A Season For Slaughter Part 31

I looked around, looking for the box of tissues. She'd be needing them soon.

There, on the headboard; I stretched and reached-and she suddenly gulped and grabbed me and fell into my arms. "Hold me, dammit!" she wailed, and I knew I'd miscalculated again. She'd wanted me to grab her and hold her from the very first.

d.a.m.n! How was I supposed to tell? How is any man ever supposed to know what a woman wants if she won't say so? It's true. Women's brains are not the same as men's. Women don't think like men. I wondered if that realization drove women half as crazy as it did men. No wonder we spent so much time trying to explain to each other what we really meant.

I held her as tightly as I could while she gulped and choked and sobbed into my chest. I could feel my shirt getting soggy. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, how much I loved her, but I couldn't. Not yet. She wasn't holding me because she wanted me; she was holding me because she wanted someone else, and he wasn't here. Neither of them were here, and she needed to cry and have someone hold her and pat her and tell her, "It's okay, baby. Let it out. Just let it all out." And I loved her so much, so G.o.dd.a.m.ned painfully much, that I would do this for her, just so I could hold her, even though I knew she'd never be able to return the same feeling for me Abruptly, she stopped. She looked up at me, her tears streaking down her cheeks in dirty rivulets. Her mascara had become a dark map around her eyes. "Oh, G.o.d, Jim. I'm so sorry. What am I doing to you? I'm using you-" She rolled away from me and bolted for the bathroom.

"I like being used-" I offered, but it was a halfhearted attempt. I didn't know if she'd heard me or not.

I sat up on the bed and tried to think. My head was full of noise. This was stupid.

I got up and went to the bathroom door. "Lizard?" I said. I knocked politely.

"Please?"

She came out almost immediately. She had splashed a little water on her face and was still wiping it off. She looked a little more composed now. As if she'd made a decision. "We should stop," she said.

"I-I-" I felt as if she'd shoved a hand grenade down my throat and pulled the pin.

"No," she stopped me. She put a finger across my lips and said, "It's not because I don't love you. It's because I do. I love you so much, it hurts. I love you so much, I'm hurting you every day. And that's wrong. I don't want to hurt the people I love.

Not anymore. Please, Jim, not anymore."

I grabbed her arms and held her still. "Stop it," I said. "Stop it, right now."

She tried to shake free. She tried to pull away. She tried to turn her face away from me.

I used the voice. "Stop it, Lizard."

It worked. The voice always works. It's the voice of G.o.d. When you speak in the voice, you're not simply imitating G.o.d-you'r being G.o.d. It's one of the things you learn in the training. When people hear the voice of G.o.d, they listen. She shut up and listened.

"I love you," I said. "You know that. That goes without question. You love me too. I know that. There's nothing you can say or do that will ever convince me otherwise." I took a breath. "But if the fact that we love each other isn't a reason or an excus or a justification for staying together, then neither can it be reason or an excuse or a justification for staying apart. It's totally irrelevant to the issue. You said so."

I stared into her eyes. She was listening intently. I could onl a.s.sume that she wanted to hear what I had to say. "Yes, we have arguments. Really good ones. Yes, I hurt you sometimes. Yes, you hurt me sometimes. But I love you in spite of it, or because of it; it doesn't matter. The important thing is that you're never going to stop hurting the people you love, it's always going to be a part of life. And you're going to be hurt in exchange. But the alternative to being hurt is to become a zombie, without feelings, without relationships, and without anyone ever to hold you close in the middle of the night when everything else gets too hard to bear. I'm not willing to be a zombie-and neither are you. Because the next step is to be one of those gla.s.sy-eyed naked men and wome walking in herds through the streets of San Francisco.

"Listen to me, Lizard. I know about Robert and Stevie. I doesn't hurt me to see you cry because you miss them. It make me proud of you for remembering what was special about the world before. I'm not jealous. How could I be? Do you know how much I love you? If I had the power to put the world back the wa it was before the Chtorrans came, I'd give you that gift right now. I'd do it in a minute, even if it meant I'd never see you again. But I can't and you can't and no one can, and we're stuck with things just the way they are. And we're going to hurt a lot, each and every one of us. But even if there weren't any Chtorrans, we'd all stil be hurting a lot; only we'd be doing it in different ways; because that's the condition of being human. At least, that's the way I've always experienced it. Well, I'm willing to accept that as the price of admission. And having done that, at least I'm going to choose the hurts that feel good. Do you hear me? I'm not willing to lose you for a stupid reason. If you want to give me up, you're going to have to come up with something a whole lot better than the bulls.h.i.t you just offered."

Amazingly she listened to the whole speech in silence. Some people listen to the first sentence only and then wait politely while they mentally prepare their reply.

Lizard didn't do that. She listened to every word I said. And when I was finished, she didn't argue. She didn't say anything. She just lowered her eyes, and then her head, and leaned silently into me. She rested her head against my chest.

