by Robert Reed
“Don’t you think he’s wrong in the head?” she wonders.
“I guess he must be, considering.”
“He’s liable to do anything. Say anything.”
And it’s easier than she could have hoped. He tells the middle of the story. He keeps the details simple and true. She senses honesty while his hands come around her body, holding her tight as if to protect her, and she feels his heart beating and his regular breathing and the warmth coming off his tired flesh. He concludes by admitting, “The man denied ever having hurt you. He implied…I don’t know what.”
She burrows into his chest.
“Did he imagine…what? Other lovers?”
“Constantly. He did,” she says so quickly that he can’t help but believe the words. “Even when he knew I went nowhere, he told me I was cheating on him. No one came to his home without him being aware, yet he cursed me and beat me for having other lovers.”
“A hard enemy to honor,” he mutters.
She waits.
Steward says, “I did some checking on him. Beyond mental health, I mean,” and he breathes and strokes the tip of his nose. “Dirk makes a considerable living as a creature of opportunity. A crime lord—”
“I couldn’t tell you about him,” she begins. “Because—”
“Of course you couldn’t. He had you made. He made sure you wouldn’t identify him. I understand. It just puts both of us, and maybe some others, in a hard corner.” Steward holds his breath. She looks at him and believes him, glad for his not getting killed somewhere. She tells herself that a man who cracks Dirk’s home, then escapes…well, how do you label such a person? “If we force him out of Brulé,” he is saying, “and I mean forever, then we’ll be doing everyone a favor.”
She waits.
“There must be a way.”
Another uncomfortable thought chews at her. “He doesn’t push, love.”
“Everyone can be pushed,” he tells her.
She says, “Take me somewhere.” Steward breathes in and lets it out between his teeth, making a slow easy whistling noise. “Another City-State maybe. Anywhere.”
“We’re safer here,” he says. He kisses the top of her head and strokes the hair. “I’ve been here for half my life. I’ve got friends. Funds. Local knowledge. If Dirk is half-crazy, and half as ruthless as I’ve heard, he isn’t going to quit chasing us—”
“So we have to run far!”
“Where?”
“Well,” she says, “maybe Yellowknife. Maybe?”
Something changes. It’s nothing visible or tangible, his face almost the same as before…but she’s aware of a sudden hardness. She isn’t surprised when he states, “No. That’s no option.”
She knows to keep quiet.
“I’ll protect you with all my abilities. But here. Nowhere else.”
She clings, muttering, “Darling.” She plays the scolded-girl role.
And he says, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m just sorry.”
She waits for a little while, then asks, “How can we get him out of Brulé?”
“The best way to push him, I think, would be to rob him.” Steward says, “A man like that likes to keep his money close. Which means I should have bled him when I had my chance.” He laughs softly and says, “That’d hit him deep. Take his quiver chips, whatever, then force him to leave.”
She is absolutely quiet, watching him.
“What is it?” he wonders. “What?”
“What?”
“I can’t tell what you’re thinking, love.”
“Nothing,” she lies. She asks, “What else can we do?”
He blinks. He puts back his head and breathes and closes his eyes. “Maybe the thing to do is not push. But pull him.” He sighs and says, “A week. You’ll have to stay hidden here another week or so. And I’ll have to be gone a good deal of the time.”
She squeezes his arms and kisses his stinking chest, asking, “Do you know what I think of you?” She has a sudden little urge to tell him the truth. It surprises her, coming from nowhere, and she suppresses the thought. So a second odd thought comes to her. What if they had met under different circumstances? She finds that notion so terribly appealing just now. “I love you,” she tells him.
“Although maybe it’d be good to move you somewhere,” he broods.
She does feel exposed, the truth told.
“No, no. We’ll hold off on that for a few days.”
And she has one more course to pursue. One more option. “He’s such an old man,” she mentions. “Sometimes I think he might die before me.”
Steward is silent.
