A STRANGE WOMAN
1560 4D
Dreaming: Jaeg‘s arm around me, and we rested, face to face, from our loving. He closed his eyes and hugged me close, both of us naked in his tiny wedge in the stone of Rumchi Zone, and his bed was hard, only a thin pad laid on the City‘s native rock. This time he didn’t get up to leave, but stayed, humming an old country coll song. Slowly it warmed me, and I drew him closer, smiling. Then I woke up.
Hours had passed. Drasstar‘s arm lay across my waist from behind, and he muttered something deep in his throat and drew me to him. My back was against his chest, and his breath heated my neck. The blankets were not between us any more. Gradually I felt his body warming to me, but it was to Thringe, I knew, and I stiffened, and called his name. “Drasstar.”
“Unh.” His arm tightened further.
“Drasstar, wake up. I’m Lejina, remember?” I tried to pull free. Finally I twisted the top half of my body around, put one shoulder into his chest, and said loudly, “Drasstar!”
He lurched, blinked, and saw me. His mouth began to form the word “Thringe". He froze, and then pushed me roughly away. “You!”
I scrambled out of the cushions, pulling my blanket around me. “You were asleep,” I said.
He sat up and held his head in both large hands, looking away and down. “Why were you near me?”
“I was tired. I don’t know. I wasn’t that close to you when I went to sleep.”
He rumbled, “Look, you’re not Thringe, and I’m not yours. Get that into your head, little baby.”
That made me angry. “I don’t want you any more than you want me. I just want to get back to my life and my father, and I can’t do that right now.”
“You’re not telling the truth,” he said. “You love this life. You’ve made yourself part of it. Look at you!” He gestured to my made-up skin. “It’s like you’ve come in and taken her away from me.”
“That’s not the way I remember it,” I said, anger mounting. “You wanted me to do a little job for you and get paid a lot of coin. Now the job is a big one, and the coin isn’t here, and my father and I are in the deep shafts.” I turned and moved toward the door.
“You can’t go anywhere now!” Drasstar said, rising quickly and reaching me in one long stride. His blanket flapped open for a second, and his manhood was visible. He hastily yanked the blanket closed again. “We’re all in trouble together. Just settle down. I’m sorry.”
“You settle down yourself,” I snapped. “You’ve got a woman, and I’ve got no man. Don’t make this any tougher for me. You’re a good man, but I’m not chasing you. You sov?”
His face relaxed. “Yes.” He held out one hand toward me. “You amaze me. When we found you, I just thought you were this streetkid.”
I took his hand. “Surprised you?”
He drew me a step closer. “Yes.”
“Think of me as a temporary member of the band.” I came one half-step from him and looked up into his dark eyes. Our hands were still clasped. “Could you blame a young woman for wanting to be near you?” Surprise, again at myself.
He shook his head. “It happens a lot. I keep my armor on, up here, all the time.” He tapped his temple. “Thringe and I have an understanding. Things happen with other people. Sometimes males, sometimes females, each of us. We get in corners, in dead ends, have to work our ways out and find each other again. Thringe is a strange woman.”
True. I asked him, “I’m not that strange, am I?”
He smiled, and released my hand. “No. That’s the trouble. You’re a lot like her, but without all the scars. Andro life is terrible, even with innerspace. She can’t hide there forever.”
“Innerspace? She spends time there?” I’d heard about it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing humans would ask andros — too private. It was a kind of shared mental theater, a built-in synthetic reality, that the andros all had. A group of them together could imagine themselves anywhere, even made-up places, wearing and doing whatever they wanted, any time. Their main drug.
“She tries, but her innerspace isn’t good. It runs out of her control, and she gets these reality nightmares, can’t get out of them. That’s where a lot of her songs come from.”
“What can she do about it?”
“Nothing.” He looked at the floor. “Andros don’t have doctors to help with things like that. Jeddin helps her when he can.” We still stood close enough for me to feel his exhaled breath on my face.
“Just who is Jeddin?” I recalled Jeddin‘s dark hair, the crooked grin, the quick movements.
“He’s an andro. Well, I don’t really know. It’s like he’s all over the place. The corpos want him bad. The Hounds are always after him. He stays just out of reach, and he’s always around when andros needs something. Like with Thringe.”
I looked up at Drasstar. “He sent me to get her.”
“Yeah.”
We stood close, then Drasstar spread his arms. “Here, Baby,” he said. “Sorry for the trouble. We’ll all get out of this, if they don’t recycle us.”
We hugged, for what seemed a long time. The faint high music kept its threads floating in the room as we stood. Then, pressed low against my belly, Drasstar‘s sex stirred. He gently broke the embrace, and stood back, turning and adjusting his blanket.
“Time to start the new day,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat, and then I want to see Grioskin. We’ll be playing again tonight.”
I was curious, and feeling reckless. “What did you mean, you and Thringe have an understanding?”
He faced me again. “You almost found out this morning. Damn!” And he turned away from me.
“Do you want me?” I asked.
He kept his back turned. “What do you want?”
I approached him. “I do want more of this life. I never knew I could do anything like this.”
His head bowed, and the backs of his shoulders sagged. “You want to be Thringe. You and a thousand other girls.”
“No, I–“
“You don’t have a beetle’s worth of understanding about the hell she lives in.”
“Oh, yes I do understand it, some of it. Why do you think I can sing what I sang? I’m no upcity girl.”
“You said there’s no man in your life. Don’t you ever take an andro man for a night? Just to clear your head?” He looked as if he wanted to turn and face me again.
“That’s not what I want.” A wall within me tottered and began to fall.
“Admit it, you weren’t telling the truth. You want me.” He knew.
I blurted, “Yes, I do. And you want me too, but you’ve been fighting it ever since you saw me. True?”
He finally turned. His face was dark, and he was aroused. “Damn you, I hope she has enough understanding for this.”
And then he picked me up like a feather. Our blankets fell to the floor, my legs went around his body, stripes on stripes; he lowered me slowly onto the hard heat of himself, and pleasure and guilt began their amorous dance in me.
