She stepped back with a grin. “You’ve still got that kind of energy after last night?”
“Warming up.” He stood back, ogling her. “That outfit looks uncomfortable. Why don’t you slip out of it?”
Virene pointed at the equipment locker behind the cockpit. “I think you’ve got some work to do, first.” She turned with a grin and vanished below deck. “Call me when you’re done!”
Terson pulled the tent from the locker without enthusiasm. Virene found camping a great adventure. Terson, conversely, had spent his share of time among creatures that flew and bit, crawled and bit, and swam and bit. Given the choice, he preferred the boat’s cabin. He carried the tent onto the beach and checked his rifle before slinging it across his back and taking a machete to the overgrown campsite.
The blade sang as it sliced through tender regrowth, eliciting pleasant ghosts of home. When he closed his eyes and sucked in the hot, humid air he could almost be home, except that the wind smelled like salt instead of jungle rot.
Rivulets of sweat streamed down his chest by the time he finished assembling the tent, the most irritating sign that his body had acclimated to the new environment. He walked back down to the hydrojet where Virene stretched out on the front deck wearing nothing but the skimpy thong she’d purchased a few months after they met, the only compromise she was willing to make with the authorities after repeated arrests for sunbathing in nothing at all. Terson leaned over the edge of the boat to fill a bait bucket with water and slipped along the walk between the guardrail and the main cabin wall.
A torrent of water hit him from above.
“I knew your intentions weren’t honorable,” Virene laughed. Terson’s counterstrike left her soaked and sputtering, dark red bangs plastered to her forehead.
“Never talk when you should run,” Terson advised.
Virene pressed her palms together under her chin and bowed. “Yes, O Great Purveyor of Superfluous Bullshit.”
“Submissiveness, at last,” Terson sighed. She stuck her tongue out at him and sat down, dangling her legs over the edge of the roof. Her eyes rested on the rifle barrel behind his shoulder briefly, then moved to his face without comment. By now she accepted his proclivity to keep the weapon close at hand. It was a remnant of his past that she could not influence any more than the scars crisscrossing his body.
“What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“Grab whatever you want. Freezer’s full.”
“There is no romance in pre-packaged frozen dinners.”
“I suppose you want me to kill something,” he sighed.
“Mm-hm. Then I want to drag you to my cave and use you.”
Terson pinched her cheek. “My horny little poacher.”
Virene reddened uncomfortably. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. It sounds dirty.”
“Pre-packaged frozen dinners, then?” he asked hopefully.
Virene pinched him back. “You’re trying to get out of cooking. I’ll get the beer.”
They let the faux pas pass, as they’d done before. The concept of poaching simply did not exist on Terson’s homeworld. On Nivia, it ranked somewhere between murder and incest. The locals invested a lot of emotional energy in guilt over filched berries and pilfered fish.
Terson loaded their gear into an over-sized backpack and they set off up an overgrown path that crossed the saddle between the island’s peaks. A comforting sense of menace settled over Terson’s mind as the trees closed in on them. He struck to and fro with the machete rebelliously, lopping off more foliage than he needed to, burning away unconscious frustration. The civilized veneer his new home demanded chaffed. The island gave him the opportunity to throw it off without the immediate danger of incarceration.
The trail emerged on a wide, sandy beach protected by the reef thirty meters off shore.
Terson had never imagined any part of a planet could be so flat. Algran Asta lacked open water, per se, and he’d never learned to swim. It was a necessary skill on Nivia but his first attempts in Saint Anatone’s tropical waters made him feel like he was floating in blood. He didn’t learn to enjoy it until he met Virene.
Virene set up the cooking pot and gathered wood for the fire while Terson searched the bushes for a pair of forked sticks with the necessary angle and flexibility to hunt with. She made a face when he handed one to her. “Can’t I just make moon eyes and fawn over the mighty hunter and his catch?”
“You could,” Terson smiled as he dug out their snorkeling gear, “but what would you eat?”
