Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  “I do. I feel your heat.”

  “Then let me share it.” She slipped her arms around his shoulders and straddled him, easing herself down over his stinger-like member, shivering as she felt those amazing ridges penetrate deeper and deeper. His claspers slipped around her and tucked up, brushing at her from below as she indulged herself in just a few slow, sweet strokes along that alien thickness, and then she moved her legs around his narrow waist, where the thorns on his hips and thighs couldn’t gouge her.

  They sat, eye to eye, his hands splayed and motionless on her back and her fingers sliding gently along his shoulder-seams, their hearts pressed together. Her hips rolled in soft, tight circles, just enough to keep her high and free at the cusp of climax, and now and then, it would feel so good she had to close her eyes and concentrate on moaning quietly so she wouldn’t wake T’aki in the next room. When she came, it was the sun, just as it had been before, just as she’d been promised, and it burned behind her eyes forever as she felt the cool wash of his cumming deep in her womb. His arms were dead branches at her sides, his chest the trunk of a petrified tree, and his palps like bony fingers tapping insistently at her head, and it was all right, all good and golden because she loved him.

  They stayed together maybe half an hour after (he came again; she felt it and heard him chirring after that weird paralysis relaxed), and finally, reluctantly, began the laborious disengaging process so that she could have a turn in the shower.

  The doors between the rooms were open when she got out, dressed again in her rumpled clothes. Sanford lay with T’aki in the queen-sized bed, dozing with his son in the crook of his arm. Without hesitation, or really thought, she padded in and slipped under the sheets on the other side of the boy’s nest. Bodies shifted, making room. They came closer, naturally and without words. She saw Sanford’s eyes shining in the darkness, and then he closed them and chirred softly, content. ‘I am you and you are me,’ she thought.

  Simplicity itself.

  * * *

  Old men sleep little and guilty men, less. Van Meyer, who considered himself neither old nor guilty, slept only four hours each night, if that. He was awake therefore and gazing out his sitting room window at Cottonwood when Piotr called on him. The scent of frustration was a sharper tang than smoke around his faithful hyena tonight. He did not ask how the hunt had gone.

  A metallic rattle on the floor behind him. Van Meyer glanced around, knowing what he would see. The girl’s translator. Ownerless, no doubt, and no trophy of the kill.

  “I would have let her go,” van Meyer said, turning back to the window, to his city. “If she had gone to Siberia as I wished, in a year’s time, her contract elapsed, I would have let her go. Do you think I care for the modest mischief of one little cook-out, eh? I do not. It is a small matter. If she wish to stay on at IBI, I would have allowed this also.”

  Piotr said nothing. He breathed, hot and hoarse.

  “So what happened, hm? What happened after she convince us so prettily to let her have just a little more time? At 10:14, she use security card to pass Checkpoint Seventeen. At 10:21, she leave again. And at 10:42, the fence surrounding recycling depot is, in plainest terms, de-atomized. Is this co-incidence, Piotr? Eh? Nee!” Van Meyer stared hard into the darkness, over the wall, into the silent alleys of his camp where few lights were lit, but where points of fire still burned. “She take bug-guns into my city. She give them to bug. When did Pollyanna get the bug-guns? How? And how is it that none of my fine security guards do not see her or even find them missing?”

  Of course, his hyena had no answer.

  “Now she is gone and my camp burns. Distribution warehouses full of bug food blasted open and emptied. Emptied! Riot across whole sections. Smoke enough that even sheep see and send their cameras to record. Better men than you rush in and do not rush out again, but I do not blame her, Piotr. She does not betray me. She is true to her wounded woman’s heart. Nee, I blame you.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “It is enough, I say to you. Let her lie in her bed of nails. She is contrite and no more is necessary. Longer than you have lived, I am a judge of such matters. I say she has learned her lesson, but you must have your fun. You defy me and you hurt her.”

  “She never saw me,” he said sullenly.

  “What matter? She knew. Do not doubt, after these events, that she knew, Piotr, and she has been planning vengeance all this time. Ja. Because you hurt her.”

  “She fought back.”

