by Tom D Wright
The only sound is a dog barking a block or two away, in response to the commotion.
I turn back to Danae; she stands facing sideways like a baseball pitcher, a sling dangling behind her from her right hand. She quickly slips it off her finger and ties the weapon around her waist, settling the leather pouch back in place. Her suddenly fierce eyes lock onto mine, heading off any question that might consider crossing my lips.
“Are they dead?” she asks, pointing with her chin toward the fallen men. Her tone is neutral, so I can’t tell whether she’s hopeful, concerned or just curious, but she clearly has no compassion for these guys.
“No,” I reply after I quickly check them. When I pick up the knife, it turns out to be just a slender metal flask—probably something to keep him warm during a stakeout. Why the hell would the idiot charge me with a container of booze?
“They’ll live, but I suspect they’ll keep their distance next time. Now, where do we meet your father?”
* * *
The house that Danae brings me to a few minutes later does not look impressive, at least in the dark. A small stone path leads from the street past a short rail fence up to a narrow porch sheltered by a small overhang, weather-beaten enough that I can see stars through the cover. But Danae’s home will certainly beat five days in the back of an open fishing vessel and six weeks in a hammock on that cramped sailing cargo ship.
We enter, and Danae uses the single candle left burning to light several more, illuminating a large common room. To one side, a physician’s workbench stands against the wall, covered with implements, bottles and jars of cryptic substances. Next to it is a long dining table which obviously doubles as an examination platform, based on the small steps at one end.
Like the tavern, the woodwork is rough but sturdy. On the other side of the room, several chairs are positioned around a fireplace that has a sizable bed of glowing embers inside it. Little else adorns the Spartan dwelling, but everything is clean and orderly.
A door swings open on the other side of the room, revealing a gaunt man a little shorter than me, with a scraggly beard that is much more salt than pepper. He peers at me with quick, shiny eyes that are buried in a craggy face, and he cinches a rough-woven robe around his waist as he examines me from the doorway. Danae looks up from the lamp as it catches, and hurries over to him.
“Papa! You should be resting.” She embraces him quickly, and then gestures toward me. “Here is the Archivist you told me to watch for.”
He nods and steps forward, hand extended. “I’m Doc Kaufstetter, but everyone just calls me Doc. So you are the one Walecki said would come, bearing gifts.” His voice is rough, and the deep tone is worn from a hard life. But his grip conveys a strength that belies the frailty of his build, and he looks me square in the eye.
I immediately feel respect for Doc, and my instincts are usually right. Then again, a Retrieval Archivist with bad instincts does not last long. “First, your daughter said Walecki is dead. I’m sure you understand that I need to know what happened.”
The old man sighs and looks down. “We went to see the Intellinet tech that I am offering to trade, which is hidden deep in the hills. On our way back he stepped away for a few minutes, and that was when he got hurt. I’m sorry, but by the time I got to him there was nothing I could do.”
He looks back up at me with genuine regret in his eyes; only a true psychopath could feign the anguish distorting the man’s face. I start to inquire further, but Doc shakes his head ever so slightly while his eyes dart toward Danae. Whatever happened, he does not want to discuss it in front of his daughter. No matter; I already know what probably happened, and it could not have been pretty.
I release a deep sigh. “Wally always knew there was some risk, but he felt what he did for the Archives was worth it. Yes, I bear gifts, but they have strings which reach across half a world.” Even if I only crossed a river to get here, the Archives would still be ‘half a world away,’ because the only thing a non-Archivist can know about our location is that it is on an island somewhere. In this case, the distance I say I have travelled happens to be true.
“We are not so different, you and I.” The old man smiles. “We both seek what fools despise: knowledge and wisdom. So, did the Archives have the knowledge I seek?”
“Wrong question. It’s not whether we have the knowledge. Rather, it’s whether we can find it and you can understand it. You can read, right? Wally said that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Of course I can,” he responds impatiently, glancing at my backpack.
Doc is ready to get right down to business, and I know what he wants. Unslinging my pack, I remove the small package that I carried all this way, place the bundle on the small dining table and reverently unfold the carefully wrapped items to reveal a palm-sized e-reader, a power cell and a solar charger.
These things are old, painstakingly preserved, and exceptionally precious. I am not sure how many functional ones are left in the world, but it is going to be a long time before anyone makes something like this again. I slip the power cell into the device and power the reader up.
“Wally told us you needed to treat your people for toxin and environmental poisoning. So what we have for you is Casarett & Doull’s Toxicology, as well as a complete library of other medical texts. We’ve made no promises to teach you anything, just to provide the knowledge.”
Doc darts forward to examine my offering, his hands shaking with anticipation. He is old enough to remember how to use the reader; he scrolls through page after page and punctuates his reading with “ohhs”, “ahhs” and an occasional “of course!”
“You didn’t ask for anything else,” I add, “but since the reader had plenty of storage, we also included the complete works of Shakespeare, the Mahabharata and the final version of Wikipedia before the net got wiped out.”
Disseminating classic literature is an Archives mission, second only to recovering knowledge. If we are lucky, some of it will survive the coming Dark Age.
