by Ivan Cat
Follow us, They say.
She sees the press of their nakedness and smells their play. They play for her, They entice her.
"Do you want to know?" They tempt. "We will know you like this... and this." Tongues trace paths along breasts and necks. "Do you want to touch? We will touch you like this... and this."
And then They touch her, knowing the curve of her skin as they know their own. They lick into her ears, knowing where she will flush, as They flush to similar caresses. They want to caress and grab as They desire to be caressed and grabbed. They want to entwine a leg and press, as They want to be entwined and pressed against.
They know she waits for the Kiss, the man-kiss, as They have waited. But They wait no more, these women of night. They find the kiss on each other, groaning, begging, like cries under a jungle moon.
They lust.
"We will kiss you where the boys can't."
They start to kiss her, like soft poetry. And start to caress her, like slithery love. She feels the unsatisfaction brewing, the fermented fantasy bubbling. The promise of release, forbidden, addictive.
And she flees.
As always. With her unsatisfaction and fermented fantasy. Before They've barely started. Hers is not the way of the night women. Hers is the way of waiting, for the Kiss. Her longing is the longing for the man in white, her only strokes the strokes of the pen in this book...
—from the black book of J. Tesla
Tepid drizzle fell over the heavy lifter, intensifying as they flew through curtains of low, ragged cloud, and then lessening, but never letting up. Sky and sea blurred together, blue-gray above, steel gray below. Water ran off orange bubble tents and pooled around bundles of supplies and stacks of equipment. The back of the lifter resembled a nomadic campground. A few humans in rain gear stood on deck. Most took cover inside the tents, while two domestics huddled together off to one side, rain trickling down faces and dripping off snouts. The aliens were depressed by the lack of sunlight and resigned to wait it out, but curious ballroom lights, glowing on the inside of Jenette's tent had caught the attention of Crash, Dr. Marsh's domestic.
Crash skewed his head sideways, trying to make sense of the phenomena. The tent sparkled. Crash chattered his teeth. The tent pulsed. Crash blinked billiard ball eyes. Finally, unable to restrain himself, Crash lit up his glowbuds. Flash, pop, sparkle, pop. "Din-tixss-ymisstash."
Bronte gave Crash the evil eye. "Who Crash talks to?"
"Tent."
"Tent not talk."
"Tent talk. Look." Crash pointed a talon. "Tent say come in peace."
But Bronte refused to look.
"Arrou in tent," she sniffed indignantly. "Playing trick."
"Arrou not in tent," Crash said, enthralled. "Now tent say peace between Ferals and domestics." His glowbuds tittered in response to the strange oracle. "Oooohhhrrrr, that good. Right?"
Bronte rolled her eyes impatiently. "Crash sucker. Crash stupid. Rain stupid, mission stupid, tent stupid." She sulked, edging away from Crash. "Want home. Want Enclave. Want dry."
Crash didn't argue back, because Bronte was older, smarter, and had more beautiful glowbuds then he, but he didn't take his eyes off the talking tent, either.
Jenette put down the wonderful starlure, her retinas afire with afterimages. With it she could say anything. The next time she spoke to Ferals, there would be no bloodbath. There would be meaningful discourse and that would lead to ... well, her mind was dizzy with possibilities. But she could not practice forever; there was work to be done, here and now. Reluctantly, she placed the sphere in a high impact case and, carrying a kiss upon her fingertip to the gem-studded crystal, sealed the latches tight.
The particular beep of the lifter's autopilot attracted her attention. Unzipping the opaque inner flap of her bubble tent door, Jenette watched Karr hop out of the cockpit and walk to the stern of the flying slab. Water beaded off his uniform and slicked tendrils of hair to his forehead. He leaned down to converse with a shadow under some crates. Jenette couldn't hear what was said, but saw Karr's conciliatory body language. Karr's overtures were met with a distinct snarl. The encounter ended. Despondent, the Pilot trudged back through the drizzle to the open cockpit.
Jenette slipped into a rain poncho and donned a floppy waterproof hat. Unzipping the transparent outer tent flap, she scrambled out before too much water rained in, resealed the flap, and wound among crated supplies to where Karr had just been.
