became frightening again.
Carl did not go to Sheelagh for sex, though the anxiety in his thews was erotic. The zotl were coming to kill him, and Evoe was waiting for him not to fail. The tension of terror and hope trilled in him with the same voltaic resonance as lust. The energy had floated him down Riverside, across Seventy-second Street, through Central Park, and east along Fifty-seventh Street to Sutton Place.
Zeke's speech had replayed in him several times, running on the charge from his tension, and he had decided to take what comfort he could in Sheelagh.
Sheelagh roused from sleep gently, cooed awake by subtle magnetic pulses from the lance tucked up the sleeve of Carl's sweater. The fragrance of sunridden grass rushed her awake, and she sat up surprised to find Carl beside her. 'Carl!' Her red-blond hair was tangled in sleep curls, and when she lifted her arm to unsnaggle it, the bedsheet dropped enough for Carl to see the pale, ample curves of her breasts. 'What are you doing here at this hour?'
'I've got to talk to somebody.' Carl slid the lance out from his sleeve and held it in both hands across his lap. 'I'm sorry to sneak in here like this. I should have waited in the TV room till you woke up. But the craziness of all this is zooming in. Its all too weird. I had to be with someone I trust. Zeke is just coming out of his chemical mixup, and your mom thinks I'm Satan's protege. You're the only one I can turn to.'
'Wait a minute.' She hopped out of bed and capered naked to the bathroom.
Carl sprawled across the bed. He felt mischievous with desire-the first conscious lust he'd felt since losing Evoe.. The Foke were not monogamous, and he knew Evoe would encourage him to be socially sexual while they were apart. The Werld, after all, had no venereal disease. The thought of her warmed his desire. At least she was alive. Only the zotl and one hundred and thirty billion light years separated them, obstacles which seemed small beside the infinite abyss of death.
He moved to place the lance on the nightstand and noticed a book on gravity waves and cosmology. Sheelagh cared enough about him to want to learn about the universe that had changed him, and that insight sundered the desire in him. Why had he implicated this girl in his grotesque fate? Why had he come here this morning except to use her to counter his anxiety? He felt ashamed of his selfishness, and he was at the bedroom door, on the way out, when Sheelagh stepped back in from the bathroom.
'Please--don't go.' In the chalky dawnlight, her nakedness glowed. e
Carl paused in the doorway, awed by her lovesick body. His shame was slipping away like sleep. Her milkwhite breasts swayed with her advance, and he let his eyes drop to the garnet-yellow hair between her thighs. He closed the door, and they sat down on the bed together. She took the lance from him and laid it on the floor.
The words he wanted to speak went breathless in him as she pulled off his sweater and unbuckled his pants.
He felt the hungriness of a cloud of mosquitoes in his loins, and as the last shred of restraint frayed, the light lancer armor inspirited a thought. Carl suppressed the chilly sensation of the other inside him. He had gotten good at ignoring the armor since he had found something like a no-time within himself. The Zone, as he called it, was a recess in his psyche where all the sounds, sights, odors, and textures of the day went within his head. With a little concentration, he could drop the armor's psychic intrusions there, too. All he wanted to know from the armor was when the zotl had arrived for dinner. The white noise of the Zone smothered the armor's inspiriting, and Carl turned away from his farflung hopes and fears for the lubricious moment.
Sex was a lens of exhilaration, amplifying parts, like the shifting rococo of her hair on the pillow and her eyes like decorated glass, chromed with tears of joy as his hand fetched the lily of her genitals. His touch floated like a piece of light, and they twined together like music. He timed his deft massage to the green pulse of a vein in her throat and the rhythms of her breasts. Her song steepened and then frenzied as an orgasm bloomed through her. She clawed at the hand welded to her bluehot center and cried.
A scream cracked the tempo of her pleasure, and she was rudely shoved aside as Carl bounded to his feet: 'Hee-yipes!' he howled, clutching his hand. His face-was skullwhite as he examined the hand and saw two thin wires of blood glinting from his knuckles to his wrist.
'What's the matter?' Sheelagh asked in a hurt voice. 'It's just a scratch.'
. He faced her with a stare like an ax. 'Oh, cod,' his huge face whispered. His wild eyes searched the room and fixed on the doily under the nightlamp. He ripped the doily from under it with such force that the lamp was dashed to smithereens. He clamped the cloth against his cut hand.
Sheelagh curled up with fright. 'Carl, what's wrong? It's just a scratch.'
He picked up his lance and aimed it at her. 'Put out your hand. Hurry.'
She balked, cringing with fear, and he grabbed her hand and irradiated it with UV But the lance shut down before it would damage her.
Carl dropped the lance, bolted to the bathroom, banged around there, and burst into the laundry closet. When he lurched back into the bedroom, he was uncapping a jug of bleach. 'Give me your hand,' he ordered.
Sheelagh crawled into the corner. 'What are you doing?'
'Just give me your hand, goddammit!' He was splashing bleach all over the bed, and when she hesitated, he seized her wrist and doused her whole arm in bleach. While she wept, he soaked her fingernails. Sweat beaded like mercury across his brow, and his face trembled.
'I'm sorry-I'm sorry,' he mantrumed while he finished immersing her fingertips in palm-cupped bleach. Then he clambered into his clothes. 'Stop crying
please! It's not you. It has nothing to do with you. Do you understand?'
'No!' she blubbered.
'I have to get out of here.' He backed toward the door.
'Don't go.'
'I'll come back,' he lied.
'You're lying. You're leaving for good. I'll never see you again. I know it.'
'No. Don't talk like that,' he said from the doorway.
