When Heaven Fell

by Barton, William

  o0o

  Moonlight shining on water, glittering on the little waterfall, lighting up the trees of the forest, making ghostly shadows out of the world. The Moon itself floated disembodied in a vast, hollow sky, stars turning in their courses behind it, icy and far away. There were wisps of cloud up there somewhere, backlit lace blowing in the wind.

  A creaking of distant crickets. Waterfall splashing, high and musical. Cold water gurgling deep as it spilled over the rim, went trickling away to the forest floor below.

  And my Alexandra, up to her shoulders in the pool, face a hand’s breadth from mine, so close it was hard to see whole, image dominated by shining eyes and white teeth and the black shadows of her hair, hair asparkle with droplets lit from the sky.

  No words, though we’d talked a little on our way through the forest.

  I’m so glad you’re here now, Athy. I was so afraid...

  Stopping every now and then to embrace and kiss and whisper to each other, arms holding on tight, hands sliding across our backs, downward to hips, bodies shifting, juxtaposing appropriate parts. Gentle shifting. Bodies knowing.

  Then standing by the side of the reflecting pool, looking down at the little world’s reflection, while Alix unbuttoned my shirt, slid her hands inside, fingers on my chest, warm on my sides, reaching back to touch the trough of my spine.

  A whisper of pleasure as she felt those solid layers and bulges, each one giving ever so slightly to her touch.

  I felt very much a hollow man as she knelt and unbuckled my belt, took off my boots, helped me step out of my trousers. Pressed her face into my belly, tongue massaging flesh. Stood up, stepped away, warm night breeze cooling the wet spot she’d left behind.

  Another whisper: “God, you’re beautiful...” Like an icon, perhaps.

  I stepped forward and undressed her then, unbuttoning blouse, unhooking brassier, letting them fall onto the pile of my clothing, mouth to her breasts, hands to her waist. Unlaced her boots and took them off, small white feet on bare wet stone, slid down her trousers and made a wet spot of my own. Felt her shiver under my touch.

  A hard, aching moment of uncertainty. It always seems like this must mean something. Especially when the words have been said. But the burdars shiver under your touch too, and will say the words if you ask.

  We slid into the water, its apparent iciness freezing our skins, making them first numb, then wonderfully oversensitive. I held Alix close, feeling her breasts on me, felt her hand on my genitals, exploring their relaxed shape.

  All those old images flooding in. Alix and I as no longer quite children, exploring the beginnings of life together in the ruins. Alix and I young, making all our plans. Alix and I in a life that never existed, so happy together, sharing a whole world of dreams.

  I put my hand between her legs, holding her on my palm, kissing her, taking all the time that ever was, as if here and now were eternity.

  Felt the engine of her soul quicken.

  God damn it. Cold, remote rage at all the dreams that never lived.

  Put my fingers inside her then, and kissed her with a fury born from that faraway rage.

  We stumbled out of the pool and onto the ground, fell upon each other than and made love, hunger-driven, fear-driven, crying out under the stars. But when it was over, I was still quite hollow.

  o0o

  Morning again, sunlight dim and grainy through the tan filter of our tent wall. Alix sat opposite me, back against the rear strut, one leg drawn up, the other splayed out, one hand to her hair, a compellingly primitive image, pubic hair a long, dark, divided swath, nothing like literature’s symbol-shrouded triangle, from this point of view.

  Answering her question, I said, “Yes, I’ve thought about it.”

  Nothing. Serious-eyed. Waiting me out.

  Memories of the night, of lying in one another’s arms, watching the stars roll overhead, listening to the night creatures, the beating of our own hearts. The long walk back through a darkling wood, things unseen crunching underfoot. Crawling into the tent, sliding out of our clothes, curling around each other, pulling the light blankets up.

  Heartbeats.

  The haze of oncoming sleep, coupled to the knowledge of her existence. Brief, troubling taps from a distant dawn: This is almost over. But I could feel her buttocks against my thighs, feel the warmth of her. What difference does the future make? It isn’t here yet.

