Her laughter interrupted his thoughts. “Yeah, a gift. Something from your trip, maybe. You did bring interesting things back from your trip, didn’t you?”
“Sure I did. Sure I did.”
“So. Give me something you brought back.”
~o0o~
Gil and Kiddo—for the creature would take no other name—lay wrapped in one another’s arms, lost to the world. Lost in each other, flesh melding into flesh, sleek hair caressing pale smooth skin. Brothers, lovers, soulmates—there was no word for what they were. Just: one.
Of a day, they roamed the land, slaying monsters, pillaging cities, raping women, carrying off spoils. But they often as not had no use for the spoils; they’d cast them into the deep black pools that littered the forest, laughing, for they knew they’d take more tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
They were two halves that made a whole. It was beyond love, beyond happiness. Kiddo knew Gil like none other had, not his mother, not his lovers, not his teachers. Words were hardly necessary.
Kiddo knew.
~o0o~
Gil stood at the bathroom sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. He’d been having the visions again, he knew he had. If only he could remember them better. Obviously, that was what had happened in the restaurant, he knew it at once. But losing thirty-five minutes: that was frightening. It had been bad enough when the fugues had lasted a few seconds: the bright, solid visions, all the scent, the color, making this world seem pale and faint by comparison, leaving him shattered and confused when they vanished again. But this: this was going to interfere with his life, if he wasn’t careful.
In an hour, he would see Esther. He had only one thing to give her, as she had asked. Despite all that had come before between them, he did not know if she would appreciate it.
~o0o~
She was a few minutes late. He stood outside on the street, watching the door to her office from a respectful distance.
People exited the building and rushed down the street, mostly strangers, but he recognized a few of her co-workers. Fellow goddesses of industry, he’d called them, joking but serious. Esther had laughed. But that was before.
Now she appeared, glancing around, looking for him, a look of impatience already threatening to take over her face. He waited ten or fifteen seconds before pushing himself off the lamppost and walking towards her.
She saw him and half-smiled, then her eyes flashed to his empty hands. He could almost read her mind: No flowers, no wrapped gift? Bastard. Unless gift fits in pocket: good, good.
He grinned at her. “You look gorgeous.”
She allowed him to kiss her, not turning away. He took her arm, and she fell into step with him. “Where are we going?”
“My place.”
He glanced at her sidelong, watching her mind shift again. I told him no, not his place. WTF? Gift too large to carry? Should I say no?
She must have decided to go with it, as she did not protest, but walked alongside him.
~o0o~
Gil dreamed, strange and terrible things that brought fear and a sick cold trembling to his arms and his legs and his scrotum. He cried out in the night, wailing for release, and soon Kiddo embraced him, as ever. “Do not fear, dear brother, the dreams are not bad omens,” the hairy man soothed. “Nay, they bring good tidings. The monster is no enemy of ours. We will prevail.”
Limbs entangled, the men found their comfort and Gil forgot his terrors.
Yet every night, Gil dreamed anew, each dream more horrifying than the last. “Kiddo—we shall all die! I know it! We must change our ways.”
The lustrous fur enveloped his skin, calming his panic, inflaming his desire. Kiddo taught him the many ways of pleasure, and then many more. Gil was a faithful student at his master’s knee, and his heart was gladdened.
And so it went.
~o0o~
“Well?” Esther’s voice held a smile, though she kept her face steady as she stood in the entryway to Gil’s apartment, holding her suit jacket by one finger.
“Well, come in!” Gil urged. He motioned to the living room, the sofa. “Drink?”
Esther hesitated a moment longer, then hung her jacket on his coat rack. She took the easy chair, crossing one slender leg over the other, keeping the top leg raised ever so slightly, so as to avoid an unsightly bulge of the thigh. “Sure—sparkling water, thanks.”
He almost poured her champagne anyway, but decided against it. Must step carefully here, delicately. “Ice?” he called, from the kitchen.
“No, thank you.”
