by F P Adriani
“Next time—” I shouted to Tan, who was right beside me “—if there is one!—we’re spending more money on a better ship-trip!”
“I know what you mean,” Tan said, his face literally looking a little blue, which was really worrying.
“Are you all right? You don’t look good!”
“Oh, Pia,” he kind of moaned now. “As soon as we hit the atmosphere—christ, I feel so lightheaded and nauseous….”
“Grab one of the wall barf-bags!” I shouted now.
But my instruction had been too late: Tan’s head lunged forward and puked a beige mess all over the painted-red floor.
“Oh christ, oh christ,” I said, but talking was all I could do. I was too afraid to unstrap. I just hoped the forces of the descent kept the vomit moving away from us, which it now was, sliding along the floor. I loved Tan, but I still didn’t want his vomit all over me—yikes….
I didn’t get his vomit all over me (thankfully!) because the ship apparently stopped moving a moment later—or maybe it was hovering over the port, going on the shaking blue-gray ocean view out the porthole on Tan’s left.
“Oh,” Tan moaned again, his right palm flattening over his black shirt, where his stomach must have been experiencing turbulence from below, just as the ship had been. “What the hell is wrong with here—it feels like I’m stoned and my head’s really in the clouds.”
“The planet’s missing that force, and the air’s gonna seem lighter to you. You’re a Sander—what do you expect? And don’t forget what I told you: on Diamond the oxygen seems to stay in your lungs longer and give you more bang for your breath. You’ve got to remember to breathe more often here. You’ll get used to it soon.”
Someone on the ship’s loudspeaker finally announced that we’d reached port and could unstrap; I did that immediately, then hugged Tan’s side. Then I ran to the bathroom for some towels to spread over the vomit, which had almost reached the bed. Yikes, what a mess someone would have to clean up….
“I’m so embarrassed,” Tan said from behind me.
“Don’t be. What can you do about the body? It does what it does.”
*
While Tan washed up in the bathroom and changed his shirt, I finished gathering our stuff together. Then when we were finished with that, we left the room, half of our bags in tow.
We were walking along the last deck before the port when we met up with Eleanor.
She hugged us both and said, “I hope you have a good stay here!”
I grinned at her. “You too! Did the porter set up a taxi to your next flight for you?”
Her slim hand waved a small blue ticket at me. “Yes! I’m ready for anything!” she said.
And I really hoped that I was ready for anything, too.
*
Once Tan and I passed through the port inspection section and into the port, we said a final goodbye to Eleanor, who quickly walked away in the direction of where the taxis usually waited.
Because Tan and I had a lot of cases and bags with us on this trip, the other half of our stuff would have to be carted to a taxi for us. And that meant we’d have over half an hour to kill inside the port.
We walked down the long gray docking ramp, farther into the sunlight-bright space, to beneath the dazzling white and silver port poles that sprung from below the earth and held up the enormous city-like structure.
This area wasn’t at the same level as where the ships landed, but this part looked huge enough to accommodate them. I couldn’t even see to the other ends, though I did spot the entrance to the road tunnels on my left, which tunnels were actual indoor roads where the taxis traveled till the indoor roads eventually sloped down into outdoor roads.
Tan moved beside me as we strolled around the vast port space; then we finally stopped at an open-top area containing a huge courtyard-type garden, where trees and bushes grew in human-made soil. The garden was surrounded by lots of shops, lots of luggage carts, and lots of people. And then suddenly there were even more lots-of-people; another ship must have docked….
We were standing before a household-supplies shop when I heard Tan moaning again. My head spun to him, saw his hand rubbing his blue shirt; the black one he’d changed out of before—I’d given that to the ship’s porters to launder. We’d have to pick it up from the port-attendant office on the way back….
Now Tan said on a moan, “It’s a good thing I’ve got nothing left in my stomach.”
“I brought one of the bags from the strap wall,” I said as I yanked out the plastic orange square of barf-bag from my pocketbook.
But before I could hand it to him, he shook his head fast. “Really. There’s nothing left in there. My stomach’s just burning now.”
“Maybe you should eat something?” I wanted to point out where we could get a snack, but before I could say anything further, I heard a noise: a short little bark.
I watched Tan’s head whip around and his whole body sort of jump back. “What the hell is that!” he said, pressing his body nearer to me and then behind me, like a scared little kid.
My eyes moved to where he’d been staring, and I spotted a long white and brown dog trotting toward us along the silvery-white floor.
“Oh!” I said. “That’s just a dog.” I looked at Tan, I looked at Tan’s fear-filled face. And I realized then that he’d probably never seen any Earth animals, other than human animals, because nonhuman Earth animals didn’t exist on Diamond or on any of the other planets. Bringing other animals anywhere had been outlawed at the beginning stages of off-Earth colonization—something I’d always been very glad about.
Looking at Tan now, I realized that if a person had never seen dogs, the canine jaws and teeth would probably be very scary to him…. Still, I couldn’t help secretly laughing inside as the dog moved right up to Tan. The tail wagged now, and, mouth open and panting through a seeming-smile, the dog appeared to be waiting, probably for a treat. I eyed the space around me for one of the port’s doggie-treat dispensers, but I couldn’t locate any nearby.