She turned to a shadow under the crates. It had initially looked a lot like a domestic, but as she splashed closer it abruptly mimicked the texture of wet deck and shadowy crates, and pretty much disappeared.
"Arrou, come out here so I can talk to you," Jenette said.
No answer.
"Arrou, I know you're in there."
"Not want talk," came a grumpy, disembodied voice.
Jenette leaned down. Only Arrou's flashing teeth were visible. "Is there a problem?"
"Karr problem," the alien said, turning sulky—but visible— colors. "Bad man."
"He is not a bad man. He's a good man."
"Took Jenette. Left Arrou behind. Flew away."
Jenette guiltily remembered the image of Arrou in a shooting-star tree, waving frantically for them to come back. She felt like a sinner at confession. "Arrou, Pilot Karr didn't force me to go with him. I went of my own free will." Arrou did not relent. "Will you please come out of there?"
"No." Arrou crawled deeper under the crates, his bullet head nestled on his forepaws.
"Fine, be that way." Grumbling, Jenette hunched down on all fours and followed him. Tepid water seeped into the fabric of her daysuit; it would be a long time before she could get it dry. "Don't be mad at Karr. It wasn't him that left you. It was me,"
"Jenette?" Arrou said. "Not believe. Jenette covering up."
"No, I'm not," Jenette protested. "Remember how we circled around you?"
"Remember," the alien agreed.
"Karr wanted to pick you up. He wanted to fly close to your tree—"
"Not Arrou's tree," Arrou sniped. "Nobody's tree."
"The tree," Jenette conceded, not wanting to get sidetracked into a Khafra argument about whose tree was whose, or who tended what. "Karr wanted to pick you up, but I wouldn't let him. I told him to leave you behind. So you see, he had nothing to do with it. It was all my fault."
"Jenette left Arrou?" Arrou said, finally beginning to believe.
His bullet head swiveled around, disconcerted green circles glowing around his eyes and mouth. "Why? Arrou do something bad?"
"No, you didn't do anything bad. I was trying to save you."
"Funny kind of save," Arrou accused.
Jenette attempted to explain herself. "It was the only thing I could think of. I was upset because the Ferals wouldn't listen to me, but I knew they wouldn't hurt you and I knew that we would have to go through Sacrament when we got back to the Enclave."
Arrou thought about that for a while, but it didn't make him any happier. "Arrou never leaves Jenette behind. Left behind worse than Sacrament. Besides," he pointed out, "was no Sacrament at Enclave. Jenette still here. Arrou still here."
"I don't want to talk about that."
Arrou regarded Jenette with stern colors. "Jenette ate bad food."
"All right, all right," she hissed, feeling a little sickly just thinking about it. "It wasn't the best of decisions, but I didn't fall into coma."
"Hnrrrph."
"And I did it for you."
"Hnrrrph, hnrrrph." Arrou crawled out of his hideaway.
"Where are you going?"
"To apologize," Arrou said, turning his back and padding shame-colored toward the cockpit.
"He's whacked," Skutch said to Bigelow. The physicist's knuckles gripped the edge of a thruster cowl as the heavy lifter skimmed over the ocean. The Guard grinned. "No question about it: full on nutbar."
"Five hundred knots, five hundred knots!" Arrou chanted from beside Karr in the cockpit.
> The day was still gray, but the rain had stopped and all nine humans were on deck. Skutch and Bigelow stood on the port side, where, until the recent rapid acceleration, they had been discussing explosives; potential energy and the catastrophic release thereof.
Jenette overheard their words from the bubble tents, where she and Dr. Marsh kept a firm grip on tie-down cords.
Jenette had crewed the expedition with colonists sharing her views. Bigelow and Skutch, of course. And, on the other side of the lifter, were Corporal Toliver and the rest of his squad. Toliver cleaned his pulse-rifle glumly. Grubb and Liberty cheered at the rush of speed. Mok, off punishment detail thanks to Jenette's string pulling, napped like a true grunt, upon damp bails of supplies, indifferent to wind, cold, and speed. Crash stood at the bow, snout extended to the wind, drinking in sea scents, the standoffish Bronte behind him.
"Yes," Bigelow said, looking nervously at Karr, "you have to concede, the man's got panache."
