Ash Ock

by Christopher Hinz

  Philippe remembered. “Yes, I understand.” He was to carry the suitcase over to the Au Fait Recycling Towers. In great detail, he and Mr. Cochise had discussed numerous potential hiding places for the suitcase, before agreeing that this one was the best.

  “And remember, Mr. Boisset,” said the voice. “You are doing a really good thing.”

  Philippe almost sobbed with joy. He felt . . . wonderful. Resealing the suitcase, and making sure that the bug-checker was locked securely inside the unit, he placed the suitcase inside a plastic waste bag and hurried out the door.

  It was four blocks to the Au Fait Recycling Towers, and Philippe walked briskly. The night air felt good; nocturnal breezes, generated by the recycling towers themselves, tickled his cheeks, although he did find himself pausing occasionally to cough. The back of his throat was beginning to feel swollen. Perhaps he was catching a cold, or one of the rare mutating flu viruses that still managed to outwit the latest vaccines created by modern medical technology.

  “Rock’n’roll with the best of ’em, Mr. Boisset,” one of the young evening maintenance workers called to Philippe as he stepped onto the main ramp leading into Tower One. Philippe smiled and gave the lad a hearty wave, not understanding the semantics of the friendly greeting, but happy that the boy was happy. The youth was slowly circling the perimeter of Tower Two on the saddle of a noiseless trimmer, using his combination of microlasers and sweep brushes to keep the decorative hedges at a respectable height. Philippe could not resist:

  “That’s a really good thing you’re doing, Noël.”

  The boy smiled. Philippe smiled too.

  At this late hour, Tower One was nearly empty—most people did their recycling during the day or in the early evening. Philippe entered an open elevator and was whisked straight to the top. He felt very pleased to be doing his citizen’s duty and accomplishing the really good thing at the same time. Two for one, he thought. How fortunate I am!

  The elevator deposited him onto the main gridfloor, a wide balcony encircling the hundreds of disposal bins. Each disposal bin, by means of spiraling ramps, fed the trash bags through a series of sorters and analyzers until finally—if accepted—they were deposited into the massive primary core of the tower for thermal breakdown and recycling. Along the outer ring of the balcony, evenly spaced doors led to the outside veranda, a unique sightseer attraction recently added to the facility by one of Toulouse’s recreational bureaus. Tourism was very important to the colony’s economic base, and even a simple recycling tower was expected to contribute to the attractiveness of the community.

  According to a holotronic sign, projected down from the high vaulted ceiling, Philippe was now two hundred and fourteen feet above street level. A host of standard imagers also littered the walls, some explaining the operation of the recycling towers, others serving as teaching aids for youngsters who were perhaps just learning their legal responsibility for proper waste disposal. Philippe smiled. The signs were very thoughtful.

  The balcony was deserted. That was good, Philippe recalled. Mr. Cochise did not want anyone to see where the suitcase was hidden. Clutching the waste bag tightly, Philippe proceeded directly to one of the special bins reserved for dangerous materials. A sign flashed to life as the thick metal door slid open.

  WARNING: THIS INPUT CHUTE RESERVED FOR MATERIALS CLASSIFIED AS CATEGORY-THREE BIOHAZARDS UNDER THE E-TECH SANITATION LAWS. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE USE OF THIS CHUTE, OR ARE IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE, PLEASE CALL TW76-909K.

  Philippe threw the bag containing the suitcase into the bin. The door closed automatically. He smiled. According to Mr. Cochise, category-three biohazards all went through a six-week automatic detoxification sequence before being routed into the central core for incineration. That meant that the suitcase would remain hidden for six weeks. After that, Mr. Cochise had said, its fate would be irrelevant.

  Philippe acknowledged a thrill of triumph. His special deed had been accomplished. I have done the really good thing.

  Suddenly he felt tense, uncertain. And then he remembered: I have to take the fastest route back down to street level! Mr. Cochise had explained that this facet of his duty was extremely important. And the voice on the phone had reiterated the necessity.

