Mainspring

by Jay Lake

  “It’s a sin,” he gasped in English, thinking back on sermons and alleyway gossip and what Pryce Bodean might have said.

  She took his hand and placed it on her chest. Through the silky hair she had a tiny breast, with a perfect little nipple like a miniature cherry. The mound neatly filled the palm of his hand. A warm, wet feeling shot like a bolt through Hethor’s personal parts at that touch.

  He had found his own heaven, right here.

  Then she pushed him down onto the bunk and climbed forward, lowering the little pink nub of her nipple to his mouth. Hands around her back, he gave suck. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. His mouth had come home.

  THEY WERE locked together in sweet embrace in the little cabin for hours. She soon fumbled him out of his trousers, marveling at the size of his penis. He was torn between embarrassment and fascination.

  He had already made his drawers sticky, but she licked him clean. Then they spent quite some time making sure she could open up sufficiently to take him. Her tight little womanly parts, furry as he had heard human women’s were, responded to her own fingers first. Then she guided his into her. After long and gentle persuasion, she pulled his mouth down there. She called it the “Little Salt River kiss.”

  Later, after he had been inside her face-to-face, she rolled over and showed him where else to kiss, where else to use his fingers, where else to enter her with the aid of her natural juices spread liberally. In between times, they touched everywhere with lips and fingers, traced designs with each other’s toes, sampled every flavor and scent and combination that they might share. Then over to the front once more, until he was so exhausted he could not move, except for his lips, which she continued to employ to her own benefit and his.

  This was what everyone was hiding, Hethor thought. This was what had the New Haven fishwives smiling in the morning and the preachers in red-faced anger on Sunday. God’s greatest gift to man, and it was locked away in scorn and shame from young folk like him who could use it best.

  As if he’d never before encountered the perverse nature of the world, Hethor marveled once more at how unfair it all was.

  Then he kissed Arellya all over again, from the soft spot behind her ears to her tiny little toes, paying special attention to the secret, lately forbidden places along the way.

  HETHOR AWOKE in the little cabin alone. His groin ached, in a pleasant fashion. His inner sense of time told him it was morning, though in the windowless cabin it could have been any time of day at all.

  Arellya was … He concentrated, listening to the clattering music of the universe that always lurked just at the bottom of his hearing. There was a particular combination of notes and rhythms that comprised Arellya, a combination with which he had become much more familiar in the course of the preceding night.

  Even in the dark of the cabin, Hethor felt himself blush. With the blush came shame, like Adam after the fall. Could he look her in the eye? Would he have to fight the correct people for her honor? Or his?

  “This was a terrible mistake,” he groaned aloud, seized by conscience. He had taken advantage of her, cowed Arellya with his superior size and force.

  But his body argued otherwise. As did his memories of the previous evening.

  Hethor stood up from the bunk. Not able to remember where or how the lantern was lit in this cabin, he found his clothing in the darkness before stumbling out the passageway. There was a little galley aft, with fruits and breads and water in blown-glass bottles, though he was sure the food would not hold out for so many of them.

  There were a number of problems to solve—correcting the course of the airship, finding fuel for her mysterious engines, finding food and water for the correct people. His actions of last night. He would have to be manful with Arellya, and take responsibility for his deeds and misdeeds.

  Up on deck everything seemed less serious. It was another glorious day, warm and breezy even under the shadow of the gasbag. The coast was farther to the east this morning but still visible, brown rather than green. A sere line of hills ran behind a coastal plain characterized by dunes and struggling grass. The great waves of the day before had been smaller here, smashing the beaches with wrack, but not running far inland. Farther out to sea, winged savages again circled with apparent aimlessness, yet somehow never out of view.

  Arellya was up in the bow, staring out across the ocean.

  He went to her and stood nearby watching her stretch out on the deck with her face pressed against the rail. Hethor admired the shallow, perfect curve of her buttocks. What she had shown him last night was beyond even sin, he decided. It was a different world here in the Southern Earth.

