by Michael Orr
“I am just there...” Wesquie cast off and drifted out of listening range to give the girls some space.
“This exists!” Trish craned over the edge as far as she dared, gazing down at huge phantom rock spires lurking in the mists below.
“Wild, huh!” Saia was running her hand through the leaves of a banana-like plant.
“Maybe the cloud villages work the same way.” Amber stood in the middle, as far from the edges as she could get.
Saia shook her head. “Wesquie says this’z all from natural gravity flux. The villages float on tech.”
“Awesome either way,” Trish chimed, partially drowned out by a flock of noisy condrells passing by.
“I’m doin’ it...” She eyed the main islet on the other end of the stepping stones, salivating at the tropical garden awaiting her.
The eight-stone walkway was arranged like an ‘S’, each stone higher than the last. The first bobbed beneath Trish’s weight just like the welcome stone, and she took the rest two steps at a time with arms out for balance, lunging her way across.
Now reaching the main islet, she stepped up onto the brick-tiled grass and studied the six towering palms taking up the back, their trunks serving as a trellis for a small selection of shrubs to curl around. One large boulder sat heavy in the grass like a headstone at the foot of the nearest palm, offering Trish a backrest as she settled into a daydream.
Saia arrived on the main islet a few moments later, reaching out to the trunk of a palm as if to prove to herself it was really there.
“C’mon...” she called back across the chasm where Amber stood on the smaller islet, resolutely shaking her head.
“Is this not the only place for a nap you could ever want?” Trish lazed like a cat in Rigel’s misty warmth.
Saia surveyed the space for creature comforts. “It could use a fountain or a well or something.” All in all, the islet was about the size of Trish’s ready room. “But yeah, it’s hard t’beat.”
“We’re floating, y’know.” Trish peered up at Saia beneath a visored hand. “Ever see anything like it on the Astarte?”
Saia shook her head. “Not even kind of.”
Something disturbed the tranquil sky around them and Trish got up, both girls watching as a group of condrells split off from a passing flock to settle on the palms overhead. Troubled by trespassers on their favorite roost, the komodo-sized snake things broke out in a chorus of ragged squealing, teeth bared like bear traps ringed with daggers.
“Oh, come on!” Trish shouted at them, but it only made their squeals louder. Maddeningly so.
One of the condrells wormed off the tree and landed not two meters away, staring them down.
“Fuckfuckfuck...” Saia froze.
14
* * *
YSP – RIGEL SYSTEM – MAR 23, 2371
“Time t’go!” Amber shouted from the far islet. She waved to Wesquie as Trish and Saia hurried back across the stepping stones. But the condrells followed them over with angry flutters, taking station at the edge of the smaller islet.
“Wesquiiiiieee...!” Amber cried out, but careful close-quarter maneuvering was required to bring the sloop in close and he couldn’t rush.
“Stupid things!” Trish scowled. “We’re not stealing your home! We just wanted a few measly minutes!”
The same condrell stepped forward again, throat open, but this time Trish lunged at it in defiance.
The snake-dragon stumbled back in surprise and tripped off the edge. She watched it recover and take wing far below, but it didn’t return. The others stood fast — albeit less adamantly now.
“Let’s go!” Saia called to her, and Trish took one last stomp at the squealing things before walking calmly back to the ship.
“Fuck you guys!” She climbed aboard unhurriedly. The screeching stopped as soon as the sloop pulled away.
“Good lord!” Amber sighed, relaxing into welcome silence.
“Verrry protect.” Wesquie shook his head. “Wrong time day.”
“Territorial,” Saia corrected.
Trish turned to him, brow furrowed. “So, when’s better?”
“Dusk and dawn. Drop into mist...can feed.”
“What’s down there?”
“Water.” Wesquie shrugged like it was common knowledge. “Lots water. Ysp cannot ocean, just waterways. This why mist everywhere.”
“So there’s fish down there?” Saia asked.
“Fish?”
