by Paul Lucas
He threw his spoon hard on the mat, making it bounce high before clattering to a stop on the metal floor. He stalked off toward his office, fuming. I was too stunned and confused to say or do anything, at first. Then I became angry. How dare he treat me like that? I had worked hard to make such a nice meal for him!
Then, wondering at my own stupidity, I realized he had not been talking about the meal at all.
I slowly made my way to my feet and hobbled over to the doorway that led to his office. He sat in a human-style swivel chair at a modular plastic desk, both of which had been delivered by a helistat crew two years before. He was typing away furiously at the keyboard to his computer, the one whose batteries had to be recharged every few days at the solar cells we had set up just outside the Great Entrance. I stood in the doorway for many minutes, but he refused to acknowledge me.
“I was looking for you in that forest, Lerner,” I said quietly.
His fingers trembled over the keyboard, their frantic rush momentarily halted. “I know,” he said, his lips quivering and moisture in his eyes. “That’s what made it even more awful.”
I hobbled up to him and he hesitantly opened his arms for me, drawing me onto his lap. I snuggled hard into his shoulder, and he hugged me close, a pleasurably sigh escaping his lips. I knew then, in that non-verbal language that husbands and wives share, that all the difficult feelings that had passed between us since my rescue was instantly forgiven.
We held each other like that, quiet, unmoving, for Spirits know how long. Then I began slowly untying the fastener-string of his shirt and lick-kissed his ear. He responded enthusiastically, his strong human hands gently seeking the most sensual parts of my body. Soon we were caught up in wild throes of love-making as I straddled him on his chair.
I needed him at that moment, hungered for him as few other times in my life. His denial of me since my rescue had hurt deeply. But in our fervent intimacy, all that mattered was the heat of his touch and the soft, rhythmic power of his hips.
Our love-making session finally wound down a good two hours later. We held each other close on our sleeping mat, where we had finally ended up after haphazardly making our way across the apartment, leaving a long trail of clothes behind us. I breathed deeply of our mingled scents, feeling my heart slow and my fur smooth out at his familiar and very comforting scent. Spirits, how could I have ever thought of him as alien?
He snuggled me up to him, saying, “Goss, I’m sorry for blowing up earlier. I’m sorry for everything.”
“I am sorry, too. Perhaps if the situations were reversed I would have felt the same.”
“I shouldn’t have treated you like that. You deserved better, especially after all you’ve been through. It’s just that...” his words faltered.
“That I make you so angry sometimes,” I finished for him. “I know. You make me very angry sometimes, too.”
“What’s wrong with us, Goss? All we seem to do lately is argue.”
I stroked his hip. “Argue and then make-up afterward, husband. Do not forget that part. Windrider has told me it is natural for couples only a few years Mated like us. We are still adjusting to each other.”
“But--”
“Hush. Do you question the wisdom of our Shaman?”
“But sometimes I have to wonder, Goss. Maybe it would have been better for you if we hadn’t Mated. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here at all.”
“How can you say that? Lerner, I cannot imagine how my life would have turned out if it had not been for you.”
“You would have Mated someone who could keep you safe. It seems every time you get hurt it’s somehow because of me.”
“I would have done those things--or other so-called ‘reckless’ things--no matter who I was Mated to. Can you truly think of any male in the community who could keep me any safer or saner than you? I cannot. How about if I had Mated with Cloud? Our arguments are nothing compared to the wars he and I would have constantly fought.”
“But he could have at least given you children.”
My joyful mood died. I looked away.
“I saw the look on your face,” he continued, “when Feather was showing off little Shardsong last week. Like how her new youngster was the greatest treasure on the entire Shard and you were the poorest beggar on the streets of Lyra.”
My ears hugged my head. “I will not lie and say it is easy. But we discussed this before, especially back in the KN. Your people’s scientists said they can give us children. We agreed we would go back when we were ready.”
