When Heaven Fell

by Barton, William

  And something of Smithfield was still intact as well, a cluster of old houses formed up as a native bustee. I couldn’t recall ever having been here, though I must have been many times, passing through with my parents on the way to Topsail Beach. It must have been a city back then.

  All around now, there was nothing but olive green forest. And, in the far distance, far to the south, a tall, pale column of thin gray smoke, rising off the horizon, standing up into the sky, its top sheared away finally by some hard high-altitude wind.

  Alix stood silently at the rail, staring at the smoke. Below the platform, near the bustee’s central square, a large group of men and women stood together, shackled into a line of chains, very much like coffled Boromilithi in transit. A local work gang? Not likely. About two thirds of them were obviously of primary European decent, people with soft brown or yellow hair that would blow around in a wind, skins burning red under the bright sun.

  There were Saanaae here too. Too damned many of them. Carrying their rifles at port arms, formed up into squads. Sagoths as well, standing in little bunches. All of them looking very nervous. Talking too much. No bystanders, other than the people from the train. Houses of the bustee all closed up. Shades drawn. Doors closed.

  The tag-ends of the coffle were spiked into the ground.

  I looked around the platform. Everyone was watching. Passengers all wide-eyed, some of them turning around, getting right back on the train, if they could, transfers bunching up on the far edge of the platform, maybe hoping their own train would just damned well show up...

  Alix’s hands were gripping the railing hard, knuckles standing out faint red against taut white skin. All right. Everyone knows but me. Even the train-sagoths clearly wish they were elsewhere.

  I counted quickly. Twenty-seven of them. Noise from down below now. One of the prisoners was crying softly, but I couldn’t tell which one.

  Squad of Saanaae was behind them now, sagoths backing out of the way, stumbling over their own feet. A snapped order. The Saanaae sat like dogs. Another. The rifles were aimed. Another. The rifles fired, muzzles sparkling blue, brighter than sunlight. Again. Again. Again.

  A faint echo from somewhere far away. Twenty-seven men and women lying on the ground, smoking curling up from their bodies in little wisps. The faint smell of roast pork in our nostrils.

  I looked down at Alix. She was still watching, hands still white on the rail, eyes very hard indeed, lips drawn into a very slight frown.

  o0o

  There are subtle differences in the Atlantic seen from the Outer Banks instead of Cape Cod, the green seawater a little browner, perhaps, a little friendlier somehow. Maybe it was just the warm summer sun making pins and needles on our backs, the knowledge that the water would be blood-warm when we walked into it, like a familiar, welcoming bath.

  Wrightsville Beach was deserted, unkept-up, sand ridged into low terraces by the incoming tide, and wide gullies had formed everywhere, running back up into the dunes, opening crevices between stands of otherwise solid, low green shrubbery. Behind the dunes was a collapsed rubble of holiday housing, already overgrown by weeds, thin saplings pushing up through mounds of wood and plaster and plastic. The tall, black and ceramic towers of modern Wilmington were visible in the distance, standing above the intervening forest, in the sky the silent silver fleck of a departing aircraft, heading off into the west, toward the sun.

  We spread our blanket on the ground not far from a single long line of shallow human footprints, where someone had come walking alone up the beach. Small footprints. A boy. A teenaged girl, perhaps. Nearby, whoever it was stopped and sat in the sand, making a little rump-crater, and played with a rubble of shells. Set some of them up to spell out a word, but pieces had been kicked loose, so all I could make out was an “E” and an “N.” A name perhaps.

  I sat and watched Alix undress, standing half turned away toward the sea, but looking at me as I watched her. Hands over her head, stretching, running her hands through her hair. Smiling, but almost nervous. Self-conscious.

  She kicked off her sandals and stepped off the blanket, standing in the warm sand, moving her feet from side to side slightly, sinking in. Looking away then, for just a moment, before reaching up and undoing the buttons at the front of her blouse, shrugging out of it, dropping it onto the blanket beside me.

