She talked about herself, too, telling him that she had grown up on Opas III, circling a star of southern Aeregian space. But after leaving home at the age of twenty-five, and traveling to several planets, she had come to Chaening's World, found a job she liked, and stayed. When Carlyle asked her if she had really had a friend once who became a rigger, she said that it was true; but she had lost touch with the person completely. "So I've always wanted to know someone who really was, is, a rigger," she said, edging about in her seat, smiling.
After dinner, they went outside and said good night by the corner of the lodge. She lived in a Kloss-owned residence around the corner. "See you?" she said, looking at him in a peculiarly penetrating fashion.
"Sure," he said, nodding twitchily. He swallowed and turned, but not before he saw her eyes flickering in curiosity; and he went back inside the lodge and slowly, wanderingly, made his way up to his room.
The suite was so large that it made him uncomfortable. He paced through the three rooms, mulling over the day. Finally he settled into an easy-g chair in the bedroom, enjoying the floating feel of its reduced gravity field. He was tired but still wide awake. Alyaca went through his mind, and Janofer, and even Cephean. Clacking his teeth, he got up and went to the entertainment console. He flicked on the holo-screen and sampled the channels and storage cubes, but he found nothing that he liked, so he switched that off and turned on music instead, with lighted flo-globe. He went to the bar and drew himself a sting brandy, then returned and sat and listened to a windsong symphony. And kept thinking about Alyaca. And when he wasn't thinking about her, he thought about Janofer, and that hurt so much that he started thinking about Alyaca again.
He considered switching on a mood sparkle-pattern, but before he could make up his mind the door signal quavered. So he got up, wondering who it could be, and answered the door.
"Who is it?" he said cautiously.
"Don't you trust me?" It was Alyaca.
He started to pale the door, then remembered that it was a solid wood panel. He opened it, and Alyaca smiled, blushing a little. For a moment he just stood, his heart cutting, off his windpipe, his arm blocking off the doorway. Finally, she said, crunching her eyebrows together, "I got lonely. May I come in?"
Chapter 8: Alyaca
He stumbled over his feet backing away to let her in. Suddenly he felt dizzy, thinking, Why has she come to see me?
She was inside and had the door closed before he recovered his footing, and she was pulling him toward her before he could begin to find his lost thoughts. His feelings blurred, and he succumbed to her embrace and to the warm pressure of her lips, and for a very long few moments he felt that this was all he needed, it was what he had needed all along, to be kissed like this by a lovely woman—and why had he kept himself in torment by such worries and fears?
Alyaca disengaged herself gently, with a caress to his cheek. She walked into the suite, across the room to the half-silvered picture window, and looked out. Then she turned back to face him, her eyes tracing a curious line about the room before meeting his. She smiled, letting out her breath with a little laugh. He laughed, too, uncertainly. Suddenly he was wondering what was coming, and whether it was something he wanted to do, ought to do, or could do without losing what was left of his equilibrium. He wished that his heart would stop beating as though it were going to bound right out of his chest.
She came to him and touched his hair, and then she walked to the bar and drew herself a sting brandy. He recovered enough to pick up his own glass, and when she returned they clinked their two glasses together. "To things working out," she said.
He agreed with a nod, wondering just what she meant. He could not speak.
"Are you glad I came?" she asked softly, sipping her drink.
He nodded again.
"Were you expecting me?" She didn't wait for him to answer; instead she peered at him over her glass and shrugged. "I really wanted to come, and when you didn't ask me I decided to ask myself." She grew somber and said, in a lower voice, "I really was lonely."
He sipped nervously. The brandy was potent, drilling straight to his head, mixing with adrenaline. He really couldn't think of anything to say. He was in shock, and he didn't want the shock to end, for fear that if he started thinking he would understand all the reasons why he shouldn't be in a situation like this with a nonrigger, especially someone he hardly knew.
She was standing very close to him, looking at him; and her perfume, musklike and dizzying, seemed to be affecting more than just his olfactory organs. The room seemed very hot. Her eyes were warm brown, and her mouth . . .
. . . she pressed to his, soft and warm and moist and giving. He breathed very hard when they stopped kissing this time, and he kept his arms around her. Her eyes flashed and closed—what am I doing? he thought—and her lips parted warmly against his—why? she's not—and her hands stroked his neck and his hair, and he was totally compelled by the kiss, surrounded by her warmth, and he surrendered and his doubts were lifted away, forgotten.
She gently broke the kiss and looked at him, obviously pleased by the effect. She was flushed, and her eyes communicated arousal. She stepped back silently, and fingered a fastening at one shoulder of her gown. The fabric loosened, and the end fell back over her shoulder. She pulled away a swath of cloth and tossed it lightly to the floor. Both shoulders were bare now, as was her left side down to her hip. Two tapered stretches of cloth angled to cover the lower right halves of both breasts, leaving exposed the rounded tops of the breasts, semicircles of dark areolas, and a glimpse of the nipples. Her breasts rose and fell gently with her breath.
