Penumbra

by Dan Ackerman

  “Hmmm.” Arden rested his head against Oggie’s shoulder. He swayed them slightly, his hands on Oggie’s waist. Dancing without music. “Have I made you feel like I don’t respect you?”

  Oggie sighed. “No. But I wish you had. I wish you didn’t treat me well, then I wouldn’t feel bad about what I did.”

  “For such a smart person, you’re pretty stupid.”

  Oggie started to say, “Spare parts,” Arden could tell just by the look in his eyes, the twist of his lips before he opened his mouth.

  He kissed him before he could get more than the initial sound out.

  Oggie leaned into the kiss, sighing against Arden’s lips and touching foreheads with him. He pulled him in close and pressed his face against Arden’s shoulder, drawing in a deep breath, then letting it out slowly.

  He stood close to Arden.

  Arden could feel the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of their clothes. He liked to be close to him and Oggie, he thought, liked to be close to him too, but like this. Clothes on, no heat or hardness; warmth and quiet and peace.

  They had kissed and cuddled a lot, but nothing more.

  Oggie hadn’t hurt him again, either, not even a poke or a pinch.

  Arden started to hum, an old-fashioned tune, a favorite of Winslow’s. Slow, sweet, made for dancing. He swayed again, moving Oggie with him.

  “What are you doing, shug?”

  Arden stopped. Oggie didn’t like to dance as far as Arden could tell. At least, not with Arden anyway. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t know that song.”

  “It’s old.”

  Oggie gave him a funny look. Not bad, but funny. He rested his thumb on Arden’s lips, hardly there at all.

  “Are we still fighting?” Arden asked.

  “Was that a fight?”

  He didn’t give Arden a chance to answer before he pushed his thumb past Arden’s lips. The slightest pressure on his teeth to open his mouth and then the mild sting of salt on his tongue.

  Arden couldn’t breathe in the best possible way.

  His mouth filled up with spit, the taste surprisingly sweet.

  He could smell sweat on Oggie’s hand, and dust, and something else. Something green. Whatever he’d gathered with the women.

  His heartbeat thudded softly through his whole body. His lips absently closed around Oggie’s thumb.

  Oggie pulled back his thumb and sucked it clean like he’d been eating with his fingers.

  Arden swallowed. His mouth felt empty. He made himself close his mouth instead of standing there slack-jawed and staring at Oggie.

  “I could use a nap. The heat makes me sleepy.” Oggie walked away.

  Arden could only follow him.

  The shuttle stayed cooler than Terra One. It had various life support systems meant to make space travel not just feasible but comfortable. As long as Arden kept the solar panels on, those systems ran constantly. A small haven of coolness and clean air in the vast yellow and brown wasteland.

  Despite this, few of the Terrans elected to visit the shuttle, let alone take advantage of its comforts.

  They didn’t trust it.

  Arden couldn’t get the taste of Oggie’s skin out of his mouth.

  He dreamed about it while they napped and woke up disoriented. Not only that, though. Nervous for some reason. His dream drained away as soon as he woke.

  He woke alone.

  He pushed himself up and looked around.

  Oggie sat at the table, his eyes on Arden’s tablet. Moving back and forth. Reading. He looked up when Arden sat up all the way. “You got a message.”

  “I read it this morning.”

  It had taken a long time for a message to travel from Eden. Rhys had sent it three days ago.

  “Didn’t want to mention it?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.” Arden had written back to assure Rhys and the Council that he hadn’t died and that he planned on returning. He’d tried to send a few pictures, but they likely wouldn’t send through the shuttle’s communication channels over this distance. “It’s probably good you came with me.”

  “I’d be in lockup for sure. Eden is in quite a state. You sure we shouldn’t go back?”

  “Rhys can handle things. And I’d feel like an idiot if I went back empty-handed.”

  “Then you’re going to have to get people to trust you before you try to whisk them away to a place that they have no reason to believe in,” Oggie advised.

  “I don’t know, I can think of a handful that would come if you told them you thought they were pretty.”

  Oggie set down the tablet and leaned back in his seat. “That’s your plan.” He didn’t ask. He stated, flatly, his eyes as dead as they’d ever been.

  Arden wanted to pull the sheets around himself. “You’re charismatic and beautiful and Eden needs help.”

  “Could have asked me.”

  Arden gave a guilty smile. “You’re doing it anyway. Why ask and make it disingenuous?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to use me.”

  He couldn’t answer. He wanted to cry.

  The serious look on Oggie’s face thawed into a smile. He came over to the bed. “You’re so sensitive, shug. I always forget you’re easier to prick than the rest of us.” He draped an arm over Arden’s shoulders and rested his head against Arden’s. “I have to tell you, though, eighty percent of what I do is disingenuous.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No, you’re a good fifteen percent of my honest emotional output.” He kissed Arden’s cheek.

  “What’s the other five?”

  “Drinking and nervous breakdowns.”

  Arden shouldn’t have laughed, but a chuckle escaped.

  “I spent so long on my own, you know, or with only Mara, or my parents, that once I moved to the Quarters I had to learn how to act like a person. I’m never sure if I’m faking the right things.”

