Mark grunted. “But it’s taken a long time. And sometimes I think this is all a little unreal.”
“What is?”
He waved a hand. “The strange, aerial society that’s been established here. I mean, beyond these walls of grass there is nothing — nothing but an intergalactic desert, across which we’re fleeing in search of protection from an alien species with whom man has been at war for megayears…”
Across the Universe we flee, Lieserl thought, with chicken eggs and bluebells…
“Maybe that’s true,” she said. “But so what? Is it a bad thing? What can the people here do, but live their lives and maintain the lifedome’s infrastructure? An awareness of what’s outside — of the Universe as megayear celestial battlefield, across which we’re fleeing — is like a morbid, paralyzing awareness of death, it seems to me. Mark, we’re bystanders in the middle of a war. I suspect the last thing any of us needs is a sense of perspective.”
He grinned, and laid his hands on her bare hips. His eyes were alive, vibrant blue, within his coffee-dark face. “You’re probably right.” He pulled her to him, and she could feel the firmness of a new erection against her own pad of pubic hair. “What can any of us do, but follow our instincts?”
She felt a small, contained part of herself open up in his warmth. Sex — even this Virtual reconstruction of it — was wonderful, and, remotely, she was reminded once more of how much had been kept from her during her brief, engineered life. She’d gained five million years of sentience, but had been deprived of her ancient, human heritage.
She lifted her arms and wrapped them around Mark’s neck. “You should be careful with me,” she said. “I’m an old lady, you know…”
He bent his head to hers and kissed her; she ran her tongue over the sharpness of his teeth.
Around them, the chickens rustled softly, detached feathers drifting through the air like snow.
26
It was a good day for Spinner-of-Rope.
She found a large hive high in a tree. The bees buzzed in alarm as she approached, but she circled the trunk warily, keeping away from their vicious stings. She set a small fire in a notch in the bark a little below the fat, lumpy form of the hive, and piled the flames high with moist leaves; she let the thick smoke waft up and over the hive. The bees, disoriented and alarmed, came flooding out into the smoke and scattered harmlessly.
Spinner, whooping in triumph, clambered back to the abandoned hive, broke it open with her axe of Underman metal, and dug out huge handfuls of comb, dripping with thick honey. She feasted on the rich, golden stuff, cramming it into her mouth; the honey smeared over her face and splashed her round spectacles. There would be more than enough to fill the two leather sacks she carried at her waist.
…Then, sitting on her branch, eating the honey, she found herself shivering. She frowned. Why should she be cold? It wasn’t even noon yet.
She dismissed the odd sensation.
In a nearby tree, a hundred yards from Spinner, a man sat. He wore a battered coverall, and his face looked tired, lined, under a thatch of gray hair. He was eating too: a fruit, a yam, perhaps. He smiled and waved at her.
He was a friend. She waved back.
She rinsed her face in a puddle of water inside a fat bromeliad, and climbed down to the ground.
She ran lightly across the level, leaf-coated floor of the forest. Arrow Maker would be tending his bamboo clumps, she knew; there were only a few groves of the species which provided the six-feet-long straight stems Arrow Maker needed to manufacture his blowpipes, and Maker cultivated the clumps with loving care, guarding them jealously from his rivals. Spinner would run up to him and show him the honey treat she’d found, and then -
Spinner-of-Rope. I know you’re awake.
…and then…
Come on, Spinner, talk to me.
Spinner slowed to a halt.
With regret she glanced down once more at the honey she would not be able to enjoy, and issued a soft, subvocal command.
Out of the air, the environment suit congealed over her limbs like some web made of silvery cloth, and the bulky couch materialized around her body. Like a skull poking through decaying flesh, the darkness of space, the harsh telltale lights of her waldoes, emerged through the forest dream.
“Spinner-of-Rope. Spinner.”
Her heart beat as rapidly as a bird’s. “Yes, Louise.”
“I’m sorry I had to dig you out of your Virtual like that. You, ah, you didn’t want to come back to us, I don’t think.”
Spinner grunted as the suit went into its daily sonic bath routine. “Well, can you blame me for wanting to escape?” She let the bleakness outside the cage flood into her mind. How wonderful it had been to be ten years old again, to have no greater horizon than a day’s frog-hunting with her father! But she wasn’t ten years old; more than five decades had worn away since those honey hunting days, and since then immense responsibilities had descended on her. The renewed awareness of who she was settled over her like a tangible weight: a weight she’d been carrying around for all this time — but which she’d forgotten to notice.
She shivered again — and became suddenly, sharply suspicious. She hissed out brief subvocal commands and called up a display of her environment suit air temperature. It was around eighteen degrees Celsius. Not exactly ice cold, but still noticeably cool. She called up a faceplate graphic of how her suit temperature had varied over the last few days.
The coldness she’d felt in her dream had been real. The suit temperature had been changed. For more than a week it had been maintained at twenty-five degrees — fully seven degrees warmer than today.
“Louise,” she said sternly.
She heard Louise sigh. “I’m here, Spinner-of-Rope.”
“What in Lethe is going on? What have you been trying to do, cook me to death?”
“No, Spinner. Look, we’ve come to understand — a bit belatedly, maybe — how hard this trip is for you. I wish, now, we’d found some other solution: someone else to relieve you, perhaps. But it’s too late for that. We’ve got ourselves into a situation in which we’re very dependent on you, and your continued good functioning out in that cage, Spinner.”
“And the heat?”
“Heat acts as a mild sedative, Spinner-of-Rope. As long as your fluid balance isn’t affected — and we’re monitoring that — it’s quite harmless. I thought it was a good solution to the problem…”
Spinner rubbed her cheek against the lining of her helmet. “Right. So you were sedating me, without my consent. Louise Ye Armonk, engineer of human bodies and souls…”
“I guess I should have discussed it with you.”
“Yes, I guess you should,” Spinner said heavily. “And now?”
Louise hesitated. “It was becoming harder and harder to dig you out of your fantasies, Spinner. I was afraid we might lose you altogether… lose you to a dream of the forest.”
A dream of the forest.
With a sigh she straightened her posture in her couch. “Don’t worry, Louise. I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, Spinner.” Louise sounded nervous, excited uncharacteristically so. “Spinner-of-Rope… it’s the fifty-first day. Look around you.”
Spinner loosened her restraints; she glared around at her surroundings, at first seeing only emptiness. Irritated, she snapped out subvocals, and the faceplate began to enhance her naked-eye images.