Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear

They’re called beanstalks, or sometimes skyhooks. To oversimplify, a magnetically propelled car rides a carbon nanotube cable from planetside to an orbiting platform, which is anchored on the other end to a captured asteroid. It reminds me of playing “crack the whip” on ice skates with Barbara and Nell. Barb always won; go figure.

  The idea is, your beanstalk lowers the cost of lifting things into orbit from the farcical to the merely expensive. The journey from earth to orbit takes almost eighteen hours, no more than four times the duration of the flight that brought us here. I didn’t know that. I looked it up on my hip while we were on the flight from Toronto. There’s still been no answer from Mitch, and I’m getting increasingly worried. Scared for Mitch, for Razorface—whom I also haven’t gotten ahold of—and for Leah and Genie and Elspeth, who are still back in Toronto. Hostage, I know perfectly well, for Gabe’s and my good behavior.

  The skyscraper that serves as the base of the thing is lost in the clouds.

  After an extensive search of ourselves and our baggage, a Unitek hostess greets us at the airlock of the corporation’s capsule, which is basically a glorified elevator car. The Executive Elevator, in this case. I’m stiff and uncomfortable in a dapper new plum-colored pantsuit that looks like Barb picked it out.

  The urge to explore before I sit down might be childish, but I do it anyway, wishing I could get a look at the control room. I’ve heard about old railways, private cars. This is like that—inside, there’s a common room, and four separate little private spaces I might call bunk rooms, but they’re a bit Persian-carpeted for that. Which is funny, I think, because we’ll be in free fall soon enough.

  Then I notice the hammocks retracted neatly into the walls of those private alcoves, and the restraints on the ostentatiously comfortable leather chairs in the lounge. I skip lunch when it’s offered, picturing the disgrace of barfing all over the knotty walnut paneling. I’ve never been in free fall.

  After the hostess gives us our safety instructions and shows us the galley and the jakes, she retreats to the control room. I realize she’s also the car operator. Valens sits down in the lounge area, straps himself into a couch, and promptly falls asleep, leaving Gabe and me sitting across from one another, staring out the windows in silence while acceleration shoves us back into the couches like a hand against the breastbone.

  Some time later, the pressure drops away. They could accelerate us for longer and get us to Clarke that much faster, but it’s annoying to spend the entire trip under multiple g’s, accelerating and then decelerating again. Some time in the middle of the ride, the car will reach maximum acceleration and we’ll have free fall.

  Gabe reaches out, curiously, and takes my hand. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  He turns it over, laying it palm-up on his thigh. The heat of his body radiates through his trousers, warming the back of my hand, but I cannot feel his fingers lightly encircling my wrist. “This is very different from the other one,” he says, fingertips stroking the hollow of the palm. “It doesn’t feel like metal.”

  I’m shivering almost too hard to speak. It isn’t at all like having my right hand stroked: instead, there’s a prickling sort of pressure awareness, fleeting warmth and a tingle that seems to run the length of my spine. I master myself with effort, force the words out evenly. “There’s a polymer ‘skin’ over the steel. Improves my grip and it gives me tactile sensitivity. It’s supposed to be pretty tough, but it will have to be replaced a lot.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Strange. Prickly. Not bad,” I amend, as he moves to release his grip.

  He lays his hand on my upper arm. “And nothing there?”

  Valens releases a soft, kittenish snore. I glance over at him. Asleep, hair tousled, he looks old, although I know he must only be in his sixties. Gabe follows the line of my gaze and then looks back at me, as if studying my profile.

  I’m out of excuses, I realize. I’m not necessarily dying any faster than he is. I can’t kid myself anymore that he’s not interested, or that I’d be hurting somebody who loves him, or that I’m so horrible to look at he could never want me. He’s not trying to tie me down or turn me into somebody I’m not. After all this time and pain and grief, he just wants to be as close to me as I’ll let him get.

  He kissed me even when I still had those scars. The armor. The mask I could hide behind. Who ever would have thought they meant so much to me? After Chrétien—after Peacock—I think I needed them.

  But Chrétien is dead. And Bernard is, too. And he wouldn’t want me to suffer in his memory.

