This is part of a cycle of shorts, an experimental collection of stories about a person trapped (as are we all, if you subscribe to the philosophy) on the wheel of reincarnation, travelling forever through lives which appear to be without purpose. Sometimes incarnating as male, sometimes as female, in each life s/he will eventually become cognisant of this cosmic disjunction and begin to actively pursue the mystery of who s/he really is and what her/his existence is really for. Set in ancient Japan, in this installment of "The Chronicals of I, the Nameless" the incarnation is female and it seems reality is at last to be answered in the only currency that truly matters. Is this the way out of existence without purpose?
______________________
The cold wind cuts like a knife.
Here I stand, alone with the wolves. Nothing changes, except by my will, and that is the soul of survival. The wolves are circling, I hear their tread, stealthy as they may be though in these conditions none of us is silent. But they are hesitant: their prey waits for them and they are afraid.
Let them be! The wind that blusters over these angry mountains worries at my robes, tugging ceaselessly, as it crackles the banners of the Sosonowo Shrine across the Bridge of Air, and I feel the world circling as if this spot is the centre of the universe. For me it has become so in this desperate moment.
Darkness. Wind over the peaks, the crunch of snow under my boots... My gloved hands are warm in the sleeves of my robe, and I stretch out to track the four bandits. I know the guards of the shrine are watching from across the way, but they will not intervene. They know me and they know why I am here.
For a moment I stretch out with my senses and feel the warm glow of the one I love. She is there, safe within those walls, so near at hand now. These final challenges have been the hard road to her side... Track her down in these wild mountains, follow the bandits who took her from her home, the merchants whose hands she passed through, traced her escape, learned of her encounter with the monks of the peaks and her safe haven here at the roof of the world.
Climb the mountain. Brave the storm. Fight the bandits. And, if victorious, cross the Bridge of Air, that final leap of faith by which, after all my tortured incarnations, I might reach at last that nexus of life and love that has eluded me, I feel in my depths, since my soul made its red entrance to this universe.
No sound save the wind and our footsteps, no light reaches my eyes. In this dark place I fight alone, as I have ever done battle, down the long ages the wheel of life has turned. When they make their move my katana sings from its sheath at my side faster than the eye can follow, and weaves a web of flickering energy -- contacts the blades of my foes in bursts of sparks, chiming thinly in the mountain air, stroke, parry, thrust, feint, all by the superhuman senses a warrior’s training brings forth. I hear a scream and know a man is down, though in a split second I have moved on to another opponent, parry, block, thrust, and the dance goes on.
Breathing is the tidal flow that sustains life. As the sea moves, the rivers flow, and the clouds blow around these peaks, so the smaller rhythms within ourselves mark the moments of our lives, rhythms from the breath that is life for the next few moments, to the cycle of our bodies with the Moon Goddess that brings forth life in its turn. Life and death are a cycle, and it is the eternal prayer of the warrior that when life finds its end on the edge of my sword, that it shall return renewed, refreshed, and with optimism for the span to come.
Four times this shall be, on this snowy shoulder of the peaks. Two screams. Three. I smell blood in the air, then the final rush and mad flurry of blows as swords hammer and clash, and our battle is made a punctuation point in eternity.
And at last I am alone. Did I ever doubt it? With all my heart, yes. My existence has taught me only to hope against hope that all I cherish shall someday be the meaning of an existence without end or reward. So it is with a strange sense of release that I stand in the chill wind among the four bodies, raise my sword to the sky above, and at last free the bindings of black across my face.
White light strikes my eyes like knives, a blinding reflection from the snow under a watery blue among fang-like peaks, and the red of blood is a cruel intrusion upon this place of pristine nature. Far too bright a place in which to do battle, it is preferable to adopt the tactics of night, and fight as do the blind. This is not the dark place that drags down the soul, it is the nexus of light that leads it forward.
I clean my blade on a bandit’s cloak and return it to the lacquered scabbard at my side, and stride on across the snowy slope toward the gorge that cuts this peak, and beyond which the Shrine of the Storm God stands atop a massive pillar of native rock. The gorge was once spanned by the bridge across which the materials of building were taken, but when the temples and buildings were completed, long centuries ago, the bridge was dismantled, leaving the monks of the Storm isolated on their fierce crag, across a gulf of air spanned by a thin ribbon of snowy stone.
The Bridge of Air.
No handrail, no guide rope, serves the pilgrim. This is where faith is matched by action, for the seeker must cross this windy vastness unaided, and no help shall come: live or die, it shall be by one’s own strength and will force. Will the bridge give way? Shall it hold another hundred years? No one knows, and that is the leap of faith we all must make to approach this sacred place.
For me it is no leap: my love has already made this crossing, so be it to death itself I shall follow. I would throw myself from this mountain to be at her side.
Above the gatehouse of the Shrine the hooded monks watch, their robes tugged by the wind that strains the standards of the Storm God, and their faces are impassive. They have watched seekers by the thousand come this way, and those who reach not the gates but the next life are blessed on their journey with a whole heart. But my step is sure in the fighting wind that seeks to tear me from the snowy arch of rock, and as it seems I walk in the endless sky itself my heart could fly as truly as an eagle.