  Then the buttons at the side of her short summer skirt, dropping it around her ankles, stepping out of it, kicking it up onto the blanket too. There was a hint of color in her cheeks, her eyes starting to wander now, to look away from me more.

  I kept looking away from her face, toward where her breasts were hidden by a rather plain and somewhat worn white brassiere, toward the front of her underpants, where I could make out the shape and color of her pubic hair through the cloth.

  She said, “I can remember when you wouldn’t watch me undress.” She reached her arm back, elbow bending at an awkward angle, and unhooked the bra, shrugged it forward off her shoulders, breasts sagging down onto her chest wall.

  I nodded. “I was always afraid to watch. Afraid you’d stop, I guess, if you knew I was... looking.”

  She laughed, brushing her hand through her hair again. “I always used to wonder why. I was doing it for you...” She hooked her thumbs under the waistband of the briefs and slid them down, bending, stepping out, tossing them onto the pile of her clothes.

  She was lovely naked, and so very different. Nothing about her of those slim, just so lines I’d come to expect from women placed at my disposal. Thickened about the waist, stomach rounded, thighs sleek and full, little striations like stretch marks at the top of her breasts, little pouched places at the front of her armpits, showing the excess flesh.

  I kneeled up and started unbuttoning my shirt, still looking at her, trying to keep my eyes on her face, repeatedly having them wander off to those other parts. “I think boys really feel they’re asking girls to do something nasty. Maybe they think their tricking them. You know: If I pretend not to notice, maybe she won’t figure out what’s going on until it’s too late...”

  That soft laugh again. “While you were busy hoping I wouldn’t notice what we were playing at, I used to hope you’d just put your face right here.” She gestured at her mons. “For about six months before we ever did anything, I used to go home at night and masturbate, imagining what it’d feel like if you ever did.”

  I stood and kicked off my shoes, undid my trousers and stepped out of them. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  She was looking at me, inspecting my body, not even making a pretense of being interested in my face. “Because... girls don’t.”

  A simple phrase, covering all the oddities of a complex, enduring culture. There’d been a pretense of change, in historical eras past, but nothing ever hung on.

  She said, “I never really got a good look at you before.” She looked up at my face then, something like pain in her eyes. “You’re still so young.”

  I put one hand onto the side of her face, running my fingers back into the hair behind her ear. “It’s not youth. More like the gloss you see on a well-cared-for machine.”

  A somber look into my eyes, a searching look, then we turned and walked toward the sea, hand in hand.

  The water was warm, no shock of entry, almost too warm, almost soporific, the bottom slimy with soft mud and algae that squeezed between our toes, the imported beach sand long-ago washed away, covered up by biological action. No debris though. No old cans, bottles, whatever. There were bits of wood. Pieces of broken shell, sharp, like slivers of dull glass.

  We followed the slope down until the water was up to Alix’s shoulders, the middle of my chest, the roll of the incoming tide rocking us gently back and forth, low rollers moving up the beach with a dull roar-hiss behind us, and stood facing each other. Beyond Alix, I could see all the way to the flat horizon, the world coming to an abrupt end not so far away.

  Once upon a time, there’d’ve been sailboats out there, sails almost always w
hite. I wonder how I’d feel if there were more Saanaae sailors just now. More at home maybe, feeling less that we were inhabiting some lost Limbo of an empty world.

  Alix was standing close to me, and I could feel her breasts floating in the ocean water, moving with the currents, nipples rubbing against my chest. She reached out to hold onto me with one hand, holding into my hip, her feet coming off the bottom from time to time, using me as a stable platform, my center of gravity higher, my chest and shoulders standing maybe twenty centimeters farther out of the water.

  Tall. I’d forgotten she was very tall for a woman.

  She said, “I used to dream about coming here with you. Especially after you left.” A long look into my face, her free hand trailing across my chest. “You remember going to the beach when you were a kid?”

  A nod.

  “I wish we could’ve come here together.”

