When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition)

by William Barton

  I don’t remember what I looked at when I was done. Don’t remember if I kneeled between her legs, looking down at a mechanical imitation of Goddess’ Altar, of Child’s Gate, soiled now with the artifacts of my... what? Artifacts of my happiness? Is that how I remember it?

  I tried to remember Reese. Tried to remember her naked, splayed open for me. Shadowy images maybe. Some from before, some from after. All I could remember was a faint tingle, an afterimage compounded mainly of shame at what I’d done.

  I hope Reese is somewhere safe, that she’s learned to feel good about herself once again.

  Porphyry?

  Stark, terrible images of naked Porphyry, sprawled in her bed of wealthy luxury, legs spread for me like an infinitely deep, dark well, liquid heat waiting for me to jump in. Legs spread for me... no. Legs spread for herself. Porphyry, naked, like the demonic answer to a stupid boy’s prayer.

  All the others, all the lesser ones, girls, women, things, burst out at me, nameless, like a bright explosion of autumnal leaves, falling groundward, floating in memory.

  Sitting on the broken pier, between the dead woman’s pile of sand and the flat, motionless brown waters of the mud-choked lake, I looked into Violet’s eyes, seeing her fear, and felt my own dread start to build up. Some disaster will come and put an end to us. Surely it will.

  Some disaster always comes.

  Almost a pleading in her eyes, compelling me to answer, to tell her the truth, no matter how horrible.

  Do I know the truth?

  Just say it.

  I said, “No. No, I don’t miss them, Violet. You’re... really all the things that they never were.”

  Seeing her eyes light up then, I wondered if I’d lied.

  How will I ever know?

  She shifted forward, leaning away from the pier post, coming to her knees, vulva suddenly closed and hidden, then crawled across the little space of splintery gray wood between us, crawling over to come between my legs—maybe I expected her to open my fly then and suck me dry. I don’t know. I pulled her up into my arms and kissed her instead.

  Long moment of silence, Violet lying against my chest.

  Then she said, “We never say that we love each other.”

  No. We never do. I said, “Maybe we’re afraid.”

  Another silence, then, “Maybe so.”

  We made love then, old friends, maybe something more, comfortable with each other.

  In the middle of it all, doing what we always did, I could always feel that comfortable certainty. Now. Now, Violet, we are more than the sum of our interlocking parts.

  Can’t you tell?

  Of course you can.

  o0o

  The physical damage to Telemachus Major wasn’t as bad as it’d looked from the sky. If it’d been a real world, maybe it could’ve been, but any significant release of energy here and her icy core would explode. You could look down from the sky and see scoured-away cityscape, see ranges of flattened mountains, sure, but those mountains were as much an artifact as the city had been.

  Remember those grainy, black and white films of that first man-made cataclysm, Hiroshima. Remember the great explosion, filling the sky with light in an instant, filling it from horizon to horizon, ground to zenith; remember the ominous black mushroom cloud boiling up out of nowhere. Then remember the empty, ashy ground, cityscape vanished, marked only by the gridlines of the streets.

  A decade later, Hiroshima was a bustling metropolis, paper and wooden buildings replaced by stone and concrete skyscrapers, all that was left of the old city, all that was left of the devastation was a ruined hulk, the twisted girders and broken concrete of the telephone exchange.

  Whose operators, safe in a concrete basement, had survived.

  On Telemachus Major, the eutropic shield had lived through the battle, the atmosphere had stayed on the ground, and so it too would revive, would come to life again.

  I suppose I was thinking about these things as I lay awake in the darkness, curled around Violet’s furry form, feeling the soft rise and fall of her chest as she slept, lying in the darkness, cuddled in a bunk with me in our barrackroom down on Telemachus, bunkered under some recently liberated Standard ARM installation.

  Darkness. Violet breathing beside me. The gleam of a little night light at ankle height, over by the door. The soft, faraway whisper of the freeze-frame, mandated to be left on, left on to carry the alarm, if it should come.

