Humming the “Farmland” theme again, she hesitated before reaching for another guinea pig. How old had she been when she’d lived to glue herself to the Cyclops and drink in the show? Seven? Eight? And now . . .
“Thirty-two years old today,” she spoke aloud, then quickly looked around, relieved that no one was in the lab to hear this confession. She had heard the announcement that no personnel would be permitted to leave their quarters and in a way was relieved. Not that there was anywhere to go, but one of her supervisors, a tall, leathery-faced man with greedy black eyes had been giving her some problems. He was unappealing in every way, at least ten years older than Gildan, which would not have mattered, but he had a sort of oily insinuation that offended even her.
If even I think he’s creepy, he must be a real toad . . .
Gildan sighed at the thought, for she had long ago faced the fact that she was not very bright, and was particularly dense about men. She never seemed to be able to figure them out, what they meant, what they wanted, what they intended . . . and she never seemed to learn.
Now her birthday was a depressing weight on her mind. Her thoughts, flinching, flickered back over her life to the series of men with whom she had allied herself over the years. She was rather glad that she could not remember their names or faces very well. The dim memories gave her very little pleasure.
Gildan was one of those intentionally blonde women who were beautiful in youth and adolescence and carried it even into her late twenties. But just this morning she’d studied her face in the mirror and noticed the beginnings of tiny crow’s-feet around the eyes—not laugh lines, as she’d tried to tell herself before, but age lines. It had depressed her on a day that was supposed to be special. Her hair at the present time was not blonde but a brilliant cherry color, and she’d wondered if there was any gray there beneath the gaudy dye.
Her figure, delineated clearly by the green Ty-nylon jumpsuit that she wore, was that of a young girl. Her body was, in fact, a triumph of body sculpture. Everything had either been planed down or pumped up. Her face also was a tribute to the Beauty Masters. Nose, chin, throat, skin, all were formed into the current fashion of beauty. But she didn’t feel pretty. When she inspected her face and body she always found something lacking or something sagging or something less than perfect. Today it was the tiny, fine skin around her sad blue eyes.
She picked up another guinea pig and this time, lost in thought, she injected it without the usual pathos. Suddenly, thirty-two years old seemed ancient to her. It struck her that her mother had been thirty-two when she’d given birth to Gildan—how was that for old? At that moment, she had to hold herself tightly in hand. She was not a woman given to hysterics, but this penumbra, this shadow that she recognized as fear of the future, had been haunting her more often of late. And now on her birthday it seemed to be more potent and virulent than she had ever known it could be.
The sudden sound of a door hissing open interrupted her frightening thoughts, and she turned quickly to see Niklas Kesteven enter. He was not wearing a white smock uniform as he usually did, but a pair of khaki slacks and a floppy denim shirt. Her quick eyes took in the ruffled appearance, the bloodshot eyes, the shambling gait, and she realized that he was half-drunk. That was an odd thing about Niklas. He never seemed completely drunk, but lately he’d never been dead sober, either.
“Hello, Gildan.”
“Hi, Niklas.” Sudden hope flared in her. Did he know it was her birthday somehow? Did he bring a gift? No, no, a gift didn’t matter—just a “Happy birthday” would suit her just fine. She didn’t realize just how lonely she was until that moment.
“What are you doing?” he asked idly.
Gildan held up the injector. “Giving shots. You have to get in line, though.”
“Nah, I don’t believe in waiting for my turn.” Niklas took her arm, his eyes glittering. “Let’s go up top to the ranch house, Gildan.”
“But we were ordered to stay in our rooms. Speaking of which, why are you out wandering?”
He grabbed her and kissed her roughly. “Looking for you, of course. And you worry too much about rules, rules, rules. Come on.” He tugged her toward the door, barely giving Gildan a chance to put down the injector.
“But, Niklas, the commissars—they’ll stop us at—”
“They’ll try to stop us.”
Gildan allowed him to lead her to the elevator. She liked Niklas very much, despite the arrogant coolness he exuded most of the time. He was, in his rumpled way, strangely attractive. He wasn’t handsome, but Gildan had known her share of good-looking men.
