"Not castrated too?"
"What use would they be then?"
"Nice people. Is that what you're going to do to me?'
Jenna stood, and folded her arms. "I've heard a lot about you from Promise."
"What did she say?"
"Girl talk. You know. I've seen Nullboxing, and to tell you the truth, it doesn't look very practical."
"You haven't seen me."
Jenna shifted her head slightly to the side, and in that pose, she reminded him so very much of Promise. He felt a familiar twinge ... but he wasn't supposed to feel that way toward anyone else, was he?
"I think I'd like to," she said. "Sometime."
"What about now?"
"I don't think so."
She turned, and picked her bag up, shouldering it.
"Yeah, well, I can understand why. From what I've seen of Durga, it wouldn't last more than a blink."
Jenna stopped, and turned, and her smile was razor-thin "You quite literally don't know what you're talking about.'
"Listen. That dance might be great to keep senile muggers from running amok. But, lady, when you talk about a real fight, that's a whole different thing."
"And where is the life in what you practice, Knight? I see beefy, hypothyroid muscle boys twisting each other into zee-gee pretzels. The second-highest injury rate in professional sports. An average professional life span of seven years. An average participant age of twenty-three. That's one hell of an 'art.' A lot of room for personal growth, for self-expression."
Aubry crouched. "Come on. Right now. We can scale it down—why don't you educate me?"
"There's no attack in Durga," Jenna said.
"I saw attacks in practice. What crap is this?"
"We practice them so that our workouts can be more realistic. But attacks are not a part of the art."
Aubry shifted uneasily. "I have to attack you?"
Jenna nodded. "And be prepared for the consequences."
"Practice knives?"
"If you're afraid of the real thing. Don't worry." She smiled. "I have very good control."
"Oh, lady. You are definitely pushing."
"Come on, mister. Let's see your stuff."
Aubry picked up one of the wooden practice knives, hefted it carefully. He worked his fingers around it until he found the right grip, and then wiggled the tip to and fro a bit, testing the balance. Then he began to edge his way forward.
Jenna stood her ground. When Aubry was four feet away from her, he paused. How close was she going to let him get? What would her move be?
Slowly, in perfect balance, Aubry moved forward into her sphere of control. Jenna slid back at the same speed. Aubry increased speed slightly, and Jenna matched it.
He stopped. All right. Purely defensive art, with a high level of sensitivity, and a structure that compensated for inferior strength, durability, and burst speed. Durga would rely on endurance, flexibility, and the ability to "fit-in" with an opponent's body. Right now, she was attempting to lead him off balance. If he never went off balance, never overcommitted, she would have no opening for a technique. Yet if he never went off balance, there could be no committed attack, and she could continue to blend with him.
Well. No way to resolve this combatively. Hell with it—what if I just look at it as an opportunity for a workout?
Worth a try.
Aubry exploded. Jenna barely twisted aside, her relaxed expression tightening with shock. Her knives were used primarily to deflect his arms and legs—that is, would have, if he had committed enough of his mass to lose control. But even at the explosive speed he used, there was never true contact.
Aubry backed off, grinning. "You're pretty good."
"Reciprocal judgment reserved," she said. She was panting a bit. So. Her cardiovascular conditioning was not extreme.
Or was that another trap?
Aubry darted in, broke rhythm and direction, and threw his first committed technique, a hooking kick that flashed a heel toward her head.
Jenna went under it, swept his standing leg, and coiled away as Aubry went down in a ball. He rolled as if the contraction were his idea and not hers, and swept her as she rose.
There it was. The arms were too dangerous. The legs were far more vulnerable—
But her roll was as much a feint as Aubry's, and she came at him along the ground now, slashing in a blind frenzy.
Correction: a controlled frenzy, thank you. Aubry timed her movement, feinted to the head with his bunched fingertips, dropped and feinted a sweep, and watched her reaction.
