The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  He was caught in the story she had told about Spider Geroan. What did such a man think or feel, or remember? Did he humiliate and degrade his victims so he could come to despise them, making murder seem a deserved end rather than a despicable corruption? Did he feel anything about them? Did he remember at all? Was his pleasure physical? Was it transitory? Was there some quiet orgasm of the mind that substituted for pleasure of the senses? Since he could not feel pain, could he feel anything? How did one communicate with someone who could not feel at all?

  It would be, he thought, like being killed slowly by a machine. Pleading would mean nothing. The device would be programmed to inflict pain, and it would not care what the victim said or did.

  Tasmin clenched his teeth tight to keep from shaking. He had always feared pain. The prospect of pain filled him with horror. He imagined blood, wounds, deep intrusions into organs and bone. Bile filled his throat and he gulped, then blanked it out. His way of dealing with the horror was not to think of it. He had seen students, mad with fear of the Presences, run directly toward them, and he wondered what it would take to break his own mind and make him behave in such a way. He had learned to blank out such thoughts, and he did so now, erasing them, thinking only of darkness and quiet.

  Donatella was remembering the body of her friend and was wondering whether she had the courage to take her own life before she fell into Geroan’s hands. Her knife was under the mattress, where she could reach it. She was not sure reaching it would be enough. She clung to Tasmin, thinking of begging him to help her, not let her be taken by that man. The terror built into a spasm of shaking, and then ebbed away, leaving her limp.

  Her face was buried in his shoulder, against his naked skin where his shirt had come unfastened under his Tripsinger’s cloak. Her cheek was on his chest, her breath moving softly into the cleft of his arm, where the hairs quivered, as in a tiny wind.

  The tickling breath came into the blankness Tasmin had evoked, came as a recollection, a summer hillside, grass beneath him, Jubal trees along the ridge, himself lying with his arms around Celcy and the warm, moist breeze of summer cooling the pits of his shoulders. Celcy’s head was on his chest, her lips on his skin. Now, as then, he felt the hairs moving in a dance of their own and responded to the diminutive titillation as he had then, by turning a little, moving her body more solidly onto his own, moving his arm more closely around her. One of her legs fell between his, a sudden, unexpectedly erotic pressure, and he raised his own leg in surprise, bringing it into intimate contact with her.

  She gasped, becoming very still, and he felt the quick heat between them. They breathed together, her lips opening on his skin, her hand moving between them to pull her shirt away. Then the skin of her breasts was naked against his own, her nipples brushing his chest as she thrust herself up from him to tug at the belt around her waist.

  He felt a ripple across his belly as the silken belt that had held her full trousers tight around her slender form pulled free. He saw the sash through half closed eyes, a ribbon of scarlet. Then there was nothing between his leg and the furry mound of her groin except the fabric of his trousers.

  Blood beat in his ears. He shut his eyes, not wanting to think or see, wishing he could shut his ears as well and let the surging feeling wash over him in silent darkness, with only the sunlit meadow filling all the space around him. She made no sound, merely raised away from him a little so he could free himself from his clothing, only as much as necessary, soundlessly. There was no time for anything more than that, no time for anything between them except this urgency, no time for avowals or questions or even words. They existed separately, in a place remote from time or occurrence.

  Their bodies slid together in a continuous, gulping thrust, then lay joined, scarcely stirring, needing scarcely to shift, the tiniest motion amplified between them as though by some drug or device into a cataclysm of feeling. She pushed only a little, the smallest thrust of her body toward him and away, and they were gasping, uncontrolled, grasped inexorably by a continuous quiver that swept them up and over a towering wave of sensation to leave them floundering in the trough, blood hammering in their ears.

  ‘Aaah,’ she moaned in an almost soundless whisper. ‘Aaaah.’

  ‘Shhh.’ He whispered in return. ‘Celcy …’ The fear was gone. His body was disassembled. There was a violent pain behind his ears from the spasms that had seized his neck and jaw in a giant’s vise, but even this seemed remote and unimportant.

