by Chris Bunch
“You are still ready,” she said in some surprise.
“Next time I’ll finish, too.”
“Does your Way teach that kind of control?”
“Yes.”
“Why is it not more popular?”
Joshua was silent for a space, then decided to tell her the truth. “Because, for one thing, it helps to have been a prisoner of the Al’ar for three years.”
Candia was jolted. “Oh. I did not know. Joshua, I am sorry. Now you are soft. Please. Forget I spoke. Think of something else. Think of loving me as you did a moment ago. As you will again. As I want you.”
Joshua breathed, measured, bringing control. Water, flow… water, move… water, change, and his body responded.
“Now,” she whispered. “Now we shall do it my way.”
Without freeing him, she pushed herself up and lifted a leg across his chest.
“Turn sideways,” she said, “until your feet hang off the edge of the bed.” Joshua obeyed. She swiveled once more until her legs were on the outside of his.
“Ah, I feel you. Now, sit up. Slowly. Yes. Now I shall do all the moving. You can use your hands as you wish on me.” She moved her hips up, down, a steady motion.
“You know,” she said, voice throaty, “I think all dancers dream of having… another dancer for their lover. Someone who has the muscles they do, someone who can move with them. Why we do not think of a fighter, a lover… Oh. Yes. Touch me there more. But… it seems men dancers always choose each other. Oh! Like that, Joshua. Oh, yes. But now I know the place to look. Ah now. Now I am coming. Come with me. I want to feel you let go!”
Her body pulsed around him, and he jerked upward, stifling his outcry.
* * * *
“You said your ship talks to you.”
“Yes.”
“It sees what’s going on outside?”
“It does.”
“Inside, too?”
“Yes.”
“So it knows what we are doing?”
“I don’t know if it can interpret what it sees. Perhaps it can. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. But I have never been watched by a machine before. I don’t know if I find it exciting… or creepy.”
Joshua threw another bucket of cold water on the stones, and steam swirled through the small room.
“That is all,” Candia gasped. “I have suffered enough for my sins! Let me out. I’m boiled!”
She pulled the sauna door open and staggered out, and Joshua heard her splash into the pool before the door swung to.
Two bucketfuls later he, too, stumbled out into the chilled air of the bathroom. Candia lay in the small pool, her splayed legs on its rim, head pillowed on an inflatable cushion. Water bubbled around her.
“I tried to talk to your ship,” she said, “but it ignores me.”
“It can’t acknowledge you. That’s in its basic programming.”
“It’s probably jealous.” She sighed. “But that’s all right. You have a very sexy ship, you know.” “No, I didn’t know.”
“Look. As soon as I got in here, pumps started up. I could just lie here like this, letting myself be loved by the water, and sooner or later forget about men.”
“Candia, you are oversexed.”
“I would certainly hope so,” the woman murmured. “I want to be able to keep up with you.”
“Enough fooling about,” Joshua said. “We’ve got to be out and about.”
Reluctantly the dancer came out of the pool. “So what are we going to do?”
“We’re renting a nice, comfortable house on our own island. I’ve decided I need more privacy. A house and a lifter, and I’d like to put them in your name.”
Joshua stayed in the background while the sleek, dapper little man danced attendance on his client. Candia looked at Wolfe when a question came that she couldn’t answer, and he’d nod—slightly.
It took only four islands before they had what he needed. The island had a single house, a sprawling, fully roboticized villa, so there wouldn’t be any nosy staff. There was a boathouse and a dock. The nearest occupied island was three miles away.
It was about ten miles off Morne-des-Esses, far enough to be able to lose any pursuit.
The realtor beamed when Candia gave her approval. He went to fetch the lease papers from his lifter.
“Tell me,” she whispered, “why you chose this one. Was it the mirrors on the bedroom ceiling? Or the size of that big bed?”
“Neither,” Joshua said. “It was the goat I saw out back.”
“Pervert!”
* * * *
The ship hovered up to the dock, and the lock slid open. Joshua set two travel cases on the dock, then stepped out.
The lock closed. Joshua touched his bonemike, spoke inaudibly, and the ship turned, went out about fifty meters, and disappeared beneath the water.
“That is eerie,” Candia decided. “What happens if she decides not to come up again when you call her?”
“Then I’ve got a very expensive salvage problem.”
“The water is very clear. Someone might be able to look down and see her, you know.”
“If anybody’s looking straight down for a spaceship, my cover’s blown, anyway. All we can do is hope and think clean thoughts.”
Candia picked up one case with the dancer’s strength that Joshua was still surprised at, and they started toward the house.
“Now what do we do? Besides make love, I mean.”
“Mostly, we wait.”
* * * *
“So what’ll you want with me? I’ll guess it ain’t real legal or you’d have Thetis do it.”
“Nothing illegal about it, Mister Libanos. Let’s just say it’s a bit chancy.”
“Whyn’t you use that fancy lifter you’ve got?”
“Lifters send up spray. I want something quiet.”
“Why not?” the old man grunted. “Nothing much happening this time of year anyway.”
