The Bonds of Orion

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “You would?”

  “I would. Considering everything.”

  “You’re not mad, then?”

  Mariwen narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I didn’t say that. Can’t you tell I’m furious?” And as if to prove it, she slid both hands inside Kris’ jacket, under her shirt and along her ribs. Kris squirmed as Mariwen's nails tickled. “Hey, we’re in the middle of a street, y’know.”

  “An empty street.” Mariwen’s tongue made a pass at Kris’ earlobe.

  Kris thought of the art patrons, the ubiquitous xels with all their recording devices. “Yeah, right.” She reached for one wrist, but Mariwen was both strong and agile. “Empty for how long?”

  “How long do you need?” Mariwen’s breath tickled her neck as her fingers scampered. “Now stop that you’ll just call attention to us,” Mariwen laughed as Kris’ torso gave an involuntary writhe. Her nimble fingers had latched onto their quarry, and her short fingernails were flicking now . . .

  “For gawd’s sake, Mariwen! Do you wanna be a lead news item?”

  “So wear a bra next time. Makes this a lot harder.”

  “A bra? Jeezus!” And finally Kris grabbed Mariwen in a bear hug and lifted her bodily a foot off the pavement. Mariwen squealed and kicked as Kris held her aloft, the sound echoing from the shop fronts.

  “No fair! Put me down,” she cried through peals of laughter.

  “You gonna behave?”

  “I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Take it or leave it!” with a cunning pinch.

  “Hey! Alright!” Kris set her back on her feet. “Okay. You win. Buy me lunch, then.”

  “Great!” She tugged Kris’ shirt straight and smoothed the front of her jacket. “There’s a delightful little place right around that corner, and I see it’s still open.”

  * * *

  “What’s huitlacoche?” Kris asked after they’d been seated and were poring over their menus.

  “Blue corn smut,” Mariwen answered, nibbling her forefinger as she surveyed the options. “I can’t make up my mind between the Cochinita Pibil or the Barbacoa de Borrego. Their chile relleno sounds awesome, but I can make a chile relleno. What do you think?”

  “Blue corn what?”

  “Blue corn smut,” Mariwen repeated. “It’s a mushroom well, a fungus. Turns black when you cook it. Really good.” She beckoned to the waiter, and when he came over, whispered in his attentive ear. “So what do you think?”

  “I . . .um ” Kris returned to her study of the menu. Barbacoa appeared to be a marinated leg of lamb that was roasted and then simmered in a cumin-and-garlic sauce with guajillo peppers. It was wrapped in a banana leaf and served with rice. But lamb sounded heavy. She frowned studiously. The Cochinita thing, on the other hand, was marinated roast pork, also wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked with achiote, unnamed spices, and grapefruit and orange juice. The menu said it was served with habanero-tequila salsa. Lots of things were served with habanero-tequila salsa. “What’s a habanero?”

  “It’s a pepper. Spicy. Nothing like a genuine Madras curry, though.”

  “Okay.” That sounded suspicious. “Why the tequila?” Kris’ reaction to alcohol was idiosyncratic, and her experiences with distilled liquors therefore problematical. She had learned caution.

  “It takes the edge off the capsicum. Thank you!” as the waiter slid between them a plate of hot bubbling folded tortillas oozing molten cheese that smelled divine. “With the chef’s compliments, ma’am,” he said and withdrew with a bow. Mariwen offered Kris a generous wedge.

  “You always get free food in these places?” accepting it.

  “I used to come here a lot when we were visiting.” Mariwen bit into a slice of the quesadilla. “It was Lora’s favorite cafe.”

  “Oh . . .” Faintly blushing she still didn’t know quite how to react when Mariwen’s murdered wife was inadvertently brought up Kris took her own bite. “Oh! That’s that’s !”

  “Good?”

  She nodded animatedly. Her vocabulary did not extend to describing the symphony of flavors that suffused her senses: the mild piquant cheeses, the roasted corn, sweet onions and myriad spices, but most of all, the sweet savory earthy delicate pungency of the huitlacoche, somewhat mushroom-like, but that was an undertone: a sort of bass note unifying the whole.

