Pallas (18 page)

“Er, come in.” As a hasty afterthought, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

She did as she was told and quietly closed the door behind her, giving him a smile with downcast eyes that was partly bold and partly shy. A half-conscious glance at the clock standing beside the radio told Emerson that it was later than he’d thought. Brody would be gone. The other i
n
habitants of the house, including Mrs. Singh, would have been in their beds by now for at least an hour.

Ordinarily, so would Gretchen, he assumed.

She was certainly dressed for it in a lightweight and translucent, v
a
guely robelike thing with who-knew-what on underneath. Inexplicably, he felt guilty just for noticing how the light came through it, outlining her body. He tried, unsuccessfully, to look away. More accustomed to seeing her in rough denim outdoor clothing that concealed, he was astonished at the way the form-fitting fabric she wore was pushed in and out, here and there, as she moved.

As she breathed.

It was a lot like the first day he’d met her. He swallowed and tried to talk, but couldn’t think of anything particularly intelligent to say. His breath came to him raggedly, his hands shook, and his legs felt like warm jelly. At the same time there was a feeling throughout his body as if it were held together by fine, hot wires which had been pulled too tight and might tear through his flesh any minute if they didn’t burn their way out first. He had a suspicion, one he hardly dared to recognize, let alone hope was correct, that Gretchen had come to his bedroom for something more than a kiss.

Looking more than a little self-conscious herself, she glided toward him, pausing to turn out the desk lamp as she passed it, which left only the small reading light mounted on the headboard of his bed, and the softly glowing dial of the radio—where something gentle and, well, seductive was being played, a classic from the middle of the previous century. She didn’t stop advancing until she stood as close to him as possible without
touching, every contour of her body within millimeters of his own. It may have been an illusion of some kind, but Emerson believed he caught the faint whiff of sagebrush and woodsmoke he’d noticed about her from the first day they’d met, a sensation he’d always associate with her.

She smiled and this time looked him in the eye, although her breat
h
ing, he observed, was no less uneven than his own. “Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

He swallowed again and nodded toward the chair across the room, instantly hating himself for his stupidity and bashfulness. “Would you like to sit down?”

“Why yes, thank you, I would.”

She took his hand and sat down on the bed, pulling him down to sit close beside her.

She cleared her throat.

“I didn’t come in here to make you nervous, Emerson, and I don’t r
e
ally care whether you’re a virgin or not. I’m very sorry I said that this morning. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m nervous, too, in case you wondered, which is why I’m talking so much. I wish to hell you’d say something so I could shut up.”

“Unh...”

He rolled his eyes, mindless and totally lost to panic, torn between taking this beautiful creature in his arms and kissing her or jumping out of the window. He hadn’t wondered why she was talking so much—he hadn’t even noticed. If anything, he was grateful. For one horrifying i
n
stant he did wonder what Mrs. Singh would say—or do; she was a better shot than Gretchen—if she were to walk in on them. Then he realized suddenly that he didn’t care.

There were worse ways to die.

He put both arms around her and kissed her. She did smell of sag
e
brush and woodsmoke. She moaned quietly, as if she’d waited for this a long time. He felt a sort of shudder run through her body and the wet warmth of tears on her cheeks. After a long while, he sat back from her a little, lifted her chin with gentle fingertips, and asked, “Is this also b
e
cause I won the match this morning?”

A million other girls might have been insulted by that question, or pretended to be. Gretchen wiped her eyes and laughed, her long, glossy hair shimmering with each movement of her head. “No, Emerson, it isn’t. That was going to be my excuse, but I’ve been thinking about doing this for months, almost since the minute I met you—although I don’t suppose I should admit that. It did help me get my courage up, having an excuse. And you certainly weren’t going to do anything on your own, were you? Don’t answer that—you couldn’t, on account of where you’re from and maybe what you think Mom might think.”

“I was wondering, kind of—”

She laid her hands atop his. “There’s nothing to wonder about, Emerson. On Pallas—what you call the Outside—you’re a free man, I’m a free woman, and that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter if my mother, or anybody else, disapproves—although she likes you very much and I’ll bet she’s actually been wondering if we’d ever get around to it. If she did, the worst she could do is
throw
us out of her house, but that wouldn’t be the mother I know. As long as you pull your own mass and take respo
n
sibility when it’s yours to take, nobody has anything to say about what you do. That was settled quite a while back on this asteroid—and my mom and I settled it long ago between
ourselves
.”