“But listen to me,” she says. “Goodness, goodness. I shouldn’t even talk about such things…a person’s life and all…”
And Steward remains silent, stroking her hair with his face toward the ceiling, his eyes open and unblinking. Unseeing. What are you thinking? she wonders. Are you thinking about pushing him? Or pulling him? Or maybe cutting him into manageable little pieces?
Twelve hours ago he was late. Twelve and ten and eight hours ago April was angry with him and hot about him and ready to scream when and should he appear at the door, humble-faced and pretending to be sorry for his negligence. Now the heat has left her, though. A level calm remains. Imagining herself from outside herself, she draws a picture of righteous fury—cold enough to scald anyone’s flesh.
She hates the big stupid cyborg.
She should pack up and leave without a word. No note. No tri-dee message. No clue as to her whereabouts. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to pack. She hasn’t all that much. She could do it so well, so bloody quickly, that when Gabbro returned from work, or from wherever, he would enter a strange piece of terrain where her absence laid on everything and mocked him to no end.
She knows that terrible sensation.
It’s happened to her more than she cares to remember. Nothing hurts worse than the lover vanishing of his own volition, without warnings or any final scene. April requires final scenes. She doesn’t know why. And an ordinary argument isn’t good enough. An out-and-out fight is best—hard talk with vicious words that neither of them will ever forget.
Just now she sits and watches a sporting event on World-Net. It’s something she chose at random, skimming through the channels and quitting when a big bright field of green presented itself. This is an old-fashioned ballgame. An enormous history stands beneath the players’ spiked shoes. Those clubs are ash. The costumes are woven white cotton. The players themselves are tailored only so far as strict rules allow, old elbows and knees replaced with prosthetics no better than the originals. The bases and balls have eyes. Each is utterly honest, calling pitches and close plays, and there’s such order to the game that April grows bored in a brief while. Rising to freshen her drink, she thinks this isn’t how the world works. This is all a considerable, elaborate lie—rules and patience and two-plus millennia of tradition sewn up into a pageant without blood enough to stain a lip.
She sets down the drink, then flips to a scenery channel. A low Antarctic mountain stands beside a warm shadowy bay. April sips and stands again, deciding to change clothes while she watches. A wind is blowing straight from the South Pole. A single boat skims across the bay, soundless and smooth. A pair of fishermen are riding in the boat, one pointing at something and saying, “Here. The place!” The boat quits moving. One of the fishermen extends a hooked pole, reaching into the water and snatching up some object heavy enough to make him labor, pulling it to the surface.
The object is a tailored sponge.
It’s the size of a small chair, perhaps, seawater slipping out of its wide pores and its flesh creamy and soft and ready to be eaten. The fishermen have long straight knives. They slice the raw salty meat into their smiling mouths, standing in the boat and chewing with slow deliberation, eyes narrowed, faces toward the rounded low mountain and the camera hidden on the slope above the stony beach. April is naked.
She connects to a fantasy channel now, an AI coming on the line with an audible, “Yes? May I be of help?”
She explains. While the fishermen discuss the flavor of the meat, she tells the AI what she desires. Then the scenery channel is invaded by the fantasy channel, conquered with no breaks or incongruences. One of the fishermen says, “Ready?” The other nods. And their boat begins to move, slipping along with the slenderest of hums. The fishermen have just sat down when a motion ahead of them, out in the bay, causes one of the men to say, “Wait. Stop!”
The water is deep in one place, except now an island has emerged from the depths. A rushing roar is dead ahead. The boat stops just short of the sudden cliff. Some eerie black and white seaweed glistens in the low sunlight. The fishermen scream while their boat makes an instinctive turn, fleeing, and the cliff rises up until enormous eyes are showing, then a protruding nose, and April sees herself. She’s a giantess. The AI has done a marvelous job dressing her up as some goddess of the sea, and she has to laugh in a sloppy drunken way as she watches the fishermen trying to escape and her towering naked body bearing down on them, long legs wading through the sponge beds and waves rushing in every direction, the stony beaches taking a pounding.