“Don’t be scared, Tan,” I said. “Some dogs live here. People put out little houses for them, and they like to socialize in all the traveling excitement. Offer your hand to her.”
Tan’s head rapidly shook left-and-right. “No.”
“Come on—don’t be scared. There are dangers here, animals with dangerous jaws, which dogs kind of have. But they’ve been around humans a long time.” Tan still wouldn’t move. I sighed. “You’ll definitely have to stay inside the Domesticated Acres or you’ll have a heart attack here.”
“I’ve seen dogs,” he said, “in pictures.”
“They’re at a comfortable distance then, huh? Really, we should have never interacted with them because, as usual with humans, those interactions mostly harmed the dogs. But they’re here now and they are what they are partly because we interfered with their lives. You can’t go backwards.”
The dog had moved forward another step to sniff at the black ankle of Tan’s pants. Tentatively, one of his hands inched down and touched the thick collar of white hair around the dog’s spotted-with-brown head; she raised her nose to nudge Tan’s thigh as his fingers stroked her fur.
“The hair’s so soft and thick,” he said then in a gentle voice, and I watched a smile grow on his rapt beautiful face.
Then the dog’s nose moved from Tan’s thigh to his crotch.
I laughed. And the dog didn’t seem to want to leave his crotch. I understood this: in my opinion, no place was as good as Tan’s crotch.
At this point I expected Tan to really have a heart attack because the dog’s jaws were near his nuts.
But he didn’t have a heart attack. He just laughed. “I had no idea dogs act like you’re the only person in the world.”
“Or, more correctly, the only crotch in the world.”
He laughed again.
And then I said, “That’s the way they make you feel. That’s what makes them so great—the endless loving generosity th
ey seem to have.”
As I spoke, I noticed one of the porters coming closer. Tall and thin, she was dressed in the silver shirt and pants port-uniform. And now she said “Lanie!” toward the dog.
The woman stopped moving and smiled big at Tan. “We just put out her gruel. We were a little late with it, and that’s probably why she ran up to you so fast. Lots of people use the treats over there.” She motioned to behind her shoulder. “I do hope she didn’t bother you.”
“It’s all right,” Tan said.
The woman called the dog’s name again and Lanie’s tail started wagging harder. She gave Tan one last sniff and lick on his hand; then she rushed over to the woman and trotted away.
Then something happened that probably wouldn’t have been noticeable to a stranger but was unmistakable to me: Tan’s cheeks deflated as his face drooped a bit.
“What is it?” I asked him.
He was still staring off at where the dog had disappeared. “Between the weird air and the dog and all that ocean out there, this all feels so wrong…and yet so right.”
I nodded as I moved closer to him, till I was almost pressed against one side of his front. “We’ve been changed some, acclimated to Diamond. But this is still our first home. And nothing can compare to your first home.”
He nodded at me, and I pressed against him fully now, staring into his beautiful face, into his warm eyes.
He sighed. “I’m really tired. I’d like to go to wherever we’re staying. I really need a shower.”
“Me too.” My smile at him now was sly. “And they say taking one together saves water. I just love testing out that theory with you.”
*
A little later we were finally in the backseat of a taxi as it moved through one of the tunnel-roads.
The roadway was pretty crowded but not a slow-moving crowded; the tunnel’s silver metal and glass walls seemed to zoom by. However, whenever the driver slowed or stopped the taxi, the view on the left through the glass sections became clearer, and I took the opportunity to narrate what Tan was seeing.
When the traffic stopped at one point, a narrow waterway came into view; a building sat perched on the near end. “See that plant?” I said to Tan, pointing to his left. “It’s reclaiming the waterway, for other species. This is the edge of this area’s Domesticated Acres. People cleaned that water for decades, and it finally got better. But then there was an earthquake, and it pushed some long-buried pollution to the surface nearby, polluting the place yet again.”
“Shit,” said Tan under his breath, his eyes on the window, on the water that looked darker than it should have looked beneath the Sun’s bright touch. “Did any animals around here get hurt?”
“I hope not,” I said fast, suddenly feeling very upset about the shit history of my species. “Supposedly scientists got to the quake-spill in time. But how can you trust anything with people?” Tan glanced at me, and, fortunately, the taxi started moving faster again so I didn’t have to narrate the waterway disaster any longer. It was too damn upsetting, all the shit we humans had done to this planet—yet another reason why I hadn’t wanted to come back.
Not everywhere was bad on Earth because quite a lot had been cleaned up, but some places were bad enough that they could never be cleaned up; they were No-Go Zones, fenced off from all life that could be fenced off. Thankfully, Tan and I wouldn’t be going near those places this trip; I just wished I could say the same for all the other animals humans shared this planet with, animals who couldn’t read our posted warning signs….
“What is it?” Tan suddenly asked me.