  I moved my hand across Violet’s abdomen, rubbing slowly back and forth, feeling her shift at my touch, not quite waking up, somnolent body aware of me. I could reach up to her breasts, down between her legs. She’d awaken, yawning, maybe ready for whatever I wanted, maybe too sleepy, merely turning in the circle of my arms, putting her head on my shoulder, nuzzling against me, falling, willy-nilly, back into some dreamy abyss.

  Her breath caught for a moment and there was a little sound from her throat, nothing like words, then the slow breathing resumed. Maybe a dream. Maybe just a reaction to my touch. Maybe nothing at all.

  I shifted my attention to the freeze-frame, making it start to wander the net, wondering when I’d fall asleep again myself. Don’t know what awakened me. Maybe Violet moving in her sleep, under my hand, the texture of her calling to my nerve endings.

  The freeze-frame whispered something about Earth. Something important. I turned slightly, turning toward it, not quite looking over my shoulder. That was enough to make it fill my vision field with gentle blue radiance, though I knew if Violet were to awaken, she’d see nothing. Nothing but darkness.

  News of the war, that’s all.

  The Centauri Jet War. Historians have a name for it already.

  The Jet sparkled above me in schematic array, Thulian holdings in sapphire, eaten away into many separate pockets and isolated globules by the ruby glitter of Corporate Alliance invasions. As I watched, two bright blue bands reached out toward one another, bridging the gap between two pockets of resistance, making them one.

  We haven’t won yet.

  The Jet War will go on.

  Far, far from Earth.

  What has Earth to do with this, with all of us out here, so very far away?

  Well. The government of the Earth and Solar Space, in conclave with the many societies and nations of the Kuiper Belt, with the far-flung habitats of the Oort, has put together some new mediatory body, the Human Defense League.

  Politicians giving speeches, nothing more.

  Politicians giving speeches, denouncing Ultima Thule, denouncing the Corporations, calling for the cessation of hostilities, the arbitration of differences.

  In my ear, Violet whispered, “I wonder if anyone who matters is listening?”

  I turned to face her, holding her in my arms, breathing in her scented breath. “I wonder if there is anyone who matters any more.”

  And Earth is so very far away. The last thing I heard, before abandoning the freeze-frame, refocusing my attention fully on Violet, was an HDL politician suggesting it might be a good idea if something could be done.

  Good idea. But Violet’s with me here and now, human politicians far away, far away and safe. For us, tomorrow... I held my dog-woman close and wished tomorrow would stay where it was.

  o0o

  The morning of our internal clocks came, Violet and I awakening at last, looking forward to a little R&R, a few days off while our faithful turretfighter went through its maintenance cycle. We bathed together, playing in the shower, then I sat on the bunk and watched, mind empty, while she worked herself over with a blowdryer.

  It’s a magic transformation, Violet changing from naked purple woman, all breasts and belly and arms and legs, to lustrous, fluffy creature, a monochrome rainbow. I thought about her question, up on the moon; dismissed it once and for all.

  No, Violet. I don’t miss them.

  We ate breakfast in the underground cantina, joking with people we’d been using for friends, noting a few unremarked absences, flyer teams lost in the recent battle, a
lready forgotten, then we went for a long walk above ground, holding hands under a hazy, blue-gray sky.

  Looking up at it, I knew the environmental control systems would have it cobalt again in no time. Soon the grass will start to grow, then the trees. Engineers will come and put the mountains back in place, and Telemachus Major will be a world again.

  Seen from the ground, there was a lot more cityscape left than there’d seemed from the air. Buildings all smashed though, ground vehicles lying wrecked in the streets, rising from them an occasional wisp of smoke or steam.

  And the dead. The dead are still here, though seldom anywhere in sight. We’d walk along, hand in hand, gaping at ruins, looking in through smashed storefronts at strewn merchandise. Every now and again we’d catch a whiff of decay.

  That’s all.

  It felt like window shopping, passing by the stumps of buildings, stopping to look inside, see what had once been sold here, there, everywhere. I stood by idly, while Violet knelt in a pool of broken glass, picking over diamond bracelets.