  “Luck of the day to you, Messenger,” she said without turning around.

  He smiled. “And good morning.”

  Then she looked over her shoulder at him, smiling as well, her lips just a bit crooked. She patted her rear quarters. “Come for more already?”

  He blushed deep red. “Here?” asked Hethor, spluttering like Master Bodean might have done in spite of his resolve to accept the miracle that was Arellya. “Now?”

  “The correct people celebrate each other when and where they will,” she said, almost primly. “The young males would cheer you on, and be impressed to see your—”

  “No!” Hethor shouted. He had seen them doing that at the festival-rite, back in her home village. And sometimes since, young males pairing on the journey—Hethor had no idea what to make of that. In any case, he had no desire to be a part of such display. He collected his thoughts. “Among my people, this is a solitary act, not for public viewing or comment.”

  “We are not among your people,” she said, smiling. “And last night was far from solitary. Twice as far, I believe.”

  “Food,” said Hethor, trying to find a way out of the conversation. “We must have food. I worry there is not a sufficiency aboard.”

  “Salwoo and some of the others report considerable feasts laid by.” She paused. “If the journey is long, you may be right. Already you have led the correct people farther from home than ever we have gone since Creation began. We follow, but hungry followers gossip and fight. It may be that Salwoo’s feasts will not be enough.”

  “If we can find … vines …” Hethor struggled for a better word. “Narrow strands of great length, rather, I can lower the boat so that we might fish in the waters.”

  “I will set Salwoo to the problem,” Arellya said. “Are you well this morning? Did I strain you?”

  “I …” He blushed again. Hethor was rapidly becoming resentful of his own body.

  “You are much bigger than any other that I have celebrated with,” she said politely. “I thought things might be more difficult for you.”

  “Other … ?” Now he was embarrassed and angry both. She was not a virgin! He had lain with a fallen woman, and was fallen himself. “I—”

  Then Hethor had to laugh.

  He was thinking like Pryce Bodean, as if he were back in New Haven. He was no sailor and Arellya was no whore, but he was at sea, in a different sort of port.

  A half-guilty, half-relieved thought darted through his mind. She isn’t even human. He knew boys at New Haven Latin who’d had the pleasure of sheep, and even Grotty Matthews who everyone said had mounted his father’s mare. No one thought them sinners—ridiculous, to be sure, but not fallen.

  Enough.

  “Food,” he said firmly. “I will steer for the shallows and take the boat down low. Have Salwoo and other young males find ways to secure the fish.”

  THAT AFTERNOON they cruised perhaps a hundred feet above the water, keeping close to shore. Hethor would take the airship no lower. He was not confident of his ability to land the vessel. He was even less confident of his ability to lift off again. The near-magical controls were wondrous, but his grasp of the principles of operation was tenuous.

  Salwoo and the others had found both lines and nets. They were happily experimenting with different ways to catch fish.

 
; “We use spears in our home,” he explained to Hethor. “But we have seen the Ivory-Eyed Tribes cast nets from their little boats, so we know it can be done.”

  Below, fish flashed silver in the shallows. The pale shapes of sharks moved among them. Hethor realized that there must be almost no fishing fleets on this part of the African coast, for he had never seen such schools from Bassett, which had sailed over waters of Northern Earth well traveled by fishers and traders both.

  Shouting erupted, screams and hoots and laughter all mixed together. Hethor ran to the rail to see what the commotion was about.

  One of the males—Kikiowo, he thought—wrestled with a rope, which jumped in his hand like a thing possessed. Half a dozen more of the correct people grabbed Kikiowo’s arms and legs, or tugged on his rope, while many others lined the rail.

  “Messenger, come look!” they shouted.

  Kikiowo had caught a shark, a large wicked shape that leapt and turned in the water. It was enormous, at least twenty or thirty feet in length.