  But, by then, the world had come to an end. “We had the lake. And we’re here now.” I put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her against my chest, enfolding her, wanting to feel the evolution of some special kind of closeness, but I could feel her hand stealing between my legs now, fumbling around.

  o0o

  Up on the beach, she lay on the blanket, legs drawn up, one arm thrown across her face, and I kneeled between her legs while sunlight poured down on us out of a glare-filled, pale blue sky. I could feel her tissues expand under my mouth, swelling as they moistened, watch the muscles of her abdomen alternately tighten and relax, her clitoris becoming a soft, buried little ball under my tongue.

  No whispers this time, just quickened breathing, become panting, her mouth open now, head thrown back under that concealing arm. Her orgasm was an astonished grunt, a sudden soaking under my chin.

  I kneeled between her legs, sitting back on my heels, waiting while her breathing slowed, waiting until she peeked out at me from under that shadowing arm. Faint smile. Gesture. Come hither. She said, “Now...”

  I crawled forward onto her, sinking into that warm, wet heat we’d made together.

  o0o

  We went swimming again later, washing away what we’d done, and later built a fire on the beach, cooked a dinner of summer sausages, baked the knobby little potatoes we’d brought with us, while sunset flamed in the sky, ridges of fire forming out over the sea, clouds of red and orange framing the sun as it fell down through the forest behind us.

  We ate dinner naked, sitting cross-legged on the blanket in the lengthening shadows, looking at each other. There was a softness in Alix’s eyes now, softer than anything I’d seen yet. A budding familiarity. A face that said, I remember now...

  And I will confess to an odd feeling in me. A breaking down of very old walls. Remember, when you loved her more than anything else? When no one and nothing else mattered? So what if the world had to come to an end? Alix and I found each other...

  I remember thinking that, one night when I was fifteen years old. I was kneeling between her legs then, sitting back on my heels, looking down at her, bedded on a blanket atop brown grass in some summery, abandoned Chapel Hill field. She was almost asleep, hardly aware of my eyes on her body and face.

  I remember how the sight of her genitals, wet with my semen, used to thrill me...

  In the here and now, she said, “What’re you smiling at, Athy?”

  “I was remembering other times just like this.”

  That somber, so-serious look. “I’m glad you remember.”

  But I hadn’t spent that much time remembering, in all the years I’d been away. I could remember kneeling between Hani’s legs even now, looking down at her delicately exposed vulva, so small and sparsely haired. If I looked up at Hani’s face, I’d see her eyes, open, waiting, attentive.

  I watched Alix put a bit of cooked sausage in her mouth, chew reflectively, swallow, lick her fingers, all without taking her eyes off mine. I wondered what my face looked like to her just now. I said, “Why is this happening?” A gesture, at the two of us.

  She said, “I don’t know. Are you sorry it is?”

  No answer, not even a shrug. I said, “What do you... want from me?”

  A flinch, a sudden closing down of her features, eyes looking away, starting to withdraw.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” We never do, do we? A thousand flickering memories of women taking hurt from the chance vagaries of curtailed grammar.

  Her eyes came back, curious, but guarded now.

  I said, “What do you want from... all of this? From us.”

  A long look, straight into my eyes, unflinching. And as if she were reading my soul. I wanted to throw up my walls of glass, shut her out, make her be a dying warrior whose heart I was about to pluck out. But the resource to do so was gone, the walls of glass no more than a distant shattering sound, glass become dust, blowing away on the wind like so much thin white sand.

  She said, “Make love to me again, Athy. I won’t have you here with me forever.”

  Nine. Warm Sunlight

  I was awakened by warm sunlight, lensed onto my face by the window of Alix’s Carrboro hovel, gradually pushing through layers of lightening sleep, making me conscious of sensation and the world. I could feel her leg thrown over me, knee propped on my hip, foot tucked between my calves, other leg cast straight down, thigh pressed front-to-front with mine. Her breath was a warm sensation on my cheek, breasts flattened into my chest.

