Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (19 page)

He tiptoed around, getting dressed. The
frogs watched him carefully, hoping that it was mealtime. They were
to be disappointed. The distraction of purpose sent him out the
door without even a glance in their direction.

A toe ached from where he’d stubbed it
fumbling around in the dark. Sa’andy hadn’t stirred. Maybe all that
stuff she’d gotten off her chest had freed her up to sleep
completely for once.

A few minutes later, he had slipped into his
office, and was bypassing security to obtain an outside connection.
It was an older method of communication, without the nice hi-res of
current visuals, but it would do. Hopefully, he’d get through.

“
Jorge? Is that you?” An older woman
came into view, her silvery hair wound tightly up into a regulation
bun. Even with a terrible connection, he could see her dark eyes
twinkling. She was pleased to hear from him.

“
Ma’am. Sorry to contact you on the
low band.” Why did he always felt like a schoolboy in her
presence?

“
I would imagine that there is good
reason.” She resonated with the dignity and authority she’d been
practicing for some thirty years.

“
I…need to know some things.” He gave
as detailed an account as he could, given his own role in the
hiding of all this information from official record. “General, you
know I wouldn’t call you unless I couldn’t get what I needed some
other way.”

The older woman was silent for several
moments, her dark eyes closing in consideration. He had already
asked a great deal. But he was kin, after all.

۞

“
I realize that it’s probably been a
while….”

“
You could probably stop
talking.”

“
I like a little banter, don’t
you?”

“
Maybe next time.” She pulled him back
close. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“
No.” In reality, the moment was so
powerful, he felt strangely inebriated. The way she watched him
overwhelmed his senses and thoughts. It wasn’t merely a physical
attraction. He’d had plenty of experience with that. It had always
proved to be temporary and disposable. This was
different.

“
Then what?”

“
I don’t know what you’re doing to
me.” He still couldn’t figure out what color her eyes
were.

“
The feeling is mutual.” She put a
wondering hand up to his cheek, as if to punctuate the thought.
They had made it halfway across the small living room in a
circuitous manner. Her heart felt excruciatingly tight. “I’m going
to complicate the hell out of you.”

“
I don’t care.” He carefully worked
off the shirt she’d put on, the dampness of her skin hanging onto
it reluctantly. His hands moved from her neck, down her arms,
finally resting on her hips. Briefly, he noted the jagged scar that
ran from her hipbone to her navel. She seemed to sense it, and
tried to cover herself. Angry tears rose, but did not fall. He
kissed them away, taking hold of her hands. “I know what I said
before….”

“
I trust you.” She laughed dryly. “I
just don’t trust me.”

He ignored the bait, not wanting to lose the
moment, and pulled off his own shirt. Placing her hand over a scar
on his chest, the one that had almost taken him into the next
world, he smiled at her shock.

“
I told you. We all end up in the dark
at one point or another. It just seems like we’re alone, because we
can’t see past ourselves.” He held her hand on his chest and let
his body take the lead. The floor was as good as anywhere. They
moved together as if half-starved, each trying to fill a vast
emptiness.

۞

“
Well, I am your
mârraine
, Jorge. And you never ask for
anything.”

“
Can you help?”

“
I will see,
jenn jan
. This is a strange story indeed, one I
have never heard before.” His godmother pursed her lips at him.
“You are looking thin, is not that girl of yours feeding
you?”

“
Yes, ma’am, she is. And I know it’s a
crazy story. If I wasn’t here, living it, I would never believe
it.”

“
Hmph. That is how we may know its
truth, perhaps. It will take me some time to ask questions without
stirring up the bees, you know this.”

“
I do. Since we don’t know what we’d
be stirring up, I have to assume it would be bad. Sa’andy said that
whatever these people have to do, that it would be
dangerous.”

“
But she won’t tell you any
more?”

“
I don’t know that she can. She’s not
telling me everything, that’s for sure, but I don’t think she’s on
the wrong side of this.”

“
And you, what happens if she is? Can
you make the right decision then?”

“
I’ll have to let Dmitry take the lead
on that, I guess.”

“
Il est vraiment
bête
. Don’t trust him to do what you
cannot.”

“
I trust him with my life.”

“
Well, be ready with a shovel for him
to dig you a hole.” The general was not one to forgive bad judgment
yet, clearly.

“
Passer
l'éponge
,
Madame
. He’s certainly paid for his mistakes to
my mind.”

“
As you say. Let us hope, anyway.” She
made her farewells and signed off, promising to let him know
anything that came to her attention. Tark wondered how she would
have reacted to the idea of Dmitry in love again. It was probably
better if that news was kept quiet for now. Rebecca was not that
distant a memory to some people.

۞

The girl he’d brought back was not what he’d
been hoping for. She’d deliberately ditched her friends, he saw
now, telling them exactly who she was going after. It wouldn’t work
for him to do anything. Utterly ignorant, she’d foiled him without
even knowing it. Luckily for the young woman, he was a creature of
some small restraint, and though his disappointment was barely
palpable, she read it.

“
Your loss.” And she was gone,
forgetting him as quickly her last drink. He shrugged off the loss,
refocused, searching and scanning until he found something new.
More and more ships were arriving every day, filling the station
back up to capacity. Distraction would not be long off. He still
had his job to do, the little voice of remonstrance said to him.
Ah, that would be the perfect outlet after a frustrating evening.
Responsibility in favor of frivolity.
He, the man of
shadow and sorrow, slouched back into the throngs.

۞

They finally fell asleep, far too
late to be of much use the next day. Saturday was the smiling balm
to that difficulty. It didn’t stop Dmitry from waking half a dozen
times, fearing he was late for duty. Between that and a dream of
Tark punching him in the throat, it wasn’t a particularly restful
sleep.