  “Thought you’d like it.” Mariwen was smiling conspiratorially. “Have you decided? There’s that stuffed and deep-fried rainbow trout, if you’re in the mood for something lighter.”

  “Ah ” Kris popped the remaining bite of quesadilla into her mouth and licked the grease off her fingers. “You, um, wanna split something?”

  Mariwen pursed her lips and smiled at the improvisation. “Okay. Let’s split the pork and an appetizer. How about the Angel Tears?”

  “What are those?”

  “Culinary skydiving,” Mariwen said wickedly. “Trust me.” She folded her menu and put it down. “Unless you’d rather try the Tiger Cries they’re a house specialty.”

  Kris scrutinized Mariwen’s face, noting the roguish glint in her eye. What was she up to now? The menu said Tiger Cries were coconut-breaded prawns, deep-fried and served with a habanero-tamarind sauce. So there was habanero involved again. No tequila, though. That sounded dangerous. The Angel Tears at least had cheese in them: cotija cheese, which was stuffed into something called a moon-angel pepper. The stuffed pepper was also deep-fried, and they served it with a mole sauce, about which the menu was silent, except for the fact that it contained chocolate. Chocolate promised a degree of benignity, didn’t it?

  She shot another look at Mariwen, who smiled across the table, perfectly charming so perfectly charming, Kris was not terribly reassured.

  “Of course, we can get something else, too.” Mariwen’s voice was as reasonable as her smile was charming. “Those prawns are lovely, and there’s always ”

  “No, no,” Kris interrupted, setting her menu aside. “I’ll try the Angel Tears.”

  The waiter appeared, the order was placed, and Mariwen added two beers on her own initiative. A few minutes later, the ice cold beers and a plate of warmly golden, wonderfully inviting puffy things appeared, accompanied by a shallow dish of dark rich reddish-brown sauce. Kris selected a puffy thing, testing it carefully with her fingertips first. She daubed it in the sauce and then popped it into her mouth. A lovely, delicate crunch, warm, rich cheese flowing, the impossibly complex notes of the mole yes, there was chocolate in it a hint of pepper, and then her head exploded. Or so it seemed. Tears sprang from her eyes and sweat from her cheeks and forehead, and she grabbed frantically for the beer. Trying to drown the volcano, she almost choked, and as it was, more beer spilled off her chin onto the table than was quite genteel.

  “Jeezus fuckin’ Christ!” she gasped as soon as she could talk again. “What was’zat?”

  “Your first culinary skydive,” Mariwen replied sweetly. And, blurred by the veil of tears, she reached out, selected a pepper, rolled it in a saucer of pink salt Kris had ignored until now, dipped it in the sauce, took a long pull from her beer and demurely bit the Angel Tear in half.

  “Bitch!” Kris blurted out. “You set me up!” And a hoarse, half-smothered chuckle was heard from the direction of the kitchen. But Mariwen’s lovely face was contorted with mirth; her tears were now also flowing freely, and her ample bosom heaved and shook with the force of suppressed laughter.

  “Oh, I’m awful!” She wiped her chin with a napkin and scrubbed at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s been years since I did that to someone you’ll never forgive me, will you?”

  Sitting back and nursing her beer, Kris exhaled as the endorphin rush that had followed hard on the capsicum explosion slowly began to ebb. “I dunno. I don’t think I should, though. That was a lousy trick.”

  “I know,” Mariwen pouted. “But the look on your face!” She dissolved into a paroxysm of laughter again, strangling it with her napkin. Kris watch
ed her with narrowed eyes and muttered darkly but not very darkly: Mariwen having this much fun was beyond irresistible, even if she had to be the butt of it. If she ever got an opportunity, however

  “How do you feel seriously?”

  “Seriously? Like you’re in some serious trouble when we get home.”

  “Oh, dear me.” That pout again, and Mariwen extended her wrists submissively across the table. “But that means you are gonna take me home, I guess? I promise I’ll be good now, ma’am.”

  “Yeah, right.” But she kissed the proffered wrists anyway. “Those things really clear your head though, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do,” Mariwen agreed, pulling her hands back as the waiter ferried a heaping plate of fragrantly steaming Cochinita Pibil onto the table as if nothing whatever had happened, and at the center of town, a great and ancient clock in the brow of the old city hall, the pride of Taos, struck the hour.