  “That’s why I think you’d be a good Entertainment Minister.”

  “Because I’m fake?”

  “You’re good at manipulating people. You pick up on cues other people don’t see and know how to twist them. You watch, even when you look like you aren’t. You influence people while acting like you don’t care what they do.”

  Oggie moved away from him. He pushed himself into the corner of the bed and drew his knees close to his chest. He eyed Arden.

  “I don’t mean it like a bad thing.”

  “That’s a little too honest of you.”

  Arden shrugged. “I was never good at acting like a person either.”

  Oggie stayed in the corner.

  Arden turned to face him and crisscrossed his legs. He rested his elbows on his thighs. “I don’t feel like I’m acting around you.”

  “No, me neither,” Oggie admitted quietly.

  “I think I dreamed about you.”

  “What’d you dream?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Oh.”

  Slowly, Oggie unfurled from his corner. After a while of quiet, he asked, “Was it a dirty dream?”

  “Might have been.”

  “I’ve left you rather unattended when it comes to those things.” He had such a discrete way of saying things sometimes, subtly seductive but restrained.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Liar.”

  “No,” Arden insisted.

  Oggie looked at Arden’s neck, surely evaluating the yellowed bruises. “Then I scared you off.”

  “Also no.” Arden slid himself closer. “Maybe taking things easy after a drug-fueled orgy is normal.”

  “Wouldn’t know. I usually don’t see people after an orgy.”

  “You go to a lot?”

  Oggie shook his head. “A handful. I’m usually too drunk, which gets unpleasant. They last a while, you know, and I have this awful tendency to pass out and someone has to haul me off the pile. I’ve thrown up a few times, which ruins things for everyone.”

  �
��Ah.”

  “All the cravings and side effects aside, though, I think maybe I’m a little better for having dried out down here,” Oggie admitted.

  “You seem steadier.”

  “I’ve got this feeling that once I’m back there, though, it will all come back. One wrong look…”

  Arden understood. He took Oggie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’ll have to be careful if you’ve lost your tolerance.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s been there.”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Sobriety doesn’t stick to you?”

  “I’ve never tried to be sober. Just less dependent.”

  “Never thought about it like that.”

  Arden kissed his palm. “Therapy.”

  Oggie let out a shaky breath. “Do that again.”

  Arden kissed his palm, then traced the tip of his tongue over his palm up toward his inner wrist.

  Oggie squirmed like it tickled but his cheeks flushed like Arden had done something much more intimate. He pulled his hand away.

  Arden skimmed his fingers up Oggie’s calf, under the loose leg of his pants. Barely touching, just enough to feel the hair on his legs. “I can be gentle with you.”

  Oggie practically yanked his leg back. He looked unsure, almost frightened.

  “I’ll be so careful.”

  “Shug.”

  They had hurried the first time, acted with desperation rather than care. Not bad, and desperation had its place, but Arden wanted to be tender with him. He assured, “I’ll always stop if you say no, or if you look like you want to say no.”

  The look of mistrust on his face made Arden’s stomach twist.

  Arden wanted to touch him, but he kept his hands still. “You take care of the things you want to keep.”

  “I’ve held up without.”

  “Have you?”

  Oggie didn’t answer. He spread out from his corner and rested his head on Arden’s thigh. Tentative, but not forced.

  Arden played with his hair.

  Eventually, they ate, and spoke of lighter things. The incessant dust, their shared and newfound fear of birds and snakes, their horror that on Terra people ate animals, and a love for the sun.

  Something about the sun felt right. Not filtered through a pane of glass or simulated by a bulb.

  Voices began to carry inside, the sign that the heat had faded enough to resume their day.

  They washed up, then rejoined the Terrans. More work waited for them, though Arden tended to get left alone. They assumed his incompetence and disinterest, and, from what Holly said, didn’t want to piss him off and lose their closest source of water.

  He’d shown a few of them the wastewater recyclers, which they’d liked, and explained how the shuttles could, in theory, bring people anywhere in the system if they’d provisioned properly. The shuttle could run forever as long as it had fuel or an alternate power source like a star.

  The pilot manual had mentioned something about harvesting water from comets and generating nutrient paste from algae cultures if provisions did run out.

  He didn’t think they’d need that.

  When it grew too dark, or all the work was done, people socialized. Some nights they watched a movie. Other times, the women sat around and told stories. Either way, the children sat raptly. So did Oggie. He soaked up stories like a sponge.

  It solidified two things: that he had to replace Lazlo Frakes and that Arden had fallen in love with him.

  Arden steeped himself in these moments. They’d never happen again. He’d never see Oggie drenched in sunlight or bathed in the flicker of a fire again. He took pictures for historical documentation as well as for personal reasons.

  Someday he wanted to be able to show someone these. He wanted to point out exact moments and say, “This is when I hoped we would last. This is when I knew we would.”

  Holly sat beside him. “You stay in camp a lot for someone who wanted to go exploring.”

  He looked up at her, almost groggy. He’d lost himself in the future. “Uh.”

  “Come with me tomorrow.”

  “Sure.”

  “Rumor has it there’s a ruin full of books. Might be useful.”