Carlyle swallowed with difficulty. He tremblingly reached, thinking to touch her shoulders, wanting to touch all of her body, all the way down . . . but thinking—she isn't . . . isn't . . .
She sank a little and drew herself to him.
* * *
He tumbled first to the polyfluid bed. As she slid across toward him, the rest of her gown dropped away. With her hair cascading, breasts swaying, nipples hard, she pulled off his tunic and pants, and kissed him teasingly. Her hair brushed over him, her breath and lips warm and moist. When he was groaning, straining and bobbing against her, she moved back up, kissed his neck gently, and straddled him. Her breasts moved enchantingly over him, her breath hot and uneven against his face. She sank onto him, swallowing him in her heat.
He slid his hands along her back, following the curve of her hips, then rubbing softly at the fascinating dark fuzz between her thighs, and moving up along the gentle roundness of her belly and the abrupt roundness of her breasts. He caught her eyes, wide and sharp, and held them wonderingly, his thoughts tugging at hers, trying to know what she was feeling. She caught her breath as he, and then she, began to move . . .
* * *
Her back went rigid, and he clasped his hands and forearms to her sides and held her as she swayed, struggling. Moments later she bent toward him again, her face rubbing wetly against his. He closed his arms over her back and held her tightly. He had already come, and he was shrinking now, starting to pull free of her. Holding her close, warm and solid against him, he tried to make it last. He did not want to speak, did not want the moment to end yet . . .
* * *
How can she know me, how can she understand? Why have I done this? And does it matter?
* * *
"Did you enjoy making love with me?" she whispered, inches from his face, her fingers stroking his cheek.
"Yes," he whispered back, probably inaudibly; and he nodded against the pillow, almost imperceptibly. But you are not a rigger, he added silently. And that must make some difference—
A little later, as they lay still together, he gazed at her forehead and the fringe of hair behind it, while she studied his chest. She said, "Are you thinking of your friends?" She looked up.
Startled, he avoided her eyes. Yes, he had been, especially of Janofer. And what of Janofer? Had he been disloyal to her?
"That mean
s 'yes,' " she said. He could not tell how she reacted to her own statement. "Well. I guess you would be, of course." She rolled back, looking up at the ceiling. She lay still like that for a moment, then turned back to him and pulled herself close. His feelings rushed dizzyingly as he held her, stroking her shoulders and hair, stroking, stroking. Attraction to Alyaca, longing for Janofer (for the Janofer who was, and for the Janofer who might have been; which Janofer was he thinking of now?). Fear. Fear of this woman, of loving her. What would she want of him, what could he ask of her?
She pressed her lips softly to his neck. "Good night," she murmured.
He stroked her and lay awake wondering.
* * *
During the days following, they swam together at the beach and hiked in the forest. They piloted a diving skate into the lake's depths, and they rode in the gondola of a balloon over the lake and the surrounding area. Carlyle told her something of rigging and the way of life it created, and the difficulties it entailed in the net of a star-ship; and he told her some of the legends of the riggers, some of the tales passed down through the centuries and across the worlds, some from before the days in which rigging first superseded the old foreshortening starflight, the sailing ship making obsolete the high-powered shell. The legend of Impris interested her particularly. "It's called the Dutchman," he said, "because in ancient times on one of the home worlds there was a seagoing ship called . . . Flying Dutchman, I think. Impris is supposed to be like that other ship, sailing eternally, lost in the Flux. She would be a ghost ship even if she returned, according to the legend. Of course the ship may never have existed. No one has ever proved that a ship named Impris actually existed and then disappeared, but it's said that the records were deliberately destroyed to discredit the legend, because it was thought to be too frightening a prospect to allow riggers to believe." He chuckled. "Anyway, the legend is probably a couple of hundred years old."
Alyaca asked him if he believed in the legends himself. "Well, that's hard to say," he said uncomfortably. "I think some of them might be true." He was glad, at least for the moment, that she was interested in these stories. It kept them from more painful personal topics, and made him almost believe that their affair together might last.
During their third night, however, Alyaca asked him to tell more about Janofer. The pain rushed back as though it had been building, waiting for a trigger.
"Do you still miss her that much?" she asked, sounding incredulous.
"It's hard to explain." His throat was very tight.
"Why? How long were you lovers?"
"We hardly were at all," he said. He dropped his face into the pillow. He lay that way, breathing through the hyperexpanded puff, not wanting to say another word. It wasn't fair that he should be tormented by thoughts of Janofer, here, now, while he was having trouble enough accepting Alyaca. It just wasn't fair. He looked up finally, to see her staring at him, waiting for him to make sense. "Well," he said, "we were. But it didn't last; it didn't work, even right from the beginning." His pulse pounded in his temples. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to talk; but there seemed no way out—he would have to talk sooner or later.
