The Last Hour of Gann (155 page)

N
ear to the stream where he had brought his mimuts to be butchered lay a small, reeking heap—wet flaps of skin cut from the belly where winter’s fat was thickest, tailbones and the sagging pouch of the anus, intestines, feet, ears. It was too cold in these early hours for the carrion-beetles to crawl droning over his offering, but he could hear their countless bodies grinding together deep in the rotting flesh.

Meoraq knelt and brought out
his makeshift pouch. He lifted a rancid coil of intestine, unleashing a plume of steam and fresh stink into the air. The beetles burrowed deeper, leaving their offspring to squirm together, exposed to morning’s chill.

Nauseating. He did not hesitate. He ran his open hand along the rumpled surface of rotting offal, taking exquisite care not to crush the
larvae. He could not feel them in his hand, but seeing them there was bad enough. No matter. He shook them gently onto the sleeve and reached down for more. It took some effort to target only the larvae and not the mess they were feeding upon, but he had all he needed in just a few more passes and soon returned to the underlodge with the churning mess of them unpleasantly secured in the sleeve.

Amber had not moved, save to thro
w off her blanket. He let her alone for now while he arranged a fresh compress and bandage for her. Last of all, he took a dried leaf of phesok from the pot by the hearth and put it in his mouth. The taste was golden, surprisingly sweet, not at all what he’d expected. He chewed resolutely as he returned to his wife’s side and cleaned away the old, soured dressings.

She moaned, but turned toward him when he put his hand on her cheek. He spat juice into her mouth. She sputtered, swallowed, panted, all without opening her eyes.

Meoraq watched her for a time, then grunted and brought out his carrion-beetle larvae. He shook out half of them and waited for them to burrow into her heat, spitting juice for her to drink when it overfilled his own mouth, then shook out the rest and covered them loosely with the compress. He was beginning to feel light-headed. Never mind. A Sheulek must be above the distractions of his flesh. Most distractions.

He sat in the cupboard with his woman, chewing and sometimes spitting, and ultimately beginning to sway just a little. Amber’s face seemed to soften, blurring into new lines only to throb itself back
into sharp focus. His Soft-Skin. His good woman. His wife. She was so unbelievably ugly.

He started to laugh, choked on a mouthful of juice, swallowed it,
then laughed again because that was such a stupid thing to do. But a Sheulek does not make mistakes. Sheul is always with him. So there. He spat some juice into Amber and swallowed another mouthful (deliberately, this time), humming to himself as the colors began to shift around in the air, but humming quietly because the other humans were sleeping and he was so nice. Amber would be proud of him. His ugly, ugly Amber.

“I love your ugly face,” he told her,
then bent down to move his mouth parts against hers. Horrible, unsanitary thing to do, and it left her bleeding a little besides. Never mind.

“I love your ugly fur,” he said, taking up many long, damp strands and spilling them through his fingers. It seemed that they kept on spilling for a very, very long time. The
phesok was almost out of juice; he swallowed what there was and chewed harder.

Amber shifted below him in the bed, pushing more of the
blanket away so that her bare chest was exposed. The sight attracted his staring eye and then his hand. “I love your ugly teats,” he mused, stroking at them. His hand moved up. “And I love your beautiful shoulders.”

Such beautiful shoulders. Smooth and pale as sculpted stone, perfectly rounded, perfectly sloping upwards into her scrawny neck and downwards into her skinny arms. Even the gross distortions on her chest seemed
flawlessly balanced beneath those amazing shoulders.

