Apprehensions and Other Delusions Read online

  “How?” You are afraid to raise your voice above the lowest whisper, afraid that you will be heard by Their guards.

  “Look.” She hands you the monocular. “There’s a dummy mine in the middle of the bridge, clinging to the side. It’s hidden, but you can find it if you’re looking for it.”

  You look, and you do see it. “So?”

  “Two things: it isn’t a real mine. It’s a trigger for a couple of traps—there’s light readers installed in its side and if you set them off, you probably bring half the artillery on this side of the river into play. The mines are probably directly under the roadway, and I won’t find them until I get there, if none of the light readers pick up on my movement. They may even have the foundations of the supports set to go up.”

  “Like you said: clever.” There is a tightening coil inside you, colder than the day.

  “I’ve set smaller devices myself,” she says, unaware of your reaction. “Sometimes they’ve worked—most people wouldn’t bother looking for the light readers.” She takes a deep breath. “I hate cold water.”

  “Isn’t there some way—” you begin.

  “Where?” she asks sensibly. She is pulling off her jacket, handing it to you, along with her shotgun. “Now, if you can, cross the river here, staying as far down the bend as you can. That will lessen the risk of you being seen. The guards will be looking across the river or upstream. When you get across, go find the A.F. lines. If that bridge goes, there’s going to be a lot of rock falling.”

  “I’ll wait for you on the other side,” you tell her.

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “I’ll be on the other side. In case I have to keep my promise,” you say, letting the harsh words settle the matter.

  Her expression is puzzled; then she slides down the bank to disappear into the water. She is only a dark speck in the sinuous river. You watch the sentries on the bridge, but, as she indicated, they are looking upstream and toward the opposite bank.

  In a while, you can see her hanging onto the foundation support.

  It’s time for you to cross now.

  There are colds that are colder than freezing. The river is that kind of cold. You ease down the bank and into the water, and the breath is forced out of you. It’s too deep and too fast to keep the beamer and the shotgun dry. You let the shotgun go. The cold gnaws at your bones, and for once your ankle does not hurt you. You do not want to give into the lure of the cold, and so you use more strength than you want to keep moving across, so that you will not succumb to the lassitude of the cold.

  Eventually you make it to the other bank, to pull yourself dripping onto the shore. And the icy wind takes up where the water leaves off. You huddle in the bushes, your teeth clattering, uncertain that you can pull the trigger on the beamer if you have to.

  The guns at your back are louder now, and closer. The sound of an army moving is stronger. Where are they? Two kilometers? Three? More?

  You can’t see her, she’s hidden by the dark under the bridge. You aren’t even sure she is there still; she might have fallen into the water and been swept downstream. You do not let yourself dwell on that.

  Off to the right there is a flash and a thud and three of Their sentries collapse on the other side of the bridge. Two of Their lasers sprout from the trees near the road to Craoi-Venduru, hissing defiance at whatever is coming down the road. And all you can do is huddle in the cover of the bushes, colder than death, and watch.

  There is more and heavier firing from the A.F. troops on this side.

  Where is she? What’s happened to her?

  One of Their lasers is silent. A fine spray of 90-pellets bites into the bank about two meters away. You jump, then retreat into the brush. Then you realize, as the 90-pellets spatter again, that they were not aimed at you.

  You look: she’s in the river about four, five meters away, coming toward the bank. You move down as close as the cover will allow, calling “Pioneer!”

  She hears you over the increasing racket; a hail of 90-pellets comes much too close. You leave the brush, coming as far down the bank as you dare, your hand stretched out to her. You almost reach her when a 90-pellet shatters your hand.

  Blood, bone, flesh shatter. Your arm goes heavy, and you stare at what is left, seeing nothing of the internal armor you had been assured you possess. Blood, bone, flesh.

  You feel her hands close around your leg. Automatically you start back toward the brush, dragging her behind you, over the trail of blood from the destruction of your hand.