"Gev?"
"Uh?"
"How can you be so hooked on her if you really weren't even that close?"
The pounding increased: you don't talk about this with an outsider—
—but she's not really an outsider; after all, she's in your bed—
—but she's not a rigger, either—
"We were close," he said tightly. "Close friends." How could he explain how desperately important that was to him, to a man who had grown up so lonely he had not even realized how lonely he was? "She was my first real friend—" and she was a rigger. "I thought it would always last—"
He dropped his head lower again, staring at the pillow. Should he tell her what it was like growing up on Alcest IV, a growing frontier world where the unrelenting demand was for practical-minded people, for civilization builders? Should he tell her what it was like growing up an odd dreamer in a family of settlers and engineers and designers? What it was like as a child walking and playing endlessly through waking dreams, and failing in the goals set for him by others, and being thought curious—until someone, a friend of his father's, not even a member of his own family, had recognized the rigger in him?
"It was hard for me when I was young," he mumbled.
It was not that riggers weren't well thought of, not respected, not needed. But that didn't mean that his family wanted one of their own. Truthfully, he did not even recognize the emptiness until later. Even when he was sent to train—eventually off Alcest IV altogether, to other Aeregian planets—he was taught mastery of his dreams and mastery of the mechanics of space; but who needed companionship then, with dreams so attractive and so highly approved of? When they had taught him that rigging required the capacity for intimacy, for empathy—and when his needs finally awoke of their own accord—it was very nearly too late.
But how could he explain that to Alyaca?
"When I found Janofer," he said, "I already knew how much I needed her. And the others, too—Skan and Legroeder." He turned his head, biting his lip, and looked at her. Her eyes were dark, her hair tousled, her bare shoulders hunched together. "Does that make sense to you?"
She pulled her hair back, in frustration, from her eyes. "I understand, sure. She filled a need."
She doesn't understand at all—
"It's the same with anyone. But you have to let go when the time comes."
Not a word. How could she possibly know what I'm saying?
She gazed full into his eyes with what seemed too much like raw curiosity to make him comfortable. Then she reached over him, her breasts hanging oddly before him, and she adjusted the sparkle-pattern in the darkened room to a more erotic setting. When she slid back down, he started slightly. He felt naked, vulnerable—and aroused. And then he felt embarrassed.
In a sudden confusion of impulses, he buried his hands in her hair and pulled her close, pressing himself against her hip and the top of her thigh. Her eyes flickered and she responded with her own movements, rocking him and entwining her legs around him.
The erotic ringlets of the sparkle-pattern flashed about the room, distractingly.
When they stopped moving, a little later, Alyaca drifted off to sleep, but he did not. She slumped close to him, and when she rolled over he encircled her loosely with one arm, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep. Though they had completed their lovemaking, he felt that he had been a failure, or that it had been wrong.
Alyaca, still rising and falling slightly on the fluid bed, sleepily moved her arm up to cover his.
* * *
Over the next few days, he began to think how ironic it was. The more he felt the distance between them, the more he was enchanted by her body, her beauty, and her company, and the more determined he was to continue the affair regardless of painful consequences.
But the future was growing slimmer. He wondered what Alyaca thought she was getting out of the relationship, and if her continuing interest wasn't just some distorted impulse to "know a rigger"—any rigger. She was having to spend most of her days in the office, and one night she was recalled to Jarvis and did not return until the following afternoon. But she got a Kloss aircar the evening she returned and took Carlyle out to a spot known as Gloander Bluff, a hill of exposed bedrock which was considered one of the best scenic viewing spots in the area. They missed the sunset but watched the stars come out in the sky over a shadow-deepened land.
"They're out there somewhere, aren't they?" she asked pointedly. The words sent a stab through his heart. That was about all he knew, based on the latest word from Freyling and the Guild; his friends were out there somewhere. It would be a long trail for him to follow, if it came to that.
But why had she asked that question, here and now? Was she deliberately trying to hurt him? Was his pain of an alien sort to her?
She looked at him intent
ly, her brows furrowed. She shivered and moved closer to him, touching him. "Are you going to go looking for them?" she asked in a low, not quite accusing voice.
Can she care that much about me? Does she love me, or does she just not want to lose the rigger she's finally found? He cleared his throat and shrugged slightly. "I might have to, yes." He was acutely aware of her body close to his, and he began to ache and tremble, wanting her. What was he doing to himself? He looked up, and the stars pulled at his soul. He looked at her, and she pulled at him, too.
Star Rigger's Way Page 12