There was just something about Niklas that drew her to him. He’d always been friendly to her in that slightly insinuating way, but he’d never tried to seduce her.
In the elevator, Niklas tried to kiss her, but she held him back. “Stop it, Niklas! Not here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like these mirrors. I think it’s for the commissars so they can see who’s in here.”
“You think?” Niklas said carelessly. “Hello there, Unterscharführer!Sieg Heil!” He stabbed the air with his open hand.
Gildan had no idea what an unterscharführer or a sieg heil was, but she gamely giggled and said, “Today’s my birthday.”
“Really? Then how about a birthday kiss?”
Gildan pouted, petulantly pushing him away. She really didn’t want to spend this night alone, but she craved at least a little tenderness. Then she thought, I’m with the wrong man for that.
Niklas saw her disappointment and said solemnly, “Happy birthday, Gildan. It will just make this night more special.”
Gildan smiled her thanks just as the door opened to Level One. Four commissars waited warily outside the doors. One of them, a burly man with a scar near his mouth, challenged, “What are you doing out of your quarters, Doctor Kesteven?”
Niklas barely gave him a glance as he led Gildan toward the ranch elevator. “To get a breath of fresh air.”
“Hold it, Doctor—” The big man moved to block their way. “We’re on alert and you know it. You know the rules.”
Niklas grinned at Gildan. “There’s that word again.” To the commissar, Niklas directed the full force of his size and authority. “Yes, I’m well aware of your rules. But are you aware that a certain friend of mine—I believe her name is Alia Silverthorne—is now Chief Commissar of the Sixth Directorate? Were you aware of that small fact?”
The commissar hesitated, licked his lips, then said, “Yes.”
“I’m sure the Chief Commissar is very busy, wherever she is, and wouldn’t like to be disturbed over a matter so trivial as this. Do you agree?”
Looking over at his comrades and not getting any help from them, the commissar seemed to shrink in size before their eyes. “I don’t . . . I mean, it wouldn’t be—”
“Oh, get out of our way. Or shoot us,” Niklas growled as he shoved past the man. Gildan expected another warning or threat, but the commissars said nothing more.
When they emerged into the ranch house, Niklas promptly used the same tactics to order the two plainclothes commissars who occupied the house as cover for the biome lab below. After consulting by radio with the cowed commissars on Level One, they promptly took their leave.
Niklas led Gildan toward one of the bedrooms. “Now, here I am, finally, all alone with the birthday girl.”
Gildan smiled weakly, but resisted. “Can’t we just talk for a while?”
“Talk about what?” Niklas asked roughly. The drinks had loosened his reactions and he was really not in the mood for anything more than a distraction from his bothersome thoughts. “What would you want to talk about?”
“Anything. Tell me what you did when you were a boy.”
Seeing that he was going to have to pay for Gildan’s favors, not with money but with attention, Niklas sighed inwardly and went to the kitchen to fix them a drink. This was shaping up to be one of those nights that only ended up in cuddling, for crying out loud.
Gildan seated herself on the horseshoe-shaped sofa in the living room. When Niklas handed her the drink, she only sipped at it and then left it untouched. He sat beside her, seeing her expectant look. “Why do you want to hear about my childhood?”
“I don’t know. I just do. Just think of it as my birthday wish.”
Niklas sighed and shook his head, then began speaking. Strangely enough, after he had talked for a time rather perfunctorily of his boyhood, he found it comforting. He reflected that telling Gildan was like speaking down a well. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask questions or make mindless comments. She just listened, with that wide-eyed, rather blank look she had. He found some sort of satisfaction in relating how he had grown up, and as he did so he was brought through the remembrance of how lonely his childhood had been. His parents had abandoned him early to paid nannies and keepers, anyone to take the responsibility off their shoulders. He had been diagnosed early as having an astronomically high IQ and had thrown himself into his studies with a fervor that pleased all of his instructors. “I missed out on a lot growing up. No sports, no hobbies—nothing but study.”
