Pallas

by L. Neil Smith

  “Let’s not take chances,” Gretchen replied with a grin, although her tone was serious, almost nervous. “We’ll just go straight home and find out later what’s going on here.”

  Emerson, all too willing to oblige in this instance, nodded. They detoured around the solar-powered machine, continued down the street past Osborn’s Plumbing & Machine Shop, where he worked, two more saloons, more gunsmiths than cities a hundred times the size of Curringer usually had on Earth, residences ranging from palatial to pathetic, and the videochip rental—Gretchen had a TV of her own—where he often picked up movies to take home after work.

  Somewhere after they’d passed the oil well, she took hold of his hand and wouldn’t let go of it until they passed through the front gate of her mother’s house.

  That evening, immediately following dinner, Mrs. Singh asked everyone present to remain seated at the dining room table for just another few minutes.

  “We got a little unfinished business to attend to,” she explained, if that was the word for it.

  Suddenly Gretchen swung through the kitchen door carrying something on a big platter. It was an oddly shaped cake. As she set it down, Emerson saw that it had been cut into the shape of the steel pigs they’d been shooting at that morning. Atop the reddish chocolate frosting lay a big, scalloped-edged figure 5.

  At a nod from his hostess, Brody arose to clear his throat impressively. “Emerson, as we’re all aware, you tied the Curringer range record today with an enviable score of twenty-nine out of forty. I’m sure a ‘mere’ seventy-two and a half percent sounds less than impressive to the uninitiated, but it’s no inconsiderable feat given your relative newness to the sport and the fact that you were shooting offhand over iron sights. That in itself would be reason enough for celebration, but this is in acknowledgment of another accomplishment on your part which you seem to have overlooked—although you may rest assured that we have not. This morning you downed five javelinas in a row.” He beamed at Gretchen. “I believe Miss Singh has a small token of the occasion to present you with.”

  Gretchen moved to Emerson’s side as the boy, face burning, awkwardly levered himself to his feet. Reaching into one of the many small pockets of her shooting vest, under which she was wearing a frilly silk blouse tonight, Gretchen extracted a glittering bit of jewelry and ceremoniously pinned it to his shirt lapel. When he got a better look at it later, he saw that it was a tinier version of the cake, silver-edged and enameled in red, with a figure 5 in its center.

  “The first,” she declared, “of many.”

  Now that he thought about it, he’d already noticed several pins just like this, chickens and pigs and turkeys and rams, being worn by Gretchen and some of her shooting friends. He’d wondered idly what they were. Gretchen wasn’t wearing hers tonight, possibly out of politeness, because it would make this sole distinction he’d achieved appear as ridiculous by comparison as it probably was.

  She stood on her toes, kissed him on the cheek, and they both blushed while Brody, her mother, and the Jacksons laughed and shouted and clapped their hands.

  “Emerson?”

  Gretchen’s voice, as soft as he’d ever heard it, had followed her light tapping on his bedroom door. Nevertheless he started. He’d come to his room as quickly as he could after cutting the cake and eating a polite portion to read from another borrowed history book, listen to the radio, and try to think. The feeling of this morning’s kiss and the odd discomfort of this evening’s honor were burned into his brain. He’d sat on the bed fully dressed, staring at the wall, seeing mental pictures of Gretchen that now made him feel more than a little self-conscious.

  “Er, come in.” As a hasty afterthought, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

  She did as she was told and quietly closed the door behind her, giving him a smile with downcast eyes that was partly bold and partly shy. A half-conscious glance at the clock standing beside the radio told Emerson that it was later than he’d thought. Brody would be gone. The other inhabitants of the house, including Mrs. Singh, would have been in their beds by now for at least an hour.

  Ordinarily, so would Gretchen, he assumed.

  She was certainly dressed for it in a lightweight and translucent, vaguely robelike thing with who-knew-what on underneath. Inexplicably, he felt guilty just for noticing how the light came through it, outlining her body. He tried, unsuccessfully, to look away. More accustomed to seeing her in rough denim outdoor clothing that concealed, he was astonished at the way the form-fitting fabric she wore was pushed in and out, here and there, as she moved.

  As she breathed.

  It was a lot like the first day he’d met her. He swallowed and tried to talk, but couldn’t think of anything particularly intelligent to say. His breath came to him raggedly, his hands shook, and his legs felt like warm jelly. At the same time there was a feeling throughout his body as if it were held together by fine, hot wires which had been pulled too tight and might tear through his flesh any minute if they didn’t burn their way out first. He had a suspicion, one he hardly dared to recognize, let alone hope was correct, that Gretchen had come to his bedroom for something more than a kiss.

  Looking more than a little self-conscious herself, she glided toward him, pausing to turn out the desk lamp as she passed it, which left only the small reading light mounted on the headboard of his bed, and the softly glowing dial of the radio—where something gentle and, well, seductive was being played, a classic from the middle of the previous century. She didn’t stop advancing until she stood as close to him as possible without touching, every contour of her body within millimeters of his own. It may have been an illusion of some kind, but Emerson believed he caught the faint whiff of sagebrush and woodsmoke he’d noticed about her from the first day they’d met, a sensation he’d always associate with her.