  No, Jenny, he wouldn’t. I know what Peacock would want from me. He’d want me to change the world for him.

  “Gabe,” I say, looking out the window instead of at his face, “I’m scared.”

  His voice is rich with amusement. “Getting old, Jenny? You talk like a woman who’s never jumped out of an airplane. Would it help if I told you to stand in the door, Private?”

  I turn to catch Gabe’s eye, thinking: Richard?

  No comment, no sense of presence. If he’s paying attention, he’s got enough sense not to let me know that he is.

  “You telling me to get a helmet, Captain?”

  “I’m telling you to keep your head down and don’t stop thinking.”

  Silence like space hangs between us. I’m not sure what I’m going to say until the words come out. “If we’re going to talk while he’s sleeping, we should probably go into the other room.”

  He nods, stands silently—ducking under the overhead —and turns around to give me a hand up. When I stand, he bends down and presses his mouth to the side and then the nape of my neck, right at the hairline, where the healing scars are still pink and tender and the lumpy outline of my nanoprocessors used to sit. I stiffen, pinned between fight-or-flight and melting into the pleasure of a kiss I feel tingling down every limb, all the way down to the pit of my belly, warm and dizzying as liquor.

  The hammocks and grab bars, it turns out, come in handy when gravity fails.

  Gabe closes and locks the door behind us but remains standing—back toward me, head bowed, his broad hand still resting on the latch. I watch his shoulders rise and fall with the slow rhythm of his breath. My own heart blurs in my chest as I look at him, waiting for him to turn.

  This is real. This is now.

  He stands as if paralyzed, and at last I come back to him, sliding my right arm around his waist. He’s warm and solid, present as an oak tree as he sighs and leans into me. “Gabe.” All the words I can find are stupid words, pointless ones. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  He turns in my embrace and raises his right hand, palming the side of my face where the scars used to be. It feels … yes. The skin there is tender, unaccustomed to touch. It’s as sensual and foreign as if he ran that hand along my thigh. “I thought I’d made my intentions plain, mon amie.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything before?” I bend into the caress. I can’t help myself.

  “I …” and he takes a slow, thoughtful breath. “First there was the problem of ranks. And then I figured that if you hadn’t said anything, it was because you didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.”

  “And then there was Geniveve.”

  “And then there was Geniveve.” He shifts forward, not closing his eyes, so I don’t close mine. He smells of aftershave, of wintergreen. His thumb strokes the angle of my cheekbone and he holds my gaze with his own as his lips brush mine. This is really …

  feedback: slow susurrus of his heart, blood moving under my fingertips when my right hand drifts up his spine, the nap of his shirt rough and then the blond curls, softer than I would have imagined.

  … happening.

  soft as his mouth on mine, and I savor the look of concentration on his face as his mouth opens, teasing, flicker of a wet rough tongue and the quick, sharp nip of teeth

  “Ah. That feels …”

  “Je t’aime.”

 
; with the little indrawn breath, his hand is suddenly knotted in my hair, pulling enough to hurt, lips still gentle, teasing until I close my own hand hard and yank his mouth down

  “Oui. Oui. Gabe …”

  “Ne parle pas.”

  his lips moving on my lips, his left hand coming up now, my suit crumpled against his chest, right hand bending my head back, mouth against the tendons of my neck

  “Gabriel. I—”

  “I said. Don’t talk.”

  silence and a little whine at the back of my throat, whimper of pleasure made the sharper by a touch of pain, my left hand splayed against his chest as my body starts to shiver, my breath comes deeper, hips rock against his as of their own accord

  “Je parlerai. You will listen.”

  “Ah. Ssssss.”

  his hand in my hair, pulling, sexy, his hand on my breast, soft, warm through plum-colored worsted fabric, warmth through my white cotton blouse not crisp any longer, hot flush up my body and melting in my belly, my metal arm pinned between us, his mouth now on my throat, my collarbones, teeth at the corner of my jaw, breath over my ear with the sound of his voice

  “Je te veux. J’ai besoin de toi. Veux-tu que j’ait dit à toi que je vais faire?”