“Being back here is upsetting. I don’t just mean for me personally. When we left Earth, we kind of stopped caring about here for a while, and the environment degenerated even more. Then we fixed it more and now it’s gotten better, but it’ll never be right. So much of it will just never come back. Eons ago some humans stupidly learned to become very destructive, and they passed that behavior on from generation to generation. Ever since then we’ve dragged so many lives along with us at the whim of our destructiveness.”
“We’re not so destructive anymore,” Tan said.
I looked at him. “You really believe that?”
He didn’t respond at first. He was staring out his window again.
Then, his voice came softer: “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here, Pia.”
“I had to,” I said, and I heard his soft sigh in response.
*
When we were finally in the lobby of our new hotel, Tan located a vending machine and bought and chewed a granola bar while I checked in. I watched his mouth move as he stood before one of the dark paneled walls beside the hotel’s long front desk.
“Hm,” he said, shrugging, “at least the food tastes the same.”
I began talking with the concierge behind the desk. Just in case someone had been aware of my arrival and planted something bad in my reserved room, I now asked for another room. Thankfully, the hotel had one available.
The concierge handed me a key-card, and then Tan and I went up to the room. It was neither too big nor too small; it was bright yellow and it smelled clean. It seemed a happy energetic room for happy energetic people.
But Tan and I were both quite tired, and I wouldn’t exactly call us happy at that moment, just maybe feeling better: I no longer had to deal with a pounding skull from the spaceflight, and the granola bar had helped settle Tan’s stomach, though he was still feeling a bit lightheaded-faint.
“You might be the whole time,” I said, “especially on the Moon.”
“Great—” he began, but then his eyes whipped to mine. “The MOON?”
“Yeah.” I laid my special case onto the floor.
“What are you talking about—”
“Not now. We have an appointment in the bathroom.”
His brown eyes flashed their confusion at me. But I just smiled at him.
*
About five minutes later, we were finally testing that showering-together theory, and the theory didn’t…hold water. I’d already known that, and it was why I simply turned off the water once we’d turned each other on, which happened within a minute of our entering the shower stall. The next thing I knew, he was entering me; my right foot was on the white ceramic soap-ledge, and my left was banging into his right ankle as he banged into me.
“This is crazy—we only just got here,” he panted into my wet hair, his warm mouth deliciously nibbling at my earlobe as my hands stroked his hard chest.
“I know, but I like crazy…ohhh, oh oh OHHH.” I was really wet, both from me and from the shower. His dick felt like a silky caress inside me, and the hairs on his legs felt like a silky caress outside me.
We went on and on like that, moving together in our wet state, and I didn’t want it to end. Ever.
…But it did end, and we cried out together then.
Afterward, we quickly finished bathing, and while we were using the hotel’s fat yellow towels to dry ourselves, I said, “I really needed that.”
“Yeah?”
“To help face everything later.” Which “everything” was going to see James, which would happen in The UPG Headquarters.
I really wasn’t a fan of going there. I had a plan to proceed carefully, and though I loved having him with me, I still thought it a shame Tan would be by my side then too. I didn’t want to make anymore trouble for him. But he had insisted on coming with me to the UPG too, so what the hell could I do?
The UPG Headquarters complex was quite close to this hotel. I’d chosen to stay here partly because of its location—that way I’d be close to who I had to work for. Having to come to Earth was bad enough; I wanted to make everything else about this trek easier….
Tan walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “What the hell did you mean about the Moon before?”
As I followed him, I said slowly, “I meant the Earth-Moon.”
“I know,” he replied in an impatient voice. “What’s going on?”<
br />
I finally told him about what James had said about the Old-Earth rhyme. I’d wanted to tell Tan about it on the flight, but I’d had enough trouble dealing with the physical issues there, and I hadn’t wanted to complicate that with too many mental issues. I figured the flight would wind up being somewhat of a calm before the storm, and, at that time, I didn’t want to pull any of the storm into the calm.
Now I basically said a version of that to Tan. And he nodded—and frowned, with his mouth only. “I still wish you would have told me. You’ve got to keep me informed.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
His frown grew to encompass his eyes too. “What do you mean—‘we’ll see’?”
I yanked a set of pajamas from one of my bags and slipped my right foot inside the blue pants. “I just don’t know how much you should know.”
“I should know everything,” he snapped.
“Well, I’ve probably got to do a job for the UPG—on Earth-Moon.”
“What the fuck—”
“I know—I know! That was kinda my first response when James asked me to do it. But the job might help me figure out what’s going on.”
“And if it doesn’t? You’ll have gone backwards for nothing!”
“It’s not for nothing! It’s that slavery-ring again—that’s not nothing!” My lips were shaking, and now I quickly pulled the pajama top over my head and torso. “Look,” I said as my head popped out of the shirt’s neck, “I’ve gotta take a nap before I get ready to go to The Headquarters. I won’t even have time to unpack—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said on a sigh. “I’ll take care of that. You get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll join you after.”
He did: when I woke up in the bed two hours later, he was lying asleep beside me, his body almost curled around me. I carefully slid away from his warm naked torso, and he rolled over to the opposite direction, mumbling something sleep-unintelligible only he could know.
