Wayne Wightman - Condemned, A Kiss, and Sleep.pdf - Wayne Wightman - widez2

This story — about the adventures of Rodan Samsara o» the pleasure planet of Thearis — is a

blend of strong writing and marvelous invention. It is from a new writer who has been published

in Amazing. Mr. Wightman writes that he is 35 years old, teaches creative writing at the Modesto

(CA) Junior College, and "spends a lot of time listening to Haydn while I'm in the kitchen teaching

myself how to cook. I also run about 20 miles a week so I can enjoy eating what I cook."

Condemned, A Kiss, and Sleep

WAYNE WIGHTMAN

Scanned by MNQ

v0.9 by Dajala. This is a pre-proof release. Page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, partially

formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed.

Full formatting, spell check and read-through still required.

My name's Rodan Samsara and I travel with the Delphic Oracle. It's a business arrangement, although

she is very good to look at, and sometimes when she touches me, the touch is more than skin-deep.

Nonetheless, it is business only with us. She is a soul-catcher and her first allegiance is to the 40,000 or

so whispering souls waiting inside her to be reborn. She has no time for me. On the outside, she is a wiry,

sexy tomboy with thick, black-rope hair, and when she walks, she moves more ways than one.

How we met is another story, but suffice it to say that she kept me from being turned into 170 pounds of

high-grade extra-lean rat kibble for the long-nosed concubines of some slime king on a dumpworld

where I had the misfortune of stopping over for a few days' rest. And now we travel together. We assist

each other. But when she touches me, it sometimes feels like she is moving the tip of her tongue across

my heart. I have not told her this.

Now, this time, I wanted a little rest, a little relaxation. Was I being excessive in my desires? Was I

demanding too much of the universe? I just wanted a few days without pressure, so what did I do? I

arranged to see Cor-andra Kinellen, the only woman living whom I had told that I loved. Coran-dra was

an even two meters tall; she had solid cat-like muscles and a mind like a box of razor blades. Her idea of

love-making would have appalled anyone but a clinician and would have amazed gymnasts — and her

skin smelled of gardenias, always of gardenias.

I should have known better.

I had met her a dozen years earlier, and every time I had seen her, some putrid disaster had rolled out of

the woodwork — but, I figured, what were the odds of that happening four times straight? God damn it,

I should have known. How many times will I have to learn that in this universe you give thanks when

nothing goes wrong — and if you're having a good time, that's when you should start looking behind you.

Screw around, and you find your gonads up drying on some muscle-head's meatrack.

"High quality illusions that you direct! The only perceptible difference between our illusions and your

reality is time: you can spend two weeks and your life's savings trying to have a good time somewhere

else, but on Thearis we use an ultra-high-speed generator that allows you to squeeze two weeks' fun and

games, two weeks' high living or two weeks' low-down gut-level fun into an hour! And the price is

something to write home about. Thearis — a resort world for those with unusual and discriminating

tastes."

That was the same advertisement I'd been picking up for two weeks. The seventh or eighth time I'd

heard it, I got in touch with Corandra Kinellen and arranged to meet her there. Del said she could use a

rest too — carrying thousands of people within her was a burden she did not discuss, but it showed in

her eyes. She drank a lot.

Del and I were coming in on Thearis, the resort world, and I was sitting with my chin resting on my

folded hands wondering what kind of meeting Corandra and I would have. It had been five years since

we'd seen each other. Del came up from the back part of the ship and stood at the counter and mixed

herself some gin and lemon.

"I have a reading on our vacation," she said. "Want to hear it?"

I didn't want to hear it, but when the oracle offers, you take. I nodded.

" 'There will be a change of mind.' " She shrugged and turned back to the bar. "Doesn't sound too

ominous," she said. Del only reported what came to her — she didn't know any more than I did about

what her prophecies meant.

Guidance chirped and threw an image of the Thearis jump station on the screen. It grew larger as we

approached. Behind it was Thearis itself. The only land mass was a thin circular rim that looked like it

could have been the remains of an ancient impact crater. The center of it was filled with water, and dead

in the middle of it, like a bull's-eye, was another dot of land. The rest was water — smooth, gray water.

"What do you plan to do down there?" I asked.

She came up behind me and looked at the screen. She rested her hand on my shoulder. "I'm going to try

to feel like a human being again. I'd like to forget for a few minutes all the people I carry around. I'd like

to forget the voice that tells me things I don't understand." The ice in her glass clinked as she poured the

entire drink down her throat. "I'd give anything to be stupid." She went back to the bar and I saw her

fingers touch the combination of buttons that would give her more gin and lemon.

The ship nuzzled against the jump station and then clanked into the lock.

"Someday" I said, "maybe you can be free of all that."