  She smiled and this time looked him in the eye, although her breathing, he observed, was no less uneven than his own. “Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

  He swallowed again and nodded toward the chair across the room, instantly hating himself for his stupidity and bashfulness. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Why yes, thank you, I would.”

  She took his hand and sat down on the bed, pulling him down to sit close beside her.

  She cleared her throat.

  “I didn’t come in here to make you nervous, Emerson, and I don’t really care whether you’re a virgin or not. I’m very sorry I said that this morning. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m nervous, too, in case you wondered, which is why I’m talking so much. I wish to hell you’d say something so I could shut up.”

  “Unh...”

  He rolled his eyes, mindless and totally lost to panic, torn between taking this beautiful creature in his arms and kissing her or jumping out of the window. He hadn’t wondered why she was talking so much—he hadn’t even noticed. If anything, he was grateful. For one horrifying instant he did wonder what Mrs. Singh would say—or do; she was a better shot than Gretchen—if she were to walk in on them. Then he realized suddenly that he didn’t care.

  There were worse ways to die.

  He put both arms around her and kissed her. She did smell of sagebrush and woodsmoke. She moaned quietly, as if she’d waited for this a long time. He felt a sort of shudder run through her body and the wet warmth of tears on her cheeks. After a long while, he sat back from her a little, lifted her chin with gentle fingertips, and asked, “Is this also because I won the match this morning?”

  A million other girls might have been insulted by that question, or pretended to be. Gretchen wiped her eyes and laughed, her long, glossy hair shimmering with each movement of her head. “No, Emerson, it isn’t. That was going to be my excuse, but I’ve been thinking about doing this for months, almost since the minute I met you—although I don’t suppose I should admit that. It did help me get my courage up, having an excuse. And you certainly weren’t going to do anything on your own, were you? Don’t answer
that—you couldn’t, on account of where you’re from and maybe what you think Mom might think.”

  “I was wondering, kind of—”

  She laid her hands atop his. “There’s nothing to wonder about, Emerson. On Pallas—what you call the Outside—you’re a free man, I’m a free woman, and that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter if my mother, or anybody else, disapproves—although she likes you very much and I’ll bet she’s actually been wondering if we’d ever get around to it. If she did, the worst she could do is throw us out of her house, but that wouldn’t be the mother I know. As long as you pull your own mass and take responsibility when it’s yours to take, nobody has anything to say about what you do. That was settled quite a while back on this asteroid—and my mom and I settled it long ago between ourselves.”

  She squeezed his hands beneath hers. “Besides,” she whispered, “Mom’s busy. You left so quickly after dinner. I’ll bet you think Aloysius went back to town, don’t you?”

  He opened his mouth. “I—”

  “I think that’s enough talk.” She placed a gentle hand on his chest, pushed him back onto his pillow, and fumbled briefly with the copper buttons of his Levi’s. “Mmmhmm, I thought so. I wouldn’t take the initiative, but we’ll have to do something about that if this is going to turn out right for both of us.”

  She worked the zipper, and, with his stunned and somewhat frightened cooperation, pushed his pants down until they bunched at his knees. Still sitting, she bent over him—her dark, soft hair brushed and tickled his thighs—and began doing something wonderfully absurd which kept them both from talking for a while.

  At some point—he was never quite certain when it happened, but the time required was all too short—every muscle in his body tensed and suddenly released. A low, involuntary shout wrenched itself from his throat and his mind exploded with a white light mystics talk about and look for in all the wrong places.

  Afterward, as shocked disbelief and the memory of unspeakable pleasure sang through his veins—he’d never heard of people doing anything like what had just happened but was afraid to ask about it because he didn’t want her to know it was his first time—they lay together, her head on his shoulder and his arms around her.

  He started to say something.

  She put a finger to his lips. “Don’t you dare thank me for that. Believe me, it was pure self-interest, the most practical application of capitalist theory I know.” She giggled. “Postponing present gratification—you can’t really say consumption, can you?—in order to guarantee future satisfaction.”

  They didn’t speak after that. He kissed her eyelids, the bridge of her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, her chin. She kissed his fingertips. Without more prompting than that, he pulled at the slender, silky ribbons of what she wore and opened her clothing, gazing down at her in the soft light of the room, touching her everywhere, unlocking the secrets of her body and claiming it for his own, inhaling her warm scent and marveling at her firm, smooth fullness.

  Nor did she lie passively beneath his hands.

  And in due course, Gretchen discovered that the most reliable miracle in the universe had occurred, that he was ready for her once again, and that she was now ready for him.

  “Remember to take your time,” she advised him with a grin as she swung a leg over his and rose to place herself atop him. “It isn’t a race, you know.”

  Somewhat awkwardly at first, Emerson followed Gretchen’s advice precisely as he had that morning at the range, and indeed, this time it turned out right for both of them.

  And the third time was even better.

  Confrontation

  McCOY: You offer us only well-being...

  SCOTT: Food and drink and happiness mean nothing to us. We must be about our job...

  McCOY: Suffering in torment and pain, laboring without end...

  SCOTT: Dying and crying and lamenting over our burdens...