He returned with two glasses of fizzy water, handed Esther hers. Sat on the couch, grinning at her.
She lifted her glass in a mock-toast. She was not smiling. He could almost smell the expectation wafting off of her, the last-chance-ness of this. He tasted her air of incredible generosity—for even coming here, letting him do whatever it was he was planning, whatever stupid, foolish, worthless thing. He could already hear her crowing words: I knew it.
He wanted to shrug his shoulders. Instead, he sipped his water.
~o0o~
Then Kiddo had the bad dreams. The awful nightmares, from which he would wake screaming, shuddering, sweating. Gil tried to comfort him, but the visions were too terrifying. Blood, death, destruction. One of them must die.
“No, that is not the meaning here,” Gil protested, remembering his brother’s words. “It is as you told me before. Dreams, like the divination cards, are never literal. Death only means a completion—such as the completion of our task. It points the way for a new beginning.”
“One of us must die!” Kiddo wailed. He would not be consoled. Gil touched and soothed him in the hundred ways, and then the second hundred ways, but solace did not come to his brother.
Gil became afraid.
~o0o~
“It’s very simple,” Gil said. “Come sit by me, and I’ll explain it.”
Esther had finished her water, declining a second glass. She leaned forward in her chair, poised, ready to flee. He could see her eyeing her jacket, the front door, the outside world. He’d never see her again if she left. He knew that. “I can hear you perfectly well from over here,” she said.
“No, you can’t.”
They stared at one another. Gil tried to read her intention, the story behind her eyes. Tried to know her like he had known the other. She was the key to his future, she would complete him…
As he watched her, suddenly the tension in her body relaxed the merest inch. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she said, joining him on the couch.
“Champagne?” he asked, sliding an arm around her shoulders.
She held herself rigid under his arm, not leaning into the embrace, not pulling away. In the kitchen, the ice maker rumbled, going through its cycle, dumping fresh cubes into the bin. “All right,” she said, and he knew he had her.
~o0o~
Gil lay prostrate over Kiddo’s dead body, and wept.
~o0o~
He gazed up at Esther through drunkenly hazy eyes. Much as he wanted to see what she was doing, the room kept spinning, and his lids drooped shut time and again. He felt as though his veins had champagne in them, tiny bubbles fizzing and popping in his blood, making him tingly all over, but not in an altogether good way. In fact not good at all.
She straddled him on the bed, her strong thighs pinning him down, pinching his hips together a little too forcefully. She was down to her bra and panties—both in frothy black lace, matching, and quite sexy. He’d smiled to himself as she’d stripped, earlier. A woman doesn’t dress like that underneath if she doesn’t think it’s going to be seen, and appreciated.
Gil just wished he could concentrate better. His head lolled to one side, then back again. He tried to focus on her once more. Had she had anything to drink, beyond the first glass?
Oh shit, he’d opened a second bottle, hadn’t he? He groaned and closed his eyes, just for a second.
~o0o~
Bereft
, lost, friendless, abandoned. Gil wandered the endless desert and then crossed the seven seas, and was destined to be forever alone.
“And so you have come back to me, is that right?” Esther loomed above him, her dark hair falling forward to shade her eyes. Kiddo fluttered through his vision—sweet, downy seal-fur, strong limbs holding him, caressing him. Esther’s strong legs squeezed him tighter, too tight. Sweat dripped from her chin, landing on his chest. He couldn’t move his arms to wipe it away.
He smelled spices, and the manure of goats. He felt the alcohol swarm through him, smelled his laundered sheets. His stomach burned and ached, and his groin felt tight, constricted. Desire? Fear? He wanted to reach up and kiss her, or shove her off him. He wasn’t even sure which. Both.
“You, who called me selfish and greedy and single-minded?” Esther laughed, and the sound was terrible. It grated against his spine; Gil shivered on the bed. She had offered him jewels and riches beyond his wildest dreams, she had promised to love him forever, she had invited him into her temple, blessed everything he owned. And he had pushed her aside, pushed her away and left.
