Drunk on alcohol and sorrow, Aliyah finally came up for air. “You’re a good kisser.”
He grinned his sweet grin. “Wasps know what to do with their tongues.”
Aliyah grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him inside the room. After a second clinch, she admitted, “They do.” She bit her lip. “I, uh, I’ve never been with a guy, but I . . .”
“Well, you’re not exactly underage anymore, but is Ellen okay with it?”
Just ask if he has protection.
“Uh, yeah. She just wants to know if you’ve got a condom.”
Jonathan’s grin was still there. “That’s one thing I was able to get at the UN gift shop.” He took her for a third clinch, running his hands down her back, stroking her sore muscles.
It had been a long while since Ellen had been touched like that. And Jonathan was an excellent kisser. For Aliyah, it was all completely new. When she pushed back for just a slight breath, she asked, “Do you want to take my clothes off or let me do it the ace way?”
“Maybe a little of both.”
Light jazz still crooned seductively from the radio. “Take off my jacket then.”
He did, his fingers deft and supple despite the drunkenness, the dexterity of someone who worked with his hands. Next Nick’s dress shirt, the buttons sliding free in sequence. Jonathan softly brushed his knuckles down the T-shirt underneath, between her breasts and over her heart.
Aliyah sighed, the soft sigh of a desert breeze, and allowed her form to blur slightly. The slacks pooled about her feet, followed by the dress shirt as it slid through the sand of her shoulders. With a soft susurrus, she reformed, naked but for the baby-doll shirt and earrings.
Jonathan Hive’s grin got wider. “Two can play at that game.”
His figure blurred as well, but where Aliyah became dull brown sand, Jonathan exploded into brilliant green, bright as his eyes as thousands upon thousands of neon wasps flew across the room to swarm atop the coverlet, a half minute later forming into Jonathan, naked but complete, his head propped on one hand, the other hand . . . well, maybe not quite complete.
A cloud of drunken wasps swirled lazily through the air, doing some intricate aerial ballet as they brought him the condom from his wallet. They reattached to his wrist, becoming his right hand with the condom between his fingers. “Care to do the honors, milady?”
Aliyah giggled. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you.”
Jonathan was drunk and hungry and desperate. Ellen knew that it was probably his first time in a while. A guy who turned into bugs probably got as much action as a woman who channeled the dead. But what he lacked in experience, he made up in enthusiasm, and Aliyah had enough enthusiasm for two. Or even three when you came down to it.
Maybe even four. As Aliyah closed her eyes and felt her growing wetness, Ellen imagined that Jonathan’s hands were Nick’s, Nick whom she’d never touched, never would touch. Nick who’d died before she was born . . .
She felt him sliding inside her, in and out, as Aliyah embraced him with her legs, held his arms with her arms, the old iron bedstead creaking with the rhythm and pounding the bricks of the wall, the rhythm of the jazz from the antique radio. “More,” Aliyah moaned. “Touch me.”
Jonathan slid out, making Aliyah moan harder, craving him, wanting him, but next he kissed her belly, tracing the way down with his tongue. Aliyah clutched his hair as he teased her, his tongue flicking in and out, and then he traced his way back to her navel, then reared up, his penis entering again as he reached one hand under her shirt and squeezed her left breast. “Oh, Jonathan.” Aliyah put her arms over her head, allowing him to pull the shirt free.
The connection faded slightly as the shirt was pulled away, but Aliyah just pushed it aside, pausing to take out the earring where it had caught. The connection faded further but she was still there, heady but lucid. Jonathan reached for the last earring, not understanding, but Aliyah instead guided his hands to her breasts as she clenched him, letting him ride her in and out. Then, when she closed her eyes and began to quake with ecstasy, there was a tiny tug on her left lobe and la petite mort suddenly became la grande mort.
Ellen was back in her body as Jonathan still rode her, quaking himself as his eyes burned in the dark like green embers.
“Not bad for a guy who turns into bugs,” he said afterward, falling into bed beside her. “How was it for you, Ali?” He placed his hand and the final earring between her breasts.
