You understand now? I ask. After all those men, after their insistence on their needs ... the only time they cared about my arousal was when they wanted to boost their own self-confidence ... after all that, I could never sleep with a man again. You probably would have been a great man, but I couldn't bear to sleep with another one, no matter how nice.
I said I understood. But now I wonder this. Did you stay with me because you loved me or because you wanted a secure life?
There's a giant difference between why I first sought your attentions and why I'm with you now.
It's an awkward moment, given the way our bodies are touching, given the years of abstinence in our last life together, so I return to the story.
When the newborns came, it was a rush. I now dreaded the sight I had once longed for. Many of the newborns had not seen enough battle to afford a guesthouse, so Amanda Sam and I traded off with the apartment. There would be an occasional woman soldier who hired my services, but mostly I listened to men lament their lives after they'd relieved themselves of their burdens. I kept an eye out for Noriko, but now my plan was to spot her first so I could avoid her.
I started to hang out more with the nurse and the therapist, just to know people who had nothing to do with the Wake and Amanda Sam, though Haven is a small enough place that I'm sure they knew what I did. I'm sure when I got up from lunch, they probably said, He's not so bad. Everyone's got to make a living somehow.
Some nights, I decided just to do nothing, and I stayed in the Wake and drank. Sometimes Amanda Sam would rest her hand on my shoulder and I'd turn to her and she'd tell me it was time to go home. She'd make love to me, comfort me, and I'd pretend to be comforted. “I'll always take care of you,” she said. “I'm so glad we found each other.” And the next morning she'd take her twenty-percent cut. So I sat in the Wake and foresaw years and years of this, and sometimes in the Wake, but never on my walks, which were just for dreams, I would tally up how long it'd take to build up savings, how long it would take to get off Haven, and how much I'd need to start a new life when her hand fell on my shoulder. I turned and Noriko was looking at me.
"I've been told you've been asking about me,” she said.
Oh, no, she says. She doesn't recognize you. She died before she had another neuromap, and she doesn't know you.
I hear the sadness in her voice. For decades and decades I couldn't mention Noriko to her; now, after all these years apart, she sympathizes. How different life would have been if so much separation wasn't necessary to erase whatever had made us bitter.
I stood up to face her. I thought for a second she looked older, as if the job had worn away her friendliness, but then I recalled this look, the way she'd gotten when she'd given out instructions to her companions. There was no recognition on her face, no joy at seeing me, just this military face accustomed to giving orders.
She said, “I thought you'd be gone by now. I made sure the cost of everything was covered."
"I couldn't go."
She stood and waited for me to say more.
"I didn't know what happened to you. I didn't know what happened to me."
She looked around, took my hand, and led me to a table. She sat across from me and ordered herself a beer. She held the glass in both her hands, and I wanted her to hold my hand again. She said nothing for the longest time. I surveyed the entire place, the bar, the booths, to make sure Amanda Sam was nowhere to be seen.
Noriko said, “Here's what happened. We posted as comrades-in-arms. We were set to attack an orbital. They told us that ninety percent of our unit would die. You began to shake in your sleep. You talked about how when you died, once they'd grown you a new body, once you'd been re-assigned, that we'd be apart. But the truth was you were scared to die. When it came time to suit up, you were trembling so much that the captain ordered you to your quarters. He didn't want you to put us at risk. I told you to pack up your gear and move out while I was away.
"The enemy was unprepared. We took the orbital with few casualties. When we got back, you'd hanged yourself."
I felt myself shaking my head. I wasn't the me that would do that.
"I blamed myself for what happened,” she said. “ Back on Haven, I was so involved in taking care of my own needs that I didn't recognize the warning signs. The one thing I forgot about youth, real youth, the first youth, is how passionate you are about life itself. How it sometimes has to be all or nothing."
I didn't know what to say. I said something about there being no discharge papers.
"You forgot or ignored what you were told. In the military, your life is only to be lost for the cause. The military won't pay for a new life if you kill yourself. They promoted me after that skirmish. I got a pay raise. I had enough money to cover your rebirth. I arranged for some loans to cover the cost of a berth back to your homeworld. I thought I'd made up for everything. I though I'd taken care of you."
We sat there for a while and what more could we say? I wanted to know what warning signs she'd seen. I didn't want to know. And what other subject was there? We'd only been together for three or four days.
Noriko didn't ask about where I was living or what my plans were. She told me she'd recently been assigned to Haven in a supervisory capacity. There would be four units of newborns to organize, plus two units of newbies coming in. The big push was beginning.
She was talking about everything they had to do and how she had to get back to her duties when Amanda Sam walked in and said hello. Noriko looked up at her. There wasn't a trace of recognition's on Noriko's face. “I'm sure I'll see you,” Noriko said to me and left without saying a word to Amanda Sam.
"I see that soldier girl is back,” Amanda Sam said.
"She didn't recognize you."
Amanda Sam looked at me for a moment. I think she was tempted to explain why I was wrong, but she'd taught me the con. I'd already used it a few times, but because I was living such separate lives in my head, I hadn't figured the whole thing out, how everything had stretched back to day one of my new life. The con: you sit down with a newborn, and you talk about the last time you'd been together, the one that must have taken place after the neuromap was recorded.