Closer, closer, and as the stone and timber gates of the Shrine grow before me, I feel a strange release beginning. A new perspective, as if I stand outside myself, something unlike any state I have ever known. Are all my existences coming together here and now? The lonely millennia reaching their focal point? More moves now than simple human destiny, my body is tingling with expectancy, and the desperate hope that this time I will complete the journey -- one I feel sure I have attempted many times in misty ages gone by.
And before I know it, I am on the pillar of rock, before the tall, ancient timbers of the gatehouse, and at a call from above those gates swing open, their hinges grinding as if rarely ever used...
A garden, protected from the elements by the stout walls, sculptured trees and bushes surround a pond now frozen for the winter, and a delegation of monks bow their welcome, hands folded in the wide sleeves of their robes. Among them is a slight figure, muffled in heavy robes for warmth but unmistakable as the day we met on that warm riverbank long ago. She steps forward and fine, small hands draw back a hood, baring a a beautiful face to the sun that floods this courtyard.
I draw back my own, feeling the wind bite and tug my bound hair, and I go to her one faltering step at a time. All of space and time turn on this moment, I now know, and when I take her in my arms it is with feelings that are too vast to be measured.
Not since the time of Tomoe Gozen and Yamabuki have women Samurai walked this land with open prowess, and the monks do homage to the skill they have witnessed. For my part I can only experience a warmth I have never known, and it seems I glimpse my past lives, wanderers, seekers, all over the world and all through time and space, all in quest of this one simple thing.
The love that brings meaning to life.
Showing posts with label Sara Lansing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sara Lansing. Show all posts
18.12.09
Extract from "Windstream" by Sara Lansing, CONTINUED
From WINDSTREAM by Sara Lansing, meet Drs Alex Layton and Mai Ling Reed, on ‘shoreleave’ from the city-sized airship Montgolfier I, visiting with vulcanologists studying an eruption in the Solomon Islands. The party have taken shelter at a resort hotel out of the line of volcanic fallout, among thrillseekers and spectators watching the fire-fountains in the night, but it seems an assassin stalks the scientists. Exhausted, the pair retire for an uneasy night...
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
***
Dawn was a silver gleam through the blind when Mai Ling stirred. She was cuddled into Alex’s arms; they had a single sheet over them in the warm tropical air, and had slept the rest of the exhausted since they had showered in the early hours. For a moment Mai Ling wondered what had roused her, then she heard hurrying feet, and somewhere an engine was started. Then another ... the grunt of diesels from the marina, and the sudden whine of jets from the helipad.
She stirred, found Alex’s hand around her middle and squeezed it. “Honey, wake up.”
Before Alex blinked awake they heard a heavy tread on the step of their chalet and an urgent knocking.
‘Leblanc’s’ voice was in their ears at once. “Mademoiselles! Doctor Reed, Doctor Layten, wake up!”
Alex sat up at once, raked her hair from her eyes and saw 6.58 on the digital clock. “François, what is it?”
“The wind has shifted again, the hotel is being evacuated!”
The pair were out of bed in a blink. The lamp went on as they groped for underwear and jumpsuits. “We’re coming,” Mai Ling called. “Two minutes!”
“That’s about how long you have!” he replied. “The planes are coming from your airship, we see their lights. Everyone is to be evacuated, north to Anoano!” He rapped on their door to emphasis his point. “Quickly!”
They closed the velcro of their shoes with quickfire movements, threw every lose item into their packs and found hair-ties and sunglasses as they kicked open the door.
The sight that greeted them was incongruous, for it was snowing ... a fine fall of volcanic ash had begun, a blanket of white that settled over palm trees and beach, a bizarre Christmas scene in the tropics. The ash had already coated the swimming pool’s waters, erased the lines of the tennis courts, and was being scuffed away from the decks of boats as they put out of the marina.
The staff were looking after the guests as desperate headcounts were made, and all the while the yellow air-cabs raced up and down the coast to the villages. The plume had left the north end of the island untouched, and the cabs would shuttle people north in a series of rapid jumps.
Meanwhile, the running lights of the Icarus and the Pegasus blinked in the early morning sky, approaching from the airship eleven or twelve kilometres downrange from the hotel. The planes were running in the shadow of the fallout; the rising sun was on the other side of the entire eruption and it would be hours before the west coast saw full daylight.
The girls headed for the helipads and found ‘Leblanc’ and his people lugging gear from a nearby chalet. “What’s the plan?” Mai Ling called over the rumble of engines.
“We’re driving north,” ‘Leblanc’ called back. “It’s safe a few kilometres up the coast, and we need to reestablish our monitoring base, this was always our intention.” He put out a hand and shook with each of them, bobbing his head in an old-fashioned bow of courtesy to ladies. “Safe journey, mademoiselles, and safe tomorrows. This is where out paths part, I’m afraid.” He nodded into the southern sky. “Your carriage awaits!”
Moments later, the two VTOL shuttles from the Montgolfier vectored their wings as they came into the hover. They waited for a cab to clear the airspace, then alighted on the helipad in formation, and their fanjets shut back to a whistling roar.