Maeve seemed not to have any
trouble in that area right then. She’d said she was prone to waking
frequently. That sleep itself was not something she enjoyed
anymore. He couldn’t blame her. It probably felt like she wouldn’t
come back one of these nights. Over two hundred years of being
comatose, its effects weren’t cumulative. Her body still needed
rest, in spite of not wanting it.

He looked over at her. She was in
oblivion, hugging a pillow tightly. Her skin shone in the dim glow
of the dying candle they’d lit hours before. They had progressed
from the living room into the bedroom, taking their time. Neither
of them had wanted to come to a finish. Dmitry was surprised to
find he hadn’t cared about the end result at all.

Suddenly, he saw Rebecca for the
first time in six years, as a ghost walking into the distance. She
was bleeding away. He almost tried to cling to her, to grieve a bit
longer, knowing at the same time that she needed to leave. It was
time for peace, for both of them. He blinked and she was
gone.

He looked at this new face, which
had erased the old. This newness was a blank canvas, upon which his
fingers drew new forms, delving into her. They had turned in a new
universe. Maeve hung from its edge, dangling uncertainly until he
brought her back. She opened her eyes, to see with fresh vision,
how light and color had changed themselves. And she watched. He
found her wrists, blindly gripping them, urging himself into the
unknown.

Maeve wanted to let go. She felt
the difference in the way Dmitry touched her, knowing she hadn’t
been touched that way before. Before was about being pulled along,
being demanded upon, it was still steeped in loss and inequity.
This was about being carried. It felt as though his hands could
hold her together and keep her from flying into a million
pieces.

She shivered, and he drew closer,
warming her with his lips.
They threw
themselves from the edge of their cosmos together, twisting,
burning, and exhaling; twin stars coming into being. He felt as
though he’d known her for all those hundreds of years, while she’d
slept. As though he had been with her in the darkness.

She had tasted that darkness far
too frequently. She had fallen off the wall, with far too many bits
of broken shell scattered around. How long had she been gluing
herself back together? Forever, in the dark. This man, though, he
had a torchlight, and a map. He was leading her out. Into what or
where, she did not yet know. Perhaps the time had come to stop
worrying and be led to safety.

۞
Earthside – the Med
.

“Ah, there you are finally, Boko.
What did you do, leave the country for the weekend?”

“Yes, Mr. Warden. I apologize for
being absent. Did you need me for anything?”

“No apology necessary! I’m merely
jealous when anybody else gets away from it all and leaves me
behind. Anywhere interesting?” Warden was half-heartedly reading
through his daily correspondence. Boko was prepared to lie; his
grandfather had paid for an alibi thousands of miles away from
where he’d actually been.

“Pattaya.”

“Oh-ho, why didn’t you say you
needed a little R&R? I would have given you more time off,
cowboy. You didn’t happen to see a little stripper by the name of
Bai, did you? What fast fingers that girl had; she’d rob you blind
and leave you limp, languishing in the Thai heat. But that was
years ago. She’d probably be at least twenty-two by now.” Warden
didn’t bother to notice whether Boko gave a damn about his
anecdote. Boko was in the midst of trying not to calculate the age
that the stripper might have been whenever Warden had been with
her. His shoulders strained against a shudder of
disgust.

“You see Boko, the reason you’re
able to go and get your rocks off in places like Pattaya still is
because of us. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. We keep things
in balance. Don’t forget it.” Warden smiled and smacked Boko
happily on the cheek several times. Boko breathed heavily, weighing
the possibility of what would happen to him if Warden ever found
out where he’d really been.

“Have we gotten anywhere with the
situation that was developing?” He busied himself with Warden’s
agenda for the day.

“The good doctor saved us some
money and dealt with herself. I mean, really, wanting to inform
news agencies, and publish a paper on the whole thing! It’s just as
well she‘s gone.” Warden paused to smell the cigar that he was
rolling between a thumb and forefinger. It was the only thing he
could do with it, anymore. “As for the others, well, we’re taking
our time to assure complete success. It’s my suspicion that there
are planetside connections that haven’t been fully discovered. But
when I do….” He crushed the cigar with one swift squeeze, and let
it fall to the ground, scattering a cloud of tiny fragments at his
feet. “Let us say that I am like a cobra on the hunt.” Warden
stared at the debris on the ground with a mixture of satisfaction
and dismay. Then, he walked off the terrace, into his offices, just
as if he were any other normal man.

“The cobra does battle with the
mongoose, and dies because he does not believe he can be defeated.”
Boko whispered this to himself, wishing that he hadn’t had to
return to this particular cobra’s den. Grandfather had been firm
about completing the circle, though. Only a few more weeks and then
the whole thing would come to a crashing halt, if all went to plan.
Boko only hoped that he’d be able to get clear before all hell
broke loose.

۞

Jemi had withdrawn from the others.
She was hiding out in a massive library, which sprawled over two
acres of levels. It was open-air, with climate controlled glass
cabinets to protect the books, some of which were centuries old.
She was curled up in a corner sofa, poring over history books,
trying to understand the past, which she had once thought of as the
future.

Birds sang just outside, just loudly
enough to conceal the whisper of soft movement nearby. She didn't
hear anything, engrossed as she was in the development of
environmental legislation in the latter half of the twenty-first
century.

She was cursing aloud over a notation
concerning test drilling in Alaska when a hand clamped over her
mouth. She fought the urge to panic, and merely bit down hard onto
a couple of fingers. She heard a familiar yelp, sighed, then turned
around to find Josh nursing his hand. He tried his best to give her
a baleful glare. It was difficult, given the rather foolish
expression that was competing with it.