by Dave Smeds
She hesitated. “I was convicted of being an enemy of the state. This was where I was sent to serve my sentence.”
“Did McCandless sentence you?”
“Who?”
“The magistrate.”
She shook her head, confused, then her eyebrows rose in comprehension. “That was the old magistrate — four or five coups back, before I immigrated to this sector. The new guy sent me here.”
Glenn turned away, concealing his reaction. McCandless gone? His term would have lasted for decades yet, but it was true that the political situation in these frontier areas was volatile. If it weren’t, the asshole might never have been spooked by what Glenn had done.
Still, unless he could prove she was lying, he supposed he was obliged to treat her with consideration.
“It’s not safe down there.” He indicated the high-water mark where the scoured banks gave way to weeds, vines, and succulents. “Better join me up here.”
She glanced at the clouds and appeared to grasp the threat without further explanation. No longer inching away, she examined him in a way she had not done at first. Perhaps she was wondering if being exiled meant that she would look as blighted as he, given time. If so, the prospect unsettled her deeply.
Aside from the cowl, he did carry one other item on his person — a waist pouch that hung from a thong. Suspended from that was the carcass of a rabbitlike animal he had killed. Her eyes settled on the furred body, recognized it as food, and licked her lips.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
She nodded tentatively, as if afraid to admit to such need.
“I can cook this for us, then.”
Her reticence eased. Wincing from the pain of her feet, she clambered up the bluff. She accepted his hand to bring her onto level ground, and stood self-consciously a pace from him.
“I’m Judith Vining.”
He coughed. “Glenn Ashwood.” He waved upriver toward one of his camps. “We need to take shelter before the storm hits.” The clouds were pressing rapidly toward the coast.
“Is it far?”
“No more than a kilometer.”
She sighed.
“I have nothing to help your feet,” he said. “Would you like me to carry you? You’re small. I could manage it.”
She shook her head quickly. That was the answer Glenn wanted. This was a proper time to keep a distance, to be intimidated by him. He would have been suspicious of anything else.
He checked her feet. They were not critical. Nor was she as sunburned as she might have been. Her morph was Polynesian, a popular fashion among women even back when Glenn was exiled. Nutmeg brown, with long raven hair scattered over her shoulders, Judith had reddened so little from the day’s exposure that he guessed she would not even suffer peeling as long as she kept to the shade during the next few days. Thanks to the river trees and the incoming clouds, shade would be abundant.
“Your jumpship’s crew was kinder than mine,” Glenn said gruffly, and guided them to a path.
o0o
They arrived beneath the rock overhang that shielded Glenn’s camp just as the rain began to fall. Within seconds, a solid wall of water obscured the landscape.
Judith sank onto the packed earth and gawked at the torrent. Then she shivered, because the temperature had plunged.
“Here,” Glenn said, handing her a blanket of sewn animal pelts — his old one, saving the new one for himself.
She accepted the article gladly, wrapping it around and hugging it close. With her womanly shape obscured, she resembled a child. Glenn stifled a pulse of paternal instinct, busying himself igniting the tinder of his cookfire and adding fuel. The skinning and dressing of the “rabbit” filled the awkward lapse of conversation.
By the time the meat was cooked, the weather front had moved on, leaving only a feeble trickle of rain. Down in the canyon the river burbled enthusiastically, a mere precursor of things to come.
The blackness outside lessened as the faint glow of twilight leaked under the cloud layer from the west. Glenn genuflected, a bit of religious ritual he’d adopted out of thanks that he had not been sent to a planet tidally locked to its primary, with himself abandoned beneath a perpetual noon. He treasured the night, and this one would be especially fine, the stars incandescent now that the dust had been rinsed from the atmosphere.
He handed Judith a roasted haunch. She attacked it with fervor, taking small bites only because larger ones would have seared her palate. In a short time he gave her another piece, then sat down to have some himself.
He regarded her steadily. Her shiver continued in spite of the blanket. Now was hardly the time to talk, but there were things he needed to know.
“Were you guilty?” he asked.
She didn’t look up from her meat. “I did the things they say I did. Whether they should have been against the law, I don’t know.”
It was a good answer. Honest, not attempting to save face, but with its admirable pride.
“Have you ever heard of me?” he asked.
“Glenn Ashton?”
“Ashwood.”
She shrugged apologetically.
“Ever heard of the Furies?”
“From the Greek myth?” She was chewing more slowly, as if wondering why he was interrogating her.
“A protest group, purged by the magistrate in 2832. I was their leader.”
“I wasn’t even born in 2832.”
With so few children born anymore, Glenn was accustomed to thinking of everyone as several hundred years old. He faltered through the next question. “How long is your sentence?”
“Thirty years.” Finishing her meal, she seemed to gather strength. “And yours?”
“Indefinite,” he said softly.
She blinked. “But that was under an old regime. When they come for me, they’ll take you, too. That’s if the current administration lasts that long. Someone might find us sooner.”
“That sounds . . . optimistic,” he muttered.
That silenced her. She crawled nearer the fire, arranged the straw he had given her for her bedding, and lay down under the blanket to watch the stars breaking through the widening gaps in the cloud cover. She didn’t look at him.