She stuck her fork in the sand at his feet and headed for the water with her mask and flippers. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Terson hurriedly unpacked his gear and waded in after her. The reef protected the tiny inlet from the open ocean, but twice Terson had found deep-water predators trapped inside the reef by storms. Most Nivians were oblivious to the sophisticated system of sonic emitters and physical barriers around their cities and roads that kept the wildlife at bay.
He checked the safety pins on the pair of bang sticks slung across his back in place of his rifle and dove into the murky shoreline waters. Visibility improved dramatically ten or fifteen meters out, where the bottom angled down and the first mounds of coral appeared.
The world beneath the surface was as noisy as any jungle, filled with chirps, grunts and cracking as fish circled within the inlet grazing on coral and seaweed or sifting smaller creatures from the sand.
Virene’s hair rippled along her back as she swam, her aquatic grace blending naturally with the reef’s inhabitants. A school of tiny fish briefly encapsulated her like a mist of jewels. They darted away in terror at Terson’s clumsy approach. Virene pointed downward where a troupe of crustaceans caught in the open sand had massed together. The creatures waved their claws overhead menacingly as they retreated toward the nearest crevice.
Terson plunged his stick into the chitinous mass, wedging one of the creatures between the forks. He transferred it to the mesh sack at his side and repeated the procedure until the troupe reached cover and the survivors vanished. He probed the holes and crevices with his stick while Virene plucked hapless, slow-moving shellfish from their nests beneath the seaweed. The humans returned to the beach with Terson’s sack filled to capacity.
The shellfish only needed a few seconds in hot water to emerge from their armor. Terson skewered the naked mollusks and dropped them in a pan to fry while the water came to a full boil. The crustaceans did not surrender as willingly, pinching at Terson’s fingers as he transferred them to the pot.
Virene flicked pebbles into the sand while they waited, unusually introspective. Terson pulled out a beer for each of them and offered one to her. “Are you disappointed your folks didn’t come to the wedding?”
Virene took a swallow and smacked her lips. “No. Should I be?”
Terson shrugged. “They’re your parents.”
“Only by an accident of nature. But… I thought Vern might come.”
Her elder brother’s signature was the only one missing from the letter Virene received from her mother after announcing her engagement to a phig. The handwriting began with precise lettering, expressing strong disapproval. By the closing the woman’s sentences swayed erratically across the margins, barely legible, but the word whore appeared frequently. Beside her vicious scrawl lay the father’s signature, little more than a feeble first initial trailing into a few arbitrary loops. Terson had wondered at the time if the man’s personality was as weak. The rest of Virene’s brothers and sisters added their names in two neat rows.
“I’m sorry they felt that way,” Terson said.
“I’m not.”
Terson picked up a piece of shell and threw it into the water. “Maybe we should have waited.”
Virene rubbed his shoulder. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Besides, I was starting to wonder if this was going anywhere. I think you would have waited forever if I hadn’t been the one to ask. I wasn’t ever sure if you’d say y
es.”
“I did, though.”
“I’m not sure why.”
“Maybe because I love you?” Terson replied, exasperated.
“That isn’t always enough,” she said. “I could always tell you’re not completely happy here; that you might want to leave some day.”
Terson slipped his arm around her. “Not if you didn’t go with me. I’d stay for you.”
“You love me that much?”
“More.”
Virene leaned over and kissed him, long and deeply. “Good answer,” she whispered in his ear.
They cracked shells between rocks to get at the sweet white meat inside, spitting fragments of grit into the sand between their feet, and washed it down with beer until their bellies bulged. Afterward they lay in a sated drowse while the shade crept slowly toward the jungle. Eventually the burn of sunlight on their bare legs roused them again. They sat up, stretching for a few moments before starting to break camp.
Virene reached into the frying pan and held up the remains of a mollusk daintily. “Eat up,” she called. “Can’t let it go to waste!”
Terson opened his mouth obediently. The meat was cold but still tender until his teeth came down on something hard. He separated it with his tongue and spat a light blue sphere almost a centimeter in diameter into his hand.
