Black Man (13 page)

It had been a very long time.

He was not a virgin, not since the eleventh grade and Janey Wilkins, and Janey hadn’t exactly been the only one before he left for the Rim, either, though he tried not to take pride in that because he knew pride in it was wrong. But the girls had always come to him, no way to deny it. Scott took after his mother, was tall and long-legged, and he’d hardened his upper body in his early teens, putting in all the part-time hours he could get stringing fences and doing river security for the big Bitterroot land parcels so later he’d be able to pay his own way through tenth to twelfth grade and not be a burden or have to sign up for a youth stint with the marines if he wanted to finish out his education. And then, for all his muscle and length of limb, he was still soft-spoken and kind, and it seemed from what Janey told him that that didn’t hurt too much, either, when a girl was looking.

But in the Rim, something happened to him.

Maybe it was the fact that sex was suddenly everywhere—perfectly toned and tampered-with bodies, impossible to know if they were real flesh or generated v-format interfaces, but there they were, twining around each other on the big LCLS billboards, on storefront display screens, on those high-end pixelated shopping bags the women carried in fistfuls like a harvest of some big, brightly colored oblong fruit held up by the stalks and vines. There was flesh and liquid moaning on every nonfaith channel he had viewing access to, in every ad-tagged piece of mail he opened, on the
trash cans,
for God’s sake, and even, once, when he was down in the Freeport, sketched holographically across the sky and booming out of massive speakers along Venice Beach. Maybe it was that, the unending barrage, the overload of it all, or maybe it was just that he was heartsick for what he’d left behind. Whatever it was, by the end of the first year, the gentle confidence he’d
enjoyed back home had gone wisping off him like steam off a morning coffee left out on the porch. Had left him lonely and cold.

Carmen Ren burned through his loneliness like a falling star. Months of half-denied fantasy boiled up inside him. Her flesh where he touched it, where she guided his hands, was warm and smooth, and her tongue in his mouth tasted of some dark, unfamiliar spice. She peeled one of the profiler cups for him, dropped the jellied weight of the breast beneath into his hand. It seemed to fit there as if made for him to hold, as if intended that way. Her hands went back to his belt, loosened it and slipped inside. He went rigid as she slid fingers around the shaft of his erection, squeezed hard at her breast in reflex. She moaned into his mouth.

They worked each other out of the clothes piecemeal, stopping to kiss and touch until finally she lay back on the bedroll naked, brushed her own hands down her flanks, and opened her thighs for him. He shifted on elbows and hands, a little awkward with lack of custom, and then gasped as he slipped into her. The evening air was cool and breezy against his skin, and Carmen Ren was heated and wet inside. She smiled, shifted sideways lazily, did something with her muscles. He felt himself gripped along the length of his cock, a slippery, tugging intimacy, and then she pulled him down on top of her, lifted her thighs, and clamped them to his sides—they burned like branding in the cool—and he came, sudden and rushing unstoppable, jolting like there was current through him off some badly insulated cable.

He hung his head, stayed propped on his elbows.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled up at him again, wiggled a little and tensed her muscles around his fading hardness. “Don’t be.

You know how it makes me feel, seeing you lose control like that?”

“It’s just.” He could feel himself flushing. “Been a long time, you know.”

“Yeah, I guessed that. It doesn’t matter, Scott. We’ve got time. I like you inside me. We’ll go again when you’re ready.” Another twitch of that coiled muscle, and a sudden widening of her eyes. “Oh. In fact.”

He didn’t know if it was the way she talked, casual as she lay there under him, as if they were sitting in a breakfast diner together, or maybe just the fact that he had her here, the culmination of so many damp, hopeless daydreams when he went home from Ward BioSupply alone. Or maybe it was that word,
handmaiden,
drumming around in his head, still on his lips like the dark spice taste of her. He didn’t know, truth be told didn’t much care. He knew, because Janey had once told him, that he was uncommonly fast back in the saddle, but even for him this was something else. He felt himself hardening right there inside her, swelling against that thing she did with those muscles, and he knew this time it was going to be all right, was going to be a long, sweet ride.

