Night Hawks

by Charles Johnson

  At last, I slide into the warmth and wetness of her. She grips at me with her inner muscles, locking so tightly I can barely move. Then releasing so that we churn, melting into one another, and finally lie in each other’s arms, sipping one another’s breath.

  It is all there is, but as the Thanadose fades, the sweetness recedes. I try to hold the illusion: I will die. Everything ends. This moment is all we have . . .

  But no, it is a lie. We are untouched by time. We will have tomorrow, and tomorrow, and every tomorrow thereafter. No one knows how long those who remain on planet Earth will live. Perhaps forever. That would horrify me. If I felt horror.

  But I do not. Or, as Thanadose fades, love. Only the body and its microsynthes, whirring on, eternal.

  We are left with after-quakes. We are told that that is enough. That this is all there is.

  I don’t believe that anymore. And that is a sin.

  * * *

  Sweat cools.

  “La petite mort,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “The small death.” Her finger traced a figure eight on my chest.

  “Some kind of Upper talk?” Beautiful as she is, I’d not be surprised if she had a lover across the divide. Perhaps she’d been a courtesan, demoted to the Möbius line for reasons I might never know. You could see it in the little things that betrayed her breeding, like the way she walked and talked and smiled, feminine in every fiber and almost too perfect to believe. Her elegant gestures, her perfectly pronounced speech, and elite Upper education, none of which she could hide. All that would explain some of the things she said, but not whatever it was she saw in me.

  “Hundreds of years ago, the French referred to an orgasm as the ‘little death.’ ” She pressed herself closer to me, somehow a greater intimacy than that which had gone before.

  “The French?” I said.

  “That was when there was a France.” She shrugged, then kissed my shoulder.

  I gave a headshake, yes. Now, of course, there is no France, or England or Germany. Or much of anything else outside our domed polises, each sustaining 10 million perfectly regulated lives, the city-state that is mother and father to us all. We could thank the Food Wars for that, and leveling the planet’s population to 100 million. And these days only “little” deaths seem to exist at all. I’d never thought about things like that before Ferris.

  She was supposed to have been relief. Just physical release from the monotony of working the line.

  She had opened my eyes.

  Not like the other women I’d had over the last . . . I don’t know how long. At least a hundred and sixty years. We are discouraged from thinking about years and serial relationships long past and replaceable. Days, minutes, yes. And we’re encouraged not to forget the communal wisdom of the polis, I am because we are. No single person is special or unique. Except . . .

  Ferris is special to me, I think. I want her forever and that is forbidden.

  I have lost count of my years, or sex partners. I could place them all on a chorus line that would stretch a quarter mile, their faces blurring together. But Ferris is more. She is the lover who might save me from myself. For her I take risks. The Thanadose she brings to us could cost me status on the line. I could be demoted. It has taken me ten years to work my way up to assessment, off the assembly queue, repairing whatever is sent us.

  But . . . if I lose something, it is worth it. She is worth it.

  I can’t exactly say she loves me. Or that I love her. “Love” died during the Wars, like so many things. But this—whatever it is—is all we have, and more than I expected. It may be as much as the Uppers have, and that thought makes me smile.

  * * *

  We parted with a promise, but not a kiss. She retired to her sleep kiva, and I to mine. A sleeping place, living place, eating place. There are public eateries, parks, museums. They belong to all. We have all we need.

  I enjoy cooking. After tubing home in our domed anthill, I spent some ergs and had fresh chicken waiting on the conveyor. Spent the evening experimenting with tastes and textures, and consumed my dinner alone, facing the framed picture of Ferris on my wall. She does not know I have it.

  Perhaps I would invite Ferris to my home. It would be a big step. Perhaps one day we would ask for a contract, for a year or a decade. Whatever I could get.

  I dreamed of her.

  It is not love. But it is what I have.

