Davy said, “Be careful, Alix. You know this neighborhood...”
A cue to me? Maybe. I stood, and said, “Would you like me to walk you home?”
A measured look, serious, eyes dark and deep. “Sure.” She turned toward the door.
I looked at Lank and Davy, at Marsh. “I’ll see you both later. Say good night to Sleeping Beauty for me...” and followed her.
Outside, the night had cooled and a stiff breeze had come up, making the young trees of the surrounding forest hiss against each other. Most of the fires were out now, or banked down to glowing coals, but a full Moon had risen, a brilliant yellow-white circle washing out the starry sky, giving the heavens a slight indigo cast, throwing shadows on the ground like the light from streetlamps.
I felt just a little dizzy, metabolizing all that beer.
Alix stood still for a minute, looking up at me, hands on her hips, solid and handsome in the well-lit night. Not really the girl I remembered. Just hints of her, fossilized relics embedded in this woman. Nothing for us to say, I suppose. Just looking at each other. Wondering. Who were we, now?
She said, “I’m living in one of the old houses on Pine Street. They seemed to survive better than some of the newer ones.”
We walked, and Alix walked by my side, close enough for me to be conscious of her presence, even when I couldn’t see her. A small form, compared to mine, footfalls light, barely audible in the night. Calling to me. I knew I wanted to put my arm around her, hold her close, walk with her the way we’d walked in the darkness long ago.
Times past, walking in the night, sometimes with a destination, sometimes just walking. Sometimes finding a dry field or forest glade, depending on season and weather, pausing to kiss and handle each other, and sometimes make love...
I realized with a slight shock that Alix was holding my hand now.
Maybe. Maybe we would have stopped right then and there, maybe we would have gone up onto a nearby hillside, what remained of a once carefully-tended front lawn I could barely make out in the shadowed moonlight. Maybe we would have lain together in the soft summer grass. Maybe.
But when I turned to face her, I could see dark shapes come out of the woods, stepping onto the pavement, hurrying to surround us. Click to attention. Five heavyset men, dressed in jeans and sleeveless jerkins, so we could see their muscular arms. Maybe in the daylight, we could have seen their tattoos, the greasy shine of their longish hair.
I heard Alix gasp and recoil against me. I did put my arm around her then.
I could see well enough in the dark to know that three of the men were Caucasian, one of mostly African descent, the last so mixed I had no idea. Somewhat Asian-looking, perhaps, but squatty and rather broad-faced. Three were holding knives, the other two big sticks, the sawed-off stems and solid rootball from the woody reeds that grew down along Bolin Creek. I’d made knob-kerries like these to play with when I was a boy.
It was the mongrel who stepped forward now, pointing at me with his slim knife blade, shining like a metal sliver in the moonlight. “Lovers’ Lane is it?” His eyes were on Alix though, not me, focused toward her pelvis. Not a very bright mugger, evidently. The other men were looking at her too. I could feel her shrinking against me, but not shaking.
She said, “Bastard. Leave us alone.”
One of the other men snickered and grabbed his own crotch, rubbing suggestively.
The mongrel laughed, and said, “Tell you what, son. You leave your wallet on the ground and walk away. We’ll let your girlie go when we’re done with her.” I could feel Alix’s muscles tighten then, sure of what must be coming.
She’d be hoping I’d do something now. Maybe she’d been through scenes like this before with other men, escorts who wouldn’t risk their lives to save her from a little rough sport...
I thought about the little gun in my pocket. Not a good idea. There were people living in the woods around here. Innocent bystanders. Besides, then I’d have to make a formal report through the Net, as well as, doubtless, fill out all sorts of forms for the Sirkar and sagoths...
I said, “You’d better not do this.”
The mongrel said, “You’re not a big enough boy to stop us, pally.” Their eyes were gleaming now, wide open, and a couple of them were grinning. Anticipation. I could hear Alix’s breathing quicken. Afraid. Wanting to run. Not wanting to leave my side. Something.