“And if I remember right you were never comfortable with the solution they offered.” Basically, the KN biologists would extract cells from Lerner and myself and use them to make genetic copies of us. Clones. They would advance the cells only to the early embryo stage and then surgically implant them into my womb. After that, they would develop within me like any other fetuses and be birthed and raised as normal children. Indeed, our embryonically cloned children would be indistinguishable from any other youngsters.
Yet the process seemed unnatural to me, and it would not give us true children. I am sure that if we went through with it I would love the youngsters I birthed with all my heart, but children were supposed to be a blending of a Mated couple’s spirits. The embryonic cloning scheme did not combine anything of Lerner and I, just copy us as a potter using the same mold makes exact copies of the same urn.
“And it’s still an experimental procedure,” Lerner was saying. “It’s only been done several dozen times with non-humans, with Orcs and centaurs, and never with a Myotan. All sorts of complications could come up. They’d have to keep you in the KN all through your pregnancy to monitor your condition and then probably through the first year of the kids’ lives to make sure nothing’s wrong with them. We’d be gone from all our friends and family here for at least two or three years.”
“Lerner, please. I knew the day we Mated that children were a remote possibility, but that did not stop me from making the vows. The fact that we even have this option is more than I ever expected, and the sacrifice sounds worth it, when we are ready. Do not worry about it just now. We have many years before we need fear my losing my fertility. Plenty of time. Yes, I am envious sometimes of my female friends and their youngsters, but I can live with that. Until we go back to the KN, you and Windrider and Flier will be family enough for me.”
We snuggled for many heartbeats before Lerner spoke again. “You are a good wife, Gossamyr. Better than I deserve. I can’t help feeling guilty about what happened to you, though.”
“I have a inkling you will always feel guilty about something, husband. It is your way. But let us dwell on other things right now.”
“Like what?”
I sat up and stretched. “Like the fact I am famished. I am under a healing spell, after all, and I have certainly worked up an appetite after the last few hours.” I reached for my crutch.
Suddenly Lerner was on his feet, sweeping me up into his arms. I laughed as he carried me over his shoulder to our eating mat, settled me gently on it, and ladled us both a bowl from the still-warm cooking pot.
It turned out he liked my stew very much.
TWENTY-ONE
Earthspan: An earthspan is a measure of distance used in the Outlands, approximating the distance around Earth at the equator, or 40,000 kilometers. The MegaShard measures roughly 246 earth-spans, or about 20 million kilometers, across.
On expeditions it typically takes an explorer helistat about four weeks to cross one earth-span, though travel times vary widely due to frequent stops for provisioning, refueling, surveying, and contact. The shortest confirmed time for a helistat crossing an earth-span is 11 days 9 hours set by the explorer helistat Galen's Lover, captained by Lady Lawrencia Rhiannon, in 543.
The distance from the KN to several notable Outland landmarks is given below in earthspans.
North Teleport Node.....……….........0.5
North Sea(Dodge City Settlement)...2.2
X12 (Myotan Settlement)........……..2.9
Forever River..............…………......3.0
X25 (Asgard Statues)...……............7.9
X31 (Ruined Builder City)..……....12.1
Boiler Lord Territory.........……....15.5
Darlan.................………….....…...18.7
NBR 117 (Old Ones Ruins)....…...19.9
Current Extent of Exploration Zone…20.4
Birthing Zone (Shard Center).…..61(est.)
Nearest Shard Edge...........……....67(est.)
--from The Basic Guide to the Outlands, 546 What the @#$%*&! Is That Thing? edition, Haggerty Publishing, Borelea
* * *
I would never have told any of my human friends this, but their landed helistats always reminded me of immense bugs with shiny, blue-black wings squatting on the grass.
Their vehicles' upper surface was covered over with solar cells that constantly recharged their homopolar batteries, hence its dark and shiny shell. Add to that its flattened raindrop shape and one could not help but be reminded of a beetle with its legs tucked out of sight.
