Z-Sting

by Ian Wallace

  Marana responded, “We get up and follow,” and he arose carefully to avoid triggering action. The Polynesian knife-prodded; Keri got to her feet—not trembling, Marana noted, but definitely angry. Marana added: “Don’t try anything, Keri. Be intercollegiate-responsive. I mean that” He turned toward the Vendic who was backing behind the curtain, gun visible and pointed.

  Behind Marana, Keri said, “I bet you’re courageous in bed. But now I’ll never know, will I?”

  He answered: “Stay tight with me, stay intercollegiate-responsive.”

  He was following the Vendic behind the curtain, and Keri was being prodded along after him. Light dawned in Keri: she went limber-limp. Marana stopped suddenly, she was crowded against his back. Tornado hit; Marana while dropping to his knees reached back to seize her upper arms and catapult her over his shoulder; going up, she felt a heel kick a chin; coming down, her heels ground into a face, and there was a scream and the zizzz of a raygun shot, and the floor flamed, and Keri was thrown past a table down the step to the next level; she cat-gathered herself and crouched appraising the action: it was that Dana had the Vendic by the neck with one hand and the Polynesian by the neck with the other: he crunched their heads together—once, twice, thrice—and dropped them where they would quickly be discovered by the waiters who were running up to extinguish the fire (which was all they had seen, having heard nothing), and whirled to find Keri, and dropped some bills on the table, and hurried to her: she was on her feet as he got there, and he rushed her around the top tier by the wall to the front entrance and out into the streetlet, and ran leading her by a hand to a corner and around it and through a doorway and down a dirty dim corridor and out a back door into a stinking alley and down the alley to a slightly lighted street: there he paused, and looked about, and spotted a cruising skimmercab, and hailed it and got into it, and gave the computer an address, and the cab moved off, and Dana settled back breathing hard and looking at her.

  Seated erect, half-turned, she looked at him. Her lips were parted, she was breathing hard indeed—but breathing like an overtaxed young woman in fine physical condition.

  Rather soon, her breathing began to slow. Almost as soon as his.

  And just about then the skimmercab stopped, and Marana leaned forward to pay and tip the computer, he leaped out, and helped her down, and led her through a door into another dim but clean corridor, and took her into an old-fashioned robot-elevator: he punched the 5-button, and the doors shuddered shut, and she leaned back against him with her eyes closed, finding that his arms about her waist were good arms.

  The door of his room closed and locked behind them. It was dark in here.

  Keri stood trembling, waiting, in the middle of the room. He came up behind her in the darkness, his hands closed on her shoulders. She stood acquiescent. His hands did not move. Gradually she relaxed in the darkness.

  He said: “Your eyes by now are dark-accommodated. Open them.”

  She hadn’t noticed that they were closed. Opening, she made out furniture shapes: there was a minimum of light from a single window. One of the shapes was a big sofa in front of the window. There was no bed.

  Keri murmured, “I don’t see a—” She stopped.

  “Beds are trite.” He released her shoulders. “That sofa opens into one—but just now we are going to sit on it.”

  Disoriented, ambivalent, Keri allowed herself to be led to the sofa, and he sat her on it. “Excuse me, Keri—I am about to ply you with liquor.” Going to a cupboard, he took out in the darkness the shapes of a bottle and two tall glasses, poured no more than a jigger into each glass, added refrigerated water from a robinet, came over, handed her one, sat beside her without touching her.

  They sipped.

  She said thoughtfully: “Three of these might loosen me. But it would take eight to make me helpless. For your PG course, I suggest four. But it would be quicker to sweeten up this one.”

  His shadow told his shadow glass: I keep wondering why you are so anxious.”

  “Maybe I’m afraid you’ll get out of the notion.”

