A million years ago, the bipedal ape sat in the shade of an acacia tree, his brain weaving a great fable about how he would accomplish his revenge against his god-damn, stinky-shit rivals.
That was the first day in the history of humankind.
The anger was scorching and useless, slashing out in one ridiculous direction after another. Anyone with a role in this poor woman's suffering had to pay. Quentin imagined jailers and federal police and bureaucrats sitting behind tidy desks. Each had a cold face and useful sneers, and one after another, he killed them. He made them cower and they begged for forgiveness, and he slaughtered them in inventive ways, each drama ending with flames and blood and echoing screams.
Nothing about the daydreams was cathartic, yet he couldn't stop them, sitting on the edge of the bed, busying himself by chaining the owner of that boot against a cold limestone wall.
Sandra was older and younger than ever. The lines in her face were deep, but lying on her side, curled up under the bedspread, she had a child's vulnerable pose. Closed eyes worked to hold still, and she took quick shallow breaths, and Quentin studied her until the aching cut him open, and then he looked at the floor.
A noise in her dreams woke her.
He rolled over and watched her.
She tried to smile, asking, "What?"
"I'm sorry."
She didn't react.
He took a breath and held it until it burned, and then the breath was out of him.
"You aren't guilty of anything," she said. "I'm the stupid person who called you when the Federals came through my door. I could have caused you so much trouble."
Except she hadn't, not yet. But that didn't cut the blame and self-loathing. Touching Sandra was important, vital. The black eye didn't want any pressure, but it endured the weight of two shaking fingertips.
"I met Theo," he said.
"I know," she replied. And she was ready to volunteer details, if he pressed.
He didn't. Instead he asked, "Which shit did this to you?"
She said nothing.
"What were their names?"
"It was a woman," she said.
"Who did this?"
"A huge woman, on the first day."
He wrote a quick wrong story.
"She was one of the other prisoners." Sandra shifted her weight, bruises burning. "I was sitting in her spot. I guess. And she taught me a lesson."
"A prisoner?"
"She seemed to be."
"Did they...?" He hesitated. "Interrogate you?"
"I was interviewed. Three times in five days."
He nodded.
"They wanted to know about my son and my political activities." Sandra fell silent and her eyes rolled, and then she said, "The woman who beat me could have been a plant. An agent. That does happen."
He couldn't look at her eyes.
"They didn't," she said.
"Didn't what?"
"Rape me."
"Okay."
"It wasn't like that," she said. "The Federals did nothing but talk."
The urge to stand claimed him.
"Where are you going?"
Until she asked the question, Quentin wasn't sure. But with certainty, he said, "To shower. I really need to."
"I'm going to sleep a little more."
"I'll be right back."
"Okay."
He shut the bathroom door and then wished he hadn't. He felt too alone now. But he left the door closed, stripping out of his wet underwear and socks, sitting on the toilet while waiting for hot water, and in his head, he pulled out a heavy ring of keys and told himself to be kind before unlocking the shackles and cuffs that were holding his prisoners to that wall of limestone and dream.
With his glasses left on the sink, Quentin shut off the bathroom light before stepping into the main room. Every other light and the television were off. Two kinds of blindness took hold. The few shapes were out of focus, and what he assumed to be the bed beckoned. But elves could have entered while he was showering, dragging out the old furniture, replacing everything with big pieces of cake. He imagined frosting instead of the cheap bedspread that felt scratchy and warm against his bare rump. He considered pulling on his underwear, but his clothes were filthy and still wet and what possible reason did he have to be dressed? The stiff foam pillow made his neck ache. The shape beside him was breathing. He touched her softly and then pulled his hand away, mostly sure that she was asleep. He wouldn't sleep. It wasn't even ten o'clock, and his stomach was empty and complaining. But he could lie in the darkness and think, trying to formulate a set of actions and avoidances that together would form the basis of a plan.
Then a hard, deep, and nearly dreamless sleep came. He grew cold on top of the covers, but the slumber was delicious, and waking, even for a moment, would end the pleasure. He didn't want to be part of the world until tomorrow. Goose pimples blossomed on his arms and legs, and his bladder filled until it ached, and the pillow produced a stiff aching cramp that threatened to shatter his neck. Yet he stayed still until Sandra noticed his plight, reaching out from the under the fiercely warm sheets and blankets with a hand that must have been baked in a stove's blue flame.
"You're freezing," she said.
With that encouragement, he shivered.
"Get under here, Quentin."
But he had to pee again. With the bathroom door closed once more, he studied his watch. It should be Saturday morning, nearly dawn. But it wasn't even eleven-thirty in the evening. This night refused to end. He finished and flushed and returned to a familiar landscape composed of unfinished shapes. A face watched his approach. If there was an expression, he couldn't see it. If the voice contained subtleties, he couldn't hear them.
"Do you feel better?" she asked.
"Much."
"Maybe you should put on some clothes."
"Why?"
She rose up on an elbow, explaining, "We might have to leave in a hurry."
He didn't understand. "Why would we?"