  Arden tried to hide his surprise. “You guys read a lot?”

  “No, none of us can read. Our last reader died twenty years ago. But I thought you might want to find a few to bring when you go home.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “It might be all you leave with.”

  “I don’t understand that,” he admitted.

  “Terra might be a dry, hot, hostile ball of dirt, but it’s all we know. We aren’t brave space explorers.”

  He grinned in disbelief. “No one’s left Eden in two lifetimes at least. You’ve seen and done more things than I can imagine.”

  Holly glanced around. “If we wanted to come back…You know, if we didn’t like it up there.”

  “I’m not in the habit of keeping people hostage.”

  She sighed. “Do you ever feel like you were meant for something different?”

  “Frequently.”

  “There’s something in me that just doesn’t belong here. I don’t fit. I never have. My tent is the only tent that isn’t shared.”

  “Come to Eden.”

  “I’m honestly considering it,” she said. She glanced at the other Terrans. “A few of them are so desperate to get laid they might go just for that. If this was a tribe of men, they’d have gotten on your spaceship as soon as you told them you had women waiting for them in the sky.”

  He snorted. If they thought of his offer in those terms alone, no wonder they didn’t buy in. “It’s not just about finding partners, you know. We have food and healthcare—”

  “What?”

  “Medicine. Doctors. Running water. Clean water. No raiders or warlords. An outdated and oppressive class system, yeah, but I’m working on that. And having new citizens would probably really help…Bex Torre built Eden to give humanity a safe haven, a place to wait out the troubles on Terra One. Not everyone got the chance. I want to fix that.”

  “Like I said, I’m considering it. Better than staying here. It gets dryer every year. There used to be a river a few miles east. It hasn’t run in a decade.”

  Arden sighed.

  Eden never could have saved everyone, but he wanted to help those who’d scraped this long by before there was no one left to help.

  Bringing this group of relatively healthy, civil, and peaceful Terrans provided an ideal test run. He’d never get every human, but he could do better than the previous Autarchs.

  After a few minutes, Holly confided, “Teo tells this story wrong every time. She always fucks up the middle.”

  “How’s it supposed to go?”

  Under her breath, Holly provided a running commentary of corrections to Teo’s narration.

  Arden thought she and Cathie would get on wonderfully.

  He turned in early.

  He brushed his fingers over the back of Oggie’s neck as he went.

  Oggie glanced his way, a question in his eyes.

  Arden shook his head.

  He shook out his clothes and hung them up to air out overnight. Laundry happened less frequently on Terra. He nestled into bed, the coolness of the sheets bliss after the heat of the fire and the air. He dropped off to sleep.

  He woke when Oggie slipped into bed. He rolled over.

  “Sorry, sugar, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Arden rolled over.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  Arden slung an arm over his waist before Oggie had a chance to tuck a sheet around himself. He’d done that every night they’d shared a bed. Arden hadn’t noticed it at first. He didn’t mind it, but skin against skin came as a shock at this point.

  “Any good stories after I left?”

  “Mmm, a few. One about a, uh, a snake and fox. I nodded off halfway through, though.” He stretched and yawned.

  He smelled
like dried sweat, salty and a little musky.

  Arden kissed his collar bone.

  Oggie tensed up.

  Arden drew back.

  The sheet had been intentional, a deliberate barrier.

  He tucked a sheet around Oggie.

  “No, sugar, if you want something, that’s fine. We can do something.”

  A decline would upset him, pressing on would be dicey. Arden thought about making something up, but he didn’t want to start lying to him, even to save his feelings. “You didn’t seem interested.”

  “No?”

  “You kind of flinched.”

  Oggie rolled onto his back and folded his hands over his stomach. “I kind of did.”

  “And you’ve kind of been, like, wrapping yourself up in a sheet.”

  “Oh, what? Yeah. My thighs stick together if I don’t put one between.”

  Arden propped himself up. “What?”

  “Don’t you get hot when you sleep?”

  “No.”

  Oggie made a face. “Probably cause you’re made of fucking ice.”

  Arden pressed a hand against his ribs.

  He flinched. “Yeah, that. Fuck, Arden, have you seen a doctor about that?”

  “I have cold hands, it’s not a medical issue.”

  “Maybe you can slide your hands between my legs, so I don’t get all sweaty.”

  Arden chuckled. He wedged one hand under Oggie’s body to warm it up. “So you kind of flinched,” he said again.

  “Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m…traumatized or anything. It’s not like that. I’m…” Oggie paused. “Adjusting.”

  “To?”

  “I’m not sure. I keep expecting something bad to happen and it keeps not happening. It’s making me jumpy.”

  “Hmm.” Arden rolled close to him again.

  “You should have at least yelled at me by now.”

  He traced a finger over Oggie’s collarbone.

  Oggie didn’t tense this time. He turned aside the sheet and tapped Arden’s flank. “Come here.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “No, come here,” Oggie said. “Don’t make me pat my lap like a creepy uncle.”

  Arden slid on top of him as smoothly as he could. “What are we looking at in terms of options?”

  “Very sensual question.”

  “Tell me again about the time—”

  Oggie covered Arden’s mouth. “Really, now.”