  BOTH: Only in this way can we be happy!

  —Stephen Kandel, “I, Mudd,” Star Trek

  Emerson woke late the next morning, happier than he’d known was possible. And from the sight, indescribably, almost painfully beautiful to him, of Gretchen’s still-sleeping face against his pillow, he believed that she was, as well.

  The radio was still playing softly. He traced the graceful, delicate line of her jaw with a gentle finger. She smiled and snuggled further into the blankets.

  It must have been obvious that last night had been his only experience with a woman. Apparently—miraculously—she hadn’t seemed to care. For the first time, he wondered whether it might have been her first with—dare he call himself a man? From what she knew and how she did it, he doubted that she’d been a virgin when she came to his bed. What he felt about that—not knowing that it would have seemed no less miraculous to her—was undiluted gratitude. He did find he preferred never to know who the other fellow—fellows?—had been.

  He sighed contentedly and looked around the room, remembering. The place would never seem the same, and here was a day that was truly new. Outdoors, the morning sun seemed to be hammering at his window, demanding to be let in. Grinning to himself, Emerson arose, careful not to disturb the girl. He strode across the small room, trying not to swagger, and pulled the curtain back. His grin vanished when he saw what waited in the road just beyond Mrs. Singh’s gate.

  It was probably what had awakened him.

  Suddenly the hammering was real, at his door instead of at the window. Gretchen sat up, gorgeous and completely unself-conscious in her nakedness, blinking with disorientation at the disturbance. Before the boy could wrench his eyes away and grab his pants to put them on, Mrs. Singh was shouting at them from the hall.

  “Emerson! Gretchen! Wake up and get out here in a hurry! Looks like we’ve got company!”

  The door opened to a four-inch crack and Mrs. Singh’s heavily veined hand appeared, holding her daughter’s Levi’s, vest, and gunbelt. She tossed them on the bed without looking in, closed the door, and they could hear her footsteps almost immediately, clattering down the stairs. Without a word, with hardly a look between them except for the briefest possible brush of her lips across his, both of the younger people dressed hurriedly, strapped on their weapons, and followed after her.

  The air downstairs smelled pleasantly of frying bacon. Mrs. Singh must have been interrupted in the middle of preparing breakfast. Outside, through a screen of privacy offered by the sheer curtains of the living room windows, the three of them watched former United States Senator Gibson Altman clamber down from the electric Project vehicle Emerson and Gretchen had seen in Curringer the previous afternoon and, flanked by a pair of thick-necked, uniformed security men, their shock batons in hand, stamp up the walk to the steps of the front porch.

  “That’s close enough, boys!” Mrs. Singh opened her front door all the way, leaving the outer screen hooked. From a large apron pocket she pulled a 10 millimeter pistol almost identical to Gretchen’s, although she held it at her waist behind her back. Her voice was high but firm. “This don’t look like no friendly visit to me. State your business or get off my property!”

  The Chief Administrator of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project, just about to start up the porch steps ahead of him, stopped with one foot in the air. As he put it down, the pair of toughs behind him each took a sideways step, spreading out defensively, their batons held menacingly across their chests.

  Altman wasn’t wearing a hat, but somehow gave the impression of politely taking one off before he spoke. In one hand he held a sheaf of official-looking forms. “Good morning, madam—Mrs. Henrietta Singh, I believe. My name is Gibson Altman. I’m here because I have reason to believe you’re harboring a fugitive—unknowingly, of course. Is there an Emerson Ngu on the premises?”

  “I know exactly who you are, Senator,” Mrs. Singh informed him. “What if there was?”

  “He’s a minor child, madam, an illegal runaway from my jurisdiction, and his parents want him back.” He spread a mod
est hand across his chest, then indicated the official-looking bundle in his other hand. “I’m only here to help them.”

  The woman tossed a quick glance first at Emerson, then at her daughter, then at Emerson again. For the first time Emerson realized—and was utterly astonished—that Gretchen’s mother seemed to know of their relationship and approve. There was a good reason for that, although Emerson, as yet, was unaware of it.

  She turned her attention back to the man on the front walk. “He may have been a minor when he escaped your jurisdiction, Senator, but he ain’t no more. Now unless Emerson wants to bother with you—which I can see he don’t—you can run along and peddle your papers someplace else. I got things I gotta do this morning.”

  Altman gave Mrs. Singh his warmest and sincerest smile, but his words had an ominous ring. “Now you know, madam, that I can’t do that. We’ve come a long way for this child, over bad roads. The summons and other authorizations I brought with me are fully in order. His parents are here, waiting for him in the rollabout. We have every right to take him by force, if necessary, and we outnumber you.”

  She snorted, looking from one of the intruders to the next. “You three poor pitiful things?”

  “And additional personnel aboard the rollabout”—Altman lifted and spread his hand toward the vehicle in a graceful television gesture—“sufficient to the task, madam.”

  “Not if all your side brought with ’em is those little electric toad-ticklers.” Taking the pistol from behind her back and pointing it at the Senator’s chest, Mrs. Singh recited: “‘In days of old when knights was bold an’ someone hadda feed ’em, they did require a local squire to scare the serfs an’ bleed ’em.’