"Because this isn't a vacation." Sandra was wearing underwear and a damp blouse. He reached under the sheets, finding a bare leg begging for its razor. Presumably there were trousers in leaping distance. If the police came, Sandra could be dressed and crawling out the back window before they knocked twice. But was there any back window? Clearly, he wasn't good at this life-on-the-run business.
"My clothes are soaked," he said, climbing under the covers.
She put a hand over his cool chest, ready to talk. But she didn't say anything and the hand retreated.
"What?"
"I was just thinking," she said.
He touched the hairy leg and ran his fingers up to her panties, wondering if she would flinch or make some disapproving sound. But she let the hand linger, and after a moment, she said, "I'll never teach again."
He hadn't considered that, but hearing it, he was sure that she was right.
"Warner doesn't want professors who get arrested. And I'll be blacklisted everywhere else, probably for the rest of my life."
He pulled back his hand.
"Something is funny," she began.
He waited. Then he said, "What's funny?"
"The idea doesn't bother me. Banned from teaching. I always imagined it would be awful, but it isn't."
A problem needed solving, and Quentin imagined this woman at the factory, working beside him.
Then she said, "Tonight."
"What?"
She sat up, pulling away the damp shirt. Her breasts felt heavier and softer than usual, or he wasn't remembering them correctly. Either way, he played with them, and she straddled him, lowering her face to where her features became clear. Sandra looked serious and intent, and the sadness that wouldn't surrender any time soon was at least pushed into a cage for now. She kissed his mouth, and he asked, "What were you thinking?"
She tried smiling. "Before or just now?" she asked.
"Before."
"I don't remember," she lied.
Que
ntin watched what she was doing, and he felt it.
"Are you protected?" he said.
"Not at all," she said.
And then they made love.
"Sage. She said her name was Sage." The name was a pleasure to say, so she used it a third time. "Sage was maybe ten years older than me, and quite pretty. During the first interview, she didn't say much. But it was obvious who was in charge. She was important and so was I, while the rest of the officers were there just to set the mood. To scare me. To coax me. To give the Law gravity, but never enough gravity to crush me out of hand."
Quentin nodded, waiting.
"They usually don't beat you," Sandra said with a lecturer's tone. "Physical measures are for amateurs. Professionals know that you learn more from patience and careful conversation. And it's odd, I know, but I felt lucky. Honored, even. I didn't mind the interviews nearly as much as sitting in that crowded cell with a dozen strange, dangerous women. I felt more at risk inside jail than when I was sitting in that bright little room with Sage and her people. Then it was just her and me. Which is a reliable trick, and for all I know everything else was just to ensure that I would want to remain in that other room, talking politics."
Quentin lay in the dark, listening. There was Sandra's voice, and sometimes a male neighbor beyond the television would cough and then curse. Otherwise, the world was silent, and the air drifting under the locked door was cool, and he felt like sleeping even while he remained perfectly awake, one hand in her hands and the other invested in the cool of her rump.
"For all I know, every word was a lie. Every action was trickery. Her name wasn't Sage, and she didn't care anything about me, and she didn't have a son, much less one serving in the army. Maybe it was acting when she confessed that she was sick, worrying about her twenty-four-year-old boy. But she'd have to be a very good actress. Her son is stationed in Europa, near the Mongol DMZ. Last week, his unit was involved in some little battle. Her connections told her about the firefight, and she still hadn't heard any official news, and it was brutal, the silence.
"Listening to that, watching her face, I felt for the woman. I know, this sounds too simple. But she suddenly asked about Theo. All those emotions in play, and then she finally used his name. She didn't ask where he was or what he might be doing. She simply asked me how much it hurt, being separated from my only child. Then we both cried, and I think that was honest. My tears were. But even if every word was true, the strategy was absolutely devastating. I gave up nothing useful, but I could see that would happen. Another interview, maybe two, and I would have said too much, and that's because my new best friend asked me about my feelings."
Their neighbor coughed twice and then spat.
Quentin lifted his arm, reading his watch. They were eleven minutes into Friday.
"You're tired," she said.
"We both are."
She moved closer.
"Why did they let you go?"
"Maybe to follow me," she admitted. "That was my first thought. They're hoping I'll lead them to Theo and the people who protect him."
"Or maybe somebody helped you get released," he said.
She waited.
"You told me: He's one draft dodger out of thousands. Where's the value in using resources to chase him down?"
She put her mouth next to his ear. "Or they decided that I have connections with some dissident movement."
"Do you?"
She breathed once, and then again, she took a long breath.
He started to turn away.
"What you do or don't do never matters," she said. "What's important is what they believe to be true."
"But maybe you have a friend somewhere. Maybe the friend has pull and got you released."
"Not much pull, if she couldn't keep me from being arrested in the first place."
Quentin's face was warm.
With a hard little voice, Sandra said, "From this moment on, for whatever little reason, they can throw me back into that jail cell again. And this time with twenty bull dykes who will happily, happily make my former imprisonment seem like paradise."
Sandra sat up, staring at her hand while it pressed against his chest.
"Here's a confession. Think what you want about me. But if Sage told me that Theo would have to spend a few months in a jail and a few years working public service jobs, I would have turned him in. I was ready to abandon the people around him too.
