A Paradigm of Earth (30 page)

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Authors: Candas Jane Dorsey

Tags: #Science Fiction

BOOK: A Paradigm of Earth
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“It is very slow for us. Some people never get it.”
“I was built for speed.”
She was laughing as she went back out into the living room, where a great many dancing bodies stepped aside for her. One was Aziz, dancing with Tony. Aziz blushed and looked away, then back at her. She smiled as widely as she could manage.
“Just a minute, sweetie,” he said to Tony, and wriggled through the crowd after Morgan. “I’m really sorry,” he said to her. “I’ve been meaning to say that for a while. My cousin—”
“Forget about your cousin. He’s gone and you’re here. That’s all that matters. Jakob’s … busy, if you were looking for him …”
“No, I just came to dance.”
Morgan, remembering Jakob’s complaint, chuckled. “Dance on, then!”
Delany was talking with Lorne, who leaned over her wheelchair with a proprietary air.
I wish Daphne had chosen differently
, Morgan thought.
He’s so straight and condescending.
Delany’s face was glowing. This was one of the times Morgan felt her heart fling straight toward Delany like an arrow. Blue’s sweet talk seemed always to put her in the mood for the human race, together but also separately, one by glorious one, as Delany was a glorious one.
When Delany spoke and smiled, she would sometimes draw her mouth into a smile that was more like a grimace, like a certain type of British moue, and the effort would sometimes make the cords stand out in her neck. Morgan marveled at the paradox that Delany’s great beauty and charisma pulled through these grimaces that momentarily distorted Delany’s fine-boned classic face. Classic of what?—some normative human head-shape, some communal cheekbone structure that often seemed Asian, sometimes Slavic or Finnish, occasionally Norse or Scandinavian, and only rarely suggested the Anglo-Norman. How could that face support, contain such a world of references? And how could it then spasm from beauty to grotesquery and back in, if not a split-second, then a split-moment? If there was such a split thing as a moment.
Delany turned her head and saw Morgan, and the smile, that Morgan thought was already wide, became luminous. Morgan walked to her, put a hand on her shoulder, suddenly felt she had done it for her own support as she felt the love weaken and strengthen her.
There are times when a thought breaks through the skin like storm through sky. Morgan knew one of these moments now. She watched Delany swivel her chair away from the closing door and into the living room, something Morgan had seen possibly hundreds of times before. This time, Morgan knew that Delany expected nothing from this night. She knew that Delany long ago had learned to prune her expectations into dwarves, like the Chinese art of
penjing
, later called
bonsai
by the Japanese, the art of stunting great trees into tiny, twisted fantasias, the art of torturing seedlings and saplings into adopting smallness, exploiting their defense of their essential natures to create a defiance of nature.
Morgan could not let another night of this go by. If she had learned nothing from the tortuous nature of living, she had learned that the truth must be told as soon as possible. The hard lessons of learning it were taught by death and loss. Her dreams of the last several months had been clouded with the words she had never spoken to the people she loved. Except Vik. As she followed Delany back through the dimly lit rooms to the bright kitchen Morgan chuckled. She and Vik had spoken too many of the truths, and that was another lesson.
Enough is as good as a feast
.
“What?” said Delany, answering the chuckle.
“Thinking about you,” Morgan said, and in the hard yellow light of the kitchen, littered with the detritus of the departed party guests, she leaned down to Delany, echoed by her reflection in the panes of the circular corner windows so that several of her at different angles reached down to hold Delany awkwardly but comfortably, several shadowy ghosts leaned over the corner of the wheelchair to kiss Delany’s head, and in a flurry of glittering refraction, several Delanys turned their shadow chairs accidentally at just that moment so that suddenly the Morgans were off balance, and leaned a little too far, and laughed again, and regained their balance.
After that she could not see her cohort of reflected selves, and self-reflectiveness lost out to immediate experience, and she went down on one knee and said to Delany, “Thinking about kissing you,” and she did.
