OK, if you’re being so God-damned silly, just ask yourself the age-old question. What does she want?
Faint snort of laughter.
Are you really that stupid, Athol Morrison?
Maybe so.
Alix looking me earnestly in the eye, speaking so seriously, though she was squatted down, sitting right on my hand, though my thumb massaged her clitoris, though two of my fingers were sliding upward into her sodden vagina.
We haven’t forgotten, Athy. Haven’t forgotten any of the old dreams. We’ve been waiting for you to come home. Waiting.
Closing her eyes. Kissing me. Breathing hard through her nose. Wrapping both her hands around my penis, pumping mechanically up and down. Letting go when I pushed her onto her back, put my face down there again.
Whispering to me between gasps, after long silences. Tomorrow, she’d said. I’ll show you tomorrow.
I leaned over and fished through the pile of my clothing, found the flat hard square of the phone, whispered to it. Into the net, level Five-high. Talked my way through to the router, asked for Shrêhht by name and number.
Hello, my friend. Vacation going well?
Well.
I’m enjoying your homeworld. I’ll show you mine some day.
I’d like that.
This is a command-circuit...
Yes. Do me a favor. Run a complete cross-index trace on three terrestrials. David Itakë. Marshall Donovan. Alexandra Moreno. Friends of mine.
ID numbers?
I don’t have them handy.
Doesn’t matter.
Brief silence, filled with whispers from the net router.
This is a level Five-high command link. You know this will leave a record. You know it’ll attract the comtrace packager.
I know.
All right.
I folded the phone away and lay on my back, staring up at the sky. Old dreams die hard. Old loves die hard. But just look up at the stars, Athol Morrison. Remember all the things you’ve seen up there. All the things you’ve done.
A universe the likes of which no one ever dreamed. A life the worth of which no one could ever imagine. Not without having been there as well. Try to remember you’ll be going home again soon. All this is just...
I turned on my side and lay watching Alix sleep, almost motionless by the fire.
Eleven. Sunlight Burning on Eyelids
I awoke with sunlight burning on my eyelids and a solid weight on my chest, slightly constricting, breathing just the tiniest bit of an effort. Eyes open. It was mid-morning already, and Alix was sitting astride my chest, knees under my arms, crotch about fifteen centimeters from my face. Looking down at me, curly hair shading her face, eyes in pools of pale shadow. One hand on the side of my head, fingers pushed into my hair, palm cradling the side of my face.
She said, “Last night seemed like a dream, Athy. Sometimes I wonder if you’re really here.”
I too. But then there was the smell of her in my nostrils, faint and crisp, as if she’d already gone down to the lake and washed without me. I looked up at her, into those dark, depthless eyes, and said, “I can’t remember why I came anymore. Maybe this is it.”
Or maybe I’m just lying to you, trying to prolong these false feelings to the very end. I feel like I’m in love. I wish I were. But I will go away, when the time comes. Already, I can see that universe beyond the stars, worlds and war and all my true friends. This is just the dream. Like the dreams you have when you’re young. You dream of a woman. Any woman. Awaken to a fading erection and splashes of cooling semen.
Her eyes registered my words, a sudden, brief depth of feeling apparent, but she only smiled. Smiled and stood, stepping over my head as she got to her feet, me tipping my head back, looking up at her vulva, struck by a brief spasm of want. And why not? Grab her by the ankle, pull her down, roll her onto her back, laugh and tickle, kiss her, force heat into her flesh with the engine of your desire. Make love to her.
I rolled onto my side and stared out across the flat blue surface of the lake. In the distance, on the other side, I could see the collapsed ruin of some old building. The caretaker’s lodge, maybe. A little hotel for people who weren’t interested in “roughing it.”
Behind me, I could hear Alix rummaging in the fire, sorting out coals, getting the flames to come up again, could hear her assembling our breakfast.