  * * *

  Dreams are carefully monitored and directed, lyrical, speaking of life and hope. No nightmares (Ferris told me of those), no chasings or fallings. No flying, either.

  I make a promise to tube out to the Pacific, where the transparent dome (so like photos I’ve seen of terrariums) that separates us from the toxic air outside ends. I would take a room, just sit by a window and watch the roll of pewter-gray waves beneath a blue and bottomless sky. That would be good. Nothing out there lives in the hazy atmosphere, but watching the roily, ever-changing water would bring a bit of tranquillity to my brooding, as I sometimes do, on the waxing and waning of world civilizations.

  Morning comes.

  Tubing in to work is pleasant, rolling through the parks. There are many, and they are all beautiful. I see the night shift playing and strolling. Some play with pets. Once upon a time I saw pictures of children playing in the park. I actually saw a child once, a tangled-haired little girl. Why her Caregiver took her outside the children’s sector is beyond me. I wonder if having children would be more . . . satisfying . . . than pets. I would never know such luxury. Or know anyone who had.

  Children grow, and change, in a world where change has been banished to the shadows. So they are elsewhere. Where, I don’t know. I know I was a child once, but remember little of that time save playing with my crèchemates. I remember liking chocolate ice cream. I cannot stand it now.

  Somewhere out there, the Uppers live. I’ve only heard rumors about them, strange, contradictory stories. Some say their lives are decadent and devoted to unnatural pleasures, others claim they are old-fashioned, cultivated, with close-knit families, no making love before marriage with anything other than sex dolls, and even going twice a day to temples to worship a god whose name is too holy for them to utter, and whose image, if drawn or otherwise depicted, is an offense punishable by memory wipe. On some days, when the sky is very clear, I can see their towers. Kilometers high, beautiful as death.

  That is wrong. Death is not beautiful. Life is beautiful. I have heard that since always. I should go to the psyops and ask for a correction.

  * * *

  Work is as it always is. A machine I had not seen before came down the line. When I researched its fixing, I found that it was like a type of marine chronometer seen now only in the antique military craft sometimes used in Upper games of war, where people pretend to die. I pulled it from the line, and spent half the day exploring, and renewing the thing. Robots could do any of what I did, and maybe even better, but except for household bots, machines doing the supposedly ennobling work of men and women were abolished long ago. When the chronometer pulsed to life again, I put it back on the line, where it mysteriously went on to whatever destination it would ultimately have, off the line. Where did it go? One doesn’t ask about what goes on before or after the station where one stands every day.

  At dinner, I saw Ferris. She sat alone in the dining room, which was lined with cooking stations, and the endless buffet. Food is wonderful. I love it.

  I sat with her, and she acknowledged me with a nod. She seemed withdrawn, staring at a tendriled flaw in her wineglass, an indentation shaped like a starburst. I asked her if she would see me tonight, and she shook her head.

  “Why?”

  “I want more”—her voice quivered—“we were so close. So close.”

  “Yes.” I nodded, knowing what she meant, how we carried eternity within ourselves like an ache or soreness in our muscles. “We were.”

  “It was like stepping right to the edge of a cliff”—h
er eyes slipped out of focus as she thought about it—“looking down and feeling the ground beckoning me to step out into space, into bliss, then we backed away at the last moment . . .”

  I just stared at her, afraid to speak.

  “Shane, don’t run away from what I’m saying. Don’t look away when I’m talking to you! We have to do this.” Her gaze snapped back, locking into mine, refusing to let go. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “We have to die. Together.”

  * * *

  Hours later, back in my sleep kiva, I could still feel the thrill that flooded through me when Ferris had the courage to give voice to thoughts still unformed in my own mind. I lacked the courage to formulate them fully, let alone put them into words. We had to die. It was as simple as that. Together, at the height of our lovemaking and passion, we would taste extinction and real eternity.

  Death. Forbidden fruit. The one tree we were warned not to touch.

