Time passed, and I
realised that the story would work better if shifted into the realm of sci-fi –
envisioning a Royal Navy of spaceships. It’s still a human story, with a moral
centre. In this form it was published in Nova
SF in 1993. So, as this is a long short story, and it was originally
conceived as a serial, here it is in four parts…
It is a horror story
and there is sex involved.
TEN YEARS HENCE
Nik Morton
*Prologue*
Sufficient
alco-pills inside me to produce a splendid euphoric effect, I was thinking in
time with the moving pavement's rumbling. Pining over Patricia's absence. Shore
leave had frittered away. On the morrow, I was due to rejoin His Majesty's
Spaceship Aphelion.
Fancifully, I wished I could be
instantly transported ten years ahead, beyond the years of deep-space sailing,
imagining we'd be happily married and settled down, my allotted space-faring
replaced by a desk-bound job.
Unaccountably, my ankles and knees
grew weak. Head swam. A falling sensation. Yet I seemed to be moving as normal
on my familiar route home. A conveyor malfunction, I thought foggily...
Utter blackness, and a damp humid
musty odour, of something aged and rotten.
Feeling about me: I was confined in a Plexiglas coffin. Hands and face
felt roughly lined. I was being rejuvenated in my grave... ten years later...
*1*
Funny, that. The
weak-kneed feeling back there. Never had that before... Not even when first
joining the RN; I've never suffered from space-sickness. Got this nagging
headache as well. Pounding, as if Arcturian rivet-birds were clawing at my
skull from the inside. Maybe the pounding wasn't my head - sounded like the
front door... at this hour?
I clambered out of the water-bed and
trundled hazily downstairs, neglecting to operate the escalator switch: I couldn't
even face its sibilant hiss. I slid open the front door.
Patricia.
Her auburn-framed head leant to one
side, emerald eyes pleading entry.
As ever, I couldn't deny her.
I helped her off with her coat; my
briefs were itching for me not to stop there - the flimsy clinging dress she
almost-wore hardly concealed her generous endowments.
‘Jack,’ Patricia began. ‘I've been
out of my mind with worry...’
Right now I didn't want an insane
woman. Danger signals flashed in accompaniment with my Arcturian riveters.
‘Worry about what, love?’ Knowing the reply.
‘I'm pregnant...’
Clever me. Clever bloody clever me!
Naturally, I had my doubts - as to the validity of both the pregnancy and the
honour of sire. But the pained, tear-rimmed look in her lovely frightened eyes
told me who...
A life lay a-growing and a-moving in
her womb, a piece of each of us, for better or worse. Ours. Oh, Gee-zus!
I remembered the evening well, even
with pregnancy screaming through my mind. It had been raining, which may have
given spur to our yearning for the melodramatic. We loved, with abandon and
urgency, till sweat soaked us as if the downpour had itself.
I came to earth with a resounding
thud. Burbled ‘I'd marry you, but - I still love you, course I do...’ To hurt
even moreso, ‘We'll get the little bugger adopted, eh? The rates are good...’
All the while, her eyes saddened and
the soul behind them shattered. Conscience, eh? Every kid I see in the next few
years, I'll be wondering if it's mine!
But what could I do? Ruin my naval
career through a shotgun wedding and a kid I didn't want? Nope, deep-space
commitment meant no hangers-on: no dependants. Without a history of deep-space
sailing you didn't advance up the promotion ladder. And that wasn't going to be
me, no way!
Next day, I rejoined my ship,
destination no secret at all: Singapore thence Deep Space...
*2*
Throughout the brief
shakedown cruise I felt guilty, repentant, a heel. Big-hearted me! There was
Patricia worried sick, carrying our child and me gallivanting off to Singers.
Unmarried mothers were frowned upon, like the old Victorian days: drains on the
social budget. She would become a pariah, lucky even to get a menial job...