  “If that’s your problem, forget it, be easy, in my own good time you’ll be rolled. Only, Keri, it’s usually the other way around, with anxiety—”

  She tensed a bit. “Am I being aggressive? I’m sorry, I’m not very skillful at—” Then, turning swiftly, she laid a hand on his arm: “After what you just did to those two guys—”

  She sensed the grin that she could not see. “You don’t have to be limp asparagus to reassure me about my manhood. Besides, I hit them with you—and I didn’t notice you fainting.” Then his grin disappeared, and he sipped, and he said wonderingly, “Keri—virgin or not, you’ve necked; and if the action stopped, you stopped it. So why are you so eager?”

  After thinking that over for a moment, she began to tremble—so pronouncedly that he quickly took her glass out of her flaccid hand. Setting both glasses on a side table, he turned to watch her concernedly, without however touching her.

  He saw that she was quieting.

  He took the glasses to the bottle, sweetened them healthily, added only enough water for coolness, returned, sat, gave her a sip. She swallowed, closed eyes, breathed deeply for a few moments. Her eyes opened and she stared straight ahead. “Thanks,” she said at length, and took her glass, and gazed into it.

  Dana told her soberly: “I like you very much, Keri. Also I want you very much, more than just a sailor with a girl, but set that aside, because I think there is something very deep here. I am not going to cross-question you any more, you have your reasons and I respect them; but I do want one thing set straight. Am I right in my belief that some inward potent motive other than female desire is driving you into this affair—that you picked me out because I seemed to be a nice guy, but it could have been some other nice guy?”

  She stared. She drank. She stared.

  “That you are a virgin who has some deep reason for wishing to alter that situation?”

  She stared. She blurted a short laugh. “If I say yes, what does it tell you?”

  “Won’t I find out anyway?”

  “No, because of my athletic youth.”

  He drank. He stared. It can happen that a single bon mot precipitates a lifelong infatuation which can in some instances be the kind of love that needs no amour for its nourishing. He had just heard the mot, he would never forget it.

  He said slowly, “Let’s drink down our drinks and put the glasses aside and sit here for a while.”

  She studied her drink. Tilting her head back, she drank the drink and handed the glass to him. He drank his and put the glasses on the table. Sliding down a little on the sofa, he laid his neck against the back and gazed at the nearly invisible ceiling. After watching him for a moment, Keri did the same.

  Abruptly Dana awoke and realized that he had been asleep. His cutichron told him that it had only been a quarter-hour. He turned to Keri; she seemed asleep. He contemplated her with desire and devotion: the latter was stronger, the former scarcely self-identifiable.

  Her eyes came open, her head started up. In something like alarm she looked about; then her face turned to his. For several moments she contemplated his face, quieting. Presently she leaned her head back again, but her eyes stayed open.

  He laid his head back too, but turned toward her.

  Perhaps two minutes later he asked, “Should we kiss, do you think?”

  After a moment her face came his way, waiting.

  His kiss was ever so gentle. Her kiss was ever so meaningful.

  Parted, faces close, they looked at each other.

  Keri said with total candor: “Dana, I’m in love with you.”

  He frowned at her, drumming fingertips on her far shoulder. All at once he knew for sure. Instantly he told her: “I love you too. Enough so, that if you were to ask me to marry you, I would say yes.”

  Her eyes widened. “If I were to—”

  His smile was not entirely happy. “I have this thing partially figur
ed out now. Those goons recognized you, that was why the kidnapping act. Probably they’ve been casing you ever since you started haunting back streets. Obviously you’re high-caste, your parents are probably wealthy. Well, don’t you see? I can’t ask you to marry me, knowing this—”

  She seized his hands. “You would marry me?”

  His smile went mischievous. “I’ll tell you what it would entail, and you won’t like it, so you won’t ask me. No dowry—I won’t accept one. No big wedding—just us two, right here and now, alone. Now I think of it, I wish that one old man could witness it, a guy named Croyd, only he isn’t anywhere near here, so no witnesses, not even your parents. And tomorrow morning you come aboard my ship and travel while I get some pressing duty done, and you scarcely see me aboard because I am so damn busy, and when the duty is done I drop you off on Rab where my home base is, and you won’t like it there because of the rabquakes, and you may never see Senevendia again, and during my prolonged absences you will raise five or ten children because Rab has no kind of population-bomb problem—” Releasing her hands, he straightened, and his smile was glorious, and he added, “Now do you see why you shouldn’t ask?”