Alex and Mai Ling saw Brigit in one cockpit, Iryna in the other. The hotel staff had marshalled a line of guests in the access area. Before they could move forward, Brigit used the aircraft’s loud-hailer, a hand at her headset.
“Doctors Reed and Layten first aboard, please. Then we can manage fourteen more on this run. We’ll be back in twelve minutes. From the looks of the fallout two, maybe three more trips is all we have time for. Move it!”
Alex and Mai Ling jogged toward the accessway, slithering a little in pumice underfoot. The air was hot and heavy. The stink of chemicals was starting to burn their noses, and when Alex was snatched sideways into a wire fence she thought Mai Ling had stumbled into her. But Mai Ling had a hand out to haul her back to her feet, and together they passed the line of guests. They ignored the angry shouts, the raised hands and shoving as they were perceived to be queue-jumpers, and ducked through to the pad.
They stepped aboard the Icarus and scrambled into seats, pushing their packs into the stowage bay. Alex hung in her seat, looking back into the bay for a long moment, then turned and closed her harness as fourteen hotel guests were counted off and passed through to the two aircraft.
Mai Ling caught her eye and knew something was wrong, but as they held on for the copilot to check that all harnesses were closed, and seal up the hatch, Alex shook her head faintly.
Later, was her message. She had no intention of telling Mai Ling here and now that a bullet had just gone through her backpack.
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
***
Dawn was a silver gleam through the blind when Mai Ling stirred. She was cuddled into Alex’s arms; they had a single sheet over them in the warm tropical air, and had slept the rest of the exhausted since they had showered in the early hours. For a moment Mai Ling wondered what had roused her, then she heard hurrying feet, and somewhere an engine was started. Then another ... the grunt of diesels from the marina, and the sudden whine of jets from the helipad.
She stirred, found Alex’s hand around her middle and squeezed it. “Honey, wake up.”
Before Alex blinked awake they heard a heavy tread on the step of their chalet and an urgent knocking.
‘Leblanc’s’ voice was in their ears at once. “Mademoiselles! Doctor Reed, Doctor Layten, wake up!”
Alex sat up at once, raked her hair from her eyes and saw 6.58 on the digital clock. “François, what is it?”
“The wind has shifted again, the hotel is being evacuated!”
The pair were out of bed in a blink. The lamp went on as they groped for underwear and jumpsuits. “We’re coming,” Mai Ling called. “Two minutes!”
“That’s about how long you have!” he replied. “The planes are coming from your airship, we see their lights. Everyone is to be evacuated, north to Anoano!” He rapped on their door to emphasis his point. “Quickly!”
They closed the velcro of their shoes with quickfire movements, threw every lose item into their packs and found hair-ties and sunglasses as they kicked open the door.
The sight that greeted them was incongruous, for it was snowing ... a fine fall of volcanic ash had begun, a blanket of white that settled over palm trees and beach, a bizarre Christmas scene in the tropics. The ash had already coated the swimming pool’s waters, erased the lines of the tennis courts, and was being scuffed away from the decks of boats as they put out of the marina.
The staff were looking after the guests as desperate headcounts were made, and all the while the yellow air-cabs raced up and down the coast to the villages. The plume had left the north end of the island untouched, and the cabs would shuttle people north in a series of rapid jumps.
Meanwhile, the running lights of the Icarus and the Pegasus blinked in the early morning sky, approaching from the airship eleven or twelve kilometres downrange from the hotel. The planes were running in the shadow of the fallout; the rising sun was on the other side of the entire eruption and it would be hours before the west coast saw full daylight.
The girls headed for the helipads and found ‘Leblanc’ and his people lugging gear from a nearby chalet. “What’s the plan?” Mai Ling called over the rumble of engines.
“We’re driving north,” ‘Leblanc’ called back. “It’s safe a few kilometres up the coast, and we need to reestablish our monitoring base, this was always our intention.” He put out a hand and shook with each of them, bobbing his head in an old-fashioned bow of courtesy to ladies. “Safe journey, mademoiselles, and safe tomorrows. This is where out paths part, I’m afraid.” He nodded into the southern sky. “Your carriage awaits!”
Moments later, the two VTOL shuttles from the Montgolfier vectored their wings as they came into the hover. They waited for a cab to clear the airspace, then alighted on the helipad in formation, and their fanjets shut back to a whistling roar.
Alex and Mai Ling saw Brigit in one cockpit, Iryna in the other. The hotel staff had marshalled a line of guests in the access area. Before they could move forward, Brigit used the aircraft’s loud-hailer, a hand at her headset.
“Doctors Reed and Layten first aboard, please. Then we can manage fourteen more on this run. We’ll be back in twelve minutes. From the looks of the fallout two, maybe three more trips is all we have time for. Move it!”
Alex and Mai Ling jogged toward the accessway, slithering a little in pumice underfoot. The air was hot and heavy. The stink of chemicals was starting to burn their noses, and when Alex was snatched sideways into a wire fence she thought Mai Ling had stumbled into her. But Mai Ling had a hand out to haul her back to her feet, and together they passed the line of guests. They ignored the angry shouts, the raised hands and shoving as they were perceived to be queue-jumpers, and ducked through to the pad.