Eventually, Doc sets the reader down gingerly and, after giving his daughter a knowing glance, nods his head.
“I’ll never comprehend all of this, but I can understand enough to see that what I need is here.” He slowly, somewhat reluctantly re-wraps the reader and hands it back to me. “The object you want in exchange is hidden in the hills, half a day’s journey away. We’ll leave at dawn.”
Doc reaches under the workbench and pulls out a cloth-slung folding cot. As he sets it up in a side room that appears to be used for storage, he tells me that he sometimes uses it for patients who need close supervision.
The space is cramped, but next to the chimney, and a cast iron fireback provides some radiant heat, so the small room is warm and more comfortable than the wooden floor. Doc and Danae bid me a good night’s sleep and retire to their rooms, leaving me alone in the main room, with the single candle lamp silently flickering.
* * *
I am exhausted from the long journey, but Wally’s death weighs on my mind and I feel the need to unwind. Stepping into my quarters, I dig into my pack to find a compact pipe and some tobacco that I picked up a couple of retrievals ago. I am not sure when I will find more, but it will be before I find another partner like Wally.
Stepping outside into the crisp night air I light the pipe with a match—a brief spark in the darkness. I remember when the visible stars were so few that you could actually count them in the night sky, but the skies everywhere are dark these days, and myriad brilliant stars twinkle in the clear sky above.
I look for the constellation of Aquarius and there, close to setting in the West is the brilliant glowing red dot that is Mars. It is nearing opposition; according to the Archives, in just a week—on September 1st—it will be less than thirty-four million miles away. The bright disk calls me home, but this is as close as I have been in the past thirty-two years, and I do not expect to ever get any closer than this.
Next to Mars, Saturn is almost as dazzling. Higher u
p in the sky is Jupiter. Together they cast almost enough light to create shadows; I long for the nice twenty-four-inch telescope I built at the Archives, with an equatorial mount using parts I had retrieved.
I never tire of observing these three planets, and my colleagues no doubt used my telescope to observe the corona of the total solar eclipse that swept over the Archives this morning. If I were a superstitious man, I would think the heavens were portending something, though I cannot imagine what that would be.
My eyes track a satellite moving across the sky, like a faint star racing toward the north. There are not many left. Some just stopped working, but most burned up as their orbits decayed. It is just luck that the Archives still has three we can use for communications, but those will not last much longer without an orbital boost.
We never figured out why Intellinet wiped out virtually all the rest of humanity’s tech but left the communication satellites alone. My personal theory is that just like on the nuclear subs out at sea, the tech on the satellites was so antiquated that the machines could not flash them remotely.
The faint dot of light glides out of view. As far as I know, there is nothing else up there.
Slowly, I take a draw on the pipe as my thoughts turn to someone I have not seen in a very long time. Did Sarah ever finish composing that symphony? It has been three decades since I last heard them, but I can still replay the notes of her first movement in my mind. My eyes are closed and I am in the opening chords when I hear a soft rustle from behind me.
Danae glides up next to me. “Do you mind some company for a few minutes?” she murmurs as she reaches from under the light blanket draped over her shoulders. Her warm arm twines around my forearm while she joins me in looking up at the stars.
I feel a flash of annoyance as Danae’s presence intrudes on my memories, but it quickly fades into an emptiness that I normally avoid facing. My answer is to cover her hand with mine and gently tug her to lean in, so that she settles against me and lets out a soft sigh—the kind that only the truly lonely can make. I should know.
As Danae leans her head against my shoulder, I smell a hint of rosemary in her hair, and the warmth of her body reminds me how long it has been since I held someone close.
I wonder if she has fallen asleep standing here, until she reaches for my pipe and takes a long draw.
“Your turn to answer a question,” I say when she hands the pipe back. “Why would an exquisite woman like you pour drinks in a bar, especially when you can handle a sling like that?”
She is silent for a minute before she replies, “I was married for a while, but it didn’t work out too well. He died while fishing. Afterward none of this superstitious lot wanted anything to do with me, at least as a wife. Not that I wanted any of them either. I needed to do something to help Papa out, so it was serve drinks to sailors, or serve them something else across the street. At least I can respect myself after serving drinks.”
Danae reaches for the pipe and takes another draw as she asks, “So… I guess you’re going back to the Archives after this?”
“Well, that’s what I do. Retrieve items and bring them back.”
“You have someone waiting for you to come home?”
This time I pause, both because I know she is fishing and because there was a time, a place when someone waited. But that is a long-faded ghost of the past, and I lost the ability to go there a long time ago. There are lots of places I have stopped going to.
“No. My home is the Archives, but my life is in the field. There was someone, but I lost her during the Demon Days.”
If Danae picks up on the fact that I have a much longer lifespan than I appear to have, she does not reveal it. Few of us remain who had aging reversal treatments, back before the Crash, when it was still available.
