A Season for Slaughter

Chapter 35 Using God's Voice

Lizard stood on the balcony, looking down at the acrid blue seas below. "I didn't think I was going to like being a passenger," she said. "Now I remember why I became a pilot. I like seeing the world from high up. I like seeing beyond this hill, beyond the next hill, beyond the edge of the sky."

Despite my… dislike… of heights, I came and stood with her. The Bosch was only twenty meters above the ocean, moving steadily south along the eastern coast of the continent. Despite her complaints about time and schedules, Captain Harbaugh had slowed the great airship's speed to a gentle drift, so that we-and all the other passengers too, I suppose-could enjoy the tropical red sunset from our balcony. The long purple rays of dusk stretched eastward toward the approaching night. Our shadow was a great dark shape moving on the water, and we could see the first faint glimmerings of phosphorescence on the hot foaming surface of the waves.

Lizard reached over and took my hand. She held it tightly while she spoke. "I never had a honeymoon," she said. "Robert and I married while we were both still in college. We couldn't afford a honeymoon. Neither of us had any real family. We promised ourselves that we'd put some money aside and we'd give ourselves the first real vacation that either of us had ever had. We planned. Oh, God, how we planned. We looked at travelogues and brochures and books and videos. We dreamed of Paris. And not just Paris. We dreamed of Tahiti, Australia, Rome, Greece, Mexico, Egypt-we wanted it all. We wanted to make love in all the world's most romantic places. You don't mind my telling you this, do you?"

I shook my head.

She pulled away anyway. She dropped my hand and turned quickly from the railing. She'd never talked about any of this before. It probably still hurt too much.

She went back into the cabin and sat down on the edge of the bed, wiping her nose, then let herself fall backward onto it as if she were as exhausted in body as she was in spirit. She sniffled and put her arm across her eyes. I followed her back in and sat down next to her, but I didn't try to touch her. She still had too much need for distance.

"And then," she said abruptly, "I got pregnant with little Stevie and that was the end of that. All the money we had put aside for our special honeymoon-and it wasn't really very much-had to go for baby bills. We didn't mind, not really, but in a way, we did. I mean, how can you not be disappointed? I'd even begun learning French. Oh, we were thrilled about the baby, of course, but we knew it would be years before we'd ever have the chance again to realize our plans." She exhaled softly, not quite a sigh, not quite a moan. "I miss them so much," she said. "I'd trade Paris in a minute, and all the other places too, if I could just have one more day with them both…"

After a moment, she rolled up on her side to look at me. Her eyes were wet. "I'm sorry," she said.

I levered myself around to face her; not too close, but close enough. An arm's length. "For what? For missing people you love? Don't apologize. I miss…" I stopped. I didn't know exactly who I missed.

She reached over and took my hand in hers again. Her smile was strained; her voice had an edge of sadness. "I shouldn't be comparing. I shouldn't be thinking of what's gone. I'll never see either of them again." And then she started to sob.

For a moment, I just watched her as she cried. I wanted to reach out and pull her to me again, I wanted to hold her and cling to her as if she were life itself, but that would have been taking advantage of her vulnerability at this moment. I held back. She didn't need my help for this. She knew how to cry. And she needed to cry by herself. When she needed to be held, she'd reach for me.

I looked around, looking for the box of tissues. She'd be needing them soon. There, on the headboard; I stretched and reached-and she suddenly gulped and grabbed me and fell into my arms. "Hold me, dammit!" she wailed, and I knew I'd miscalculated again. She'd wanted me to grab her and hold her from the very first. Damn! How was I supposed to tell? How is any man ever supposed to know what a woman wants if she won't say so? It's true. Women's brains are not the same as men's. Women don't think like men. I wondered if that realization drove women half as crazy as it did men. No wonder we spent so much time trying to explain to each other what we really meant.

I held her as tightly as I could while she gulped and choked and sobbed into my chest. I could feel my shirt getting soggy. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, how much I loved her, but I couldn't. Not yet. She wasn't holding me because she wanted me; she was holding me because she wanted someone else, and he wasn't here. Neither of them were here, and she needed to cry and have someone hold her and pat her and tell her, "It's okay, baby. Let it out. Just let it all out." And I loved her so much, so goddamned painfully much, that I would do this for her, just so I could hold her, even though I knew she'd never be able to return the same feeling for me

Abruptly, she stopped. She looked up at me, her tears streaking down her cheeks in dirty rivulets. Her mascara had become a dark map around her eyes. "Oh, God, Jim. I'm so sorry. What am I doing to you? I'm using you-" She rolled away from me and bolted for the bathroom.

"I like being used-" I offered, but it was a halfhearted attempt. I didn't know if she'd heard me or not.