Later, when the sun was high, we walked down a gloomy forest trail, surrounded by tall old trees, following the shoulder of some shallow-sloped mountain, ground covered by leaf mold and brown pine needles, gray rock poking through here and there, wherever the hill steepened. There was old trash here, bottles, crushed plastic cans and bits of industrial whatnot, labels gone, colors bleached away by the years, and the trail led above a narrow, half-dry creek.
After a while, we stopped talking, Alix walking on ahead of me, looking around, nervous, pensive, stopping every now and again to glance at this tree or that, stare broodily at some odd rock or another. Finally, in a hollow between two steep hills, the sun so well-hidden by the forest that it was like deep twilight, the trail divided, and Alix stood still, looking at her choice, almost as if waiting.
All right. All right. Speak. Nothing. I said, “When are you going to tell me where we’re going, Alix?”
She spun, eyes wide, fearful. And, at the same time, relieved. Finally, she said, “We’re going to meet some friends of... ours.” A nod to herself at that. Friends of ours. “I wondered if you’d begun to suspect.” To the accompaniment of a very thin little smile, a touch of that familiar Alix.
I shrugged. “I’d guessed I was supposed to suspect something. But I wish you’d been straight with me, Alix.”
She reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out a folded scrap of paper, opened it up, squinting down in the gloom. She looked up at me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.” She gestured at the left branch. “This way.”
It felt like there was a vast, nebulous hand squeezing my heart, making me short of breath. We walked on and, after a while, I said, “Why were you afraid?”
The trail was a bit wider here, enough to let us walk side by side. She took my hand before she spoke, and her fingers felt very small and cold in mine, eyes downcast. “I don’t know if I really know you, Athy. I can’t tell what’s real.” A serious, almost agonized look up at me. “Or whether I’m just imagining all this.”
All what? I said, “I always wanted you to trust me, Alix. Always.” Since when?
She said, “I do trust you. But you did go away.”
I nodded to myself, could see her thinking it was meant for her. Did she imagine I’d stay here, become one with her, resume our old life? Build some facsimile of the life we never had? Her hand was squeezing mine tightly. And I could read fear in those dark eyes. I said, “You have to tell me what you want, Alix.”
Dark eyes in shroud, separating from me, hiding her thoughts again. She said, “In a little while, Athy. Just a little while longer.”
Fear. Fear separates people. I learned that at least, when I was young, before I went away and learned not to be a person any more. Not to care. How old was I? Sixteen maybe? Fifteen? Doesn’t matter.
It was late fall and I was going over to Alix’s house after dinner, just going over to see her for a little while, maybe sit in her room with the door open so she and I could be together while we pretended to work on our homework by lamplight. Parents in the background somewhere, listening perhaps, for sounds of...
Of course they knew what was going on as well as my parents. Knew perfectly well we weren’t going out on weekends to play cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, guerrillas and aliens together.
I could see Alix’s mother look at us for signs when we came home holding hands as the sun went down. That flush on my daughter’s cheeks. That dewy look in her eyes. That smug look on your ugly boy’s face, you rotten, defiling little bastard.
Oh, Hello, Athy! Smile. Smile. Would you like to stay for dinner?
/> It was dark, air crisp outside my jacket as I walked across their ragged lawn, passing around the corner of the house on the way to the front door. Alix’s room was on this side of the house, lamplight filtering yellow-orange through the curtains. I stepped up to the window, peeked over the sash, looked between two edges of heavy cloth.
Alix lying stretched on the bed, stark naked, delicious, just the way she sometimes stretched out naked for me. Waiting. Inviting. Now alone. Head thrown back, mouth open, left hand on her left breast, squeezing, puckered nipple poking up between two fingers. Right hand at her face, fingers in her mouth. Wet fingers arcing down the length of her body, landing between her legs, diving down into the darkness.
Rapid movement starting up so suddenly, a hard, fast circular motion, hips cocking up suddenly, knees apart, lamplight shining off the wet.
I was frozen in place, mouth open, hypnotized. I guess I knew about it, had known, but never given it any thought. What can she be thinking about just now? Me? Some other man, some unknown man, some unknowable man? Some romantic image?
