Blue Remembered Hills (ch10)

[igenlode]

Well, after all the excitement over the initial chapter of "In Regret, Always", the second chapter got precisely eighteen visitors and one review (so much for "please update soon"). I ought to be grateful for the one loyal reviewer (who has reviewed just about everything — except "Blue Remembered Hills"! — since the start, when she was for some time my only person doing so) but... it would be nice to know whether people inherently object to the plot, or the experimental structure, or just don't find it that interesting :-(

Time to try again with the next update on the next story... I think it does pay to write either longer stories or one-shots in this fandom; people seem to like epics, and one-shots don't require much commitment. At any rate, my one-shots seem to do relatively well. (It couldn't possibly be anything to do with the longueurs of my writing, could it? ;-p)

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Chapter 10: Happy Highways Where We Went

Rall dreamed of loving Cris, and woke smiling, with the vivid warmth of that memory almost close enough to touch. He lay quietly on the hard pallet, drowsing, reliving the clumsy, exquisite miracle of each kiss behind closed eyes. The ghost of her mouth under his moved against parted lips; drew away in shy disbelief, and gave itself again with an eagerness that brought a stab of sheer joy now in remembering.

She had wanted him.

He held the thought against his heart like a dagger of ecstasy, piercing with every breath he drew. She felt as he did; it was more than he’d ever really dared dream — more than anyone could deserve. He’d never known that so much happiness could hurt: it was as if a great velvet-footed beast bounded within him, clawing its way out in leaps of pure delight until he felt as if his breast must surely burst.

Cris loved him. It was incredible; it was hope and power and desire and utter surrender, all in one heady, intoxicating rush. It left his heart racing in shuddering, overdriven spasms like a stardrive powered up beyond all sane limits, sitting on a cone of white-hot flame that would break it free from gravity’s chains or else vapourise it in a single split second.

He’d spent so long living with the knowledge of those ‘Keep Off’ signs, obeying the warning limits of friendship with all his own longing hidden from view, that he’d scarcely let himself think of what might come after, if the barriers fell. He could have lived for a hundred years on the memory alone of each of those kisses, each a new outpost in the halting exploration of intimacy and need in a world utterly new to them both. They’d gone hand in hand onto those wide untouched plains, ardent and a little afraid; and they’d found hidden hills and dales that were all their own, and caught a trembling glimpse on the horizon of peaks they might reach together in a joining that was closer yet.

It changed everything. There was no way now that he would ever let her go, no matter what happened to him, no matter the price he had to pay to stay at her side. They’d made no promises other than the unspoken. They hadn’t needed to.

Yours, always. It was unquestioning and unconditional. Only you...

He tried her name out loud, just for the pleasure of saying it: that little syllable that was barely a breath, a tiny gasp. Cris. Oh Cris, Cris— he had no endearments for her, only the childish names they’d used and the coarse jocundities of the docks: angel-face, dolly darling, sweet-cheeks, and lewder appreciations that brought a hot blush.

At least there was no-one to see. It was almost strange not to hear the light breathing of Salj in the other corner, or the faint subvocal buzz of the pocket communicator his fellow junior used, kept on the single cabinet that was all the furniture either of them had been allotted. But he’d managed to secure a berth to himself last night... by the simple expedient of getting himself thrown in the brig.

Rall grinned privately, exploring split knuckles, rolled over and sat up. It hadn’t, exactly, been intentional. He hadn’t meant to hit Salj that hard, or to trip over the bench himself and bring half the table in the mess-hall down on top of them, in a brief, glorious brawl that had ended with six of the largest cadets sitting on top of him and three or four of the others out cold in various attitudes on the floor. But it had been worth it. Salj wasn’t going to be making that particular joke again — or any others, for a while — and his own blood had been singing with the wild exhilaration of combat, in a world that had narrowed down to bodies that flung themselves at you and could be flung back.

They’d said he was drunk — acting completely out of character. Perhaps he had been; but not on adrenalin and soma, or any of the throat-stripping homebrews smuggled out of dorms all over the building. He’d been inebriated, utterly and overwhelmingly, with the scent and sensation of Cris, who’d slipped from his arms a bare half-hour before with a final embrace that had shot straight to his head and fizzed through every vein until he simply had to dance... or sing... or hit someone.

