by Moshe Ben-Or
But mom would say that you couldn’t just hide from the Leaguers under a bed like a child and hope they’d go away. Yes, they were a ruthless lot, no doubt about it, but it was the Archduchy that had started the business both times around, and the Omicronians weren’t exactly a likable bunch to begin with. Besides, there was bad blood between the Archduke’s people and the Jews going way back, all the way to before the Wreckall War. Everyone knew that.
When the Leaguers fought the Empire, they always abided by the civilized rules. When they’d invaded Tienchen and Lingjao, they’d thrown kinetic impactors around with no regard for collateral damage to civilians, it is true, but they’d been careful about the ecosystems, and they didn’t use WMD. When Marshal Chen had surrendered Lingjao, the Leaguers’ army had even fed Imperial civilians out of its own rations, rather than let them starve.
Besides, mom would say, they had money. They had money and power and now that the government had created a new Free Trade Zone, they would come to San Angelo to spend that money just like they’d come to San Cristobal. They weren’t insane, just different. You could do business with them. You just had to understand them. They didn’t just walk around killing each other and everything that got in the way. There were all kinds of complicated rules about everything.
The Jews had a civilization going back over five thousand years. You had to have special Chefs and pots and plates and a special AI in the kitchen called a “mashgiach” and an inspection certificate from their embassy, or they wouldn’t even eat at your hotel restaurant. But they loved gambling, and skiing, and hiking, and mountain climbing, and fine wines and olives and feta cheese. And they ate Barnard melons and ethylvine berries by the crate.
And the Spartans actually liked foilfish and all those toxic deep-water shellfish from the ocean that accumulated heavy metals in their meat. They drank ale by the barrel and ate organic beef by the truckfull, and they would pay to go hunt wild boar and leopard with spears. Up here in Angeles Province they could get all kinds of toxic mountain things that couldn’t be had fresh down on the coast, like horn’s lizard and highland bamboo shoots.
It wasn’t enough to simply learn their language. Everyone could do that. You had to understand their culture. You had to know that the Spartans expected there to be practice rapiers and sabers on loan in the exercise room, that half of New Israel went to the shooting range to “unwind” after work, that men and women didn’t sit at the same table at dinner on Haven unless they were married or closely related, that a belter would take umbrage if you didn’t serve aperitifs before any business discussion.
And what if it did come to the worst, mom would say, what if the Leaguers did invade? They had no history of foreign conquest. They had never really ruled an occupied population.
The Havenites’ near-bloodless subjugation and absorption of a few thousand paddle-swinging stone-age savages on Bretogne three centuries ago was certainly no useful precedent. The even more distant assimilation of Hadassah was more legend than history anyway, and that had been largely peaceful. New Helena and Volantis were taken in what were, fundamentally, defensive wars. The Empire had evacuated and absorbed its subjects immediately following the cessation of hostilities in both cases. The Archduke took his people off before the Omicronians had ceded Timon. None of these precedents were applicable to Paradise.
So who knew what Leaguer rule would be like? Certainly, the only other alternative in the long run was the Empire, and everyone knew what that was like, if you weren’t of the Celestial Races.
If Paradise offered no resistance, why would the Leaguers be brutal about things? They were very polite to the staff at the casino, for the most part. Very cold and standoffish, and formal, but polite. They didn’t pitch fits and throw things, the way rich herdeiros did, when things didn’t go to their liking. It was a point of pride with them to keep self-control no matter what, especially with the Spartans. If you just knew what they expected, you could keep them happy, and then everything would be all right.
And they’d need people to run this world if they ruled it, wouldn’t they? Local people, who could manage things for them, who understood how Paradise worked.
If Brandon and the girls were going to end up living under Leaguer rule, would it not be better for them to know their future rulers? Would they not be better off if they were useful to the Leaguers, the way smart, educated blancos like them had been useful to the herdeiro elite from time immemorial?
The girls even looked like some of the Leaguer women. Lots of Jewish tourists had white skin and light-colored hair, and they didn’t try to hide it the way a lot of blancos did. You’d see mixed couples all the time. The herdeiros would always stare at them.
Mom was going to download everything she could, directly from League sources, the expense of it be damned. Not just the language tutors. She was going to buy League tutors for history, civics, religious studies, the whole shebang, so that the Leaguer culture would rub off on her daughters. So they would really understand those people. She’d said that there was a great future in it.
But dad would have none of it, and he’d always won the arguments. Mom had gotten her way with the language studies, but it was from Paradisian tutors, and that had been the limit of it.
Hesus Christos, how much she wished now that dad had lost!
How could she know what this Yosi wanted her for? Did she remind him of a daughter, or a little sister back home? Is that why he was being so nice?
A few hours after he’d fed her a second time, her stomach began to burn. She felt like she would throw up any second, but she never did. It had hurt so much! Like she was on fire from the inside out, from her stomach all the way to her bones. Her head had felt like it was about to split in two. She’d just curled up into a little ball and whimpered in agony.