They stepped aboard the Icarus and scrambled into seats, pushing their packs into the stowage bay. Alex hung in her seat, looking back into the bay for a long moment, then turned and closed her harness as fourteen hotel guests were counted off and passed through to the two aircraft.
Mai Ling caught her eye and knew something was wrong, but as they held on for the copilot to check that all harnesses were closed, and seal up the hatch, Alex shook her head faintly.
Later, was her message. She had no intention of telling Mai Ling here and now that a bullet had just gone through her backpack.
17.12.09
Extract from "Windstream"
From WINDSTREAM by Sara Lansing, meet Drs Alex Layton and Mai Ling Reed, on ‘shoreleave’ from the city-sized airship Montgolfier I, visiting with vulcanologists studying an eruption in the Solomon Islands. The party have taken shelter at a resort hotel out of the line of volcanic fallout, among thrillseekers and spectators watching the fire-fountains in the night, but it seems an assassin stalks the scientists…
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
To be continued -- stay tuned for more!
Fatigue was a companion now. They had been awake over twenty hours, since the airship had sighted the volcano from hundreds of kilometres out. They soon they took their leave of the vulcanologists and ambled back to their room.
Even now Alex was on her guard, and checked the place carefully before she locked up behind them. It seemed almost funny to take such precautions after daring fate, and Mai Ling found herself laughing for no reason she could name. The mild hysteria took a few moments to settle. She sat on the end of a bed and wrung her hands, a gesture Alex had not seen in years.
“Hey ...” the Australian whispered, putting a hand over Mai Ling’s to still their motion. “Gently, sweetheart. Gently ...”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” Mai Ling replied, just as softly.
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned, sending an arm around her wife. “We can’t be sure. And we knew we were gambling our lives when we decided to swim against the current.”
“I know.” Mai Ling closed her eyes. “It’s easy to be a bold idealist when you’re 60 kilometres up in the sky. Down here, a bullet is very final. And down here is where the politicians live.”
“Not really.” Alex smiled as Mai Ling opened her eyes. “They have their own ivory towers ... their own concerns ... they have very little to do with ordinary people, except at election time. They understand people. That’s what makes them politicians.”
“Alex, are we offering up our lives futilely?” The question was level, quiet, haunted.
Finding an answer took time, but when Alex spoke it was with a sunny smile. “No one can second-guess tomorrow, darling. And no one can play our game better than we ourselves. We wouldn’t have started it if we didn’t think we could finish it as well.” She squeezed Mai Ling’s shoulders. “Remember how we felt when we reached that last flag and looked at the volcano, up close?”
“Oh, yes.” A tiny sparkle glittered behind Mai Ling’s eyes.
“Remember the heat, that wind, the sound of it. Wasn’t that the same adrenalin rush as the first time you stepped out of the ship in a pressure suit, at 65,000 metres?”
“Yes. No different at that level.” The Eurasian girl smiled now. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying, enjoy the ride ... feed on the danger. Let it happen, stay on the horse no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Alex let her lips trace Mai Ling’s neck, felt arms go around her back, and in another breath they were grappling with an excitement that had been too long on hold. Bravado could carry them only so far, they were both wanting it badly. The unreality of wagering their lives, the future and the world as they knew it, generated a hot, urgent wanting.
When their lips parted Mai Ling panted, “I need it so bad ...”
They relaxed for a few moments, shrugging out of jumpsuits and underwear, kicking sport shoes across the room, and Alex unzipped her pack to find something. “I had a feeling we might get the chance while we were off the ship, so I brought along our old friend just in case.”
Mai Ling left one lamp burning by the other bed and lay back, panting shallowly, heart pounding. The beat made her small, high breasts quiver as she watched Alex bring out the makings of sex. A silver drawstring bag opened and Alex produced a tube of lubricant, then drew out their double-ended penetrator. The size and form of a generous double-erection, it was molded in softly yielding wine-red plastic, glass-smooth, translucent; and was fitted with elastic straps that fit either of them.
Alex’s hands trembled faintly as she unscrewed the tube and ran a bead of clear gel the length of one erection, and Mai Ling watched with a fascination, ever-fresh, as her partner worked the gel around the dully-gleaming shaft, then put it to her lower lips, found the channel and began to take it in.
That something so prominent could glide so swiftly within a living woman’s body never failed to amaze and excite them both. What seemed only moments later, Alex was wiping her fingers and closing velcro about her haunches. She was panting also now, moving carefully as she handled the sensations of the cool, deep presence. She reached down to lubricate the other end, her gleaming, rampant erection. At last she set aside the tube — standing with a flushed face and rigid nipples, presenting an image that confused the sexes in delicious schism — and Mai Ling lay back and spread her arms.
Alex was never more conscious of the difference in size between herself and her partner than when they came together. She had 15 kilos on Mai Ling, and was never so abandoned that she let her weight hurt her partner. She took herself on her arms and waited a beat as Mai Ling spread her legs wide, found the penetrator and eased it into herself. Alex mewled with pleasure as the member filling her moved unpredictably, then she began to bear down gently, twitching her hips.
