The Transmigration of Souls (53 page)

Feeling that special sensation. Feeling it build right up and threaten to overflow. Warmth in her face and warmth in her fingers. Wondering why it bored Mother so. Wondering why... Then that first hard pulse, astonishing pulse of sensation redoubled, sensation echoing, echoing and fading away so slowly, leaving her filled with warm lassitude.

Richardson on her now, hips rocking back and forth ever so slightly, rubbing gently against the hard bone and muscle of her hip, against the ridge of her pelvic blade.

Kincaid thinking, I’ve got to make her stop. Even if I’m just imagining things, I’ve got to make her stop.

Richardson’s face, wet with tears, rubbing against hers. Richardson trying to kiss her, gently, first on the cheek, then on the lips.

Kincaid near panic, but... Taking Richardson by the hip, intending to hold her still, intending to make her stop, Richardson seeming to take that as active cooperation, thrusting forward harder now, spreading warm moisture on her skin. “Mandy...”

Richardson whispering in her ear, “Oh, Sergeant. Oh, please... please.” Soft, gentle, not so much a plea as a pleasure.

Kincaid holding still then, one hand on the other woman’s rump, feeling her rub, rub, rub away down there, letting herself be kissed, but not cooperating. Just being still, Just accepting that it might be... necessary.

Image remembered, of Mandy in the latrine, raped and bloody. Who knows what she needs? Not me. Mandy gasping against her, softly, ever so softly, warmth and wet increasing down below. Then Mandy so still beside her, holding her close. Finally, Mandy’s small hand stealing down into her crotch, fingers starting to probe.

Kincaid’s big hand intervening.

Soft whisper, “Sergeant? You’re so nice and wet now...”

Stomach crawling with desire. Heart crawling with bewilderment. This woman is my friend. Is that what friendship means? Also my responsibility. Am I responsible for this? Maybe I’ve done enough. Maybe... too much? Don’t know.

She said, “We’d better get some sleep. Morning’s coming.”

You could feel Mandy’s puzzlement, expressed by the tension in her body, but... “OK.” Snuggling close with a sigh...

It took a long time for the darkness to go away by itself, for the sun to rise, while little Mandy slept, safe and sound, secure, avenged, while Kincaid lay awake.

I killed a man tonight. Now I don’t know why. For friendship? And what is that?

o0o

Kincaid running through the darkness, through absolute darkness, running alone now, boots
tock-tocking
away on the invisible pavement, sound echoing off unseen buildings, off surfaces unknown.

Morning. Morning always comes, no matter how dark the night. Mandy smiling at me as she put her underwear back on. Troopers smiling at me, sly men’s smiles, appraising women’s smiles, as I went off to the showers in my own underwear. Showered among my soldiers, women just... looking at me. You could tell which ones were the Lesbians now, even if you didn’t already know. That look in the eye, saying, Do
I
want some of that? Maybe just the way they started to pose for her, try to get her attention...

No matter. It would fade in time. Just an aberration. Happens sometimes. They’d see her with men again. Noncoms from her own cohort-in-rank. Would remember seeing two sergeants, a man and a woman, equal stripes, equal hashmarks, slinking into a motel room, hand in hand...

Then the messhall, looking for the table where her friends would be. Other people sitting there, just now, chattering amiably. Women scattered, sitting at other tables, with other sergeants and corporals. Puzzled. These are my friends. We... did it together. Then the investigation. Being called to testify, one by one. When did you see him last? Where? How did you feel about him? Why? Wondering if anyone would break. No one did. Investigation eventually turned over to the local police. Captain Bergeron, it seems, getting a little careless. Wallet was empty, after all. Just killed by some thug or another, probably never find out which one.

No one thought to rob him. Probably spent it all on booze and whores. Astrid Kincaid running alone, running right through her life. Running through the darkness, waiting for pink streamers of light to form up ahead, heralding the dawn. What if I’m running the wrong way? What if I’m running toward midnight?

You’ll know
. A whisper in her heart. A familiar voice. Voice of the angels? No.

o0o

Then Astrid Kincaid running alone, running barefoot, running naked down a dusty forest path, sun bright overhead, beyond a gray screen of trees, sheen of sweat on body and limbs, long brown hair streaming out behind her as she ran, heart thudding away in her chest, heart so perfect, so damnably immortal, burn of perfect conditioning everywhere, as her arms and legs flew.

