Voyage

by E M Gale

  I just shook my head angrily.

  ‘Why the hell are my friends listening to this bastard?’

  “I’ll catch you guys later,” I said, with a scathing look for Brannigan. He shifted in his seat. “I’m tired,” I added.

  “Oh, OK, Clarke,” said Rob. “Do you want me to walk you back?”

  I just stared at him.

  ‘No, not really. I want someone to take me in their arms so that I don’t have to think about humanity-denying assassins and how my friends are listening to one.’

  “No, thank you, Rob,” I said, then I turned and walked off.

  “What’s up with her?” asked Anna. “And aren’t her quarters in the other direction?”

  I headed down to the marine bar to have a drink and pick up a nice marine off shift who still thought of me as human.

  * * *

  In Potentiality

  The next port, a very new colony named Excelsis, was not that far from Tortuga. In fact it was the next nearest port to it, so I did not have very much time to get Cleckley’s password and look at where he was putting the data he had been gathering on me. During that time, there were surprisingly no pirate attacks and everyone had started to relax. No one even mentioned the kidnap attempts except the major, who remarked that maybe they had given up or lost our trail at Tortuga. I replied that chasing us was probably more effort than it was worth. The pirates we had sold back would have told their employers that they weren’t after a woman or a vampire, but the scary vampire Clarke.

  Once I had calmed down from the bar trip with Brannigan, I started to muse about my friends’ reactions. By now I was certain that Jane knew I was a vampire, but since Mark hadn’t turned up at my door with a notebook full of questions, I figured that she hadn’t told him yet. Then again, they hadn’t had much chance. The next time I was off shift coincided with when they were asleep.

  I’d thought I had given things away, or perhaps that Brannigan might have, since I had never told him not to tell my friends, but now I wasn’t sure. They weren’t acting how I would expect if they did know–they’d not asked me any questions. Then again, maybe they did know and just hadn’t felt it an urgent enough thing to run and see me during their precious sleeping time. Perhaps they were just waiting until they saw me next. After all, it surely wasn’t that big a deal, was it?

  Well, it hadn’t been for me. I hadn’t run away from Mr. Does It Matter or screamed or done anything the heroine in a low-budget horror flick would have done. And it was even easier for them, because they already knew that vampires existed and had met two personally.

  The only thing that worried me was their reaction to Brannigan. They seemed far too eager to listen to Brannigan telling them that vampires weren’t real people. Still, I got the feeling that he would be off the ship at the next port and good riddance.

  Thinking it over, I was pretty sure I hadn’t given it away and that only Jane knew I was a vampire. It seemed that none of the rest of them had thought to ask why I didn’t like vampire hunters. I supposed I could have gone to talk to them and explain, but since they hadn’t figured it out I resumed my habitual silence. It wasn’t that I meant to keep it from them. Since our visit to Tortuga, I’d known that they would find out and was more or less ready for that. But I was accustomed to keeping things quiet, mostly because of the way people reacted to either my ideas or my affairs. It was usually best to let both just slip under the radar.

  It wasn’t long before they did find out. And, like the robot had said, it was worse for them when they did find out than if I had just told them, but what he had neglected to mention was that it was also far, far worse for me.

  * * *

  Excelsis was a small planet. It was a small human outpost, but I didn’t notice any major characteristics of any country. The population was roughly half human, half Kreegle, so maybe that was why. I wasn’t particularly interested in the architecture, the history or even flora and fauna of this planet. Though I do remember that it was a small planet, because the gravity wasn’t normal gravity and it made me feel like I was floating as I stepped. Me being me, I took the opportunity to run and jump as much as possible–although I didn’t float through the air, as it was only slightly weaker than Earth normal, it did feel different.