  You pause in the brush, your body slicked with cold sweat, nausea sinking into your vitals. You pull her toward you as you press your arm to your side.

  She is white to the point of being blue.

  You are struggling with the bindings on your jacket, trying to pull something free that will let you bind your arm.

  “It’s safe,” she whispers. “They can cross now. The bridge won’t blow.” Her veins stand out, her eyes are distant.

  You stare as your blood pumps out of you. You were hit with 90-pellets, you think in a calm eddy of your mind. You can bind it up, but it won’t make any difference. 90-pellets are lethal. You are a dead man.

  But she is still alive. You shake yourself, struggle once more to pull the binding free. You have some time left before the 90-pellets do their work. You can get her out of danger. You can do that much.

  You drag yourself to your feet and, using your teeth and one hand, you manage to tighten a thong around your arm so that the bleeding lessens. You are dizzy when you move, but you force yourself to bring her to her feet. “Over that rise. That’s all we have to do.”

  “I’m too cold,” she murmurs, then sees what is left of your hand for the first time. Her eyes grow enormous. “How?”

  “They were trying for you,” you say before you can think of something better. “It’s fair.”

  Her laughter is desolate.

  “Get moving,” you tell her, shoving her ahead of you, knowing that if she falls again, you might not have the strength to get her to her feet. You know that if she does not move, she will freeze to death. “Move,” you urge her.

  She’s over the ridge; you start down after her, your vision swimming at the sides.

  A snap from the trees ahead, and a thud. Another snap and thud.

  She wavers on her feet, turns toward you, amazed, bewildered.

  You lurch, stumble down to her, to have her fall against you, looking into your face, astonished.

  “I’ve been shot.”

  No, you say. No, no, no. You hold her, arms across her back to protect her. And all the time there is something warm and faintly sticky seeping through your sleeves, something that isn’t yours. You can’t stop that. Or the thread of blood at the corner of her mouth. Or the moment when she becomes heavier and her lungs are still, when her arms no longer hold you and you know you hold nothing at all.

  There is a time when you drag her—you don’t have enough strength left to carry her—away from the noise, to a place where she will be safe, where it won’t matter if you’re gone. You don’t know how long it takes, because it doesn’t matter.

  A young cadet finds you, all questions, to apologize for firing on you because the A.F. forces mistook you for Them.

  There is a time, a little later, when you lie in a darkened shelter while a physician looks at your hand and refuses to meet your eyes.

  And there is a time when you ride in a skimmer to a Commander waiting for a report while you can still give it.

  All you remember, see, feel, is her body; how you left her in a stand of scavenger Capuchin trees, under the carnivorous branches. Her image brands you, hot against the shock of your loss and your oncoming death.

  The Commander looks you over, and whatever is in his thoughts he conceals from you.
/>   You salute with the wreck of your hand. “Malfunction,” you tell him, holding out the bits of blood and bone, now sealed in a flexible, see-through, completely useless bandage. “Cyborg malfunction.”

  “I’m sorry,” says the Commander, and it is almost possible to believe he means it.

  “Fortunes of war?” you suggest, somewhere between fury and darkest amusement.

  “I am sorry,” the Commander repeats.

  You close your eyes against him, against the noise, against the rusty smear on your sleeve and the horror at the end of your arm, against the destruction working its way into you.

  The Commander shifts. “I know how you must feel: cheated, perhaps even betrayed.”

  “That’s human.”

  “Yes.” The Commander is careful about his next words. “If it weren’t absolutely necessary, we wouldn’t do it. But They make it necessary. There isn’t ... time to explain why.”

  “No; I suppose not.”

  Once more he says, “I’m sorry.”

  You speak, not to the Commander, but to those things you see with your eyes closed.

  “So am I.”

