’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Ten ― Honey Moon

¿Hasta cuándo, oh simples, amarán la simpleza, Y los burladores se deleitarán en hacer burla, Y los necios aborrecerán el conocimiento?

— Proverbios 1:22

How long, O simpletons, will you love being simple-minded, and tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

—William Shakespeare
As You Like It, act ii. sc. i.

Senator Ortíz was very glad of Captain Churco and his security team, because there had already been three assassination attempts on him, but none inside the hacienda, at least not yet. As Maneesh had predicted, powerful people had objected violently to his timetable for independence in the colonies. The general populace was enthused, though, because he’d also announced the eventual opening of the frontier worlds to anyone who wanted to apply for emigration, and better wages/prices for goods prepared for export, so their lives on the frontiers would actually be better than most citizens here on Earth, rewarding the adventurous with the certainty of comfort, and the possibility, at least, of wealth. Since he’d decided to ‘ditch’ the robber barons and profiteers, leaving them in the lurch, there would be plenty of cash to fulfil his promises, lower imported food costs, and still leave enough for a tidy, but not exorbitant, profit.

In fact, both he and his friend Maneesh figured to set more money aside for themselves, not less, because they’d managed to shift all the costs to their crooked former associates, and had put a few in the penal colonies as a lesson to the rest.

He’d managed to sway quite a few Senators to his side of the argument as well by pointing out that, historically, revolutions against empires always succeeded eventually, and usually bankrupted the former empire in the process. He’d prepared a nice set of examples using the ancient British Empire, the old Soviet Union, and the original United States of America, showing how the costs of empire eventually outstripped the profits, demonstrating where they were in the inevitable progression, and finally explaining that the historical analysis showed that they were probably less than five years away from the tipping point where profit turned to loss and human lives began to be cut short, not all of these casualties members of the governed — as opposed to the governing — classes. Whatever the individual Senators had thought about abstract ideals like ‘human liberty,’ they all understood money, and they understood survival. The fact that he’d been so recently against any concessions to the left-wing side of the issue was a huge point in his favor as well, because it proved that his thinking hadn’t been swayed by sloppy notions of ‘innate human dignity,’ ‘moral justice,’ or any of the other wishy-washy sentimental blatherings of his former opponents. With all those rebellious colonists happy again, mankind was free to journey on toward their collective destiny, to create the airships needed to carry humanity to the stars and beyond, and eventually populate all the habitable planets throughout the Galaxy, and eventually outward to other Galaxies, so there were buckets of money to be made along the way.

He’d have to make sure that the scientists began research on better stardrives, and made a note to have somone look into the problem. The Skinner Drive they had was entirely too slow. Why, it would take thousands of years to encompass this one galaxy alone, which wasn’t nearly good enough. To ensure the success of this great enterprise, we’ll need to re-engineer our systems of production. Instead of shipping raw materials back to Earth to be fashioned into the great starships of the void they’d need, the building should take place right at the expanding frontier of human dominance, so as to start their voyages already headed in the right direction. Creating a level of population and technology on each frontier world sufficient to build the new starships should be their first priority, since centralized starship planning production was a vulnerability they couldn’t afford. A single errant asteroid could set back human civilization and human expansion into the galaxy for a thousand years or more. The current system was entirely too fragile, so it had to be fixed.

They’d let the colonies stagnate for far too long, sucking the blood out of them for purely personal profit, when they should have realized that their pioneers were — with the possible exception of the penal deportees, and he wasn’t entirely sure about them, because many were the kind of men and women who chafed against authority, exactly the sort of people one needed on la frontera. — the best of humanity, adventurous and bold and brave, the robust leading edge of the human race …. He’d have to see about arranging some sort of vid series, maybe three of them, aimed at different demographics, young men, women, and kids at least. He’d turn the task over to his public relations team, but all of them would celebrate the frontier, like the antique cowboy vids in the old USA, and the same themes with a Mexican accent down here, glorifying los caballeros, the horsemen, the rough riders, who faced dangers with almost superhuman courage, and always ‘got the girl’ in the final scene as they rode off together into the sunset. ‘Did they even have horses on the colony planets?’ He reminded himself to ask about it, and have someone rectify the situation if they didn’t. The vids, of course, could ignore reality, because the new waves of colonials would carry horses with them. A mounted man had dignity, a physical presence that couldn’t be ignored, although the new rancheros would be armed with the latest in human weaponry, of course, neurolizers and laser rifles at least. He’d have to ask Captain Churco what weapons he’d want in his backpack if he was cast away on a desert island, as long as they would ‘play well to a video audience.’. The starship industry was the key, though; maybe they should invent an alien menace, slimy octopoid invaders who threatened Earth itself, build up a frenzy of patriotism and sense of self-sacrifice to drive the young men and women out to the edges of known space, stalwart guardians of the people left behind. It shouldn’t be difficult, with modern video technology. Hell! Half the actors on the vids these days were VR simacula anyway, to save money on salaries and residuals.