“You, who said he had to go find himself? Is this the gift you brought back to me? Your lousy worn-out body?” She grinned cruelly down at him, a face with no love, no compassion, no understanding. Was this what he had returned for?
The hundred and the second hundred ways of love worked on everyone—man and woman alike. Kiddo had taught his brother Gil well.
But they did not work on the goddess.
“You were going to show me some sex trick?” She squeezed even harder. Gil stared up at her with frightened eyes.
He was at her mercy. He had always known that.
~o0o~
Kiddo dreamed beneath the soil, and although Gil journeyed to the farthest lands, he could still hear the dreams.
And they still frightened him.
At long last, Gil returned to the city of his birth, the city where he was a hero, acclaimed—almost godlike in his powers. They would welcome him there. They would cheer him, celebrate his deeds, soothe his wounded heart.
The goddess herself would embrace him. As she had wanted to in his youth, when he had turned his face from her.
~o0o~
Gil had been foolish to come back. That was his first thought when he awoke in the empty bed, head pounding, mouth dry as bone. There was nothing for him here, no job, no friends, and nothing with Esther. She saw directly into his heart, and she knew she would always hold second place there.
Second to a dead person.
Second to a dream world.
Yet hadn’t she been the one to call him back? Or had that just been his madness?
Gil moaned and rolled over, searching for a glass of water on the bedside table, a cough drop, anything to moisten his parched mouth. The bathroom was too far, too unattainably far. He blinked at the light pouring through the window. Then his stomach twisted, and he staggered out of the bed after all, stumbling across the hall and onto his knees, gripping the cold porcelain as he retched into the toilet.
When he sat back an eternity later, wiping his mouth, eyes streaming with tears, he heard her behind him. “Too much wine?”
He didn’t turn around. “Go away.”
Her laughter tinkled, rattling against the inside of his skull like a handful of sharp-edged jacks. “Oh, Gil. Poor Gil. You see, I’ve changed my mind. You’ve convinced me; I think it can work out after all.”
Now he did slowly turn his head. She stood wrapped in his robe, holding a streaming mug of coffee as she leaned against the door frame. “You might want to flush that,” she added.
He just stared at her. “What do you want?”
She grinned and took a sip of the coffee. “You always were so charming when you were hung over.” She leveled her eyes at him. “Last night was incredible. You were right. You have to tell me where you learned all that.” She wiggled her hips suggestively.
Another wave of nausea rolled through Gil. He turned back to the toilet just in time.
~o0o~
Forgive me, Goddess, for I have sinned. I threw away your love and now I want it back.
I am sorry, Seeker. For it is too late. There are no second chances. You saw to that yourself, the first time around.
Please, Goddess. Please forgive me. I’ll do anything. Anything.
~o0o~
Gil sat at the reception desk, smiling at the goddesses of industry as they came and went, doing their important business, buying and selling small countries as if they were trading cards. He had been lucky, so very, very lucky. Esther had found him such a good job here. He owed everything to Esther.
Not just a good job, but a good life. He had his very own room in her house, and all her pretty friends came by and permitted him to work his magic on them. Their cries of lustful pleasure filled Esther’s house late into the night. And then, if she came to him after the last friend was gone, who was he to withhold his favors from her as well? She had saved his life: rescued him from his delusions, his sickness.
No matter that he was left muzzy and half-asleep all day. Receptionist wasn’t a challenging job, after all.
And he was lucky to have it. So lucky.
He kept his eyes on the bank of elevators, waiting for them to open. Every time, it could be her! And even when it wasn’t, he smiled anyway.
What else was he to do?
The door to the street opened, and the merest scent of cardamom floated through the lobby. Gil gasped, in the grip of a sudden powerful, soul-drenching sadness. Why? He shook his head, blinked his eyes, and reminded himself how lucky he was.
And soon enough, he was happy again.