I didn't move. I waited. I wanted to see if she would put her arms around me. She didn't. I felt so d.a.m.ned frustrated. All I wanted was just one little signal that it was all right to touch her again; but she wasn't going to give it to me. I wondered if she was through giving, if the whole thing had become so irrevocably damaged that it could never be repaired.

I made a decision. I had to know. Slowly, gently, I reached my arms up around her. I didn't pull her toward me, I didn't even hug her. I just put my hands on her shoulders in a comforting way and waited in wretched silence. She felt so warm and she smelled so good, and I ached so desperately to know what she was thinking or feeling. Did she still hate me?

She sniffled quietly and brought one hand up between us to wipe her nose. She looked at me bleary-eyed and shook her head sadly. "I can't ever win an argument with you, you know that?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, I can teach you. I can give you information you never had before, Jim-but I can't ever convince you of anything. You have always been so headstrong in your pursuit of what's right that all that anybody around you can do is cooperate or get out of your way." She leaned against me again, resting her head against mine, and put her hands on my shoulders. She sighed and finally let her body relax against mine. "It's so hard to be your friend. Harder to be your lover. But it's harder to let go altogether. I can't do it. I don't have the strength to let go anymore. I'm so tired."

She glanced up at me. "You're going to have to be strong for both of us. I'm just going to hang on until you decide to give me up."

"I'll never give you up, you know that."

"I know." She looked so sad as she said it that I almost changed my mind.

I tilted her chin up so she was looking me straight in the eye. Her sea-green eyes were wet and shining. "Lizard-will you marry me?"

From this perspective, it is now clear that the most advantageous method of colonization is to start at the very bottom of the food chain, replacing the Terran processes of decay with Chtorran processes of decay-thus capturing the basic building blocks of the Terran food chain and transforming them into a source of energy for the Chtorran ecology.

The Chtorran ecology can now begin to a.s.semble itself layer by layer without any overt or direct attacks on any Terran life form. The ecology of the host planet becomes progressively weaker while the colonizing ecology becomes progressively stronger.

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 36.

Chocolate and Babies "It only takes one person to make a marriage work-it takes two to really f.u.c.k it up."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

For the longest time, she didn't answer. Her silence lasted several centuries-during the whole of which time I agonized that I had taken advantage of her vulnerability, that I had said a terribly wrong thing, that I had finally, irrevocably, made myself the kind of fool that even she couldn't forgive-because no matter what she said in reply, yes or no, nothing between us could ever be the same again.

At last, Lizard sniffed, wiped her nose, wiped her eyes, smiled a little, looked up at me, shook her head, and said, "You don't have to do that. I won't lock you out again."

"Listen. I didn't ask you to marry me because I'm afraid of losing you. I asked you to marry me because right now you need me even more than I need you. I needed you to help put me back together after I was captured by the Revelationists.

Now it's your turn-and my job is to hold you together."

"Why bother?"

"Because if I give you all of my strength, then you can be strong for the rest of us."

"But I'm not strong anymore, Jim. The best I can do is pretend."

"That's good enough. n.o.body can tell the difference anyway. Fake it till you make it."

"Jim-" She tried to insist.

"Listen to me, sweetheart. It's always pretend-for everybody. We're all just little kids in grown-up bodies walking around saying, 'Huh? How did this happen?"'

She smiled in spite of herself. "Dr. Foreman trained you too well. You refuse to lie down and stay dead."

"I'm too mean to die-or too stupid."

She put her hand on my cheek and let her smile widen into a warming dawn.

"You're not stupid," she said gently.

"Okay, then it's settled. I'm mean. Listen-" It was time to be serious again. "I know what's important. You are-and the work you do. Those people out there depend on you. They love you-almost as much as I do. They trust you and they need you. You can't let them down."

Her eyes were watering again. The hardest thing in the world is to keep your mouth shut and listen to somebody say good things about you-especially when you know it's true, but you've never let yourself believe it before.

She tried to pull away, but I wouldn't let her. She needed to hear this. "You say you need me-okay, I'm here." I took her hands in mine and she had to turn and face me again. I blinked back my own tears and swallowed past the hard lump in my throat and somehow managed to get the rest of the words out. "Lizard, my beloved-I will never abandon you again. I will never hurt you again. I'll be here for you night and day, to hold you and make you laugh and love you and give you whatever strength I can, so that you can go out in the world and inspire everybody else. That's the most important job that I can do-and just so you'll know that you'll always have your source of strength right here where you need it, I'm going to marry you. That way you can't lose me. Even if you try."

"Is that an order?"

"Yes. It is."

And with that, she relaxed. Finally. She let herself go completely limp in my arms, as soft as a kitten nestled in its mother's fur. She let out a long, tired breath-not her usual sigh of contentment, more a sigh of simple relaxation, but it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. It said that she was at ease, at last.

