Robert Silverberg - The Way to Spook City

When the cleanup work was done she lifted the tent flap and stepped halfway inside. He held back, unsure of the right move. “Well?” she asked. “It’s okay to come in. Or would you rather sleep out there?

Demeris went in. Though the temperature outside was plunging steeply with the onset of night, it was pleasantly warm inside. There was a single bedroll, just barely big enough for two if they didn’t mind sleeping very close together. He heard the sounds she made as she undressed, and tried in the absolute darkness to guess how much she was taking off. It wasn’t easy to tell. He removed his own shirt and hesitated with his jeans; but then she opened the flap again to call something out to the elephant-camel, which she had tethered just outside, and by starlight he caught a flashing glimpse of bare thigh, bare buttock. He pulled off his trousers and slipped into the bedroll. She joined him a moment later. He lay awkwardly, trying to avoid rubbing up against her. For a time there was a tense expectant silence. Then her hand reached out in the darkness and grazed his shoulder, lightly but clearly not accidentally. Demeris didn’t need a second hint. He had never taken any vows of chastity. He reached for her, found the hollow of her clavicle, trailed his hand downward until he was cupping a small, cool breast, resilient and firm. When he ran his thumb lightly across the nipples she made a little purring sound, and he felt the flesh quickly hardening. As was his. She turned to him. Demeris had some difficulty locating her mouth in the darkness, and she had to guide him, chuckling a little, but when his lips met hers he felt the immediate flicker of her tongue coming forth to greet him.

And then almost as though he was willing his own downfall he found himself perversely wondering if he might be embracing a Spook after all; and a wave of nausea swept through him, making him wobble and soften. But she was pressing tight against him, rubbing her breasts from side to side on him, uttering small eager murmuring sounds, and he got himself quickly back on track, losing himself in her fragrance and warmth and banishing completely from his thoughts anything but the sensations of the moment. After that one attack of doubt everything was easy. He located her long smooth thighs with no problem whatever, and when he glided into her he needed no guidance there either, and though their movements together had the usual first-time clumsiness her hot gusts of breath against his shoulder and her soft sharp outcries told him that all was going well.

He lay awake for a time when it was over, listening to the reassuring pinging of the tent pegs and the occasional far-off cry of some desert creature. He imagined he could hear the heavy snuffling breathing of the elephant-camel too, like a huge recirculating device just outside the tent. Jill had curled up against him as if they were old friends and was lost in sleep.

She said out of the blue, after they had been riding a long while in silence the following morning, “You ever been married, Nick?”

The incongruity of the question startled him. Until a moment ago she had seemed to be a million miles away. His attempt to make love to her a second time at dawn had been met with indifference and she had been pure business, remote and cool, all during the job of breaking camp and getting on the road.

“No,” he said. “You?”

“Hasn’t been on my program,” she said. “But I thought everybody in Free Country got married. Nice normal people who settle down early and raise big families.” The elephant-camel swayed and bumped beneath them. They were following a wide dirt track festooned on both sides with glittering strands of what looked like clear jelly, hundreds of feet long, mounted on spiny black poles that seemed to be sprouting like saplings from the ground.

“I raised a big family,” he said. “My brothers and sisters. Dad got killed in a hunting accident when I was ten. Possibly got mixed up with a Spook animal that was on the wrong side of the line: nobody could quite figure it out. Then my mother came down with Blue Fever. I was fifteen then and five brothers and sisters to look after. Didn’t leave me a lot of time to think about finding a wife.”

“Blue Fever?”

“Don’t you know what that is? Infectious disease. Kills you in three days, no hope at all. Supposed to be something the Spooks brought.”

“We don’t have it over here,” she said. “Not that I ever heard.”

“Spooks brought it, I guess they must know how to cure it. We aren’t that lucky. Anyway, there were all these little kids to look after. Of course, they’re grown by now.”

“But you still look after them. Coming over here to try to track down your brother.”

“Somebody has to.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be tracked down, though?”

Demeris felt a tremor of alarm. He knew Tom was restless and troubled, but he didn’t think he was actually disturbed. “Have you any reason to think Tom would want to stay over here for good?”

“I didn’t say I did. But he might just prefer not to be found. A lot of boys come across and stay across, you know.”

“I didn’t know. Nobody I ever heard of did that. Why would someone from Free Country want to live on the Spook side?

“For the excitement?” she suggested. “To run with the Spooks? To play their games? To hunt their animals? There’s all sorts of minglings going on these days.”

“Is that so,” he said uneasily. He stared at the back of her head. She was so damned odd, he thought, such a fucking mystery.

She said, sounding very far away, “I wonder about marrying.” Back to that again. “What it’s like, waking up next to the same person every day, day after day. Sharing your life, year after year. It sounds very beautiful. But also kind of strange. It isn’t easy for me to imagine what it might be like.”

“Don’t they have marriage in Spook City?”

“Not really. Not the way you people do.”

“Well, why don’t you try it and see? You don’t like it, there are ways to get out of it. Nobody I know thinks that being married is any way strange. Christ, I bet whatever the Spooks do is five hundred times as strange, and you probably think that it’s the most normal thing in the world.”

“Spooks don’t marry. They don’t even have sex, really. What I hear, it’s more like the way fishes do it, no direct contact at all.”

“That sounds terrifically appealing. I’d really love to try something like that. All I need is a cute Spook to try it with.” He attempted to keep it light. But she glanced around at him.

“Still suspicious, Nick?”

He let that go by. “Listen, you could always take a fling at getting married for a while, couldn’t you?” he said. “If you’re all that curious about finding out what it’s like.”

“Is that an offer, Nick?”

“No,” he said. “Hardly. Just a suggestion.”

An hour after they set out that morning they passed a site where there was a peculiar purple depression about a hundred yards across at its thickest point. It was vaguely turtle-shaped, a long oval with four stubby projections at the corners and one at each end. “What the devil is that?” Demeris asked. “A Spook graveyard?”

“It’s new,” she said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Some vagrant curiosity impelled him. “Can we look?”

She halted the elephant-camel and they jumped down. The site might almost have been a lake, deep-hued and dense against the sandy earth, but there was nothing liquid about it: it was like a stain that ran several yards deep into the ground. Together they walked to the edge. Demeris saw something moving beneath the surface out near the middle, a kind of corkscrew effect, and was about to call it to her attention when abruptly the margin of the site started to quiver and a narrow rubbery arm rose up out of the purpleness and wrapped itself around her left leg. It started to pull her forward. She shrieked and made an odd hissing sound.