I put my hand firmly on her hip and pushed her back away from me, heard her stumble and grunt softly, confused. Then I turned to the five men. “All right,” I said. “Too late.”
You could see our moonshadow on the ground for just a moment, the shadows of five slim young men, mine facing them, larger, thicker, Alix’s woman-shape in silhouette off to one side. Not running away. Waiting for me. No way to know why. She could probably make it to Davys while I fought them, maybe even bring help. Hell. Maybe she thought I didn’t need help.
Then the shadows shifted, my arm reaching out, thick and black, rippling as it passed over a crack in the pavement. The mongrel’s arm made a popping sound, the crackle of an extracted turkey drumstick, as it came out of its socket, and he dropped his knife, turning toward the pain, trying to pull back. Sharp intake of breath through his nose.
His shadow flailed as I picked him up, a momentary squeak of surprise-terror as I spun him, and two other shadows bowled away, grunts from the men as I knocked them down. The African screamed when I kicked him in the chest, a short, chopped sound, then I twisted his neck and heard the hard crack of his vertebrae giving out.
I turned again, grabbed another man, someone swinging a big stick, pulled him across my body, broke his weapon-arm, popping the elbow apart, then broke his back over my knee for good measure.
Someone was getting up, muttering “Jesuschrist, jesuschrist...” turning to run away. I stamped on the mongrel’s neck, heard him make a last, short, gagging cry as he died, caught the runner with a hard kick in the back, sharp, rippling crackle letting me know I’d broken his ribs off at their spinal roots. He went down on his face, silent.
In the distance, in the darkness, I could hear the fading footfalls of the last man. No sense in chasing him.
The man whose back and arm I’d broken was lying curled on the pavement, crying softly to himself, murmuring something, words garbled and full of fluid. Punctured lung maybe. I kneeled beside him, smoothed his hair softly with my fingers, gentling him, then cradled his head in my hands and quickly snapped his neck.
Four shadows on the ground. Debris.
I stood and turned to face Alix.
She was standing right where I’d pushed her, one hand held to her temple, clutching at her own hair, staring, eyes wide, at the men on the ground, at me, mouth open slightly, breathing a little fast. She whispered, “Oh, God, Athy...”
A moment of tension, then she was against me, arms around me, holding on, whispering. “Oh, Christ....”
I held her close, cradling her head against my shoulder, smoothing her hair, running my hands through soft, slightly stiff curls. I could feel her heart pounding against me, gradually getting slower and slower, her breathing back to normal. Finally, she pulled back a little way, still holding on, and looked up at my face. “I guess... I guess you’ve been trained for this sort of thing.”
I nodded, marveling at the feel of her in my arms.
She said, “You weren’t so tough... back then.”
I said, “Nobody was back then.”
We left them on the ground behind us as we walked on. Maybe someone would come clean them up in the morning.
Alix’s house was a little cottage nestled in a grove of tall, thin, scaly evergreen trees. Inside, it was full of shadows, moonlight streaming through cracked and cloudy plastic windows, and there was very dim, ruddy light coming from a brazier standing by the hearth. Alix made a dark shadow kneeling beside it, leaning into the fireplace, and I could heard the clunking of wood, the delicate crackle of kindling being broken. Finally, she picked up a dull red coal
in a pair of tongs, blew on it delicately, making it glow more orange, then held it into the wood. Yellow flames leaped up, the fire catching quickly, pale smoke heading up the flue, the room filling with a cheerful, flickery light.
Alix remained kneeling as the flames reached higher, beginning to crackle, then roar softly, looking up at me, holding the tongs loosely in one hand. Finally, she said, “Lit from below like this, your eyes are hollow. Like some kind of demon.”
I returned her smile, then she said, “Where did you get those scars?”
I reached up and felt my face, the long scar reaching across my left cheek, making the corner of my mouth turn up slightly, the rougher scar where my forehead had been laid open. “I’m a soldier.”
She put the tongs aside and stood gracefully, coming over to me, standing close, breasts barely brushing against my chest, reaching up to run her fingers gently over the scars. “Don’t they have plastic surgery software out there?”
