Armor (23 page)

I could feel her. From the doorway, I could feel her. And she was real! Karen was real, had been all along. This other thing, this vague dream, this fantasy, only now half remembered of a ship of my own without cares or destination or, face it, purpose, this sloppy goal, was never as real as the vision of her exquisite promise in my bed.

I Stumbled out the door, easing my wet hand trembling from the plastic door. I sat, then lay on the couch my tubes and trembling neck. Why didn’t I?

Why didn’t I? A worthless sacrifice, a horrible choice.

Even if it was real. Even if it did hurt. Or especially. Or not.

I slept, my face feeling sunburned somehow. Blasted.

XII

I had horrible dreams that night that lasted years. Not true nightmares, really, not at first. But very odd, in a macabre, intriguing sort of way. There were many distorted figures lodged and packed into a room that was at the same time ageographic. They and I stumbled around with staccato gaits, first windsome, then fierce, getting faster and faster until the whole Hang resembled some sort of spastic frenzy. By then I knew it was a dream, but that didn’t help. It was a commentary on me, the daytime me, the message seemed to be. It was about the recent me. The lately irrational, emotion taut me. Other me’s too, I supposed, but in any case, too damn many me’s.

It would only get worse. I would stretch to the frenzy. I would warp. So I woke up, fast as I could.

Cortez was sitting beside my bed. He smiled when I opened my eyes, the lids of which felt puffy, ponderous. It seemed I had been out two days with a raging fever. The muscular spasms had stopped hours before, now even.

The local bug, in other words, had struck.

“Welcome to Sanction,” said Cortez with a wide grin, adding, “Didn’t you feel it coming on?”

I ignored him. I hadn’t, of course. But, God knows, I should have. Idiot.

It took me eight days, a full local week, to get over it. Mostly, I slept. Peacefully, for the most part. I did meet a couple of doctors. Or maybe just one as the only things I remember about either of them were youth, athletic postures, and greatly affected, pretend deep, bedside voices.

Lya came often, cheerfully unconcerned for my welfare. “Everybody gets it,” she reported gleefully. Holly came twice, everfriendly but vague about progress with the armor. Cortez left only once, when Karen came.

She hated being there, hated looking at me as I was. She. was gone in minutes, again replaced by Cortez who entered looking like the gossip I supposed he was. I ignored him, tiling over into my pillow for my hourly nap. I drifted off wondering if I had not, in fact, learned more about her in these few anxious moments than in all of our previous hours. I thought I knew at last what she wanted from me.

It was nice to be able to just sleep instead.

I was sitting up smoking a cigarette on the morning of the eighth day when Lya canoe in and told me about the picnic. I didn’t answer at first. I was still trying to get used to her appearance. I hadn’t seen her in the past couple of days. She looked rotten. There were dark circles under her usually chinapure eyes. She was somewhat pale as well. And her movements seemed a bit shaky, hesitant, and uncoordinated.

Worry. And only one thing could make that one worry. I was anxious to ask her about him but I couldn’t seem to get through her let’sbecheerfulifitkillsusmehim. It was all for her sake, of course, though I doubted she was aware of it and, to be sure, I got all the fussing over. Lya had a great time directing the expedition to the out of doors, insisting I be famed on a spring sheet by two attendants(me quite short, one quite tail and laughing delightedly at the bouncing their mismatched gait gave me.

It was, thankfully, a short trek, just three hundred or so alters along the riverbank to a grove of very Earthlike trees. If it had been much farther. I’d have gotten out of the springer and walked. I was still pretty weak, but I figured anything to be better than that bouncing seesaw.

It was a beautiful warm day. Bright sun and blue skies, the rains now long gone. It was a nice spot, too, beside a rancher’s grazing stretching down from a low hill all the way to the edge of clear sparkling water. Damn, but it looked a lot like home.

I was still looking for a chance to ask about Holly, remembering that it had been quite a while since we had spoken. But before I got an opening there was the milling about spreading groundcloths and unpacking utensils and getting me prepped. The attendants left then, only to be replaced by Cortez, face glistening with sunscreen. He was helped by Karen, of all people, with the carrying of the food and liquor. She smiled pleasantly at me, said hello and the rest. She even went to the trouble to feel my forehead, a more token gesture than could be believed. Then she picked a spot a couple of trees away, cuddling up with a glass of wine and a shaded bookscreen and looking, well, perfect.