  A night full of happy, half-remembered dreams. The awakening. Alix turning in my arms, holding me close. Murmuring about how wonderful it was to wake up like this, find me here, holding her, to realize it wasn’t quite a dream.

  Then, the reality. Eyes hard and questing.

  Tell me your decision, Athy. Have you thought about it?

  Long pause lengthening, awakening fear in her eyes. Then I said, “I don’t know that I can do anyone any good out here in the woods, Alix. And I don’t know that I believe in Davy’s dream. It’s been tried before, and tried and tried.”

  Sorrow. She said, “But...”

  I raised my hand, reaching out to her, putting my palm on one knee.

  “I’ll do what I can to help you, Alix. You and all my old friends. Teach you what I can, and... think about the... rest of it.” Very hard to say these things, knowing they were untrue.

  She slid forward then, so that my hand went to the top of her thigh, making contact with her vulva, embraced me fiercely, face against the side of my neck, and said, “I knew you’d come, Athy. I knew it.”

  o0o

  Davy full of joy, overflowing with hope. Stoneshadow thoughtful and serious, exchanging blank-eyed glances with her mate. Marsh pensive and silent. He’d filled up on beer after last night’s dinner, though. Maybe he was just hung over. Marsh the Ambiguous. Or maybe just the Ambivalent.

  All the others were merely excited, standing around in noisy little clumps, talking, laughing. A mercenary, you see. Here to teach us how it’s done. Teach us how to be free once again.

  Most of these people had been children before the Invasion, if they’d been born at all. They didn’t remember. The world of men was just a story, old people’s ramblings fading on off into fable.

  I said, “I’ll do what I can. Teach you how to use the weapons you have. Teach you some elementary tactics. It might keep you alive for just a little bit.”

  Serious look from Marsh at that. Maybe some inkling of what I was talking about.

  I said, “I don’t know about the rest of it, Davy. We’ll see.”

  Mace kept looking up into the sky, uneasy. Probably wondering if we should really be standing out in the open like this, carrying these illicit weapons around.

  Davy, fidgeting like a child, clapped me on the shoulder, laughing. I had a momentary urge to strike him. Waste of time.

  I lined them up, sorted them out, had rifles passed around, took one from Davy and checked the clip, made sure there was nothing in there but slow frags. There were watchers in the sky who’d see an X-cracker pop, but these were safe. If they were caught with these things, they could claim they found the rifles in a box somewhere and were using them as hunting weapons, which they were. Probably get no more than a few hundred lashes and a life sentence in some quarry, maybe spend a few decades pulling a plow.

  I cradled the rifle across my chest and pointed. “See that bird?” No reaction. “Top of that tall pine.”

  Several of them squinted in the right direction.

  “On that last branch. Gray, with whitish bands across the wings.”

  Marsh said, “Mockingbird.”

  I looked at him. “You see it?” He nodded. “Stoneshadow?” Another nod.

  Davy said, “Where?” Shading his eyes with one hand.

  I leveled the weapon, glanced at the rangefinder and fired, snapping the little branch out from under the bird. It fell for a second, tumbling, thrashed with its wings, righted, began to fly.

  Davy said, “Oh!”

  I fired again, not bothering with the technosight, watched t
he bird fall, a dot disappearing into the trees.

  I said, “When you can do that, you can think about getting into an armed scrap.”

  Davy was saucer-eyed.

  Stoneshadow ambled over, rifle tucked under one arm, muzzle angled away and toward the ground, sat on her haunches beside me, still looking up at the treetop. She said, “I was captured after a firefight with some of you Spahis. Six of my company left alive out of eighty-one effectives.”

  “Ever fight Kkhruhhuft?”

  She turned to look into my eyes, extract whatever data it was Saanaae expect from looking into eyes, and said, “I’m alive, am I not?”

  Good answer.

  o0o

  Afternoon sunlight sloping down on us out of nowhere, warming our backs as we warmed to the task.

  Marsh standing beside me, the two of us face to flat black headshield with an armored man. Davy in the background, standing beside Alix, the Saanaae sitting behind them, others in their loose groups, rifles held so very carelessly, watching.