She burst out of the forest, ran to the edge of the cliff and stopped, panting, pulse pounding in her temples, muscles quivering on the edge of exhaustion, reserves played out, everything done now.

Finished.

Sky overhead a soft lilac hue. Feathery gray grass rising round her ankles. Vista before her of a wide, alien landscape, lit by the light of a blue-gray sun. Stars twinkling through the purple haze, first magnitude stars aglitter overhead. In the distance a city, a magic city. City of the dead. Tall pastel towers in pale yellow, pink, light blue, bright gray. Silvery roads, aerial paths winding back and forth among them.

“Remember when we were the first ones here, Astrid Astride?”

Spinning round, sweat flying off her brow, soggy hair slapping the side of her neck and sticking. Pudgy naked man sitting on a dark gray stone, plump Caucasian body covered with a dense fur of reddish-black hair, gray hair on his head, face looking so old, so startlingly old...

He was only fifty-six the last time I saw him. Not so very old. Not
this
old...

“Dale.” Nothing else to stay, standing here, watching him look at you. Familiar interplay of eyes on your body. He’ll look at your face, yes, try to keep looking at it because he knew he was supposed to, but... Lingering on your breasts. Following the outline of your hips. Hardly lingering at all, though. Circling round and round and round, headed for the inevitable center...

Usually, by this time, he’d have an erection.

Yes. There it is.

Is this all there is at the end? I find my long-lost, longed-for lover and he fucks me and that’s that? Do we live happily ever after now? A little twist beginning inside. A spike of ancient revulsion.

Dale Millikan laughed his familiar laugh, and said, “Oh, Astrid. I wish I’d known you before you grew that hard, ugly shell.”

When was that? Before I was born?

A sigh. “Maybe so. Plenty of worlds out there in which you get the chance to be... someone different.”

And, in those worlds, I
am
someone different.

A slow nod, a knowing frown. “You understand that much about the Multiverse, at least.”

That perverse little thing sticking out of his middle, nodding just a bit as he breathes. Waiting for me to take notice of it. Memory of passion spent, of lying here, naked, atop this same cliff, of feeling him thrust away inside you, waiting for the warm spill of seed, seed spilled on barren ground... Why am I here?

He smiled. Shrugged. “Because you let yourself get tangled up in the machinery, Astrid Astride. Tangled up in the machinery until you couldn’t go home again. Until your home was well and truly lost.”

Is it gone, Dale? Did the Space-Time Juggernaut come?

“The Jug always comes, Astrid. Always.”

The Space-Time Juggernaut comes and wipes away whole worlds. Wipes them away to nothingness. And for what? What harm have we done?

A shrug, not so much of a smile. “All the harm there is. The threads come loose, the skeins unravel. In time the sweater unravels too, and the loom of garments is lost.”

And what about the souls who are lost?

“What about them? Would you die for the sake of your viruses, Astrid Kincaid? Would you give up
your
immortality?”

We gave up the Multiverse because we were all afraid to die, Dale.

“Just so. And now you hold God to a higher standard than your own.”

God again. Always God. As if that explains anything. Tell me about God, Dale Millikan.

He laughed. “Later.”

Will it always be later and never now?

He said, “When you understand why
you’re
here, Astrid Astride.”

That silly name. And yet... a feeling of familiar warmth. Of wanting him to rise, to push me down in the soft gray grass, push me down and use that thing on me... She could see him smiling. An infuriating smile, as usual.

I’m here because they sent me, Dale.

“You could have come, could have taken them out, could have blown the gate as you were instructed, gone home to live out your forever.”

Bitter thought. It would have been an empty eternity. 

“So what were you going to do?”

Catch some Arabs, grab me a Chinaman. Send the soldiers home with their prisoners. Jump back out into the Multiverse and blow the gates behind me. I figured if the Jug caught wind of it, he’d come after me, not Earth.

“So you were headed out into the Multiverse. Looking for what, Astrid Astride?”

Not astride much of anything anymore. She thought, Looking for you Dale. You know that. And know how bitter I feel just now, having found you at last.

He said, “Looking for me? I don’t think so.”