She was a move ahead. Three-move timing, very sophisticated, more like Tai Chi than any Japanese art. In order to stop her, he would have to damage her physical structure, and that he was unwilling to do.
Unless—
Aubry drew one of her blades down with a kick to the shin, then shifted his shoulder as if about to throw a punch. When the blade came up he trapped her hand with his right. Her left hand sliced across as his fingers closed. Aubry released, and swept her feet. As she went to the ground, he disarmed the first knife, feinted a kick to the jaw, and then began a roll away. He reversed direction, catching the second knife on the sole of his right shoe as it flashed in. With the left heel he tapped her diaphragm.
She surprised him, keeping her composure with the breath slammed from her lungs, and the blade was at his groin—he smacked the inside of her elbow with a knuckle, and she dropped the knife from a suddenly nerveless hand.
Jenna's elbow jackknifed, clipping his jaw. Aubry rolled back, and shook his head, grinning.
Jenna came to her feet, holding one of the knives in a reverse grip, in classic "ice pick" configuration.
She was angry. At least she was breathing hard now, and her eyes were bright, and there was the slightest edge of a fighting smile on her lips. . . .
"Next clash, you're going to get hurt," Aubry said quietly. "I think we should stop now. You're very, very good."
Jenna inclined her head. She was still breathing hard. She watched him carefully.
"I've talked to Promise," she said. "She's been trying to teach you the dances. She says you aren't learning."
"They're not me," he said bluntly.
She looked at him, and at last he saw beyond the words, beyond the postures. For that moment, she was a woman interested in him as a man, and neither of them knew how to handle it. Jenna spoke first. "Come on. Come with me." She slipped her knife into her belt, and led the way.
They walked up a winding path behind the complex, and up the hill. He wished that she would slip, or falter, or weaken, something that would give him an excuse to touch her. He watched her legs work under the denim, and couldn't help comparing them to Promise's dancer's legs. Jenna's calf muscles were more pronounced, and moonlight glinted on her ankles as she walked. He caught his breath. He had a woman who was, in essence, Jenna with a different history. There was no reason to the attraction.
But reason never had much to do with it, anyway.
She stopped on a leveled shelf of earth where a circular amphitheater stretched back to the tree line. Aubry looked out; from here he could see the camp, the lumber mill, the hoist, and part of Marjo Valley. Above it, to the north, was the broken line of Flint Ridge. The swollen orb of the helium balloon rose over the valley like a demon, bobbling slightly in the wind.
"Marjo," she said. "We bought it with money and sweat. For most of us, it's the only home we want. For many, the only home we have. For some, the only home we've ever known. We live simply. That may be technology's greatest gift—giving us back the simplicity." She reached out and touched him, and he felt the electricity. He knew that she felt it too. Something in her eyes begged him not to take advantage of what he knew.
There was honor at stake here. He could have her if he really wanted, but that would ruin something else. Something that was more fragile, more delicate. Perhaps even more valuable.
Friendship.
"There isn't any magic out there anymore," s
he said. "We've figured everything out. Here, there's still a little of it. But you can't think about it. You have to just feel it. That's the magic. It's the magic of feeling. The first time you watch a child being born. Of watching someone weak become strong. Of watching things grow. Do you know what I'm saying?"
"I'm not sure." Stop playing games. Either touch me, really touch me, or don't . . .
"You say that the dances aren't you."
"They make me feel like some kind of faggot."
"Because they ask you to be feminine? That part of you is there. Just as the masculine is in me."
"Bullshit. Your whole art is based on evasion. There isn't a confrontational moment in the entire thing. In Chinese terms, it's all Yin."
"The dance and the fighting art are the same thing. Promise never understood that, not really. In the Indus Valley, the Mistresses of Durga practiced their art right under the noses of their men. She's the greatest dancer we ever produced, and she should have been Mistress. She ran from her 'masculine' emotions like you're running from the 'feminine.' It's all garbage. I just hope to the Goddess that the human race has time to learn that."
Aubry was silent.