He thumbed a button on his communicator. “Churco! Could you come in here for a moment? And bring …what’s-his-name, the PR guy, with you.”

“Sanderson, Sir?”

“That’s him. Make it as quick as possible, but don’t hurt him. I’ll be needing him to do some work for us, and I’ll need your advice as well.”

“Right away, Sir!”

World Senator Ortíz leaned back in his leather office chair with a satisfied smile. ‘At last! Things were getting done around here!’ Then he wished that his wife were in the room, instead of off at one of her charities. There might have been just barely time for a quickie! ‘Oh, well, there’s always tonight!’ He had an instant hard-on just thinking about her. ‘Damn! But that woman was hot!’ He wondered, and not for the first time, why he’d been wasting his time with cheap floozies in the past few years.

“Dammit all to Hell! Shit! Piss! Ass! Fuck!” O’Hare was furious at the world in general. He had a raft of unsolved assassination files stacked on the edge of his desk, and they were no closer to solving any of them. Every lead they’d uncovered, some of which had looked really promising, like Jack’s week-long vigil with the werewolf/dog, had just petered out like an old man pissing, dribbling in fits and starts past a prostate as big as a baseball.

Jack himself was sitting sprawled. legs akimbo, one leg slung over one arm of the chair as he leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, wisely, for a change, saying nothing.

O’Hare glared at him. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“You’re doing fine, Mr. Bossman. I feel exactly the same way, but you’re so statesmanlike and eloquent, much better at expressing yourself in a dignified manner than I am. When I get really mad, I just punch somebody, or a wall if there’s nobody punch-worthy within arm’s length. Hurts like hell if the wall is brick …or concrete …or durasteel especially, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“So, what the hell am I paying you for? Got any bright ideas?”

He grimaced. “You know how police work goes, boss. Most of the time you just round up the usual suspects and keep digging. Except in this case there are no ‘usual suspects’ because ….” He stopped dead, brows furrowed. “What a minute! The Burladors are supposed to be colonials, right, striking back in righteous indignation over their oppression and persecution in the colony worlds. But where did they come from? The nearest colony world is Quicksilver, twenty light years and thirty real years away in coldsleep, stacked like cordwood in an automated space-going freight truck, so they didn’t sit around the passenger lounge cooking up a plot to overthrow the government.” His gaze unfocused, he started playing with his communicator. Once they get out there, most people stay, even if they have the funds to return, because there's no one left to return to.” He did some more research on his communicator, frowned, then did some calculations.

He looked up at his boss, matter of fact and self-assured as he began, “Relativistic effects from two prolonged periods of sub-light travel means that any putative returnee will come back younger than even the longest-lived of their contemporaries, if any are left alive at all. Going off-planet is like stepping into a time machine and then stepping out sixty to a hundred and twenty years in the future, with no way back to where and when you came from, even if you turn right around when you get where you were going. There have been exactly three high-level officers come back from Quicksilver, and that’s it! No colonials, no disgruntled returnees. There couldn’t be, because we ship people out for free, but unless they’re some big muckymuck in government, they have to pay their own way back, and we charge them an arm and a leg, so they’d be plunged into poverty as soon as they returned, scraping by on government rations and ‘Tube Quarters,’ all alone. Earth Two and Gruntovoy are even further out, and we’ve had exactly one Colonial Governor come back from each, and even they only came back to retire after a long career, so that’s it! A grand total of five suspect terrorists, none of whom fit any profile I could imagine and ….” He diddled with his communicator again, then continued, “… One of whom is recently dead of old age, one is long retired, and in very poor health, and the other three doing quite well for themselves as retired government bureaucrats. In fact, they’d all three be excellent targets for the so-called Burlador, because they’re living the high life back here because of their successful oppression of the masses of suffering colonials.”

“So the whole colonial thing is just a smokescreen!” O’Hare’s gloom had vanished like the morning fog in the San Francisco urbopolis.

“Not quite. That’s been their only demand, even from the beginning, so it’s got to have something to do with the colony worlds, but ….”