As she did, she felt suddenly like several metaphors at once. She felt armor crack and fall away, armor she could hardly do without. She felt a mirror crack too, and a web float out and unravel. She felt a burst of fear and desire, and a sense of inevitable destruction. She felt suddenly mortal, and she hated it. She felt suddenly hot with a flush of lust spread to the same places orgasm reached, but with a pang that was almost pain, it was so sudden: this was readiness, and if she had had any fear left for herself in the world, she might—considering what that readiness might be preparing her for—have been frightened. However, in the same way that she had abandoned silence and the palimpsest of adolescent shyness which always tries to bleed through during someone’s sexual beginnings with loved ones, she had also abandoned unnecessary self-cautions.
“Don’t you think, my friend,” she said, “that it is time we did something about this?” And having said it, Morgan was struck with a paradoxical wave of teenaged angst so atavistic and stereotyped that she was laughing as she buried her head against Delany’s chest. Delany’s strong hands against her head and back inflamed her, and she was filled with a bubble of mixed elation and despair.
I’ve done it
,
I’ve said it
,
she’s sweet as I thought
, said the fizz of joy, while the despair wailed,
we’ll never manage this
,
I don’t know what to do, why the fuck am I letting myself get reached this way?
“Morgan,” said Delany, “are you laughing or crying?”
I’m not sure
, thought Morgan, but hanging in that uneasy place was too perilous, so she drew back and looked again at Delany. Delany’s face was luminous in the garish light, and Morgan said, “Let’s go upstairs … all right?” and Delany, licking her lips to moisten them, nodded.
“Here, let me do that,” said Morgan, and kissed her again, a sloppy passionate intense untidy kiss that made them laugh against each other’s lips, laughter that transformed midway into something, something, something else.
On the way up in the elevator Morgan felt Delany draw into herself again, and wasn’t surprised when she heard her say, “Morgan, are you sure?”
“What do you mean, sure? I know what I know. Are you worried?”
“No,” said Delany softly, and pulled Morgan’s hand to her lips, but Morgan felt her quiet as disquiet. The elevator arrived noisily, and Morgan held the gate back for Delany to wheel ahead into Delany’s room.
No negotiation
, thought Morgan.
But I suppose it’s the bed: she has to be comfortable
,
and my low bed is not exactly
… She closed the door behind her, leaned over the back of the chair, and began to kiss Delany’s neck.
How will I do this?
she thought.
I’ll be awkward
,
what if I hurt her
… and meanwhile the ache of desire only mounted. Morgan was surprised how intense it was.
Morgan helped Delany from her clothes, each unveiling suddenly fraught with a shiver of anticipation and desire. Then Delany levered herself from the wheelchair, and Morgan steadied her as she had done many times, this time thinking
ah, she is taller than I am
,
but so slight,
but this time went down with her as Delany lay back on the bed—
Lord
,
she is so slender and her body so weak
,
she is like the ideal Victorian woman
—which was never one of Morgan’s pet fantasies.
Do I know what to do?
Delany reached out for Morgan, for her hands which were touching Delany’s body, and her touch was light as always when she thanked for service, not hard and hungry as it had been downstairs. Delany’s hands were hot—and then her grip released, suddenly not there: Morgan felt the air cool the sweat from her wrists.
“I don’t … if you were a man I’d know what to do.” Not the words she expected, they stopped Morgan cold, shaking with whatever it was, fear, anger, thwarted lust—love? Dammit.
“What?”
“If you were a man. I know men. As soon as they touch me all gentle and soft I know what they’re going to be like. It revolts them to see this body react, but it makes them feel superior too. Then I never see them again, or else I do and they can’t forget what I looked like and they’re careful to be polite. I don’t want to see that look on your face.”