  “You think it’d be all right for me to take this one?”

  Violet kneeling, looking up at me, holding a pretty confection of clear jewels and pale gold. I shrugged, thinking how natural it looked, draped over the short fur of her wrist.

  She started to put it back, sighing, then stopped, looking down, looking at the thing in her hand. As she slipped it into her Standard-blue shoulder bag, I said, “No one will know.”

  And no one will care.

  A little further on were the ruins of one of those live sex-show places. Nothing there for me to steal. The advertising poster out front had been torn off halfway up, broken off along with the wall behind it, leaving bare brown legs and curly black pussy for us to see.

  I tried to imagine the woman’s face, but what was left of her was all I could imagine. There was a faint flavor of rot about the place, making me wonder if she lay dead inside.

  Beyond the shopping district was a little park, some of its trees still standing, though most of them lay on their sides in the dirt. Over by a clear-watered little lake, lake water reflecting the blue-gray sky so far overhead, there was a little cluster of people, maybe a couple of dozen, all human beings. From their midst, a man was babbling, pleading for something in run-together words.

  Obviously pleading, though his words meant nothing. As we approached, he started to scream, short, high, choppy pulses of sound, separated by sharp gasps, lungs tearing air into his throat so he could scream again.

  They had him tied to a tall, fractured stump, stripped naked, bleeding from a hundred cuts, little red rivers running over plump, blue-white flesh, Just now, a woman was kneeling before him, holding his little prick in one hand, trying with the other to slide a long, dark splinter of wood in the little hole, doing a pretty good job of getting it to go while the bound man wriggled and shrieked and begged her to stop.

  I nudged a man near the back of the crowd. “What’s going on?”

  The man looked at me, taking in my blue Standard uniform, glanced at Violet, then said, “What d’you care?”

  The screaming stopped and the woman stood, wiping bloody hands on her skirt while the man tied to the stump struggled in his ropes, panting for breath.

  I said, “Just curious.”

  A tall, thin woman beside the man said, “His name’s Derben. He was District Manager under the Occupation.”

  Violet: “So this is a captured Thulian? Ought to turn him in to the authorities.”

  The man snorted. “Ain’t no Thulian. Derben used to be in charge of the local shopping mall.”

  Derben was screaming again, louder than before. There was another woman kneeling before him now, cutting open his scrotum with what looked like a steak knife. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Just one, Julie! You only get one!”

  Another voice: “Yeah, Julie! The other one’s mine!”

  That made the crowd laugh merrily, but Derben, screaming and bucking, didn’t seem to get the joke.

  The woman by us said, “We’re all taking turns. All the women he did, whether they wanted his money or not.”

  Oh.

  Violet said, “Just the women?”

  The other man said, “Naw. My wife’s dead, so I get her turn.” He held up a long, slim, silver pin. “I got dibs on his left eye.”

  After the steak-knife woman had finished pulling off his right nut, Derben didn’t seem to be able to talk any more. Or maybe he’d figured out it was a waste of time. He did whimper though, watching the next woman step forward, holding a garlic press up for him to see.

  Violet and I turned and walked away, getting out of the park as quickly as we could, heading back toward the Standard ARM bunker. Pretty soon we couldn’t hear his screams any more.

  o0o

  A day later we were summoned to a special meeting of senior tactical combat teams, making me wonder just where the time had gone. Years. The war’s been going on for years already, Violet and I cocooned together, wandering through the wilderness of nothing between the worlds.

  We had no idea why they’d interrupted our little vacation, but it didn’t matter. There was really no place to go on Telemachus Major, not anymore. No place where scenes like the one in the park weren’t being played out, people doing what people always do, when they can.

  Bitter moments when I envied Violet her status as a nonhuman. No way of knowing how optimods would behave, if they were free.

  Better, I hope.

  They sat us down in a big amphitheater, kems beneath the surface, down deep where the bombs had never reached. There were scars here, of course, footsoldiers had battled in these underground warrens, Thulians come to capture the corporate world, Corporate soldiers come to take it back.