  Philippe raced back toward the elevators. But even though he was running fast, it seemed to be taking forever to get there. And then a horrible sensation ripped through him; his mouth went dry and he tasted the onslaught of a wave of unmitigated fear.

  I’m not going to make it in time! he thought desperately. The elevators are too slow!

  There was only one thing for him to do. He changed direction slightly and headed for one of the doors leading to the outside veranda.

  Quickly! he urged himself. There was no time to waste. He had to get back down to street level.

  Through the door, out onto the open balcony, the cool night air sweeping across his skin, the dazzling sweep of the cylinder fully visible from this great height, and he thought:

  I’m going to make it! I’m going to make it to the street in time!

  He leaped onto an observation bench, compressed his legs, and with all his might, dove high into the air, easily clearing the six-foot transparent barrier. His body continued to ascend for a moment before gravity overcame the initial thrust of his upward dive. Then he began to fall: down the side of Tower One, accelerating rapidly, the ground racing up to meet him with incredible swiftness. And in that final instant before he plowed into a ringlet of hedges, Philippe experienced a dark shadow of doubt.

  Perhaps this wasn’t such a good thing after all.

  O}o{O

  The steps leading to the three-story chalet—frozen blocks of ice lined with abrasive edge grips—snaked their way up the snow-drenched hillside, winding thrice beneath the shadow of the lower suspended porch before yielding to linearity, terminating in a gently sloping ramp hugging the right side of the forty-foot-square structure.

  I’m getting old, thought Ghandi, breathing deeply as he counted the steps, one hundred and fourteen, one hundred and fifteen, on the final helix now, well above the level of the rough gray road and the garage where they had housed their treaded snowrover, and almost directly beneath and parallel to the railing of the overhanging second-floor balcony. He glanced upward, wary of falling icicles. But weather programmers had created no recent ice storms and polished teak floorboards shone cleanly against reflected snow-light.

  “Hurry, my love,” teased Colette, pausing twenty steps in front of him, twisting her neck around, blessing Ghandi with a bright smile, her slow, steady exhalations of frozen gray breath wafting upward to blend with Pocono Colony’s permanently overcast skies. He glared unpleasantly, but that only made her grin.

  “More aerobics, Corelli-Paul,” she scolded warmly. “You need an enhanced exercise program, something with a little more bite to it. You should spend a few weeks in a muscle cone.” Colette wiggled her bottom playfully then continued her effortless dash up the ice block stairway.

  Ghandi grimaced, wondering if his wife was serious about his visiting an exercise cone. The miniature self-supportive facilities hung outside the Colonies, connected by long cables. They offered physician-supervised power-G workouts—anywhere from one-point-two to three times normal gravity—and turned weaklings into hearty, overmuscled supermen.

  “Hurry, my pup,” she urged again, laughing merrily as she vanished around the corner of the chalet, and he knew from the sound of her voice that she had been joking about the exercise cone. But it bothered him that he had not immediately been able to deduce that she was being playful.

  I am getting old. And you, my love, you are becoming harder and harder to understand. Ghandi’s two omnipresent demons, both growing more powerful with each passing day.

  Twenty-five years ago, he had still been too young for the reality of Colette’s extended lifespan to bother him. He could not have imagined what it would be like to grow old, to feel muscles languish ever so slightly, the vitalit
y of youth beginning to blister from the incandescence of too many years, while Colette remained as strong and lively as the day they had met. And twenty-five years ago, comprehending the often-mysterious schemes and intrigues of Colette/Sappho had not seemed so imperative. Life had been far simpler then; he had been willing to acknowledge that this tway of the Royal Caste possessed an intellect far exceeding his own and that she would remain youthful long after he had degenerated into a bedridden old man. Back then, with their differences less extreme, he had willingly acquiesced to the twist of fate which had melded him to an Ash Ock.

  But today he was paying for those sins of youthful insouciance. Today he sometimes felt like a tag-along stepchild, tolerated but essentially unnecessary.