Glenn was being a poor host and he knew it. Yet he was finding it hard to be gracious. Judith might be who she said she was. Or she could be lying. McCandless might still be in power. He could have sent her. She could be an actress. She could be an android, a construct of Fluidmetal and an A.I. matrix.
She was too perfect. She brought with her the prospect of companionship, sex, hope for release from prison, and information about the galaxy he had been isolated from for fifty years. Too much like his fantasies, she was.
McCandless would love to torment him further. No sooner would Glenn come to trust Judith, pour out his confidences and pour into her his semen, than she would melt away, leaving a recording of McCandless’s voice, laughing. Or maybe McCandless needed something. Glenn had always believed that during all the druggings and coerced testimony, he had not revealed all the names of his comrades. Perhaps a splinter of the Furies remained to this day, annoying the magistrate. He would try to worm that last name or two from Glenn’s lips.
Judith was drifting to sleep, exhausted by her initiation to the planet. He winced. If she were to be his Eve, he needed to treat her better. But how did he dare? He stared at her until long after the storm run-off from the mountains thundered down the river channel.
o0o
In the morning, he held up the gift he had made for her: clothing. The garments weren’t much to speak of — just a loincloth of hide, suspended from a waist thong, and a thong necklace with another wide scrap of hide that would drape both breasts. He had had neither the time, the skill, nor the materials to craft anything less rudimentary.
Her nose crinkled at the odd, ferretlike odor, still present though the animal the skin had come from had been dead a year or more. But she nodded and tied the loincloth to her waist. She left
the upper garment on the ground.
The gesture had gone over well. Glenn was pleased. It had been little enough of a risk. If she were a spy, much better for him that some of her beauty was concealed. If she were a genuine castaway, then he had ingratiated himself by allowing her to find her level of comfort. Though modesty had been on the wane ever since the advent of molecular cosmetology, some people — women especially — still appreciated the chance to selectively reveal themselves.
She smiled and looked at him expectantly.
“Come on,” he said. “If you’re going to survive here, there are some things you should know.”
He had no choice but to take her on as a student. It was the only responsible thing to do if she were not McCandless’s tool, and it would give him a task to keep him focussed. He started with a tour of the drenched plain, sticking to rain-softened sands for the benefit of her blistered feet. She followed his lead without question, listening respectfully as he spoke. And well she should. The knowledge he was sharing had been won with pain and arduous trial-and-error.
Soon, as was inevitable, they encountered a quintessential example of the desert’s unpleasantness. Skirting the edge of a dwindling pool, he used the haft of his spear to scoop out a drowned specimen he called a heeby-jeeby.
“Too stupid to get out of the rain,” he commented.
She cringed as she leaned over the remains. Long and scaly, the creature resembled a snake or lizard, but with twenty or more pairs of legs, like some reptilian version of a millipede.
“They’re lethargic during the day,” he added. “You might be tempted to sneak up on one to kill it. Don’t. They spit their venom. It’ll dissolve your skin, or blind you if it gets in your eyes. Dilute it a hundred to one and it’ll still give you hives.”
Judith, who was only a step from the pool’s edge, scooted back to keep the potentially contaminated water from touching her feet. “I take it they’re active at night?” she asked tremulously.
“Very. You’ll hear the scuffle of forty little feet. Can’t miss it.”
She shivered.
“Whenever you hear that, just stay still. Heeby-jeebies don’t eat anything as big as we are. They’ll ignore you if you don’t hassle them. Last month one crawled right over my neck and just kept going.”
She gazed at him with undisguised awe. Glenn blushed. He hadn’t been trying to impress her. He didn’t want to become dependent on praise now that he’d lived so long without it.
But it did feel good to be seen as competent. And to be appreciated as a teacher.
“Well, then,” he mumbled, “I’ll show you what their burrows look like, so you can steer clear.”
o0o
Over the next week, he shifted the lessons away from immediate threats to life to the next level of priority — finding food. That usually meant meat, taken mostly by snare and net rather than spear. Plants were too often poisonous. Moreover, edible vegetation consisted largely of widely scattered seeds or pulp hidden deep within spiny protuberances or armored rinds — it was never easy to obtain. It was worth the effort only because of the fiber and trace elements, and because those carbohydrate sources would not run away when a hunter was tired, unlucky, or injured.
Judith closely attended whatever he said to her. He caught himself staring as she breathed. Her lungs filled, briefly widening the set of her breasts, and he was reminded of the gentle way the latter rose and fell as she slept.
She was a woman. He could smell the femaleness of her. She gave off pheromones that shot up his nostrils and linked directly into his primitive brain. Each day left him a little more dazed.
Signs indicated she was caught in a complementary sexual tropism. She maintained less distance, allowed their hands to brush as they traded objects, and held eye contact. His weathered body might hinder her evolving interest, but did not halt it.
For better or worse, he was giving in to her. By the end of another week, they had become casual with one another. She asked more questions, did small tasks for him. He could tell she was still terrified of this place, but that she accepted him as an ally. To her, they were friends.