  About Day 17

  This odd tale has a past as quirky as its style: it was sold three times before it actually saw print—once to a science fiction anthology that was cancelled when its in-house editor was fired, and once when a magazine changed hands and policies. It finally made its first appearance in a small-press magazine. I was almost beginning to think that the story had a curse on it.

  The second-person present-tense narration proved very obdurate—I tried to do the story in both third and first person, present and past tenses, and nothing worked except this somewhat peculiar style. I figure the story understands itself better than I do, so I stopped trying to make it fit my expectations and let it run the way it wanted to. I still find it disconcerting, but I know it’s what it ought to be.

  AS SOON as he had slammed the door in the lackeys’ faces, the Baron was on her, fumbling greedily at Desiree’s stays, his big, lean hands dry as reptiles as he dragged her breasts out of her corsage.

  She had feared it would be bad with him, but nothing had prepared her for his rapacity, and she retreated, her voice high and shaking. “You are too eager, mon Baron.” She struggled to break away from him, her delicate fingers closing to fists which she did not dare to use.

  Le Baron Clotaire Odon Jules Valince Pieux de Saint Sebastien laughed unpleasantly, contemptuously, as he reached for the ties of her panniers. “How can I not be eager when you are so charming?” he taunted her in a travesty of the grand manner he had learned as a young man. He was the last of a bad lot: dissipated, corrupt, some said blasphemous, and long since out of favor at court. He was also very rich and, in certain circles, powerful. Now he watched while Desiree struggled with her trailing skirts and undone corset, no sympathy in his hooded green eyes. “What is this, ma belle? Why do you hesitate? Surely you are not going to pretend virgin shyness?”

  Desiree smiled desperately. “No,” she said, more wistfully than she knew. “But perhaps ... first ... something.”

  “Courtship?” He sneered. “But to what purpose? Why should I court you when I own you?”

  Her body went cold at his implacable words. “Perhaps we could talk?”

  He regarded her narrowly. “Are you going to be tiresome? What prattle of yours could possibly interest me? You have one use for me, and if that is denied me, then I have made a poor bargain and I will have to recoup my losses however I may.” His stare grew harder and more calculating. “There is a brothel I know; the madame takes girls like you, she prefers them, in fact, so that they can be chastised.”

  Desiree would not let herself scream, though she felt the sound and outrage building in her. “Tell me of yourself, then? Your lackeys said nothing in the coach. I ... I have seen you only once before.” She was inching away from him as she tried to gather enough of her bodice and corset to cover herself. While his hands had been on her she had been contaminated, debased; even his cynical gaze had a filth about it. “I know little of you, mon Baron.”

  “Have you considered I might prefer that?” He was almost certain that her silly young lover, de Vandonne, had told her tales, undoubtedly going back to his grandfather, who had been part of de Montespan’s set. “What do you need to know but that I want you and will keep you so long as you please me?” He strolled over to the trestle table and started to pinch out the candles of the nearer candelabrum.

  She was still retreating from him. “But I know so little ... I have had just one lover, and he ... he—”

  “Was a foolish, handsome young man and you think you love him, and that he adores you,” Saint Sebastien finished for her. “You will come to learn otherwise.”

  “There has only been Michon,” she pleaded, wishing that Michon were here to save her, to see what his stupid, reckless, unforgivable wager had wrought.

  “I assure you, ma belle, I am experienced enough for both of us.” There was no humor in his voice. “I pay well for my pleasures, do not doubt.” He paused. “And do not doubt you will pay dearly for my disappointment, Desiree.”

  Her panic was rising, but she fought it down. She had to get out of this salon, she had to find the servants and enlist their help, or run away. If only she knew where she was, what estate this was. “I do not want to disappoint you, mon Baron, but ... but I have not learned much ...”

  Saint Sebastien was tiring of their game. “I do not wish to have to hurt you, child. But I am not a patient man and your loveliness and your reluctance may drive me to it.” He had taken off his heavy silk coat with the wide whale-boned skirts, and was starting to unfasten the thirty pearl buttons that closed his gold-brocaded waistcoat.