I walked and walked that night. I told myself I wasn't a coward, I wasn't the kind of person who'd kill himself. Look at what I was living through now. I hadn't been tempted to kill myself in the past months with everything that had happened. And I reminded myself that Noriko had said we'd left Haven as comrades-in-arms. I thought of ways I could see her again, of things I could say to win her back.
But, of course, Haven was a military way station, even though it was run by civilians. Of course, people knew I'd been asking about her, and the local military intelligence guy, whoever he was, must have told her. They'd know how I was making a living, and so Noriko would know.
I didn't see Noriko again. I avoided the hospital, and I avoided other taverns. I only conducted business out of the Wake, and she never returned. I stopped taking my walks. I'm sure she was on Haven until everyone involved with the big push had left. And by the time the newborns and the fresh recruits were gone, I had enough money to start a new life, to be reborn and not remember one bit of this. Instead, I worked for another year and had enough to fly to planets that people liked to talk about, to have some money to live for a little bit and try one unsuccessful business venture or another.
Amanda Sam cried when I told her I was leaving. “I made this possible for you,” she said. “I want you to remember that.” And my last night there, I let her make love to me the way she liked, and I was so moved by the way she felt that I had my first orgasm while I held her in my arms. This caused her to kiss me passionately. “Please don't leave. Please stay. You think I took advantage of you, but I really do love you.” Right then I thought she was begging her twenty-percent cut to stay. Now I think she either loved me or, at least, my company. I think of all the booths I sat in, waiting alone to attract some eager company. I think of those same booths at the end
of a long evening when she sat beside me and took my hand in hers.
And the ship I boarded later stopped at some planet or other, and you boarded, and that's how I spent the rest of my lives.
She turns over in the bed and kisses me. I caress her face, and the way time has lined her skin feels wrong against my fingertips. My body betrays me. I say, Talk to me, and I hear her voice and she pulls me into her embrace and it's her I make love to.
The next morning she makes me my favorite breakfast and she packs my bag. I tell her I was more than willing to stay indefinitely. I have no special plans and I like being with her.
She says, These last few days, well last night, especially, were perfect. When I first met you, you told me about Noriko, and I wanted to be with someone who could love so passionately. And I was jealous of her ever since because I couldn't inspire the same kind of love. Last night, you told me about Noriko, and I remembered everything about you I loved when our lives together weren't so difficult. Last night is the memory I want to have of you when I die.
I argue, but if I argue too fiercely, I'll destroy everything these few days have come to mean. I leave her house in the woods, take train after train, come to a port and board a ship for elsewhere. In the decades we were apart—me in a fresh new body, she finding out what happens when the body finally ages—I always thought about her. During those years, I knew that one day, when I had the money for the voyage, I would track her down and see her at least one last time.
I leave her now, but I can't imagine another life.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Short Story: SHADOWS ON THE WALL OF THE CAVE by Kate Wilhelm
I remember it well: I was a new writer and the goal was to be published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. An impossible goal, I might add. I wanted to be there, in that company! Recently I was talking to two other writers, one already published in F&SF, and one not yet there, who expressed exactly what I had felt fifty years ago. She yearned for an “impossible” goal in such an impossible distance it was like a mirage. The more things change, the more they stay the same.—Kate Wilhelm
Ashley was dreaming when her phone rang. In the dream she was in absolute dark, running wildly, crying out soundlessly, screaming, hearing nothing. A pinpoint of light, a single star in a void, blinked out when she ran toward it, only to appear somewhere else, again and again.
She came awake, wet with sweat, shivering, and groped for the phone. It was her father.
"Your grandmother died during the night,” he said. “I'll catch an eight o'clock flight. Do you want to fly down with me?"
She shook her head. “I'll drive.” Her voice sounded hollow, strange. She cleared her throat. “I'll get there tonight."
"Give us a call when you get in,” he said. “Drive carefully."
After hanging up, Ashley pulled the thin summer blanket over her, then pulled the bedspread up also, cold, shivering. She seldom knew what brought on that nightmare, but three times this week she had known. Before her mother had flown to Frankfort to be with Gramma, she had said they would go to the farm after the funeral, and she wanted Ashley to go with them. “There are things she would have wanted you to have,” she had said.
Ashley had refused. The last time she had been to the farm, seventeen years ago, she had promised herself that she would never go back.
Huddled in bed, covered, even her head covered, in spite of herself, that day surged into memory again.
For years, every summer, Ashley's mother Maribeth packed up the car and drove from Pittsburgh to her parents’ farm in Kentucky. Ashley's Aunt Ella left Atlanta at the same time with her two sons to spend the same weeks on the farm where the sisters had grown up, where Grampa had grown up as well.
It was a time of joyous freedom for the children when they could run in and out at will and play without the restrictions of a big city. Their companion in play was Grampa's dog Skipper, a short-haired brown and white mutt, who, Grampa said, would kill any snake he came across and wouldn't let a stranger on the farm without setting up a ruckus.