I sat up on the bed and tried to think. My head was full of noise. This was stupid. I got up and went to the bathroom door. "Lizard?" I said. I knocked politely. "Please?"

She came out almost immediately. She had splashed a little water on her face and was still wiping it off. She looked a little more composed now. As if she'd made a decision. "We should stop," she said.

"I-I-" I felt as if she'd shoved a hand grenade down my throat and pulled the pin.

"No," she stopped me. She put a finger across my lips and said, "It's not because I don't love you. It's because I do. I love you so much, it hurts. I love you so much, I'm hurting you every day. And that's wrong. I don't want to hurt the people I love. Not anymore. Please, Jim, not anymore."

I grabbed her arms and held her still. "Stop it," I said. "Stop it, right now."

She tried to shake free. She tried to pull away. She tried to turn her face away from me.

I used the voice. "Stop it, Lizard."

It worked. The voice always works. It's the voice of God. When you speak in the voice, you're not simply imitating God-you'r being God. It's one of the things you learn in the training. When people hear the voice of God, they listen. She shut up and listened.

"I love you," I said. "You know that. That goes without question. You love me too. I know that. There's nothing you can say or do that will ever convince me otherwise." I took a breath. "But if the fact that we love each other isn't a reason or an excus or a justification for staying together, then neither can it be reason or an excuse or a justification for staying apart. It's totally irrelevant to the issue. You said so."

I stared into her eyes. She was listening intently. I could onl assume that she wanted to hear what I had to say. "Yes, we have arguments. Really good ones. Yes, I hurt you sometimes. Yes, you hurt me sometimes. But I love you in spite of it, or because of it; it doesn't matter. The important thing is that you're never going to stop hurting the people you love, it's always going to be a part of life. And you're going to be hurt in exchange. But the alternative to being hurt is to become a zombie, without feelings, without relationships, and without anyone ever to hold you close in the middle of the night when everything else gets too hard to bear. I'm not willing to be a zombie-and neither are you. Because the next step is to be one of those glassy-eyed naked men and wome walking in herds through the streets of San Francisco.

"Listen to me, Lizard. I know about Robert and Stevie. I doesn't hurt me to see you cry because you miss them. It make me proud of you for remembering what was special about the world before. I'm not jealous. How could I be? Do you know how much I love you? If I had the power to put the world back the wa it was before the Chtorrans came, I'd give you that gift right now. I'd do it in a minute, even if it meant I'd never see you again. But I can't and you can't and no one can, and we're stuck with things just the way they are. And we're going to hurt a lot, each and every one of us. But even if there weren't any Chtorrans, we'd all stil be hurting a lot; only we'd be doing it in different ways; because that's the condition of being human. At least, that's the way I've always experienced it. Well, I'm willing to accept that as the price of admission. And having done that, at least I'm going to choose the hurts that feel good. Do you hear me? I'm not willing to lose you for a stupid reason. If you want to give me up, you're going to have to come up with something a whole lot better than the bullshit you just offered."

Amazingly she listened to the whole speech in silence. Some people listen to the first sentence only and then wait politely while they mentally prepare their reply. Lizard didn't do that. She listened to every word I said. And when I was finished, she didn't argue. She didn't say anything. She just lowered her eyes, and then her head, and leaned silently into me. She rested her head against my chest.

I didn't move. I waited. I wanted to see if she would put her arms around me. She didn't. I felt so damned frustrated. All I wanted was just one little signal that it was all right to touch her again; but she wasn't going to give it to me. I wondered if she was through giving, if the whole thing had become so irrevocably damaged that it could never be repaired.

I made a decision. I had to know. Slowly, gently, I reached my arms up around her. I didn't pull her toward me, I didn't even hug her. I just put my hands on her shoulders in a comforting way and waited in wretched silence. She felt so warm and she smelled so good, and I ached so desperately to know what she was thinking or feeling. Did she still hate me?

She sniffled quietly and brought one hand up between us to wipe her nose. She looked at me bleary-eyed and shook her head sadly. "I can't ever win an argument with you, you know that?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, I can teach you. I can give you information you never had before, Jim-but I can't ever convince you of anything. You have always been so headstrong in your pursuit of what's right that all that anybody around you can do is cooperate or get out of your way." She leaned against me again, resting her head against mine, and put her hands on my shoulders. She sighed and finally let her body relax against mine. "It's so hard to be your friend. Harder to be your lover. But it's harder to let go altogether. I can't do it. I don't have the strength to let go anymore. I'm so tired." She glanced up at me. "You're going to have to be strong for both of us. I'm just going to hang on until you decide to give me up."

"I'll never give you up, you know that."

"I know." She looked so sad as she said it that I almost changed my mind.

I tilted her chin up so she was looking me straight in the eye. Her sea-green eyes were wet and shining. "Lizard-will you marry me?"