“Keep out of here!” shouts the goddess. “You fools! Run, run, run!” And with that she stops and jumps in place, her feet slapping the ground and the ground splitting, spitting out molten rock and columns of steam.
April kills the channel.
She turns and goes into the bedroom, finding her swimsuit and fitting into it with the usual self-conscious feeling. She’s been this fat before. She hates the feeling and the lack of breath and the looks of others. Of course Gabbro has challenged her to exercise, or at least ingest some of the fat-burning agents available everywhere, shoving off the extra bulk. Only she doesn’t like the side effects of fat burners. And she loathes athletic drudgery. And the permanent solution—selective tailoring of her natural metabolism—is too expensive. “Besides,” she mutters, “I like his watching me bloom.” And she laughs. Sure. It’s tangible proof that Gabbro isn’t keeping her happy. All the blame is on his shoulders.
Going outside, she notices the empty pool, flat and calm and all her own. She has a folding chair, towel and lotion and sunglasses. She isn’t thinking about Gabbro, except sometimes she finds herself looking over one shoulder at nothing. She isn’t angry anymore, no, and she doesn’t care about him. She goes so far as imagining a call from the mines and the caller telling her to brace herself because she has some sad news. An accident has occurred. Gabbro Gleason is dead. And April says thank-you for having informed her. She knows it’s never easy bearing bad news.
She lies down on the towel and applies a layer of oily lotion, then naps. Bugs gather and drown in the lotion. When she wakes she’s dotted with their carcasses. So she climbs into the deep cool water, and the little fish come up out of the soft-coral hiding places to suck away the dead bugs. She feels their little teeth. She floats easily, back arched and feet pointed and her black-and-white-streaked hair hanging down in the clear water.
Her eyes are shut.
There is motion an instant before the splash, and she hears the high soft giggling that gives away her assailant’s identity. April smiles. She tucks just as a little hand grabs her ankle, tugging without pulling her deeper. April uses her arms to fight her buoyancy, submerging and opening her eyes to see the Cradler’s muscular body kick away and his face smiling and giggling underwater. Amazing people, she thinks. So graceful and effortlessly happy. They don’t ever worry about weight, and they sing like angels—their songs complex and simple at the same time. She can’t begin to say this Cradler’s name, though she’s heard it many times. Surfacing, she squeals and says, “You little shit!” and giggles too.
He says, “Phew!” and shakes off the water.
April grabs the top of his little head, using her bulk for something good. The Cradler struggles. Then he twists and is gone, diving and curling and kicking off the bottom, climbing out before she can paddle over to him. Some damned goddess I make, she thinks. He laughs and points and she splashes him. The flying water is bright in the sun. Then he’s running again, leaping over her head and splashing and gone. She gasps and tucks and chases him, thinking nothing is so adorable as a Cradler. There he is! He’s waiting on the bottom, tiny hands clinging to the sides of the pool and his smile eternal. They’re like children, she knows. All their lives they have the temperament and enthusiasms of bubbly young children. Her lungs burn. She has to fight herself to keep swimming downward, every muscle burning. The Cradler waits. He waits. Underwater, using her spent breath, she tries calling him by his full name. It comes out better than it would have in the air above, odd as it seems.
The Cradler answers by saying, “Gabbro? Gabbro?”
“Gone,” her bubbles confess, and her gestures.
“Gone where?” he asks.
But she can take no more. She needs air, in long luxurious breaths, and she kicks and rises with her brain on fire. And only now, finally, does she realize what she must have been planning all along.
His accent doesn’t perplex her so much anymore. They’re spent, lying on the big special bed with the recharging cord wrapped around the usual post and the sheets kicked away and she still sweating in the darkened, human-warmed room. The little Cradler is talking of home now. He sings about it and uses both hands to draw out the lay of its land. Rivers flow. Canyons snake down to little violet seas. Has she ever spent much time looking at the landscape on World-Net? He’s curious. Has she ever seen images of a Cradler pasture? Deep violet is the very best color for vegetation, he maintains. From pole to pole, Cradle is one great pasture with the violet growth sucking up the precious feeble sunlight.
