Dean Koontz: Dark of the Woods

"Don't cry," he said, knowing the foolishness of the statement. Her people were dead, the last of her kind were dying. Why the hell shouldn't she cry?

Damn the Alliance! Damn the Supremacy of Man! Damn them to hell!

His curses were like a litany on his tongue, spurting between his tears and echoing about the stone corridor within the head of God. He held her, rocked with her. He lifted her face and kissed her nose. It was tiny and warm against his lips. He kissed her cheeks, neck, hair, lips… And she kissed back, with enthusiasm. He felt her tongue against his, her tears mingled with his.

And the corridors of God's mind knew love…

They told him Demos was a place without danger. Yet there had been the spiderbats when he had landed. The bird diving at the windscreen of the grav car on the way up from the port… the rat in the demolished gas shelter… And now the love he had for this alien woman. Yes, that was the most dangerous thing of all. And though Proteus floated only a short distance down the ancient passageway, this was the one danger the machine's powers could not protect him from…

The days seemed to pass as swiftly as the leaves fell from the yellow trees. One fled after the other with such rapidity that autumn was soon fast upon the fringes of winter and the air was nipped with the chill of coming snow. They were usually oblivious to the cold, for there was the warmth between them, the heat of their bodies. Occasionally, as the afternoon waned beyond the portals of the aviary and she would be required to return to the Sanctuary, he would begin thinking of the hopelessness of the situation and a chill would work its way into the base of his spine and crawl upwards along his back like a spider. It was in the fifth week of their lovemaking that time jerked to a hah in its rush past them, and he was forced to confront the nature of their future in a responsible manner.

"When must you leave?" she asked, her head against his chest, her lips trembling on his skin with the words she spoke.

"My notes are pretty complete."

"Soon, then?"

"I can't put them off much longer. Suspicions will grow."

"What can we do?"

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, trying to clear his head to think. "There are two possibilities, I guess. First, I could fight the miscegenation laws through the courts. That's going to take most all the money I have. And I still might lose — most likely will lose — and go to jail anyway. The other way is for me to leave, have you smuggled off Demos, smuggled onto another world — some backwoods place — and buy a place deep in some wildland area where the neighbors wouldn't be a problem. Then live in secrecy. There are a good many danger points, like smuggling you off, getting you onto a second world without customs finding you…"

"The first would not be so criminal. Maybe they would take that into consideration."

He said nothing, suddenly filled with a panic that threatened to take control of him. It had been all right to theorize about what they could do, to let plans roil over one another in his mind — but to speak them, to talk about them as if a decision must be reached, was more than he could stand up to. He lit a cigarette, savored the smooth smoke of the drug weed, hoping it would relax him more quickly than usual. He tried to speak, to talk over the problem with her, but the words wouldn't come. When she asked what was the matter, he found he could not even look at her. A coldness, a terror, a calculated emotionlessness had seeped into his mind and was struggling to take over the reins and guide his actions.

For a long while, they lay together, saying nothing, listening to the occasional noise of animals in the trees outside and the far and melancholy cry of the Wintercrest, a white, lavishly feathered bird common in the cold months on this part of the continent.

Finally, she asked, "Are you married?"

His voice bounced into his throat unbidden, "Yes." It fell into the air like hot, smoking lead. It was the way out, the way to avoid losing everything. He was not married, of course. But if he could lie, if he could say that he was, if he could dismiss all of this so swiftly with that one, three-letter word, didn't that prove that there wasn't the land of love here that he had once thought there was? Yes. That was it. He had been following along a dangerous trail with only disaster at the end, lulled by infatuation and mistaking that for love. If he had really loved her, he would not have hesitated a moment to risk everything to have her. He would not have lied so glibly, so quickly, so easily. He had very nearly blown everything for infatuation, for lust mixed with curiosity, and that had been sheerest folly.

They were silent a time.

"It's just as well," she said at last. She hesitated, blushed for the first time since he had known her. "So am I."

He tensed against her. "You're married?"

"Do you mind?"

"Uh—"

"If you do—" She started to move as she spoke.

"No. Don't go yet."

Silence. Time passing. The roar of the future speeding darkly on to meet the present and be thrust into the past.

"Is he — a winged man?"

"One of my own? Of course, yes."

"Then why—"

"What?"

"Why leave him to love me like this. I couldn't compare with—" He was furious, and the words stuck in his throat, clung to his lips and would not come forth. He felt that she had been making a fool of him. Surely, loving a man as free as the birds, being enfolded within his wings in joy, could be much better, much more fulfilling than anything a cumbersome, landbound brute such as he could offer. His tenderest movements would seem gross and stupid in comparison.

"He isn't impotent," she said, "but sterile, just as I am sterile. You are not. I wanted a fruitful man, even if I cannot bear children."

"Then it wasn't me — but simply my juices?"

She squirmed away, stood. "I better be leaving now," she said in her elfin voice. She slipped her heavier winter toga on and walked quickly toward the portal.

He heard her wings.

Proteus came alert at the sound, looked about for an enemy.

Davis rolled onto his face, filled with anger and a sense of loss — and chiefly relief.

The next day came and went, and she did not appear as she had for so many days in the recent past. He made a pretense of correlating his notes, but his mind was elsewhere, tangled in memories of her, lost in the alleyways of her smile. He tried to convince himself that a longing of the flesh could be overcome easily, and that such was all this was. The second day without her was worse. He gave up the phony facade of writing and patrolled the woods about the towers, hands in his pockets, head bent to the chill wind of early winter. Why had he told her he was married? And why, most of all, had he felt such overwhelming relief when he had watched her leave and known it was forever? And why, if he was relieved, did he now ache emptily, like a drained can of fruit left to rust in the ditch, with only particles of sweetness still clinging to the corroded metal? Was it only relief that he was no longer a criminal and only the ache of the aftermath of his fear — or was there, as he suspected, some deeper reason for it?

On the third day, he got in the grav car and set the coordinates for the port, for he had an appointment to keep with Mrs. Bunter's reading club. She had called the previous evening, and he had accepted, anxious to have some reason to flee the confines of this aviary. He sat in the front seat brooding, watching the leaves smack wetly against the windscreen, watching the sky cloud and pack itself for snow.

The club meeting was held in the squat woman's home: a rather palatial mansion with a large drawing room where a podium had been placed before five rows of ten chairs each. He was playing to a full house by the time he began his lecture. They were quite intent, and soon he got wrapped up in telling of the trials and tribulations that had gone into the construction of Lilian Girl, Dark Watch on the River, and other famous Stauffer Davis novels.