“Um, swimming things? Live in the water?”
“No no...” He grew a bemused grin. “No can. Plants only. Plants and watergrass.”
On the way home he plunged the ship down into the mist and navigated between looming rock outcrops, showing his passengers the surface waters that flowed constantly around the planet.
“Sometimes I land in water. Can drift. Relax.”
“But the air’s so heavy down here.” Saia flapped the dew from her top and waved out her hair.
Wesquie shook his head. ”A few longer minutes.”
“Then what?” Trish asked.
“You see...”
The peace and calm began to stir, first in the water currents and then in the air itself.
“What is that?” Saia asked, but grinning Wesquie only winked at her.
The stirring grew into a roar and the placid current beneath the sloop’s keel gathered into turbulent white froth. The mists parted like magic and the girls gaped upward at a jaw-dropping waterfall hundreds, even a thousand meters high.
“Wholly fuckeddy!” Trish gasped.
The cascade carved deeply into the cliff, its horseshoe-shaped hollow more than three kilometers across. The frothing water at the base roiled furiously, and the falls’ constant wind swept the area of mist, leaving the air clearer than the girl’s had seen since arriving planetside.
“Gawww...!” Amber gushed.
“There’s nothing like this on Earth,” Saia stared. “This’z, like, cutting inta the planet’s crust!”
“Now we can up,” Wesquie said. “No work.”
He steered toward one edge of the cascade, bringing the skyship close enough that spray drizzled everyone and everything. Here, rushing updrafts lofted the ship skyward as they passed close enough to scrape the moss-covered cliff face.
It took twenty minutes to reach the top, where the mists gathered back around them and hid the waterfall’s source.
“Now you seen many secrets.” Wesquie stood proudly at his wheel. “Beautiful place.”
The following night as Asherah slipstreamed to Mintaka, Trish sat in her suite editing footage from her trip to Jhouv, Rigel’s watery seventh planet.
Reliving her day, she marveled anew at the underwater megalopolises of the G’kalu. The cities of sharp cathedral-like minarets forested the ocean floor, their inhabitants virtually unaware of the atmosphere above.
She and Amber had gazed in wonder out the tourist sub’s portholes, wondering what kind of lives the G’kalu led in their unvisitable metropolises.
“And I’ve still got three fourths a’the cruise ta go!”
She paused her recording, wondering what else Renée would want to hear about. Her footage would give everyone back home a panorama of the Alliance. She’d already gone into nauseating detail about the Asherah itself, along with clips of her shipmates, but she was leaving out a major piece.
What to say about her dancing? The peeps back home knew her as a nouveau pro, and her Zodiac gig was about as far from that as could be.
It wasn’t shame, exactly. She had no qualms over baring herself on stage these days. It was more about how her longtime friends would have to adjust to this new Trish.
She took a breath and continued:
“Anyway, more t’come. I can’t wait ta see what the Grenadines are like, but there’s still a lot between now ’n then. I don’t even know what t’do with it all.
“Bye, guys. Luv u!”
15
* * *
NORCAL MEGAPLEX
– EARTH – MAR 25, 2371
Loni Daneca was lost. They’d shut off her screem-screen access for the third time in as many weeks, and now it would be impossible to find work. No digics, no room. She’d be out on the street in days, and once that happened there’d be no chance of getting off the streets ever again. You had to mind your p’s and q’s or the Conglom would shut you out, sending you into cultural exile. Once you were on the outside the only way to survive was to break the law, which meant never getting back into the Conglom’s good graces again.
It was a policy based on the tactics Premier Kher had used to control Earth after the twenty-first century upheavals. If you didn’t behave the way he liked, he’d shut off your utilities and send you back to the stone age, cut off from all the technological conveniences surrounding you.
It was excruciatingly effective and led to terrible abuses even before his death — abuses that united a group of blacklisters into an underworld where outcasts could eke out a barter-based living. Their vision came to be known as Libernation, and provided the one hope for a free lifetime on a quarantine planet.