  I let the idea unwind, wondering what it would be like to nibble at this. I stepped into the spotless kitchen, where every stain and odor, sweet or offensive, was obliterated by roaming microsynthe colonies. From the cutlery cabinet, I withdrew the biggest, sharpest blade I could find. I paused for a moment. All my life I’d been what others wanted me to be. I’d bent or broken little rules here and there, sure. Everyone did that. It was expected. But I’d never toyed with anything taboo. Not until now. Trembling, taking a deep breath, and with just a single stroke, I cleanly sliced open my left wrist right to the bone. Blood . . . It should have geysered from the ugly gash I opened. But the microsynthes work with abominable speed. As if in a dream, I stared at my wrist as they worked, repairing me, removing even the individuating scar that would have distinguished me from everyone else in the polis. Suddenly, I felt a scream spasm up through my throat. I could have cut off my entire hand, but I would have just been printed another, identical one from my genome file.

  I wanted—needed—to bleed. To feel that something changes. And matters. To wake up from this nightmare of forever.

  We must die. I knew that then. But in order to do that we had to find the Death Dealers.

  * * *

  I spent the next day denying that the conversation had ever taken place, but it lingered like a low-grade fever. How could I believe it? Suspended between hope and horror, I went to the line, and worked. I didn’t see Ferris at lunch, and then I saw her and she wouldn’t talk to me. I knew her reason. Disgust with my own cowardice overwhelmed me. I wrote her a note, and tucked it under one of the flanges of a drum of combined African and Korean design, destined for Ferris’s line.

  “I will try,” it said.

  Heard nothing back from her, and slept that night alone, and lonely. Awakened in the middle of the night, and sent a message to the single-use drop Billy had given me twenty years ago.

  She was in the cafeteria the next day, her hair gathered up in a coil, but seemed tetchy and again would not speak to me. Her eyes bled need and want.

  The next day I merely rambled through the motions, feeling emotionally murky, when a repair job came in, the one I had been waiting for. Tied with a red ribbon. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from my chest, and in the cafeteria I managed to get her to take my hand, and passed her a note: “Tonight.”

  She came to my table, eyes brimming with gratitude.

  “My brother says he can help us,” I said.

  Playfully, she raised an eyebrow and pouted her lips. “Is that a pie crust promise?”

  “Huh?”

  “Easy to make and easy to break.” Ferris winked at me. “Thank you. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” Then she did something she had never done before: she leaned over, held my head in both hands, and kissed me. A few of the others looked over, curious. Public displays of physical affection were rare.

  “It’s going to be so good,” she whispered. She was glowing. Her cheeks. Lips. Totally turned on. She took me by the hand to a comfort room, peeled my clothes off, and welded her body to mine.

  She was like a furnace, insatiable. It had never been like that before. And would never be again.

  * * *

  How do you dress for death? What do you leave for others to find?

  An autopod took me to a side street where Ferris waited at the entrance to a tattoo parlor. Streetlamps penciled a latticework of patterns on the moving sidewalk in front of her. Behind her, animated tats of constellations and extinct animals blossomed on the skin of living models in the windows: a gam of whales spewed columns of water skyward, a brace of eagles spread their wings, elephants thundered. Dead now, like death itself.

  The pod’s doors sighed open. Once she was inside, the windows blacked out.

  “The pod?” she asked.

  “Off the grid,” I said. “Cost a lot of ergs, but can’t be traced.”

  That seemed to reassure her. Closing her eyes, she leaned into me, her head of flush, nut-brown hair on my shoulder. “It won’t matter after tonight.”

  “No,” I said. “It won’t.”