Others from the Project wandered by, snatching bites of chicken and sips of wine, a long procession which was apparently planned, since there were ample stores for the long afternoon. At one point there were a good three dozen people gathered around us, chattering, gossiping, giggling. I was left pretty much alone, either in deference to my health or my notoriety or, most probably, both. Just the same, I missed nothing, however juicy or dull. Lya, sitting beside me, was the favorite of all. Everyone stewed to chat with her. She charmed each of them individually and thoroughly and made it look easy. She seemed to know everyone by name, for one thing, which was damned impressive. Particularly since most of those in attendance were Crew, rather than the scientist types she was usually around.

Occasionally I would break off from admiring the performance of Lya’s social flair to check on Karen. Infinitely more beautiful than anyone else and growing more so as the afternoon sun blazed multicolored in her hair she was nevertheless left alone. It may have been her position that discouraged approaches. She was Boss to most of those people, after all. Or, for all I knew, she had the reputation of a loner or a bore or even a bitch. But I didn’t think so.

It was her beauty. Curled up on the grass reading, a glass of wine in her hand, she was more painting than real. Her face, in classic profile, was unusually calm and serene and framed with casual perfection by a few golden strands which had slipped free from the luscious whole flowing across her Shoulders and halfway down her back. She was wearing a spotlessly white Crew jumpsuit. It provided the fundamental thread linking the necessary contrasts of blue skyIeyes, blonde hairIskin, green grassItrees.

The view was a painting. Angel descended among mortals. I was frankly grateful to be there at that instant. For all those .who were not, however well or long they had known her or would, had missed it. I could not imagine she would ever, in her strident life, manage to repeat that breathtaking image.

It was her beauty that kept them away. It was intimidating! No woman could stand the comparison that side-by-side conversation would inevitably illuminate. And the men how does one appreach and disturb the angel in repose? Even should he wish to crack the crystal? Look. Touch not.

And everyone, to be sure, looked. The gathering about Lya stared constantly with the oft repeated turning of heads. The women snatched, or rather sneaked, glances. Brief, probing, envious. Some of the men followed suit, not wishing to be obvious, but many didn’t care. They simply arranged themselves so that she was in easy view ami thereafter rattled conversationally along with people they never saw.

I leaned against my pillowed throne and did some serious storing of my own. Unmistakably Karen, but still so unlike her. It was her. It just wasn’t her life.

If you could see this from my eyes, I wondered at her, the admiring hosts, the idyllic setting. . . If you could see you as I see you now, would it help? Would it reinforce your faith? Would it revive sinking dreams and hope? Or do you hate the beauty that has helped make your life just so?

I never could decide. No way to tell, of course, but I’d expect some of each. It would have cheered her, even thrilled her, to have seen herself then. It would have had to. It was simply too lovely.

But afterwards, with time and doubt leaning so heavily on

the memory and with that placidly desperate struggle of her vs. her. . . And some hate did exist, I felt certain, for the beauty. For the brand of having it.

I shook my head, shook it again. I found that I was no longer even looking’ at her, hadn’t been in a while. The sun was no longer framing and she had moved position a little. Christ! I thought, has it come to this now? Too much wine and bug eating drugs and afternoon sun and. . . Guilt was still about too, still leading me away from the point. I shook my head a third time.

Most of the party had wandered off. Two hours or so of sunlight remained. It was still pleasantly warm. Lya was encouraging, gently, the departure of her final moth, a stoutly muscular Asian woman seeking inside influence for a transfer back to her old position in the Project Dome Galley.

“The Agritechs know nothing about food,” she complained in a shrill whine that had been installed, no doubt by mistake, in that massive chest. “They hate everything I fix.”

From the way she strove to suppress a giggle, Lya was hardly surprised at this piece of news. Clearly, she found both the issue and the woman hilarious. But somehow she maintained her composure until at last free of the cook, sending her marching robotlike down the bank, short thick arms held firmly immobile at her sides.