She squeezed his hands beneath hers. “Besides,” she whispered, “Mom’s busy. You left so quickly after dinner. I’ll bet you think Aloysius went back to town, don’t you?”

He opened his mouth. “I—”

“I think that’s enough talk.” She placed a gentle hand on his chest, pushed him back onto his pillow, and fumbled briefly with the copper buttons of his Levi’s. “Mmmhmm, I thought so. I wouldn’t take the i
n
itiative, but we’ll have to do something about that if this is going to turn out right for both of us.”

She worked the zipper, and, with his stunned and somewhat frightened cooperation, pushed his pants down until they bunched at his knees. Still sitting, she bent over him—her dark, soft hair brushed and tickled his thighs—and began doing something wonderfully absurd which kept them both from talking for a while.

At some point—he was never quite certain when it happened, but the time required was all too short—every muscle in his body tensed and suddenly released. A low, involuntary shout wrenched itself from his throat and his
mind exploded with a white light mystics talk about and look
for in all the wrong places.

Afterward, as shocked disbelief and the memory of unspeakable pleasure sang through his veins—he’d never heard of people doing an
y
thing like what had just happened but was afraid to ask about it because he didn’t want her to know it was his first time—they lay together, her head on his shoulder and his arms around her.

He started to say something.

She put a finger to his lips. “Don’t you dare thank me for
that.
Believe me, it was pure self-interest, the most practical application of capitalist theory I know.” She giggled. “Postponing present gratification—you can’t really say consumption, can you?—in order to guarantee future satisfaction.”

They didn’t speak after that. He kissed her eyelids, the bridge of her nose, her cheeks, her mouth,
her
chin. She kissed his fingertips. Without more prompting than that, he pulled at the slender, silky ribbons of what she wore and opened her clothing, gazing down at her in the soft light of the room, touching her everywhere, unlocking the secrets of her body and claiming it for his own, inhaling her warm scent and marveling at her firm, smooth fullness.

Nor did she lie passively beneath his hands.

And in due course, Gretchen discovered that the most reliable miracle in the universe had occurred, that he was ready for her once again, and that she was now ready for him.

“Remember to take your time,” she advised him with a grin as she swung a leg over his and rose to place herself atop him. “It isn’t a race, you know.”

Somewhat awkwardly at first, Emerson followed Gretchen’s advice precisely as he had that morning at the range, and indeed, this time it turned out right for both of them.

And the third time was even better.

McCOY: You offer us only well-being...

SCOTT: Food and drink and happiness mean nothing to us. We must be about our job...

McCOY: Suffering in torment and pain, laboring without end...

SCOTT: Dying and crying and lamenting over our burdens...

BOTH: Only in this way can we be happy!

—Stephen Kandel, “I, Mudd,”
Star Trek

E
merson woke late the next
morning,
happier than he’d known was possible. And from the sight, indescribably, almost painfully beautiful to him, of Gretchen’s still-sleeping face against his pillow, he believed that she was, as well.

The radio was still playing softly. He traced the graceful, delicate line of her jaw with a gentle finger. She smiled and snuggled further into the blankets.

It must have been obvious that last night had been his only experience with a woman. Apparently—miraculously—she hadn’t seemed to care. For the first time, he wondered whether it might have been her first with—dare he call himself a
man?
From what she knew and how she did it, he doubted that she’d been a virgin when she came to his bed. What he felt about that—not knowing that it would have seemed no less mir
a
culous to her—was undiluted gratitude. He did find he preferred never to know who the other fellow—fellows?—had been.

He sighed contentedly and looked around the room, remembering. The place would never seem the same, and here was a day that was truly new. Outdoors, the morning sun seemed to be hammering at his window, d
e
manding to be let in. Grinning to himself, Emerson arose, careful not to disturb the girl. He strode across the small room, trying not to swagger, and pulled the curtain back. His grin vanished when he saw what waited in the road just beyond Mrs. Singh’s gate.

It was probably what had awakened him.

