by Mike Ashley
"Scott! Scottie!" The one from the man, the other from the woman.
Despite the best of intentions, I kept looking at her crotch, and that made her smile in a shy sort of way. Him too.
"Katy. Ben."
He said, "That was a damn good idea you had!"
"Glad you liked it. Uh ... " He laughed. "It was nowhere near as bad as I expected. You know, we almost made it to the rainout?"
That little pang of guilt, remembering the night I sent him away to die. All for nothing. I could have told him to go get Katy and bring her back. But I didn't. So how am I different from Paulie then? Wasn't Ben my friend? Or Katy, with her lovely little snatch?
"I, uh ... well. I hope it wasn't too bad for you. I mean ... "
Katy said, "If you've got enough Seconal, it's easy enough." She laughed at my look. "Hey, Ben and me woke up together. He told me, um, you and Connie..."
I shook my head. "We made it through the rainout. After that..."
There was a shadow in Ben's face, however sunny Katy was right now. And, of course, for them, that rainout was minutes ago, on the other side of a double-handful of mother's little helper. Look at them. They belong together.
And, somewhere out here ... Connie? Lara? I...
The two of them were looking past me now, faces curious. When I turned, there was a naked woman with curly black hair, smiling, just like you'd expect. And she said, "So, is this my reward in the hereafter?"
What a grin!
I don't think she expected me to pounce on her the way I did, grappling, almost knocking her down in my eagerness. She pushed me away, laughing, wiping her mouth, "Jesus! Down puppy!"
Behind me, Katy said, "Shew! You don't waste any fucking time, Scott! You know this nice nekkid lady?"
To his credit, naked Millikan was even blushing. When I introduced them all to each other, Katy looked Maryanne up and down slowly, lingering on her tits the way women will, then said, "Hey. Connie shows up anytime soon, we can compare notes." Letting Maryanne know where she'd been. Maryanne looked at me, bit her lip, made a little crooked smile, and shrugged. I felt something cold touch my spine, making my balls pull in a bit. I looked down the hill again, towards the shining sea. People were coming out of the bushes everywhere, milling, calling out to one another.
Down there, most likely not far away, a pretty blonde woman of about thirty is inspecting her right wrist, and wondering what the hell she did wrong.
Wonder what I'll say if I run into her?
Somewhere nearby, maybe just beyond the trees, an elephant howled and then we heard a man's terrified scream. Millikan spun, looking towards the sound, then over his shoulder at me. "I guess I wasn't paying attention when the Gods did their bit. Did they say anything about the animals coming here too?"
Gods? As in, I'm not the only one was told where we are? I said, "You got a nice ass, Ben."
He gave me a weird look, then turned back to the woods. You could see a fucking elephant in there, a big gray shadow, blundering about among the pine trees, getting all tangled up, thrashing this way and that. In front of it, you could see a big fat white guy running our way. Every once in a while he'd look over his shoulder, scream, trip and fall, get up and stumble on.
Maryanne said, "The trees came to heaven with us, why not an elephant?"
I put my arm around her waist, and said, "Long as you're here, the details don't matter."
She twisted in my grasp, trying to look me in the eye. I started to rear back, and realized with a jolt that the far-sightedness that'd been building as I moved through my late forties and into my fifties was gone.
She said, "Even if Connie shows up and changes her mind?"
I smiled. "Especially then."
That still, solemn look. "And what about the other one?"
I took a deep breath. "When Lara took that razor to her wrist, she knew who would find her in the morning. I've had twenty years to think on that."
A slow nod. "I've got a past of my own. You never asked."
"If it matters, you'll let me know. Until then ... look!" A gesture with my free arm, downslope towards the deepening mist. "Everybody and everything that ever was is here in this valley. We..."
The fat guy came out of the trees stumbling, still looking back, though the elephant seemed to have given up, stuck in a tangle of fallen trees, confused. I waved my arm. "Paulie! This way!"
Maryanne nuzzled close to my ear and whispered, "Shut up! Maybe he won't see us."