Morgan tried to decide what to do, whether she could find the incredible energy needed to move, to overcome the tide that was ready to wash Morgan away from Delany, from the bed. Morgan touched her shoulder; Delany tried to shake Morgan’s hand away but Morgan was the strong one, without wasted muscles, and held her. Fury, Morgan decided, and said angrily, “You’ve known me this long, and you get me out on this limb here, and then you pull the crip routine?
How dare you?
” Morgan was almost shaking her, forcing herself from self-doubt into self-righteousness. Delany’s face had a life and fury Morgan had never seen in it, and she looked magnificent, Morgan’s belly turned to ice, then fire.
“Let me go!” Delany struggled. “You don’t know what to do either, do you? You think I’ll break? One minute I lost my nerve and right away you’re ready to back out. Well, you aren’t so hot yourself!”
Morgan took away her hands, put them on the bed on either side of Delany, to support her weight as she bent over Delany to whisper, “That’s the one thing you couldn’t be more wrong about. I am so hot I am close to spontaneous combustion, and it’s true, I’m scared as hell. But I’ll try if you will.” Morgan bent her head to Delany, lips to her cheek. When she lifted her lips away, Delany turned her head so her mouth was under Morgan’s, and they kissed again, hunger restored and meeting—
—and they were clumsy, sometimes, but it was all right. It was a new way to move, Morgan arcing around and above Delany, but she tasted as sweet as Morgan thought she would.
She’s stronger than I expected her to be
, thought Morgan, then,
why not strong? She wheels the chair, lifts in and out, does everything with upper
-
body strength
…
“What?” said Delany, holding Morgan suspended above ecstasy, and laughed when Morgan told her. Delany’s coming at first scared Morgan, then delighted her, and the whole house probably heard Morgan’s (as well as the usual listeners, Morgan thought with an edge of awareness) though they had to work hard together for their consummation. The last thing before sleep, Delany said, “I need to sleep on my side, it’s easier to breathe,” so Morgan curled behind her, which was her favorite way to sleep with a lover anyway, and over Delany’s shoulder saw her wheelchair a silhouette in the dim light from dawn coming through the shade, heard the birds starting to wake up in the surrounding trees and Blue’s door closing/opening softly, background noise.
And for Morgan sleep, and dreams, and waking to Delany’s sweet smell and taste, and that was Friday night.
In the gloaming of dawn Morgan awakened suddenly, not sure at first where she was. It had been a vivid terrifying dream—fading rapidly now—of two antagonists struggling, then a prone body, all in shadows. She got up, went upstairs quietly to Blue’s room, but the bed was empty. Back to the living room, down the long shadowy stair, the dream-fear lingering in the darker corners, and Blue was there, looking out the window at the full moon. Morgan realized with a shock that the days, the weeks, the months had gone by, and she was not only still alive, she was loving, and loving this alien fiercely, with all her all-too-human heart. And that in knowing this intimate distant blue one she had changed, changed into someone, something new.
“Your dream was too real,” Blue said. “So was mine. I think … it might have frightened me …” A long pause, and when Blue spoke, it was with a preoccupied manner that unsettled Morgan. “You and Delany together, it is very beautiful.”
“And you and Anne?”
“She went home. She was not very pleased with the alien.”
“The alien?”
“Do you know the book about the language with no word for ‘I’? For a long time it was that way with me. For Anne, always that way for me. In the crunch, I think you say.”
“In the clutch?”
“That too. She wanted a blue woman. Very hard for her to realize that I could please her, and still be so different, she had to learn a new technique. When I didn’t have the right shape, a vagina, vulva, clitoris, she was disturbed.”
“Like Jakob looking for your penis.”
“But Jakob at least understood that he wouldn’t find what he expected, and he reached out to me anyway. You knew about that by a dream?”
“Yes. It was a fine dream. I didn’t know it was real then.”
In the dark, with almost all Morgan’s barriers gone, with that malevolent image from her sleep fading in the moonlight and Blue’s company, it was easy not to be afraid that she could have true dreams.
“And with Delany you were satisfied. Yes?”

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