Gildan stared at him for a moment before speaking. “That’s very sad, Niklas. It sounds so . . . barren and impersonal.”
Niklas shrugged. “It made me what I am.”
“But it sounds like it was so hard.”
“Yes it was. But you can’t go back. You can never go back.”
“But you can look ahead,” Gildan said. She reached out, put her hand on his cheek, drew him to her, and kissed him. He reached for her and was surprised at how welcome, and somehow comforting, her softness and unquestioning yielding were to him.
Though the Cyclops in the room wasn’t actually on, it was of course in standby mode, and it made the small alert chimes for a broadcast. Both of them turned to see the red eye.
A bloodless male voice intoned, “Attention, please. Code Yellow Alert has been upgraded to Code Green Alert in the Olympic Biome and the Stanislaus-Toulomne Biome. All Sixth Directorate facilities are on a Code Red alert; all other Man and Biosphere Directorate facilities will remain at Code Yellow at this time. Unauthorized personnel remain at your facility. Lab XJ2197, all personnel are restricted to quarters until further notice. Next notification, twenty hundred hours.”
“What does all that mean, Niklas?” Gildan asked plaintively.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. The Sixth Directorate thinks they’re the KGB, the CIA, and the ISS all rolled into one big ball. The devil take all commissars.” He jumped to his feet, pulling Gildan with him. “Come on, Gildan. I need you . . .”
SEVENTEEN
EVER SINCE LITTLE BIRD HAD come into young womanhood, she had been aware of the attraction she had for men. Some men she had flatly refused. Some of them she had given her body to, some her friendship, some her love, and one man had completely stolen her heart.
All of them had left her, sooner or later, with one excuse or another, so Little Bird had also become wary and taught herself to keep to herself. That didn’t keep them from trying, however, and ever since she had met Cody Bent Knife, she had been trying to prepare herself for the moment when he would reach out for her.
It was difficult, though. For the first time in a very long time, she didn’t want to push a man away, and she could get no satisfaction from anticipating the control she would finally be able to exert over him when she repulsed him.
But as the days and the weeks progressed and Cody showed no attraction to her, Little Bird became first puzzled and then a little annoyed. More than once she had looked in the small mirror that she had brought, studying her features, although she knew them well enough. Little Bird’s pure Apache blood gave her no pretensions of soft prettiness; her features were as sculpted and still as the eternal rock faces of the desert. Her dark eyes were bottomless, fathomless pools, giving no hint of the heat of her soul. Her sharp cheekbones and the uncompromising line of her jaw accentuated the resolute mouth. No, she would never be pretty or beautiful; but she was a compelling woman that men desired.
Night had fallen swiftly as it does in the desert. Little Bird sat with her back against one of the intricately laid stone walls of the room that Cody Bent Knife had chosen. He had covered the floor with fresh sage, and the sweet wild scent filled the room. Little Bird closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She loved the smell of sage and smoky mesquite.
“Here’s tea, Little Bird,” Cody said politely, setting a rough earthenware cup down by her side, then moving to the other side of the fire. The primeval light made grotesque shapes on the walls of the small room and lit Cody’s face with a primitive hunter’s light. His dusky skin and eyes were dark mirrors of the flames, and Little Bird studied his face with narrowed eyes. He sat down, not next to her as most men would have done, but squatting on his heels across the fire. As he sipped his tea, his eyes over the rim of his cup showed amusement at her perusal.
“Don’t you like girls, Cody?” Little Bird asked caustically.
“That’s like asking a man if he likes food,” he answered wryly.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean I like some kinds of food but not other kinds. I like venison but I don’t care for snakes.”
“You’re saying that you like some women but not others.”
“Isn’t that the way it is with you? If I asked you do you like men, you wouldn’t answer yes or no. You’d say I like this one or I don’t like that one.”
The sophistry of his reply irritated Little Bird, even though it had been close to her own private reflections of just a few moments before.
“I think there’s something wrong with you. You’re not normal.”
