Dust outside, just dust and clouds.
Harper poured some more beer down his throat. He *still* wasn't drunk yet. He
could still feel the little wrigglers squirming. When he was drunk, he wouldn't
be able to feel anything, oh no. "Rommie, have I ever told you what a babe you
are?" he called out.
"Five times in the past hour," said the ceiling.
"Oh." He grinned up at the ceiling. "Well, it's still true."
"Thank you, Harper. Shall I carry you back to your quarters now or do you
persist in thinking you can walk?"
He wiggled his feet, propped up on the table. "Ooh, that sounds like fun. But I
resent the implication that I am drunk! I am not drunk! I know my limits and I
am nowhere near."
"Whatever you say, Harper."
"I am an anarCHIST! I am an anti-CHRIST! I know how to get and I know how I want
it... wait." Harper scowled at the ceiling. "Rommie, is that how it goes?"
"I have no idea, but I doubt it."
"Huh." He tipped up the beer and found that it was down to the dregs. He tipped
his chair back, licking for the last drops.
The door opened. Harper opened his eyes upside down and saw Tyr.
Harper thumped back onto all four chair legs. Tyr settled into the chair next to
him, also putting his feet up on the table and looking out the port. He propped
a blue bottle between his knees.
"So how are *you* feeling, Tyr?" Harper bent his knees and set the bottle
carefully between his feet with the other dead soldiers. Later he'd rinse them
to reuse.
"I've been better, but I have also been a great deal worse, so on the whole I
find myself content." Tyr popped the cap off the blue bottle and the knifelike
scent of Tar Graz Ar cut through the air.
Harper sniffed openly at the alcohol as Tyr drank. "I've been trying to figure
that out. If this is the bottom, you know? I can't decide." Murder in his belly.
Innerspace invaders--and the whole *universe* about to follow when the Magog put
their worldship back together.
Trust in Dylan to pull the iron out of the fire. Trust him, oh yeah, trust him
when Harper only trusted in Harper and Harper was pretty much scared and
*screwed* and not very happy, oh no, and also not *drunk,* no matter what
Andromeda said.
Tyr glanced at him; Harper didn't know what he saw, but he passed the bottle.
Harper took a giant swig, shivering all over at the hot and cold taste
sensation. Trust a Nietzschean to pick a liquor that fought back. Yeah, trust
*him.* Trust him to find a way out that Harper couldn't follow.
Harper passed the bottle back and looked at the pretty stars. Red, blue, green,
whee, and half of them had planets around them. Pretty much any planet had
something you could use... and then there were Drifts, fat merchant carriers,
colony ships, everything... it was a big fat juicy universe out there. "It's a
big fat juicy universe out there," he told Tyr.
"I've noticed." Tyr was *looking* at him.
"Magog noticed too," Harper said. "I think... when my parents were killed, that
was pretty bad. Dunno if that was the worst, though. Maybe it was. I was old
enough I shoulda done something." Harper let his head tip back.
Tyr pressed the bottle back into his hand. "How old were you?"
"Um, fourteen. I think. Maybe--younger. We lost the clock in a raid and then
there was a bunch of--running, for a long long time, and... everything looks
pretty much the same underground... I was born in the hot summer, and that's
pretty much..." Harper took another drink and realized he couldn't feel the
larvae any more. Trust the Uber, yeah, trust him... "Rommie, I think you're
right."
"Of course I'm right." the ceiling said.
"I'm drunk." Couldn't feel his feet either. Or his tongue.
"I told you so."
"Nobody likes a snotty starship!" Harper yelled at the ceiling.
"I thought you loved me?"
"Privacy mode, Andromeda," Tyr said.
"Look after Harper," Andromeda said before cutting off.
"Hey! Seamus Harper can look after himself." Harper took another swig from the
bottle before Tyr grabbed it back. "Been doing it for--ten, twelve years now...
fourteen, twenty, who knows--hey, Tyr, do you know how the song goes? I am an
ANARCHIST! I am an ANTI-CHRIST!"
Tyr winced. "That's a song?"
"It is a CLASSIC." He grabbed for the bottle and nearly fell out of his chair.
Tyr grabbed him by his shirt and held him there. "Come on, let me go..."
Tyr dragged Harper's chair over beside him instead, pulling him into his arms.
It was kind of nice. Kind of snuggly. Kind of weird. "Hey," Harper said, and
grabbed the bottle.
Tyr pulled it back, sending him off-balance again, and the whole thing was just
too much work for a man who was losing body parts left and right. He gave up and
curled up sideways, head on Tyr's thigh, knees against the back of his own
chair. Tyr petted his shoulder. "You're being nice to me. That makes me
suspicious," Harper said.