He ran straight across the sloping ground towards the hill, tripping again, running slower, then slower still. Just before he got to the steeper part, leading up to where the four of us stood, he turned away, running parallel to the base, then turning at an angle away from us again.
Gasping. Gasping for breath.
Suddenly, he screamed, "Julia Julia, wait!"
I turned and looked. There. Naked, long hair streaming out behind her, running away, toward another patch of dark, piny woods. Running along, holding hands with another fat man. Gary, of course, healed from the bullets and the cold.
Paulie fell down, got up, shouted, "Julia! For God's sake! Please! I love you!" Ran on, stumbling, following them into the trees.
Eventually, the rainout reached the point where even the spacesuits were useless, trapping us in the shelter. One night, we all pitched in and put together one of best dinners I ever had. Cornish hens. Brussels sprouts. Baked potato. Cornbread stuffing. Salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. We were all crowded into the Staff Quarters kitchen, working on our favorite things, bumping into each other, laughing about silly little shit, like old times, like we were, somehow, having the life we'd always wanted, maybe even the life we deserved. There was chicken giblet gravy. Real butter. Sour cream.
Everybody had their own favorite wine, from Julia's snobby chicken-appropriate dry white whatever, to my own beer stein full of tawny port. I lifted it now and looked at them. Silence? Not quite. In the background, you could hear a soft drumming sound, rather a slow drum right now, the dull, intermittent thud of exploding oxygen rain.
"Here's to us," I said, "here and now."
Paul picked up a champagne flute of Black Opal something or other. "Not the things that were. Not the things that might have been. Just us."
Julia looked at him, seeming surprised.
"Good one, Paulie." Wish you'd been thinking that way back when life was real and there were things we were maybe going to do and be. We ate quietly for a while, most of the noise coming from Paul, who'd never learned to chew with his mouth shut. Hell. It's just defiance. Somewhere, his dead parents are still looking over his shoulder, yelling at him, wringing their hands in despair because he won't do what they want.
Overhead, the sound of the rain grew louder for a moment, then softened again. Like someone far above had dumped an extra-big bucket of droplets on us, just for fun. Connie put down her fork and looked up at the ceiling, as if inspecting it for water stains.
Conniekins, if this roof starts leaking, we are fucked.
She said, "Is it going to stay like this?"
"We don't know."
Paul grimaced. "Yeah we do. In a few days it'll be like real rain, a downpour."
"Well, we only imagine that, Paulie. And we've been wrong about a lot. Remember?"
"Look. Right now, it's just getting started. The droplets are coming down slow because they're low density and falling through gaseous air. But it's the air that's falling! The atmospheric pressure will start to drop, more oxygen will condense out, then the nitrogen will start to go."
"I know. I know. As the pressure goes down, the drops will fall hard. Towards the end, they'll be falling like rocks."
He grinned. "Feathers in a vacuum."
Julia kept her eyes on her plate, eating slowly, as if ignoring us.
Connie said, "What'll happen to us then?"
"That's why we piled that extra dirt on the birm. Might help. Can't hurt. If things get scary, we'll go in the capsule and seal the ha
tches."
Her voice was soft, eyes on mine. "And... afterward?"
"We'll just have to see. I... "
The floor shuddered, rattling dishes and glasses together on the table, my wine rocking in its mug. I jumped up and ran to the lounge, looking out the big picture window into the brightly-lit garage. Nothing. Bulldozer at the door. The two cars. The nose of the Cat visible in shadow. The little door up to the hotel was still sealed, containing its coffer dam of concrete and dirt.
Over my shoulder, Paulie said, "Let's go to the cupola."
I nodded, looking at the open door to the tunnel. Nothing. Darkness. "Yeah. And maybe we better think about keeping that shut when we're not down there?"
From the cupola you could see there was a fire burning beyond our old observation hill, a big fire, enormous red flames licking skyward, pouring forth dense black clouds of smoke, like crude oil burning in a bowl, calling up images of the end of the Gulf War, when the well-heads were set off by Saddam's retreating heroes. Already, the smoke was towering up in a steep, jet-black column towards the bright green sky, with its muddy orange streaks and curls of vermilion lightning.
