Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar glanced at her. “You keep doing this sort of thing,” he said, “and I will believe in telepathy.”

They arrived at the cabin just at dusk. The light was thick and golden even through the nearly closed shutters.

“Do you want to have a drink and dinner now?” said Dar.

“No,” said Syd. She took her holster off her belt, removed three clips of ammunition in their neat leather belt holders, and set them on the dresser.

It had been so long since Dar had helped undress a woman that he had almost forgotten that the buttons were backward. Out of her clothes, Syd looked all gold and white in her plain underpants and bra. They kissed. Dar remembered how hooks and eyes worked and he unfastened them without fumbling. Syd’s breasts were full and heavy, her hips wide: a grown woman.

“Your turn,” she said, helping him pull his T-shirt over his head. She unfastened his belt buckle. “I’ve been wondering since I met you,” she whispered after another kiss, her breasts compressing against his bare chest. “Are you a boxer shorts or Jockey shorts kind of guy?” She unzipped his fly and helped him step out of his chinos.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Habit I picked up way back in Vietnam days,” said Dar. “No one wore underwear in the jungle.”

“How romantic,” Syd said with a smile, but this time as she hugged him her right hand went lower and found him.

The sheets were cool. Syd swept the pillows aside. Dar kissed her mouth, kissed the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, kissed her breasts and long nipples. Their fingers interlaced even before they began making love.

Syd kissed him deeply and long. Their fingers intermeshed more tightly as her arms spread above her head, his palms against hers, his arms pressing hers down into the sheets, every square inch of his flesh aware of hers.

They had dinner at around 11:00 P.M. Dar grilled the steaks outside, wearing only his bathrobe, while Syd tossed the salad, fried some potato wedges—they were too impatient to wait for baked potatoes—and let the cabernet sauvignon breathe. Dar was hungry as they sat down to eat. Syd was obviously ravenous.

He had forgotten—it was that simple. Of course, he remembered the pleasure of sex—that was impossible to forget—but he had forgotten the thousands of small pleasures of intimacy with a woman. Of lying naked with her in dim light and talking before sheer, physical imperative reasserted itself; of showering together and turning the simple act of washing each other’s hair into a pure form of lovemaking; of laughing while walking around in bathrobes and bare feet, starving, rushing to get dinner ready. Of being happy in the moment.

They each had a glass of Macallan single-malt for dessert and sipped it in front of the fire. The night was warm and the screens were open, letting in the rustle and scent of the pines and the occasional noise of night birds or yip of distant coyotes, but they had lit a fire anyway. Then the Scotch was left only half consumed on the side table and they were in bed again, more passionate than before, Syd crying out at the same instant Dar did, each of them abandoning the boundaries of self at the same instant.

They lay touching then in the sweat-soaked sheets, the air rich with the combined sexual scent of themselves.

“All right, it’s time to tell me,” Syd said softly.

Dar propped himself up on one elbow. “All right,” he said. “Tell you what?”

“Why you joined the Marines and became a sniper.” Syd’s eyes were bright in the dying firelight.

Dar actually laughed. He had been expecting something a bit more…romantic?

Syd’s voice was soft but serious. “I want to know why someone as intelligent and sensitive as young Darwin Minor joined the Marines and became a sniper.”

Dar lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. He found himself strangely unprepared to explain this because he never had before. Not even to Barbara.

“I’ve already told you I was interested in the Spartans. But I didn’t really tell you why.” He paused. “I was scared,” he said at last. “I was a scared kid. At age seven…I remember the day, the afternoon, where I was, the curb I sat on, when the realization hit me…At age seven I realized, knew, that I was going to die someday. I was already an atheist. I knew there was no afterlife. The thought scared the shit out of me.”

“Most of us encounter that sooner or later,” Syd whispered. “But usually not that young.”

Dar shook his head. “The fear wouldn’t go away. I had night terrors. I began wetting the bed. I was afraid to be separated from my parents, even to go to school. I was aware that not only did I have to die, but so did they . What if they died while I was away in Miss Howe’s third-grade class?”

Syd did not laugh. After a minute she said, “So you joined the Marines to find courage…to get over that fear?”

“No,” said Dar. “Not really. I graduated from high school early, finished college in three years with a degree in physics, but all the time, what I was really interested in was death and fear and control. That’s when I started studying the Spartans and their ideas about controlling fear.” He rolled over to look at her. “The Vietnam war had started…”

Syd set her palm flat on Dar’s chest. He could feel the coolness of her fingers. “And so,” she said very softly, “the U.S. Marines.”

Dar shrugged slightly. “Yeah.”

“Thinking that perhaps the Marines would still know the secret science of controlling fear.”

“Something like that,” said Dar, realizing how stupid all of this sounded.

“Did they?”

He chewed his lip a moment in thought. “No,” he said at last. “They had preserved a lot of the disciplines started by the Spartans—tried to live up to their ideals—but had lost most of the science and philosophy which lay behind and beneath the Spartan mind-set.”

“But…a sniper,” said Syd. “The only snipers I’ve met are on SWAT and FBI tactical teams, but they seem to be outcasts…”

“Always have been,” said Dar. “That’s probably why I gravitated in that direction. Whereas even Marines are taught to be part of a bigger organism, snipers work alone—or in teams of two. Everything has to be factored in: terrain, wind velocity, distance, light—everything. Nothing can be ignored.”

“I can see why you would gravitate to that,” whispered Syd. “Always thinking.”

“The guy who set up and ran my sniper school was a Marine captain named Jim Land,” said Dar. “After the war, I read something that Land wrote for a little sniper instruction manual called One Shoot—One Kill . Want to hear it?”

“Yes,” whispered Syd. “More sweet nothings, please.”

Dar smiled. “Captain Land wrote: ‘It takes a special kind of courage to be alone—to be alone with your fears, to be alone with your doubts. There is no one from whom you can draw strength, except yourself. This courage is not the often seen, superficial brand, stimulated by the flow of adrenaline. And neither is it the courage that comes from the fear that others might think you are a coward.’”

“Katalepsis,” whispered Syd. “You told me about that before.”

“Yes,” Dar said, and continued. “‘For the sniper there is no hate of the enemy, only respect of him or her as a quarry. Psychologically, the only motive that will sustain the sniper is knowing he is doing a necessary job and having the confidence that he is the best person to do it. On the battlefield, hate will destroy any man—especially a sniper. Killing for revenge will ultimately twist his mind.

“‘When you look through that scope, the first thing you see is the eyes. There is a lot of difference between shooting at a shadow, shooting at an outline, and shooting at a pair of eyes. It is amazing when you put that scope on somebody, the first thing that pops out at you is the eyes. Many men can’t do it…’”