  Then there was the sound of a voice, the rattle of gravel, and the vision of meadowlands shattered as his eyes snapped open. Coming toward them was the crunch of hooves, a voice cursing monotonously.

  Their bodies lay flaccid, boneless, like two beings mashed into one creature, that creature scarcely aware. Through a chink in the piled stones, Tasmin could see through slitted eyes a dim segment of the path extending back the way they had come. A line of mules. Two Explorers, one of them on foot examining the trail with a lantern, then the man Donatella had said was Spider Geroan with a another rider behind him, dark and silent as a shadow. Then the string of riderless mules. They went past in a shuffle of feet, a roll and rattle of gravel. After a long gap a bald man and a tired, smudge-faced woman approached.

  The final hooves came closer, passing the ledge with a scratch and click of stone against stone, then went on to the south. The voice they had heard before cursed again, at repetitive length. The woman answered, briefly and whiningly, the two finally complaining their way into silence behind the rocky rampart.

  The pain in Tasmin’s head departed, leaving a vacancy behind. Her body clenched on him like a squeezing hand, and he moved once more, this time slowly, languorously, lifting her with his body, holding her there with his hand while he dropped away, then pulling her down once more, over and over again, impaling her, holding her tight to him as he rolled over upon her and thrust himself into her. The wave came again, slowly, building and cresting, carrying them with it into the dark depths of a strange ocean.

  The first time it had been Celcy. This time it was no one at all. He sought a name and could not find one as nonsense words flicked by, babbling rhymes, childlike sounds. Perhaps the name he wanted was an exotic word in some foreign tongue, a question without an answer.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ she sighed.

  He did not know who it was. Who either of them were.

  They slept as their fleeting hunger had dropped them, disarrayed, close coupled, slowly moving apart as the night wore on until dawn found them still side by side, but separate. When Tasmin awoke, it was to a strange dichotomy, a bodily peace surpassing anything he had known for months coupled with an anxiety for which he could not, for the moment, find an object.

  When he saw who lay beside him, both body and mind were answered. She opened her eyes to see his own fixed on her, accusingly.

  ‘We aren’t dead,’ she said in response to this unspoken indictment. ‘I expected to be dead by this morning.’

  His instant reaction had been a twitch of revulsion, a feeling very much akin to guilt. The feeling passed as he said Donatella’s name to himself, leaving only a faint residue of grief behind. ‘You’re disappointed,’ he murmured, feeling hysterical laughter welling within him. ‘Ah, Donatella, you do sound a little put out.’

  She flushed. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that I …’

  He felt a surge of sympathy. ‘You wouldn’t have … I know. Neither would I. We thought we were going to die. Or maybe our bodies thought so. Well – it happened. Forget it.’

  There was a silence. She seemed to be considering this. ‘Yes. I think you’re right. It didn’t matter what I did. I would never need to explain it, not to myself, not to anyone, because there wouldn’t be any tomorrow….’

  He was stung into an irrational objection. ‘It may be petulant of me, but did it really take that to make you want to make love to me?’ He tried to smile to take the sting out of his words, but the wound to his vanity was there. Amazing! He was wounded becaus
e a woman he hardly knew felt she needed to explain away her actions regarding him.

  ‘You know better,’ she said sharply. ‘You, of all people! It didn’t take that to make me want to make love to you. It wasn’t really making love, Tasmin, and it wasn’t really you. I haven’t made love, not for years. Not to anyone. Not since …’

  ‘Not since?’

  ‘Not since Link.’ She sat up, pulling the blanket around her while she fumbled with her disordered clothes, crouching for a moment to shake herself into some semblance of order, tugging at her tunic, searching for her sash. ‘We weren’t casual lovers, Link and I. We were fellow Explorers. Colleagues. Friends. For him, there isn’t any more. For me there isn’t either. Not really.’

  ‘I thought you told me about that man, what’s his name? The services man?’

  ‘Zimmy? Zimmy was just … like getting my hair done. When things got too tight. Too rough. He was talented in that way, Zimmy. With him it wasn’t love, it was skill. Technique. It wasn’t making love.’

  ‘And last night wasn’t either.’

  ‘In a way it was.’