As it had turned out, he’d ended up hitting as many people as possible. He tried to feel regret about that, but the wild pleasure of the fight was still bubbling through the memory, and he couldn’t honestly say he was sorry for it.

And then, of course, he’d ended up in the brig. At least, he assumed that was why. He didn’t actually remember very much of the end of the evening, but it had definitely involved two large men in black uniforms with visors down, and the clang of a heavy door.

It hadn’t been the most comfortable of beds, even by the standards he was used to; but the dreams had been very sweet ones.

Rall looked around, taking stock of the situation, and found a clean uniform pointedly laid out on the end of the bed. Someone, last night, had stripped him to his undersuit; he peeled that off, zapped the fresher unit provided, and wriggled into pressed, cool clothes with some appreciation. He was starting to feel a little hungry. Even love, when you were young, could not fill an empty stomach. Presumably someone would come to let him out before it was time for the mid-day ration...

It probably wasn’t as late as it felt, he decided; they’d taken his chrono before they’d put him in here, along with his equipment and everything else that had been in his pockets. It wasn’t as if there was any time-display in the cell, of course, and they hadn’t provided any convenient gratings or outside vents by which he could have judged the daylight’s progress. It was just a plain white room, deep inside some detention block on the planet — not, at any rate, the familiar force-gridded confinement facility on the lower decks of the Borda in which most cadets spent a few hours at some point or another.

An uncomfortable sense of having forgotten something important was beginning to trouble him. It should have been the Borda— shouldn’t it? Wasn’t that what he’d been half-expecting to see when he woke up this morning? Before all the fuss had kicked off, last night... hadn’t there been some kind of announcement about embarkation— and all leave cancelled?

Rall drew in a sharp breath, memory flooding back abruptly. Yes, there had been— because that was precisely why Salj had started on that tasteless jibe about Cris and his own activities of the afternoon: everything else had flown out of his head from then on. But the announcement had been made right enough.

The Borda was powering up over the next two days; was probably finishing the first-stage fuel intake at this very moment. All junior officers and cadets were under notice to report aboard as soon as their sections were reported habitable. If all the new units tested out, take-off would be three hours after dawn, planetary time, on the third morning. Any stragglers who missed their allocated boarding time would be regarded as absent without leave as of the previous sundown, and penalised accordingly.

His mouth set, tightly. He had his lieutenant’s commission now. As soon as the Borda docked at Sector Headquarters he’d be assigned active duty that might take him two or three sectors away, and there was no knowing if he would return at all, or how long it might take even if he did. His own father hadn’t set up a household until he was all but retired from space-flight; it could take years to get permission to send for Cris, even if he could find a place for her to live and allot enough pay to support her.

When Captain Philp had tried to warn his young officers off getting involved... he’d had a point, Rall admitted between gritted teeth, he’d had a point.

When he’d thought she didn’t — wouldn’t let herself — want him, at the back of his mind all along he’d been prepared to go. But now, with that ‘always’ strung trembling-taut between them... he’d take any consequences, throw away any hint of a future that had no place for her. And with that Ghost-who-called-himself-Angel busy blackmailing her tender heart, there was no way he was going to leave her here alone to be torn in two.

The very idea brought with it a wave of the most appalling jealousy that drove him restlessly up and down the confines of the narrow room. Rall groaned, sat down on the edge of the bed-shelf, and dropped his head into his hands, fighting a sudden impotent rush of tears.

When he heard her voice, he thought for a moment he really had gone out of his mind.

~o~

“Rall— Rall, are you there? Can you hear me?”

“Cris? Where—” He’d jumped up, staring round wildly.

A grille, there, high up above the door. Her words carried the familiar distort of the speaker system. Somehow, she’d got into the prison intercom; located his cell. He’d known she was good at what she did. He hadn’t known she was this good... his brave girl. His clever undercover rebel. His quick-thinking, marvellous Cris.