  So now a thousand of us sat murmuring in our chairs while two corporate security executives, one in Standard ARM blue, the other wearing the red and brown of General CHON, bracketed a free-lance technarch in a colorful civilian toga. Little man with big green eyes and a piping voice, too valuable to be harassed by lawyers, too smart to sign a restrictive contract.

  Must be wonderful, being free. Free as a ronin scientist is how the saying goes.

  The murmuring gradually faded, people and things turning in their seats, waiting while the execs made their introductions, then listening as the little man with the squeaky voice made his presentation, all about the new All-Purpose mark one Tactical Assault Craft, about how we, as senior combat teams, were being given the wonderful opportunity to volunteer for this new duty.

  Retraining to be had.

  Exciting new front-line duty in your future.

  Opportunity for advancement, you see.

  Advancement and promotion.

  Promotion to what, I wondered, but by then he was telling us how much we pilots would enjoy flying this splendid new high-performance battle platform, how much we combat systems operators would enjoy its new weapons systems.

  Particularly the firehaze projector.

  I glanced at Violet, who cocked her head to one side, pretty as can be, and muttered, “What the hell.”

  They made us volunteer before taking us down to see the prototype. Very few teams stayed behind.

  o0o

  ATAC-1.0022, waiting in a row of identical vehicles on a landing stage inside a small corporate habitat, a dirigible world at the heart of something called a carrier task force, was externally identical to the partly mocked-up prototype we’d been shown on Telemachus Major. Same double-ended boat shape, same dull bronze hull with its two dark-gray, side-mounted field modulus pods, same four articulated landing legs ending in flat black saucers, same unobtrusive hatch mounted just under the matte-finish nosecap.

  Seeing her for the first time, Violet and I stood at a little distance, admiring the sleek, clean lines, not quite like the day we’d come to board our first Harbinger turretfighter. Still less like the day I’d walked up to Athena 7 and found Dûmnahn waiting to greet me.

  I tried to imagine this ship, in f
ront of me now, roaring through the atmosphere of a large habitat, maybe streaking through the skies of a real world, plasma tail streaming behind.

  There’s beauty in these birds of war.

  Maybe that’s why we’re all so easily fooled.

  Violet went first, popping the hatch, which dropped open, unfurling a small, rigid ladder, and disappeared inside. I waited a second, then followed her in, looking around in the half light. Much better than the prototype, which had had generic crash nets and pretend control panels. Violet was already sitting in the left-hand seat, a seat whose nets and harnesses were recessed, invisible, were supposed to appear like magic when needed, running her hands over the armrest controls, looking forward at the dead gleam of inactive freeze-frames.

  I slipped into the right hand seat, the CSO’s workstation. Directly in front of me, slightly below face level, was a modern combat interface, retracted now, dark. Beyond it was a flat surface with a gleam like black marble.

  Seeing me look, Violet said, “Stereotaxis hood.”

  I nodded, imagining what it would be like when all this stuff was live. We’d feel like we were riding our little seats, naked in space. Scary as hell, maybe. That’s how it’d feel.

  Violet thumbed the system master switch at her side. There was a soft whine from somewhere, a faint vibration, a puff of warm air from a pair of vents down by our feet. A rapid scroll of data as freeze-frames erected themselves here and there, green and amber indicator lights cycling overhead as discrete emergency panels talked to themselves, to each other.

  All’s well.

  Is that what they’re saying?

  Better be.

  I twisted in my seat and looked over my shoulder. Behind the cockpit was a niche holding a single narrow bunk, set up for zero-gee sleeping, off to one side an exposed zero-gee toilet and a collapsible mistbath, to the other a tiny kitchen module, refrigerator and oven doors side-by-side.

  Violet was looking at me, head cocked, not quite smiling.

  I shrugged, trying not to grin, and said, “Feller could have a good time in a place like this with the girl of his choice.”

  Violet looked back at the little bunk. “Beast,” she said.