Afterward, they lay in a tangle of limbs on the bedroll, backs to the peeling wall, partially draped with the sleeping bag and Ren’s jacket, gazing at the slice of evening sky just visible through the empty doorway that led outside. Scott thought the stars had never looked so bright and kind as they did tonight, not even back home. They seemed like sentinels, vibrating gently in the soft blue-black, wishing well. He told her that, and she chuckled deep in her chest.

“Postcoital astronomy,” she said.

“No,” he said, letting her have her joke, but firm despite it. “This is special, Carmen. We’re blessed tonight.”

She made a small, noncommittal noise and stretched a little.

“You know,” she told him, a little later. “It could be for a long time, this hiding. It’s going to be tough.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed a hand on the stubble of his cheek, mock roughly. “I imagine you’re used to tough, aren’t you.”

“Will RimSec come after us?”

“I don’t know.” Her tone was thoughtful. “There are people I’ve called to tidy up back at the dock.

They’ll cover our traces, that’ll be a start. We have friends, Scott. More friends than you’d imagine.”

“And enemies,” he said.

“Yeah. Enemies, too.”

He twisted his head to look into her face.

“Tell me the truth, Carmen. Is this the End Times? When the world goes down in flames, and the beast rises from the ocean with the names of blasphemy written upon him? Is that who we’re up against? The beast?”

She hesitated. “I don’t think so. He hasn’t talked about that. But I do know this much: somewhere out there, there’s a dark man looking for him, and for us. This man is a servant of the darkness, and that’s who we have to guard against, Scott. Both of us, whatever happens, we’re servants of the light and we have to keep watch. The black man is coming. And when he comes, we have to be ready to fight, if necessary to the death. Are you ready for that?”

“Of course I am. I’ll do anything. But…”

She shifted, pushing herself up against the wall so she could look him in the eye. “But what?”

Scott looked up at the ceiling. “Can’t
He
do anything about this black man?”

“Not yet,” she said gently. “At least, that’s what he tells me. It isn’t time. He has other concerns, Scott, other work to do. It’s complicated, I know, I don’t pretend to understand it all myself, but I know what’s been revealed to me, and all I can do is tell you the same. We have to have faith, Scott, that’s what he told me. That’s a Christian strength, isn’t it? Having faith, not questioning what’s revealed?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“And, yes, maybe this doesn’t make a lot of sense right now, but if we have faith, I think it will. We have a part to play in this, Scott. You have a part. There’s a reckoning in the wind, and, uh, a harrowing to come. Those who stand in its way will fall, those who follow in faith will be raised up.”

“Then, that means…” He squeezed her hand tightly. Blood thudded in him; he felt his groin stir faintly.

“He
has
come in judgment. It
is
the time.”

And then, abruptly, he remembered the gaunt, hollow-eyed stare of the stranger, remembered how it felt to be fixed by those eyes at close range, and looking up at the ceiling again he no longer felt the warm pulse of longed-for vindication, the affirmation of all he’d struggled to believe and hold true. Instead, out of nowhere, he remembered those eyes, that stripped-to-the-bone face, and all he felt was cold, and afraid.

A reckoning in the wind.

Fifty kilometers outside Van Horn, Interstate Highway 10 laid down a luminescent pale strip of gray in the desert night, stretching away toward low, horizon-hugging mountain ranges whose names the man calling himself Eddie Tanaka had never bothered to learn. Stars punctured the velvet blue-black above like knife points, sharp white contrast to the dull red glowing orbs of the autohaul rigs below as they hammered along through the darkness in both directions, following the highway with insectile machine focus. Rising drone, blastpast rush of dark noise and wind, drone collapsing back into the distance.

Passing the garish LCLS lights of Tabitha’s with a detachment no human driver could have mustered.

Well, maybe a gleech,
he allowed sourly.
They don’t got much use for this kind of merchandise
.