  We’d slept like this on the beach, too, wrapped in a rough woolen blanket that itched on our skins, while the fire crackled in the background and died down to embers, the sea chuffing softly as the tide came in and then receded.

  When the moon came up, waning slightly from full, its pale, cold light made the beach a ghostland, tiny crabs coming up to look at us, eyes on stalks, expressionless, like so many faraway nonhumans. No urge at all to kill them. Until the Masters told me to.

  Alix stirred against my chest, tucking her hips in, pressing her abdomen against mine, murmuring softly, nothing like real words, and when I opened my eyes hers were already open, hazily waiting. She smiled. “You slept peacefully all night. You usually don’t.”

  Already getting used to me, learning my habits. I nodded. “You’re... making me comfortable.” That made her smile, and kiss me.

  She said, “You still want to go on the camping trip? Like... old times?” A curious look, the apparent fear that I’d only been seduced by that night out on the beach, being drugged by sex and more sex until I could hardly think anymore.

  But, like old times... I said, “I think this is why I came home, Alix.” This time, when she kissed me, she put her tongue in my mouth, slow and languorous, pressing herself against me full length, curling her leg behind my back and pulling me close.

  I could feel myself starting to erect against her, hardly any awareness left to wonder just what the hell I was doing.

  And she was grinning into my face, slowly grinding her hips against me, and whispering, “I think this is what I waited for...”

  It was a tiny particle of fear, so easily smothered, not so easily forgotten.

  o0o

  Later, walking alone down a narrow dirt track in the young woods that had grown up between Carrboro and Chapel Hill, I felt grainy-eyed and strange. Larger than I had been and lighter, as if I’d somehow grown more tenuous. And emptied of thought, merely walking like a shadow through an empty world, listening to the faraway hiss of the wind, watching a few diffuse white clouds move across the blue backdrop of the sky.

  She’d clung to me when I’d taken my leave, watching as I took a spongebath in her little basin, pouring well-water from a bucket, cleaning myself with her threadbare washcloth and a cake of some hard, homemade soap.

  We’ll leave tomorrow. There’re a few things I have to do. I’ll be back by this evening. I’ll take you out again. We’ll have dinner with our friends...

  Can’t I come with you?

  I need to be alone for a little bit. Let my head clear some.

/>   That fearful look.

  I’d laughed and ruffled her hair, had held her close. Don’t look so concerned. It’s just a habit I have.

  Oh.

  I’ll be back. I will.

  o0o

  Then, in the dark rooms of the Master’s castle, I dialed into the command net, level 5-high, and secured the necessary permissions before using the antiquated human datanet interface to link with the planetary resource base.

  On the day I arrived, as I’d ridden down on the monorail, Saanaae police, aided by several squads of recently imported Kkhruhhuft mercenaries, interdicted and captured a party of humans moving northward along the forest trails that had formed up on the Piedmont plateau, usually following the routes of old secondary highways, some of which had been abandoned since the early twenty-first century. Approximately sixty humans killed. They’d had time to set up an old portable Jackrabbit SAM launcher and knock down one Saanaae gunship, but the Kkhruhhuft had taken them out pretty easily.

  Smoke cloud, south of Smithfield, along the old I-95 corridor: Saanaae police, aided by native auxiliaries, captured a military small-arms cache located northwest of where Fayetteville had been. It had, apparently, been left there thirty years ago, hidden by a squad of North American Marines, shortly before they turned themselves in to the occupation authorities. A small party of humans, led by a former squad member, put up no resistance and were dispatched quietly when no further leads could be developed.

  One Sirkar native policeman was accidentally killed in the incident. Some of the old munitions turned out to be unstable.

  A quick look through the list. Incident after incident, stretching back almost ten years. Numbers slowly increasing. Not a problem, given how many Saanaae had been brought to Earth. It was assumed, once Earth had been further depopulated by selective emigration, that the problem would decrease until it was gone. That was the usual pattern.