  Unsteadily: “Do you really want me to ask—or are you kidding?”

  He went serious. “Do you mean that you wouldn’t take that kind of kidding very well?”

  “From you, not very well. Know me, Dana—here I am—but don’t kid me.”

  He leaned toward her, intently earnest. “Let me tell you what I think about marriage. A guy and a girl fall in love, and the only goal they have is to be together in their love. Then afterward, where they make their mistake is to imagine that they should keep love as a goal forever and ever, over-and-over sought and reattained. But that is ridiculous, because it already has been sought and attained once and for all. So instead, after the delicious exploring of the love, it should stop being a goal, and instead it should be a climate for wonderful things further on that both of them can attain together, secure in their lasting growing love. Keri, I want to love you constantly until the amour begins to scale off at the edges; but then after that, I want to explore your mind and heart while you explore mine until we know each other almost totally and our confidence in each other is perfect; and meanwhile I want us to be moving ahead on other goals forever, dear friends in the climate of our love. And that is why I would say yes if you would ask—”

  Suddenly he leaned back, clenched teeth, hit a fist on the sofa back. “Hell, Keri—will you marry me? Now?”

  She was awash. “Marry you—now?”

  “I’m a ship’s captain. I can marry us, there are seven precedents—”

  “But we’re not aboard your ship—”

  “My quarters are my ship. Keri—”

  They were clutching shoulders, eyes to wide eyes, his mouth near her trembling mouth. She whispered: “I did not think of marriage—”

  “Think of it now.”

  “But that is—forever! With trouble!”

  “Sure is.”

  “You—want that? When you don’t have to?”

  “Keri—any kind of a service will do it, we have only to register it later, we can do that in my ship’s log tomorrow, but when we declare it, we two here, it is done. Look, we can make it simple. When you kiss me—we are married for keeps.” He paused. He moistened lips. He added uncertainly: “If you kiss me—”

  She stared at him an instant longer. Her eyes closed, and her breath shuddered out, and her eyes opened, and her lungs filled with the wind of life energy, and she covered his mouth with hers.

  Midway through a continental breakfast in the small dining room of Dana’s hotel, Keri demanded of her bun: “Why haven’t you been asking any personal questions lately?”

  He told her: “I still need answers to all the questions I asked you last night. But you don’t have to answer, not ever, if you prefer. But I hope you will answer, it will be better.”

  She studied the hard bun. With her front teeth she nipped a small particle out of it, like a chipmunk putting neat fangprints into a crisp haw-apple. She masticated the bread, swallowed it, sipped thick coffee, considered. Then she looked up at Marana and put her heart into a guarantee: “Dana, I am in love with you, I am. Always.”

  He leaned earnestly forward. “It’s a good thing, and it better stick, and I warned you why last night. How much more time do you estimate to finish breakfast?”

  “ ’Bout eleventy-seven minutes. Why?”

  “Make it eleventy-six. We have to be aboard ship for noon takeoff. That leaves us about three hours to go to your house and pick up your stuff and confront your parents.”

  She dropped the bun. “Confront my—”

  He was a bit grim. “They aren’t going to be happy about this, and you know it. What kind of a guy is your father? Will he try to kill me? I’d better know now, so I can parry without hurting or humiliating him too much—” She grabbed his hands. “Dana, we can’t—”

  “Keri, we have to. Keri, you are going all mysterious again! Keri, please answer what I asked you last night. Answer now, so we board my ship with everything on the poop deck!”

  Her eyes were death. “I can’t—”

  “Why not, f'John’s sakes?”

  Her mouth went small and mischievous. “Because I gotta go, f'John’s sakes.” It was the other bon mot that he would remember.

  Rising, she came around behind him, and slipped her arms around his neck, and kissed his spacious back-tilted forehead, and whispered: “I love you. And when I come back, I’ll try to tell you what you’ve done for me.”