  “Did she? So severely she must be stomped upon until her guts burst? Perhaps I should send you to Siberia and hire her for my bodyguard.”

  “Sir—”

  “Shut up.” In all the years they shared, he had never said those two words to Piotr Lantz, but he said them now and they were obeyed. “Ja, she fight back. I’m sure she fight back. Great brute that she is, the wonder is only that she did not kill you. Nee, you live and my contrite Pollyanna is taken to hospital. And she come out hurt, wanting only to hurt me. Clever Pollyanna,” he mused, looking out the window at the glow of fire in Cottonwood. “She know just how to hurt me.”

  “I’ll find her.”

  “You? I have other men,” van Meyer said with a dismissive wave. “I think I am done with you for a time.”

  Piotr did not retreat. Instead, he came two steps closer, lowering his head like an animal that means to charge. “I wasn’t the only one she fooled.”

  Van Meyer spared him a contemptuous glance and then another, more thoughtful look. “Nee, you were not. She has told me lie after lie. I see this now. She has lied to me with every breath.” He allowed himself a pang of honest admiration for the audacity of this truth before crushing it. “You, she merely offer to fuck.”

  His hyena bared his teeth at the master’s back. Van Meyer saw it in the window glass. He turned around.

  “But as you say,” he said, “we were both fooled. So. Against my judgment, I allow you this chance. I want her back, Piotr. And until she answer my questions, you are not to harm even one hair of her. You have bitten me once. Next time, I do not forgive.”

  A thousand thoughts moved in his hyena’s eyes, but, “Yes, sir,” was all he said.

  “Perhaps now that you are done chasing her transmitter signal across town and back into the Heaps, you will condescend to chase the girl. Find out where she is going. And go quietly. I will tolerate no more mistakes from you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And remember, not one hair of her until she talks to me.” Van Meyer drew the curtain on the smoldering glow of his city and turned around, neither an old man nor a guilty one, but an aged and still venomous cobra. “Afterwards, I do not care what you do with her.”

  “I’ll find her, I swear.”

  “For your sake and the sake of our long friendship, you had better.”

  Another flash of sullen fang and Piotr was away. Van Meyer watched him go, then walked to the bedroom, ready at last to sleep

  .

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She drove through the day and then right through the night again, although she hadn’t planned to. The back roads were so much slower-going than the freeways and the hours had a way of slipping by unnoticed. Midnight came and she still felt fresh, so she drove. At two, another town came and went. T’aki woke up at the gas station to sleepily inquire if it was “Motel time yet?” but Sarah kept going.

  By five a.m., she knew she was losing her edge, but by then, the sun was coming up and she knew the light would bring her around. Which it did, some. And crossing into her home-state of Oregon gave her an even bigger boost, especially when the grey skies opened and sprinkled her with a little welcome-home rain. But these were short-lived rejuvenators and they still had a long way to go. She began to yawn, and then to stare, and was finally forced to snap on the a/c and the radio to help keep her awake.

  “Perhaps you should find a place along the road and rest,” Sanford suggested and T’aki, curled small around his seat belt, moaned, �
�Motel time, okay?”

  “Jellybean, checkout in most motels is, like, in four hours. It’s still a long way to Salina and we don’t have so much money that we can afford to blow the cost of a whole night’s stay for just four hours of sleep. And it’s not exactly legal to just pull over and sleep anywhere. The first cop that came along would want to know why I was doing it, and I can’t risk you being seen. Besides,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I’m catching my second wind. First place I see, I’ll get some coffee and I’ll be just fine.”

  “You look exhausted.”

  “Would you like to drive?” she asked sweetly.

  His antennae lowered. She felt immediately ashamed of herself and turned the radio off again. “I’m sorry, that was bitchy.”