There were sparks of rain everywhere, falling faster now, pulling their pale blue contrails, popping as they hit the landscape, twinkling around the edges of the hot black smoke, flaring and veering from the fire.
Paul said, "Somewhere near downtown. Maybe a gas main explosion?"
"I don't think so. That's big. Farther away than you think, maybe on Palmer's Ridge. There's nothing up there but woods."
"Plane crash?"
"Jesus, Paulie. You know any planes that could fly in a -200 atmosphere?"
The flames were getting bigger and brighter now, showing long tongues of yellow in their midst, maybe from the falling oxygen.
Connie pressed her face to the quartz, then jerked back. I touched it. Cold. Cold enough to hurt. She said, "Are we in danger?"
I said, "Whatever it is, it can't spread far. It'll go out soon enough."
Paul was looking down at the little bank of meteorological gauges in a panel below one window. "Temperature's actually up a few degrees. It's that hot. Pressure's down more than I expected. It's around twelve psi outside."
I took a deep breath, feeling my heart flutter nervously. "Still okay in here. I guess we've got a tight enough seal."
I turned and looked at the hotel. It was surrounded by a boil of pale blue fog, tower of vapor reaching for the sky. There was something wrong with the roof, maybe shingles missing now, and you could see the occasional ball of light as a raindrop would strike and flare. Leaking? Hard to say. The oxygen probably would evaporate on the wood, but ... I said, "It's not going to last, Paulie. We need to think about closing the geothermal water valves, so we don't have a blowout when it collapses."
He said, "It'll go fast, once it gets cold enough."
"We should leave a video camera running in here, once we do. So we'll have a tape, after ... " After? Christ. What after?
Paulie snickered, turning away towards the tunnel hatch, headed back to the Quarters, where our dinner was getting cold. When I looked at Connie, she was still staring out the window, not at the fire, not at the hotel that'd been our home for a while but down the driveway at Gary's pickup truck. It was visibly dented, and the windshield was gone, no more than a few shards remaining, dangling around the rim, stuck together by safety-glass film. You couldn't see inside, not even when a raindrop would get in and flare up briefly blue.
Maybe they're eaten away. Maybe they're gone. She must've seen it the first time she came in here, while we were out shoveling up birm dirt. She never said a fucking word.
She turned to me and smiled, put her hand out and touched my chest, let it drift down to hold onto my belt buckle. "Come on," she said, "we can reheat our stuff in the microwave."
Greekee, greekee, greekee, greekee ...
The nights in heaven are dark indeed, filled with darktime noises that turn you back into a child. Greekee. Like those stickbug creatures I made up for a book I once wanted to write, about a man who didn't know who he was. All lost now.
Perhaps for the best. Somewhere in the distance, a big cat squalled, high scream falling off in a deep gurgle, some great engine dieseling away to silence. Maryanne shivered next to me, maybe the tiger-bright, maybe the nighttime cold. I put my arm around her shoulders again, welcoming the touch myself.
Oh, great. Another hard-on. She's going to get tired of this shit sooner or later.
We'd gotten a few more people together on the hilltop, mostly folks from the Redoubt EVA crew, a few from HDC, a couple of Ben's friends, and we'd managed to uproot thorn bushes, swearing at the cuts they made, Jonas yelping when he hooked one on his dick, making a little boma round the top of the hill.
Millikan startled me by knowing how to make and use a fire drill, lighting us up a cheery little deadwood fire just as the sun sank fat and dull red-orange behind the remotest mountains.
He'd grinned at my amazement. "What the fuck did you think I was up to on all those wilderness camping vacations? You should've come along, like I said."
Maryanne nuzzled the side of my neck, then pointed up in the sky. "You suppose they have names?"
She was pointing at a little pink moon, an irregular rocky little asteroid thing that had come over the mountains a couple of hours ago, swelling as it came our way, tumbling and twinkling against the black backdrop of the sky.
