherd. Have you done likewise? Have you denied yourself bodily pleasures and set yourself apart from other women?"
Pax could only smile and nod 'yes'.
She kissed him deeply, letting her glistening body slide up against him.
"Do I please thee, shepherd? Do I quicken your blood?"
She reached down between his legs and let her slippery hands feel his testament in answer.
"I see the Cedar grows strong with our union," she said.
She then took his hand and led him to a portable camp bed she had set up in a small grove to the side.
She whispered a prayer to him in his ear, though his head buzzed so from the intensity of the experience that he couldn't' remember much of it.
He did remember when she knelt before him, however, and took him into her mouth for the first time. She paused, looking up into his eyes.
"Make your honey sweet and thick, my beloved friend. I will drink you with pleasure."
It was not long before she did just that and had her very first taste of a man. For Kari, on this night, it was not unpleasant. It was the salt of the sea, of the sacred waters spilling into her throat.
"Will you make me ready, lord?" she whispered to him as she lay back on the bed. "Will you prepare me for your fullness?"
Pax did as he was ordered and knelt before her, kissing her tenderly between the legs. To his surprise, for the first time she seemed to be truly responding to his attentions. As she drew closer to an orgasm, she beckoned him up to lay beside her -- guiding his hand down to where his tongue had been.
"Like that," she gasped.
His finger had found the perfect little circle and she held onto his wrist as he pushed her, for the first time, over the edge.
It was not a tumultuous climax like she generally had with her female lovers, but it was a climax all the same. Pax was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
"Well done, sir," she said.
"Why thank you, ma'am."
"Are you ready?" she asked him, reaching down to caress him with her hand. "Oh! I guess you are."
She pulled him across her, and he paused with an infectious grin on his face.
"What?" she asked. "What is so funny?"
"I uh... I shouldn't say it."
"Go on, Pax."
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Erotica: Volume 1 (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Erotica Series) Page 4