  * * *

  The sign above the inconspicuous door in the otherwise blank wall of an undistinguished building was nearly illegible, merely a series of shallow, worn-looking indentations to suggest the name: Ajaib-Gher Designs. Not what Kris was expecting for an internationally renowned couture studio. The couple who owned it, James Murad and Lielle Modjeska, were old friends of Mariwen’s modeling their fashions had been her first big break in the industry and she’d wanted to surprise them.

  The surprise was not forthcoming, however, for Lielle and James were not in town. A small, hand-lettered sign pinned to the door declared this and added that the couple would return tomorrow.

  If Kris wasn’t exactly used to the eccentricities of Terrans, she had learned to ignore them to a large degree, and while employing a hand-written sign this way struck her as odder than most, she let it pass without comment, especially in view of the resigned look on Mariwen’s face.

  “Maybe we could stay the night,” Kris offered. “My schedule’s clear.”

  “Here? You don’t mind?” Mariwen’s eyes searched her. Then, with a tone that was almost shy: “There’s a lodge a little outside of town. They might have rooms. I could check.”

  Kris glanced up and down the alley in which Ajaib-Gher Designs was located. “Yeah. Okay. Check. Sounds more comfortable than here.”

  “I earned that, didn’t I?” commented Mariwen as she brought up the lodge’s info on her xel.

  Kris gave her an indulgent wink. “Yeah. You did.”

  * * *

  The lodge had rooms. Indeed, given the huge fuss made over Mariwen by the owners, the staff, and a gaggle of locals gathered in the spacious taproom, Kris felt if they had lacked rooms, someone might have been summarily evicted. Or or more likely there might have been a contest over who got to surrender their room to Mariwen Rathor.

  That was about all Kris was able to gather from the rapid-fire conversations that closed in on all sides. That and the fact Mariwen had evidently stayed here often when she was visiting years ago. She seemed to know many more people here than Kris had at first understood. This was punctuated when, right as the hubbub showed signs of dying down, the owner, blue eyes leaping with joy in her cherubic face, tugged Mariwen aside and said privately, “Teijo was in not two hours ago. I’ll call her. If she misses you, she’ll be devastated, and I’ll never live it down!”

  With that, the woman made the call clearly, no force short of extreme violence could have stopped her, even had they been so inclined, which they were not, and a quarter of an hour later in breezed a tall rangy weathered older woman, smiling all over her beautifully lined face, accompanied by a much younger, rather plump blond woman, trying not to stare at Mariwen in awe.

  Teijo, Kris learned as they made introductions, was none other than Teijo Santos, the artist, who was married to Raoul Santos, the noted architect who designed the QE Stratotowers VI, considered by many to be the Solar System’s premier hotel: a neo-gothic structure that hovered 35,000 feet over the English Channel. The younger woman was Layla, their spouse. Kris had heard these types of plural marriages were legal on Terra, but this was the first time she’d met anybody in one.

  Mariwen and Teijo obviously had a history and considerable warmth for each other, and if this might have seemed a recipe for some awkwardness between the four of them, none in fact resulted. Released by the troop of well-wishers, they settled into a cozy seating arrangement by the fire in one of the lodge’s smaller parlors, in an atmosphere so open, relaxed and companionable that Layla soon lost her star struck look, and Kris, though she took only a small share in the conversation, felt entirely at ease. One hour smoothly became two, and then, reluctantly, Teijo announced they had to leave. Raoul was working on a new project smaller but particularly challenging, somewhere off Cape Horn and they were to join him there. He’d be devastated he missed her (Kris noted that word again with an inward smile).

  Earnest farewells, promises to meet again, profound gratitude for this meeting, pleasure at the new acquaintance, warm smiles, embraces and the implacable hand of time overcame a tendency to linger. At last boarding the waiting cab, Kris and Mariwen gave them a final parting wave.

  Walking back inside, they retired to their rooms the honeymoon suite on the topmost floor (the owners had insisted) where a light dinner had been set out for them, and they sat down to eat it, Mariwen still rosy with thoughts of bygone days. Nipping the tip off a stalk of asparagus, she looked down at the grilled duck breast with pomegranates on her plate.