"We're orphans," Jenna said sadly. "America is a nation of bastard mongrel children in a beautiful land that isn't really ours. The American Indians are the only ones with a real tradition here, and we've done everything we can to destroy them. We're a thousand different subcultures trying to survive with each other. The women here have nothing in the outside world, so we're making our culture from scratch."
"You can't do that. . . ." Aubry said, confused. "You can't just create yourself."
"Why the hell not?" Her voice became urgent. "You contain both hard and soft, Aubry. What good would your strength be without your flexibility?"
"Not a lot," he admitted. "But I'm no dancer. . . ."
"You move beautifully." They were very close together. "I'm trying to save you. I'm trying to give you a chance."
"Why do you care?"
She backed away. "Shit. You're hopeless." She took two more paces away. "Listen, mister, I can care about you without wanting what's in your pants."
"Then you have no interest at all?"
"You belong to my sister," she said simply. "It doesn't matter what I'm interested in. Or what I want. My honor is more important."
"All right," he said. "Let's leave it at that. What do I do?"
"Learn to lose."
"I lost, once."
"And what happened?"
"He became my teacher. My friend."
"That's just more macho buddy-buddy yes sifu bullshit. So you lost! So what! The strength is in you, or it isn't.
What are you so damned scared of? That you might be human? That you might be weak?" She was yelling at him now. "Well, if you live long enough, you'll find out what weak is, believe me. And if you're lucky, you'll have enough people who love you to help you through that time, but you never will if you can't be a goddamned human being."
"I don't have to be weak."
"I suppose you don't have to get old either?"
Aubry's answer was very quiet. "Not if I die first."
Jenna stared at him, then turned her back. "Every tree out there is stronger than you. But you can kill it, or insects can kill it, or fire, or weather, or time. If you can't bend, you are going to break, Aubry. And that would be a shame. You ..." There was a catch in her voice, and she sighed. "Promise loves you very much."
"She has to. Cyloxibin does that."
"God," she said numbly. "You have to be the most frightened man I've ever met. You're dangerous as hell."
She walked back down the path a few steps, then stopped. ; "Good night, Aubry," she said, and then took another' step. She stopped. "And if you weren't with Promise . maybe I'd try to save you from yourself. You don't know yourself yet. Not at all. I hope you have time left. I hope we all have enough time." Then she was gone.
Aubry stayed up on the mountainside long after she was gone, listening to the quiet sounds, watching the stars.
He had never realized that the sky was so damned large.
Chapter Fourteen
Courtney
Promise lay on her stomach, awake but unmoving. The gauzy veil suspended from the ceiling fluttered in the early morning breeze. It obscured her expression. She watched as Aubry climbed in the window.
"Where've you been?"
"Thinking." He ran a thumbnail under his boot fasteners, and slipped them off as they fell into halves. "Thinking about a lot of things."
Promise lifted herself up from the bed, pulled the thin blanket up to cover her nakedness. "Anything that you want to talk about?"
"Not now. Not yet." Aubry sat on the edge of the bed, and barely reacted when she snaked her arms around him. "Do you ever wonder?" he whispered.
"Wonder what?" She kissed his ear, nibbled at the heavy lobes.
"Wonder if we really love each other." Even the effort to speak the words was gigantic. His body thundered its response to her overtures, all hormonal systems going for broke. He felt as if he was squatting atop an erupting volcano. He wanted nothing but to hold Promise, to bend her back against the mattress and join their bodies together.
He began to sweat, trembling with the effort not to move.
"I don't care," she said. "I don't care what caused it, or what feeds it. I'm sure that I'm happy with you. Aren't you happy ..."
"I don't know," he said huskily. "I wish to hell that I did. I have a beautiful woman who can't keep her hands off me—" and here he smiled. Some of his control broke, and he pulled her back onto the bed. "And all I can think about is whether or not she would have loved me if it weren't for that damned drug."