“Plenty would agree with that,” he remarked calmly. “Why do you ask? Do you need a man?”
His bluntness irritated Little Bird. “No, I don’t need any man, but if I did, I wouldn’t ask you.”
“But you just did.”
“No I didn’t, I was just talking about you and women in general. That’s all.”
He shrugged carelessly, his expression still tainted with laughter.
The conversation displeased Little Bird. She was not accustomed to having to draw men on like this. “Don’t you get lonely?” she finally asked. “Don’t you need anybody?”
“Everyone gets lonely. Everyone needs human contact,” he answered remotely.
“You don’t ever show it. You’re the most isolated human being I’ve ever seen—except for that retard Zoan. You cut yourself off from everyone.”
Cody did not answer for a time. “I’ve always been outside somehow, Little Bird. I can’t explain it, but it’s as though everyone else forms some sort of group and I can’t join it.”
“Well, what about all of us who have come to follow you? Don’t you feel a part of us? Of our search, of our dreams, our hopes and visions?”
“It’s just—different for me,” Cody said rather lamely. The actual truth was that since they had met Zoan, and had come to Chaco Canyon, Cody had felt less secure in his mission, and more cut off from his followers, than he ever had before. He had tried to analyze these unwelcome changes in his spirit, but he felt as if he’d been disconnected from his anchors of visions and beliefs. Somehow Zoan had jarred him loose from his internal moorings. He simply wasn’t communing with anyone, not with himself, not with the spirits he’d come to believe in, not with his followers—not even with his spirit-father, Benewah Two Color.
But sometimes these thoughts and responsibilities were just too burdensome and murky for Cody Bent Knife. Yes, he was a visionary, and yes, he was the last warrior of his people . . . but he was also a flesh-and-blood young man of only nineteen years. His thoughts and longings became more simple and tangible as he considered Little Bird and her awkward invitations.
The hungers that come to all men stirred within him. Little Bird was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a tight-fitting white shirt that outlined her figure, rich and sensuous. He knew suddenly that
she was aware that he was looking at her as a man looks at a woman—and waiting to see what he would say.
Dropping his eyes, he murmured thickly, “I can’t explain it to you, Little Bird. I’m not like other men. I have different wishes and longings and hopes, I guess, and women haven’t been a part of my life.”
“I thought,” she said, breathing a little unevenly, “that you wanted me.”
He looked back at her then, with no pretension on his face or coloring in his voice. “I do.”
“But you’ve got other things on your mind.” She leaned back defeated, feeling the roughness of the stone. “This place . . . I don’t like it at night.” She shivered slightly.
“Why? I find it very comforting.”
“It’s full of ghosts or—or evil spirits.”
She thought he would laugh at her, but instead he nodded thoughtfully. “The Old Ones, they used to call this the place of the ‘evil ancestors.’ They never knew, of course, that the Anasazi, for all of their intelligence and shrewdness and scientific advancement, were actually savage cannibals. That’s why they died out, you know. But our great-great-grandfathers knew nothing of that.” He smiled a little at her. “They just felt that the place was full of ghosts or evil spirits.”
She smiled back. Picking up a stick, she put the tip of it in the fire, and waited until it caught. She held it up like a candle before her face, studying the yellow flame, saying nothing for a while. Outside the stillness was complete except for the howling of a coyote far away. It was a lonesome sound and echoed the mood that had come to her recently. Still, she watched the flame until it burned down, then restlessly tossed it back into the dying fire. “I don’t know what I believe. My grandfather believed in those things. He couldn’t have been wrong. He was too wise for that. But I don’t know about God.”
“Neither do I.”
“I thought God led you out here. At least that’s what everybody says.”
“They didn’t hear it from me,” Cody said wearily. “Your grandfather was a Christian, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Just about the only one I ever saw that I respected. Except for a couple, some friends, old friends . . . but they left. They’re gone.” She looked into his shadowed eyes and said, childlike, “Everyone leaves. We all wander, aimlessly, and we’re all really alone. I’m afraid, Cody.”
The Beginning of Sorrows Page 25