“What’s that?” Virene asked, leaning in for a closer look.
“Some kind of pearl, I guess,” Terson said. He held it up where motes in its surface sparkled in the failing sunlight.
“It’s beautiful,” Virene breathed.
He held it out to her. “Accept it as a token of my eternal devotion.”
“I love you, Terson,” she smiled.
Any lingering doubts about their decision evaporated then and there.
The sun sank bloodily into a cloudbank on the horizon while they put out the fire and gathered their things. An enormous moon took over, casting its pale, cold light through the trees. Terson shouldered the backpack and turned to the forest. The reassuring light of the moon stopped dead at the tree line, making him wish that they’d packed up a little faster. There’s nothing on the island bigger than your forearm, he assured himself, but nineteen years of conditioning were hard to overcome.
Terson gripped his rifle and stepped into the darkness. Humidity clung to the tree line like a damp shroud; goosebumps raised as the forest closed around them. His eyes flicked, scanning the shadows. A drop of condensation splattered down his right arm—he started to bolt, held fast, spine buzzing with cold terror.
Virene walked on, oblivious to the battle waging inside him. Terson forced his attention away from the jungle, concentrating on the woman walking beside him, the future they were making and the family they would have one day. The cadence of his heart and breath slowed again; he was okay.
But later that night, he saw Jack Tham die again.
Chinche wings whined in the jungle around them. Jack reached inside his pocket for a pipe and tobacco. The whine grew more intense, sharper, like a fly deep in his ear. Terson rapped himself on the side of the head with the heel of his hand, trying to knock it out .
“What’s wrong, pal, need a hit?” Jack held the pipe out to him, wisps of mildly narcotic smoke swirling around his hand.
The jungle rustled and thrashed, each stem and branch moving of its own volition. A huge leaf fell. It melted and stretched, gained mass, solidified into a chinche. Terson yelled; no sound issued from his throat. He struggled to raise his bushgun, but the harder he tried, the slower it moved. The jungle collapsed, flowing toward them, a living wave of chinche. They brought Jack down from behind with sheer numbers, hacking, stabbing with knives of cured razor grass. Jack’s fingers dug furrows in the dirt and he looked up at Terson with an agonized, accusing expression.
The chinche began to feed.
Terson ran, Jack’s screams echoing behind him in the dark. He felt the chinche leap on him, felt them pummel his body, felt the blood on his skin. The ground went liquid, climbed up his legs, dragged at his feet until he couldn’t run anymore. Blood gushed across his eyes, ran from his chin.
“Terson!” A blinding flash of light ripped at the darkness, shocking his eyes, turning the blood to water.
He stood up to his waist in the lagoon. Virene stood next to him, brushing aside the lock of hair channeling water into his face. Terson pulled her into a fierce embrace and buried his face in her hair, letting her warmth melt the twisted knot of ice in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t realize how badly he’d been shaking until he stopped.
“Honey, I need to breathe,” Virene said. Her voice barely overcame the constant rumble of thunder. Terson let her go with a pang of guilt. She gave him a squeeze and drew his arms about her again. Lightning flickered in the clouds. “The way you ran out of there, a girl would get the idea you didn’t like sleeping with her,” Virene said.
“What do you mean?” Terson stammered.
Virene put her hand over his mouth. “I’m teasing, Terson.”
Terson felt a twinge of annoyance that must have shown on his face, because she laughed and leaned away from him, stretching her arms over her head. Rain spattered her upturned face and shoulders, cascaded over her taut breasts.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” he asked.
“Yes,” Virene giggled. He let go of her. She went all the way under and came up sputtering. “Wait until Mother finds out her son-in-law would let her daughter drown for a cheap thrill.”
“I was hoping you’d need resuscitation.”
Virene snaked her arms under his and began to kiss his neck. She had never asked about the dreams, even when they’d been a nightly plague. The worst ones taught him to trust her, when she held him and cried with him without knowing why, and what passed between them never found its way to her friends. He didn’t have anyone who understood. Having someone who cared was enough.