Oh Give Me Land, Lots of Land, Under Starry Skies Above
Shannon Page and Mark J. Ferrari
This was the first story Mark and I wrote together. It started as a solo story; I’d been invited to the anthology Space Tramps, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and had this great idea about a realtor stranded in space with nothing to sell. I charged into the story and ... got lost. Frustrated, I talked to Mark at length about it, and he finally said, “We’ve discussed collaborating; you want to write this one together?” A grateful YES was my answer, and a new writing partnership was born. Space Tramps: Full Throttle Space Tales Volume 5 came out in 2011.
_______________
I shouldered my pack and moved on again, still trying to look like I belonged to someone. Someone important and frightening and powerful.
Who was I fooling?
I’d gone through lots of training before leaving Earth. I’d passed the psych tests with high scores for adaptability, calm demeanor, and flexible attitude. I’d watched virteos about all the possible dangers and side effects and unexpecteds ... except for one: being marooned on Longhorn 6 with no backup, no office, no Principal Broker, and nothing to sell.
Selling was what I had left Earth to do. Selling land, specifically, and structural space, and development tech. I was a real estate broker, trained by Old Rehaus himself. I’d been on my way to help our brokerage develop Astoria Corporation’s recently settled planet Greenleaf 43, not to be a stranded vagrant on some space station thousands of light years from nowhere.
Old Rehaus was dead now. I’d been lucky not to perish with him and the rest of the brokerage when our FTL carrier, Fleetness, had somehow come apart upon re-entry into system space. Only one small portion of the vessel survived, limping to its end on this unthinkably isolated pit stop.
Ecoballs like Longhorn 6 are designed to feel like planets. But no matter how big and round it is, how much “wide open space” they’ve designed, a space station is a space station. You’re breathing canned air, hoofing it down tin corridors, and looking up at a “sky” with no sun.
Most problematic for me, there was no private property here. Not to own, not to buy, not to sell.
I’d spent most of the trip from Earth in Rest, a light trance state that makes time pass dreamy-fast. It’s far healthier and quicker to get over
once one is planet-side than Sleep, where you’re put under entirely. It’s more expensive too, but being alert for that initial wave of eager buyers had seemed worth the cost to me. I’d imagined those first few turns around Greenleaf’s Monopoly board would set up the rest of my career there. Now there would be no Monopoly board—but Rest had saved my life. My colleagues had all decided to economize, Sleeping elsewhere on the ship, to their misfortune.
I still didn’t know exactly what had happened to Fleetness. The Longhorn goons who’d rescued us hadn’t said. They’d just brought us down here and dumped us into some huge processing bay.
The station’s populace seemed watchful and grim, their dress code inspired by the collision of a circus, thrift store, and military surplus outlet. Their expressions and body language conveyed mute hopelessness. Not the kind of customer I’d been trained to work with. I had no idea how to act here, much less what to do.
Confused and fog-headed, I had obediently taken my place at the end of a long line at first, just grateful to be alive. Soon, however, I began to wonder if I’d have been better off atomized into vacuum along with the rest of my agency. Most of the women ahead of me were being sent elsewhere by rough-looking male handlers with a steady stream of lewd remarks and leering gestures. Soldiers pulled away the larger, fitter men, while older folks and children were sent through a smaller, shabbier exit. As my turn approached, a sudden wave of prickly instinct made me duck from line while none of our handlers was looking.
Longhorn 6 was a busy, crowded place. It was easy to merge with nearby streams of human traffic and just keep going.
~o0o~
Two days later, I walked down yet another tin corridor, trying to look stern and busy as my eyes flicked about, searching for threats or clues. I’d slept only once, in a deserted construction zone under a pile of refuse, and eaten nothing but the chips and bottled water distributed free of charge at scattered “refreshment stations” sponsored by Longhorn 6’s corporate owner, Galactic Enterprises—Astoria’s only serious rival in the interstellar real estate business.
Eastlick and Other Stories Page 11