  A sound, behind and above him—a high-pitched echoing whine, increasing rapidly. He knew what it was, but he turned around anyway, pleased to focus on the sanctitude of the moment, pleased to find a reason to chase demon thoughts from awareness.

  Speed Slope Fourteen—one of Pocono’s fastest—was a nine-mile-long, twenty-foot-wide floating ice trough effortlessly suspended in midair by thin cables trailing upward and vanishing into the gray fog of center-sky. There, the speed slope began as an enclosed tube spiraling gradually outward from the colony’s central core, assuming greater mass as it receded from the gravitational convergence. And here, close to the end of the run, where the slope was a mere twenty-five feet above ground level, the greatest velocities were achieved.

  This leisure colony offered most variations of skiing: downhill, cross-country, low-gravity aerobatics up near the weightless core. But the speed slopes—and the men and women who risked the two-hundred-plus-mile-per-hour runs—remained Pocono’s primary tourist attraction.

  Ghandi waited expectantly, hearing the whine of the skier’s rocket engines growing louder and louder, and he could tell from the rapidly increasing pitch that this was no ninety-mile-per-hour rookie, gingerly learning the delicate relationship between jetpak thrust and where to position him- or herself on the steep banks of the trough, but a seasoned pro at competition speed, perhaps even pushing for a record-breaking run. And suddenly the whine rose to a vile shriek—the nerve-bending hiss of a fighting tomcat—and the skier appeared, high on the opposite bank of the floating trough, a low crouch easily maintained by mutually repelling energy webs mounted on the back of the skier’s thighs and ankles, swept-back Giger helmet spring-buckled to the heel of the boots, a streamlined sexless form traveling at close to one-third the speed of sound.

  From Ghandi’s position at the base of the chalet, he was able to observe only three hundred or so feet of the actual inner raceway, and the daredevil flashed into view for but a brief instant And then the skier was gone, the high-pitched whine falling rapidly in pitch as the Doppler shift reversed. A few faint puffs of jetpak exhaust hovered above the slope for a few seconds before the colony’s gentle winds dispersed them into the misty gray skies.

  Prior to the run, the skier would have spent hours triple-checking gear, aligning energy webs, coating the underside of the uniski with low-tension polyfreeze, scouring the jetpak tubes; a plethora of preparation distilled into one hundred and fifty-plus seconds of high-speed excitement. A few of the wealthier team-supported pros even utilized seekers—ski-mounted robots that they sent down the course ahead of them—the seekers’ sophisticated laser measurement systems analyzing track conditions, compiling up-to-the-minute schematics that located the ever-present ice cracks, any of which could lead to a potentially fatal spill. A mountain of effort in order to spend a few brief moments of life on the edge.

  Ghandi clearly understood such dedication of purpose. In fact, he admired it.

  Turning, he continued his trek up the ice steps. Reaching the corner of the chalet, he forced himself to jog along the final few feet of gently sloping ramp, which led to the rear second-floor entrance.

  Colette was inside already, plopped on a sofa in the day room, long legs outstretched, lean thigh muscles clearly visible beneath skin-hugging gray trousers, black boots resting on a hassock. She leaned back, slipped her hands behind her head, and blessed Ghandi with an amused chuckle.

  He knelt in front of the hassock, unclipped her boots, slipped the thermals over her ankles. Toes wiggled beneath red cotton stockings, demanding attention, and he massaged her feet, rubbing his knuckles deep into her arches, knowing how much she liked that.

  “My love,” she whispered, sliding forward onto the hassock, wrapping her legs around his back, her small hands caressing his cheeks. He drew a deep breath, feeling the beginnings of an erection, her electric touch as exciting as the day they had met. Pleasures he could lose himself in. Pleasures that served to counter the twin demons of growing old and growing stupid.

  “I need you,” he mumbled. The words seemed to bubble up from deep inside him, carried within a turbulence of deeper darker emotions. I need you. A desperate urge, a shoot struggling to split the peel of hard dry earth, touch air.

  He felt himself gasp, as if the very utterance of such a feeling was too intense for his body to properly assimilate, and then Colette’s palms closed on his face, drawing him down, burying his face against the thin fabric of her blouse, between her breasts.