He kissed her shoulders slowly, cupped her face in his hands and met her lips with his own. Lightening split the sky so close the ground jumped. Virene grasped his wrist. “Wait, wait,” she gasped. “If we don’t drown out here, we’ll get electrocuted.”
Inside the tent their skin still tingled from the rain’s battering. Terson stroked her cheek with the back of his finger, felt the edges of her mouth curve upward. She kissed his knuckles, then his wrist, then took his face in her hands and drew him down to her. He’d never believed he could feel what he felt for her, could still hardly believe that it was his touch she wanted, his touch that made her shiver.
They held each other for a long time, kissing tenderly. Virene rubbed the backs of his legs with her feet, nuzzled her face in his neck and shoulder to inhale his musky male scent. His hands slid under her shoulders and cradled her head. It was times like this she felt closest to him, when they managed to put passion aside for a while and really experience intimacy. “I wish I could hold your whole body inside me,” she murmured in his ear.
“I do love you, Vi,” he whispered.
Her body was softer, silkier than anything he’d ever felt. He buried his face in the warmth of her flesh, flicking his tongue against her skin, sucking up the beads of water clinging to her body. His head buzzed, drunk with her. She kneaded his back, felt the power in his muscles.
They were one, bodies and souls moving toward a single purpose. Her desire to possess him matched his desire to possess her; she accepted that part of him that needed to be accepted and he filled that part of her that needed to be filled. Virene’s breath came in gasps and a tingling ache built in her loins. Terson moved against her slowly and deeply, her head swimming with the pressure of his thrusts. Her desire hovered on the edge of fulfillment and she pushed against him desperately, crying out as the pull in her loins built. He raised his head and called her name as the climactic shock raced through his body.
The storm outside drowned out their exclamations.
God’s Saucer, Nivia: 2709:03:24 Standard
Noise was a constant companion to tho
se who lived and worked at God’s Saucer. During the rare moments when the supersonic boom of starships and shuttles died away and the distant howl of engine test cells faded the air gave out a long moan as if it had exhausted its ability to meet the demands placed on it by human activity.
It was during one of these lulls that Cormack MacLeod heard dogs baying amid the scrapped hulks of starships and aircraft behind him. He quickened his pace toward the edge of the boneyard, skinny frame bent beneath a backpack full of stolen property.
It had taken longer than expected to pry the instruments and circuit modules out of the hulk he’d scouted days before, long enough that the effects of the drugged meat he’d tossed over the wall had worn off. It might have been wiser to abandon his burden, but MacLeod decided that he’d be damned if he let a pack of filthy animals rob him of what he’d gone to so much trouble to steal.
He reached the wall as the pack emerged into the open less than fifty meters behind him. The baying fell silent abruptly as the animals spied him and broke into a full sprint. MacLeod shrugged out of the straps and spun once, twice, three times. He let go, sending the backpack arcing over the top of the three-meter wall.
The dogs had halved the distance. Puffs of dust rose from the ground beneath their feet as they closed on him. He jumped into a narrow manhole at the base of the wall and reached up for the grate. The dogs snarled and nipped at his fingers as he slid it back into place. One thrust a paw into the narrowing opening and yelped in pain when the edge of the cover fell on its toes.
The others, realizing that the interloper had effectively escaped, took the only option left open to avenge their comrade: one by one they lifted a leg and pissed through the grate.
“Goddamn!” MacLeod let go and dropped the last meter to escape the shower of urine. The dogs, satisfied that they’d accomplished what they could, trotted away with tails high.
MacLeod cursed under his breath the length of the concrete tube and lay on his back to squeeze under the bars at the outlet where the infrequent rains had eroded the ground beneath their footings. He retrieved his backpack and dragged his tricycle up the bank from its concealment in the bottom of the dry flood channel then set off along the edge of the sterile alkali plain peddling furiously.
Pale Boundaries Page 4