RAINBOW RUN (5 page)

 I shifted positions so I could watch the door that Errox had entered. That was where I'd get my wristlock. Then Errox would take me to different dwell, one where I wouldn’t be known as a blanc.

She pressed her body against mine as if magnetized, molding herself against me like a second skin. Her warmth was comforting, her ardor disconcerting and appealing at the same time. She was attractive and willing. Her breasts were spherical and firm; I could feel them pressing against my ribs. If it wasn’t my imagination, her nipples were hard.

Keeping my foot on the door cell in the floor, I put my arms around her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had sexual relations. I had no memory of sexual experiences but I could recall the sensations. I felt sure I would know what to do and how to do it, but now wasn't the time. She writhed against me as if possessed by an all-consuming passion, saying Vargan over and over in an erotic incantation that sent waves of desire through my flesh.

I was lost in her seductive wiles. She had me enveloped in her sensuality and sounds. Was I Vargan? The name grew more familiar with her continuing repetition, but had it been familiar when I first heard it? I couldn’t remember….

With both hands I moved her upper body so I could look into her face. I asked, "What's your name?"

Her eyes snapped open. She asked, "You don’t remember? After all the things you've done to me, you don't remember my name!"

She stopped grinding her pelvis against me. My eyes were trapped by her gaze. She had strange-looking light brown eyes, eyes that looked like gray stones with a translucent brown overlay.

"I'm sorry. I don't remember anything about me either, not my name or anything else."

"Your name is Vargan and you're a riplocker. I don't love you, but I must have you as a lover. You possess me, now and forever. We are bound together by more than the ties of our lust."

"Please tell me your name."

"Lyonella. Look me in the eye and tell me that you never heard my name before, that you don't remember the time of sexual enchantment, our time of intoxication and decadence."

I stared intently into her face. Her eyebrows were perfect arcs above large eyes that slightly protruded from heavy lids. Her eyes appeared out of focus and I noticed an intensity that didn’t appear normal.

"I have no memory of ever saying or hearing the name Lyonella before you just spoke it. Nor do I have any memory of being Vargan. I want you to believe me. I need your help to learn about myself and who I am. Please?"

"I see you still have the ability to tell the boldest lie while appearing sincere, but you forget who I am. I am a woman for all cycles, not a perm-gray voluptuary fresh out of the House of Rebirth suffering from transit fugue."

"This is no game. I don't know who I am. I don't know you. Why won't you believe me?"

"Because you were watching the entrance of the dwell of Hushel, the wristlock smitty, and because you're not wearing your wristlock. Who are you hiding from?"

Lyonella's statements confirmed that Hushel dealt in wristlocks. I looked at her wrist again and realized that she was the first person I'd talked to who wasn't a gray. She was different from them. Was that difference caused by her knowledge of me or was it that she was delusional or crazy?

"It's true I'm here for a wristlock. I don't deny that, but I was brought here. I don't know any more about where I am than I know who I am."

"Can you deny the flesh, Vargan?"

Before I could frame a response, Lyonella pressed her body against mine so strongly that I almost lost my balance. Her lips devoured my mouth. Her tongue explored the inside of my cheeks, my palate, my teeth, and strained to reach my uvula. Automatically I responded with an embrace that lasted until we both gasped.

As soon as she caught her breath, she said, "There has to be a way for us to be together. We can get away from this backwater. I'm going to get better. The time between severe attacks is lengthening. We'll go someplace where they aren't organized enough to check immigrants. They won't have to know who you are and what you've done."

Every sentence she uttered made me more aware of how much I didn't know. I couldn't ask intelligent questions because I didn't understand the context. I didn't know what her problems were or even if they were connected to my unremembered past. The sexual desire I felt for her was warping my perspective. I had to keep focused on my first priority, getting a wristlock. I didn't know what to say to her. I could tell by the look on her face that she sensed my confusion. I wondered if I was so obvious that anyone could tell I was confused, or if she knew me well enough to be familiar with all my reactions.

"Your body responds to me," she said. "It always has. Why deny both of us? Take off your tunic and exercise those backwater tricks that seduced the sophisticate of Alura."