  “He had a big fish,” said the correct person next to Hethor, “and a big, big, big fish took the big fish.”

  “Cut the line,” Hethor shouted, “before he drags you under.”

  The correct people laughed. More of them grabbed on to Kikiowo in a great crowd. The struggle was so violent that the deck actually rocked, straining against the stabilizing influence of the huge gasbag.

  “Let it loose,” Hethor shouted again.

  “It is my Grandfather Fish,” Kikiowo called back above the yelling of the crowd. “His soul is mine; my soul is his.”

  “He will kill you!”

  The rail dipped just then, Kikiowo going over with his rope, pulling a chain of correct people with him. Hethor dove for the screaming mass of hairy legs and arms and began hauling backward.

  The young males swarmed aboard again, climbing on one another as they had to ascend Malgus’ column back in the great stone city of sorcerers. Even Kikiowo made it back aboard.

  “My soul has fled for deep water,” he said in a serious voice, his pale eyes narrowed in thought.

  “Ho! There are still two of us left behind in the Great Salt River,” someone shouted.

  So for a little while they fished for correct people while Hethor steered the airship around, beating across the wind to stay near the lost. Hethor had to talk hard to keep others from jumping to their aid. He explained that the shark was a grandfather crocodile that lived in the deeps of the Great Salt River. The correct people humored him as they brought up rescuees and fish alike, until there was a sufficiency of wriggling silver marine life for a true feast that night.

  THE DAYS PASSED and so did Africa. The coast, always to their left, trended east of south. Hethor kept the airship on the same course. He felt more comfortable following the line of the continent than striking off across the open ocean. Were the airship to run out of fuel or be forced down by weather, the advantages of a terrestrial landing over a marine landing were both obvious and considerable.

  At the same time the ocean continued to provide food in deck-slapping abundance. Several days after Kikiowo’s attempt to land the enormous shark a group of correct people and Hethor managed to bring up a small one. It thrashed about the deck, biting and snapping for quite a while, but the steaks were delicious.

  The land below became progressively drier and more desolate as they passed southward, the scents on the breeze changing. The jungle foetor slipped away, followed for a while by the crisp smell of dry grass, which in turn melted into a salty dirt smell. Hethor sighted no cities and very few villages. A fire glinting in the night was rare. After the sixth or seventh day, they saw no more signs of settlement at all. Malgus had been right about the Southern Earth being a paradise of sorts, at least if one defined “paradise” as nature in the absence of the hand of man.

  The only thing that disturbed this quiet paradise was the fact that midnight came a little later each night. The Mainspring continued in its progressive failure, even as Hethor journeyed ever southward.

  But Arellya met him in the evenings in the little cabin, driving all cares from Hethor’s thoughts. They explored the hours together with hands and hearts and tongues. This was Hethor’s definition of paradise, a loving and joyful partner in the sharing of bodies. It bothered him that the correct people speech had no word for love. He wanted to explain to Arellya about the swelling rush of warmth in his soul, the half-weary longing he felt through the day, the pride with which her every word and action filled him.

  “I love you,” he whispered one night, using the same word that would have meant he favored papayas over guavas.

  “Mmm … ,” she’d said to his roaming hands. “Your taste is good, too.”

  “No, no. My heart aches for you.”

  “You should drink a bitterbark tea. One of the young males may have brought some onto the boat.”

  “Not that kind of ache!”

  “What ache, then?” She giggled. “You are trying to tell me something of your kind, are you not?”

  “Yes …”

  “I am of the correct people. You can tell me anything of my kind. Your kind, they are beyond the Wall. Leave them be there, that you might someday return to them with your words of their tongue intact and unflavored.”

  He didn’t expect to return. If by the grace of God and the help of the archangel Gabriel he survived this trip to the Mainspring, Hethor wanted to stay with Arellya. Giving up on his language and hers, he proceeded for a while to demonstrate the thrust of his devotion in a firm manner.