  Two hours later—having checked out the lobby and his room, having even barged into the powder room and peered over stall doors with eye-boggling results—Marana cursed quietly, went to the hotel desk, and began to scribble a note for the clerk to give her when she would return looking for him . . .

  Something white in midair drew his side attention. The clerk was gently waving an envelope before his eyes. He seized it and ripped it open . . .

  Dana—I love you, but this is divorce. Do not try to find me. Call it a wonderful dream, and I shall worship the dream so long as it is possible for me to feel anything. Please make me happy by marrying well next time. And please, please dear, if you love me—get off of Erth!

  Rehab Action Six

  ZISKA AND THE MOON

  Nereid, Moon, and Erth, 22 May

  Out of sleep-without-dreaming, Marta awoke swiftly. The instantaneous re-entry into life was in tasty conscious contrast to her years-usual prolongation of debilitating early-morning twilight sleep among gobbets of dream-garbage.

  Marta lay comfortable. Marta stretched in luxury. Marta suddenly sat up in bed, realizing that she could scarcely remember her last awakening in luxury, so long ago it had been.

  Dropping her arms, Marta allowed herself to sense all four limbs. None of them ached, no extremity was asleep.

  She was not quite ready to get out of bed. But neither was she dismayed by the prospect.

  She swung her legs out of bed, yawned, stretched again, opened her eyes, discovered that they had come almost wide open with a minimum of sleep glue. She thrust herself out of bed and checked her cutichron: 0500 hours on the dot, just the time she’d left a call for. The call came, and she answered, and disconnected, and congratulated herself on the automatic self-awakening after the planned five hours of sleep.

  It crossed her mind to go to a mirror.

  Could her jowls and eyebags be a little firmer? Could her eyes be a little clearer? Could her blood be moving a bit more fluidly, suggesting a bit more arterial elasticity? For her arms and legs were not excessively outsleeping her brain this morning.

  She looked closer. Were there a few visible blonde hairs replacing the white? No, that part was sheer delusion, or an illusion of light: it couldn’t happen that fast, it would have to start at the follicles.

  She saw a grin in her mirror, but it was cynical. Croyd had her thinking wishfully, that was all. Nevertheless
she did feel pretty good, for eighty-six . . .

  At 0600 hours she received Croyd at her desk (mahogany, French-curved paneling, area three square meters, a twentieth-century period piece that the rest of the furniture matched) in a richly carpeted mahogany-paneled office whose walls elegantly accommodated a number of original masters (Rubens, Velasquez, El Greco) and one fake (a bogus Rembrandt by Van Eyck). Croyd stood before her at easy attention. “Relax,” she invited, indicating a chair near the desk but facing her across it. He settled himself into it a little precariously, as though his joints were arthritic and his equilibrium-feedback uncertain; he was privately grateful that neither was any longer the case for him.

  “I have the report on who you are,” she informed him. It was already before him, she did not move a hand.

  He nodded gravely and waited.

  “You are Croyd, an extraterrestrial humanoid immigrant into Anglia. You have an impeccable visible career of fifty years as a traveling international underwriter for Lloyd’s of London under the pseudonym Grayn, and at the same time an impeccable and not undistinguished invisible career as a secret agent for M-13,” (That was the Anglian subconstellational organization which had succeeded M-7 through M-12, the serial successors to M-5 and M-6.)

  “In 2400,” she eagerly pressed, “at the age of seventy-seven, you elected for euthanasia. Something went wrong, and instead your animation was suspended. You were kept in a tank at London General Hospital for seventy-four years, until last year when you evinced unmistakable signs of wanting out. Since your awakening you have been idle, living on your state-invested pension which at seventy-five years of compound interest is a visible contributor to the Norwestia Constellation deficit. Idle that is, except in writing letters to me: of these there have been three evenly spaced at two-month intervals—according to Berber’s memory, anyhow, since these letters have unaccountably been misplaced in our files. I do remember the last one. These details about your identity and past have recently been certified into the BuPers memory by Assistant Secretary Fiori in Manhattan. Do you too certify them?”