Not because he would get a slap on his wrist, because he wouldn't have. They would throw him in prison for twenty years. But I would have turned him in just for the promise of that hard, easy slap.
"That was my mood," she said quietly, in astonishment. "And that's what scares me more than anything. I won't let that happen, Quentin. Which is why I've decided... this isn't how I wanted to tell you, believe me... but I'm going to run, starting in the morning."
"Run?"
"While you were showering," she said. "I made a call. Arrangements are being made."
He said nothing, and she continued to speak, talking to Quentin or to herself, or maybe that Federal in the adjacent room—the one with the smoker's hack. "I'm going to cry and doubt myself, I know. But there's never going to be another day where I will be brave enough to vanish."
Her birth name was Eleni, but for six years she had been Marian IX. She was plain and beautiful at the same time, and she had never felt healthier. Her favorite two boys were built like bulls, but with the temperaments of angels, and she loved them so much that she occasionally considered their futures. What would happen to them when she was dead, or worse, when she grew bored with their geometries?
The future was weighing heavily on the Theotokos tonight.
"What did you think of today's visitor?" she asked.
One of the boys was literate, even a little bit wise. "I think that pony-man was more than a little mad," he said with confidence. "Insanity is easy to spot. The insane believe what they want. They twist the world into shapes that can't abide, and nothing else is real. If it is as he says, if there is a tribe of pony-men savages, they will be slaughtered by our enemies long before they can assemble at our gates. And if for some reason they cannot be destroyed by our enemies, then you will ride out to meet their armies."
"As a very old woman," she said.
"A lovely old lady," he said, and with that he nudged the boy lying beside him in the giant bed.
That other boy was illiterate but never simple. Between the two he was the Theotokos' undisputed favorite.
"Everybody is insane," he said.
The first boy laughed in mocking fashion.
But the young woman cast an admiring eye at the sturdy young fellow, asking, "Why do you say that?"
"Because we bend what we see, and we see what we want. Everybody looks to the future, and we pick what seems best. But every future is just as impossible as any other. Ask yourself. When have we ever gotten the future that we want?"
A long uncomfortable silence claimed the bed.
Then to himself as much as anyone, the illiterate boy said, "I'll tell you what runs the world, in the Empire and everywhere else too."
"Our Lord," said the first boy.
"Fuck no," the second boy said.
"What then?" asked Eleni, her patience faltering.
"Need," said this hairy animal who could not read ten words. "Need is the principle that carries everything forward."
Sandra promised they could sleep, although she didn't know for how long, and she wasn't sure who or what would wake them up. But she insisted that good people were making plans on her behalf, adding, "We should dry your clothes, our clothes. As best we can."
Quentin's trousers and shirt were given the prime territory, stretched out in front of the room's heater. A battered piece of metal and angry electrons, the heater hummed ominously, throwing out a small, furious wind, and in no time, the air was filled with his stink as well as recycled rainwater. Sandra lay beside him in bed. With that endless, breathless voice, she talked a
bout life on the run. But the word "run" was a misnomer. Most of your time was spent inside a safe house, often confined to a single basement room. What was coming for her was a contemplative existence, including a few books worth long study and the belated chance to write down old thoughts and new ones. Many fine works were composed inside secret closets, and she insisted on looking for the good in this turn of events.
"Good," Quentin echoed.
Then her voice changed. Sandra confessed that her only fear now was that she was going to be very lonely.
Quentin heard the words, and after a moment, he replayed everything else that she had just said, but with a new sensibility.
Of course. The woman was hoping that he would come with her.
But none of her words were explicit. She sat up in bed, naked with the heat and humidity and frank odors, and Quentin wished for any interruption.
The room phone broke into song.
Three short notes, and then the long note—the sound every telephone had made since the beginnings of this awful century.
A man's voice had given them a destination. They were returning to Eureka. The man told them to drive Sandra's car, but only partway, parking on a side street where it might not be noticed for a day or two. Nothing incriminating should be left behind, including fingerprints, he had warned. While Sandra drove, Quentin wiped, never in his life so consumed by a sense of neatness. They didn't speak during the journey, for fear someone was listening, and she acted stony calm, emotions kept under tight control. Warner College and Quentin's home were east of the original main street. They went west, finding a residential road that neither one of them knew, and she parked and lifted the hood again, detaching the battery, and then they walked in the darkness, holding hands until Sandra suddenly pulled hers free.
Finally she was talking, the tone of the voice almost light.
"I've walked leagues back and forth on the Acropolis," she said. "The first time as a student, a few years younger than you are, Quentin. Even for my age, I was very young. But I loved history, and Athens is the center of everything old and rich, and don't believe what old people tell you, that you don't appreciate the importance of things when you're innocent. You do. I did. My Marian spent time and effort protecting the Acropolis from those in the church who saw pagan threats in the ruins. All of the Theotokos took that as a mission of great significance, and most of the Deipara have done the same. Which was why it was in such marvelous order, the marble and the columns and the repaired statues... the Parthenon Frieze alone would have cemented my feelings for the past...."
Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 Page 15