Cottonwood (46 page)

“Go to sleep,” he said, and came back to tuck blankets in around the obedient curl at the nest’s center. He bent to exchange breath and held T’aki’s a long time before letting it out again. Hope was in him like the heat of a living thing. “Go to sleep,” he said again, and turned his son’s lights off.

A bar of yellow under the opposite door told him Sarah was still awake as well. He didn’t need it. He could hear her mutters through the wood, her voice rising and falling in restrained tones of worry. He knocked twice, quietly, and went in.

“Sanford,” she said, but didn’t look up. She had her maps spread out on the bed before her. He was reminded of his son’s nest. “Did you watch the news?”

“Yes. There was no mention of us. They talked about crime, about your politics, about gas prices, and about dangerous bugs and why we must never be allowed to leave the immigration camps.” He snapped his palps to show what he thought of that. “There is a lot of smoke over Cottonwood. They called it a riot, which has been contained. I suppose that must be Sam’s work, but they didn’t mention an escape. There are no names, no pictures.”

“But IBI knows I’m gone. They have to.”

“By now, they must.” He knelt on the edge of the mattress to watch her in her anxiety. Her eyes seemed fixed, no longer seeing what she stared at as her hands shuffled papers around. The vein along her soft throat jumped, jumped. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are pursuing us.”

“Sanford, they have to be. They
have
to. But they want to keep the cops out of it, which means they want to take me down pretty…pretty hard.” She took a swift, shuddering breath. “Or maybe the cops are involved, but they’re keeping it out of the media. Maybe they’re putting up roadblocks or…they can’t block every road, can they? We’re going to lose time if we can’t use the freeways. And what if…What if they know where we’re going?” She looked up, her eyes huge and ringed with glassy white. “I mean, there isn’t much point in escaping if you don’t leave the planet, right? They have to know where we’re going!”

“Please calm down.”

“Sanford, tell me what to do!” she whispered. Threads of harsh sound cut through. She was fighting panic, did not want T’aki to hear her. “I’m not a soldier! I’m not even a social worker anymore! I’m…I’m ridiculous! Did you see what I packed? I’ve got my hairbrush and, like, ten bottles of water! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“The best you can.”

She laughed. It cut his ear like a razor, rusty and too sharp.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I am in mortal terror.” She said it like she was reading it somewhere, in some amazement. Her eyes stared at him, through him. “I have never felt this way before.”

“Just breathe.”

“I’m scared to death I’m going to get us all killed. I can’t make even
one
mistake and I don’t even know what the mistakes are! I look at T’aki in the rearview mirror and I just want to throw up.” She started to say more, stopped, and rather obviously replayed her words, then turned pink. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“But they’re going to kill us if they catch us.” She looked at him again, that panic rising to take back her face. “So if they catch us—” Her mouth worked. “—then I’ve killed you!”

There. Named. She clasped a hand over her mouth and then the other over her eyes, which had begun to pour water. She made the sounds, the crying sounds, but softly, as softly as she could. It was all right. It was misery, but misery was better than panic.

Sanford took her maps away. She protested, but could not do so loudly without waking T’aki, so she was easy to ignore. He set them on the little table beside her just as he had done with his son’s spaceship, and then went into the washroom. He found a cloth and wet it, then looked at himself in the mirror. The thought came to him that he looked pretty good, all things considered.

She was still crying when he returned to her bedside, but her tears seemed to be running themselves out. She put out her hand for the washing cloth. He ignored it and moved back her hair to clean her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “God, you’re so calm. I’m trying to be strong, believe it or not, I really am, but wow, I am not cut out for this soldier-of-fortune crap. I just keep coming back to what could happen—”

He hushed her with soft chirrs.

“—and it just boggles me,” she went on. “How can this be happening? That’s what hurts the most…how can people be so
mean
?” She looked up, beseeching him, and he wiped down her cheeks. “First Contact was supposed to be this beautiful thing. I was
happy
when you guys showed up. I was
happy
when I heard about IBI forming and the camps being built.” Her face pinkened, turned away; he cleaned it, chirring. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

More tears.

Sanford put the cloth aside and wiped them with his fingers.

