Up Against It - M. J. Locke [102]
* * *
They were both exhausted, but neither could sleep. At two a.m. the cameras went off, and she told him what had happened with the feral. He listened while she described it.
“Regrettable that it didn’t survive,” Xuan said.
“Yes.” She released a slow, sad breath. “We’ve been so busy dealing with the crisis I haven’t been able to prep to respond to Reinforte’s accusations. They’re going to eat me alive. And I haven’t got a live sapient for barter. The PM will have no choice but to dump me, to get Ogilvie & Sons’ ice. It’s probably going to be tomorrow morning. Today, I mean.” She felt more vulnerable than she had since she was a child.
It was dark in the room, except for the glow from a night-light; all she could make out was his dim silhouette. But her other senses shaped him for her: the small movements of his back muscles beneath her hand as he shifted in the hammock; the feathery touch of his breath against her hair; the beat of his heart against her cheek. His skin smelled faintly of Xuan-ness. His breath had its own scent, too, and both smelled good to her.
“Life is change. You know that.”
“I know.” A long pause. She pillowed her cheek. “But people will blame me. They already are. I’ll go down in history as the woman who brought an entire stroid cluster down.”
Xuan burst out laughing. “Look at it this way, dear. At least you’ll be remembered! The only ones who will know my name in years to come will be random geologists who happen to stumble across my outdated old tomes in some wave archive that someone forgot to purge.”
She did not know whether to be angry or amused. “Oh, Xuan.”
He finally said it. “We’ll weather this.” He kissed her head. “Don’t worry.”
* * *
Her sleep was troubled that night. She saw Hugh, floating faceup in a river, dead, only he wore Marty’s clothing and was covered in vines. She wept. Her mother said, “Don’t grieve, for I bring you joyous tidings.” A woman wearing an old-fashioned male Downsider’s suit moved past. She had her hand on her belly, and Jane knew she was pregnant.
“Look!” The young woman turned toward Jane, and she had the face of a man. Two snakes slithered up to her, making wave patterns in the sand. One was made of electricity with jewels for eyes, and one a smooth blue-green, with human eyes. The snakes wriggled up to the pants legs and moved upward.
“This child has two fathers,” the woman-man said and removed her-his clothing; the snakes had coiled around her-his hips, like a belt. “A father of flesh and a father of wave.” She-he pressed her-his fingers into her-his belly and it opened. Within, Jane could see clockworks. Then she-he closed her-himself up, as Jane’s mother’s voice said, “It is to remain sealed for a time and a time.”
Then Dominica came, only it was Dominica as she had been before she had left, barely beyond her childhood, willowy and boyish and solemn. She led the newly pregnant woman-man off.
Jane saw her mother standing at the edge of a pool in the light of the full moon. She wore no clothes, and her body was old and wrinkled. Her giant breasts sagged to her belly. Her hair was white, flowing, and beautiful. It went all the way to the ground.
The pool at her feet was dark, like spilled blood, and glass knives lay on the shore. The old woman stepped through the knives, which cut her feet till she cried out. She waded into the pool and as she moved deeper inward, the blood was converted to pure water that swirled around her hips, her waist, her chest. She grew young. The knives on the shoreline crumbled to a bed of clean, soft sand. Greenery blossomed at the pool’s edge.
“Don’t be afraid, Jane,” she said. “Much good comes after,” and sank below the surface.
Jane awoke with a start, heart hammering, the echoes of her cry lingering in her ears. She curled in the hammock, pressed against Xuan. It took a long time for her to fall back to sleep.
20
Sean did not go to bed that night. He sent the three uninjured teens home after the medic cleared them. Then he took stimulants and stayed at the hospital