The Archives once estimated that only one out of a thousand people around the globe survived the initial year after the collapse. From what I have seen that is a generous figure, at least in the highly-populated areas.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Danae murmurs, and I hear genuine sympathy in her voice as she steps closer to me and places her head on my chest. “So we both know it. That loss which never really goes away. Wishing that the memory of the person could go wherever the person went to.”
“You loved him then, that fisherman of yours?”
Before answering she stares into the distance for a while. I feel some light sobs from her before she eventually replies in a small, quiet voice, “Yes, I did. He was my best friend as we grew up. We used to build forts in the boats that wrecked and washed up on the beach. When we were eight we had a mock marriage,” Danae says with a light laugh. “But to us it was serious. It never occurred to us that we wouldn’t grow old together.”
Her gaze shifts up to me with the same empty eyes and downturned mouth that I sometimes see in the mirror, when I make myself look. It hurts to look at her, but I cannot turn away.
Danae whispers, “Sheldon was a good man. You don’t find many of those nowadays.” She peers deep into my eyes and lets the blanket drop when she places both arms around my neck. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears as she asks, “Do you still think about her? Does it ever stop hurting?”
I slowly shake my head, and reply, “It gets better. But no, it never goes away.”
Tears well out onto her cheeks as she presses her face into my shirt. She says nothing, but sobs shudder through her body, and I feel her pain just as deeply as my own. I wrap my arms around her and fold her into me, until eventually her tears fade and she buries a long sigh into my chest.
“Do you ever feel so alone, it’s as though the rest of the world doesn’t exist?” her muffled voice asks.
I answer not with words but with my hands, caressing her back and shoulders gently, feeling her soft hair against my palms. The gentle warmth of her shoulder. I feel a hard response to the womanly scent of her arousal. She moans softly when I turn her face upward, and my mouth finds her full, willing lips.
Danae’s arms tighten around my neck as she pulls her body against mine and my hands reach under her shirt. She moans again as I caress her full breast and swirl my fingers over her hard nipple. Her mouth presses rough against mine, and she pulls me through the door, back into the house. With an almost-dancing motion we move across to my small room, and I close the door. Our lips only separate long enough for me to slip her shirt up and over her head.
As I drape the garment over a chair, I notice scarlet dragon-like shapes on Danae’s upper arms. Before blowing out the candle, I see that they are tattoos: mirror images of crouching and snarling red tigers. There was a moment back in the bar, when Danae stood with a candle glowing behind her, that her illuminated hair glowed with the same hue as the cats.
Then, I am back in the here-and-now as she pushes me down onto the cot and straddles me without a word.
Our passion builds like thunderheads on a sweltering summer day, until release comes for both of us, as sudden and intense as a cloudburst in the desert. A flash of intimacy floods over the parched landscape, then flows away before anything is allowed to seep into the hardened soil of our souls.
Silently she rises, takes her shirt and is gone, leaving behind only her scent.
Chapter Three
Stray slivers of sunlight poke through the curtains that are drawn across a small window above the cot I am lying on. I still smell faint traces of Danae, which remind me of our encounter in the darkness. Danae is certainly not the first woman I have lain with over the past thirty years, but they have been few and far between, and always at the Archives.
Unlike any of those others, though, for a few moments last night Danae and I were not only physically naked, but utterly nude in an emotional sense. More than a sexual liaison, that flash flood of intimacy was almost a spiritual experience, and that scares the hell out of me.
Reluctantly I slip out from under the warm covers into the frigid morning air that seeps through the same cracks as the sunlight. Only the radiant war
mth of the chimney which makes up the inside wall counters the chill as I dress and prepare for a cross-country trek.
When I step out into the common room, I find a vigorous fire snapping in the hearth, which explains the warm chimney. Danae has already laid out a breakfast at one end of the table: earthenware bowls filled with scrambled eggs, cooked grain that looks like oatmeal, and some sausage links.
Danae regards me with eyes as empty of expression as they were overflowing with it last night. Her stare silently tells me, ‘What happened last night will not happen again,’ and my unwavering gaze replies my agreement. I think it was as unexpected for her as it was for me.
“Good morning,” she says, finally, with what would be a friendly greeting from anyone else. But I have seen Danae’s real smile, and the stiff grin is a pathetic facsimile. She steps behind the table, placing the barrier between us. We both needed our encounter in that moment, but now we need what happened in that room to stay there.
Doc strides out of his room dressed for the road in heavy pants and shirt, interrupting what had been an awkward moment. He nods to me and I follow his lead as we fill broad, flat bowls with our servings and sit on the bench.
I turn toward the older man while Danae returns to the small kitchen. “If you don’t mind my asking, why the request for information on toxicology? We’ve never had anyone ask for that before. Usually it’s either how to make weapons or grow food.” I am not actually interested. I just want to put distance between me and that un-moment.
Doc closes his eyes while he savors a bite of sausage, then looks at me. “There used to be a mining operation upriver. You’re too young to remember the time of the Crash, but like everything else, the mine was run by robots and computers, so the whole operation shut down along with the tech. The few men staffing the mine had no idea how to do the real work, so they just drifted away. Unfortunately, the mess they left behind didn’t drift away with them.”