  “I need you forever,” he heard himself moan, like a little boy, desperate for acknowledgment.

  “My love,” she soothed. “It’s been harder for you of late, has it not?”

  He rubbed his cheeks across her bosom.

  She sighed. “So much harder, my love. I know that. I know this past year, especially, has been difficult for you. Plans are finally coming to fruition, decades of effort are yielding rewards. And I know what this has meant to us. We have spent little time together of late, and our intimacy has suffered.

  “But consider the future, Corelli-Paul. Consider that soon the long-delayed plans of the Ash Ock will be complete. The Colonies will be ours. The Earth will be ours. And you and I will be together always.”

  Always. He buried his face deeper against the warmth of her flesh, wanting to shroud himself there. Forever.

  “And I know, Corelli-Paul, that these days you are troubled by the spectre of growing old, and that the dichotomy of our aging patterns becomes more of a strain as the years pass.”

  Yes. She understood. For the first time since childhood, Ghandi felt on the verge of tears.

  She sensed his emotion, and her voice dropped to a hush. “When I am a tway of Sappho,” she whispered, “when this body is functioning as one half of an entity, there are times when the effort of maintaining two separate bodies in conjunction requires . . . deliverance. The interlace must be depressurized, purged of its poisons; an emotional cleansing must take place. I must be allowed to fall into the madness that humans call flexing.

  “As an Ash Ock, I can experience the process internally, without the need to manifest outward madness. Yet the rigor of flexing remains the same.”

  She caressed the back of his neck. A stray finger tickled the lobe of his left ear.

  “You’ve always known of my flexing urges. And I believe that you’ve always known, though perhaps unconsciously, that it is you, Corelli-Paul, who has provided me with an outlet for those urges.” She lifted his face to hers. “It is you, my love, who has endured the cleansings of my dual spirit. It is you who has given me the strength to continue.”

  And then her fingers were probing beneath his shirt, palms rubbing his chest, rubbing so hard that he felt his skin would peel away. He reached up, framed her face in his hands, lunged forward, his lips enclosing her mouth, sucking hard. Her strong hands shaped his buttocks, squeezed; their bodies slammed together. Her fingers seemed to be everywhere at once, detaching his trousers, peeling away his shirt, pinching, caressing, and then they were on the floor, rolling across the carpet, manic wrestlers in a timeless round. And still her fingers explored, under his arms, between his buttocks, deep into his mouth, like tiny insects seeking nourishment.

  A chill swept through him. A nameless dread
hovered just below consciousness.

  “My love,” she hissed, raking nails across his bare back, blurring his fear into a maelstrom of overwhelming desire. Fingers continued their relentless probing, finding all crevices, worming their way beneath the minutest folds of his flesh. And Ghandi knew that it must be his imagination, but he felt as if he was being devoured by more than one set of hands.

  * * *

  When he awoke, she lay sprawled across the sofa on her back, one bare leg propped lazily over the leather armrest, the other hanging to the floor, silken-haired vagina exposed. Ghandi staggered to his feet, turned toward the bathroom, stopped when he heard a dull repetitive pounding emanating from downstairs.

  He squirmed into his pants, opened the door at the back of the day room, slithered cautiously onto the small inner balcony overlooking the windowless first-floor rec chamber.

  It was Calvin, all three of him—the Ash Nar en masse—the maniac collected and confined to several hundred square feet of gym space, sweat-covered tways in matching red shorts, standing in a tight circle, hurtling six palm-sized hardballs back and forth with impossible speed. None of the tways looked up, but Ghandi knew that he had been seen the instant he stepped onto the balcony. Three sets of eyes missed very little.

  Fortunately, Ghandi’s usual reaction to Calvin’s presence—animosity on sight—was tempered by spent lust. Microbes abstained from their little dance; he remained remarkably at peace. No uncontrollable twitches of anger, no physical manifestations of rage. Protracted pacification: Even after twenty-five years, making love to Colette remained a multifaceted joy.