She’s seen it on World-Net, yes. But it’s been a while.
“Come live with me and my family,” he sings. “In a little bit we go home again.”
“Do you?”
He nods and starts to sit up in bed.
“Why’d you come here in the first place?”
“Vacation,” he sings.
“You’re tourists? I didn’t know.” She says, “I thought you had jobs somewhere.”
“Just time and interest. No jobs.”
“I don’t travel myself,” she tells him. “World-Net is good enough for me.”
“Pictures on a wall, silly girl.” He laughs.
“Why, oh why, do I keep falling for children?” she asks.
And the Cradler turns sober, concerned, breathing deeply and looking at the cord as if it’s what could cause him misery. As if it has eyes and might tell on the two of them.
She says, “Here.”
He watches her reaching hand, acting as if he might flee.
She says, “Relax. Go on. Relax.”
He watches the stroking of her hand, his penis stiffening. It’s the only hairless point on his body. She thinks of him as sleek, thinking of otter fur, thinking maybe it would be good to wander with him for a time. Though she doubts the offer’s genuineness—something made between lovers, reality suspended by mutual accord.
“How do you find the Earth?” she asks, kneeling to the floor. “Good?” she jokes, taking him into her mouth.
The little Cradler makes a contented sound.
She works him. She has him rocking on the bed, hands over his eyes and the moaning regular and soft and a little bit sad. He doesn’t hear the front door open and shut. The poor fellow is oblivious to it all. She persists with her mouth, planning nothing and going with the moment, the bedroom door coming open at the instant April decides to take him out of her mouth, holding the penis with a hand and turning to look up into the handsome face, saying:
“Hey now! You’re home!”
It is as if Gabbro sees nothing unusual, standing in the bedroom door in the dirty clothes and heavy boots with the big hands hanging at his sides with nothing to do. His eyes are tired. His entire face is long and drawn and near exhaustion.
“Oh my!” the little Cradler sings. His penis is shriveling in her hand, and he halfway sits up and blinks, plainly scared. “You—you promised him gone…!”
“She did?” asks Gabbro.
He doesn’t sound mad, she thinks. He doesn’t sound anything at all. What’s it mean? What’s he telling himself? The Cradler has begun to tremble, every hair on his legs standing erect, and on his body, and him sitting all the way up and looking larger than before but still tiny as he stares up at the cyborg, plainly weighing his prospects.
“What else did she tell you?”
The Cradler can’t find words.
“Well,” says Gabbro, “why don’t you stand and walk out of here. Now.” He takes a long, lazy breath and says, “Let, him stand, April. Help him if you’ve got to.” He says, “Do it.”
“Come on,” she tells him. “Here. Remember these.” She hands him his soggy swimsuit and towel, his hands feeling cold and shaking in her warm hands. “There, there.” She tells him, “Relax. He knows who’s to blame.”
The Cradler keeps watching Gabbro.
“Go on,” she says.
He makes a soft moaning sound from somewhere deep in his throat. He looks to April, saying, “No,” and wanting something. He glances at the suit and says, “Wait,” as tears well up in his eyes.
“Get dressed,” April insists.
“Hurry,” Gabbro adds, his voice without blood or hooks.
The Cradler untangles the suit and steps toward a leg, missing and nearly stumbling as he hops in place, weeping now and stopping and trying again with both shaking hands and his legs trembling and the one leg in and then the other and the suit up around his waist and the built-in belt taking in the slack, his breathing quick and light, quick and dry.
Gabbro says, “Come on.”
The Cradler moves toward him, swallowing and keeping his eyes down. Gabbro moves aside just enough for him to pass. He watches the Cradler. April studies him, trying to guess what will happen. The Cradler is gone and Gabbro again blocks the doorway, looking at her with the tired eyes and long face and the empty hands doing nothing. “Yes?” she says, challenging him. “Well, what do you want?”