  Now the door was only a few steps behind her. Once through it, Desiree thought desperately, and she would have a chance to save herself. She pretended to trip on her ripped petticoat, and flung out an arm to break her fall, her fingers closing on the scroll-handled latch. She put her weight against it, but to no avail.

  “Ah, yes,” said Saint Sebastien as he snuffed out three more candles. “It is locked, I am sorry to say. And I have the key. Though if you did get out of the room, the lackeys would bring you back.” He tossed his waistcoat aside. “Little as you may like it, I won you in fair play, Desiree.” He recalled the shock in Michon de Vandonne’s turquoise-colored eyes when he realized he had gambled away his mistress, and lost her to Clotaire de Saint Sebastien, of all men. “You are mine now. I won you and have the deed to prove it. Accept that. You are mine, to do with as I wish. I could have you deported to the American colonies, with a load of whores. I could give you to my servants to use. I could blind you and leave you somewhere on the high road. I have done these things before to others, and I may do them again. So be grateful that for the moment I desire you for myself.” He looked dreamily into the fire, and his expression was not a good one. “I do not want to continue your game: do not make me go to the trouble of fetching you.”

  The last of the candles was out; the salon was ruddy in the glow from the hearth. To Desiree, it was a vision of Hell. She stared, her courage deserting her, as Saint Sebastien dropped into a leather chair and began to unfasten his jabot.

  Desiree leaned on the locked door and wept silently. She was just seventeen years old, and for one happy year she had been the mistress of Michon de Vandonne. For the second daughter of an Anjou carriage-maker, she had done well, and though her family did not wholly approve, they did not object—for they were realistic enough to know that de Vandonne could offer her more than any suitor they might secure for her—or they would not object until now. Now she knew they could cast her off. She had to force herself to look at the man who waited for her on the other side of the room. Her body was clay-cold and as awkward as a puppet with tangled strings; it seemed to her that her fine violet silk dr
ess—quite ruined—was a shroud.

  As the clock on the mantel chimed the hour, Saint Sebastien rose with a sigh and walked to the door. There was deliberation in the sound of his high-heeled shoes. “I asked you not to make me come to you.” His mouth smiled, but his eyes never lost their stoniness; when she winced at his touch his lips stretched wider.

  “Ah, no, mon Baron,” she whispered as he took her chin in his hand, pressing hard.

  He pulled the last of the silk out of her hands and away from her body. He flung her panniers aside. The laces of her corset were already torn and it came away quickly; in his haste, he left bruises as testament to his anger. When at last she was naked and weeping with dread, he pinned her to the floor and fastened on the secret places of her body.

  When Desiree tried to escape the first time, he beat her into unconsciousness and let it go at that: his estate was an isolated one, and he was aware she had no real chance to get free. Had the game been more equal, he might have let her continue the farce, but it did not amuse him enough for that. It had taken his gamekeepers less than two hours to find her and to drag her back to his chateau. His thoughts, too, had been on other matters; there was news from Austria of the new Empress, and Saint Sebastien wanted an ear in Maria Theresa’s court. He had other arrangements that demanded his attention and he did not want to lose precious time disciplining his reluctant mistress. But the second time she ran away was another matter. “Well?” he, demanded when his warden finally brought her back to him, more than a day after she had fled. A night in the open had taken its toll: her clothes were disheveled, her shoes muddied, one of them lacking a heel. Her face and arms were scratched and smirched, and she limped painfully on a swollen ankle. Her jaw was raised and her eyes hard and bright. As he surveyed her, Saint Sebastien took snuff from a gold-and-enamel box and dusted his satin coat with a lace handkerchief. From his brocaded shoes and silk stockings to his pigeon’s-wing bagwig, he was the picture of the perfect gentleman. Only the lines scored into his face marred him. “I am waiting for your answer.”