He found himself grinning insanely, despite cheeks that were still wet. “How did you find out? Wherever did you—”

“Oh Rall, listen — I don’t have much time. Any minute now he— he’s going to come back...” And unbelievably, her voice caught and broke away, shaking as he’d never heard it before. Not from Cris, whose gentle, stubborn strength had always been the one fixed point for his own wildly balancing heart. Who had done this to her? How dared they?

“What have they done to you? Who’s coming back? Just wait till I—”

“Hush. Please. Don’t shout so loud.” She choked back tears. “Please, Rall. I’ve got to get a message out — I need someone to believe me. I got him to show me how to do the trace he uses, but I don’t have time to do this more than once. Everyone else thinks I’m a traitor, or dead, or worse... and I— I wanted to talk to you so much...”

More words, swallowed off, as she fought desperately for control. Rall could feel his fists clench in helpless rage. She needed him; and he— he was trapped here, shut up for a stupid prank.

“It’s the Ghost, isn’t it?”

An almost inaudible ‘Yes’, and his fury exploded. “I knew it! I knew that Angel story was too good to be true. He’s been playing on your innocence, posing as a friend—”

“Oh listen, Rall — listen, if you want to know.” The undertone was almost fierce, and he flushed hotly, biting his tongue.

“The Ghost took me last night; denounced me in front of everyone. I didn’t know he was Angel Six. I thought he’d found out about us himself — about you and me. I thought he was going to have me killed... but he drugged me and took me, I don’t know where. Somewhere on the edge of the Servin Range. It’s a big building. We’re somewhere underneath, hidden... yes, ‘we’...

“This is his home, Rall. He wants to keep me here, like a pet. Like a prize. He— I think he is mad. And he loves me. It’s horrible: pathetic, and horrible. He weeps, and I can’t bear it...”

“I’ll kill him.” It was jerked out of him, almost beyond his control. “I swear I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him. I’ll get you out of there, Cris — you’ll never have to listen to his claims of love again, never see those horrible tears—”

At that moment he had not the faintest idea how. He was only possessed by the single, all-consuming need to drag the girl he loved away from this faceless, monstrous rival, whose power spanned a planet and yet was turned upon this small struggling prey like a plasma lance deployed to burn a gnat. He was a gnat too, in the eyes of the Newparis Ghost, he knew that well enough: just a little, stinging nuisance to be swatted aside and crushed without thought. But he could buzz, and he’d buzz loud enough to bring the whole Federation down on this secret retreat and its sinister master, if that was what it took...

“You don’t understand.” Cris sounded desperate. “I can’t hate him like that. He horrifies me — his love is like death itself — but I can’t hate him. He is so pitiful... and I’ve been lying to him, Rall, such endless lies just to get him to trust me a little. Just to get this one brief chance—”

She broke off with a cry. Something bumped and swung, dragging audibly even across the broadcast channel, and Rall’s heart clenched within him in a sudden spasm of sick terror. She’d been caught. He had come back, and she’d been caught.

“Did you really think Erik wouldn’t know — my little ‘pet’, my little ‘prize’? Did you really think you could use Erik’s computers, Erik’s tricks, and he wouldn’t see?”

The distant voice filled the room, almost drowning out the panicked breathing that was Cris; it was resonant, deep, beautiful, caressing to the ear. It made shrinking children of them both, playing out their petty games in a world that was utterly beyond them. Rall hated it, and feared it, and clung to it as if to a thread of ecstasy. When it came closer, turned to spite, it flayed him alive.

“Erik let you play your games, tell your lies with your beautiful hair. Erik went away to see what happened. And now he knows. Oh yes, he knows what your kindness is worth—”

“Let her go!” He could bear it no longer. “If you care for her at all, let her go!”

“So easy to be brave from a prison cell, is it not?” A horrified gasp from Cris as the Ghost laughed, his voice gaining minute by minute in composure and menace. “Oh yes, child, your lover is at present confined. Did you not learn that, when you worked your trace? But fear not, he will soon come rushing to meet us both... provided, that is, he lives to get the chance.”

A sudden whine and clank from below the grille, as the heavy door-lock powered up. Rall backed away, wild-eyed, one hand going uselessly to the holster that was not there. He no longer understood what was happening; only that the monster was playing with them both. Had been playing with them all along.