Lya collapsed into helpless laughter before the cook had gone twenty meters. She jammed her peals of laughter against the comer of one of my pillows to muffle the noise. It was a compassionate gesture, and more than a little comical in itself. When she had resumed some semblance of control, she turned to me. I beat her to it.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the one who had her moved out of the Dome in the first place.”

She looked surprised, but nodded. A pixie’s grin curled up. “Worst cook in the world,” she said. And then the laughter bubbled out again. “She cooks like she looks!” she added before collapsing once more into hysterics, now unmuffled and belllike.

Lya laughed so long and so hard she cried. I found that I was laughing as well after a few seconds, so joyous was the sound. Cortez, asleep for hours, broke off his gentle snoring abruptly. He sat up, rubbed his eyes. “What’s so funny?” he asked sleepily. Then, without waiting for an answer to that questioned a wise move since it had only started Lya off again Cortez asked another: “Anything left to eat? I’m starved. “He followed this by immediately rummaging through the stores, opening and closing food seals. Still half asleep, he was spilling everything. I lifted my leg to avoid a stream of some sort of purple fruit juice.

Lya, now relatively calmed, sighed, half smiling at his childlike grogginess. I groaned audibly, having little of her: tolerance and even less of her tact. After some four bears of garden party gobbling, I had yet to have my private moment

Lya and I refused to cater to this sloppy sleepyhead on top of that.

“Cortez,” I said as calmly as I could, “there’s no food.

No more wine either. Why don’t you run fetch some?” He frowned, scratched his head. “Now? I’d have to go all the way down to Storage. I don’t know why. . . ?”

I cleared my throat. “Let me rephrase that: Cortez, you will run and fetch the wine. Dig?”

“Huh?”

If “Understand?” I quickly amended.

He stared at me, at Lya, who was suppressing yet another giggle, and nodded. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” :

“Take your time,” I added quickly. “Don’t run.”

Lya smiled at his retreating form. She sat up, stretching her over her head and yawning. She looked around.

“Is that about everyone?” she asked.

I pointed to Karen, still absorbed with her reading. “Must be some story,” I offered. “She do that a lot?”

Lya shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” she replied coolly, thus establishing, for my future reference, her lack of any connection with the other woman.

I, “Hmm. I see,” I replied, no less editorially.

Lya didn’t bite. The subject had already been dropped.

Fine with me. I was plenty ready to get on with something

“Now,” I began, “what’s wrong with Holly?” She sobered visibly, her shoulders stiffening. “Is it the suit experiment?”

The look of concern on her face managed to both age her and compliment her at the same time. It reminded me of her depth and her value.

“Jack, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!” she blurted. “Pretty bright chap, you know,” I countered easily. “He’s an expert at this sort of thing.”

“Nonsense,” she replied firmly. “No one’s an expert at this. This is theory. Jack. And new theory, at that. It’s never even been thought about seriously be fine, much less attempted.” “You’ve tried to get him to slop, have yon?”

She lanced at me briefly, teen away. She nodded. “
AMI
he wouldn’t budge, would he?” She met my eyes. I smiled. “Only on this,” I added.

She smiled reluctantly in return. “How did you know that?”

I shrugged. “Well, I knew you ran die rest of it.” She made a face, looking embarrassed. And .of course, damned proud.

I sighed and leaned back against the pillows. I fished a cigarette out and took my time about lighting it. She watched and waited.

Finally: “I’ll try it if you wart, Lya. I’ll talk to him.” “Would you?” she asked, just as if she were really surprised at the offer.

“Of course I will. Only. . . I wouldn’t count on much.” “But he thinks a lot of your opinion. Jack,” she assured me.

I blew a smoke ring. “Funny. If I were as smart as him, I’d never give me a thought.”

She smiled broadly, placating. “Well, Holly is that smut and he listens to you. You know he does.”

I nodded. “I do. But I don’t know why! He doesn’t know anything about me.”

“Of course he does!”

I shook my head. “Jack Crow stories don’t count. We’re talking about me.”

She tilted her head to one side, as though she couldn’t believe her ears. But her voice remained amused. “Well, now. What happened to the smooth talker? Is this a confession or what?”