  “Yes.”

  left hand unbuttoning the jacket, tailored armor, warrior in business attire, mouth a moment behind as he pushes open one blouse button at a time, heat and wetness, shivering, painful, and the only thing keeping me off my knees is his grip on my hair and the fact that the car is slowly losing acceleration, my left breast bared to cold air now and the slow spirals of sharp teeth, rough tongue, and the tickle of his voice against my flesh

  “Je vais te deshabiller. Je vais embrasser chaque pouce de toi. Je vais te lécher et je vais te faire toi jouir and then I’m going to open up that pretty scallop shell between your legs and fill you up with my cock until you want to scream …”

  Soft, promising between the love bites, oh so dirty and sensual and sharp and already I want to scream; he’s let go of my hair and is pushing jacket and blouse off to lie forgotten on the floor, and kneeling now, exploring my navel with his tongue like a promise of what’s coming, fingers nimble as he opens the button of my slacks, slides them down over my ass, hooking my panties down with the same smooth motion and I step out of my shoes as I step out of the trousers and he pushes me back against the bulkhead. Cold.

  Breath harsh in my throat, both hands knotted in his hair, pulling the collar of his white, white shirt. My knees are like water. I have to lean against the wall.

  “Ta chatte mouille, n’est-ce pas? Je veux toi goûter.”

  “Never thought I’d hear a man with daughters talk so fucking dirty, Gabriel.”

  “Comment pense-toi que je leur ai reçus?” And while I’m laughing, shocked at his audacity and his filthy, sexy mouth, he presses those enormous hands flat against my hips and shoves my ass hard against the icy bulkhead. Somewhere in there the acceleration cuts out and we sail into sudden weightlessness and spin, drifting, helpless, but he holds on to me somehow and I have no idea, when it’s over, if I screamed his name or God’s, or what language, or if I managed to hold my tongue. There’s blood on my mouth, and through the twisted collar of his shirt I can see a pale handprint darkening where my left hand clenched, somehow not hard enough to break skin, crush bone. My whole body shudders and as he pulls me naked into his embrace I bury my face against his shoulder and I am weeping, am laughing, am shivering in the cold capsule air.

  “Shhh,” he says, stroking my hair, floating, spinning slowly. A droplet of blood drifts free of my bitten lip and splashes his cheek, followed by a salt-sticky tear. I swallow the rest, scrubbing my face against his shirt to jar the swelling globes out of my eyes. “Shhh, mon amie, mon amour. Don’t cry, Jenny.”

  I sniffle against his shoulder, tension gone, and the next round of shivers are from the cold. “We’ll sleep,” he says. “There’s time later.”

  “Bullshit.” I grab him by the cheeks and, spindrift, kiss him, tasting myself on his mouth like butterscotch. He catches my waist. We bump lightly into a wall, careen off, and while he’s holding me I start working on the buttons of his tear-stained shirt, not really sobbing, and then kissing his throat, burrowing through the curly pale hair on his broad chest to let him feel teeth on skin, floating, twisting, my struggles with his belt sending us gyrating like a top. I elbow him in the head and he kicks me in the knee and we connect with the bulkhead again, and it doesn’t seem to matter …

  I’m a pro. Thirty-five years ago, I would have had him zipping his pants back up before he was finished with a cigarette. Some little voice still tells me that I should feel bad about that bit of ancient history, but what I’ve got left is just the gritty acknowledgment: I did what I had to do and I lived. I’m not ashamed of it. I lived.

  I’m ashamed I wasn’t brave enough to take Nell with me. I wasn’t brave enough to take my sister through Hell. If I had been, she might have made it, too.

  Then Gabe’s hands are in my hair again and I’m not ready for the kisses. Like making out on the porch swing, long and slow as if we just started, as if I’m a young, young girl who needs to be seduced very gently and thoroughly. Lingering and wet and dreamy, like crickets chirping and nowhere to be for hours. But he’s naked and hard, almost where I so badly need him, and I swear a million years pass before I awaken, hammock cords cutting my skin and Gabe stirring against my back as the car begins decelerating and the feeling of gravity slowly, slowly returns.