He sucked hard on the pulp in his mouth, held it a moment, then bent reluctantly and spat it into Amber. She mewled a protest, but swallowed it. Her soft mouth, very lightly bleeding, parted for her panting breath. He could see the pink glisten of her tongue. Without warning, sexual urges swept over him, more dizzying th
an even the phesok in its strength. Meoraq loosened his belt, but his organ would not extrude. The urge died, leaving him with a confused re-discovery of her fevered face and the dressings at her side. It was unforgiveable, even to a Sheulek, for a man to lie with a woman on her sickbed; Sheul, in his wisdom, had prevented it. He spoke a shamed thanks, but already his eye was moving on, becoming fixed on the oddly graceful whorls and ridges that ringed her ear. He sucked on the phesok pulp again, but it had no more juice to give him. He spat it into his palm instead, shook it off into the other room, then closed the cupboard door and lay down beside his woman. He supposed he’d ought to pray, but couldn’t quite focus on what words to say.

Meoraq pulled the
blanket up around Amber’s beautiful shoulders, then dropped a careful arm around her chest where it could not hurt her. ‘I am cuddling,’ he thought, pleased with himself. Then the dreams started, dreams of Amber beside him at Xi’Matezh reaching out to hold his hand when the doors hushed open, Amber sitting with him on the rooftop garden at home with the first of his many sons in her arms, Amber holding Nicci’s hand as they waited in a long line of white-garbed people before a great glass-walled shrine. Always it was Amber, sometimes with him and sometimes with her blood-kin, now creased with age and now half-grown, fighting and laughing and weeping and in every way alive. The dreams were glorious and it was a very long time before Meoraq, reluctantly, closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

Amber woke up first to the sounds of people talking none too damn quietly in the main room. Not even really talking, but actually hollering up the stairs to other people outside, just like it wasn’t first thing in the friggin’ morning, which it had to be because Meoraq was still sound asleep beside her.

Her annoyance was the first thing she was really conscious of. The second was a tickling sort of sensation in her side. She started to scratch at it, but was smart enough to stop herself as soon as her fingers touched the bandage. She really did not want to tear herself a brand new gash now that it was finally starting to heal up. And it must be healing up because that’s what things did when they healed, right? They itched? And even though this was more of a tickle, it tickled like six bitches in a bitch-boat, so it better be healing.

Ah, it was great to feel like herself again.

Amber smiled to herself without bothering to open her eyes. She sensed she could open her eyes if she wanted to, however, which was better than she’d felt all night. In fact, the last three days had been like trying to cross quicksand—sinking further and further the more she moved. Yesterday, she’d been absolutely certain she was going to die. The stench coming from her side had been so bad, she was amazed Meoraq could stand to touch her, but he didn’t even mention it.

And maybe he knew something she didn’t, because she felt worlds better this morning. Apart from a headache and an absolutely epic case of morning-mouth, but if that was what it took to wake up free of the fever that had been chasing her down, she’d learn to love it.

But the tickling…

Amber squirmed, as if shifting her weight could actually help. It didn’t.

Out in the main room,
Dag was stomping around and bitching about having to go all the way out to the stream for water when it was raining.

“Coming down hard enough,”
Crandall commented. “Could probably just stand outside with your mouth open and drink just fine.”

“Give it another hour and you could probably drown that way,”
Eric added. “Sheesh, did the lizard die in there? What is keeping him?”

“Keep your voice down,” Nicci said. “They’re sleeping.”

“Sleeping, hell,” Crandall muttered. “They’re probably screwing.”

Amber frowned, then caught herself reaching to scratch again. Dammit, this was going to drive her crazy!

He’d put some sort of plant in there that first day. She didn’t recall it itching—the pain had pretty much occupied all her nerve-endings at the time—but maybe that was the trouble now. He probably wouldn’t like it if she just opened up her own bandage and took his leaves out, especially since they might be working, but she couldn’t stand this and anyway, he was asleep and therefore did not get a vote.

Casting furtive glances at the alien snuggled up beside her, Amber began to extract herself from his uncharacteristically clingy grip. He slept on, oblivious, even when she picked his arm up and put it down again on her thigh. Next to go was the sweaty (and now smelly)
blanket. She could see the bandage now. It wasn’t even tied on. Maybe it tickled because it was loose. Felt like a bigger tickle than that, though. God, it was all she could do not to get in there with both hands and just go to town.

