The Woman They Kept

by Krause, Andrew

  Gideon cocked an eyebrow at her and then ignored her, studying the lines on his map. There was too much to do, he couldn't worry about her psyche just yet.

  With a sudden movement Rolanda stuck her nose into his hair and smelled him deeply. “You've got the smell on you.” She sniffed at herself. “I wonder if I do too? This whole room reeks of it.”

  Later that night they curled up on the little mattress together, sharing a bed for the very first time. Her body was molded against him, perfectly enveloped in his embrace. A bare blanket covered them, and the softness of her skin made his body react unconsciously. He placed a hand on her breast, reaching under her shirt and cupping it gently. Softly, she pulled his hand away and moved over on the bed.

  He followed her, his body awake and insistent, and he put an arm around her and kissed the back of her neck. “Gideon, don't,” she said in a whisper. Trailing an open palm across her flat stomach and down the outside of her thighs, he persisted. She tried to pull away again but he turned her and lay on top of her, forcing her legs open with his knees, kissing her neck softly. Rolanda pushed and kicked at him, turning until she was off the bed. “I told you, I don't want it!”

  Gideon lay back. His senses had clouded for a moment, driven by his desire. “What's wrong with me? You've been through this before with men you didn't love, and then when you're with the man you're supposed to love you don't want it? Why not me?”

  Rolanda's eyes filled with tears. “I didn't want the others, and I do love you.” She turned to the small window and rubbed away some dirt to look out into the night. “Gideon, are you still a virgin? Have you waited for me?”

  A high flush rose in his cheeks. Suddenly he wanted there to have been a thousand women before her, so she could feel what he felt. He thought briefly about his night with Leanin, how it could have ended, and then he sighed. “Yes, Rolanda, I am.”

  She pushed a hair behind her ear and turned back to him. “Well, I'm not. That was taken from me. I don't want to have our first night together in some dirty room above a bar just because you have an itch that I can scratch.”

  They went back to bed again, leaving a few inches of space between themselves. Both wanted to be held but neither went to comfort the other. The sounds of the bar, the laughter and the music from the jukebox, played through the paper thin walls. Eventually they fell asleep, alone and cold.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the morning they dressed and ate in silence, avoiding looking at each other. Gideon had a route planned out that would take them a while to get home, but also would help them avoid major cities and areas that were too desolate. They took a bit of time to properly outfit Rolanda with riding gear before loading up and heading out. The next stop on their trip was a small bubble named Dagmar.

  Gideon found himself thankful that the riding was as difficult as it was. The trail went over rocky terrain and down through river beds, climbing steep hills and through barren plains. It took all of his concentration to stay on the road and moving, he was unable to think of a single other thing, and he was grateful for that. He was so thankful for the riding that he skipped any sort of meal break and rode straight on into the night.

  The sun had gone down completely when he began to look for a place to camp. He had to strain his eyes, the light from the front of the motorcycle only gave off a pale beam for him to see, and his vision was tired and blurry. Everything about him ached, and that was a good thing. He wanted to be so exhausted when they set down for camp that the minute he lay his head on the pillow he would fall asleep.

  Rounding a bend on a low hill his luck ran out; his wheel struck an unseen rock, lifting the bike up and off the road. If it had been during the day he would have seen the obstacle and been able to avoid it easily, but it wasn't.

  Gideon had the momentary sensation of flying, his insides feeling weightless, as though time had simply stopped and all laws of the universe no longer applied. Then gravity came rushing back and a flash of light blinded him as something struck the back of his head and then everything went dark.

  ...

  Leanin's bike was well equipped to travel off-road. Where Gideon's could go faster and had a better sense of balance, it did not have as high a clearance as Leanin's did. After she zapped Gideon with the electric truncheon she got on her motorcycle and went off the beaten path, where Gideon would have a hard time following.

  She rode only a few minutes away before stopping and throwing her helmet down into the dirt. Every fiber of her was enraged, she could have killed him for what he had done.

  Eventually she calmed, taking several moments to just breathe. He had come back, that was true, and though it had felt like ages, in reality it was probably only a minute or two before he came in guns blazing. He had come up with a plan, a good plan, she just didn't like that she had played a part without knowing it. Leaning against her motorcycle she chewed on a piece of dried beef. Her anger had faded, though she still felt that she owed him a good hard slap across the face.

  After about an hour of resting her ears perked up at the sound of a motorcycle in the distance. Though she didn't want to see him just yet the damn fool was liable to get himself killed without her. She put on her helmet and kicked her bike to life.

  ...

  Rolanda had been thrown clear, landing softly in the dust; the bike flew away from her and shut down as it hit the ground. She laughed loudly, unable to help it. Her heart was racing and her skin had gained a prickly sensation. Beyond the hill a light shone and then turned off. Cursing softly, a shadow walked toward her.

  “Hello, little shadow,” Rolanda said, lifting the visor of her helmet. “I've seen you back there, following us.”

  The shadow pulled off her helmet, short black hair falling around a sharp face. “Rolanda,” Leanin said. “Have you told Gideon that you've seen me?”