  Unlike all the planets we had visited so far, I was on shift when we landed so I had to be there to unload the goods we were carrying. With the light gravity and my strength this was an easy task. We had half unloaded the goods when one of the spaceport attendants came over, calling for a ‘Florentina Clarke’. I gritted my teeth. I did my best to get everyone to call me Clarke. I had thought that the marines didn’t even know my first name–I didn’t think that they would bother looking me up–but some of them directed the attendant over to me.

  “Florentina Clarke?” he asked me. I eyed him cautiously.

  ‘A trap? No one should know I am here and most people know me as Clarke. Is this a message meant for my future self? Will I have to remember it forever? Or, well, for two hundred years. That’s a long time to remember anything, though I suppose I could just copy it down into my diary and try not to lose that for two hundred years.’

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said, cautiously.

  He held out a piece of paper to me. “I was asked to give you this.”

  I took the paper and he was about to turn away before I asked, “By who?”

  “Oh? A well-dressed and softly spoken gentleman. I think he was a vampire,” he said, then he headed back to his job before I could question him further.

  ‘Hmm… Price, perhaps?’

  I looked after the attendant. I didn’t see any vampires standing there watching me.

  ‘It could be a trap. It probably is a trap.’

  I unfolded the note and read it. There was just an address and the note was signed ‘J.P’.

  ‘Hmm, Jonathan Price, then. Well, who else? Few people know I’m here. Perhaps he asked someone at the spaceport to keep an eye out for the Silvered Cloud. They would have known that we were about to land here from when our ship started landing procedures, which was about an hour and a half ago. Now did he give the attendant a standing order, in which case he won’t know I’m here yet, or did he pay the attendant to let him know if that ship came? In which case he’ll know I’m here and he’s probably in the spaceport now.’

  I stared at the multitudes of people in the port. I couldn’t see him and was far too far away to smell him if he was there.

  I looked back down at the piece of paper in my hand.

  ‘So I have his address. Is that an invitation? Surely it is? We parted, but not forever–it felt like that because I turned him down, but we both expected to meet up again.’

  ‘Well, what am I going to do about it? I do want to see him again. But why? Will things have changed? Will he be the violent Price or the tender Price? And what will we say to each other, what can we possibly have to say to each other? Am I even going to go? I don’t have to, of course…’

  “Clarke? Hello! The Silvered Cloud to Clarke? You’re supposed to be unloading,” said Bron to me.

  ‘Oops, daydreaming again.’

  “Sorry, I’m on it now,” I said, pocketing the address.

  “And what are you grinning about?” asked Cliff.

  ‘Eh? I’m grinning?’

  “Uh, nothing.” I knew I was blushing. “Let’s get these boxes unloaded,” I said, turning back to my task.

  “So that’s your first name then?” said Cliff.

  ‘Sigh.’

  “Florentina, Florentina,” he said, trying it out.

  “Don’t use it, my name’s Clarke,” I growled.

  Cliff nodded and grinned. “It is a pretty odd name,” said Cliff.

  “It doesn’t suit me,” I said automatically.

  ‘Hey, hold on, he said ‘pretty odd’, not ‘pretty’. Meh.’

  “Nah, it does, you’re pretty odd too, Clarke,” said Petey with a grin.

  “And why do you think
I’m odd, Petey?” I asked in my best schoolteacher’s voice which I accompanied with a sharp look.

  He looked a little taken aback by my question. “Oh, y’know. Strange way of speaking, uh…” He trailed off as his self-confidence left him.

  I grinned at him. “That’s age for you,” I remarked.

  We had nearly finished unloading when I espied my friends heading into the goods bay. I hastily unloaded the boxes in my hands and picked up only one for the next load.

  “Clarke!” yelled Anna, waving. “We’re heading off to explore Excelsis City, you want to come?”

  “Busy unloading now,” I said, dumping one of the last boxes into the anti-grav loader field.

  “Well, you look nearly done.”

  “Wow! Low gravity on this planet,” said Rob, as he left the ship’s artificial gravity field–the docking bay was at the planet’s gravity to make our unloading job easier.