He glanced up at the brothel’s skyline billboard—the name in vampiric spidery red lettering the original Tabitha would never have agreed to if she hadn’t sold up and moved to the Rim as soon as she had the capital. Behind the spiky-thin lettering, as if caged in by it, female figures switched back and forth in full flesh-toned color, pixeled almost—but, legal requirements and all, not quite—up to human footage perfect.

Gleech wouldn’t be out here on the highway anyway. They don’t drive.

That you know of.

That Kenan knew of, and he fucking
was
one, smart guy
.

Smart guy? Yeah, you’re some fucking smart guy, Max, out in the parking lot of Tabitha’s with whore’s snot on your jacket and not even a blow job to show for it. All your plans and schemes, your carve-out-a-new-life bullshit, look where you’re standing still. Snot on your clothes and no blow job.

That’s how fucking smart you are, smart guy.

“Smart guy…”

He heard his own mutter, final echo off the abrupt, tinny dispute he’d just mounted in his head, knew he was subvocalizing again, knew why. Knew, too, why he hadn’t bothered, couldn’t
be
bothered to push Chrissie into blowing him.

Never can fucking leave it at just one shot, can you.

He’d dumped the synadrive into his eyes a couple of hours earlier, and the thing was, this was quality product, right out of his own stash, not the stepped-on shit he shifted to the kids in Van Horn and Kent on a Saturday night. So he fucking well
knew
he’d only need that single squirt—and initially that was what he settled for, just the one dropperload dribbled down onto the quivering surface of his left eye, what the kids called pirate dosage. But pirate shots always, fucking
always,
left him feeling weirdly unbalanced, and that was on a good night-which tonight wasn’t—and so as the synadrive came on, that feeling of fucked-up symmetry built and fucking
built
until it seemed like the whole right side of his body was just too slow and sleepy to bear, and so he gave in and tipped his head back one more time before he hit the road, and the fluid rolled down his right eyeball like tears.

Was a time,
he recalled,
you had the disicipline. Discipline or self-respect, either way something that wouldn’t let you do this to yourself
.

He was remembering that time a lot these days, staring into mirrors at rooms he abruptly couldn’t believe he belonged in, wondering how he’d wound up here and where it had all leaked away to. That time when syn was a tool like any other, useful and used with a wired confidence that would have been arrogance if it hadn’t all felt so fucking clean and right. Back before it all turned to shit and a black pall of smoke across a Wyoming sundown sky.

Was a time…

Sure. And there was another fucking time the summers never seemed to end and you’d never paid for it in your life. Remember that? Time passes, Max—get over it. Skip the fucking nostalgia, let’s get where we’re at.

And here he was. Snot and no blow job, out in the night.

He wiped a hand down his jacket, not bothering to look. The synadrive hooked in visual memory and sparked a link to neuromotor precision, put the gesture right on target, and his fingers came away gummy with the snot. He rubbed them back and forth, grimacing. He didn’t need this shit right now, not the way things were. Not like he didn’t have enough stress. He told her, he fucking
told
her he had other stuff cooking, stuff that needed managing, not like this pimping shit was his main gig—

Yeah, right,
the syn told him crisply.
How many years we been saying that, exactly? Smart guy?

Different this time. This pays off like it has been, this time next year we’re out. Out for good.

And if it doesn’t?

If it doesn’t, we’re already set up to cover. Quit worrying.

Set up to cover, yeah. And go on being a pimp for life. What you going to do about Chrissie then?

What he was going to do then, he reflected somberly, was going to
have
to do about Chrissie then, was probably something violent. Should have seen that one all along—fucking bitch always had been high maintenance, even back in Houston when she was still working street corners. Cotton-candy mane of blond and that manicured fucking Texan drawl, and now the subcute tit work he’d gotten for her, he should have fucking known she’d start with the airs and graces as soon as she settled in at Tabitha’s.

Acting just like she actually was the bonobo purebred they’d packaged her as. Calling him at all hours, or pushing Tabitha’s management so they called instead, bitching about how she wouldn’t work on account of some headache or stomach cramp or just plain didn’t like some fat fuck who’d paid good money to get between her legs, sitting there on the fucking bed bright-eyed and whining
Eddie this, Eddie that, Eddie the fucking other,
forcing him to wheel out the whole nine yards of bully-threaten-cajole like it was some favorite comic routine she liked to see him do.