The lack of tactile feedback made it somewhat guesswork, but she had learned to read, through the walls of her vagina, what was happening at the other end of the plastic shaft, and she eased slowly as Mai Ling arched her back and closed her eyes.
The smaller woman was stretching, stretching to accommodate the member, relaxing from her normal state to one of total arousal. When at last Alex felt her belly smooth against that of her partner, she also relaxed for a few moments.
They began to kiss, mouth exploring mouth, and Alex felt arms around her shoulders, nails that scratched slowly down her back. This was the prelude, and she felt her hips begin to move almost of their own accord. Every thrust into Mai Ling was a thrust into herself: the most incredible duality the mind could imagine, to be both active and receptive in the same motion. She had done something similar with a boyfriend long ago, but this was not a transitory experiment ... this was the very way it was done. Slowly her rhythm built, and Mai Ling panted as her features flushed with pleasure.
The same feelings were bombarding Alex’s brain and body. She felt the warm knot somewhere in her abdomen tensing like a fist ... or, she thought, like a flower awaiting the sun’s touch to open and spread luminous petals throughout her body. But reaching that first blink of sunrise was the mountain they climbed. Her back tensed up with thrusting, and she relaxed for a few moments, rising on her arms and seating deeply inside Mai Ling.
As they rested, Mai Ling reached up to stroke and fondle Alex’s breasts. They were heavier than her own, and swaying deliciously. Then she bent her neck to apply her lips to each hard, pink-brown nipple in turn, sending electric shocks through Alex which made the bigger woman flinch and gasp, driving the penetrator randomly back and forth.
Soon Alex began to thrust again, and felt Mai Ling’s hips rise in return strokes, sending the other member deeper into Alex. Then Mai Ling flung her legs around Alex’s back and dragged their hips together in a firm lock that made them both gasp and shudder. Now thrusting was limited. Mai Ling was making it last longer, and they wrangled breathlessly for minutes more, sweaty and supremely aware of each other’s chemistry.
Closer, closer ... the sun was ready to rise, the trick was making both suns rise together. In the glow of the lamp Alex saw Mai Ling’s features in an open-mouthed grimace of joy as her nervous system approached overload point, her lips dark with the flood of blood that washed out from her inner circulation.
Alex raised the tempo, hitting her peak at the fastest thrust her own body would tolerate. The lubricant was almost spent, friction was firing off nerves throughout her pelvis, and with her great shout of elation the sun broke the horizon. As she felt the heat of its rays, her last hope was that Mai Ling had reached daylight also, then she lost all objectivity and went spinning like a leaf blown on the wind, drifting in the sky for an unknown time.
When Alex blinked into the lamplight she found herself relaxed over Mai Ling, and their hands were entwined She lifted her weight at once, and Mai Ling opened her eyes, her face in the repose that came only after she also had scaled the heights.
“Thank you,” the Eurasian girl whispered, and drew Alex’s head down for one final, sweet kiss of gratitude.
To be continued -- stay tuned for more!
8.12.09
Unity, Squared by Sara Lansing
There are times, when the wind is roaring through the stripped frames of the Antares, and the sun is setting, swollen and yellow, through the blowing dust, that I feel so alone, alone as the last soul in all this universe.
But it is so unreal. Where is reality? Is reality the harshness of the broken ship, or is it the hope of rescue? Is it that beacon that calls to the stars and which I truly believe will one day draw a shuttle to my salvation...? Our salvation.
Or is it the one I love?
Does reality dwell only in the hope and belief that life does not end, and that broken flesh can be mended?
Shanna, Shanna, my love, it is so unfair that your spirit should define this terrible place, a voice in the wilderness, a whisper from beyond... And the lifeline to my sanity.
***
A figure stood in the deepening ruddy twilight of an unnamed planet, a hand raised to the blowing dust to keep a broad faceplate clear. By the feet of that figure lay a jagged, wind-scoured rock on which was burned a single phrase. Shanna's hope.
The figure turned, hunched in the wind, and moved with careful step between the rocks and the ever-shifting sands to the exposed flank of the ruined Antares, climbed a flash-welded ladder to an airlock, stepped within and sent the outer hatch across. Clean air flooded the chamber and a raging blast scoured all dust away.
Moments later the figure emerged in the dimly-lit, slanted interior of the crippled vessel, among the silence of desertion, and sat back on the suiting bench for a long, exhausted while before beginning to remove the worn, tough suit piece by piece. At last the suit was stowed in its niche and a woman with the pale features of strain and malnutrition stared at herself in a stainless steel surface. Eyes once filled with life were like the blank orbs of a doll, and scrappy hair hung in a witch’s straggle. With the precise motions of one who knew that an injury would mean death, she turned on the tilted deck and followed a safety line strung on the high side of the corridor.
***
Hi Shanna, I’m home! (Big smiles, a long hug and sweet kiss.) I got a fair bit done today, never as much as I would have liked, but enough. I realigned the suntrackers so we’ll get back to about 70% delivery on the solar cells, but the dust is scouring the protective coatings and reducing light reception. Unless this dust storm stops blowing a day will come... No, you’re right, best not to think of that. Just keep working on bringing the hotcores online instead as a fallback.