Ellen smiled. “Aliyah liked it just fine, but it’s just Ellen now. I stopped channeling her when you took this off.” She held up the fateful earring, the Eye of Horus twinkling in the dimness.
Jonathan’s face fell. “So I swapped partners mid-orgasm?”
Ellen nodded.
“Uh,” Jonathan stalled, “I should probably be going.” A cloud of wasps literally buzzed across the room and next thing Jonathan was getting on his pants.
“You don’t have to go. I was there the whole time you were with Aliyah.”
“I’ve really gotta.”
He almost ran from the room. Ellen heard the jangling of keys as he let himself into the room across the hall. Tears welled up in her eyes on their own. She’d been spending all day on someone else’s tears, but in the end, there were still a few left for herself. “Oh, Nick . . .”
She didn’t know how she could be unfaithful to a man she’d never touched, but it still felt like a betrayal, to a memory at least. The memory of a man she loved. Ellen clutched the pillow, listening to the soft music in the darkness.
Ellen awoke the next morning to the sight of a used condom, a couple of asphyxiated wasps trapped in the tip. It was not a lovely memento. She turned back over, fresh tears stinging her eyes, but sleep wasn’t returning. Forcing herself, she got up, turned off the radio, and showered.
Ellen didn’t want to touch the clothes from the day before, not Aliyah’s, not Nick’s. She opened her suitcase. The final outfit was a twenties flapper gown, midcalf spangled black silk with jet beads, with a matching cap with black ostrich plume and a steel mesh purse fringed with ermine tails. It was beautiful for a night on the town, but utterly impractical for a hurricane.
To hell with it, she was wearing it anyway. Everyone already thought she was nuts.
At the last moment, she paused and set the plumed cap aside. She reached down and retrieved Nick’s fedora from where it had been crumpled into the pocket of his jacket.
Nick looked at himself in the dressing-table mirror, touching his fingers to the skin below his eye. “You’ve been crying, Elle. What’s the matter?”
Aliyah . . . Ellen thought, but she couldn’t lie to him, not Nick. The whole flood of memories came across in a tsunami.
“It’s okay,” Nick said. Her heart was now his and it calmed slightly, but only slightly. “I’ll take care of it.” He stood up, steeling his fingers on the dresser top, then surveyed the room, the wreckage of the night before. Reverently, he retrieved Aliyah’s earrings and shirt, placing them neatly in the ermine-fringed mail purse, then less reverently, he picked up the condom by its edge and stalked across the hall.
After three sharp raps, Jonathan opened the door, looking disheveled and even more hungover than Nick felt. “You left something.”
Jonathan sheepishly took the condom, and looked even more sheepish as the trapped wasps roused themselves, crawling out the bottom and buzzing up the leg of Jonathan’s boxers. “Uh, thanks, uh . . . Ellen?” Jonathan’s green eyes flicked to the dress, then the hat.
“Nick.” He pushed the fedora out of his eyes. “We need to talk. Man to man.”
“Man to man?”
“I’m being nice about it. I could say ‘man to bug.’ ” Nick pushed his way into the room, standing on tiptoes to look Jonathan in the eye. “A real man doesn’t treat a lady that way. Do you have any idea how upset Ellen is?”
Nick, please, you don’t have to make a big deal—
“Yes, I do,” snapped Nick. “A rea
l man never treats a lady that way, and Elle is a lady. Do you know what I’d give to be able to touch her, hold her, just once? And you . . .” He fixated on Jonathan’s small paunch. “God, man, don’t you ever work out?”
Jonathan sucked in his gut and a cloud of fat wasps liposuctioned their way out of his navel and buzzed menacingly about his midsection. “Back off.”
“You’re forgetting who you’re dealing with, aren’t you?” Nick raised his hand and formed a ball of pure lightning floating on his fingertip. “My ace name was Will-o’-Wisp.” As punctuation, he let his entire body limn itself in St. Elmo’s fire.
Jonathan’s eyes went wide and his fat wasps were even more horrified, funneling down his navel and hiding themselves as his love handles.