* * * *
“Can I ask you something, Joshua?”
“You can ask anything.”
“But you might not answer. It is a personal question. Very personal. You were a prisoner of the Al’ar, you said the first night we made love.”
“I was.” Joshua’s voice was suddenly dead.
“I wish the light was on. I would like to see your face, to know when I should shut up.”
“Don’t worry about it. What’s your question?”
“Were you a soldier?”
“Not then,” Joshua said reluctantly. “When the war started… when the Al’ar attacked the Federation, I was on Sauros. That’s one of the Al’ar Ruling Worlds, as they called them. They didn’t have to centralize their capital, since they had ways of communicating between stars almost instantly. We still don’t know how they did that.”
“My family had been sent there two, almost three years before, when the first incidents occurred and things started heating up. They were supposed to try to defuse the situation with words.”
“But after a while the Al’ar decided they didn’t want to listen. I guess there weren’t many on our side who wanted to, either, by then.”
“When they blindsided our fleets without bothering to declare war, they rounded up every Federation being on any of their worlds. They didn’t bother with the difference between soldiers and civilians. Not then, not later. I ended up in a camp.”
“What about your parents?”
“They died, like most of the people around me. Disease. Malnutrition. Neglect. The Al’ar weren’t deliberate bastards, but it worked out the same.”
“But you escaped.”
“I escaped.”
“And after that?”
“I was the first human who’d been that close to them for that long, and so the Federation was very glad to see me and use what I knew. Later on there were a few more like me. But not very many. The Al’ar didn’t take many prisoners, since they never surrendered themselves.”
&
nbsp; “Then the Federation made you a soldier?”
“Of sorts.”
“I have known soldiers,” Candia said softly, “and I have learned that none of them, none of the real ones, ever want to talk about fighting. So I shall not ask about what you did or where.”
“But I have another question. How could you stand to be around those creatures? I never was; I only saw them on the vid or on holos. But they made me shudder. Like… like seeing a slug on your walk. Or a spider on your wall.”
“That’s the way most humans feel… felt. The Al’ar felt the same way about us. That’s the real reason the war happened.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Wolfe was silent for a long time.
“I don’t really know,” he said slowly. “Maybe it’s because spiders never bothered me. Or maybe because I got moved around so much growing up that I was always on the outside. Every place we went was new, and the people were strange. Most generally they didn’t like me, because I was different.”
“But they killed your parents. So you hated them and must hate them now.”
“No,” Joshua said. “No, I didn’t. Not then, not now.”
* * * *
After two weeks no one much noticed Joshua around the casino. He was just another sleek gambler who happened to be Candia’s latest lover.
He would take her to work and back to the island most nights, generally spending the time in between at the table, where he usually won. Always courteous, always reticent, he kept himself to himself and became invisible in that world of flashy transients.
One night he pulled the lifter close to the employee entrance and escorted Candia inside. He’d timed his appearance close to showtime, so the ramp to the backstage entrance was deserted.
He went back to the lifter, took out a black satchel, and reentered the casino. The corridor was still empty. He went down it to an unmarked door and opened it. He’d picked the lock earlier in the day.
He closed the door behind him and used a jamb lock to secure it. The stairwell was gray and smelled of moisture, concrete, neglect.
He opened his satchel, took out coveralls that were marked casino staff with a name tag of KYRIA, and pulled them on. The only other thing the satchel contained was a gray metal box. It was stenciled:
RELAY BOARD.
DO NOT OPEN WITHOUT
PROPER PRECAUTIONS.
He touched the paint, made certain it was dry.
He went up two flights of stairs, opened the landing door, and came out in another corridor. He went past five interior doors, paused at the sixth. His hands blurred around the lock, and he heard a click.
He opened the door and looked out on the catwalks that spidered above the main theater. There were the lights, pulleys, lifts, flats, and ropes remotely operated by the production crew backstage, a level below. He found the open section of wall he’d chosen, turned four studs on the back of the metal box, and held it against the wall.
It held firm when he released it. He went out, relocked the door, and went on down to the main level. He stripped off the coveralls, then opened the door a crack. The corridor was vacant.
He left the building, drove to the main entrance, and entered, this time politely greeting three or four people he knew, pausing long enough to ask one of them the time, frowning, and pretending to reset his watch.
* * * *
“Wake up! Joshua, wake up!”
“What is it?”
“You were dreaming. Not a good dream,” Candia said. “I heard you grunt. You’re sweating. And you were speaking a language I do not know. It gave me the shudders.”
“Something like this?” He spoke a few words in Al’ar.
“Yes. That is it.” She turned on the light, got up, went into the bathroom, came back with a towel, then began drying him gently.
“Do you want to tell me what the dream was?”
“I was dreaming about Sauros,” Wolfe said slowly.
“What were you doing?”
“I was with my Al’ar friend, Taen. I guess he was my friend. I never asked him, and he never told me.”
“What were you doing?”
“He was showing me places on the body where, if you just touch them, the person must die.”
Candia shuddered. “No wonder you were grunting. What a terrible thing to dream!”