O'Hare had the bit in his teeth now, and was running with it. “The Burladors want to get the economy moving! We’ve been in a holding pattern for years now, with corrupt politicians and their cronies skimming off most of the gross world product, and just enough going to the masses to keep them alive! By focusing on the colonies, which is the only place where there’s room for growth, they manage to conceal the fact that they want Earth itself to change in some way that benefits their economic interests! It’s a perfect setup! There must be millions of people who are relatively disadvantaged, but still have enough money to throw around for a chance at the jackpot.”

Jack held up his hands in a referee’s ‘time out’ sign. He wished he’d thought to bring a whistle. “Hold on, Bossman, You’re forgetting a few things: first, that we don’t have anything like the technology these guys used. How do we account for the shape-shifting, for example?”

He scoffed. “Easy as pie, it’s a trick, just like you said about the dog, which was just a dog, but we thought for a while it came from Planet X or something. We pretty much know that they can pull off some sort of ‘mind control’ thing. So they just hypnotized that girl who supposedly saw a man turn into her twin, and maybe they did the same to everyone who now swears that she — the ‘ringer — looked and acted just like the original housemaid.’”

“DNA?” Jack said laconically.

“A plant. While the girl was out cold, the impostor took some swabs, that’s all, maybe even pumped her for the information he — or probably a ‘she’ they kept off-stage to mystify the rubes — used to pull off the hoax. Who the hell pays attention to the cleaning crew anyway? Most people, the women in the housemaid’s uniforms could all have two heads with three eyes each and they wouldn’t care, as long as the beds were made.”

“The dog?”

His face fell a bit and his brows almost met in the middle of his forehead, his scowl was so intense. “I’m still having trouble there, but we know that it’s just a normal dog with some abnormal tricks; the vet’s DNA tests proved that.”

“Did it? I think it just proved that that dog is like a lot of other dogs, but what if a lot of dogs have been infected with something?, something that makes them vulnerable to that sort of manipulation? My problem wasn't that I disproved the connection, but that I couldn't prove anything that we could use to prove the opposite. I'm personally convinced that the dog was used to bite Senator Ortíz, but my problem is that I don't know how or why. It was a dog, you said, like other dogs, but it might be a little difficult to figure out what happened if you had a room full of ‘ringers,’ but only one was guilty.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm saying what if every — or almost every — dog was capable of doing what that dog did, but only one was … influenced to stretch his capabilities enough to allow him to follow a complex series of instructions, and then left to ‘face the music’ on his own.”

O'Hare was trying to follow Jack's reasoning, without success. “But if every dog could do that, why don't they do it?”

Jack answered with what sounded like a non sequitor. “How long have we been in space, seriously I mean? How long have we been sending airships out into deep space and returning?”

“I don’t know, a hundred years?”

“A hundred and seventeen years since the return of the first round trip from Quicksilver.” He held up his communicator, “and in that time we’ve completed one million, five hundred and thirty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-seven round trips, a little more than thirty returns a day, each one of which unloaded roughly one million metric tonnes of cargo.”

“But ….”

“We’ve assumed that no one could have ‘stowed away’ on those many hundreds of thousands of voyages, because we have to do it in cold sleep, but what if there were aliens for whom thirty or forty years siting around twiddling their thumbs was no bother? You know what they say about ‘assumptions?’ ”

“ ‘When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.’ Oscar Wilde said it first, I think, but it’s not as clever as most of his quips, a little stupid, in fact.”

“I wouldn’t know, but the general idea has been around forever in police investigations. You have to let the evidence speak for itself, not pick and chose your evidence based on some preconceived notion that ‘The butler did it,’ or ‘Cherchez la femme!’ I think we’ve fucked up badly, and we’ve let greed persuade us to ignore the downside of exposing the entire world to organisms and diseases native to entirely different worlds.”

O’Hare thought about this for a moment, then said, “And we’ve had a thousand years of experience with foreign plagues, even on Earth, to urge caution. The indigenous Americans were decimated by European diseases before the Europeans fired a shot, and at least some of the barriers that faced European conquerors of the rest of the world were disease: syphilis, malaria in many tropical regions, parasitic diseases like sleeping sickness, African trypanosomiasis, in equatorial Africa, and many more. But that’s crazy! What kind of disease acts like it’s intelligent?”

“Quite possibly, an alien disease. We’ve got diseases carried by worms; why not diseases, or vulnerabilities, carried by little green men? Typhoid Mary was as human as we are, but she wasn’t the sort of house guest you’d want to invite in for dinner. Syphilis is carried by humans, and makes people crazy unless you treat it.”