  “That was more of a circus than I expected. Sorry if it made you uncomfortable.”

  Kris leaned back from the table, recalling how Mariwen had seemed to bloom in the company. Not the adoration, but the convivial warmth, the immersive camaraderie of like minds; these were light and air to her a nourishment too long denied.

  “It didn’t. They certainly seemed happy to see you, though. Did you two stay here a lot?”

  “Me and Lora?” Mariwen looked up and glanced about, vaguely distracted. “No. This was a bit, ah, rustic for her tastes. She liked a place called . . . The Eagle Nest? Over in Cimarron Canyon.” Her gaze dropped back to the plate with its half-eaten meal. “I’d been friends with the owners here for . . . years before we met.”

  “Oh.” Kris noted the hesitations with an inward pang and covered it with a smile. “You had fun.”

  “I did.” Mariwen consumed a solitary pomegranate seed. “I missed it. I didn’t think I would . . . not this much.”

  Leaning in, Kris laid a finger on the back of Mariwen’s raised hand. “No reason you have to.”

  Mariwen raised her eyes again. “I don’t ever want you to feel like . . . you don’t . . . belong.”

  Mariwen knew Kris did not feel jealousy toward any of her past partners, any more than she had of Rafe’s. While she didn’t know much of Kris’ history Kris didn’t like talking about it, and there was no reason she should Mariwen knew it hadn’t allowed for the development of that particular emotion. But Rafe’s often hectic social life was a very different issue: it threw into high and painful relief Kris’ status as an outsider. As long as Mariwen kept to her reclusive ways, that issue could not arise. But if she started to make her way back into society, it most certainly would. And the very last thing she wanted to do was put Kris back in that position.

  Kris stood up. “I don’t. I won’t.” She reached out. “C’mere.”

  * * *

  The truth of the old adage “the course of true love never did run smooth”, no person with any sense doubts. When love, and especially sex, is a battlefield littered with unexploded ordnance, as it was with Kris, not running smooth did not begin to capture it. Huron was a talented lover and had been an understanding partner; Kris didn’t blame him for their breakup. That he lacked the gift which allowed Mariwen to negotiate that battlefield more deftly, that being in love with two people at once in what she thought must be incompatible ways made her anxious and confused these things were not his fault.

  That he let her go with such ease, so little fuss and no fight,
sometimes did bother her: she knew he loved her, but she couldn’t see into that closed space bridging the gap between the way he felt and the way he acted. On bad days, when memories of their months together oppressed her, she did blame him for not trying harder, for not fighting at least a little. On better ones, when she considered that he must have known how she felt about Mariwen long before she did, that her leaving must have cost him dearly even if she couldn’t see it, when she recalled the look in his eyes the night he’d given her Mariwen's restricted address in response to her embarrassed and flustered inquiry and what happened after that she felt a gratitude so deep it ached. The rest of the time, she tried not to think about it.

  She was thinking about it now, however, as they lay snug in the great carved mahogany four-poster bed with a comforter packed over them and a fire burning cheerily in the granite fireplace. That Mariwen could feel her way around Kris’ sexual minefield did not mean the mines were not still there, and if they were a good deal less touchy than they’d once been, they still imposed a constraint. Which could be awkward. Not too awkward, though, and Mariwen (Kris thought) minded it more than she did. Kris wished she’d get over that. She figured she would in time. It was okay.

  But tonight had been much more than okay. Tonight, where once there might have been a sea of troubles, they’d found an ocean of pleasure, limitless on every side. Never before had they meshed so fully, shared so deeply. She might have given or done anything. They’d hadn’t pushed the envelope much, but what really mattered was the feeling that they could have.

  She had a premonition that it would not last: the enchanted evening would progress inexorably into a mundane tomorrow, the sea of troubles flowing back at the turning of the tide, and to try to stop it was to bring it all the sooner can’t take arms against a sea . . .

  Mariwen, molded tightly into the curve of her side with her eyes closed and her breathing long and slow and sweet, stirred and then looked up. “Hey, you. Whatcha thinking?”

  “Who was it that said that thing about a sea of troubles?”