Suddenly the hammering was real, at his door instead of at the wi
n
dow. Gretchen sat up, gorgeous and completely unself-conscious in her
nakedness, blinking with disorientation at the disturbance. Before the boy could wrench his eyes away and grab his pants to put them on, Mrs. Singh was shouting at them from the hall.

“Emerson! Gretchen! Wake up and get out here in a hurry!
Looks like we’ve got company!”

The door opened to a four-inch crack and Mrs. Singh’s heavily veined hand appeared, holding her daughter’s Levi’s, vest, and gunbelt. She tossed them on the bed without looking in, closed the door, and they could hear her footsteps almost immediately, clattering down the stairs. Wit
h
out a word, with hardly a look between them except for the briefest possible brush of her lips across his, both of the younger people dressed hurriedly, strapped on their weapons, and followed after her.

The air downstairs smelled pleasantly of frying bacon. Mrs. Singh must have been interrupted in the middle of preparing breakfast. Outside, through a screen of privacy offered by the sheer curtains of the living room windows, the three of them watched former United States Senator Gibson Altman clamber down from the electric Project vehicle Emerson and Gretchen had seen in Curringer the previous afternoon and, flanked by a pair of thick-necked, uniformed security men, their shock batons in hand, stamp up the walk to the steps of the front porch.

“That’s close enough, boys!” Mrs. Singh opened her front door all the way, leaving the outer screen hooked. From a large apron pocket she pulled a 10 millimeter pistol almost identical to Gretchen’s, although she held it at her waist behind her back. Her voice was high but firm. “This don’t look like
no
friendly visit to me. State your business or get off my property!”

The Chief Administrator of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project, just about to start up the porch steps ahead of him, stopped with one foot in the air. As he put it down, the pair of toughs behind him each took a sideways step, spreading out defensively,
their
batons held menacingly across their chests.

Altman wasn’t wearing a hat, but somehow gave the impression of politely taking one off before he spoke. In one hand he held a sheaf of official-looking forms. “Good morning, madam—Mrs. Henrietta Singh, I
believe. My name is Gibson Altman. I’m here because I have reason to believe you’re harboring a fugitive—unknowingly, of course. Is there an Emerson Ngu on the premises?”

“I know exactly who you are, Senator,” Mrs. Singh informed him. “What if there was?”

“He’s a minor child, madam, an illegal runaway from my jurisdiction, and his parents want him back.” He spread a modest hand across his chest,
then
indicated the official-looking bundle in his other hand. “I’m only here to help them.”

The woman tossed a quick glance first at Emerson, then at her daughter, then at Emerson again. For the first time Emerson re
a
lized—and was utterly astonished—that Gretchen’s mother seemed to know of their relationship and approve. There was a good reason for that, although Emerson, as yet, was unaware of it.

She turned her attention back to the man on the front walk. “He may have been a minor when he escaped your jurisdiction, Senator, but he ain’t
no
more. Now unless Emerson wants to bother with you—which I can see he don’t—you can run along and peddle your papers someplace else. I got things I gotta do this morning.”

Altman gave Mrs. Singh his warmest and sincerest smile, but his words had an ominous ring. “Now you know, madam, that I can’t do that. We’ve come a long way for this child, over bad roads. The summons and other authorizations I brought with me are fully in order. His parents are here, waiting for him in the rollabout. We have every right to take him by force, if necessary, and we outnumber you.”

She snorted, looking from one of the intruders to the next.
“You three poor pitiful things?”

“And additional personnel aboard the rollabout”—Altman lifted and spread his hand toward the vehicle in a graceful television ge
s
ture—“sufficient to the task, madam.”

“Not if all your side brought with ’em is those little electric toad-ticklers.” Taking the pistol from behind her back and pointing it at the Senator’s chest, Mrs. Singh recited: “
‘In
days of old when knights was bold an’ someone hadda feed ’em, they did require a local squire to scare
the serfs an’ bleed ’em.’

“Only the Middle Ages’re over, Squire Altman, in case you weren’t aware of it, an’ we ain’t none of the disarmed and cowering peasantry you’re used to bullying.”