Below the house, past the kitchen garden, through a small area of woods, was Rabbit Creek, no more than ten inches deep, where they could splash and play, hunt for crawdads, find miniature monsters lurking under rocks. Sometimes they populated the creek with crocodiles, or piranha, watched lions and tigers come to drink, or they spied submarines on secret missions. The woods on one side after a few hundred yards gave way to corn fields, and on the other the land rose in a low rocky hill, their Mount Everest, or the magic mountain. Bigfoot lived high on the mountain, or a dragon guarded its treasure, or bears prowled.
But best of all was the cave. The entrance was narrow, one-person wide, with a massive boulder on one side, and a limestone outcropping on the other. The passage curved around the boulder, widened and descended in a shallow slope to a small chamber where the cave ended. No more than twenty feet in all, dry, dimly lighted from the outside, it was a hideout, a castle dungeon, a spaceship, submarine, whatever Nathan declared it to be.
Nathan was eleven, their leader in all games, Ashley was nine that summer, both with hair turning darker, mud-colored, Ashley said. Joey was seven, still a towhead, a daredevil who was determined to do whatever his big brother did. Neither Ashley nor Joey disputed Nathan's leadership.
That day they were explorers in the dark African jungle, alert for headhunters who were roaming the area. “There's a gold mine somewhere out here,” Nathan said. “We'll find it. I'll buy an airplane with my share."
Joey nodded. “Me, too. A jet fighter."
"I'll buy a castle,” Ashley said. “With a moat."
Nathan consulted a scrap of paper. “Ten paces from the river, turn right, and find the big boulder. This way.” He led them to the boulder and cried out in astonishment, “Look! A mine entrance!"
"The headhunters!” Joey yelled. “I saw one over there!"
He pushed past Nathan and fled into the cave, with Ashley and Nathan close behind.
"Skipper, stay. Guard,” Nathan ordered.
There was no point in trying to get the dog to go inside. No amount of coaxing or cajoling, or bribery with a bone or dog biscuits had ever enticed him inside. He flopped down at the entrance, tongue lolling, and became a guard dog.
The chamber was a foot or so higher than Nathan's head, irregular in shape, and big enough for three to be comfortable without touching one another or the walls, although a step or two in any direction would put a wall within reach. Joey sat down cross-legged as Nathan unslung a small day pack, prepared to hand out provisions, cookies and a thermos of Kool Aid.
"We'll wait them—” Nathan started, and the light went out.
Ashley reached for Nathan, but her hand felt nothing. “What happened?” she said. “What's the matter?” Her voice rose as she called, “Nathan, where are you? What happened to the light? Nathan?” The black was intense, without a glimmer of light, and there was no sound except for her own voice, and then a strangled sound of her whisper. “Nathan! Answer me! Joey!"
The silence was as intense as the darkness. Ashley took a step, another, to where Nathan had been. She was sweeping her hands before her, trying to find one or the other of them, crying now, pleading, calling Nathan, then Joey. Panicked, crying, yelling, she ran with her hands outstretched to reach the wall, to reach anything. Running this way, that, screaming, encountering nothing, hearing nothing. No walls, no cousins, no light from outside. She began screaming, “Mommy! Daddy! Mommy!” There wasn't even an echo, as if the darkness swallowed her cries.
She ran and cried and her screams had become whimpers only when she saw a tracery of light and ran toward it. As she ran, the light increased until it defined the narrow cave entrance. Stumbling, she ran to it, scraped her arm on the wall in her dash to get outside, to safety.
Skipper rose to greet her with a wagging tail, and she tripped over him, fell, then pulled herself up and ran as fast as she could to the path that led to the house.
"What happened? Did you fall down? Honey, it's all right now. Calm down. Tell me what happened?"
When her mother tried to push her away a little, Ashley clung ever harder.
She heard Nathan's voice and lifted her head enough to see him stagger into the kitchen. “Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” He said again and again, his face the color of dry putty.
"Nathan! What's wrong?” Aunt Ella cried. “Where's Joey?"
With the question the nightmare became family business.
* * * *
Years passed before Ashley could sort the snapshot memories of that day, late into the evening, and the chaotic days that followed. Relatives came, her father and Nathan's father were there. Strangers, some with dogs, were everywhere, policemen, reporters and television people. Skipper was tied to the porch rail and he lay groaning, moaning, growling. Different people asked Ashley a lot of questions. A woman doctor asked her if Nathan had done something to her. Others asked if he had done something to Joey and scared her so much she promised not to tell. Did Joey have an accident and she and Nathan had become afraid and hid him?
That first day and night Ashley had clung to her mother as a baby might and her mother had to stay with her until she fell asleep. When she woke up during the night, alone in the dark, she began to scream and couldn't stop. After that, she kept a light on in her room day and night for fear of the return of the blackness.
One of the most vivid snapshot memories was when Grampa grabbed Nathan by the shoulders and shook him. “Tell me the truth, boy! What happened to Joey? What did you do to Joey?"
Joey was Grampa's favorite. They all knew that. Grampa said Joey was Bill made over. Ashley's Uncle Bill had died in Vietnam when he was nineteen. He was just a name to her, as unreal as any other historical figure.
FSF, October-November 2009 Page 35
