“The virus.” When she spoke again, her tone had a tentative warmth. “Though I couldn’t convince the White House or the Pentagon, it really has begun to spread. Even to the cop and the colonel, who had never been inside the tunnel. Which means it can change everybody, everywhere. Forever!”
“I hope so,” he told her. But if I’m changed, I’m not changed enough.
She kept on talking for a time, groping to picture the world as it might become. If enough people were transformed, transformed far enough, wars could be impossible. Pain and sickness could be ended. Everybody could be happy. Could he imagine that?
Silently, Belcraft shook his head. His mood was too bleak.
Of course it would all take time. There might be conflicts and misunderstandings, but perhaps there were ways they could aid the change. If she. could get funding and freedom tb make the Roman Foundation the agency for international understanding old Jules had planned, perhaps it could do useful scientific studies of the virus and its effects. She wondered if he would want to help.
“Not yet!” His voice came harsher than he expected. “I’m not ready.”
“Sax …” She drew suddenly farther from him. “I don’t understand you!”
Eyes on the hummocks and pits of a mudhole ahead, he found no answer. He felt her searching stare, but she said no more. The slow sun sank. Darkness fell. As silent now as he, she rummaged through their supplies to share a scanty supper of cold tortillas and canned sardines.
He kept on driving, longing to escape her tantalizing nearness, to end the pain. He wished—almost wished— that she had chosen to stay behind with the colonel and his crew. Midnight had come before the nearly empty gas tank and his own fatigue forced him to stop at a dark adobe building behind a Pemex pump. He parked in the muddy court and clambered stiffly out of the car.
“One room?” he asked her. “Or two?”
“Nichevo.” She shrugged as if she didn’t care, but her voice had a brittle snap. “Whatever you say.”
He hammered on the door. When a sleepy woman cracked it open and shone a flashlight into his face, he asked for two rooms. There was only one, for many pesos. When he had counted out pesos enough, she lit a candle to lead them back to a hot little room that reeked of garlic and pot and mescal.
The narrow bed was still warm, as if just vacated. They got into it, naked in the dark. Lying sleepless beside her, listening to her breathing and feeling all her restless movements, he tried again and failed again to swallow that bitter clot of hate.
“Sax!” Her sudden outcry echoed his own pain. “You know I’m changed. I said I’m sorry. What’s wrong?”
“Everything!” He tried to soften his voice. “I’m not Mickey. Not born again. I can’t forget.”
“Oh, Sax—”
That was almost a sob, and she said no more. They lay a long time there in the stale-odored heat. Her rigid limbs were hot when they came against him, and he caught her own sweet scent. Tormented, he tried to shrink away, but he was already on the edge of the lumpy bed. At last her breathing slowed. He felt her body relaxing. He thought she had fallen asleep, until he felt her fingers.
Playfully, teasingly, they brushed his arm, caressed his chest, crept down to his belly and on below. Taut, breathless, he endured it all until she found his strutted penis. Emotion exploded in him then. Suddenly, savagely, he was upon her.
“So, Sax!”
Though he had crushed out half her breath, she was laughing at him. Her strong arms slid around him, pulled him hard against her—and thrust him abruptly away.
“So that’s how you hate me?”
Out of control, he grappled her, dragged her to him. Her writhing flesh was hot against him for a moment, her scent intoxicating, but then he felt her arm twist out of his grip. Clutching, he felt it tightening. The edge of her flattened hand struck behind his ear. Paralyzing pain rang through his skull. Aware again, he found himself sprawled and gasping beside her, gone limp, half off the bed.
He heard a muffled sound from her, more sob than laugh.
Then a different voice.
“Sax! Por favor!”
Meg! Or was it? Reeling dizzily to his feet, he wasn’t sure of anything. She seemed to be somewhere far away, her high child-voice almost too faint for him to hear. Sinking back to the edge of the bed, he thought he saw a rosy glow in the dark above them. Or was it still that dazing blow?
“Please, Sax!” Her voice seemed stronger. “I cannot leave you fighting with la pobre Anya. Not because you think she killed me, for I am not dead. En verdad, I am more alive than I ever was.”
He looked for Anya, to see if she was hearing anything, but she was only a dark huddle under that pink dimness, still softly sobbing.
“Dear Sax!” He thought he heard that tiny voice again. “My second father! I must go away to my new people, who will love me and make me happy in their far world of fire, but I cannot leave until you love each other.”
In the dark above he thought he saw those pale wings spreading wide to reveal a brighter shape, the form of a woman, lean-limbed and lovely, with long yellow hair.
Alphamega, grown into the goddess Vic had dreamed she would be!
In another instant that glimpse had dimmed. Those glowing wings were closing again, but they brushed him as they closed, and suddenly the pain and the hate were gone from his ringing head.
“Dear Sax! Dear Anya!” He thought the shining wings were lifting. “Show me that you love each other.”
Tenderly, he reached to touch Anya’s trembling arm. The sound of her sobbing had stopped. He heard her laugh again, happily now, the laugh of a delighted child.
“Thank you, Meg!” she whispered. “Spasebo!”
At first very gently they came together, needing no words, hardly even hearing that far small voice as it faded into the dark.
“Adiós, queridos! My new Father-Mother is calling me home.”
Table of Contents
A GRAND ADVENTURE BY A GRANDMASTER OF SCIENCE FICTION
Firechild
Copyright page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
Firechild Page 35