  In silence, then. The pod glided on as Ferris dozed. I’d told her little about my crèchemate Billy, how we’d been raised together, but walked different paths. He was sly, crafty. He’d spent time as a cop, a psych tech, a street maintenance guy. Now . . . well, I didn’t know how he made money, and I’m not sure I’d want to. But from time to time we still exchanged favors. Now, he was going to grant me one final request.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, we came to a busy rialto close to a different zone. A kind of tenderloin marketplace abutting the upper-class zone. Judging by sound and sensation we descended into a tunnel. Long narrow drive. Then we stopped. The interior lights came on. The doors opened. Ferris and I climbed out. The autopod moved away in the direction it had come, plunging us into woolly cave-like darkness. Ferris held my hand tightly, her palms slick with moisture.

  As our eyes gradually adjusted to this chamber, I realized we’d been deposited in a death brothel. Until now, I’d only heard about places like these, a hair-raising edge zone, liminal, where Uppers and Lowers shed their assigned status and met secretly for every sort of illegal sex. Faintly, as shapes came into focus in a common space that connected to a warren of private rooms, I saw death and twisted Venusian embraces commingled in exhibitionistic ecstasy. Instantly, I felt ill. Naked men wanting to be watched were grinding against women painted to resemble corpses. Others sat in shadowed cubbyholes twitching and jerking and erect, neural helmets playing end-of-life brain waves. Women coupled with aged surrogates and grunting beasts. Men gripped and thrust into things that looked as if they were barely . . . barely . . .

  My god, my eyes had to have been lying. The tiny bodies and disproportionate heads, the mewling screams . . . they had to have been clones, or dolls, or . . .

  My brain felt on the edge of shutdown, refusing to process what I was seeing. The scent of sex mingled with the stench of decomposition. The room rushed at me, then receded. I felt dizzy, and came within a hash mark of fainting, but Ferris was so stimulated she could hardly stand. Even in this sexual abattoir, her musk was a tangible thing. Off to our left, I saw a door. Before it stood a husky, hairy-necked, masked man, ponderous and pale as a ghost. He wore cutaway pants, exposing chalky flesh. Hermaphrodite, with a hard distended belly like a sack of marbles. Not far from him, a drooling woman crawled along the floor, eyes ripped from her face. Empty sockets swarmed with microsynthes, already knitting new orbs.

  “I saw it,” she moaned. “Can’t you see it?”

  Suddenly and without a sound, Billy materialized at my side.

  “Shane,” he said.

  “Billy.” I took a breath and with two fingers wiped sweat off my forehead. “You startled me.”

  He looked much like me. Dark knotted hair, dusky copper skin. Eternally at his physical peak. Squint lines around bright eyes that had seen too much, for too long. Pimp, go-between, facilitator. My crèche brother.

  “You always were jumpy, Shane. More nervous than any
one else in our litter. Never figured I’d see you in a place like this.” His brown, heavy-lidded eyes, which deceptively always made him seem sleepy when he was, in fact, alert to everything going on, swung toward Ferris, as if he was appraising a nice veal chop on his kiva’s conveyor. “She the one?”

  “She’s the one,” I said.

  His lips twisted up in a smile. “You always had luck with good-lookin’ ladies, brother. Sometimes I hated you for that.” I hadn’t seen Billy in thirty years, but our childhood bond was strong enough for me to read his expression, despite his carefully guarded emotions. In childhood, Billy had always covered my back when anyone tried to mess with me or when I looked like I was about to do something stupid. Like maybe now.

  “Can’t talk you out of this?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay, it’s your funeral.”

  When I looked confused by that, Ferris gently applied pressure to my hand and said, “Back when people died, their friends and family would get together with their dead bodies, all cleaned up, and say nice things about them.”

  As always, I took Ferris at her word, and turned back to Billy.

  “All my possessions and kiva go into a trust.” I handed him a plastic card. “This is the code. If I . . . when I die, you get everything. It’s not much, but I owe you.”

  “You do.” He blinked, greed overriding brotherly love. “Miss you, my friend.”

  I tried to smile, and couldn’t quite manage.

  Billy gave Ferris a slow look sideways, his face suddenly suspicious. “You an Upper? Don’t lie. I can hear it in your voice.”