  Rolanda smiled at her. “His world is much too dark to see shadows.”

  Leanin propped up Gideon's head gently and undid the straps on his helmet, feeling at his neck for a pulse. “Fool was asking for this to happen, riding so long into the night.” Tracing a finger in the dirt, Rolanda shrugged.

  As Leanin was making him comfortable, taking off his shoes and balling up her jacket for a pillow, Gideon's eyes fluttered open. “Leanin,” he said groggily, “I dreamed of you. I hoped I would get a chance to explain things.”

  Leanin pulled out a stout little knife and held it against his cheek. Gideon blinked away his grogginess. “This is a warning, Gideon. If I hear you try to explain things to me I'll start taking fingers off you.” She sliced at his cheek, leaving a small cut that trickled out blood. Gideon gasped at the sudden pain. “Now, can you sit up? Does anything feel broken?”

  He began moving slowly, stretching this way and that, testing his limbs. “I think it's just bruises. You know, aside from the bleeding cut on my face.”

  “You want another?” Leanin asked, holding the knife up, her lips curled in a half smile.

  Gideon held out his hand for her to help him up. “It's good to see you.” Rolanda was busy playing with the dirt, making a little drawing of three figures and two motorcycles.

  They built a fire and sat around it, the three of them equidistant from each other, eating dried pieces of beef and staring into the flames. Gideon kept looking from Rolanda to Leanin, neither of them looking back at him. Rolanda was concentrating on something in her palm, her mouth moving silently.

  Was it really Rolanda there, sitting across the fire from him? Gideon wasn't sure. The woman had Rolanda's face, and hair, and body, but something deep inside had been changed. He couldn't stop looking at her eyes, trying to figure out how they were different. They had an unfocused, uneven quality to them, but that wasn't it, not exactly.

  Leanin looked sharp, but she
had ever since they first banded together. Her jaw was angled, her muscles tense, even when sitting around a fire. There was a dangerous sort of beauty about her, though. Looking at her gave Gideon a strange little thrill in the bottom of his stomach.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  Leanin's eyes cut to him, piercing in their intensity. “I was following. I wanted to think about some things. What do you know about that Akem guy?”

  Gideon concentrated on the flickering flames before him. He had been trying not to think of the man. “A woman I talked to directed me to him, said he might be able to help me. She described him as a 'fine print' sort of guy, but I didn't really know what she meant at the time. He knew a lot, that should have tipped me off not to trust him, but I didn't have anything else to go on. He was the only person helping me out.”

  Leanin picked a piece of meat out of her teeth. “They all want the same thing, though. It's just money to them, he'll realize that it's not economical to chase us. I doubt we'll hear from him again.”

  “That's just it. I don't know that this is about money. Why go to such great lengths to play with me for Rolanda? He's spanned a few different bubbles, why bother for one woman when he could just get another?”

  They sat in silence for a while, and then Rolanda looked up from the palm of her hand. “Maybe he's a spider, letting you walk along his web.” She bared her teeth and nipped toward Gideon. “He'll get you in the end.”

  “What's that in your hand?” Leanin asked.

  Rolanda smiled at her. “I am having a conversation with a new friend.”

  “Who is your new friend?” Gideon asked. Rolanda opened her palm, on it sat a fat and shining cockroach with two antennae that twitched this way and that. Gideon recoiled in disgust and walked away from the fire.

  “What does your friend have to say?” Leanin asked, her eyes on Gideon as he stomped away.

  The cockroach crawled up Rolanda's arm and to her neck, twitching at her skin with its antennae. She giggled as it tickled her. “Oh, lots. Cockroaches always do, but none of it is terribly interesting.”

  “Nothing interesting?” Leanin asked.

  “No. He has all the little dreams that normal cockroaches do, little cockroach dreams of finding a missus cockroach and digging a neat little hole for them to live in. He wants baby cockroaches to teach his little cockroach ways to. It's sad, in a way.”

  “Sad that the cockroach is normal or sad that you no longer are?” Leanin asked. She had been so concerned about whether she was mad at Gideon that she hadn't really had time to think about Rolanda. It wasn't going to be easy bringing her back from wherever she was inside. Her face softened and she reached out an arm to touch her. “Let's be serious here, Rolanda, you're not okay, are you?”

  Rolanda closed her fist quickly, little cockroach guts squirting out between her fingers. “You look through your window and I'll look through mine. I see just fine.”

  Leanin nodded and decided to let Rolanda alone for a while. She stood and walked over to Gideon, he was staring out to the horizon. The path twisted and snaked away from them. The ocean framed them on one side, looking obsidian in the night. “She wasn't like this before, was she?”

  Gideon spat into the dust. “Something's changed in her. She says things she doesn't mean, she doesn't really get what's going on.” He sighed. “I'm trying to understand, I really am. She's free now, why wouldn't she go back to being herself?”

  Leanin's hands twitched. She wanted to place them upon his shoulders, hold them to the back of his neck, intertwine her fingers in his. There was too much similarity between Jenny and Rolanda, it made her want to get on the motorcycle and drive away. But she had done that once before, and she wouldn't again. “She'll get better. Give her time.”