  ‘Only a way?’ His irrationally hurt pride was giving way to curiosity.

  She gave him a long, level look. ‘In a way it was because I forgot you aren’t Link. You’re not Link, Tasmin. You’re a lovely man and I think a dear friend, but you’re not Link.’

  ‘And you’re not Celcy,’ he said, wanting to get through her self-absorption, perhaps to wound her, only a little.

  ‘Celcy’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘You need to forget. Part of you knows that, Tasmin. How long will you go on being married to Celcy? You called me by her name, you know. How long are you going to go on allowing yourself to love only if you pretend it’s Celcy doing it? There are other people, you know. Clarin, for instance. She’s in love with you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, thrusting his way through the stones that had hidden them. ‘She’s a child.’

  ‘Child my left elbow. What is she? Eighteen, nineteen?’ They slid down onto the trail, adjusting shoes and straps. ‘What are you? My age, about? Thirtyish?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘She’s no child,’ Donatella muttered.

  He rejected all this. He had no intention of forgetting Celcy! ‘Don’t you need to forget Link and go on living, too?’

  ‘No!’ The cry came out uncontrollably, her hands went up in a pushing gesture, demanding that he take the words back. ‘He’s alive. If I could get him to Serendipity, if I could afford the fees, he could have regeneration. Everything that made Link himself is still there. It’s only his body that won’t let him out. It isn’t the same as if he were dead!’

  He felt a wave of empathy. ‘Money? That’s it, isn’t it. That’s what love comes down to sometimes. A fortune to space him to Serendipity, and you’ll never have it. A fortune to get my blind mother to Splash One and pay for the treatment, and I don’t have that. So, your Link stays in a support chair and my mother can’t see.’

  He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. ‘Have you stopped to think that if we’re successful at proving the Presences sentient, we’ll probably be shipped to Serendipity – for transshipment elsewhere, if nothing else. All of us. Every human person on Jubal. Which will include your friend Link, won’t it? And my mother.’

  She looked dazed. ‘It … it never occurred to me.’

  ‘We’d still have the treatment to pay for, but at least we’ll be where it can be obtained.’ He laughed, a little harshly but with some satisfaction as he saw her look of concern for him turn to one of confusion and dismay, and then to irritation.

  ‘Oh, God, Tasmin, what are we talking about this for?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he murmured to himself, thankful that she was getting off the subject. Clarin! Of all idiotic …

  ‘I can’t handle all this,’ she went on. ‘We may not even be alive tomorrow. We’ve got to get to the Enigma and Deepsoil Five. It’ll take half a day to pick up the mules and get back where we are, and now they’re ahead of us.’ She shrugged her arms through the straps of the pack and started down the rocky shelf.

  ‘Yes, but they don’t know that yet,’ he said, trailing her a half step behind. ‘Which gives us the tiniest bit of an edge, Donatella. I think the time has come for us to break out of this valley and head straight for the Enigma.’

  ‘We have to backtrack for the mules anyhow, and there are some routes east. Rough transit, though. No Passwords for a good part of this country east of us. Let me think about it.’ She rubbed her head. ‘When we get to the mules, I’ll take a look at the charts.’

  He agreed, shrugging the straps into a more comfortable position. The trail sloped downward to the place they had left the mules. And the mules would be rested. If they went to the east…. ‘Pray God Jamieson and Clarin get to Thyle Vowe….’

  ‘You’re placing a lot of hope in a couple of children,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘Clarin’s no child,’ he said absently, only then realizing what he had said.

  At that moment, Clarin and Jamieson were re-entering the north-south valley in a mood of defeat. Clarin was frankly crying, tears of weariness and frustration, and Jamieson’s face showed a similar, although more controlled emotion.

  ‘We’ll never catch up to them,’ she said hopelessly. ‘And now the trackers are between them and us.’

  ‘We know where they’re going,’ Jamieson replied. ‘So, we’ll meet them there. Or we’ll get ourselves to Deepsoil Five and ask the Master General to help us someway. I don’t know, Clarin. I wish you’d stop crying.’