He’d steered for shore and made this shelter for her, under a big old shelleaf, in the middle of a huge bramble thicket, where people wouldn’t go even if there were people out here. And then he curled up around her, and held her and stroked her hair. She couldn’t believe how soft and gentle his voice could get, when he wanted to be comforting.
He’d said that it was all right, that she’d be ok. That it was the medicine working, getting all those heavy metals out of her body. He’d said that it hurt so much because she had a lot of nasty stuff in her from drinking unfiltered water, not just lead but thallium and cadmium, and tellurium, and antimony, and even mercury. The little nanites in the medicine were going all over inside her, and whenever they found the metals, they released the chelation agents to bind them and get them out of her system.
He’d made her drink more Kool Max, in tiny little sips so she would keep it down, and more soup. Later there were tiny bits of that fishy-tasting alien ration bar, and spoonfuls of something warm and creamy, maybe mashed potatoes, or some kind of pureed fruit. And he’d made her swallow more pills, even though she really hadn’t wanted to.
It had gone on for hours and hours and hours. For days. It had to be days. She wasn’t really sure how many. The pain had turned everything into a haze. Sometimes she would lose consciousness, and that was a mercy. And then she would wake up and it would hurt just as bad. But he was always there. He’d feed her, and make the invisibility cloak take care of her when she had to go to the bathroom, and wipe her down with wet cloth.
He said that she wasn’t just peeing the metals out, she was sweating them out, too. The little medicine nanites were dumping lots of the poisonous stuff out through her sweat glands, because otherwise her kidneys would overload, so he needed to get it off her skin.
And he was so nice the whole time. So kind. You could almost forget that he just killed people. Casually, like she would eat a sandwich.
She didn’t understand it, the way he could be so cold and brutal one second, and so warm and nice the next. It was like he was two people in one body. It was so scary to be with him, sometimes. But then sometimes he would be so nice, and then she would feel so safe. Maybe if sh
e knew more about the Leaguers, she could figure out how to keep him from getting scary. She really kind of liked him when he was being nice.
“And if he really wants that other thing, the one that guys always want,” thought Mirabelle, “would it really be so bad?”
A little thrill ran through her at the thought of it. She wasn’t really sure if it was just fear, or something else, too.
He was handsome, in a scary kind of way. And so strong. If she was his… girl, he would protect her, and take care of her, right?
But he was so... different. Like no one she had ever met before.
But… Mom had been right after all, hadn’t she? Different wasn’t necessarily bad. It was just… different. Different rules. If she just learned the rules, she would know what he expected, and then she could keep him happy, and everything would be ok. She could live with different, right?
But he was so… old. Old enough to be her dad, for sure.
But… so what? Older guys still wanted it. Half the teachers at school had drooled over the girls. They just pretended to hide it, and the girls pretended not to notice.
And Leaguer women married young, didn’t they? It wasn’t like Paradise, where everybody waited until forty or fifty to get married. On their worlds, if you didn’t have a husband and a baby to care for at eighteen, the Civil Defense Corps would send you a polite message, telling you to report for two years’ compulsory service. Half their women would rather get married and have a baby. But their men had to serve six years, and then go to college and find a job afterwards, before they could afford a wife and children.
So, if she were one of them, she’d be planning a wedding this year, likely as not. And the groom would be thirty at least, assuming she was lucky enough to be his first wife. If they could afford it, their men would marry two, or even three women, wouldn’t they? So, maybe weird was, kind of… in the eye of the beholder?
Besides, older guys could be really nice, right? Corazon had had that college guy, and then that businessman of hers. They’d given her all kinds of expensive stuff. So, maybe, if she… gave herself, he’d be good to her afterward, and stop being so scary?
But what if he hurt her? Not even on purpose. Just by accident. He was so much bigger than her. A meter ninety, at least, and probably a hundred and twenty kilos.
But he was so gentle when he touched her now, so tender. Like she was made of glass. Especially when he was washing her. He knew that he could hurt her by accident.
Maybe he’d be like that when… if… If she asked him to be gentle? And he had seen everything, hadn’t he? Every part of her. He had even touched it all, pretty much.
She could feel his body against her. It wasn’t just his stomach on the other side of that thin, blanket-like partition. And somehow…
Somehow she knew. She just knew what he felt. She’d always known what he felt. She just needed to reach… Reach into that part of her that knew, somehow.
He wanted to protect her. Protect her from everything, and make her feel better. And he was so sad, inside. And lonely. Terribly lonely.
He was sad because she was in pain? Or maybe because she was afraid of him? And he wanted… He wanted something. He wanted something from her? He wanted… that, right? What guys always wanted. What else would he want?
Mirabelle felt Yosi uncurl as she straightened out her legs and turned over to face him. She was looking up into his eyes now. His arm was still around her. She was suddenly so incredibly aware of where it was, wrapped around her back, pulling her close to him; of the huge, muscular mass of him on the other side of the partition.
She felt so tiny and vulnerable next to that mountain of muscle. She was at his complete mercy. She always had been. He could do whatever he wanted to her. No one would stop him. But…
But he hadn’t hurt her, had he? He wouldn’t hurt her. Right? Because… Because he liked her? Because he wanted her to… like him, too? To be with him? Of her own free will? So he wouldn’t be so lonely and sad?