  “Bitchy is a vulgar word,” muttered T’aki, playing with his ship.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, and sighed. “Look, we’ll be coming up on Hastur soon. In three hours, we’ll be on my side of the mountains, and three hours after that, we’ll be in Brookings, where Kate lives. She can drive us in her car and I’ll sleep then, okay?”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he gave her a conciliatory chirr. It never reached his eyes. He was worried about her, and you couldn’t get mad at a fella for that, could you? She did look exhausted; she glanced at herself in the rearview and wanted to cringe. All black circles and bloodshot eyes over fading bruises. She looked like Kate rolling in through the door after an all-nighter with that biker jackass she’d dated a few years back, whatsisname. Bricksteak or Boomerang or some damn thing beginning with B. She looked awful.

  Sarah turned the a/c up and adjusted the vents so it hit her square in the eyes. Kate. Maybe even by noon, Kate. Now that the end was in sight, the sister-sized void in her life had become overwhelming. There’d be some I-told-you-so’s and she was ready to take it on the chin, but she knew once her sister met Sanford, she’d want to help and not just because they were family. Kate would help because it was the right thing to do and even more importantly, Kate would be better at it than Sarah was. It was almost over. Maybe not by noon, but today for sure. Kate. She could see the four of them around the dingy kitchen table (they only had two chairs, so Sanford was standing and T’aki was mostly pushing his ship back and forth along the edge) talking everything out and between Kate and Sanford, there would finally be a plan. Kate always knew what she was doing and how to get it done.

  Sarah rubbed at her eyes before they could tear up. She was too tired and it was making her too emotional. There wouldn’t be time to sit around the table and talk anyway. They wouldn’t even have time for her to catch a shower, which she desperately needed, but maybe she could grab some clean clothes out of Kate’s closet. She could shower at the next motel, if there was one. On the other hand, if they drove straight through the night again, they’d be in Salina on Tuesday, even if they took the back roads. Instead of getting a motel and a shower, they could be renting a boat. She’d never been on a boat before, not a real one, out on the ocean. She hoped she didn’t get seasick. There was nothing quite so discouraging as seeing your fearless rescuer yarking over the side on every wave…

  Did you need a special license to pilot a boat? Were they going to ask to see it? Ugh, don’t think about it. Just get there and deal with whatever comes up. If they had to steal the boat, so be it. She’d already beaten up a security guard and abetted whatever Samaritan had done for a distraction that night in Cottonwood, and she knew she’d have to help hijack the shuttle or whatever IBI was using to get up to the ship. She was already, in no uncertain terms, a terrorist. Stealing a boat was pretty small potatoes in comparison. And maybe it wouldn’t even come to that. How easy it was to picture her infinitely more competent big sister as a member of some secret underground alien-rights resistance movement. Maybe the end of the Great Escape would come as just a few phone calls, a secret meeting, and a quick helicopter ride straight up to the ship.

  It was a happy thought, but it was also complete crap and Sarah knew it. Kate wasn’t a mercenary, although she was about to become a criminal, thanks to her little sister. A refugee. A buggie.

  ‘But not for long,’ Sarah thought suddenly, in an inner voice so clear that she nearly turned her head to see who said it. ‘Because once you get up to the ship, you won’t be coming back down.’

  The moment of wondering horror with which the rest of her brain processed this perfectly obvious piece of information lasted until the van sailed right past the posted sign and over a set of railroad tracks at full speed, bouncing her head off the van’s ceiling and the rear tires right off the road.

  “Sorry,” she said at once, mostly to T’aki, who was trying to get out of his seatbelt and into his father’s lap. “Sorry, that was my fault. You okay, jellybean?”

  “Don’t do that!” T’aki wailed, slapping at Sanford’s arm as his father attempted to calm him down. “That’s not funny!”

  She agreed it wasn’t and solemnly promised not to do it again, all the while thinking of the ship. How was it possible that she could plan to put Sanford on the ship and send him home, that she could even dream of herself as a part of the happy ending, and yet somehow never connect the two? Even now, when she could clearly see a hundred different scenarios leading up to the ship (not all of them ending well), she still could not quite see what came after, when Sanford was home on yang’Tak and she was the alien.

  And where did that leave Kate? Because she could no more see a future without her sister than she could see one without Sanford. She already knew that she would try to insist that Kate stay behind when they rented that boat, just like she knew that Kate would refuse. She could hear it now: ‘We’re family, aren’t we? You’re all I’ve got.’