Karr was not hunched over the cockpit controls, as might have been expected, rather it was Arrou who gripped the steering yoke and throttles with his paws. Karr leaned over the alien's shoulder giving a stream of instructions.
Skutch's grin broadened. "I hear you."
"Hurrakurrk!" Arrou growled in concentration.
"Hurrarooooooo!" Crash howled in encouragement.
"Keep the nose up," Karr coached. "That's it. Easy on the stick."
"Rrrraaarrrk," Arrou snapped his teeth in the wind. "Five hundred knots!"
"Thirty-five knots," Karr said firmly. Tapping the appropriate mark on the airspeed indicator, the needle having risen several notches too far. "Back it down."
Arrou reluctantly eased up on the throttle, but without any protection from the headwind, thirty-five knots was still enough to blow tears from Karr's eyes. The ocean whizzed by below, endless whitecaps bucking across the waves. For the comfort of exposed crewmembers, Karr normally kept the airspeed down to fifteen or twenty knots. Just then, however, he wanted Arrou to get the feel of how the lifter reacted at different power ranges. Arrou's enthusiasm for speed and intense concentration made him a natural heavy lifter pilot; the alien was going to be good, as opposed to Karr, who was decent but never really liked the unwieldy craft and had to constantly work at it. Karr even let Arrou try a few simple turns. The only drawback was that Arrou squatted on the reinstalled crash couch and could not reach the pedals with his hind legs, so he was limited to flying with autopilot assist.
"What's the proper startup sequence?" Karr quizzed.
Arrou recited carefully. "Master switch on. Engine run-ups, one, two, three, four. Cowl fields engaged and locked open. Urrrrrr. Throttle flux mixture rich." He tentatively tapped the left side of a knob; Karr nodded. "Thruster buffer needle at yellow line."
"Ninety percent," Karr confirmed. "What else?"
"Urrr... autopilot engaged?"
"Yes, what else?"
"Urrkurrkurrk ... not remember," Arrou admitted sheepishly.
"D.O.I. throughput to one hundred percent." Karr tapped the red line on a gage. "Very important."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry," said Karr. "That's pretty good considering I only ran you through it once. Just get it right next time."
Arrou rumbled with determination.
"Take her down," Karr instructed.
Arrou pushed the yoke forward and the lifter descended slowly. When they got below ten yards, water sucked up behind them and flared out like a cloud. The lifter bounced.
"Feel that?" Karr asked.
"Pillows," said Arrou, feeling the spongy response of the controls.
"Yes. Pillows of air trapped under the hull. It's called—"
"Surface effect," Arrou interjected. "Like skimmers."
"That's right," Karr said, appreciatively. Arrou continued to surprise him with his knowledge of machines. "Saves a lot of power to fly like this."
Arrou concentrated on his task. Water scrolled by.
Karr could not help but note that there were a lot of Ferals on the ocean surface, singly or paired in small watercraft. He hadn't seen them at first because of their chameleon camouflage, but he got better at spotting them as the day drew on. There were small clues: odd shadows on the water, blocked highlights on wave crests. "Are there always this many Ferals around?" he asked.
"No," said Arrou. "Usually Ferals hide from machines."
At first Karr thought they must be the Ferals that Jenette tried to talk to with such disastrous effects—Tlalok's Ferals—but the math didn't add up. Feral Island 716 had been a day's flight west from the Enclave, and the lifter was now a couple of hundred kilo-yards south of the human colony. It didn't make sense that the Ferals below might be Tlalok's Ferals. This must be a different group—a group that was indifferent to the passage of a human flying machine. If they looked up at all, it was not to gape in wonder or fear, but merely to take an idle look. Arms and legs kept paddling over the waves, the bows of their tiny vessels all pointing in the exact same direction.
"They're all headed west," Karr noted.
Arrou looked down. "Yes. Weird."
For some reason, Karr felt a chill.
"He's very cute," Dr. Marsh said as Jenette inspected a minder-board with Marsh's medical manifests and contingencies.
"The Pilot?" Jenette asked lightly.
"Who else?" Marsh replied.
"I hadn't noticed."
There was a territorial flash in Jenette's eyes.
The doctor quickly added, "That is, if one goes that way."