“I have seen things that I could not imagine. Could not. And I’ve always thought I was pretty imaginative.” She tried to laugh and couldn’t. Her breath was very hoarse now. He could taste it when he moved his palps. It tasted of tears. “Stuff I can’t imagine is the stuff you’ve had to survive for years. I feel awful, Sanford. All the time. I…I hate myself for being human.”

He put both hands boldly on her face and made her look at him. “Do you see yang’ti?” he asked.

“What?”

He moved his head closer. His antennae twitched in her hair. Her face filled all his field of vision, as his must hers. “Do you see yang’ti?” he asked again, quietly but with sharp snaps. “Is this all you see when you look at me? A yang’ti who must be saved?”

Comprehension filled her eyes with horror. “No! No, that’s not what I m—”

“What do you see then?”

“I see Sanford,” she whispered. “My…M-My best friend.” A confession, naked and vulnerable. “I see a good father and a…a good man. The best man I know.”

His heart throbbed twice, hard enough almost to hurt him. Man. She saw a man. He said, “And I see a woman who has only ever tried to do the best she could. I see Sarah and we are the same.”

She reached up and touched his shoulder. Her fingers were small and very warm as they found the joint and the soft pads to receive her. She saw a man. Not a person, not a male of another species, but a man. She looked at him with the candor of a woman who looks at a man. And he wanted her—skin, bones, hair and all. He wanted to be with her. He’d wanted that for some time.

When he released her, she let her hands and her gaze drop back into her lap, sitting like a child who has been chastened. She did not seem to notice when he stood up and pulled away his worn shirt, unbuckled his belts. “I’m glad it’s you,” she was saying. “Don’t get me wrong. But if I was really a good person, shouldn’t I be willing to do this for anyone? I mean, I drove right past Mr. Samaritan’s house to get you and I never even thought—”

Her ramblings stuttered to a startled end as he lifted up the sheet and climbed onto the mattress beside her. She looked open-mouthed at his bare body. He leaned in to share her breath and began to unfasten her blouse. His heart was throbbing at every beat now, every beat.

“W-What are—? I mean, I can s-see what you…B-but you can’t po-possibly—” She looked down in astonishment as he exposed her bare chest, as if even she had never seen the human swellings there, with the colored tips he covered now with his hands. He stroked in short, gentle downward pats. The ridges of his fingers brought her tips out erect, just like in the programs. “S-Sanford!” she gasped, flinching back. Her hands flew up, but did not cover. They hesitated there, trembling slightly. “You can’t mean this! We’re not even s-s-sexually c-com-compat—”

“We could be.” And when she gaped at him, he clicked reassuringly and began to guide her up onto her knees to face him for another shared breath. This one, she answered, her lips parting even as she cringed uncertainly back. He stroked her swellings again and she shivered, arching her back so that she pressed against his hands, only to pull away again, her eyes huge. “I know what to do, I think,” he said. “I know your skin is fragile and I will remember this. I want to copulate with you, Sarah.”

Her lips moved. She seemed incapable of sound. Then she touched him, her fingers along his neck seams, where he could feel them tremble. He pulled the sheets away from her waist and found her final cloth layer. She helped him remove it and then knelt, shaking, waiting for direction.

“Are you frightened?” he asked.

She thought about it. “No,” she said, her eyebrows climbing as if in surprise. “I can’t be scared of you, Sanford. You’re my friend.”

“Then turn around, please, and bend forward. I will be careful.”

She stroked his seam once more, then obeyed, bracing her hands and knees almost in the way of a yang’ti female. He knew better than to mount her as one, however. He touched her instead, soothing her as his claspers tasted the air between her slightly-spread thighs. Her pheromones were alien, of course, but all the same female triggers were there, however faint. His belly-flaps relaxed at once; his spermatogus pushed slickly out, warming as her musk stimulated him. He reared over her, shifting his bent legs on the unstable mattress, and brought them cautiously together, penetrating not the ridged cloacal vens of a yang’ti woman, but the hot, soft, indescribable opening of his human, instantly and fully contained by her in welcome, in friendship, and in shocking heat.