She stepped back from me, pulled off her tunic, and let it fall to the floor. I couldn't look away from her lean, shapely figure and the rich, brown triangle of pubic hair. She parted her thighs and said, "See. The scars are hardly noticeable. I bring you a beautiful body once again, the body that drove you to scar my mind."

I had a hard time taking in what she said; either I was a monster or she was mad. Had my memory been taken from me because I abused women? I made no move to accept her sexual offer, leery of what it might mean to her or me. Her voice became strident as she said, "So you reject me after closing me off from everything I ever had that wasn't you. I ought to notify the VIS."

I knew I didn't want that. "I can't stay with you now. I'm in this urbode to get a wristlock. After that I have to find my way to a new dwell. After I get relocated we can talk and I'll try to understand what you're telling me. I do want you and I want to know what you know about me. How can I find you again?"

"Find Hushel and I'll be nearby. You won't tell Hushel who I am, will you?" The bright glaze of paranoia crystallized in her eyes.

Hastily I promised, "I won't say anything about you to Hushel."

"How can I be sure? What am I to you but a damaged instrument of power? But I warn you…do not underestimate the extent of that power. I am still learning about it. Every time I survive the holocaust that you ignited in me, I become stronger."

Her presence disturbed me in multiple ways. Her voice and actions differed from what I'd seen and heard among the grays. When she bent over to pick up her tunic, the sight of the bare curves of her buttocks brought a lump to my throat. She snapped the tunic in the air and then began to tie fist-sized knots in it. I had no idea why she was doing that until she flicked it toward me, hitting the side of my head with the knotted end.

I gasped, lost my balance, and almost fell to the floor. She began screaming invectives at me in a loud voice, "Scum! Rake! Bum! Fake!" She repeated the words over and over as if chanting a curse while she continued slapping me with the tunic knots.

I moved into a defensive crouch, taking her blows on my arms. I managed to grab the tunic. With surprising strength, she jerked me off my feet. I panicked at the sound of the door closing. I let go of the tunic, lurched to my feet, and slammed my body into hers. We fell in a tangled heap to the floor, our bodies in intimate, but hostile, contact. I was terrified at not being able to see Hushel's door, afraid I might not get a wristlock, half-afraid that I might not see my enigmatic guide again.

Lyonella's frenzied attack subsided, perhaps because my strength matched hers. She pressed her body against me as if trying to push me through the floor. When I braced myself, getting ready to heave her off me, her hand clutched my genitals. My body jerked in agony.

She twisted my sexual softness and the pain drove me berserk! I thrashed around like a madman, making spastic position changes. Using all my strength, I beat at her arms until she released me.

When she started rising up from the floor I hit the side of her head with a roundhouse blow that knocked her down. I rose and put my foot on the door cell. The door opened. As I limped into the corridor, she said, "It's all right, Vargan. You know this isn't the first time that you've beaten me."

I didn’t like what she was implying, it felt wrong somehow. I had no memory of ever seeing her before, much less hitting her. I didn’t bother to reply, because I was afraid I’d get caught up in her endless game of recriminations. I wasn’t sure what kind of person I was before my memory fled, but I was almost certain that I wasn’t anyone who beat women for pleasure or out of malice. I certainly hoped not….

The door closing behind me cut off her words. I straightened my tunic, ran my hand over my hair, while trying to calm the shakiness I felt after our violent, disturbing encounter. I was not quite composed when Hushel's door opened. Errox stepped out and looked toward the elevator where he had left me. When he turned and saw me in the corridor, he asked, "What are you doing down there?"

"Just pacing," I answered. I was surprised by how spontaneously the lie came out of my mouth, without a second thought. I didn't know whether or not I was Vargan, but Lyonella had said Vargan was an accomplished liar. As far as I knew it was the first lie I had ever told.

"Come in. Everything’s ready." I saw Errox was now wearing a green wristlock; it brought back the image of Errox severing the wrist of the dead woman in the Rainbow Room. I shook my head to clear out the disturbing image and followed Errox into Hushel's quarters.

Errox introduced me to the wristlock smitty by saying, "Hushel, this is Rathe, the nu-blanc I told you about."