I explored the ridge to the south, it’s lucky we crashed where we did... Lucky we crashed, that’s funny! No, really! The other side of that ridge is a steep drop to volcanic gullies and rilles that would have smashed this ship apart beyond all hope of survival. At least the others got out when they did. I checked the logs when I got back, but there’s no signal. Hmph, that one hi-band antenna is our lifeline, the beacon goes out, a reply will come back the same way. We must hold onto the fact the escape pods have a better chance of being spotted up there than we have down here, and they’ll send a survey ship back. It’s only a matter of time.
Time... How long has it been, my love? Five weeks? Let me check... (A quick flutter of data through circuits, multiple overlays in the perceptive envelope...) Seven weeks. Seven? Where did they go? (Long silence.)
What’s that, grrl? You’d like to go for a swim? Me too!
***
No lights burned in the chamber she had set up for living. She flicked on a single fluorescent bar as she stepped in and sank into an acceleration couch’s welcoming comfort. The telltales of the computer interface lit as the ship’s surviving systems registered her presence, and she reached to the instruments at her side to tap a screen. Her evening meal ration began to heat in the food hole, nothing special, just enough to keep body and soul together, drawn from the emergency stores that had withstood the shocking impact of the Antares.
She saw her reflection in the cover of the food unit, saw how slimness had become gaunt, how her uniform coveralls hung loose on a body now motivated mostly by the will within. Her nametag, over her left breast, was meaningless, the letters backward to her eyes, though she knew they spelled out Harelson. Maggie Harelson... That was her name. Yes.
She ate without tasting, her eyes on the visual display of the com array, as they usually were at this hour, ‘monitoring,’ she called it, though any incoming signal would be brought to her attention by the main computer without her input. The radio sky pulsed and shimmered as the computers endlessly scanned the frequency spectrum for the ghost of a signal, whose reality might spell escape from this living hell.
At last she pushed aside the plastic food container, scraped clean, and with a sigh of relief drew on a sensory headset, adjusted the contacts to her temples and let her mind go blank...
***
The rush of dislocation was like coming home, and when Maggie Harelson emerged head and shoulders from the warm sea the sun on her face was a caress. Shanna was there as ever, like a mermaid, her long hair streaming. The women trod water after their dive, then began to stroke for the beach close by. Gentle waves pushed them ashore and they relaxed in the warm shallows for a while before striding up the beach to their camp. The breeze was cool on their bare skins, and they towelled off briskly before coming together in the full body hug that was the spice of their lives. Kisses were sweet as wine and exploring hands triggered quickfire nerve impulses that set them sighing and laughing into each other's mouths.
Shanna pressed Maggie gently back onto the rug on the sands and lay over her in a glide of smooth skin and wet hair, kissing and caressing, and their joy of being momentarily wiped away the agony of reality. Loving was the reward of living, and so long as there was life, there was love. Darting tongues and skilled fingers found well-known trigger points and each woman arched her back in her turn, crying out, to startle gulls on the red cliffs above the bay, in the ecstasy of climax. Panting, gasping, nothing else in the universe mattered in those moments, and the caressing aftermath, when they lay together in the cuddle of all lovers, was their affirmation that there was a way out of limbo.
“I’m concerned for you,” Shanna whispered. “You’re giving me the power.”
“You need it,” Maggie replied bluntly. “I’ll survive, my love. Because I must. You can’t without the power.” She smiled and stroked her lover’s face. “It gets cold. There’s not much to eat. At the end of the day, people have survived far greater hardships.”
“You truly believe they’ll come?”
“There would be no point fighting to survive without that belief,” Maggie whispered. “You and I will be together again.”
“Mags... I’m dead,” Shanna mouthed almost silently.
“Technically, yes. And technically, no.” Maggie’s smile was the forlorn hope of the desperate. “When the cockpit was wrecked and your seat broke loose, you were fatally injured. It’s your good luck the suspension pod in sickbay survived and I got you in there before you flatlined.”
“Or my curse.”
“Don’t say that.” Maggie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I need to believe. Your injuries are treatable and life was suspended before the end.”
“I’m a whisper in my own brain,” Shanna said, her voice blending with the roll of the sea. “Eventually I’ll loose coherence. And then... Who knows.”
Maggie took her face in her hands and kissed her firmly. “But that day is far away. So long as I keep the power to the pod above minimum safe level, you’ll survive.”
“And you’ll die slowly of cold and hunger.”
“It’s my choice.” Maggie stretched in the illusory warmth of the virtual sun. “I have faith.”
For a long moment Shanna was motionless, her eyes flicking right and left as if she were reading text, then she rose suddenly to her feet and looked around. When Maggie joined her, a strange current of excitement had entered her own consciousness, a prickle at the tips of her nerves. She put out a hand to her lover, who took it in a fond clasp, allowing herself to hope just this once before they faded out, and became as ghosts to each other.