Jenette looked at Marsh sideways. New Ascension males could not participate in any sort of sexual activity, not even self pleasure, for fear of changing their testosterone levels and triggering the onset of full-blown Scourge. For females, after growing old (the primary trigger for full-blown Scourge in both sexes), the release of the XS hormones during pregnancy was a primary Scourge trigger in females. However, forty-seventh-century birth control being highly efficient, there was no biological reason for decreased female sexual activity. Except, of course, for the lack of willing male participation. Most New Ascension women had very private forms of release. Jenette wrote erotic prose in her little black book. But some found alternate partners for diversion, which was what Marsh was alluding to.
Liberty strolled by, ears dragging. "Don't believe the brombelcrap, Consul." Liberty put a friendly arm around Marsh. "The doc here would jump him at the drop of a hat. Hell, I'd jump anything good and stiff that didn't run away."
Marsh and Liberty guffawed.
Karr, for some reason, stopped moving in the cockpit. Jenette hoped it was not because he had overheard.
Liberty continued to yuck it up. "We all would. Except, of course," she winked at Jenette, "when it ruffles the boss's glow-buds."
Marsh grinned innocently. "What she said, boss."
"I have no idea what you two are talking about," Jenette said, feeling herself turning red.
Jenette returned Marsh's minder-board, walked forward on the bow, and stood close to Karr.
From that vantage, Jenette also noticed the Ferals on the ocean below. Her instinct was to run back to her tent, grab the starlure, and get Karr to stop so that she could try to communicate with them, but she strangled that impulse. Karr's mission—their mission —was of critical, urgent, pre-emptive importance. After much internal wrestling, Jenette had decided to put off her own agenda until after recovering the C-55 warheads. It wasn't even putting off her own agenda, she had told herself; a rescued fugueship would provide an endless source of fugue, eliminating the need for Sacrament as well as the primary reason for her father's objections to peace with the Ferals. Jenette was determined that Karr's mission should succeed as quickly as possible, then she would call in his promise to help her make peace.
"Need anything?" she asked.
"Hunh?" Karr started up from staring at the ocean. "Oh, uh, I need all those Ferals to go away."
Jenette smiled wanly. "Sorry."
A bl
ue-purple cloud sat pregnant in their path. Karr returned his attention to Arrou. "Take us around that squall," he instructed, "then I'll take over."
Arrou made a smooth, wide turn, growling, "Haaaarrraaaarrrk!" with infectious exhilaration. Crash, and even Bronte, howled with him.
The sullen day drew on hour after hour. The lifter passed over many more Ferals paddling west. Karr experimented, changing course to try and find the bounds of the armada, but the net of aliens stretched kiloyards in every direction. Their numbers were unsettling. After an hour of zigzagging, Karr admitted defeat and returned to the original heading of due south.
Evening neared, as evidenced by a darkening from gaunt gray to oppressive gray. Not much later, the expedition members ate. Jenette suggested Karr consume the self-heating gutbombs in the cockpit.
"We need to cover as much ground as possible."
"Agreed." Karr kept a watchful eye on the autopilot as he pulled the pins on gumball-sized spheroids, popped them into his mouth, swallowed, and waited. Three seconds later, Karr felt a warm swelling, like a gas bubble, and tasted the aroma of food rushing back up his gullet. "Corporal Toliver," he called back to where the others were sitting on cases and canisters near the bubble tents. "How's our course?"
Toliver put down his mess kit and cross-referenced a map-reader. "Steady on one-eighty magnetic, sir."
"Thanks."
Toliver resumed popping gutbombs.
"This blows," Mok complained, holding a spheroid disgustedly between thumb and forefinger.
Bigelow concurred. "They do lack a certain je ne sais quoi."
"Yeah and they taste like shit, too." Mok rifled through his segmented tray of spheroids. "Hey, which one of you freaks snarked all the desserts?"
Grubb, always hungry, grinned.
"You fuck!" Mok said angrily.
Grubb made kissy-faces.
"Don't make me kick your ass," Mok said angrily.
"Don't make me like it," Grubb taunted.
"You wankers work it out later," Toliver barked. "Some of us want to eat in peace."
"I'm not a wanker! I want to live! He's the wanker."