Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [26]
“Perhaps they won’t try again,” said the warrior woman. “What can we have that’s worth more than five lives?”
He laughed shortly. “I hope you’re right.”
“We’ll take turns to watch.”
Standing breathless, every sense alert, they smiled at each other in new-forged comradeship. There was no second attack. At dawn Sonja, rousing from a light doze, sat up and pushed back the heavy masses of her red hair.
“You are very beautiful,” said the man, gazing at her.
“So are you,” she answered.
The caravanserai was deserted, except for the dead. The brigands’ riding animals were gone. The inn-keeper and his family had vanished into some bolt-hole in the ruins.
“I am heading for the mountains,” he said, as they packed up their gear. “For the pass into Zimiamvia.”
“I too.”
“Then our way lies together.”
He was wearing the same leather jerkin, over knee-length loose breeches of heavy violet silk. Sonja looked at the strips of linen that bound the wound on his upper arm. “When did you tie up that cut?”
“You dressed it for me, for which I thank you.”
“When did I do that?”
He shrugged. “Oh, some time.”
Sonja mounted Lemiak, a little frown between her brows. They rode together until dusk. She was not talkative and the man soon accepted her silence. But when night fell, and they camped without a fire on the houseless plain: then, as the demons stalked, they were glad of each other’s company. Next dawn, the mountains seemed as distant as ever. Again, they met no living creature all day, spoke little to each other and made the same comfortless camp. There was no moon. The stars were almost bright enough to cast shadow; the cold was intense. Sleep was impossible, but they were not tempted to ride on. Few travellers attempt the passage over the high plains to Zimiamvia. Of those few most turn back, defeated. Some wander among the ruins forever, tearing at their own flesh. Those who survive are the ones who do not defy the terrors of darkness. They crouched shoulder to shoulder, each wrapped in a single blanket, to endure. Evil emanations of the death-steeped plain rose from the soil and bred phantoms. The sweat of fear was cold as ice-melt on Sonja’s cheeks. Horrors made of nothingness prowled and muttered in her mind.
“How long,” she whispered.” How long do we have to bear this —?”
The man’s shoulder lifted against hers. “Until we get well, I suppose.”
The warrior woman turned to face him, green eyes flashing in appalled outrage —
“Sonja” discussed this group member’s felony with the therapist. Dr Hamilton — he wanted them to call him Jim, but “Sonja” found this impossible — monitored everything that went on in the virtual environment; but he never appeared there. They only met him in the one-to-one consultations that virtual-therapy buffs called the meat sessions.
“He’s not supposed to do that,” she protested, from the foam couch in the doctor’s office. He was sitting beside her, his notebook on his knee. “He damaged my experience.”
Dr Hamilton nodded. “Okay. Let’s take a step back. Leave aside the risk of disease or pregnancy: because we can leave those bogeys aside, forever if you like. Would you agree that sex is essentially an innocent and playful social behaviour? Something you’d offer to or take from a friend, in an ideal world, as easily as food or drink?”
“Sonja” recalled certain dreams, meat dreams, not the computer-assisted kind. She blushed. But the man was a doctor after all. “That’s what I do feel,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m here. I want to get back to the pure pleasure, to get rid of the baggage.”
“The sexual experience offered in therapy is readily available on the nets. You know that. You could find an agency that would vet your partners for you. You chose to join this group because you need to feel