  Of course, she didn’t think she could be one hundred percent forthcoming about the exact nature of her relationship with Sanford, not at the start, but there was time to work it casually into the conversation on the drive to California. Sarah had tolerated all of Kate’s stormy romances, the least she could do was reciprocate once. Besides, apart from the whole alien-thing, Sanford was the ideal man—strong, sensitive, a caring father, plus he could program the coffee maker. What more could a girl ask for? Okay, skin would be nice, but it didn’t pay to be too picky.

  Smiling, Sarah looked into the rearview mirror for a soul-shoring glimpse of her man, something positive to keep in mind when she made that first uncertain introduction.

  Her heart slammed into her ribs.

  Kate sat beside Sanford in the back seat, looking out the window.

  Her hair was down, tousled as with sleep. She wore the Bud Bowl V tee she used as a nightgown, pulled demurely down to her knees, and her feet were bare. As Sarah stared, Kate turned her head and met her eyes in the mirror. She smiled, Kate’s same old smile, tired and a bit distracted, but still glad to see her.

  “Sarah!”

  Her eyes snapped forward right about the time the logging truck whose lane she was slowly invading blasted his horn. She pulled right, veered onto the shoulder, and stomped the brakes flat.

  Two aliens hit the auto-lock on their seat belts with twin rattle-cough cries of alarm. Sanford grabbed the gun before it could get away from him, but T’aki’s spaceship went on its maiden unassisted flight, banging high in the back of Sarah’s seat before clattering to the floor in two pieces. The van fishtailed wildly once, slightly twice, and came to a stop.

  Sarah stared into the mirror, her heart pounding back into rhythm. Sanford, T’aki, no Kate. She slumped in her seat, both hands over her face, just breathing.

  Seatbelts clicking. Sanford’s hands on her shoulders, squeezing her too tight. That was really the only problem with him; he never knew how hard he was squeezing her. “Are you all right?”

  “Get back. Someone will see you.” She tried the mirror again. It stayed empty. “I’m fine. You were right. I need to stop. Next place I see, I promise.”

  He didn’t seem to want to let go of her. She had to rub his joints for two or three minutes
, making assurances, before he finally retreated to the safety of the back seat and its tinted windows. He gave T’aki his ship, after finding and snapping the wing back on, and the two of them sat very quietly and watched Sarah collect herself.

  Too tired. Think of Kate, see Kate. Just that simple. If she’d been thinking of stopping for burgers, she’d have seen Mayor McCheese.

  She looked in the mirror one more time, saw her man and his son, and smiled at them. Then she pulled out carefully onto the road.

  There were no motels in Hastur, but there were two bed-and-breakfasts and three campgrounds. One of the campgrounds had cabins; it made her feel a little dizzy when she pulled up to the office, like time itself had wound back and she was just starting out again, two thousand miles reset and Cottonwood right behind her. God, she really was tired, wasn’t she?

  The cabins were almost twice as expensive here, with none of the niceties. No café, no gift shop, only a couple of vending machines and a stack of brochures advertising rafting tours and hiking trails. She bought a couple bags of potato chips, since they’d gone over so well at the block party, two bottles of water, and a Dr. Pepper for herself. She didn’t want it, but she thought she ought to drink something. Her stomach was feeling a little flippy at the moment.

  The cabin was every bit as private as the manager had assured her it would be, and much smaller than she expected—just a one-room kitchen/dining/living area, a half-bath, and a tiny bedroom—but the view was nice. Once the coast was clear and she waved them in, T’aki ran immediately to the back door and pressed himself against the sliding glass, gasping, “Father! Is it the ocean?”

  Sarah let him look awhile before gently drawing the curtain. “No, honey, it’s just a river. But don’t go out there, okay? Lots of humans like to go out on the water when it’s hot like this and you might be seen.”

  “Stay inside,” Sanford amplified, picking up his son to carry back to the tired couch in the front of the cabin. He pulled the decorative afghan off the back of the cushions to wrap T’aki in and then set him firmly down. “Away from windows.”