So why the fuck didn’t you just take Serena or Maggie for that subcute work instead. Either one’d be half the fucking trouble.

In the hyperlucid blast of the syn, he knew why. But he turned on his heel and put the knowledge at his back along with the blink-blink carnal come-on of Tabitha’s skyline billboard. The relative gloom of the softly lit parking lot darkened his vision. He blinked hard to adjust.

“Hello, Max.”

The voice jolted him as he blinked, kicked him back to the Scorpion memories, to times and places so vivid he opened his eyes and almost expected to find himself back there, back before Wyoming in that other, cleaner time.

But he wasn’t.

He was still here, in the deserted parking lot of a second-rate Texas bordello, with a sassy whore’s snot drying on his fingers and too much syn for his own good sparking through his brain.

The figure detached itself from the shadows around his car, stood to face him. Soft violet light from the lot’s marker lamps threw the form into silhouette, killed facial recognition. But something about the stance chased up the memories the voice had stirred. The syn gave him a name, features to put on the darkened form. He stared, trying to make sense of it.

“You?”

The figure shifted, made a low gesture with one hand.

“But…” He shook his head. “You… You’re on fucking
Mars,
man.”

The figure said nothing, waited. Eddie moved closer, arms raised toward a tentative hugging embrace.

“When’d you get back? I mean, man, what are you
doing
back here?”

“Don’t you know?”

He made a baffled smile, genuine in its origins. “No, man, I’ve got no fucking—”

—and the smile collapsed, bleached out with sudden understanding.

For just an instant, the desert quiet and the rushing away of an autohauler on the highway.

He clawed across his belly, under his jacket. Had fingers hooked around the butt of the compact Colt Citizen he kept cling-padded at his belt—He’d moved too close.

The knowledge dripped through him, and it was a Scorpion knowing from that other time, somehow sad and slow despite the speed at which he could see it all coming apart. The figure snapped forward, bruising grip on his wrist, and pinned his gun arm where it was. He flung up a warding left arm, chopped at the other man’s throat, or face, or,
too close, too fucking close in,
and here came the block, he had nothing, could do nothing. A low kick took out his legs from under him, a full-body shove, and he went down. He rolled, desperately, don’t let the fucker get on you with his boots, land on your back maybe, the gun, the
fucking
gun—The cling-clip held. He got a grip of the Colt’s butt again, dragged it loose and sprawled backward with a snarl of relief, raising the pistol, the Citizen had no safety, just squeeze hard and—The figure stood over him, black against the sky. Arm down, pointing—And something flattened him to the
ground again, something with god-like force.

Muffled crack. His ears took it in, but it took him a couple of moments to assign it any importance. The stars were right overhead. He watched them, abruptly fascinated. They seemed a lot closer than you’d expect, hanging low, like they’d taken a sudden interest.

He wheezed, felt something leaking rapidly, like cold water in his chest. He knew what it was. The syn forced a merciless clarity.

He lifted his head and it was the hardest work he’d ever done, as if his skull were made of solid stone.

He made out the figure of the other man, arm still pointing down at him like some kind of judgment.

“I figured you’d fight,” said the voice. “But it’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it. Too long. Maybe that’s why.”

Why what?
he wondered muzzily. He coughed, tasted blood in his throat. Wondered also what Chrissie was going to do now, stupid little bitch.

“I think you’re done,” said the voice.

He tried to nod, but his head just fell back on the gritty surface of the lot, and this time it stayed there.

The stars, he noticed, seemed to be dimming, and the sky looked colder than it had before, less velvet-soft and more like the open void it really was.

Dead in a brothel parking lot, for fuck’s sake.

He heard the blastpast of another autohauler out on the highway, saw in his mind’s eye the cozy red glow of its taillights accelerating away into the darkness.

He ran to catch up.