  I looked at my shadow in the rubbery matte finish, started walking around the man, inspecting. On one shoulder, the tiny doublestar decal of NACDC, the North American Comprehensive Defense Command, with unit number and suffixes. This might once have been worn by an Army Ranger, but it showed no signs of ever having been in serious combat. The left elbow articulation had a small hydraulic leak, a fleck of wet silicone where it shouldn’t have been.

  Down for maintenance, perhaps, when the time came.

  I glanced at Marsh. “You’re a corporal in the Sirkar Native Police?”

  He nodded, eyes narrow.

  “And in the, um, rebellion?”

  I could see a flicker of awareness behind his numb-faced mask. Understanding my thought processes. Cop training. And an intelligence we’d never given him credit for. Good, old Marsh. He said, “We haven’t been using military ranks, really. Section leader. There’re a number of groups like Davy’s.”

  “He know that?”

  An uncomfortable glance at the man. “Sort of.”

  “The Saanaae?”

  Longish pause, staring at me, uneasy. “They know more about us than we know about them.”

  I said, “Is it wise, telling me these things?”

  His face was quite still, eyes cold on mine, but... “I have to trust you, Athy. You’re our only hope.”

  Jesus.

  I said, “Then you’re in big trouble.”

  No reaction.

  I turned back to the armor. “You think you know how to use this stuff?”

  He said, “Selected sagoth noncoms are trained to use the old armor. There’s a lot of it left laying around, stockpiled from before the Invasion. Masters aren’t bringing much hardware in, other than their own. I guess they figured we’d use what we had.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve had your eyes open, Athy. It’s not all peace and quiet.”

  “You think they suspect?”

  “Probably.”

  More than you know.

  I rapped the armored man on his faceplate, wondering if he had his audio hooked up, if he’d been listening to our conversation. The man in the suit was nobody I knew, just a small, muscular man remembered from the bar. “You know, an X-cracker will open this right up.”

  Troubled look. “Manual says no.”

  I looked at the helmet’s video pickup. “Tip your head back.” His chin went up. Stupid, Marsh. Unless this fellow’s a most excellent lip reader.

  I said, “It wasn’t well-designed. There’s a weak point at every inward flexion on these slip joints. That’s at the throat, and at the insides of the elbows and the backs of the knees. Hip joints have secondary armor. Gloves and boots have better joints made by a different subcontractor.”

  His mask was slipping away, face mirroring professional interest. “Why didn’t they fix it?”

  “Because it was only combat tested once.” And there was no second opportunity.

  “So the armor’s useless?”

  I shrugged. “Old Rangers say they quickly learned to keep their chins as far down as they’d go, their arms folded tight when high-order explosives were flying around.” I rapped on the breastplate, a dull, plasticky thud. “And you don’t want to be turning your back on an armed adversary. It’s not a fatal flaw.”

  “Sagoths might not know.”

  Another shrug. “You got many ex-troopers in the ranks?”

  Distant look. “A few. Getting pretty old now.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, then.”

  “No.” He said, “What about Spahi combat armor? Is it like this?”

  “No. It’s derived from the Kkhruhhuft armor technology. You can smother an X-cracker between the palms of your gloves.” No point in saying just how much that’d make your hands smart. It’s not magic.

  “What about an anti-aircraft missile?”

  I shook my head. “You’d knock me down. I’d get back up.” I gave the man in the suit a shove, listened to his gyro-platform whisper. This armor was not in good working order. I said, “A small tac-nuke would do the trick.”

  Marsh smiled briefly. And he said, “I wonder why the Saanaae never wear armor?”

  I didn’t even look at them, instead tipping my head back, looking up into the dull blue sky, where high haze was gathering. “Because they’re just police, Marsh. That’s all.”

  He said, “Come on, Athy. Show us how to kill an armored man.”

  o0o

  Sunlight fading, the woods full of shadow. I stood in the semi-darkness between two tall, scaly old pine trees, listening to my urine stream sizzle on the bark, crackle softly as it flowed down through the crevices and started soaking into the carpet of pine needles, like milk soaking into dry cereal. Sensation of fullness, almost pain-like, receding, a little bit like the relief you feel after a long-delayed orgasm.