Emerson had stood half-frozen in the middle of the living room until this moment. “Well,” he turned to Gretchen, “I guess the Chief Admi
n
istrator gave a damn after all.
Nice to be wanted.”
He left her side—the girl almost extended a hand to stop him,
then
thought better of it—to join his landlady at the door. “I’ll talk to him, Mrs. Singh. I don’t want anyone to get hurt over—”

“Over a sacred principle.”
Mrs. Singh turned and looked him hard in the eye. “Don’t you forget that for a minute, son. There’s a deal more happening here than just the business of the moment. And you’d better not go out there without that weapon of yours drawn and the hammer at full cock, you hear me?” She lowered her voice, almost to a whisper. “Gretchen’ll be right behind you, Emerson. Bein’ the mistrusting and suspicious type I am, I’m gonna watch the back door!”

Emerson glanced down briefly at the Grizzly, which suddenly seemed to hang twice as heavy in its holster as it usually did. Although the blue goons only had their electronic shock batons, he knew from previous experience that they could be very fast with them. Once they so much as touched him with them he’d be completely incapacitated. If he had to draw, it would take him forever to get the big autopistol into action. He’d only been using it for what amounted to target practice anyway, not combat exercises, and he now appreciated the utter folly of employing the hammer-down, so-called “Ahern carry” for safety’s sake.

He regretted even more the fact that he’d never reloaded the weapon after the previous day’s match.

Not realizing that she’d left an unarmed boy behind, Mrs. Singh headed for the kitchen, on her way to the back door. Gretchen glanced after her, came to what she may have known was the decision of a lif
e
time, and remained where she was. When Emerson unhooked the screen and stepped out onto the porch, leaving the massive autoloader in its holster where, he believed, it already looked impressive and intimidating
enough, Gretchen—who knew his habits and may have been aware of the condition of the Grizzly—was not behind him, but beside him.

“Well,” the Chief Administrator managed to get in the first word, “I see that you’ve picked up a couple of bad habits, living among these barbarians.” He tossed a sneering glance, first at Gretchen, then at the gun on Emerson’s hip. “Take that filthy thing off, little man, and get into the car. I’m not entirely certain why, but your parents are anxious to see you. I only hope for their sake that you haven’t already killed somebody or acquired some kind of disease.”

As often happens in an emotional and potentially violent confront
a
tion, the boy never heard or understood those ugly words until afterward. Emerson could see both his parents aboard the Project vehicle, su
r
rounded by goons. For some reason, Altman had brought his son, Gibson Junior, along, as well. Alice
Ngu’s
face pressed against the plastic of the canopy, staring out at her son. His father kept his eyes ahead, stoically refusing to look his way. It all seemed to bother Emerson less than he’d expected. He’d made his choice more than a year ago.

“I’d like to see them, too,” he replied, nevertheless. “Let them out of that thing and well talk here.”

The Chief Administrator shook his head, apparently more in sorrow than in anger. “I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as that, child. You know your own people and their beliefs, better than I do. This is a matter of ‘face.’ They feel disgraced by what you’ve done, by the ingratitude to me and to the Project that it represents. They will refuse to have anything to do with you again unless and until you return willingly and accept whatever p
e
nalty the law sees fit to impose on you.”

“Sounds to me like a blank check if ever I heard of one.” Suddenly aware that he’d unconsciously imitated Mrs. Singh’s West American accent, Emerson gave him a humorless grin. “Return willingly and accept whatever penalty the law sees fit to impose? And you’re the person I’m supposed to make it out to? You’re the law?”

“You know perfectly well that I am, according to the charter of the United Nations”—the Senator shrugged and gave him a generous, self-deprecatory smile—“as well as the government of the United States
of America. Now I’m getting quite weary of your nonsense. Tell me truthfully, aren’t you, just a little bit, as well? Let’s avoid any further unpleasantness. Take off that...that
thing,
tell that little slut of yours good-bye, and come with us.
Immediately!
”

Across the road, high in the air above an empty and uncultivated field, a circling hawk suddenly spied something small and furry moving in the buffalo grass below. It stooped and struck. The victim squealed briefly and fell silent. For the first time in his life, having witnessed this sort of thing often in the Project fields, the boy felt no pity for the rabbit being lifted and carried away in the claws of the raptor, but understood and shared the exultation of the predator.