And to him, what were they?
They were exploring the sea, always the best source of protein, the water cool enough to be refreshing. As ever, he was careful to warn her of dangers. “Stay in the shallows,” he told her. “There’s a species out there sort of like a giant lamprey. Big enough to eat people. Venture into deep water and your nanodocs might have to reconstitute you out of eel shit.”
She laughed. He grinned back. Some of his old self had reemerged. When was the last time he had owned a sense of humor?
Suddenly she grew serious. “One of them ate you, didn’t it?”
He coughed. “Only my left foot, actually. Not that it made much difference. The gangrene killed me a few days later.”
“I can’t imagine what you must have been through all these years.” Disconcerted by her own boldness, she wiped the salt flecks off her cheeks and chin. “I don’t think I could have endured all that by myself.”
The memories rose like bile. Mocked at his trial, forced to betray comrades, and then sent to hell. He dropped his net into the surf, using the motion of retrieving it to hide the tears that were springing from his eyes. He came up facing away from her.
He was unable, however, to disguise the sob that wracked his whole body.
Judith moved forward, wrapping her arms around his waist, hugging him. The unmistakable caress of nipples on his back forced new tears up.
Glenn rocked back and forth, succumbing to the rhythm of the waves, letting Judith support him. The touch of her arms, her breasts, her chin, soothed him too much to resist. She was giving him comfort in spite of his calculated ugliness, in spite of his gruffness.
“It won’t be so bad now,” she murmured. “We’ll keep each other company. Let me be your friend. We could make something of our time here.” She circled to his front, pulled his head down to her level, and kissed him.
It was a light, chaste kiss. Her nostrils quivered as she drew away, trying to corral more of his scent. It was clear she would kiss him again — that and much more. She led the way to the beach, where she dropped her loincloth to the sand. Beckoning him, she walked in the direction of the camp.
From the shallows he admired the female way her hips rocked up and down with each stride. He followed, never letting her recede from view.
o0o
Their lovemaking was everything he could have wished for. Soft, snug wetness. Enthusiastic puffs of breath. Little squeals of feminine delight. The pungent, delicious aroma of passionate exertion. Only after the third set of orgasms were they content to collapse into the aftermath, lying together under a single blanket underneath the stars, where Glenn fell into a deep, all-consuming slumber.
Morning arrived, illuminating the recessed walls of the camp. Sunlight glittered off the minerals in the rock. It was the one time of day the camp was not in the shade, a welcome arrangement that chased away the nocturnal chill. Glenn woke with a start, opening his eyes to find that Judith was standing, body haloed as she gazed out at the landscape.
Her passion-tousled form was glorious. As she turned toward him, his eyes were riveted to the supple twisting of her waist. He could just imagine how it would feel to grasp her there again while she mounted him. She blew him a kiss, pointed toward the river, mouthed “Bath,” and tip-toed down the embankment, out of sight.
He was ready for her when she came back. Beads of water clung to her coppery skin, held in place by random hair follicles. Were he to lick them off of her, he would never wish to drink any other way again.
She held out her arms to him. Her expression had hardly shifted from pleasure to shock before his club connected with her skull. No sooner had she fallen, limp, to the ground than he raked his stone knife across her throat. Blood gushed from the huge wound, staining the dust.
Her nanodocs would revive her, of course. Glenn estimated that would take several
hours. He tossed a few essential items, ones he kept at no other camp, into a makeshift knapsack. By the time her death was erased, he would be far gone toward the mountains, and given Judith’s rudimentary tracking skills, she would never catch up.
He shuddered as he marched away, humbled to realize how vulnerable he had been. In another month, he would done almost anything for her. At a minimum, he would have restored his body to its youthful morph so that she would not have to bear the sight of his middle-aged, graying self. And in the process, erase much of his identity.
That was what McCandless would want, after all. To erase him, one way or another. Given the effects of intimacy, the drunkenness of hormone haze, it would not have been long before he had accepted her version of the outside galaxy — a place where even the name of his enemy was forgotten. He would begin dreaming, hoping, of the rescue she had mentioned, begin to be confident that no more than thirty more years of exile remained. He would no longer plot revenges, no longer picture the moment when he would at last catch up with the magistrate. New priorities would subsume the old, until former concerns seemed hollow and indistinct.
In short, he would leave behind the very vision and faith that had sustained him all these years. And when at last she asked him about his old friends and of his former exploits, he would pour out it all out without reservation, naming the names that McCandless wanted, and be made a fool once more.
And then she would depart, and he would be alone, left with nothing anymore, not even pride.
The storm, though gone a fortnight already, had blessed the peaks ahead with bright new snow. Perhaps he would climb all the way to the top, build a snowman for company, or simply reexperience the novelty of frozen water. Perhaps, from that height, he would see an ocean out beyond the wastelands, or a savannah. A new home, where he could laugh at his foe’s paltry manipulations, and one day find the means to become the victor.
A little inner voice nagged at him, asking if he might have misconstrued things, but it faded away, unheard. Onward he walked.
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INTRODUCTION TO “FOREIGNERS”