Nowadays, Libernation was just as authoritarian as the corporatocracy it opposed. To join, you had to have something meaningful to offer, and Loni had nothing left but her body. That was a step too far, so for all intents and purposes she was a stray.
Like about sixty percent of the population, Loni had been incubated in a baby farm and raised by the state. Just a cog contributing herself to the whole. No special lifepath, no particular gifts — just a random self awash in the milieu of life. But her cog-in-the-machine lifepath never felt right.
She thought of it the way the transgenders thought of their birth sex — just a bad fit. She wasn’t right for the normal workday; wasn’t right for sitting in an office or managing a squad of bots. Nor was she technically-minded or particularly problem-solving. The world seemed to expect things of her that she’d never agreed to.
Who’s fault am I? she bitched. Can’t be mine. You guys brought me here, so why’s it on me t’fit myself into a system I got nothin’ t’do with? Why’s your agenda my problem?
“Fuck you.” She was sick of trying to make life work when it wouldn’t play fair. No meeting her half way; no compromise. Life demanded its way or else.
“And fuck your ‘or else’.” She gazed at the cold pavement beneath the back-and-forth swing of her shoes. “You don’t gimme anything I want. Why should you get anything you want?”
The world had always been a flat, unsympathetic wall keeping her out. There was no way to be part of it. All she really wanted was someone to camp with at the foot of the wall and throw things. Instead, she was forever alone.
“I’ll bet dead people don’t get cold, don’t hafta work, don’t hafta eat. They damn sure don’t hafta make a living or worry about the future. Life takes too much work.”
Thoughts of offing herself were growing more common, but the world was so aggravatingly safe that the only way to rid yourself of it was to do something horrific to yourself. There’d be no jumping off buildings, because G-tech barriers on roofs and balconies made leaping impossible. And hovering lifeguard bots with unblinking eyes made drowning in the coastal waters a thing of the past. She was pretty sure drowning was a horrible way to go, anyway.
With those options off the list, getting out of here meant bashing your head in with a rock...providing you could find one. Life held every goddamned card. It owned you to the point that even if all you wanted was to leave it behind, it still made you work at it. No matter what, life was hell-bent on making you suffer.
“Why does everyone think life’s such a blessing? What’s there t’be grateful for?”
“You look lost,” a voice intruded.
She turned to see a guy about her own age, but no one she recognized. “I live here,” she scoffed, hoping maybe he could end her.
He smiled. “I don’t mean in that how do I get ta Main Street way.”
ESS ASHERAH – ALLIANCE SPACE – MAR 27, 2371
Mid-way through their first cruise, Trish, Saia and Amber finally had a shared free evening to try out their visceral encounter with the cosmos, as the orgone article called it.
“We sure?” Trish held her hand at the ready.
Saia did a brow-shrug and Amber nodded with mute uncertainty.
Trish licked her lips and swiped her suite’s iso-mag setting all the way down to ‘minimal’.
Baited breath filled the air as they waited for whatever the unfiltered orgone energy might do.
A minute passed.
“Party on,” Saia clucked.
“Unmazing.” Trish abandoned her watchful post by the panel and sat with her friends.
“Maybe it takes a while,” Amber said.
“Or...” Trish reasoned, “maybe nothin’ happens ’til we pass through a pocket.”
“It’d make sense.” Saia agreed.
“Let’s just leave it ’n see what happens,” Trish decided, pulling up a show. Tomorrow was Alnilam, The middle star in Orion’s belt, with nothing to gear up for and no planetary excursions. Just a mellow day of gazing at the Great Orion Nebula.
She found herself staring past the show, eyes unfocused. Something was happening inside her. Something indescribable.
“Y’guys feel that?” Amber asked.
Trish and Saia nodded, eyes glazing over.
What started off as a slight sensation was growing into a monster. Taking her over.
Trish squirmed on the couch, responding as the universe brought its hands to bear on her body.