She had her head to one side, had a corner of the pillow between her teeth, biting down hard, grimacing, grimacing. I heard her grunt softly. Motion abruptly stopped. Both hands down at her crotch, on her vulva, not moving, just squeezing ever so gently, hips rocking ever so gently.
What did I know afterwards that I didn’t know before?
Nothing, maybe. Or perhaps just that Alix and I were more alike than different. Hard physical pleasure, born and bred in the genes, there for all of us, no matter what the old myths had to say.
I went in and her parents smiled for me, offered me tea and cookies. Alix’s voice, through the bedroom door, said, Just a minute. And then we did our homework with the door open and Alix smiled at me, cheeks still a little flushed. Put her hand on my thigh every now and again.
I never told her, of course, and now we through the gloomy forest, Alix in the lead again as the trail grew steep and narrow, me watching the slow, effortless rock of her pelvis, remembering a young Alix who masturbated by lamplight. Oh, I know. It was truly a sensual experience for me, watching a woman masturbate, knowing the act was done for its own sake, free of any impulse to control another person’s feelings.
That is why I never told her. Because then she’d know, and the act would be transformed, robbed of its meaning. Just the way seeing her look down at that scrap of paper, seeing her point to the left branch and say, This way, Athy, had so suddenly erased chains of meaning from the past few days.
Was that the whole point of all this?
We’ve been waiting for you, Athy. That’s what she’d said. But, when I looked at her, watched her walk, felt myself flood with longing, it was still very hard to believe. Hard to believe all this...
I had to shake myself inside.
Why are you feeling so bad? When you thought that she... believed in all this, you kept reminding yourself you intended to take whatever she offered. And, when the time came, go on home. So it’s been a splendid vacation at that. Maybe she’s just the burdar you always wanted and could never quite find.
Woolgathering. Watching Alix walk. Tension straightening her spine.
I saw him before Alix did, though she must have been looking for him, saw him before he saw me, though he must have been alert for our coming. The road here was lined with tall, bulky, broad-leaved trees, trees alien in this land of slender, piney woods. An old orchard maybe. No. Not fruiting trees. These were the kind that grew small, hard nuts. Acorns? Can’t remember. Maybe this patch of forest had spread from the trees of some ornamental garden abandoned a hundred years ago, or two, even three.
I scanned the bushes lining both sides of the road and shook my head slowly. Idiots.
Standing on the almost-horizontal branch of a fat old oak tree, one hand on the scarred bark of the trunk, clad from head to toe in a form-fitting suit of some smooth green cloth, a slim, dark-haired man stood daydreaming, looking up at the sky. His green clothes were not quite the same color as the vegetation. Too light, by several shades, for this time of year the leaves of the eastern woodlands are a dark, sullen green, the green of late summer.
Familiar color. I even knew its name: Lincoln green.
Jesus Christ.
One hard pang of anger, barely touched by baffled amusement at what I was seeing.
The man in the tree, whose lower face was hidden by a dull tan bandanna, glanced down, started visibly as he saw me. His hand went to the strap of the glossy black rifle he had slung over one shoulder, as if to swing it round and bring it to bear on me.
Moment of saw-edged tension in my muscles. Nothing’s going to happen. You know that. But the training...
One of those one-false-move-and-you’re-dead situations.
But his hand merely hung there, thumb under the strap as if it were an elastic lapel, then Alix saw him, stopping suddenly in her tracks, looking upward.
I wondered briefly what he would say. Stand and deliver? Your money or you die? What the Hell good would that do?
He said, “Hello, Alix. Glad you could make it.”
She waved up at him, almost timidly.
I think the hot, tired feeling in my throat was only disappointment. I don’t think I was about to cry. Not quite. I said, “Come on down, Davy. I’m afraid you’ll fall out of the tree.”
A tableau. Silence. Did he think I wouldn’t recognize his voice? He said, “Um. All right, Athy.”
I glanced at the bushes beneath the tree. “You too, Marsh. You and your friend.” A quiet scuffling sound, something like an intake of breath. “These folks on the other side of the path, too.” I gestured, didn’t look.