“No,” Joshua said. “I was fascinated. Taen was helping me translate those places on an Al’ar body to the same spots on a man.”
“This was a friend?” Candia’s voice was incredulous.
“A friend. A teacher.”
“Did he teach you anything other than ways to kill people?”
Joshua started to answer, stopped. His words had gone on too long. “Yes. But nothing worth talking about.”
“I do not believe you,” Candia said after a pause. “But each of us must have secrets. There. Now you are dry. Think happy thoughts.” She kissed him, turned off the light, rolled away from him, and pretended to go to sleep.
Joshua lay awake for a time. Thinking. Remembering:
* * * *
“Very well,” Taen said. “I have decided I am mad. I shall teach you how to fight. But it will be necessary for you to learn more of our ways. A virai cannot fly unless it studies the winds.”
The boy bowed.
“You will not like me as I teach,” the Al’ar warned. “I did not—perhaps do not—like the one who taught me. But this is as it should be.”
Without warning, his grasping organ came out at stomach level, struck the boy, and sent him stumbling down. Joshua hit hard, rolled sideways, tucked his feet under himself, and was back up.
The Al’ar moved closer. Joshua snapped a kick; Taen’s grasping organ touched it, and Wolfe lost his balance and fell heavily.
Once more, without outcry, he got up.
“Good,” the Al’ar said approvingly. “Showing pain like a hatchling means your shell, your body, is not learning. But this is the last I shall praise you.”
* * * *
Another time:
“I know the ways of being invisible,” the boy complained. “They’re of another Way, but I’ve studied them.”
“Tell me, wormling, of thy brilliance.”
Joshua took a breath.
“You’re not really invisible. You just move beyond someone’s perception. To the side, above, below. Or else you use misdirection. Touch them on one shoulder, duck under when they turn, and they’ll think they’ve observed the area.
“Another way is to use light, darkness. Move toward the greater light, the greater darkness, and you’ll remain unseen.”
“I shit on such mummeries,” Taen said. “This is the Al’ar way.” He moved to one side, then back, and Joshua’s eyes hurt. He looked away, then back. Behind Taen was a table, and on it was a vase.
Now he could see the vase clearly.
The air shimmered, and the Al’ar returned.
“That is what I mean. It is harder when someone is looking directly at you, easier when their focus is set elsewhere and then they turn to you. But this is another thing you shall learn.”
* * * *
Joshua smiled in the darkness.
The Al’ar shuffled toward him, moving in a semicircle. Joshua turned, kept his face toward Taen, moved sideways. The Al’ar’s grasping organ swept out, and Joshua ducked under it, tapped the organ with three knuckles, and felt Taen’s pain. The Al’ar’s leg lashed, and Joshua kicked it away.
Taen tottered, and Joshua snapped a frontal kick into his midsection, sending the lean alien sprawling. Taen curled his legs under himself for the rebound, saw Joshua standing above him, fist ready for the killing knuckle stroke, and let himself down.
“You have learned all I have. Now it is time for us to go out and seek a name for you. You must then study, but with other teachers. I must consult our Elders and study our codex for permission, but I feel it is time. When—if they agr
ee, we shall go beyond Sauros, out into the dry lands, at night.
“Someone shall be waiting for us. I shall teach you the words you must use to him. You must study them so you make no mistakes and cause me to look like a blind one.”
* * * *
A final memory came to Joshua.
He was twenty. He was alone by the green haze that marked the limits of the prison camp. Cross into the haze and you died.
He paid the haze no mind. After almost three years it had become a part of him, as much a part as the long shabby huts, the constant hunger, the torn clothes, and the cold.
And the searing loneliness.
He did not allow himself to think of that.
Instead, he began his movements, as he did every day at dawn and dusk. Slowly, letting his mind be taken away.
“Hey! You!”
The peace left him. He turned.
There were four of them. One was the son of a man who’d been one of the embassy’s lifter drivers before the war, before internment, and was his age. The second was one of the Marine guards who preferred being with younger men instead of the few survivors of his detachment. The other two he did not know other than that they were always seen with the driver’s son.
All of them were heavier than Wolfe and had found ways to acquire more food than the allocated rations.
Wolfe did not respond.
They formed a semicircle around him, keeping about eight feet from him.
“We wanted to set you straight,” the driver’s son said. “Teach you we all gotta hang together an’ remember we’re men, not friggin’ slugs. We ain’t gonna be here forever, an’ we’ll need t’ be ready when th’ time comes to fight back.
“It ain’t right, you doin’ all this Al’ar shit. Tryin’ to be like one a them. We been watchin’, seein’ you study them. Prob’ly wishin—”
Joshua was suddenly next to him, less than a foot away. Two fingers touched the young man’s skull just at the angle of his jaw. He screamed in mortal agony and stumbled back.
The Marine was coming into some sort of a fighting stance, but before his hands came level with the ground, Joshua struck him with a backhand and he fell, trying to breathe, eyes popping.
The third and fourth were backing away, hands lifted.