  Gideon turned and put his hand on her arm. “I have to wonder what will happen if she doesn't. What role should I play in her life? I can't be husband to half a person.” He moved closer, both of his hands were now touching her. “I don't think that would be good for either of us.”

  They looked each other in the eye, Leanin found herself trembling, her breath coming deeply. “These aren't things that you can question right now. You have to give her time.” She placed her hands, palms open, on his chest. “Give everything time.”

  Some distance away, on the other side of the fire, Rolanda watched the two touch each other. Her eyes were still, the fire dancing in them, her face blank.

  Leanin pushed off Gideon's arms. “Just wait and see what will happen. There's no point in speculation.”

  That night they all shared a single tent, sleeping side by side. Rolanda was in the middle, kicking and muttering in her sleep. Both Leanin and Gideon stayed awake on either side of her, hushing and comforting her when her cries became too fitful. They wouldn't look at each other.

  ...

  Dagmar was two days north of Algernia. Their journey brought them over mountains that cut into the sky, the peaks powder-topped with a yellow snow that shone in a dull way during the day. They rode slowly, the snow leaving the ground greasy and slippery under their tires as they made their way through the mountain passes.

  Dagmar itself was on the sunny side of one of those mountains. The ocean glared a mean green in the distance and the city had been gouged out of the side of a mountain, the top of the bubble itself having a little glimmer of snow. They parked their bikes on the outskirts, Dagmar didn't have cubbies for parking so they just locked them on the street. The houses they passed were small but placed on large plots of land. Most of them had goats and chickens wandering around their yards, braying and clucking at the strangers as they passed. A few people sat on their porches and waved to them as they walked into town.

  The center of the city was a little more concentrated, each building small, none having more than a second floor. The Abrahamic 'A' was seen mounted above more than a few doors they passed.

  “What's the plan?” Leanin asked. They leaned against a wooden fence while Rolanda clucked at a chicken in a yard.

  “Long term or short term?”

  “Short terms always end up at long term anyway, let's hear them both.” Leanin squinted her eyes and looked down the road. Dagmar was too much like home for her; the simple, folksy comfort that the people showed hiding an intolerance for anyone different than them. Cities like Dagmar were the reason that her father drove Jenny to suicide, everyone knew everybody's secrets, and having a whore daughter wasn't something the man had been okay with. She could picture him now, her father, on the faces of the men walking past them on the street while Gideon thought of his plan. He had been a tall man, his shoulders set straight, the type of man who thought he knew everything despite never asking questions.

  “Short term I think we should spend a night here, get our bearings and figure out a more solid long term plan. I was hoping we'd be able to make it back home eventually. It would be nice to not have to look over our shoulders anymore.”

  “Our?” Leanin asked, a wry half smile on her lips. Rolanda had wandered a little ways away, following where the chicken went, still clucking at it.

  Gideon ran a hand over his hair. “I had hoped we could all go back there. Do you have any reason not to?”

  “I don't like the question framed like that. Say rather, do I have any reason to go?” Leanin glanced at Rolanda and then to Gideon.

  He opened his mouth and then stopped, unsure of what he really wanted to say.

  “They know us here. We're desired,” Rolanda said, thrusting herself between the two. She held a piece of paper torn from a wall.

  “What do you mean? I've never even been here,” Gideon said.

  The piece of paper showed three photographs, one of each of them, with their names and some general information about them. Both Roland
a's and Gideon's were old school photographs from back in Cormac; Leanin's was some sort of prison photo. Across the top of the page, in large red lettering was the word, 'Wanted.'

  Gideon paled and held on to the fence as his knees shook. “Charges include prostitution, sexual assault and battery, and human trafficking,” he read.

  “This is put out by the Dagmar peace officers,” Leanin said, pointing to a small shield at the bottom of the page. “Akem's reach must be a lot farther than we thought. We may never stop looking over our shoulders.” Her face was strained as she looked at the paper. Suddenly it felt like everyone who passed was looking at them, studying their faces. “I don't think that we should stay here.”

  “I don't think that you should have ever come,” a voice boomed out. A tall man in a crisp brown uniform stood a few feet behind them, silver star pinned to his breast. In his hand he held out an electric truncheon. From behind the buildings around them several men dressed in similar uniforms came out, each holding their own weapons. “Now, that poster you're holding we received just this morning down the pipeline, and low and behold, I hear we have three new arrivals come under our dome. This doesn't have to come to any violence, but we do need you three to come with us and get this all sorted out.”

  Leanin exploded toward the nearest officer, lashing out fiercely with her fist. A loud crackle resounded in the air as the officer thrust his electric truncheon into her and she collapsed in a heap. Gideon strained forward.

  “Hold, son,” said the tall officer, “she's not harmed, just unconscious. Come peacefully with us, we don't want to do any real damage.”

  The words were ineffective compared to seeing Leanin's body splayed out, her limbs every which way. Gideon threw himself at them, immediately feeling the blinding and paralyzing pain of the truncheon.