  Clarke Station spins, giving the illusion of gravity. We step out of the elevator’s expansive “car” onto the Woods Memorial Platform, a space that looks exactly as an airport terminal would if it had porthole-sized slivers of reinforced crystal instead of broad glass windows. Gabe angles me a sidelong smile; I can almost see canary feathers at the corner of his mouth. The patterns of his touch still tingle on my body. I find my own lips curving in a smile, still unfamiliar with the ease with which it spreads across my face. My right shirtsleeve is buttoned down over soreness I expect will bruise purple by morning, and I’ve never been happier with a minor ache in my life. Besides, I more or less did it to myself, and probably left a few bruises on him as well. And who would have thought blue-eyed Boy Scout Gabe Castaign would turn out to be such an inventively dirty old man?

  Valens intercepts the look between us, but I’m not sure he picks up its significance. And with a sudden flare of rebellion I don’t give a damn if he does know. If he was listening at the door, for that matter. I offer him a broad wink with my prosthetic eye and turn back to surveying the landing platform.

  “Are you all right, Casey?” Soft voice that even sounds concerned.

  I think about all the things I could say. Gabe’s attention is on me, too, subtly, and I settle on a phrase they both will understand, in their very different ways. “Sir.” A long breath. “I got my shit squared away.”

  A fair man of medium height strolls toward us, pushing a desk-worker’s paunch in front of him. Beside him is a petite and tidy woman in Canadian Air Force blues. Richard, who is that?

  I hear his voice as if he whispers in my ear. “The man’s Charles Patrick Forster, Ph.D. He’s a xenobiologist associated with the Avatar project. He’s the guy who figured out the wetware that runs the ships.”

  Xenobiologist? The VR linkages? A moment before that sinks in, and I’m sure it will bother me later. A lot. They’re alien in origin, too?

  “Yes.” Fleeting impression of a smile. “The woman with him is Captain Jaime Wainwright, commanding the Montreal.”

  My CO, then.

  “Yes. Jenny.”

  Richard.

  “Once we’re on the Montreal, once you’re jacked in, I’m going to get the hell out of your head and give you back some privacy. Promise.”

  Thanks.

  “And thanks for the lift.”

  Any time.

  Captain Wainwright comes to a halt in front of me and extends her hand. I return th
e clasp as warmly as I can, managing not to wince when she closes her left hand on my bruised wrist, strong and warm. “Pleasure, Captain.”

  “Likewise, Master Warrant Officer. I guess that makes this a joint army–air force venture?” Her hair’s black as jet, but I imagine she’s a few years older than I am. Beside me, Gabe holds out his hand with a cheerful smile, showing no sign of discomfort when I step on his toe.

  “I’m only just back in the service, Captain.”

  She grins and offers what would be the nicest compliment of any normal day. “By the shine on your shoes, Casey, I never would have guessed.”

  When she turns away from him to greet Valens, and I’m done shaking the biologist’s hand, Gabe offers me a conspiratorial wink and touches the center of his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Dirty, dirty old man. It’s a little difficult to walk normally as he takes my steel arm and steers me after the others, and I’m feeling like a very lucky girl indeed.

  The biologist, Forster, falls into step on my other side. “I understand you’re one of the recipients of the nanite-maintained wetware our team developed. How do you like it?”

  I look at him, and he’s earnest and shining, scrubbed cheeks freckled under close-cropped thinning hair. What do you say to a question like that? “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, Doctor,” I tell him quietly. “My pain’s down 63 percent, my reflexes have actually improved, and I can sleep through the night without drugs for the first time in twenty years. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  His grin turns into a thoughtful pursing of the lips, and he actually seems to consider my question with care. “Yes,” he says at last. “It is.” He glances up at Gabe, who is seemingly oblivious to the conversation. Ahead, Valens chats with the captain. I’m not quite sure where we’re going.

  “Care to hear a little confession, Master Warrant?” He’s been hanging around with army too long.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I got into this line of work because I wanted to—well, I wanted to be in the front lines of whatever we found, out here. I figured the greatest thing I could manage in this lifetime would be what I’ve been doing for the past ten years—studying an alien life form”—my eyes widen, and it’s only Gabe’s grip on my arm that holds me upright—“the shiptree, as I’ve taken to calling it. Have you seen my papers on it?”