She pulled the bandage off, already reaching with her other hand to gingerly pick away whatever voodoo he’d packed in there. For a moment, she thought it was rice.

For a moment.

Her breath caught, but she sucked it in and shrieked anyway, tearing up her throat like her screams were made of fishhooks. Meoraq bolted up, banged his head, and dropped back down with a snarl of sound she could not begin to process, much less translate. If she hadn’t been frozen by horror, she might have dug the maggots out then, but the split-second it took for her to act was all the time he needed to recover. When she did slap wildly at the boiling mass of their pearly little bodies, he caught her.

“The hell is going on in there?”

“Getthemoffme
getthemoffme
getthemoffme!
”

“What is wrong with you, woman?! Lie still!”

She fought, but there was no fighting, not before he straddled her thighs and bore down on her from above, and certainly not after. Kicking was futile under the blanket. Bucking dislodged some of the maggots, but only so they could rain their repulsive little bodies down over her stomach and her hip and oh God what if one bounced high enough to land in her mouth?!

Screaming for release, screaming for help…just screaming. It was all she knew, all she was capable of.
There were maggots in her
!

Then the cupboard door flew open and there was her baby sister’s half-glimpsed face, staring at the lizard atop her in open-mouthed shock. And then she screamed.

Meoraq looked around, startled, because even an alien had to know that wasn’t a human scream of fear, but of rage. Little Nicci dove at him, clawing for his eyes, so that Meoraq was forced to release one of Amber’s twisting arms to shove her back. Amber immediately went for the maggots. He caught her again, swearing vigorously, and pushed her arms together, wrists-to-elbows. Now able to restrain them one-handed, he reared back and whipped his belt off. He used it to bind Amber’s arms together so that she was unable to scratch anything but her own arms, which she did in helpless panic.

The next time Nicci came for him, he was ready. He c
aught her in one hand and dragged her with him as he flipped athletically from the cupboard onto the floor, and from there across the room to the water bucket, where he dunked her head repeatedly.

N
icci’s screams turned to sputters. Amber’s went on, but they were dying in spite of her, torn to hoarse shreds by their own violence. No one else was making a sound.

Meoraq turned in a full circle, hauling Nicci with him, to face off against the
rest of them. “Are you all mad or is it just your women?”

“Hey, do what you want with them,” said
Crandall, holding up both hands as Amber howled for help.

Meoraq
tossed Nicci in a heap by the hearth where she curled herself up small, sobbing, and returned to the cupboard. He studied Amber while she struggled in her bondage, then reached out and laid his hand over her mouth.

She stared up at him in
weepy dismay, unable to believe he could be so calm when there were bugs eating her.

“I have Gann
’s own headache,” he informed her after a moment’s meditation. “So I am going to ask just once what is wrong with you and you are going to answer quietly. Now. What is wrong with you?”

He removed his hand.

“I’m rotting,” she whispered, and felt tears drop hotly out of her even though she couldn’t blink. “I’m rotting! There’s maggots in me!”

Behind him, the others recoiled and immediately began to mutter at one another. None of them looked very upset, only a little wary and a lot disgusted.

Meoraq, on the other hand, just kept staring at her. After a while, he closed his eyes and went someplace private with his God. He was gone a long time. His eyes opened. His head cocked, demonstrating resignation and some small amount of humor. He took a deep breath and said, “I know there are maggots in you, insufferable woman. I put them there.”

And as Amber still reeled from that, he bent down and began to put them back.

The panic was gone and the adrenaline with it. She could do nothing but sob out wailing, incoherent pleas as he scraped up all the disturbed maggots and placed them carefully back in the wound. He put the compress back on. He loosely tied the bandage. Then, in that same calm, deliberate, God-alone-knows-how-hard-it-is-not-to-slap-you-woman voice, he said, “The maggots eat only dead flesh. They will clean your wound and at day’s end, I will wash them away.”