I said, "If they don't, we'll just have to make some up."
There'd been three of them so far, a yellow, a blue, and now a pink, though there'd never been more than two at once. The blue one was sort of like Earth's old Moon, a round, not quite featureless disk that seemed far, far away.
There were other lights in the sky too, but damned few. Distant, untwinkling glints, reminding me of planets, that familiar one out there maybe Venus, a pale yellow that might be Jupiter, a pink that could be Mars. Nothing, however, that would remind you of stars, just deep, velvety black that went on and on.
On to nowhere. That's what the Gods said.
This is the Lesser Creation, infinitely folded in on itself, holding whatever the Gods felt was worth rescuing from the mistake that made us.
What happens if the Greater Gods, unknown, unknowable, find out what their tools have done? Will they sweep us away then, after all?
Maryanne stood and stretched, still looking up at the sky, shining and shadowy in the firelight, all breasts and bush and pale white skin. "You suppose we're immortal now?"
Isn't that the way it always works in these things? I said, "If it were my story, that's the way I'd have it end."
Looking out across the black, blank emptiness of the immense valley, supposedly filled with every living thing that had ever existed on the Earth, she said, "I always wondered just how bored people might get, living on forever in the hereafter."
In the end, the only decent place to ride out the rain of air, if you could call it that, turned out to be in our survival capsule bunks. Paul and Julia were hiding in theirs, separate, Connie and I together, this time in mine. In case we wound up flung across the room, at least there'd be a few less feet to fall.
We left the lights on and scrunched in there, eating lunch, listening to the roar of the rain, now more like waves at the ocean, as if heard too close up, than anything else, eating yesterday's leftovers, like nothing was wrong, like it was raining outside on a blustery winter night in North Carolina.
Tomorrow the sun will shine, and we'll go for a nice walk in Umstead Forest, amid the leaf ess gray trees under a crisp, cloudless dark blue sky. And in due course, summer will come again.
We're not fifty-something, Connie.
We're young. Young and beautiful. Remember?
The tuna was better for having steeped for a day, and Connie got a loaf of that really great Wellspring bread out of the cupboard. "Last one," she'd said, bracing her feet against the shivering floor, brandishing a sharp knife. Sandwiches, pickles, chips and Sea
ltest French Onion Dip, a plastic bottle of Welch's for me, decaffeinated diet Coke for her.
Think about it.
No matter how hard you try, Connie dearest, you ain't got time to get fat now.
I kept reaching out to touch her thighs, pat the warmth between her legs, and when we were done, we stretched out, bunk rocking gently underneath us, nuzzling our faces together. Inside her pants, my hand was nice and warm, Connie smiling against the side of my face and murmuring, "Incorrigible."
I wanted her to call me Scottie again, wanting to feel the way it would melt my heart.
BAM
The bunk jolted so hard it threw us up in the air a bit and, from the other side of the room, Julia screamed, a high drawn out wail like a special effect in some cheap movie or another.
Crackl
The capsule tilted hard, walls shuddering and groaning around us, tipping back the other way, so we fell together against the inside wall of the bunk. There was a tumbling sound from the floor, Paul cursing incoherently, not even words, near as I could tell. When I looked, he was scrambling on his hands and knees, trying to get back in bed.
Stroby out there, fluorescent lights flickering.
Ballasts failing, I guess.
I turned back to Connie, driving Paul and Julia and everything else from my head. She was scared-looking. White-faced. Wide-eyed. Eyes searching mine for something, anything.
I kissed her softly and reached under the waistband of her pants, putting my palm flat on her belly. Smiled. In the background, you could hear Julia sobbing. Nothing from Paul. Hey, Paulie. Gotcher pillow over yer head yet?
Connie seemed to smile back.
I said, "I'm glad you're brave."
The bed jerked under us and the angle of the floor steepened a bit. Outside, things were whacking and booming, so loud I couldn't imagine what was happening. Jesus. Sounds like sheets and blankets flapping on a clothesline. Gigantic sheets and blankets. In a hurricane.
