Page 11       HOME        Previous Page         Next Page          Contact me

largest of Arable's moons had risen while they lay there, and some of its light filtered through to where they lay.
Looking into his eyes she felt the enormity of what he had said, and how all her fantastical theories were made real in this moment. For years she had played with plans for how the Collectivity could withdraw from all the unsafe planets and let life bloom as it was meant to on good arable livable Earth-like planets. She had worked out a lot of the economics of it in theory. But ultimately, when humans had retreated from the dangers of hostile planets and hostile space, this would be the revolution that would be wrought: that a person could say "I love you" to another person. Until now it had all been daydreams and theory, and first-and-last that was truly all she had thought it ever would be.
"You are not just 'another person'. You are a woman," someone said. It was a soft but penetrating voice, easily heard above the roar of the water. She startled and cocked her head to hear more, gripped his arm as warning.
"There's someone here," she whispered. And because he appeared puzzled, "Didn't you hear the voice?"
"You're imagining things. It's all right. No one heard me." When she remained tensely alert he added, "Don't worry Mariammo, I'll never say it again." What was he talking about?
"You are a woman. Bear a child," the voice said. Now she heard it again she knew it wasn't a voice from outside. It appeared to come from inside her head. But it was not her own voice, or anything to do with her. I'm overwrought, she thought against a panicky pulse of blood in her ears. She wanted someone to switch on the light. She wanted to throw Mesfun off her and crawl for the outside air and moonlight. Instead she lay rigid, and tried consciously to take deep slow breaths like they were taught in first aid. The stress. Being kicked out of the nest like a baby bird not ready to fly: flapping on the ground. They expected her, who loved Arable ever-so-muchly with her whole being, to go to Tarcuna? Either they were mad or they were driving her mad. But MAN would sort it all out. But did she want it sorted out - did she want to be made into someone who could live caged on a methane-sulfur planet? The stress. She lay back and breathed deep. A woman. Bear a child. Yuk! What next!
Finally she could speak. "Sorry. What did you say? I just had such a weird thought."
"I said I'd never say it again. I really don't know what came over me.."
"Never say what again?" She felt him draw back, almost as if she had slapped him in the face. Her senses speeded up in panic - what had he said, before the voice… something that made sense of all her studies… "Oh yes, yes, Mesfun, I love you too."
"You do?"
He was beside and above her. She raised up on both elbows to reach his lips and drew him down.
It was the strangest sex, if sex it was, she had ever known. Like teaching a pair of toddlers to run: one or other of them kept falling down, hardly ever were both running at the same time. She longed to merge with him as she had never done with anyone in the softroom, but when he put his hand between her legs she didn't trust her own

(Continued on page 12)

thought, none of us have ever known tenderness.
She took her hand away from his back and stroked his face, invisible in the darkness. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his lips. His lips responded at first touch of hers and then stiffened. His whole body had gone rigid. First me, now him.
She gave up and lay next to him, wondering what might unlock him.
"Tell me what you know about Tarcuna," he whispered, hoarsely.
"Methane-sulfur atmosphere. Can't go outside, ever."
"Poor Mariammo." A long silence. "Poor Mariammo."
His hand reached up to stroke the back of her neck, once. Do it again, Mesfun, do it again.
"Ruling planet of the three central planets," she added. "Administrative center of the Collectivity. Seat of First Committee, which is led by Rosa, who is out-and-out traditional." His hand stroked the back of her neck some more.
"Plans the economies of every one of the 1035 inhabited planets. Plans the foundation of one new colony planet every year. Regulates trade, a modified market system. Far-and-away my sort of thing." If only that sweet hand would stroke her neck for ever.
"Just a big mudsucking metal habitat."
"But no mud," he said.
"No mud. No hills. No weirs. No forsythia. Just a mo, I'm too warm." She unzipped her fatigues all the way down. She was naked under them. His hand went tentatively down over her back, all the way down as far as he could reach, to her hips. She leaned back from him a little which forced his hand to come around to her stomach as it came back up.
"Known to be the ever-so-muchly most proper place in the Collectivity, most rigid practitioners of the Space Code…" she gasped as his hand found her breast. He was so gentle, his touch so different from the softroom. That was sex. This was something from dreams.
"Keep talking," he said.
"Oh…Um… Economists get assigned to one of several bureaus: if I'm in one of the commodities bureaus then I may get to go on the freighters and see other star systems." He had bent to kiss her breast. She felt her nipple rise to his lips. She ran her hand over the close-cropped hair on his bent head.
He whispered something, but the roar of the weir drowned it out. If she asked him to repeat it would it make him say it louder or scare him? Doing this is like taming an antelope in the back country beyond Black Hill - no one knows how to do, no one has ever done it. Now he was licking her breast so softly, gently. "What did you say?" she whispered when she could stand it no longer.
"I love you."
He had brought his head up from her breast and she realized she could see his face dimly now. The moon glinted in his eyes. She looked up through the crisscross of branches and saw that the