His eyes shut. Softly skreeing, he brought her back against his chest where he could feel her heart pounding through his plates—a double beat to his triple, and yet somehow still in harmony. He wrapped both arms around her; she brought her hands up like fluttering moths to touch them and find his seams. He could feel her body in constant motion, not struggling against him or even attempting the movements of human copulation, but only twitching and rolling a little, trying to look at him and be still at the same time, just as the little sounds she made wanted to be words without knowing anything to say.

He began cautiously to move. It took a few seconds to get the knack of using just his hips and thighs without all his body, but the rewards were explosive. Her head rocked back fast, striking his shoulder. She bit her lip, her throat tight against sound, her features pulled strange with surprise, but beginning to soften and to fill with color. His claspers brushed thicker and thicker pheromones from the air, but he did not need it to measure her interest or hold his own. Her hands clenched on his arm, then shivered aside to find the joint of his wrist and his shoulder, to touch him the only way she could. He could not fathom what she must be feeling, but he moved as the male in the programs moved—or as near as he could approximate—and held her close against his heart, chirring.

There was no friction for him, or for any yang’ti. His pleasure in this endless moment was primarily cerebral. He could release his store of sperm at any time, but he held it for now, reveling in Sarah’s dance of mating. Her body moved, moved, and suddenly she slapped both hands over her keening mouth, moving back at him in rhythmless urgency, flooding the air with her human pheromones. Orgasm, he realized, and it did not paralyze her in place, but drove her to a kind of frenzy.

Encouraged, Sanford began to explore, trying to puzzle her out, to map and memorize her responses. He was surprisingly successful. Again and again, she climbed and lost herself, until all tension fell away from her imprisoned body. Her head dropped back, resting on his shoulder. She did not move even when he tapped his palps against her slender throat, but she answered his chirrs with humming and smiled. Her fingers twined with his, stroking his receptor pads in tandem with his movements.

Now, now, it must be now. Sanford picked up the bedsheet and wrapped them both together, holding them close as he injected his fluids uselessly into her body. The contraction keyed his own climax. For a slow count of ten, he swam in chemical bliss, perfectly still, aware only of her heat enveloping him, her heart and his in alien harmony.

Gradually, he came back. He tapped at her throat. She smiled without opening her eyes and hummed. The sound thrilled him on some level, urging him to stroke up into her in mating ways until she arched and moaned and released a final cloud of pheromones, its colors dampened by her exhaustion. Yes, it was late.

He retracted his spermatogus and tightened his belly plates, his claspers brushing fastidiously at him and her together all the while. Then he shifted her, lay her down, and lay down beside her. She did not speak, but hummed again, her hand brushing back to catch at his. She touched his pads, lingered.

Sanford chirred, exhaling over her naked back. He brought the sheet over both of them. ‘Well done,’ he thought, intensely proud of himself. He could not remember a more satisfying copulation. More natural, certainly, and more pleasurable, but never one so satisfying. He pressed his chest to her back, found her heartbeat and followed its song to sleep.

* * *

She was on the wrong side of the bed. She was naked. She was sleeping on what felt like a giant thorny log—that must be Sanford’s arm—but none of that woke her. And that was a deep, deep sleep. She had never been so relaxed in her life.

So why was she awake?

Felt like it was getting light, but light had never woken her before. She felt…itchy, indefinably itchy. Not on her skin, but on her air, if that made sense.

Slowly, Sarah opened her eyes.

And found them staring into T’aki’s.

His head only just came up to the level of the bed. She could see only the eyes and the round tip of his head, quivering with antennae. When he saw he had her attention, he reached up one arm and silently placed a doughnut on her pillow. His eyes were very solemn.

Oh dear sweet Jesus, she was naked in bed with this kid’s father.

Sarah smiled weakly, which T’aki apparently saw as an invitation to join them. He hopped up on the mattress and clambered unselfconsciously against her sheet-swaddled stomach, quietly chirping without words. Sarah made room for him, and Sanford’s other arm lifted from her waist long enough to rub affectionately at the tiny head. His slow, slightly asthmatic breaths had not altered. She hadn’t realized he was awake.