“It’s not our custom.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t lose your eye.”
“I did lose it. The Masters won’t let us keep any functionally negative disfigurements.”
She’d come closer now, breasts flattening against my body, and I put my arms around her, leaned down and kissed her, tasting beer, but also the underlying sweetness of her mouth. Her tongue reached up for mine, smooth here, rough there, testing me, probing. When we broke, she laid her head against my chest for a moment, and I heard her whisper, “I guess we do...”
That same phrase, the one she’d said so long ago, when two friends, longtime playmates, embraced in a forest glade and kissed for the first time, answering the unspoken question: Do we love each other? I guess we do...
And so, just like on that long ago evening, I slid my hands down her back, feeling supple muscle, feeling the flare of her hips, the gentle curve of her buttocks, and she tipped her head back to kiss me again.
Charade movements. Suddenly, I realized how often I’d made my burdars play out this scene. Pretend you love me, Hani. Pretend. Pretend. Hani was good at pretending. They all were. The ones who couldn’t pretend were washed out of basic training, so the soldiers never knew them.
Alix’s hands ran down my sides, holding me by the hips, reaching around to feel my back, the muscle ridges and scars under my clothing, and I held her close, kissed her, whispered to her, until we were lying on her soft old carpet, half undressed, running our hands over each other’s bodies, just the way we used to. Her breasts were softer than they’d been years ago, the muscles of her stomach lightly padded now, no longer so close to the surface. But she sighed, just the way she always had, and clung to me, rubbed against me, breathing in my face, a whisper of desire...
An agony of remembrance. And moments of bemused delight. I reached between her legs, running my fingers through a luxury of thick, almost woolly hair, far different from my burdars, ran my fingertips over delicately swollen flesh, felt silky moisture everywhere.
How much like the burdars? Not at all. A sexual partner here of her own accord, here because she desired me, rather than because she was an employee, doing her job...
Time passed, the tension between us increasing, our whispers full of the past, of all we’d meant to each other, so long ago, then Alix was lying full length on top of me, holding my penis in her mouth, pressing her pubic bone against my chin, urging me to act, urgent in her desire. I put my mouth on her, tongue pushing past that bounty of crisp hair, tasting her. Almost sweet, the organic balm of a healthy woman, moisture glistening in the firelight.
Evolution saw to this, I thought, briefly distracted, that a man would be drawn to the taste and smell of a woman’s genitals, that a woman’s reproductive cycle would be accelerated by the prostaglandins in semen. Binding forces, men and women making love, triggering each other’s biological determinatives, making sure they would make love over and over, until the pregnancy was secure. Binding the woman to the man with the pregnancy itself. Binding the man to the woman with insidious biochemistry, so the offspring would be protected and nurtured...
But I tasted her, ran my fingers into her, heard her soft intake of breath, felt the movement of her mouth upon me, the way she pressed her body against mine, binding flesh to flesh, branding me with herself.
As if that original brand had ever faded.
Then I was lying on top of her, our mouths pressed together, my hips curling under, thrusting into her, the soft slide of slick tissues on my skin, sensation reaching up into my spine, while she ground against me, hips moving in smallish circles, rubbing her mons against my lower abdomen, our passions feeding on each other now...
She suddenly grabbed me hard, breaking our kiss, pressing her head back against the carpet, eyes open but blind in the firelight, mouth open, and I could feel her inner muscles clenching, clenching hard, relaxing. One soft grunt, terminating in a sigh, a delicate shiver, and she started to subside, hands trailing gently down the length of my spine...
My orgasm came and went of its own accord, while I looked into her eyes.
o0o
With morning light, I awoke from a violent dream, still curled around Alix where we’d slept on her carpet, her damp back pressed against my chest, curly hair in my face, hips tucked into the angle formed by my thighs and abdomen. Sunlight was streaming through the windows at a low angle, making a hot-looking yellow patch on the floor nearby, dust motes lit up and swirling in the beam.