But the humans never saw them that way, or, if they did, never mentioned it. They always talked of their vehicles with great pride and more than a little awe. As well they should. These were craft designed to travel tens of millions of kilometers in their operational lifetimes. The Tower was located over one hundred thousand kilometers away from the Known Nations, a mere tiny fraction of the total distance across the Shard they were designed to explore. Immense explorer helistats, measuring a monstrous three hundred meters from stem to stern, pass through our territory every few months now before heading to or returning from destinations far into the Outlands. And each ship was designed to make many such trips.
I held my Mate's hand as we leisurely walked toward where our newest visiting helistat lay a thousand or so paces from the walls of the Tower, about ninety degrees around from the five-meter-wide doorway of the Great Entrance. Large as it was, the helistat before us was one of the lesser of its kind, a converted cargo helistat barely fifty meters long and twenty meters high at the apex of its hump. The vast majority of its interior would be taken up by dynamic buoyancy gas bladders and a thin but strong composite support frame.
An arrow shuddered into the ground at my husband's feet, stopping us dead. I gasped and Lerner swore.
Its owner appeared a moment later. Cloud walked right up to Lerner, staring him eye-to-eye, snarling, "They are staying!"
"Cloud!" I snapped. "You could have hurt us!"
He snatched only a quick glance at me. "If I truly wanted to harm your...Mate, Gossamyr, that arrow would now be shuddering in his chest." He turned back toward Lerner. "But that does not change what I just learned! These humans are staying, are they not, Lerner?"
"Yes," Lerner said through clenched teeth. "You knew it was going to happen sooner or later, Cloud. Flier approved this months ago. The Niven's Folly is just the first to be assigned here."
"More humans!" Cloud shouted. "Now they are going to live among us? It was bad enough we had to put up with you for the past four years..."
"And do you think that, oh mighty Chief Hunter," I snapped, "every time you fly one of Lerner’s gliders? When you are up in the skies enjoying the rapture of the wind thanks to my husband's generosity, do you curse his name?"
Cloud glared pure murder at me. "One of those gliders also killed Sunwing," he said darkly, referring to the accident which took his own Mate the year before. "I will take this up with Flier." He gathered his arrow and stalked away.
During such encounters with Cloud I was never happier with my decision to choose Lerner over him. I proudly walked beside my Mate, holding his arm just so in the tradition of Myotans, unafraid to show off to everyone that I was proud to be Lerner's Mate, no matter what Cloud or Azure or any of their his like-minded followers thought of us.
We reached the helistat and Lerner knocked at the side-hatch. A few moments later it swung open and the largest female human I had ever seen stood on the other side of its threshold.
People had told me of her, of course, in the past two weeks as I convalesced, and I had seen several others of her kind during helistat visits in the past. But those had all been males; seeing a female of her race in the flesh was not something I had expected.
She was an Orc. The female's jaw was substantial and powerful, giving her the appearance that she could easily bite my arm clean off, bones and all. Above that was a wide, flat nose and dark, heavy brows. Pointed ears sprouted from a nearly-bald pate, which was shaved clean except for a single, night-dark topknot of hair that spilled down to the small of her back.
She was so big. She easily topped two full meters, a head and a half over my husband. She was broad and powerfully built, with a muscular build few humans could match and no Myotan could achieve without a Tower full of wishful thinking.
She was dressed modestly, in jeans and loosely-buttoned gray flannel shirt, but there was nothing modest about her as she stood brazenly in that doorway, hand on her canted hip and a scowl on her lips.
Her frown melted into an instant smile as her eyes wandered from Lerner to me. "Are you Gossamyr?"
"Y-yes?"
She grabbed up my tool-fingers and shook them vigorously, taking the rest of my body along for the ride. "I am very honored to meet you for real! What you did two weeks ago, fighting all those Xique to find your husband, that was so ass-kicking cool!"
"It was stupid," Lerner grumbled.
The Orc woman turned toward him. "You dishonor her by belittling her deed, scientist." She pronounced the last word as if she were saying dung-eater or baby-slayer.
Now it was my husband's turn to scowl.