  ‘I’m tired! We haven’t slept since we left Tasmin and Don, and there’s no point in trying to pretend I’m rested and cheerful. I’m scared, too. God, Jamieson, with what we found out, aren’t you? I’ll cry for a while and get it out of my system. A good cry is almost as good as a night’s sleep.’

  ‘It’s very hard for me to control myself when you do that. I find myself wanting to hug you.’

  ‘Up a gyre-bird’s snout,’ she remarked rudely, wiping her face with grubby hands. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘You’re huggable.’

  ‘Not by you, Jamieson.’

  He turned away so she would not see his face. ‘Got your mind set on him, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Up a bantigon’s end flap you don’t. You’re wasting your time, Clarin. He was brou-dizzy over his little wife when she was alive, and he still is.’

  Clarin sighed and wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘All right, Reb. Just between us, yes. I’m tracked on the man. He’s a little stiff, a little humorless. Some days I think he’s got a Tripsinger score where his sex urge ought to be. But when he talks, it’s like he’s reading my mind.’

  ‘You’re what he ought to have had, Clarin. But he didn’t. He had a little girl who never had the least idea what was going on in his head. You never met her, but I did.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Like? She was … she was a lot like Wendra Gentrack. Edible. And sweet. Like some baby animal, soft, and giggly. Kind of fearful. Not interested in much. A good cook. Beautiful looking. She only had one way to act toward men, flirtatious. She didn’t mean anything by it. She fluffed up even for me, and I’m nobody.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she objected softly.

  He shook his head in mock protest, going on. ‘What I mean is, you got this very strong urge to take care of her, even when she didn’t need it. She’d give this little breathless laugh or sigh, like a child, and you’d feel your chest swelling with protective fervor.’ He laughed. ‘Not like you, Clarin. Not independent.’

  ‘No, I haven’t noticed myself arousing any of that protective fervor.’

  ‘She couldn’t relate to women at all – always had her claws out. And that was fear, I figured out. She had any woman between the ages of eight and eighty slotted as a possible competitor. Poor Mast
er Ferrence could only sneak over to see his mother when she wasn’t looking. I’d always figured it was lucky we didn’t have any women Tripsingers at Deepsoil Five, or she’d have made his life miserable.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Clarin said. ‘That sounds hard, but it’s the simple truth, Reb. She’s dead. She’s not going to come back from the bottom of the Enigma. She’s gone. Eventually, he’ll realize that. If there is any eventuality. I keep forgetting there may not be….’

  ‘You’re planning on being around if he does?’

  ‘If any of us are still alive, you bet your sex life I do.’ She managed a rueful smile, then stiffened. Her eyes had caught a tiny motion, far down the valley. ‘Give me the glasses,’ she said, with an imperative gesture. ‘Quick!’

  She stared, searching the clearing where the movement had caught her eye.

  ‘It’s them,’ she said, disbelieving. ‘Tasmin and Don.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘All alone. On foot. Coming back this way. They must have hidden the mules. Or lost the mules. Or the way’s blocked down there as it was for us.’ She urged her tired animal into a trot. ‘Come along, acolyte. We’re not as alone as I thought we were.’

  Jamieson’s report to Tasmin of their effort to find an open route to the west made it clear they had no other choice than to return. ‘We were cut off,’ Jamieson snarled. ‘We tried three routes west, and every one of them had an encampment of troops arrayed across it. Guards, sentries, whatever. With life detectors of some kind, too. They damn near caught us!’

  ‘Every trooper with weapons bristling all over him,’ Clarin said. ‘We’ve thought all along that Justin had the troopers in his pocket. Now we know for sure. Half the garrison is camped between us and the ’Soilcoast. They had Explorers with them. Jamieson spied out one group last night.’

  ‘They were talking about guarding the routes out of the Presences,’ Jamieson said. ‘Except for regular brou caravans, anyone coming from the west is supposed to be stopped. The troopers were arguing with the Explorers whether it would be acceptable to engage in a little robbery and rape in the process. The Explorers were really tense about the whole thing – sitting back-to-back kind of tense. Somebody in that setup is going to get killed!’