Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

Marianne provided me an escape clause from Plato’s society. She came with a ready-made family, and best of all, I liked the boy.

Five days had passed since the day Archie and I had flown out and seen the Grant . Marianne and I began taking late night walks every evening. We would sit and I would stare into the sky and tell her stories about planets and battles. I told her about Ezer Kri and the Japanese. I told her about Bryce Klyber and how he died so needlessly.

Sometimes I searched space for signs of battles between the Mogats and Confederate Arms. They were out there somewhere, killing each other. More than once, she asked me if I cared who won that war, and I told her that I did not. I lied. I wanted both sides to destroy each other; but if one side had to survive, I preferred a universe with the Confederate Arms rather than Morgan Atkins and his fanatics.

But on this particular night, she said something that sent a warm thrill through me. She said, “Caleb talks about you all the time. He loves you, Wayson.” And she took my hand in her calloused and leathery hand and said, “And I love you.”

I turned toward her, and we kissed. It was an innocent kiss, the kind of kiss that I would imagine grade-school boys give grade-school girls when they decide to be a boyfriend and girlfriend. My lips were closed and my eyes were open, but I felt her warmth and tasted her breath. I had not had tender contact with another human being in years. It made me weak inside.

Had this been Kasara, the girl I met in Hawaii, we would have made love. She would have led me back to her apartment and I would have removed her clothes. Kasara was young and beautiful and had no cares. I felt no longing for Kasara, though I sometimes fantasized about her.

With Marianne, things happened more slowly. We remained outside, sitting on a bench overlooking the farm, exchanging childish kisses and holding hands. She may or may not have known that I wanted more, but she did not offer it to me.

“I love you, Wayson,” she said again.

The sky was dark and the stars showed clear, like pin-prick diamonds laid out on a black velvet sheet. A cooling breeze traveled across the field. I wanted to tell Marianne that I loved her, but I was not sure I knew how to love.

“How do you feel about me and Caleb?” she asked. There was a note of desperation in her voice. It was as if she had given me her best offer and would give up if it wasn’t enough.

“I’ve never had a family,” I said. “I don’t know about love or father-son relations. I like spending time with Caleb. It’s funny. I like to teach him things. I like it when he asks me questions.”

“You’re the closest thing he has ever had to a father,” Marianne said.

“How about me, Wayson? How do you feel about me?” She punctuated that question with a longer, more passionate kiss than the childish kisses she had been giving me. I put my hand upon her waist, but fought the urge to let it travel. Our eyes met and we kissed again.

“Will you stay?” she whispered, and we kissed again.

I wanted to tell her yes. I believed that if I said I would stay, she would have let me make love to her. But at that moment I did not know whether or not I would be able to stay. There was a war going on in the galaxy. There were many wars. The Mogats and Confederate Arms were fighting. Unified Authority fleets still patrolled every arm. The Unified Authority still had the most ships and the most troops, even if the government itself no longer existed. What would have happened if Rome had sunk into the sea and left its legions in Gaul and Carthage?

“Will you stay, Wayson?” she repeated, and her hand brushed against my thigh. Her breasts rolled across my arms as she leaned over and kissed me again.

A life of farming …She might as well have asked me to spend the rest of my life in prison. Her lips were dry but soft. Her breath was sweet. Her touch was warm. Marianne was thirty-two years old. I was only twenty-two, but I considered myself much older. All I had to do was promise to stay and she would give herself to me. I suddenly understood that life held more experiences than killing. In her way, Marianne knew far more about life than me.

But the velvety night and the sparkling stars still called to me. “Stay with us,” she whispered. “Stay with me.” And she kissed me. Her hands stroked my chest and stomach. The night was warm and her hands were hot. It should have been uncomfortable, but her touch felt good.

My mind raced. I flashed through memories of making love to Kasara, but willed myself to imagine Marianne in her place. And I realized that, yes, maybe I did love Marianne. And as I thought this, I realized that I could not lie to her. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Oh, Wayson,” she said, and her voice was not angry but sad.

“I was made for war. I don’t know if there is anything else in me. I can’t become a neo-Baptist farmer. I simply don’t know how.”

She pulled her face away from mine, but she did not pull away. I saw tears running down her cheeks. In the faint light that came from the compound, her skin looked dark gray and smooth. Her eyes remained on mine and I could not look away from her. Yes, I thought to myself, I do love her.

“I’ll take you and Caleb with me wherever I go,” I said. “It can be just like Ruth. ‘Where thou goest, I goest.’ Something like that.”

She sighed and placed her face on my shoulder. “Oh, Wayson,” she sighed again. “You don’t understand.”

I did understand. I just could not do anything about it.

They might have attacked earlier except they could not risk hurting my Starliner. For the last week, Caleb and I had broadcasted out and located the Grant every day. It was coming closer. Sometimes it traveled at a mere ten million miles per hour, one-third of its best speed. A few times it stopped all together. The crew was taking its time.

The congregation slept as families in dome-shaped temporary dwellings that looked like blisters on the ground. I would have liked to have slept with Marianne, but no one offered. Ray and I continued to sleep on the reclining passenger seats inside the Starliner. Caleb slept with us.

Caleb was fast asleep. Ray and I did not sleep so soundly. We had our seats back and our feet up. Perhaps I unconsciously noticed the movements through the window beside my seat. Something woke me from my sleep, and I turned to look.

Outside, the moon lit the clearing with pale gray light. We were on the edge of a forest, and I saw the silhouettes of trees swaying in the background. I saw rows of dome-shaped temporary housing shelters—sophisticated tents—rising out of the ground like snowy moguls. Lights burned in a few of those tents.

It was not the tents or the trees that I focused on when I woke up. It was the phantoms that caught my attention. They looked like phantoms. Men dressed in U.A. Marine combat armor sifted their way through the tents. To me, they looked like the ghosts of the battle of Little Man, risen from the valley and come to collect us.

When I woke, there might have been fifteen of these spectral Marines moving forward slowly, carrying M27s with the rifle stocks attached. As I watched, more of these men emerged from the woods behind the camp. Apparently they had hiked in from a landing site on the other side of the trees.

“Ray.” I did not whisper. They would not hear me through the Starliner’s thick walls. Knowing that Freeman slept light, I did not bother repeating myself. He woke up alert. I asked, “You seeing this?”

“How many?” he asked, already in combat mode.

“I’m guessing forty-two.” There were forty-two men in a platoon.

Watching them move, I felt strangely annoyed. These men seemed to have forgotten everything they learned in basic. Platoons divide into fire teams with a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, a grenadier, and a team leader. They flank their target. They don’t just walk in a haphazard picket line.