She stayed that way for a long time, and I was content just to sit and hold her.

For a while, the rest of the world went away. Time was suspended in midair, and we were beautiful together.

"All right," she said softly into my chest. "When this mission is over, after I've made my report to the President, we'll get married."

"Why not right now? Captain Harbaugh would- "Because... " she said, "The Very Reverend Dr. Daniel Jeffrey Foreman will be hurt if we don't ask him to perform the ceremony."

"Oh," I said. "You're right. But look-I don't want to make a whole big thing out of this. Can't we just sort of-I don't know--do it quietly?"

"And spoil the best gossip in Houston? Are you kidding? A high-level military wedding like this would be such a great boost for morale that the President would have us both shot for treason if we tried to elope. Now, let's see, I think we should have a military wedding, with an honor guard-you know; raised swords and all that-oh, and your friend Ted; he should be your best man-"

I shook my head. "He's just as likely to want to be your maid of honor. It depends on what body he's wearing at the time."

"I don't know. Does he look good in pink? I was thinking pink dresses for the whole bridal party. I don't think I should wear white this time, I mean, not for a second marriage. What do you think? Do you think I could get away with a white dress again, with a veil and all? Oh, my G.o.d, when am I going to find time to have a dress fitted-maybe we should be married in uniform. And-oh, G.o.d-who's going to plan the bridal shower? And that's another thing. I'll have to register crystal and tableware patterns with the bridal registry, and-"

And then I knew for sure that she was putting me on. "All right, all right." I hugged her tightly to me. "Anything you want, sweetheart. Tap-dancing dolphins.

Singing dogs. Boy Scouts in drag. Elephants. Penguins. Strippers. Clowns.

Skyrockets. Dancing bears. Explosives. Fire engines..." I trailed off, and we sat a moment in silence.

"You know what I really want?" Lizard said softly.

"What?"

"Chocolate ice cream. Do you think we could have chocolate ice cream-I mean, made with real chocolate?"

"Do you know how much chocolate costs these days?"

"Do you know how much I love chocolate?"

I sighed. "I'll take out a loan. If you want chocolate, you shall have chocolate."

"Mmm, okay, it's a deal," she said. After another moment, she asked, "What do you want, Jim?"

"I don't know," I said. "Let me think for a minute."

We sat and listened to the breeze. It carried the scent of the sea, a salty wet rea.s.surance, and ever so gently, it also carried the faint green smell of land.

At last I let out a breath.

"What?" Lizard asked. She turned her face up toward mine.

"I'll tell you what I really want. More than anything. I want it for both of us."

"You're going to be serious, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

"You're no fun-"

"Hush, sweetheart, and listen. If you're going to waste your wishes on chocolate ice cream, that's your business. My wishes are my business."

"Chocolate ice cream isn't a wasted wish."

"Hush, it's my turn. I want-" I said it very slowly and very carefully. "I want us to start some babies. Let's pop some eggs and get them fertilized and then put them in the freezer. So that way"-this was the hard part-"if anything ever happens to either one of us... there'll still be a family."

I could feel her stiffening in my arms; maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but- "You're right." She nodded her head against my shoulder. "Robert and I should have. But we never did. Okay. As soon as we get back."

"No. I don't want to wait that long." She looked up at me, puzzled.

"Med section is fully equipped," I explained. "We'll harvest, fertilize, and ship the eggs home when we-stop over at Amapa. Please-?"

"Jim? What's the rush?"

I pulled away from her and held her at arm's length, so I could look directly into her eyes. "I'll tell you what's the rush. I keep looking at the satellite photos of the j.a.pura mandala, and it scares the h.e.l.l out of me. We've never seen anything that big anywhere. We have no idea what conditions obtain there. I hope to G.o.d I'm wrong, but I'm terrified that this ship and every single one of us aboard are heading into the biggest f.u.c.king nightmare of all."

"Jim, we've been over this a thousand times. You were part of the planning sessions. This ship can't possibly be touched. Or-" Her eyes widened. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"No. I told you everything I know. I can't think of anything we've encountered that could be a possible threat to this ship. But I lie awake nights worrying that there's something waiting for us in that camp that we don't know. No-let me say it another way. I'm sure there're a lot of things in j.a.pura that we don't know. That's why we're going. I'm afraid that some hole in our knowledge is going to let us make the kind of stupid mistake that will kill us all. That's been the history of this war so far."

"You're afraid, but you're still here-"

"Because you're here. And because whatever happens, I want to be with you. I'm going to protect you-and if it turns out that I'm wrong, and that everything works exactly the way it's supposed to, then okay, I'm wrong, and I'll buy you all the chocolate I can afford. But please, can we be terrified of the future long enough to humor my fears and make some babies?"

"I'd rather make them the old-fashioned way, with a bowl, and some batter, and a big mixing spoon-"

"Hold it. It's my job to stir."

"I a.s.sume you're planning to lick the bowl too?"