***
Time sense distorted across the VR barrier and Maggie found the signal had been incoming for more than two hours when she opened her eyes and drew off the headset. Long enough for it to make no difference. Two faces she did not know were lit in the dim glow of emergency lamps, clean helmets were set aside and a young man with medical insignia on the shoulders of his suit was running a scanner over her. He looked up into her eyes and whispered “Welcome back, ma’am.” He turned and called his skipper.
The other man turned from inspecting the central computer interface and offered her his hand. A broad, craggy face was lit with a human relief that touched her heart. “Captain Harelson, it’s good to find you in one piece. Captain Mason, ship Bellatrix. We picked up the pods two days ago and backtracked their course. It’s a miracle you put her down at all.”
“The last pod malfunctioned,” Maggie whispered. “My senior pilot and I could only ride her in and do our best.” She released his hand, savouring human company but knowing she had held it long enough. “Speaking of whom...”
The medic inclined his head to the long, sealed sleep casket that nestled at the opposite wall of what had been the sickbay and nodded. “Both legs broken, ruptured spleen, punctured lung, if you hadn’t suspended her she would have been dead in minutes. If that. But according to the computer, she’s still in there.” He smiled and lay a gloved hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get her back to the Bellatrix, then leave it to me.”
Captain Mason took her hand and helped her rise stiffly. Her wasted frame and haggard face had not escaped his notice, and he knew why it was so grim here: a suspension pod took power to run, and he could only admire her determination in the face of bleak disaster. “Let’s get you both home,” he said softly.
Maggie crossed to the pod and looked through the monitoring panel at the face she knew best in all the universe, and lay her palm to the glass as she had times beyond reckoning, and in her mind’s eye she took her lover in an embrace as close as two beings in one skin. Not much longer, my love, she whispered silently to herself.
Not much longer.
But it is so unreal. Where is reality? Is reality the harshness of the broken ship, or is it the hope of rescue? Is it that beacon that calls to the stars and which I truly believe will one day draw a shuttle to my salvation...? Our salvation.
Or is it the one I love?
Does reality dwell only in the hope and belief that life does not end, and that broken flesh can be mended?
Shanna, Shanna, my love, it is so unfair that your spirit should define this terrible place, a voice in the wilderness, a whisper from beyond... And the lifeline to my sanity.
***
A figure stood in the deepening ruddy twilight of an unnamed planet, a hand raised to the blowing dust to keep a broad faceplate clear. By the feet of that figure lay a jagged, wind-scoured rock on which was burned a single phrase. Shanna's hope.
The figure turned, hunched in the wind, and moved with careful step between the rocks and the ever-shifting sands to the exposed flank of the ruined Antares, climbed a flash-welded ladder to an airlock, stepped within and sent the outer hatch across. Clean air flooded the chamber and a raging blast scoured all dust away.
Moments later the figure emerged in the dimly-lit, slanted interior of the crippled vessel, among the silence of desertion, and sat back on the suiting bench for a long, exhausted while before beginning to remove the worn, tough suit piece by piece. At last the suit was stowed in its niche and a woman with the pale features of strain and malnutrition stared at herself in a stainless steel surface. Eyes once filled with life were like the blank orbs of a doll, and scrappy hair hung in a witch’s straggle. With the precise motions of one who knew that an injury would mean death, she turned on the tilted deck and followed a safety line strung on the high side of the corridor.
***
Hi Shanna, I’m home! (Big smiles, a long hug and sweet kiss.) I got a fair bit done today, never as much as I would have liked, but enough. I realigned the suntrackers so we’ll get back to about 70% delivery on the solar cells, but the dust is scouring the protective coatings and reducing light reception. Unless this dust storm stops blowing a day will come... No, you’re right, best not to think of that. Just keep working on bringing the hotcores online instead as a fallback.
I explored the ridge to the south, it’s lucky we crashed where we did... Lucky we crashed, that’s funny! No, really! The other side of that ridge is a steep drop to volcanic gullies and rilles that would have smashed this ship apart beyond all hope of survival. At least the others got out when they did. I checked the logs when I got back, but there’s no signal. Hmph, that one hi-band antenna is our lifeline, the beacon goes out, a reply will come back the same way. We must hold onto the fact the escape pods have a better chance of being spotted up there than we have down here, and they’ll send a survey ship back. It’s only a matter of time.
Time... How long has it been, my love? Five weeks? Let me check... (A quick flutter of data through circuits, multiple overlays in the perceptive envelope...) Seven weeks. Seven? Where did they go? (Long silence.)
What’s that, grrl? You’d like to go for a swim? Me too!
***
No lights burned in the chamber she had set up for living. She flicked on a single fluorescent bar as she stepped in and sank into an acceleration couch’s welcoming comfort. The telltales of the computer interface lit as the ship’s surviving systems registered her presence, and she reached to the instruments at her side to tap a screen. Her evening meal ration began to heat in the food hole, nothing special, just enough to keep body and soul together, drawn from the emergency stores that had withstood the shocking impact of the Antares.
She saw her reflection in the cover of the food unit, saw how slimness had become gaunt, how her uniform coveralls hung loose on a body now motivated mostly by the will within. Her nametag, over her left breast, was meaningless, the letters backward to her eyes, though she knew they spelled out Harelson. Maggie Harelson... That was her name. Yes.