"Kindness is a tactic, true enough."
"You butter me up now and I support you in whatever later?"
"Exactly."
"You're so full of shit." Harper poked Tyr in the chain mail.
Tyr shook him by the shoulder gently. "Recently, I was offered fifty thousand
thrones to kidnap you."
"Whoa." Harper considered that amount. "Whoa."
"Your reputation as an engineer is spreading. Your knowledge of the Andromeda's
systems is quite rare. I considered the offer, of course, but I decided in the
end that the price was far too low for such a prize."
Harper blinked. "I'm worth more than fifty thousand thrones on the open market?"
"Much more than that."
"Hey. That's not so bad." Back on Earth, slaves were ten thrones apiece on a
good day. Control collars extra. Out on the merchant drifts, you were worth up
to ten thousand thrones if you knew something really valuable--or were a girl
and were really pretty. He'd been grabbed by one of those goons and assessed at
a thousand, due mostly to the wetware, before Beka stormed up to the stables and
kicked everyone's ass. At the time, he'd been flattered at the price.
Tyr gestured with the bottle. "I thought you might appreciate it. I hope you
will also appreciate that we are not likely to let such a valuable asset die
without a fight."
Harper grinned into Tyr's thigh. "I feel all warm and fuzzy. Of course, that
could be the liquor."
"Probably." Tyr took a drink.
He felt like his head was floating away from his shoulders. The liquor burned
painfully in his belly; he hoped it felt like an afterburner to the squirmers.
"How much they sell you for? To the mines, I mean?"
"I don't know. I was in cold storage at the time." Tyr made a face and set the
bottle on the table. The body-hot links of his chain mail brushed across
Harper's shoulder.
He closed his eyes and saw Rev writhing behind his eyelids.
Trust the Magog--he's a *priest.* He's harmless. He's not going to inject
horrible little eggy things into your belly to chew and gnaw and eat you
alive--oh *no,* trust the Magog. Nice Magog.
He wanted to know whose goddamn babies he was carrying, but he guessed he never
would. He opened his eyes and looked at Tyr's belly. "Hey, can I see?" Harper
turned onto his back.
"See what?"
"Where the larvae were." He cut his eyes at Tyr's stomach, but couldn't see
through the chain mail.
Tyr looked down at him for a long moment, then reached up to his shoulder,
unfastening a hidden seam. The mail sagged off his shoulder. He undid another
fastening on the same side, under his arm, and the mail came loose altogether.
He let it slide off his other arm.
Tyr's skin was smooth as a nanoweld. "Here," Tyr said, placing his hand just
below his navel. He tugged the waist of his pants down a little and Harper
finally saw a mark.
Tyr leaned back, rolling Harper even closer to his skin, and unbuttoned the top
of his pants. There it was--the half-circle mark of Magog teeth. Harper had the
same mark, just bigger and uglier. He didn't heal up nearly so well. "It's
really real," Harper said.
Tyr touched his shoulder and looked out at the stars.
"You ever have those dreams where you're walking and talking and seeing people
you know? And they sound like themselves, not like they all have lobsters on
their heads so you know they're just dream people. And then you wake up and you
don't know if you're remembering or if you just made it all up..."
"Yes."
"Yeah. Me too." Harper closed his eyes and folded his hands up under his chin.
He could smell the cinnamon-and-grass scent of the liquor sweating out of Tyr's
skin; he could feel the furnace of Tyr's body burning through his cheek. "Ever
smelled grass?" he asked Tyr. "Ever... run through mud? Or seen a stream? Or a
bird? Or an ocean?"
"Yes."
"Does it still exist? Your planet?"
"No."
"Mine neither," Harper said, tears coming up in his eyes. "Not for a long, long
time before I was ever born, because you know, my planet didn't have Magog."
Old songs were the best songs because they *didn't have monsters*--
"Mine was scorched with an atmosphere-eater. Now it's a rock."
"Mine's gone forever, but it's still there." Harper closed his eyes tight, but
tears leaked from the corners anyway. He pressed closer to Tyr's belly and he
could feel the smooth scar against his forehead, harder than the muscle that
surrounded them.
His own bite had healed rough and ragged, torn up with infection and
cris-crossed with old scars: scars from hard living, scars that inevitably
happened when you bumped up with Ubers. Earth wasn't the home of humans any
more.
Tyr's bone spurs brushed his skin. "And don't take this the wrong way, but my
planet didn't have any Nietzscheans either," Harper whispered.
"Oh," Tyr said, "I never expected that it would." He cradled Harper loosely in
his arms, feet up on the table, staring out at the stars.
THE END.
All comments are welcome.
bas@yosa.com
www.ravenswing.com/~bas/slash