“How could I?” The most explosive sex he’d ever known, and perhaps it was time to stop writing letters to his dead wife. “But what the hell was that thing?”
“It’s like an elemental,” she said. “Nature, sex, birth, whatever. Creativity.” She looked calmly at him. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll still put you in danger.”
“Offering me the choice,” she said. “My decision. You’re not my first general.”
He half smiled. “I read your Army file.”
“That’s your job... what does it say?”
“Brilliant soldier, maybe too independent.”
She punched him. “You know, right?”
“How you avoided a court martial over that dead Gliese. Yes.”
“We were fucking before then.” And that’s all it had been, for her. The general had talked about love. He’d talked about honour. Dignity and duty, too. None of that prevented him from asking to be spanked while wearing Kara’s bra and panties, which was when she’d decided the affair was over. Kara was as sexually experimental and out there as anyone, with a few scatological no-go areas, but catering to the general’s whiny needs – please Kara, oh please, please, you know I love you – would have made her feel like a whore.
Greenaway’s face was expressionless. “The file said he was obsessed with you. People were worried about scandal. It’s why you were allowed to resign instead of being court-martialled.”
“What scandal?”
“Kara,” he said, so gently as to surprise them both, “Army Int recorded everything.”
She stared into the fire, surprised by her own concern over Greenaway’s reaction when he’d seen the vids.
“Powerful men often develop weird needs. At least,” he corrected himself, “those that require a great deal of sympathy and understanding.”
Kara smiled to herself. “The men or their needs?”
“It’s the same.”
“So I’m the empath,” she said into the flames.
“Not the same as sympathy. You can look at me, ouch!” as she punched him again, this time much harder. “Are you concerned?”
“Because people drooled over the vids?” It was out there. Because you saw me naked and fucking.
“He was a general. AI access only. No humans.”
“Did you...”
“Nope.”
Kara didn’t believe him, but liked that he’d lied to avoid embarrassing her. “I also like women,” she said, suddenly aware that for this brief time she and Greenaway had become a couple.
“So do I. Not men, though.”
“There’s a few could change your mind.”
“I wanted you the first time we met,” he said.
“It was mutual.” She stood up and held out her hand. "Ready for bed?”
“You have a plan. Like to share?”
So she did and he couldn’t fault it, and knew that she’d still go ahead if he did.
And later when they were in bed, Kara heard her own voice, as from the other side of her soul. “This might be our first and last time.” A soldier’s farewell.
He knew what she meant.
“But we’ll always have Paris,” Kara whispered against his neck.
He thought to ask her what she meant in the morning but never did.
3
Marc Keislack, netherspace
He had been floating in netherspace for an eternity, and for less than a second. Time made no sense. Everything is.
Chaos.
Or maybe near-chaos, because the things Marc and Kara called boojums were occasionally the same shape. Smell. Taste. They possessed a consistent inconsistency.
Emotion.
That had been the strangest thing: discovering that the boojums were emotion. Not emotional, but avatars of emotion. Sometimes pure, sometimes a mix. And some of those emotions weren’t even human. He’d been exposed to love, hate, fear and all the rest, yes, but also to feelings he couldn’t name or describe. Some of them had caused him to recoil in horrified nausea; others had made him reach out desperately and pursue them with a profound but uncomprehending desire. Most had just confused him.
They had a basic intelligence, as he understood it, but they were probably closer to dog than to human. He wasn’t sure how he knew this. It wasn’t as if they had any conversations.
Meanwhile he floated.
It wasn’t as if they had names. Or any regular shapes that stayed the same for ... well, not minutes or hours because there weren’t any.
Marc Keislack knew he had gone insane.
It was a protective mechanism. He had to be insane in order to survive. So a voluntary insanity, perhaps. Elective insanity.
It had seemed the obvious thing to do. Either open himself up, become one with them, as them, or cling onto his human sanity until it was ripped from him, leaving only a burned-out shell behind.
How did/do/will I know that?
Marc didn’t know why the boojums were intrigued by him. But they were, always around him, long tendrils of colourless colour reaching for him. Reaching inside him.
Sometimes he slept. He didn’t feel hunger or thirst. What was left of his logical mind thought he was probably getting a direct energy transfer from the boojums, so didn’t need food or drink. That same mind also wondered if he was dead and simply hadn’t noticed.
And all the time he clutched a piece of wood. He sensed happiness, hope, loss and sadness. Sometimes he dimly heard two voices laughing together. He couldn’t remember how he came to have it. Only that it was important.
One time he tried to talk to his AI, without being too sure what an AI was. There was a memory, but fuzzy. He heard a voice singing “La-la-la-la-la-la” in E flat and never tried again. He was mildly pleased to have recognised E flat. It made him feel more independent.
There was a moment when he understood.
Another time when he sensed something infinitely wonderful, mysterious and seductive that somehow was beyond netherspace. He couldn’t tell in what direction it lay. Maybe there wasn’t one. So, perhaps another dimension whose splendour was so great that a little of it had eased into netherspace.
He wanted it. Oh, how Marc wanted it! He