She ate without tasting, her eyes on the visual display of the com array, as they usually were at this hour, ‘monitoring,’ she called it, though any incoming signal would be brought to her attention by the main computer without her input. The radio sky pulsed and shimmered as the computers endlessly scanned the frequency spectrum for the ghost of a signal, whose reality might spell escape from this living hell.
At last she pushed aside the plastic food container, scraped clean, and with a sigh of relief drew on a sensory headset, adjusted the contacts to her temples and let her mind go blank...
***
The rush of dislocation was like coming home, and when Maggie Harelson emerged head and shoulders from the warm sea the sun on her face was a caress. Shanna was there as ever, like a mermaid, her long hair streaming. The women trod water after their dive, then began to stroke for the beach close by. Gentle waves pushed them ashore and they relaxed in the warm shallows for a while before striding up the beach to their camp. The breeze was cool on their bare skins, and they towelled off briskly before coming together in the full body hug that was the spice of their lives. Kisses were sweet as wine and exploring hands triggered quickfire nerve impulses that set them sighing and laughing into each other's mouths.
Shanna pressed Maggie gently back onto the rug on the sands and lay over her in a glide of smooth skin and wet hair, kissing and caressing, and their joy of being momentarily wiped away the agony of reality. Loving was the reward of living, and so long as there was life, there was love. Darting tongues and skilled fingers found well-known trigger points and each woman arched her back in her turn, crying out, to startle gulls on the red cliffs above the bay, in the ecstasy of climax. Panting, gasping, nothing else in the universe mattered in those moments, and the caressing aftermath, when they lay together in the cuddle of all lovers, was their affirmation that there was a way out of limbo.
“I’m concerned for you,” Shanna whispered. “You’re giving me the power.”
“You need it,” Maggie replied bluntly. “I’ll survive, my love. Because I must. You can’t without the power.” She smiled and stroked her lover’s face. “It gets cold. There’s not much to eat. At the end of the day, people have survived far greater hardships.”
“You truly believe they’ll come?”
“There would be no point fighting to survive without that belief,” Maggie whispered. “You and I will be together again.”
“Mags... I’m dead,” Shanna mouthed almost silently.
“Technically, yes. And technically, no.” Maggie’s smile was the forlorn hope of the desperate. “When the cockpit was wrecked and your seat broke loose, you were fatally injured. It’s your good luck the suspension pod in sickbay survived and I got you in there before you flatlined.”
“Or my curse.”
“Don’t say that.” Maggie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I need to believe. Your injuries are treatable and life was suspended before the end.”
“I’m a whisper in my own brain,” Shanna said, her voice blending with the roll of the sea. “Eventually I’ll loose coherence. And then... Who knows.”
Maggie took her face in her hands and kissed her firmly. “But that day is far away. So long as I keep the power to the pod above minimum safe level, you’ll survive.”
“And you’ll die slowly of cold and hunger.”
“It’s my choice.” Maggie stretched in the illusory warmth of the virtual sun. “I have faith.”
For a long moment Shanna was motionless, her eyes flicking right and left as if she were reading text, then she rose suddenly to her feet and looked around. When Maggie joined her, a strange current of excitement had entered her own consciousness, a prickle at the tips of her nerves. She put out a hand to her lover, who took it in a fond clasp, allowing herself to hope just this once before they faded out, and became as ghosts to each other.
***
Time sense distorted across the VR barrier and Maggie found the signal had been incoming for more than two hours when she opened her eyes and drew off the headset. Long enough for it to make no difference. Two faces she did not know were lit in the dim glow of emergency lamps, clean helmets were set aside and a young man with medical insignia on the shoulders of his suit was running a scanner over her. He looked up into her eyes and whispered “Welcome back, ma’am.” He turned and called his skipper.
The other man turned from inspecting the central computer interface and offered her his hand. A broad, craggy face was lit with a human relief that touched her heart. “Captain Harelson, it’s good to find you in one piece. Captain Mason, ship Bellatrix. We picked up the pods two days ago and backtracked their course. It’s a miracle you put her down at all.”
“The last pod malfunctioned,” Maggie whispered. “My senior pilot and I could only ride her in and do our best.” She released his hand, savouring human company but knowing she had held it long enough. “Speaking of whom...”
The medic inclined his head to the long, sealed sleep casket that nestled at the opposite wall of what had been the sickbay and nodded. “Both legs broken, ruptured spleen, punctured lung, if you hadn’t suspended her she would have been dead in minutes. If that. But according to the computer, she’s still in there.” He smiled and lay a gloved hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get her back to the Bellatrix, then leave it to me.”
Captain Mason took her hand and helped her rise stiffly. Her wasted frame and haggard face had not escaped his notice, and he knew why it was so grim here: a suspension pod took power to run, and he could only admire her determination in the face of bleak disaster. “Let’s get you both home,” he said softly.
Maggie crossed to the pod and looked through the monitoring panel at the face she knew best in all the universe, and lay her palm to the glass as she had times beyond reckoning, and in her mind’s eye she took her lover in an embrace as close as two beings in one skin. Not much longer, my love, she whispered silently to herself.
Not much longer.
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