“Do we have a problem?” asked a voice from the hall.
Nick turned and Ellen saw Bubbles, slightly plumper but still recognizably supermodel Michelle Pond. “No, miss.” Nick let his will-o’-wisp ground itself into his fingertip, blanking the rest of the charge as well. “I was just telling Jonathan here how a gentleman treats a lady.”
Michelle looked to Jonathan, who still stood there, holding the condom.
Nick turned his back to him, searching her features. “You’d be Michelle?”
“That or Bubbles.” She gave him a quick up and down. “Whoever you are, we don’t have time for this. Harriet has just changed course. She’s headed right for New Orleans.”
Double Helix
YE BRUTISH AMONG THE PEOPLE, WHEN WILL YE BE WISE
Melinda M. Snodgrass
MORNING IN NIGERIA. I only have time for a few impressions. The way the edges of the leaves seem to gleam golden in the rising sun, the sweat that’s already itching in my beard, the rich smell of wood smoke and coffee, and the rank odor of urine and the throat-clogging reek of shit.
The Radical has his back to me, shoulders hunched as he grips his dick, sighing with relief at the first pee of the morning. I can hear the piss pattering on the leaves in the bottom of the latrine trench. I want to rip his head off with 750 rounds per minute, but he’s not alone in this morning ritual. A soldier standing next to him spots me. I don’t have time for the careful aim. Instead I bring the Heckler and Koch G36 up to my shoulder, aim for the largest target—his back—and depress the trigger.
The stream of .223 rounds vomit from the barrel. I stitch my way up his back hoping to hit the kidneys, spleen, lungs, and spine. The shirt flies into blood-spattered rags, and the smell of gunpowder trumps even sewage. The force of the bullets throws Weathers into the trench. I change targets, and fire a short burst into the soldier. I risk a quick glance into the trench. Rivulets of blood trickle around the turds and stain the wet ground. The Radical’s face has gone slack and smooth, the lids fallen over the eyes, forever hiding that mad glitter.
A sudden memory of Weathers’s face gentled by love intrudes. Soldiers are converging on the latrine trench. I jump into the Between hearing in my mind a woman/child’s cry.
“Dadeeee.”
Flint is waiting in his office. I’m still wreathed with the warm scent of gunpowder. On the desk a silver carafe exhales steam like a soft breath. It carries the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. My chief holds out a plate of ginger scones.
“All tidied up?” he asks in the low whisper.
“Yes.” I take a bite of scone, and feel crumbs drop. I brush them out of my beard, and decide to transform. I hate facial hair, it always makes me feel dirty when I’m sporting it.
It doesn’t hurt, precisely, but it feels like the skin wants to tear before it suddenly softens, stretches, and shifts. I’m back to myself with the fatigues hanging a bit on a body that is slimmer than Bahir’s.
“Why is it, sir, that our proxies always fight worse than the tin pot dictator’s fanatics?”
I manage to maintain my bored drawl, but it’s an effort. Why couldn’t the politicians and the Helix let me kill Weathers back when I’d first offered? Instead they wait until the PPA’s tanks and army have rolled across the border and Britain is scrambling to mobilize the army and Royal Marines to assist the Nigerian forces, and I get interrupted when I’m taking care of Dad.
Mum has a conference in Wells, and had asked me to look out for him. We’d had a very bad night last night. He had been in a great deal of pain and the hours between the morphine injections had dragged like centuries. In the midst of this I’d had to transform into Lilith and jaunt off to Nigeria to scout for a place to effect the assassination. Thank God Nigeria and Britain are in the same fucking time zone.
I help myself to a cup of coffee, and wash down a couple of lid poppers. Flint notices. “Do you need more of those?”
“I wouldn’t say no. Got to fuel three people, don’t you know.”
“When did you do it?”
“This morning. I’d considered killing Weathers in his tent last night, but he was fucking someone, probably Snowblind, and I would have had to kill her, too. If I were spotted the Committee might wonder why Lilith was killing another member of the Committee. And since I always assume that what can go wrong will go wrong in these situations I opted to wait.”