But not much of anything registered
my first day at Singapore Spaceport, for on arrival I was twenty-two and I had
more than my fair share of everyone's tot - Aldebaran IV Rum. (Their Lordships
had banned rum but so much illicit drinking and smuggling of the stuff went on
that they resignedly repealed the veto. The risk of drunk-driving diminished
with the automated people movers.)
Inebriated, I slept it off - till
1800 when I was woken with a pre-Atreides Dune of a mouth, a lousy thunderous
riveters' congress for a brain.
Having amazingly managed to get
ashore, in the company of fellow Able Spacemen, I ambulated or was otherwise
propelled along the rows of blast-pads and, via a ‘fast-black’ hover-jet,
eventually into the ‘Village’ - No.6 wasn't in sight.
Although most of Malaysia had caught
up with the 21st Century with a vengeance, the outskirts still retained their
traditional flavour - squalor. Street sellers of all shapes and races, antennae
and tentacles waving, continuously hawked their interplanetary wares from
gaudy, dilapidated stalls. All noise, a veritable Babel.
An education... Daughters offered at
reasonable prices, wives at even more attractive cost; and for those otherwise
inclined, brothers and others for even less than reasonable cost... At least
the ultimate cost, death from AIDS, no longer had to be paid: they'd found that
cure on the Perseus mission...
Foggy recollection: slumped over a
table; my carefree companions shouting and accosting attractive females of
dusky skin and dark eyes; heady fragrance of smouldering joss-sticks;
Catamites; my elbows wallowing in Tiger beer. And the terrible pungency, of
staleness, of spilt liquor, of sweat and urine untended, of cellulose
cigarettes and more potent drugs.
Inwardly I was fighting down a
nausea very powerful; and alas I was as helpless as a lamb. Lamb to the
slaughter, you could say.
A gentle touch of cool fingers on
neck and arm, a soft lilting whisper of comfort promised and present, of
tenderness totally unexpected. Sandal-wood, musk: exciting scent-buds I'd
thought irretrievably saturated.
Felt myself lifted up; tended to
stagger, head reeling, stomach gyrating, eyes unable to focus. This was almost
as bad as the early transporter trips, but this same tender cool touch steadied
me. I felt no longer alone.
For one of her calling, the woman
who had liberated me from my inglorious situation was unusually gentle, and
most considerate.
I must have been a very awkward
partner in bed; flopping about, mumbling between groans, drunkenly sprawling
all over her. Yet as my lethargy wore thin so did my desire grow. Before dawn,
both of us were asleep, sound away in the tranquil depths of after-love.
Sun deigned to intrude through the
window's plastic jalousies. Automatically glancing at my automatic watch, I
noted I'd precisely fifteen minutes to get onboard. Otherwise, adrift! My watch
was precise; apart from being a Rolex (smuggled from the Cassiopeia colonies
because no earth-sider could afford one) it was beer-proof and shock-proof. I
wasn't shock-proof, however.
In a flash I was out of bed. The
flash wasn't my agile movement but my searing headache: the riveters were
employing hammers and tongs now, it seemed.
My pleasurable saviour of the night
before lay unmoved, olive musk-scented skin contrasting with the sun-tinted
sheets that lay rumpled at the bed's foot.
As I hurriedly donned my Leading
Spaceman's tight-fitting trousers I watched her firm little breasts rise and
fall. Dark nutmeg-brown nipples and large aureoles mesmerised me; I drew my
eyes away, to gaze on the sparse black cluster. With a dry tongue I licked dry
lips, overcome with an urge to experience those idyllic delights again, the
after-love odour exciting sense-buds. I wasted precious minutes there...
I sped out of that room, bowled
hazily down the decrepit stairs into the sunlit street. A few alien eyes
glowered my way, but I just ran. Verdun Road, a sign said... I ran, footsteps
a-pounding, a-resounding, as did my head as it received a pounding which
blacked me out and sent me a-falling.
… to be continued tomorrow…
Originally published in Nova SF, 1993. Copyright Nik Morton, 2014