“And we know how to treat it because we’ve had loads of experience with it.” O’Hare nodded, paradoxically pleased with the way this was going.

Jack continued, “So maybe this ‘craziness’ has a non-human vector, but makes anyone infected susceptible to some sort of external influence. We ought to be able to test the idea by comparing our suspect DNA to historical examples, and see what’s changed, if anything.”

“Do it! The historical databases ought to be available online, so it should just be a matter of feeding our samples in for automatic comparison.”

“My thought, too, but I’ll need your authorization for the costs. All those archive sites charge through the nose.”

“Key it to my account, and I’ll authorize it now.”

They both concentrated on their communicators for a few minutes. Jack said, “Well, it’ll probably take an hour or two to run full comparisons. Want to go out for dinner? I’m getting a little hungry.”

“Sure. I’m feeling a little less hounded, now that we have a reasonable lead. I can at least report some semblance of progress, even if it doesn’t pan out.”

“Politics! I’m just a simple …”

O’Hare interrupted, “… ‘Beat cop.’ So you keep telling me.”

And they walked out the door. The lights turned themselves off, as soon as the controller detected that the room was empty.

She held the fruit to his lips, a smile upon her face, “Margarita told me it was good, my friend. You saw that I came to no harm. This world is changing to become a paradise, a new garden of Eden, with everything made perfect for our pleasure and delight.”

“Juanito, I can’t …”

“Ben, can’t you see what’s happening? The good Triffids are destroying the bad ones; look around you, you can see it happening. They’re changing the world right before your eyes. It’s a miracle, Ben, and you’re the only witness with the scientific training to observe and learn what it means. You can’t stand aside.”

“But it was poisonous just a few minutes ago! It can’t …”

“Can’t it? Do you, a scientist, rely on past prejudice, or are you willing to observe and incorporate new observations into a new theory? Ben, my friend, it was just a simple misunderstanding is all. Quicksilver thought you were an enemy, because it saw the bad people first, who came to slash and burn. You started this, because you treasured the Triffids, in your way, and preserved them. Now, it knows better. There are bad people here, as everywhere, but most people are good and kind. Do you think that I would wish you harm?”

“Well, no, but …”

“Smell it, Ben, you don’t have to taste it. Does it smell anything like the old Triffids?”

He already knew that it didn’t. The old Triffids had an acrid, poisonous smell that warned you not to touch, but these new ones smelled like ripe apples, with a hint of rose, sweet and bracing, like a cool Fall day in an apple orchard back on Earth. He’d been in one, once, on assignment, and he treasured the memory, the ripe fruit heavy on the trees, a natural bounty that few people ever saw these days, fresh fruit ready to harvest. It had been years since he’d had fresh fruit, since what came from Earth was freeze-dried bricks of fruit that had to be ‘reconstituted’ before it was edible, and ‘edible’ was a charitable description. His mouth began to water in anticipation …. “No!” he said aloud. He shook himself, but she put her hand behind his neck, and drew closer, the ripe fruit overwhelming his senses, her luscious body almost touching him, with just a few inches separating her bare breasts from his chest, overwhelming his caution, filling his mind with reckless need. He could smell her womanly scent as well, a deeper grace note underneath the sweeter fruit. He opened his mouth to say ‘No,’ but ….

“… it tasted like ambrosia, the precious food of the Gods that bestowed immortality even on mere mortals, and sustained the lives of the Gods and Goddesses on Mount Olympus. It was like every wonderful treat he remembered from his childhood, a fresh peach his mother had given him for his seventh birthday; it had cost his parents almost a week’s worth of his father’s salary, but they’d wanted to give him a small portion of the rich memories they’d had of the world they’d grown up in. There was something of real ice cream in it too, like chocolate ice cream made from real cream, rich and satisfying on the tongue, the sensuous creamy-sweet taste of it lingering on the palate, fading slowly to the slightly bitter aftertaste, spreading out perfectly as he swallowed.”

