Piers Anthony - Sos the Rope

He resumed training. He worked on the devices in the rec room, now more familiar to him than his new body.. He climbed the ladder, swung on the bars, lifted the weights. He walked up and down the hallways, balancing his suddenly heavier torso and increasing his pace gradually until he was able to run without agony. He hardened his healing hands and feet by smashing the boards; in time he developed monstrously thick calluses. He stood still, this time not moving at all, while Sosa struck his stomach, neck and head with all her strength-with a staff-and he laughed.

Then with a steeltrap motion he caught the weapon froni her inexpert grasp and bent it into an S shape by a single exertion of his two trunklike wrists. He pinioned her own wrists, both together, with the fingers and thumb of one hand and lifted her gently off the floor, smiling.

Sosa jackknifed and drove both heels against his exposed chin. "Ouch!" she screamed. "That's like landing on a chunk of stone!"

He chuckled and draped her unceremoniously across his right shoulder while hefting his weight and hers upon the bottom rung of the ladder with that same right arm. She writhed and jammed stiffened fingers into his left shouldet just inside the collarbone. "You damned gorilla," she complained. "You've got calluses over your pressure points!"

"Nylon calluses," he said matter-of-factly. "I could break a gorilla in two." His voice was harsh; the collar constricting his throat destroyed any dulcet utterances he attempted.

"You're still a great ugly beast!" she said, clamping her teeth hard upon the lobe of his ear and chewing.

"Ugly as hell," he agreed, turning his head so that she was compelled to release her bite or have her neck stretched painfully.

"Awful taste," she whispered as she let go. "I love you."

He reversed rotation, and she `jammed her lips against his face and kissed him furiously. "Take me back to our room, Sos," she said. "I want to feel needed."

He obliged, but the aftermath was not entirely harmonious. "You're still thinking of her," she accused him. "Even when we're-"

"That's all over," he said, but the words lacked conviction.

"It's not over! It hasn't even begun yet. You still love her and you're going back!"

"It's an assignment. You know that."

"She isn't the assignment. It's almost time for you to go, and I'll never see you again, and you can't even tell me you love me."

"I do love you."

"But not as much as you love her."

"Sosa, she is hardly fit to be compared to you. You're a warm, wonderful girl, and I would love you much more, in time. I'm going back, but I want you to keep my bracelet. How else can I convince you?"

She wrapped herself blissfully about him. "I know it, Sos. I'm a demented jealous bitch. It's just that I'm losing you forever, and I can't stand it. The rest of my life without you-"

"Maybe I'll send a replacement." But it ceased to be funny as he said it.

After a moment she brightened slightly. "Let's do it again, Sos. Every minute counts."

"Hold on, woman! I'm not that sort of a superman!"

"Yes you are," she said. And she proved him wrong again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Nameless and weaponless, he marched. It was spring, almost two years after he had journeyed dejectedly toward the mountain. Sos had gone to oblivion; the body that clothed his brain today was a different one, his face a creation of the laboratory, his voice a croak. Plastic contacts made his eyes stare out invulnerably, and his hair sprouted without pigment.

Sos was gone-but secret memories remained within the nameless one, surging irrepressibly when evoked by familiar sights. He was anonymous but not feelingless. It was almost possible to forget, as he traveled alone, missing the little bird on his shoulder, that he came as a machine of destruction. He could savor the forest trails and friendly cabins just as the young sworder had four years ago. A life and death ago!

He stood beside the circlet the one where Sol the sword had fought Sol of all weapons for name and armament and, as it turned out, woman. What a different world it would have been, had that encounter never taken place!

He entered the cabin, recognizing the underworld manufacture and the crazy maintenance. Strange how his perceptions had changed! He had never really wondered before where the supplies had come from; he, like most nomads, had taken such things for granted. How had such naivete‚ been possible?

He broke out supplies and prepared a Gargantuan meal for himself. He had to eat enormously to maintain this massive body, but food was not much of a pleasure. Taste had been one of the many things that had suffered in the cause of increased power. He wondered whether, in the past, the surgeons had been able to perform their miracles without attendant demolition of peripheral sensitivity. Or had their machines taken the place of warriors?

A girl showed up at dusk, young enough and pretty enough, but when she saw his bare wrist she kept to herself. Hostels had always been excellent places to hunt for bracelets. He wondered whether the crazies knew about this particular aspect of their service.

He slept in one bunk, the girl courteously taking the one adjacent though she could have claimed privacy by establishing herself on the far side of the column. She glanced askance when she perceived that he was after all alone, but she was not concerned. His readings had also told him that before the Blast women had had to watch out for men, and seldom dared to sleep in the presence of a stranger. If that were true-though it was hardly creditable in a civilization more advanced than the present one-things had certainly improved. It was unthinkable that a man require favors not freely proffered-or that a woman should withhold them capriciously. Yet Sosa had described the perils of her childhood, where tribes viewed women differently; not all the badness had been expunged by the fire.

The girl could contain her curiosity no longer. "Sir, if I may ask-where is your woman?"

He thought of Sosa, pert little Sosa, almost too small to carry a full-sized bracelet, but big in performance and spirit. He missed her. "She is in the world of the dead," he said.

"I'm sorry," she said, misunderstanding as he had meant her to. A man buried his bracelet with his wife, if he loved her, and did not take another until mourning was over. How was he to explain that it was not Sosa's death, but his own return to life that had parted them forever?

The girl sat up in her bed, touching her nightied breast and showing her embarrassment. Her hair as pale. "It was wrong of me to ask," she said.

"It was wrong of me not to explain," he said graciously, knowing how ugly he would appear to this innocent.

"If you desire to-" -

"No offense," he said with finality.

"None," she agreed, relieved.

Would this ordinary, attractive, artless girl sharing his cabin but not his bed-would she ever generate the violence of passion and sorrow he had known? Would some stout naive warrior hand her his bracelet tomorrow and travel to the mountain when he lost her?

It was possible, for that was the great modern dream of life and love. There was in the least of people, male and female, the capacity to arouse tumultuous emotion. That was the marvel and the glory of it all.

She fixed his breakfast in the morning, another courteous gesture that showed she had been well brought up. She tried not to stare as he stepped out of the shower blessed her and went his way, and she hers. These customs were good, and had they met four years ago she been of age then- It took him only a week to cover the distance two men and a girl traveled before. Some of the cabins were occupied, others not, but he kept to himself and was left alone. It surprised him a little that common manners had changed; this was another quality of the nomad society that he had never properly appreciated until he learned how blunt things could be elsewhere.