Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Louise Bragg grabbed the radio. “Sarah, did you check that one for brain damage, too?” The humans on both sides of 16tun Canyon laughed together.

“People, I think the best thing we all could do now is rest,” Sarah said. “We’ve had a long day, and another one is coming up tomorrow.” She switched from pragmatic physician to wife, but only for a moment. “Love you, Irv. Out.”

“Love you, too. Out.” Irv fired up the portable stove to melt snow and then boil water for the dinner packs he, Pat, and Louise had brought along. The chicken h la king, he knew, wasn’t really bad. But that was the trouble-he knew it. Damlama khasip-such an exotic name. What would it taste like? He was intrigued enough to wonder out loud.

“Like making love with a stranger after being married for years,” Pat suggested. She dug a spoon into her own food, tasted it, and sadly shook her head. “Married to somebody boring,” she amended. No one argued with her.

It was nearly dark by the time they were done.

“We’d better keep watch through the night,” Irv said, “or your husband, Louise, who I hope is not boring”-she stuck out her tongue at him-“will have our hides when we get back to Athena.”

He tore three scraps of paper off a notebook page, kept one, and handed the others to the women. “Write a number between one and ten,” he said, “and then show it.” He scrawled a 5 himself. Louise revealed an 8, Pat a 2. “All right, I’m odd man out; I’ll stay awake a while. Who shall I roust when I sack out?”

Pat and Louise looked at each other. After a few seconds, Pat said, “I’ll take the middle watch.”

“If you’re silly enough to volunteer, I’m silly enough to let you,” Louise said at once. “I hate sleeping in shifts.” Yawning, she unrolled her sleeping bag. “And I am beat.” She climbed in and zipped the bag up so little more than her nose showed. “G’night.”

Pat got into her sleeping bag, too. “I’ll wake you about ten, Minervan Standard Wristwatch Time,” Irv said. She nodded. Louise was already breathing slowly and regularly.

Irv walked around, wishing for a big blazing campfire; as night fell, the horizon seemed to close in on him, until the unknown lay hardly farther away than his outstretched fingertips. City boys like me don’t really realize how dark night can be without street lights and such, he thought. It took all of his will not to turn on his flashlight and wave it for the sake of something to see.

Stars would have helped, at least to ease his mind, but the clouds wrapped them away in cotton wool. Once, for a moment, he saw a wan smudge of light in the sky-one of the three little Minervan moons, though without a set of tables he had no idea which. Thicker clouds soon drifted over it and made it disappear.

That left Irv his ears and nose, left him a wolf pacing a prairie not his own. He was not evolved to know which little innocuous night noises were not innocuous after all, which of the scents on the chilly breeze would have sent any sensible Minervan beast running for its life. The local odors reminded him of nothing so much as how an organic chemistry lab smelled from a good way down the hall.

Something crunched behind him. He whirled, one hand grabbing for the flashlight, the other for the.45 on his belt. “It’s only me,” Pat said softly. “I can’t sleep.”

“Jesus.” Irv felt himself getting angry. He knew it was his adrenaline all dressed up with no place to go, but knowing that did not make the anger any less real. “Good thing you didn’t try sneaking up on Emmett like that,” he said, inhibited in volume because he did not want to wake Louise. “He’d’ve handed you your head instead of going into palpitations like me.” His heart was still thumping in his chest.

“Sorry.” Pat made her whisper sound contrite. She stepped closer to him. “I just figured I’d wander over and keep you company for a while, that’s all. If you want, I’ll go away again.”

“No, never mind. Now that you’re here, I’m glad you’re here-but damn, Pat!” They both laughed. Remembering his earlier thought, Irv went on, “We’ll have to keep it down so we don’t bother Louise.”

“Sure, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. She sleeps like a stone-must be a clear conscience or something.” Was that bitterness there? Hard to be sure, with only a whisper to go on. Hard to imagine anyone having anything against Louise, too.

Irv’s brain finally paid attention to what his nose had been telling him. He scratched his head. Odds were, knowing him, that he had just missed it before, but still… “Did you have perfume on while we were biking up?” The sweet muskiness cut through the strange Minervan odors and struck deep into his senses.

“No,” she said.

He scratched his head again. “Don’t tell me you put it on just for me. I’m flattered, but-”

Pat interrupted him, but not with words. Her mouth was soft against his and clung with something close to desperation when he started to pull away. She was almost as tall as he and just about as strong. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she murmured.

“Have you?” Irv said, amazed. Even through his protective clothing and hers, he could feel her breasts press against him; his gloved hand found itself at the curve of her waist. “You’ve done a good job of hiding it, then.”

“I’ve done a good job of hiding lots of things. The worst part is, Frank doesn’t even notice.” Her low voiced laugh had knives in it. “And don’t tell me you’ve been getting all you want from Sarah, either. There isn’t enough privacy on Athena to let you get away with a lie. There isn’t enough privacy on Athena for anything.” She made it into a curse.

What she said was true enough, he thought dizzily as Pat kissed him again. No privacy… He knew, for instance, that she had a tiny brown mole just under her fight nipple, that the hair between her legs was a couple of shades darker than the tarnished gold curls of her head. Till this moment, he had not spent much time thinking about any of that, but he knew.

He also knew that Sarah had told him no more times lately than he had been happy with. It was hard to think of Sarah right now, with Pat’s tongue, agile as a snake, trailing warmly over his cheek and under his cap to tease his ear.

He felt his body respond. Her hand pressed him through his trousers. For a moment, his hands pressed, too; the firm flesh of her buttocks yielded beneath his fingers. She arched her back, thrusting her hips against him.

At last their mouths separated. The chill of the long breath of air Irv gulped in helped him bring his body partly back under the control of his will. Trying to make light of what was happening, he said shakily, “God, Pat, if I were twenty-one again I’d haul your pants down and screw you fight here, even if we both froze our asses off.”

“Do it,” she said. “I want you to.” She was still rubbing him, stroking him, trying to goad him to action.

“Pat, this is foolish,” he said as gently as he could, reaching down to take her hand away and suppressing a spasm of regret almost before he knew it was there. “I’m not twenty-one anymore; I don’t let my cock do all my thinking for me. You’re not twenty-one, either. Don’t you think we’re too far from home to do anything that would hurt any of us?”

“I hurt now,” Pat retorted. “You would, too, if you’d been faking it all the way out from Earth orbit. And the only way Sarah’d be hurt is if she found out.”

“She would. I’m a lousy liar about that kind of thing.” Not, Irv thought, that I’ve ever had much to lie about. His one brush with infidelity had come at a drunken party a few years back. He and a girl-God, he’d forgotten her name-were fooling around in a walk-in closet when he passed out between second and third base.