“Must have made for an uncomfortable night.”
I nod, but it wasn’t for the reason he thought. I hadn’t waited out the night in Nigeria. I’d hopped back to Cambridge and sat with Dad until sunrise, then teleported back to Nigeria, killed the Radical, teleported to London to report, and now . . . I check my watch . . . I should get back to Cambridge in time to prepare his breakfast.
“And to answer your question.”
I try to remember what the fuck was the question.
“Our fellows aren’t fanatics, and we do try to maintain a modicum of civilized behavior.” I can’t help it, I glance down at the blood flecks that pepper my Kevlar vest. “Oh, not you. You’re our agent of last resort, the place where morality gives way to necessity.” That hangs between us, then Flint adds, “You need to be debriefed.”
“No, sir, I need to go home. I left my dad alone.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. Dying, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” The word emerges from between gritted teeth. Of course, why should I expect sympathy? I kill for my country. He must think that death holds no power for me.
Dadeee.
I put a hand to my head as if that will somehow silence that voice.
It’s frighteningly quiet when I arrive in the hallway outside Dad’s bedroom. I don’t hear the thin whimpering moans that had tormented me all night. I rush into the room. He’s managed to get himself propped up against the elaborately carved wood headboard. There’s a luminous, almost translucent quality to his skin, and for an instant I have the illusion that I can see the vibrant colors of the starburst-pattern quilt through his hands. He has the Bible resting on his lap. It’s open to a color plate. A picture of Abraham brandishing a knife while the child Isaac lays passively atop the stone altar. A brilliant stream of golden light pours through an opening in the clouds, pinning Abraham like a bug.
The smile of welcome loosens the knot in my chest, tension leaches out of my muscles, and my legs start trembling. I drop into the chair beside the bed. “You’re all right,” I say inanely.
“Well, I’m still dying, but the pain isn’t so bad this morning.” He glances out the window where a breeze is bending the overtall grass, and shaking the fall-splashed leaves on the big oak. “Or perhaps I can just bear it better when I can look out and see the world. Look, the leaves are starting to turn.”
“Would you like me to carry you outside?”
“That would be lovely.”
He whimpers when I pick him up. I feel my guts curdling with frustration, anger, and guilt, and then it hits me. Dad doesn’t have to suffer between morphine injections. I can go anywhere in the world. I speak Arabic and a smattering of Pushtu. I can get heroin in Afghanistan.
I get him settled on a chaise lounge, and drop into the grass beside him. The blades prick through the fabric of my slacks. I p
ick up a fallen leaf and study the tracery of dark veins through the rampant colors. When I look up my father is gazing down at me fondly, but with a faint crease of worry between his graying brows.
I cough to clear the obstruction in my throat. “What?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. And why would you be worried?”
He smiles ruefully. “Well, we’ve been quite the best of friends, and I just hope you have other friends. I’m afraid you’re a little too much of a loner. You take after your mum that way.”
I’m startled at that. “Really? I don’t think I’m much like her at all.”
“Oh, no, you’re very like her. Same drive, same intellect, same ability to have a very private but rich interior life.”
As a child you aren’t often offered an opportunity like this. “Did you love Mum?”
“Yes. And guess what, I still love her.”
“But she seems . . . you’re very . . . I mean, you’re dying and she’s not here.” It just bursts out. Writhing at how inarticulate and juvenile that sounded, I try to cover my discomfort by plucking blades of grass. They leave green stains on the tips of my fingers.
“Couples carve out their own spaces and accommodations. I send her into the world, and she comes back with tales and wonders.”
“And what did you get?”
The brush of his hand across my hair is like a sigh. “You.”
Political Science 301
Walton Simons & Ian Tregillis
HIS BUTT WAS SORE from getting bounced around in the back of the truck, but at least they were getting far away from BICC. Zane, the last of Niobe’s babies, was keeping them camouflaged, but the kids apparently didn’t live more than a few days and Zane might not be around much longer. The truck was stacked full of packages, and it was stuffy and cramped inside. In spite of the gas shortage, some things still absolutely, positively needed to get there overnight.