  I grinned at him. “If you’ve not tried it yet, try running and jumping around.”

  “Yeah, Clarke’s been bouncing all over the place like a jack-out-the-box,” said Cliff.

  I looked at him. “Don’t you mean a jack-in-the-box?”

  “Heh, since you’re not in a box, you’ve escaped,” said Petey with a wry grin.

  ‘I don’t think that that joke was worth the oxygen expended on telling it.’

  “Oh, cool! Hehe!” said Rob, bouncing up and down. He looked like a loon.

  ‘I did not look like a loon when I did it, and anyway, I was unloading goods at the time, so I was working.’

  “So, are you coming with us, then?” Anna asked.

  “Uh… not this time, guys,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly and grinning.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Uh… I gotta work,” I said, trying not to grin as I thought about spending my shore leave with Price. They nodded and even managed to look sympathetic.

  “Florentina’s got a date,” said Petey to them over my shoulder. I turned to look at him and gave him one hell of a dirty look. He bounced away out of range, laughing.

  “I told you, my name is Clarke. You do not have my permission to use my first name. No one does!”

  “Well, someone does. Someone knows it and they sent you a love letter,” he said. I growled at him, and he laughed.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Someone foolish,” muttered Bron.

  “Ah ha, so you have a date! Who with?” asked Anna, smiling triumphantly.

  Rob was giving me a hurt look, but I was damned if I knew why.

  “No one.”

  ‘Grrr.’

  I spared one of my scariest glares for Petey, but he just chuckled.

  “So you don’t have a date, then?” asked Rob.

  “No…”

  ‘I have a confusing situation with a confusing man who I don’t even like or want to see. Except that I really do want to see him. Why am I putting myself through this again? I don’t have relationships, I don’t fall in love. I was glad to see the back of him, wasn’t I?’

  ‘But I should go and see him anyway. It’s polite, right? And anyway, I do want to see him. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I’m free now until we take off, so why not?’

  I smiled to myself.

  “Well, listen, Clarke,” started Rob. “Listen, um, I was wondering, if you’re free after your shift–”

  I confess I wasn’t really listening to him. Although I was aware that everyone was staring at Rob and that he was rather earnestly looking at me.

  “OK, that’s it guys, you’re done,” called Petey to our s ; he was still staying out of my way. I nodded at him.

  ‘Great, I can head over to this address now. What will it be like? It has only been a few weeks, but we parted in such a strange and final way…’

  “–that, well, perhaps we could go out? Um, y’see, you’re a great person and I–” continued Rob.

  “Hey.” I waved my hand to cut him off, I didn’t normally interrupt him, but I was in a hurry. “I’ll talk to you guys on the ship later, OK?” I turned on my heel before they could answer and strode off across the runway into the town.

  “What? Clarke? Where are you going? I…” called Rob after me.

  “I don’t think she was really listening there,” said Grom to Rob, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “So what is she up to?” asked Anna. After that point I was out of range and couldn’t hear what they were saying, not that I really cared. I was thinking about Price.

  I left the spaceport, stopping only to pick up a map of the town so that I could find the address. I strode along the streets, not paying much attention to my surroundings. I’d been in such a hurry to leave that I didn’t even have my shades with me. Luckily, the day was dull and the address was not far from the spaceport. It turned out to be a small hotel–not a dive, I might add, I guessed Price wouldn’t stay in a dive–more a small, family-run style hotel. It was the sort of place where the landlady would chat to you, the sheets would be clean, the breakfast would be simple, the toast would be cold and they’d probably have a cat or something.

  I walked in. I was about to go up to the desk and ring the bell to bring the hotelier away from her soap operas when I realised he was here. I walked into the hotel proper and found him sitting in a chair in one of the sitting rooms. Smelling my approach, he rose smoothly from the chair and smiled. I stopped about a metre away from him. My breath caught in my throat.

  ‘Which is it to be? Tender or violent?’

  “Hello, Flow,” he said, smiling at me.