Alix was staring up at me, wide-eyed, astonished. Did any of them think they were doing anything other than playing a game? Davy said, “Sure, Athy. Um. Come on out, guys.”
Davy. Marsh and his girlfriend, Sandy whatshername. A half-dozen people I more or less recognized. Faces from the bar. The grown-up faces of children I’d once known. Maybe played with from time to time. Every one of them armed, all of their guns the same. Old fashioned military rifles, regular human combat issue, slim and black, launchers really for little self-propelled projectiles. Spahis still use them sometimes. The old X-cracker charges can be damned effective, but that residual induced-radiation can be a nuisance.
“This all of you?”
Looking up at me, Davy pulled down his bandanna, and said, “Well, no. We’ve got a camp a few kilometers from here. It’s almost dinnertime.”
Almost dinnertime. I looked at Alix, who seemed nonplused. “What is this, a surprise party?” Blank look, followed by something like fear. “It’s not my birthday.”
Marsh said, “You still got that little pistol in your pocket, Athy?”
I looked him in the eye. “You make a better cop than I ever would’ve expected, Marsh.”
He gave me a wan smile. “It’s easy to be dumb.”
I guess so. I took Alix by the hand, felt her fingers squeeze gratefully on mine. “Lead the way, Davy.”
o0o
Another gloomy forest trail, this one very old and very artificial. The forest here was wide open, trees towering above us, turning the day murky yellow-green, and I could see collapsed square holes in the ground here and there, usually the focus of what little underbrush there was. The trail showed some signs of having once been paved, and there were the remains of stone slab stairs wherever the trail got particularly steep.
River down there somewhere, splashing away. Probably an old millrace or two. The people who’d lived here had been the millworkers, and this had once, back in the Nineteenth century maybe, been a rural industrial center of sorts.
They’d all gone broke and moved away during the great wave of urbanization, gone away long ago and given the forest time to grow up through the ruins of their homes.
Maybe children had played here once. Maybe not. Maybe the children were all too busy working in the mill. Small children then. Bareass children beca
use they weren’t quite housebroken yet. You could almost hear them scuffling and screeching, like ghosts whispering over the sound of an unfelt wind.
“Why the Hell are you wearing a Robin Hood suit, Davy?”
He glanced back at me, surprised, then grinned and fingered his green lapels. “We found them in the ruins of a costume shop over in downtown Raleigh.”
Marsh said, “It’s against the law to wear military camouflage, Athy.”
“Whose law?”
Pensive look. “Mine. Sort of.” Sandy was holding his hand, the two of them more or less walking in step with Alix and me.
“How’d you get up here? You can’t all have travel passes.”
“Well. Sagoths aren’t really monitored...”
Davy laughed softly. “No one’s really monitored. They just don’t seem to care what we do.”
Until they become a nuisance, do you care what ants are up to? Even then, anti-ant pogroms are always local. Even so, the ants never win. “So?”
A shrug. “It’s easy enough to get around. Local freight. Still plenty of private cars left over. Electrified localities that...” He exchanged glances with Marsh, the two of them... what? Warning each other? “Well. It’s easy enough.”
Maybe not quite as stupid as they seem.
Marsh said, “We’re trusting you now, Athy, showing you... what’s going on. We’ve... talked about this a lot. Every since we knew you were coming home. Talked about what it might mean.”
Baffling. What the hell could they have imagined it meant? Did no one suppose I just wanted to see the place again?
Davy said, “If you tell anybody... Well, you know what’ll happen to us all.” He nodded meaningfully at Alix, who was looking up at me with that same put-on earnest look that she tended to don like a mask at need.
Shit. I tried to ignore a passing wave of faraway anger. Of not wanting things further... spoiled. “I won’t tell.”
I could see Davy relax. Not Marsh, though.
Alix squeezed my hand again, and said, “What happens if we’re all caught some day and they find out you... knew?”
When Heaven Fell Page 18