Her narrow shoulders shrugged. She looked back and gave me that cocked-head look of hers that's the

closest thing to a smile I ever see on her face. "And maybe gin is good for me" she said. She slugged

down the second drink and dropped the glass in the re-cycler. "Let's get on with it" she said, brushing her

hands against her thighs. I took a deep breath.

How you do, folks! My name is Earl and I'm going to be your host here on Thearis." Earl at least looked

human. "Thearis is the greatest pleasure center in this sector of the known universe! Step right this way.

Right down this corridor. Just follow me." Earl looked like he would be more at home selling small

appliances to defectives. He wore a stagger-stripe suit, the kind that changes with every movement and

causes you to wonder if you're suffering from a drug overload. His face was red, and slick-skinned and

from his nearly lipless mouth boiled a continuous stream of words: ".. .straight ahead is what we call 'the

lagoon,' although it's actually a small inland sea. Get your money ready please — twenty creds each. The

only land area on this planet is this right here, that's in the shape of a skinny donut, with the lagoon is the

middle, which is where the Techs live, the people, if you want call 'em that, who lived here before we

came and made this place what it is."

"Why is the central island orange-colored?" I asked.

"We serve all species," Earl said, sticking his hands in his baggy pockets and making his suit jitter even

more. "This part of the island is for humans, and up the trail a ways we take care of the Shrifar, the

Vargoonians, you name it." He stopped suddenly and with a flourish indicated a small inset in the

corridor. "Just deposit twenty creds each right here." He smiled pleasantly, his eyes nearly disappearing.

Between his short teeth showed a narrow, deeply grooved tongue.

"Why is the central island orange, Earl?" I asked. I looked directly into his eyes, but there was nothing

there.

"Orange?" The question seemed to freeze him, as though he had never been asked it before. Suddenly he

sprang to life. "Beats the hell out of me. I just work here, meet folks at the jump station, take their money.

I don't get paid to think!" he said happily.

Del looked at me curiously.

"Twenty creds each. Just feed it into that slot there," Earl said. His suit wavered wildly each time he

rocked back and forth on his feet.

I took the money from my pocket.

"Why is it so cheap?" Del asked.

"I am not allowed to discuss the economic operations of Thearis, miss" Earl said good-naturedly. "But I

guarantee if you don't like what you get, I'll see to it you get your bucks back."

I put the money into the intake. The machine thanked me.

"A friend is supposed to meet me here" I said. "She—"

Earl walked away from us, motioning us to follow. "Our illusions are of the highest quality, tailored to fit

any species. We got no prejudices here, although personally I could do without some of the trashlife that

comes down here and expects us to virtually hand over an actual herd of sex objects for them to mess

around with and then kill or eat or whatever the hell they want to do. But I digress—"

"Earl could you hold it just a minute?"

He stopped in his tracks and turned around very fast, his face open, blank, his lips slightly parted. "You

have some special request? Something a little on the unusual side? Say no more. Something a shade on

the violent side? Say no more." His tongue flicked at his . bottom lip and he grinned.

Del was standing very erect beside me, watching Earl carefully.

"A friend of mine is supposed to meet me here. Her name is Corandra Kinellen."

Earl stared blankly at me several seconds. He did not seem to be able to think and move at the same

time. Suddenly he raised one hand over his head. "A tall one? About this high? Copper kind of skin?

Gets mean and shows her muscles if you mess with her?"

"That sounds like her." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Del had her hands in her hip pockets and

was doing her cocked-head mona-lisa smile.

"Right down this way and around the corner," Earl said, "and all your questions and desires will be

satisfied." He was silent for a few steps. "Your friend, Coranna Kinanna or whatever, she kind of injured

one of the Techs this afternoon. The management will be happy if you can get her occupied. The Techs,

see, they're a bunch of cold-blooded sonsabitches, if you want the truth, and this one was asking her

some questions about her body and I guess he tried to touch her."

"How bad was it?" I asked. Del was still doing her smile.

"Well, she busted his arm and then she held his hand right up to his own ear and then she crushed his

hand — I guess she wanted him to hear it. You gonna mess with her?"

"As much as I can," I said.

"Well, she's right up here. Now, what we got here, on this island, is a real nice situation. About twenty

years ago, the first generation of my people landed here just to look around and see what kind of place it

was, and they met the natives, the Techs, and they called 'em that because they were real good with

machinery. Not real talkative, but good with their hands. Now my forebearers handed over a bunch of

equipment, old junk stuff, and lo and behold, they thought miracles had happened. The whole

goddamned island filled up with what you're going to see right down that hallway right there."