She had never given it to anybody. You weren’t supposed to. Only sluts did that. You were supposed to wait until you got married. Sometimes, if you really wanted a boy to like you, you could let him touch things. She’d done that once or twice. But you were never supposed to let them have… that.
But now… If he was gentle… Maybe…
She licked her lips nervously. Her heart beat against her ribs like it was trying to escape.
“Yosi…” she whispered.
The words stuck in her dry throat.
His hand moved up to stroke her hair. His fingers brushed against her cheek.
“Don’t be afraid, honey,” he whispered back, “I won’t hurt you.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Suddenly, she didn’t care what he did. He could have her. He could do whatever he wanted.
Her arms went around him on their own as she turned her face. Their lips met, and her tongue was suddenly in his mouth, and then he was looming over her and kissing her and pulling her close to him.
The fuzzy thin partition was just gone, and she was naked with him.
Her body pressed against his skin. He was kissing her everywhere, on her lips, on her forehead, on her cheeks, on her neck, on her chest… His hand was brushing her cheek again and cupping her breast and running down the side of her body, and back up, spreading her legs…
His hands were doing things. Things that no one had ever done to her before. The couple of times when she’d let boys under her clothes, they’d just fumbled around. He was nothing like them. He knew things. It felt…
“Oh God please don’t let him stop!” thought Mirabelle.
No one had ever told her how amazing this felt. Not that she would have believed them. Maybe this next part wouldn’t hurt much, after all. Maybe he knew things about that, too.
“Please be gentle,” she whispered into his ear as she kissed him, “I’ve never done anything.”
* 20 *
That night, Yosi had trouble falling asleep, even more so than usual. The splinters embedded in his back were really starting to hurt. He’d tried to get the poncho to pull them out, but even the big ones were stuck too deep, and at all the wrong angles.
Thoughts came and went. He missed Leah and Rachel more than ever. There was nothing he could have done, he knew. He’d gone over and over it, for years on end. He’d had the therapy, sought comfort in prayer, tried to find healing in the solitary reflection of a Gaian walkabout, but still the guilt spread over him in a great black wave, eating at his soul like a poisonous acid.
Being stuck with this poor, helpless girl didn’t help. Rachel had hair like that. And light skin, like her mother.
Leah had gone quickly. The nerve gas got her. But Rachel… All he could do was curl up with her and hold her, as she whimpered her life away. A day, and a night, and another day. He had lived, and she had died, and he would give anything, anything at all, if he could only switch places with her.
Why had he lived at all? He should have died with her. He should have died after. How many times? Rachel had died, and Yosi had lived. Menachem had died and Yosi had lived. Hannah had died, and Yosi had lived. Dov had died and Yosi had lived…
He could count, but then he’d be counting all night, wouldn’t he?
He should have died, but he didn’t. What did the Almighty make him live for? Him and not them…
Girls. Girls were the worst. When the ghosts got bad, Duke Reginald would just pour him a few stiff ones from the medicinal bottle he kept in the study, or take him hunting with the old armsmen. Leo would pull some stupid practical joke and make him laugh, or just claim that he needed some practice and drag him into the ring for a dozen rounds. But the girls…
They saw the medals and they read the stories and they thought that they could make it all better. The brave hero would forget his pain in their arms, his scarred soul would warm by the fire of their love, and all would be well. Just like in VR. Or in some book by some idi
ot who wrote romantic trash for schoolgirls.
They didn’t really love him. They loved themselves and the idea that what lay between their legs could cure all the troubles of a man’s soul. Except that it couldn’t.
They could be kind and nice and good to you, but they could never really understand what it felt like to lose everything. Everything you cared for, everyone you loved, all of it, in the blink of an eye. Just gone.
Duke Reginald and the old armsmen, they understood. They had Tienchen and Lingjao, and Second Miranda, and Third Paradise, and Saint Luke, and the “incidents” and all the things that had supposedly never happened… Even New Helena and Volantis, and the First Tienchen, during the Second Imperial, some of them.
You could sit around the campfire and drink the ale, and gnaw on the roast meat and talk about it, or just stare silently into the flames and watch the dancing ghosts, and they would understand. But the girls…
The girls were like vodka. Good enough to make you forget your problems for a while, but afterward you just ended up with a gigantic headache, and with less money, and your problems were still there. At least vodka bottles didn’t stare at you with big, stupid cow eyes afterward, and try to prattle at you about some nonsense you couldn’t care less for. The women worth talking to were all old enough to be his mother.
Except for Liza. Liza could understand. She was one of the two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-seven. She’d been there, too. But it hadn’t helped, had it? He’d loved her, and she’d loved him and they had both understood. And then she’d blown her brains out. Liza had lived for a while after the shooting had stopped, but the Omicronians had killed her just the same. And he couldn’t save Liza, either. Instead, he’d almost followed her into that great black Unknown.
This girl… Her, he could save. It hadn’t been sytoxin killing her. Just the chelation nanites doing their job. But every time she’d whimpered in agony, he’d been there again, in the bomb shelter, with Rachel.