  Silly. I’m always having thoughts like that. As if I’d never grown up, still, somehow, focused on my dick’s reality, neglecting my own. I’d have to ask Solange about that when I got home: Hey, Solie, you ever feel like your cunt’s an independent entity? More like a symbiote, she’d probably say. Gives as good as it gets.

  I finished peeing and stood there, head tipped back, looking up at the striations of the orangish sky, dick still hanging out, feeling soft skin under my thumb.

  Marsh’s God-damned smile. No one smiles like that without a reason. So Marsh wants to go killing all his little sagoth buddies. Why? Davy I can understand. Bastards killed his Dad like that...

  No. My father killed Mike Itakë. Make it real. Hold it close. You’ve got feelings somewhere. You know you do... I tucked the damned thing back in my pants, zipped my fly, rubbed my hands on the front of the old flannel shirt I was wearing, something my parents had kept in a closet for the last twenty years. I wonder if they knew it was my favorite shirt? Too small for me now. Really much too hot for this summer weather, but when I saw it hanging there, I had to bring it along. It’d be cool enough later on, it’d be comfortable. Up here in the mountains, the beginning of Fall was about three weeks away.

  They think you’re in because you’re showing them how to use their guns, shoot holes in sagoth armor. How should I feel now, knowing...

  Image of Davy and Marsh and their proud little band coming up against a Spahi octal. It’d be over in about twelve seconds. One trooper could finish them off, in just a little more time.

  Image of Davy kneeling before me in the woods, his hair on fire.

  Hurts, doesn’t it, pal?

  We never thought about that, back when we were playing Liberators. Didn’t even do the cowboys-and-Indians pretense. Aaahhh! You got me... Fall down dead. Lie there with your eyes shut for a moment, body contorted, baring teeth in a rictus-grin. Pop. There. Now I’m somebody else.

  Probably how the human race came to believe in things like reincarnation. Ogg the Cavedork playing hunters-and-bears with his friends. Rowwrr! Got you, ya silly bastard. Did not! Did not.<
br />
  I turned and started walking back to the camp, where the cookfires were burning. We’d have a nice dinner, a nice little talk. And later on, Alix and I would go back to our little tent, or on back to the pond, maybe even just out in the middle of the field, where we could lie together under the stars.

  Dorvo Valley, for Christ’s sake... and a horrible cold voice, speaking within: You know what you have to do.

  o0o

  Watching her sleep by the moonlight flooding in through our open tentflap was getting to be a habit, one which wouldn’t go on much longer. The waning Moon was slightly past half phase now, inching delicately toward darkness as August became September. When it was full again, it would be Harvest Moon, the one after that Hunter’s. Then it would be winter, but I would be long, long gone. Maybe it would snow in Chapel Hill this year, and children would play outside, throw snowballs, build snowmen.

  Hell, maybe the little green lizard kids would be out there with them, building snow Saanaae. I couldn’t remember if there were snowy places on Aeli Saa.

  Alix was curled up, lying on her left side, facing away from me, right leg drawn up tight against her chest, arm draped over the thigh, left leg down slightly, bent up at the hip, down at the knee, toes pointed slightly, flexion bunching up the muscle in her calf. Dreaming, perhaps.

  Male mammal, full of instinct. I couldn’t even begin to change the way I was feeling about her right now, if you can call this feeling. Looking up her rear-end in the moonlight, feeling my passions stir, though I’d had my fill of sex and orgasms not an hour ago.

  For a little while, I had a big blonde burdar named Mandy, came from someplace in the far Midwest, I think, Iowa, Minnesota, one of those places, though I couldn’t tell from the accent. She sounded like every video voiceover you ever heard. Musical enough. Not too musical. Female enough. Not too female.

  She tried to be attentive, tried to do what I wanted, face earnest as she slaved over me. Is this OK? How about this? But she could not make herself stay awake at my whim, when I was keyed up from a too-exciting day. I’d watch her suppressing those yawns, watch her eyes gradually grow glassy.