He had timed it perfectly. We went around the last corner and saw something that looked like a

centimeter-wide strip of silver tape across the corridor floor; it was mirror-like but seemed to reflect

nothing — but best, best of all, on the other side of it stood Corandra Kinellen, two meters of her,

dressed in lavender fur, her hair a violent configuration of shifting arabesques. My bones vibrated, and

when she turned her eyes on me, I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. I wanted her. I was smothering

in desire. Testosterone poured into my blood.

Like the vaguest voice of some fading ghost, I heard Earl saying from somewhere behind me, "Just walk

across that shiny thing. Just step right across it and you'll see what Thearis is all about."

Corandra had her arms out, reaching toward me. I glanced back at Del — she had her hands in her back

pockets and was looking at the mirror-line. Del glanced up at me and with her eyes told me to go on, to

go ahead. A part of me didn't want to leave her; she looked very small.

Just one pace in front of me, Corandra was reaching for me, coming toward me. Like a lavender cobra,

she fixed me with her eyes, stepped across the mirror line at the same moment I crossed it and swung

around her, my arms wrapping around her hard body and my hands feeling the smooth sheaths of muscle

that enclosed her powerful body. Something flew up out of the mirrored strip — something blue and

round — but it was only light — globes of blue light. Then something unusual happened.

In all my years drifting in lightless space and admiring the rising and dying flares of tortured stars, the

stately entropy of galaxies that relax their hold on order, and the quiet intricacies of dark, uninhabitable

worlds where small things creep and live with night — in all that time, I never guessed, never dreamed,

how my irrational blood yearned for the green living things of Old Earth, for the black rich soil on which

my ancient kin had built and lost their dreams a thousand times and more. But there I was. In a place I

had only heard about, I was home. / was home. And I was sitting in the shade of a wide, spreading tree

with leaves like the palms of hands, looking into the round blue eyes of Corandra Kinellen, who now, like

a figure out of history, sat straight-backed, her legs folded lady-like beneath her, dressed in white lace.

The smell of gardenias filled the air around her.

For a moment, the smallest instant, I was distracted by the rush and flutter of a flock of black birds that

rose from the rolling meadow near us. They were birds of Old Earth — I had never seen anything like

them before.

"What has taken us so long?" she asked. Her lips barely moved when she spoke, and her eyelids

lowered slightly. Corandra's gaze barely concealed the sexual violence that was visibly rising in her. Her

dress of white lace was beginning to fade, revealing her brown skin and browner nipples beneath. She

stared at me.

"I was...." I looked behind me, expecting to see Earl or Del or some part of the building in which we had

been standing. There was nothing but pastures and rows of bushy poplars. "Where are we? What is this

place?"

"Part of us is back in the corridor — where I was waiting for you." She moved closer. The smell of

gardenias was stronger and I could feel her warm breath on my lips. "I've been waiting for you longer

than I can remember."

I had forgotten the details of her face, her mongol eyes, the way her black hair glowed like spun filaments

of black pearl. I had forgotten the speck of pale skin on the back of her left thumb — my skin that she

had had grafted there.

"As always" she breathed, "I carry you with me."

I moved my hand up her arm, over the smooth arches of muscle, to her neck. Her blood pulsed under

my fingers. In every part of my body I could feel the speeding beat of my heart.

"Stand up," she said. "See what happens."

I got to my feet, nearly lost my balance, and then realized why: somehow, in this land of illusions, when

we stood up, we grew taller, and we stood shoulders-above the tree we had just been sitting under; we

were titans, we were giants in this place, and it was all ours.

She turned and ran a few strides away from me. The ground trembled with her steps. She grinned at me

and then sprinted away. I followed her across fields and plains, and we ran knee-deep in wide, swift

rivers; and miles away, over the tops of scattered forests, we could see range after range of fading

mountains in one direction — and in the other lay the humped back of the ocean, lying smooth and blue,

not more than a few miles away. We ran and ran, and when we ran, the earth thundered.

I caught her in the white dunes. The hot sand poured rivers of energy into us until we were no longer like

human beings but were wind and sea and fire restrained only by the sheerest lac-ery of flesh. We were

giants and we were power and we were greater than our world.

She lay beneath me, her hair spread in intricate curls, half-buried in the powdery sand. Her hands pulled

at my shoulders at the back of my neck, and I said, "I didn't know how much I was meant to be here,

how much I needed you."

She just said, "Yes."

The breeze off the water dried our sweat, and we lay on our backs and watched a single seagull pass one

direction and then the other over the hissing surf. I asked her if she had been here before.

"Yes, while I was waiting for you."

"How much of this illusion is of our own making? How much does Thearis provide?"

"Morley told me that Thearis provides the whole thing. We have no input." Her hand touched my thigh.

"We just enjoy."

"Who is Morley?"

"A fellow who speaks bad English and says he is my host."

"I should have guessed. The man who met us was named Earl."

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