I liked her.
"I'm Amethyst, of the Bloodrinker clan," she said as she stepped aside so we could enter. "My ancestors served as honor guard in the ancient Borelean Empire, and my mother and grandmothers fought in the Teranesian War of Independence."
The other Orcs I had met had also introduced themselves by quoting their family's great deeds. It must be part of their customs, most of which I had read that they adopted from records of Earth’s great warrior cultures, such as the Samurai and the Masai.
"I am honored to meet you, Amethyst. Are you the captain?"
"Me? 'Fraid not. I'm the security specialist and sometimes double as secondary pilot and engineer. Jackie's the captain. I just wanted the honor of greeting you and your husband at the door. C'mon. We've set everything up in the cargo hold."
Amethyst led us through a short stretch of hallway to the cargo hold that took up the central portion of the ship. I had been on a similar vessel when I had traveled to the KN two years before. Many of these vessels had served as commercial cargo haulers between the principalities of the Known Nations before being converted into exploration craft. The crew quarters and operational machinery were arrayed in a ring around a central rectangular cargo module, which can either be outfitted with a standard cargo space or with special-purpose modules such as laboratories or pre-fabricated advanced bases.
A double-layered sliding door shifted open to reveal a cargo hold overladen with boxes but with a large space cleared out in the center for two back-to-back folding tables and a half-dozen chairs. Two humans--baseline humans, like my husband--were inside. One, a male, sat with his legs up on the table, studiously smoking a cigarette. The dark glasses which hid his eyes were a perfect match for his dark hair and black leather jacket. Despite his new affectations, though, I recognized him instantly. “Louis!”.
He grinned broadly as he came over to hug me. We all laughed and exchanged pleasantries as he punched Lerner affectionately on the shoulder and brushed his lips on my cheek. “Never did get to kiss the bride! Ha!”
I mock-scowled at Lerner. “Why didn’t you tell me Louis was here?”
He just grinned. “I wanted to keep it a surprise.”
The female human watching all this, for a refreshing change, was abo
ut my size, maybe only a centimeter or two taller. She had a shock of short, reddish hair and a face punctuated by a number of small blemishes my husband later called freckles. She wore a pair of wide-lens glasses which made her blue eyes seem unusually large and expressive, almost Myotan in character. She identified herself as Jacqueline McDevitt but was quickly distracted by a coffee machine beeping behind her. She seemed to be one of those people who were constantly harried by too many things to do and not enough time to do them in.
"...So Rumiko got hired out on an expedition to Boiler Lord territory. But they couldn't fit me on as they were already overloaded with Mages, and we couldn't turn down the money she was being offered. So I figured if she was going to be gone eighteen months, I might as well sign on to an expedition myself." Louis was saying. “And I must admit, Gossamyr, that you're looking a lot better now that you aren’t bleeding to death.”
Amethyst crossed her tree-trunk arms. "Not that you were much help with the Xique, you charlatan of a Mage."
Louis snarled, like he had been expecting her to insult him. "Hey, I got the healing spell on her when we rescued her, didn't I? I stopped her bleeding!"
"Only after Lerner had to yell at you to do something. You just stood there looking stupidly at her when he pulled her in, like you had never seen blood before. And you could have done something about the Xique pursuing her."
Louis' brows knitted together, his face reddening. Amethyst was obviously trying to make him angry, and succeeding. "Security was your job, Orc!" Louis spat.
Amethyst's fists curled. "Hedge wizard!"
"Merc!"
"Slacker!"
"Slut!"
"Do I look like your mother?"
And so it went for a number of minutes. Jacqueline came over to join me and my husband, and I caught Lerner and her smirking. My confusion must have shown through into my expression because Jacqueline leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Oh, don't worry about them. They do that all the time. Louis is just way too dense to understand that Amethyst is flirting with him. That's how Orcs do things. They think a vicious argument is a kind of foreplay. If she really didn't like him she'd just ignore him or pound him into a fine pasty pulp."