And then she was tearing at his clothes, and he was helping her, shredding his shirt like tissue paper, ripping his pants from waistband to ankles like a stripper’s trick tear-away outfit, even his heavy leather belt snapping like thread, and he picked her up in his strong arms and carried her to a bed of triffid leaves, as soft and welcoming as a downy bed of feathers as they fell down on it together, as they came together perfectly, almost in mid-air, with magnetic force, unerringly pulled toward alignment with neither fumbling nor the slightest awkwardness, already joined intimately, passionately, perfectly, locked in an slippery embrace of pure passion and desire, her hips thrown up to his powerful movements as if they’d practiced many times before, and she was ready for him, hungry, spread wide and squeezing him with the fierce power of her womanhood, milking him with all her strength and the full power of her thighs and legs as he strove mightily within her, and she clasped him in her arms, and pulled at him, encompassing his power with the fullness of her own deeper strength, and they moved together in perfect synchrony, both filled with passion and power and hunger, but this was the first time, the predestined first of many sexual encounters to come, the first joining of their souls, and it was perfect, and then they came together in a different way, shuddering in perfect release and pleasure, and then they began to move again, and they were both ready, and hungry for each other, like always, and it all happened again, and it was perfect, and then they slept, cuddled together beneath the Quicksilver sky, surrounded by love and sunlight.

Dan woke up first, opening his eyes to a wonderfully strange sight, a woman’s head beside his own. She was sleeping still, but she was lovely in repose, with long lashes and thick blonde hair, just shoulder length but visibly heavy, like women’s hair often was, more luxurious than any man’s. He kept very still, just drinking in the sight of her, her physical beauty, and his face suddenly felt hot, flushed with the memory of their recent sexual passion, something he hadn’t experienced since he’d left Earth. He was afraid that, if he moved, she’d wake and remember that she had somewhere else to be. He was fast approaching middle age, with a bit of a pot belly now from too much time spent behind a desk, and she was so very young, and so very beautiful.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him and smiled. “Hi, Dan,” she said, and smiled again.

“Hi yourself. I don’t know what to call you, I ….”

“… feel a little funny calling a woman with whom you’ve just had great — make that fantastic sex — ‘Juanito.’ ” She grinned. “Okay, I get it. I guess ‘Jaunita’ isn’t in the cards either, too close … Hmmm. How about Luz? It was my mother’s name. It means ‘Light.’ It seems fitting, because you met me first, in this form at least, in the brilliant light of midday.”

He smiled. “Luz. Yes, that’s perfect. I’ll always remember the sunlight on your hair, just like this.”

She stretched forth her arms and pulled him close, then kissed him.

Dan replied with quiet formality, “Podrá¡ nublarse el sol eternamente;
Podrá¡ secarse en un instante el mar;
Podrá¡ romperse el eje de la tierra
Como un débil cristal.

 ¡Todo sucederá¡!
Podrá¡ la muerte
cubrirme con su fáºnebre crespá³n;
pero jamá¡s en má­ podrá¡ apagarse
la llama de tu amor”

She answered, fluently turning the poem back into English: “The Sun could become dark for all eternity;
The sea might dry up in an instant;
Even the axis of the Earth itself might break
Like a fragile crystal.

All these things could happen!
Even Death
might cover me with its mournful veil;
But it could never extinguish
The flame of your love that burns inside me.

“Oh, Dan, Dan, you dear sweet man, I quite agree, and thank you. That’s one of Margarita’s favorites. She loved to read Bécquer’s poems, but especially liked to hear me read them to her. I see the attraction now. I love the sound of your voice, so deep and resonant.” She laughed. “It almost rumbles when I feel the vibrations through the leaves of our improvised bower. It tingles. It makes me feel like a girl again.”

Dan smiled, tracing the womanly curve of her hip with his hand, so incredibly beautiful, so evocative of every tender instinct he possessed. At this moment, he felt like he could slay dragons, suffer any hardship, perform great feats of strength and courage, to protect this wonderful woman who had so freely given him her love. In his heart, he vowed to become a better man, to do his best to deserve her sweet love forever. “Of course she did, my sweet darling. She told me so, and wants us to be happy.”

She smiled up at him, joy suffusing her already lovely features with an inner brilliance. “We are blessed, my darling, mi amor.” She smiled again, but with a teasing difference. “Do you think you’re ready for another round? I want to celebrate.” She pulled his lips down to hers and kissed him hungrily, gripping him close to her with both arms and spreading herself for his entry. “Our love has quickened inside me, my true love, my lovely man. We’re going to have a child.”

He was rock hard in an instant, rising to the invitation like a young man of twenty, powerful and invincible and proud, already entering her as he said, just starting to breathe deeply with burgeoning desire and effort, “We’re going to get married, of course.”

She laughed, low and sultry, deep in her throat, sounding incredibly sexy, like Lauren Bacall in one of her better vids. “Oh, my dearest love, I thought you’d never ask!” as they moved together in a dance as old as life.

Copyright © 1993, 2010, 2011 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

Copyright © 2011 Levanah