Promise pulled him onto his back, squatted atop him and began unbuckling his belt. She bared her fine, small teeth at him. "Shut up," she said. She pulled his underpants away, and arched up onto her knees. "I don't care if it was drugs, or fate, or an act of Congress." She held her breath and settled down on top of him. Suddenly all of his thoughts and concerns vanished. The only reality was the searing heat their bodies generated, and the thunder of his heart as she bent over him and fused their mouths together.
Tuesday, May 30
It was almost dawning when they stopped, when Aubry disentangled himself from her arms and stood naked in the room, watching the sun's first pale pink brush strokes along the horizon.
Promise lay watching him. Finally he felt the intensity of her stare, and turned.
"Come on," she said. "I want to try something."
He grinned, and reached for her again.
"No, monomind, not that. Slip into your overalls. I want you out of here."
"Why?"
"No questions. Let's just go."
Aubry sighed. Whatever it was that she had in mind, he had a feeling that it wasn't going to be fun.
He dressed hurriedly and they went downstairs. They unhitched the car from the charging post. She wouldn't let him drive, just pushed him to the passenger side.
Something was wrong. Aubry did what she asked, went where he was told, but knew on some level that he was imprisoned. It didn't matter how pretty the prison was, how much love he was surrounded by.
He had no choice. And that one thing turned Heaven into Hell.
She drove him up over the wooden bridge, and into the woods a mile or two. The road got uncomfortably rough, even through the air-cushion. At one point the dust and dirt blown up by the ground-effect skirt obscured their view. Promise pulled over to the side and stopped.
"OK. Down here." She took his hand and led him down a path to the water. It gurgled at him as he approached. The trees formed a canopy that shielded it from even the slight warmth of the morning sun.
"Why here? It's cold."
"And going to be colder. I want you to take off your overalls."
He squinted. "You what?”
She laughed. "I know. It's crazy, and it's uncomfortable, and you'll hate it. You'll never feel more vulne
rable. I think it might be just what you need."
"You first."
"Ah-ah-ah. I'm not the one who has to dance in two nights."
"Yeah, well, if I don't believe you ever did it, I'm not gonna do it."
She stared at him for a minute, and then stripped. Her body was not as tight and muscular as Jenna's, but it seemed to have been made to show and to hold, and just watching it now fanned the flames to new life.
After the drug, and the time in prison, and the severity of Nullboxing training, he couldn't remember whether he used to feel like this or not. What was real? What was created by that damned drug?
Promise tiptoed into the stream, gritting her teeth as the freezing water splashed over her calves. "All right," she chattered. "Now you."
Aubry cursed under his breath and stripped his overalls off.
"You can either get in here a half inch at a time, or take the plunge."
Teeth clinched, he waded out until the water was to the middle of his massive thighs, almost lapping at his genitals.
Christ, did he feel ridiculous.
"Open yourself," she said. "Just dance what you feel."
"I feel like a foolsicle. Can I put my clothes back on, please?"
She laughed up to him, kissed at his mouth. "Not yet. Come on. Try."
Aubry gritted his teeth and spread his arms twirling around in a circle. Water splashed up between his legs, and he felt himself shrivel.
"Lose your balance and catch it . . ."
Aubry tried to relax and summon Warrick's face, but his friend's spirit seemed to belong to a land of steel towers. Here, in the mountains and valleys, in the world of dizzying greens and browns, Warrick and his strength was impossibly distant.
"Relax!"
Finally he did, and his ankle turned on a stone. He almost fell. Promise danced like a sprite in front of him, seemingly oblivious to the cold.
He stopped, and watched her, and tried again, and stepped on a broken branch under the water, jabbing his foot.
He stopped again, and this time he couldn't make himself move. "This is idiotic," he rasped.
She didn't laugh this time, eyes sad. The morning sunlight filtered through the trees, split into a thousand gentle beams, spotting their faces and bodies. "Aubry. I'm just trying to help."
Gorgon Child Page 13