  “Hello, Price,” I whispered. He smiled a sardonic half-smile at me and gestured that I walk with him. He took my arm and steered me towards the stairs up to his room. I went along with him, eyeing him.

  ‘He’s not changed at all, but then I guess he wouldn’t have, would he?’

  He opened the door to his room. I grinned at him and walked in.

  ‘Yup, a nice, tidy, homey room, as expected from a two- or three-star hotel.’

  He shut the door behind him and smiled at me again.

  “It’s great to see you again,” he said. I nodded.

  ‘You know, I think I did want to see him again. It is great to see him.’

  “Likewise,” I said with a genuine smile. He stepped forwards, drew me to him and into a deep and passionate kiss.

  ‘Oh, I missed this.’

  He leant back and smiled at me, his teeth growing. I smiled back. He kissed me again, this time biting my tongue. I nicked him too so that the kiss was infused with our mixed blood. He pulled back and healed me. I did the same to him.

  ‘I have missed you, Flow,’ he thought, giving me a serious look. I felt happy. It felt like things had changed somehow; something about his manner was different.

  ‘I missed you too,’ I thought. It was true.

  He started to nibble on my neck, kissing the skin on top of the artery. I sighed as he bit me and drank deeply. I didn’t think, I just experienced. It was amazing, though I wasn’t sure whether that was because I didn’t let the marines drink from me or whether it was Price. After what seemed like forever he pulled away, licking the wound and healing it for me. My turn. I pushed him back onto the bed and pounced on him, going for his throat. I bit him and drank deeply as well. He was still delicious. I took as much as I could and stopped. I was lying on top of him with my head raised up so I could look him in the eyes. He smiled sardonically at me, but he seemed calmer and happier than when I last seen him.

  From the mind-meld I could tell that he wanted me. He kissed me and started to remove my clothes, so I started pulling his off. We tumbled around the bed, each pulling each other’s clothes off, communicating our feelings for each other more accurately through the medium of touch than our stilted lie-filled conversation. There were things that you just couldn’t say, that you could only tell someone by the way you looked at them or touched them. The sex was passionate, but miles away from violent.
>
  We exhausted ourselves and expressed far too much of what we felt to be comfortable. I lay in Jonathan’s arms, sighing, my thoughts a confused whirl. I was in the mind-meld with him, so he couldn’t fail to be aware of what I was feeling, as I was aware of what he was feeling. He decided to cut the intensity of purely emotional communication and use words, allowing half-truths and omissions in to our discussion.

  ‘I missed you, Florentina,’ he thought. ‘I didn’t realise quite how much until I saw you again.’

  I smiled at him and nodded. ‘Weirdly, I missed you too.’ I was better able to prevent him from reading every single one of my thoughts this time–he could just pick up on what I was feeling, and at that point, I was feeling rather good.

  ‘Oh? Why weirdly?’

  ‘Well… I’m not used to it,’ I thought.

  ‘I guess that was accurate.’

  ‘Missing anyone,’ I clarified. I smiled and touched him gently.

  ‘No, you don’t seem to want to share much of yourself with others,’ he observed. Then he looked at me piercingly. ‘Do you regret it?’ he asked.

  ‘Saying no to you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ I thought. ‘You are confusing.’

  He laughed at that. ‘You are so young, Flow.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘How old were you then? When you died, I mean?’ I asked, hoping that this question wouldn’t make him angry.

  ‘About thirty-five,’ he thought.

  ‘Well, he is older than me then. I suppose I can let him get away with comments like, ’You are so young, Flow.’ What exactly is that supposed to mean anyway?’

  I climbed off him and he sat up against the headboard and pulled me close to tenderly wrap his arms around me.

  ‘I prefer this; no biting,’ I thought.

  I felt him get serious again. In the mind-meld state I could actually experience his emotion. I guessed he was thinking about the last time we met, but the seriousness passed across him and left like a cloud across a full moon.