“Oh...” Saia was doing the same. Amber was already caught up in it and Trish closed her eyes, letting the current take her.
There was a moment in the flood of feelings when she turned lucid, aware of the experience. The three of them were breathing heavy, passion rasping in and out of their throats as the universe had its way.
It felt to Trish like the cosmos was having sex with her heart chakra, rhythmically pumping its member into her center as waves of ecstasy overcame her.
Again and again it thrust into her core — her very soul — bringing her closer and closer to climax as the air she breathed filled her throat with pulsing. She was swimming in the passion; drowning in it as she felt for her fingertips. Her nerve impulses were limp and languid like she’d been drugged...could barely make her digits move.
Her entire essence, the energy that made up her being, danced on a knife edge, incapable of falling to either side. It was the most intense pleasure she’d ever known. Had no idea the human body could withstand so much. There was no will in her to do anything else. Nowhere she would rather be. Nothing she could want more.
On it went, cosmic-scale pleasure plunging in and out of her beingness, her fabric, as her body trembled at the precipice of orgasm, never quite reaching... quivering at peak pitch.
She was aware of her mouth hanging open...of drool pooling on her chest as she collapsed into the cushions. It would’ve taken heroic effort to even blink. Better just to leave her eyes as they were.
“Uhnnn...”
Trish caught the note of helplessness in Amber’s whimper.
This isn’t right!
It was like dragging herself out of tar just to slip off the couch. She fought to stir; battled to break free of the couch’s gravity. One of them had to reach the panel and raise the suite’s shielding or they wouldn’t survive. Pleasure-passion was swallowing them whole.
“Uhh guhhhd...” She fell to the ground on all rubbery fours and tried to scrape herself across the floor. There was no solidness left in her bones to move with. Each limb was a useless slinky and the panel was so far away. All the way across eternity.
She collapsed.
The lights came back on as her eyelids broke open. She rolled her head to see Saia crumpled on the floor just shy of the panel, completely spent. And there was Amber, pooled on the couch like a water sack.
The auto-restore had switched on, and they were lucky to be breathing.
16
* * *
ESS ASHERAH – ALLIANCE SPACE – MAR 29, 2371
I’m having a moment. It’s just past midnight, Mumbai District time, and I’m supposed to be dancing on this stage.
But there’s nobody here.
The Zodiac Lounge is empty and I’m lying here gazing up at the Great Orion Nebula as we leave it behind.
Life on Asherah is amazing. Delirious. Dazzling. I’ve seen things I never imagined. The oceans of Mintaka 6 are pink from the pearly sky and minerals in the water — the whole planet has a kind of divine glow to it. And there’s the fragile floating jellyfish-birds of Alnilam 9 that fill the air in undulating flocks, and the dancing trinaries of Rigel B that flood the space around them with a blue halo from their solarswept coronas.
That’s only a meager taste. I’m halfway through my first cruise and I can’t even guess what’s coming up. What I’ve seen so far blows my mind.
And then there’s Asherah, the Queen of Heaven herself. How do I paint the experience of four sister cities flying through space, with skyscrapers and lakes and jungles and golf courses and meandering creeks? Everything you could think of is here — even sky-gliding, since the envirodomes are a kilometer high.
You step out onto the streets and find yourself surrounded by metropolitan life at its finest. Couples in evening glitz lean toward each other in intimate sidewalk bistros, their private conversations riffling through flowered hedges and draping vines that hang like curtains between themselves and passersby. An hour from now they’ll be hobnobbing in their arching opera houses and outdoor symphonies amidst lush green parks moted by dancing waters and colorful, glowing canals.
The next street over, you’re swallowed by a dancing neighborhood as Goddess’s buskers turn the plaza into a jubilee. A few blocks down, groups in swimsuits head for the zero-G pools and whirling carnival rides of the fun zone. Kaleidoscope lights turn crystalline towers into living works of art, and every conceivable dish to tantalize your tastebuds is only footsteps from wherever you happen to be.