I could feel her heart beating against me, slow and gentle, letting me know she was still asleep, her breathing barely perceptible, the rise and fall of her chest under my hand almost sporadic.
The dream was an old one. I and my comrades in our armor, with our guns, marching across the dusty plains of some old, almost-dead world, giving it the coup de grâce. A little blue sun burns in the sky, an empty and fathomless hole, a window into some other dimension, throwing lurid white shadows on the dull orange ground.
We march, and the natives are waiting for us, across the plain. They are bold, manlike things, with skins of old leather, tanned hides, hides we can hang on our trophy walls with scarcely more than the work of removing their inhabitants.
The natives wait, brave, impassive, knowing what will happen. And we raise our guns, and we kill them all, a killing fire so bright it makes the blue sun go dim...
The Masters, we think, approve, but we have no way to know. The Masters aren’t real, can’t feel, can’t approve. All they can do is certify that we’ve carried out their instructions correctly.
Then they send down all the little blue poppits to clean up the debris, red eyes gleaming, without real awareness, red mouths agape, working, working, like ants. Or machines.
Alix began to stir against my chest, leaning back into me, sighing, yawning, and I could feel her muscles begin to stretch against each other, alternately tightening and relaxing, her buttocks shifting, sliding against each other, gliding on the skin of my thighs. Her head tipped back, turning, and I could see her looking at me out of the corner of one eye. She smiled slightly, an almost-shy look.
I leaned down and kissed her gently beside the eye, and said, “Good morning, Alix...” Like a whisper, my voice rough with sleep.
Her own was soft and clear: “I never thought you’d be here for me again.”
“Nor I.”
She turned the rest of the way in my arms, leaned in and kissed me, her mouth tasting of sleep, perhaps of our lovemaking. I waited her out, not wanting to spoil anything for her. When she finished, she pulled back a ways, and I could see her eyes were misty with something like unshed tears. She said, “I still love you, Athy. I didn’t think I did, not after you were gone so long, but...”
I nodded, and hugged her close. What should I say? Gentle lies, knowing I would be gone again in a few weeks, that I could put all of this behind me once and for all if I chose? Or be brutal, for her sake, push her away, hope she’d finally let go of my memory, of the childish dream we’d shared? I said, “I never really forg
ot how I felt about you, Alix. It’s... why I came back, I suppose.”
She put her hand on my stomach, that familiar half smile on her face again, let her fingers slide down onto my abdomen, where she could feel the tension of a building erection. I wondered for a moment if that would spoil the feelings for her, but she smiled, holding me, and said, “I’m glad you came home.” Somehow, it seemed as though I’d never gone away.
o0o
After breakfast, we dressed together, still skittish in our newfound familiarity, and went outside. It was midmorning, cool for a North Carolina August, and we went for a walk, heading down by the old monorail track, toward the woods behind the high school, where we’d walked so often. Talking, holding hands, pretending.
The trail beside Bolin Creek was still intact, much the way I remembered it, but the trees were taller now, and seemed farther apart, the underbrush a little sparser. The forest is maturing, I realized, taking on that natural park-like appearance that the Carolina forests had had when the first Europeans arrived six hundred years ago.
The Natives did that. Burned out the underbrush, so the deer would come live around them, a form of Neolithic animal husbandry...
After a while, Alix let go my hand and walked closer to me, putting her arm around my waist, molding her form to mine, shrugging in under my shoulder so I had to put my arm around her. I felt, for just a moment, as if I’d fallen into a dream.
Surge of old emotions, old feelings, thoughts that I’d put safely away, long, long ago. I loved this woman, when she was a girl and I was no more than a child. Loved her with the intensity you only know from your first love, no matter how profound those other, later loves may become. Now? I couldn’t say. Maybe I didn’t know.
But, from moment to moment, that sudden rush of innocent joy, threatening to spill over me, though I sought to push it away...
What good will this do? The weeks will pass, and then I must go, back to the land beyond the sky, to soldier, to do the bidding of my Master...
When Heaven Fell Page 10