  Back on deck, away from the pleasures of the evening, among daylight’s concerns, it was Salwoo who turned the journey’s last great worry to a species of almost-joy. Hethor was down in the galley inspecting the water barrels and wondering if he dared land the airship at the next river they came to along the increasingly sere coast.

  “I have found the tits of the boat,” Salwoo announced to Hethor. He was grinning even more than usual.

  Hethor held in his surprise. “I’m sorry; that didn’t sound quite right.”

  Salwoo grabbed his own chest, mimed squeezing with his hands while favoring Hethor with a salacious wink. Hethor’s blush came back, making his skin prickly and hot. His embarrassment raised his temper along with it.

  “I don’t think—,” he began, but Salwoo held out a palm. “Come with me, Messenger.”

  Hethor followed Salwoo aftward down the passageway, seeing by the light of one of the airship’s little lanterns that the correct person carried. They came to a stowage locker he had inspected in one of his early tours of the ship. Salwoo had dragged the collection of tools and small lumber out to reveal a hatch in the floor that Hethor had missed.

  “The boat of air,” Salwoo said, “her belly has more shape than these huts within show us. So I looked, as I have become your finder.”

  Hethor looked down. It was cramped below, where the bilges and ballast would be on a surface vessel. Bassett had stored fuel there for the steam engines. There were bladders and pipes down beneath the deck, much as Bassett had held.

  “Look,” said Salwoo. He gently nudged Hethor aside, then dropped below. The space almost accommodated the correct person. There were a series of stopcocks of odd design on the port side, now visible in Salwoo’s lantern. He set the light down, opened a stopcock, and let a fluid splash into his hands.

  For one startling moment, Hethor thought Salwoo was letting oil flow free next to open flame. He yelped, then caught himself.

  Salwoo was drinking the fluid.

  Hethor cupped his hand, leaned into the darkness, and captured a little.

  It smelled like nothing. The stuff was oddly flat, in fact. When he put it to his lips, it was water. Clean, in a sort of stale, aggressive manner, as if it had been scrubbed by the most determined of housewives.

  “Water,” said Salwoo. “From these tits. No flavor. It must be Messenger water. Correct people would not favor this.”

  Looking at the piping and bl
adders in the bottom of the hull, Hethor realized that the eerily clean water was connected to the mysterious engines. It had to be. They either ran on water or exhausted water as waste. Neither seemed likely to him, but he had no better theory.

  “My worries are fewer,” Hethor said. “And you are my hero, Salwoo.”

  That night on deck they feasted. For the first time a stew had been made, a fish stock being boiled down in the galley from the now freely available supply of water. Hethor wondered if he was imperiling the airship’s range or fuel supplies, but evidence so far was that it had been designed and built for far lengthier journeys away from a friendly port than Bassett or any of her similars in the Northern Earth.

  Correct people danced and sang on the deck. In the skies around them, a few of the winged savages circled closer, attracted by either the cooking or the noisy revels. Hethor watched the moonlight on the water. He even managed to trace the fine golden line of the Earth’s orbital track where it reflected in the night’s desultory chop, though the moon’s more delicate trace was lost. Arellya stood in the circle of his arms, her narrow fingers reaching up to stroke his hair.

  “I think we shall make it to the southernmost part of the world,” Hethor told her. “Since Salwoo found the water, the air boat seems secure.”

  “Messenger,” Arellya said formally, “we are all passed out of life already. Your world is our world now. I look forward to this south.”

  “Thank you. But there is a custom among my people I would like to bring to us here.”

  She rubbed tight against him. “Some of your customs have been adaptable.”

  Not customs, Hethor thought, but rather improvisation. Still, he took her point and the compliment that came with it. “Our boat of the air requires a name.”

  “Really? We do not name our canoes.”

  “We do,” he said shortly. Then: “May I name it after you?”

  She laughed. “No, you may not. My name is my own, not to be bestowed on some great bird of artifice.”