You were the only one who ever talked to me, Dale. The only one who ever tried to be a friend as well as a lover. I couldn’t forget that, no matter how many years went by.

No more smile, more a look of sorrow than anything else. “It was the only coin I had, Astrid. The only coin with which to buy you.”

A slight shock of disconnection. I know that now. Maybe I even knew it then. Who among us wants to acknowledge a life without friends, a life in which our only connection with other human beings is... a gesture at his still-erect penis... is so trivial as that?

Smile returning. “Didn’t seem so trivial to me, Astrid Astride.”

I guess you’re still a man, then.

Silence between them. Silence and distance.

That same silence that surrounded me as a child. Silence of a mother who gave her attention to the husband who used her for a toilet, rather than the daughter who needed her. Silence of adolescent friends, false friends who’d betray her for any slight advantage in their tawdry social games. Silence that followed the breakup of her circle of Corps friends. Wedge driven between them by what they’d done together.

Millikan said, “I gave you what you wanted. Is that so awful?”

Gave me what I wanted, offered up as coin to buy my cunt.

Awful enough.

Awful because I... knew.

“Why did you think I was still out here, Astrid Astride?”

Stop calling me that! Penis poking up out of his fat middle like some kind of demon, taunting her with its presence. Then, anger subsiding. I spent all those years reading the Scavenger books, Dale. Spent them trying to figure out where I’d been, what I’d seen. Trying to understand what had happened to me. Scavengers seemed to think individual Colonials had survived whatever disaster overwhelmed their civilization, had eluded the Jug, wandered the empty byways of the Multiverse for a long, long time, disappearing one by one, their pathways ending at... blank walls. I thought I might find you somewhere. I thought I could... rescue you.

“For what purpose?”

Rescue you for me. For me to have again. Have for my own.

“Did you think I might be changed?”

Maybe I did. I pictured you wandering the worlds alone, with nothing to do with your time but think.

“Did you picture me on this cliff by myself, masturbating and thinking of you?”

I pictured you here, thinking of me, yes.

He smiled. “What we imagine of other people is seldom more than a reflection of what’s in our own hearts. I did come here, once upon a time. Lay here on this same rock, looking at the city...” He wrapped his hand around his penis now, squeezing, so the glans darkened. Laughed at the expression on her face. “Sat right here and jerked off, looking at our lost city, jerked off and imagined you back home, lying alone in your bed, shoving a vibrator up your snatch.”

Hollow, sullen anger. Always... that. Never
me
, God damn you.

A very soft smile on his face now, letting the damned thing go, penis bobbing at her, making her look at it. Gently, he said, “You got your wish then, Astrid Astride. God has damned me well and true.”

Puzzled. What do you mean?

“Jug caught me, Astrid Astride. Caught me right away. Snatched me right off this cliff with my dick hanging out and my goo spraying in the wind. Took me away and did me in.”

So you’re dead now as well. I figured you were, or we wouldn’t be... a gesture around, at their long-lost paradise.

Still that smile. “Wasn’t being dead that I found so hard, Astrid Astride. It was the afterlife.”

She thought, If there’s an afterlife, any afterlife at all, then there
is
no death. Any idiot would realize that with the slightest thought.

“The Scavenger’s Space-Time Juggernaut, our Angel of Death sizzling in the sky, is the scrap manager, remember? Comes to put you back where you belong, tuck away all your loose ends.”

And where did you turn out to belong, Dale Millikan?

Laughter then, hardly Olympian at all. “Gave me a new name, my belovèd Astrid Astride. Made me be the probability manager.”

Brief shock of understanding.

Then jump-cut away.

o0o

Professor Ling Erhshan then, sitting on the smooth, cold library floor, listening to the wind howl softly outside. Dark sky beyond those windows, lit only by the wan light from within, black sky of blowing, backlit clouds, white mist slipping by, there then gone. Ling Erhshan sitting on the floor among his books.

I could sit here and read them forever. I could begin with those first books, those precious few books of my childhood. I could read the translated words of the American fabulist Thimble Valley, he of the strange, potent name, move on to later discoveries, to the dreams of Tarzan and Barsoom, to the dreams of last and first men, to the endlessly pointless valley of the fabulous riverboat...