I wondered if Hushel would recognize me as Vargan. Lyonella knew him and he might have known me. From what Lyonella had said, I had surmised that wristlock smitty was an illegal pursuit. If so, Hushel was the kind of person Vargan would know.

Hushel, showing no sign of ever having seen me before, pointed to a chair and said, "Sit."

I wondered if he recognized me and was keeping quiet for reasons of his own, or because he didn't care who I was. I sat down in the chair, which had an unusual device built into the right arm. It was comprised of a strong metal frame around a short, hollow cylinder that ran along a track.

Hushel locked my right arm in the frame at the bend of my elbow. He attached fittings from five thick wires that ran through the cylinder to the ends of my fingers. Using a complex spreading tool, he carefully fitted a gray wristlock on the cylinder, treating the wristlock as if it were fragile.

I suspected that this was the gray wristlock that Errox had worn. Hushel touched a control on the frame and my fingers were pulled straight by the wires. He sprinkled a warm liquid over my hand that first tingled and then created numbness. He bound my numb hand and my wrist with a strip of silvery material. He pressed a lever on the frame and my hand was compressed to a degree I would have thought impossible.

When he turned a dial, the cylinder moved to cover my fingers and then my hand. For a moment it felt as if my hand was being crushed, then a sudden snap and the wristlock popped onto my wrist. Hushel disconnected me from the machine. I looked at the opaque grayness of the wristlock. I touched its smooth surface. I pulled at it and it stretched without appearing thinner.

"Don’t do that!" Hushel shouted. "They only expand so far. If you pull it too hard, it'll blow your wrist off."

I gazed down at
my
wristlock. Had I been freer without it? I really had no way of knowing. With or without a wristlock, I was still more dependent on Errox than I wanted to be.

Hushel said, "Once the numbness wears off, your hand will be sore for several cycles. Don't see a medic about it. A medic would only notify the VIS. And, whatever you do, don't try to take it off yourself. There's an explosive charge in wristlocks that will shred your body into chunks the size of food cubes."

I stared down at my new wristlock with a newfound sense of fear and respect.

After getting my wristlock I followed Errox out of the building. He said, "I’ll take you to another urbode where you'll be able to stay. Don't tell anyone there or anywhere else that you were a blanc or how you got your wristlock."

I tried to make a map in my head of the slideway route we took but the many turns and reverses of direction made remembering difficult.

We arrived at a gray urbode no different from the rest, as far as I could discern. Errox led me inside and introduced me to Mirall, the pink-faced, blond-haired gray in charge of my new residence. He was slightly shorter than me and heavier. He seemed eager to please Errox and was friendly toward me. After Errox left, Mirall introduced me to some other resident grays. After glancing at my new wristlock, they seemed to accept me as one of their own. If they knew I'd been a blanc, they didn't care or mention it. Small talk and jarva juice seemed to be their major interests.

In my new dwell, I tried to rest and ignore the pain in my right hand. My thoughts turned to my missing memories, and then to Lyonella. The encounter with her made me wonder for the first time if I wanted to regain my memory. Was I Vargan, the shady, shadowy character whom Lyonella blamed for all her difficulties, or was this a case of mistaken identity? Could I merely be a stranger that she had coerced into her disjointed, troubled life?

I had mixed emotions about seeing Lyonella again. Even if I wanted to see her, I wouldn’t know how to find her abode without assistance. I knew that I didn't want to ask Errox for help because I didn't want him to know I'd met her. I distrusted Errox. If he decided that he wanted her white wristlock, he wouldn’t hesitate to harm Lyonella to obtain it—of that I was certain. Therefore, I must have known others like him in the past with his ruthless disregard for other people. If I had been like that myself, I didn’t want to be that way any longer.

Regardless of whether or not I may have hurt Lyonella in the past, I didn't want to cause her any trouble now or in the future.

During the next two days I learned what I could about finding my way around. I was living in an urbode identical to the other ninety-nine urbodes that were in a large square bounded by slideways. On the other side of the slideways were other urbode complexes which from a distance appeared to be identical to the ones in this compound. From all viewpoints around the urbode, there appeared to be endless rows of urbodes as far as the eye could see. Wherever I was, I was just one unidentified mite among a teaming mass of humanity.