Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“Yes,” came the reply, and the warriors with the domain master started to cheer. “How do we stand, clanfather?”

“Well. Very well now, eldest, very well. The other half of the Skarmer army has already yielded to us.” That brought answering cheers from Ternat and his warband. Reatur went on, “How fare you, eldest?”

“Also well. I have many, many massi with me, and Dordal as a captive, too.”

“Do you?” Reatur said when the clamor among his males subsided enough to let him be heard. “Do you? Then, eldest, it is very well indeed.” He thought about that, decided it was too small a thing to say. “Eldest, it is as well as I could have hoped.”

As soon as Damselfly touched down by Athena, Sarah knew she had made a mistake. If she didn’t want to damage the ultra-ultralight, she would need help getting out, and it looked as though Irv, Louise, and the stepladder were still over on the other side of Reatur’s castle.

She reached for the radio switch, then dropped her hand. All she wanted to do was sit and shake for a minute. Flying across Jotun Canyon had been tougher physically but had not left her drained and limp the way this bombing run had: terror was harder to take than exhaustion.

Cold started seeping into her bones as she rested. If she did too much of that, she knew, she would stiffen up and be sore for days. Her hand moved toward the radio again.

Something hissed through the couple of inches of snow outside. Sarah turned to see what it was; she had never heard any Minervan creature make a noise like that. It wasn’t any Minervan creature, as it turned out: it was Emmett Bragg, speeding up on his bicycle.

He slid to a smooth stop, waved. “Need a hand getting out of that contraption, don’t you?”

“Yes, but doesn’t Reatur still need you back at the fight?” “Nope.” He got off the bike. “For one thing, I’m out of ammo, so I’m less use to him now than one of his own warriors who really knows what to do with a spear. For another, he was moppin’ up when I left. With you takin’ out the Kalashnikov, the Skarmer didn’t have anything in the middle, and Reatur broke ‘em in two and defeated ‘am in detail.”

“All right.” As usual, Sarah thought, Emmett had a good mason for everything he did. She laughed a little-he wasn’t eight feet tall, though. “What are you going to get me out with? The stepladder’s a couple of miles from here.”

“I’ll manage.” He climbed up the chain ladder to the airlock and disappeared into Athena. When he emerged a minute later, he was carrying a large, square plastic-mesh box. He set it down by Damselfly and then climbed on top. “This ought to do the job.”

“I think you’re right.” Sarah unlatched the ultra-ultralight’s canopy and swung it open. She stood up on the pedals and reached out for Emmett. He more than half lifted her out of Damselfly’s cabin. The box made a crunching noise under the weight of the two of them. They jumped off it. Sarah stumbled.

Emmett steadied her with an arm around her shoulder.

“Let’s get you inside,” he said. “Wearing that skimpy getup, you’re gonna be a lump of ice in a couple of minutes.” They walked over to Athena. He didn’t take his arm away. She started to shrug him off, changed her mind. He was warm.

She sighed in relief when he shut the inner airlock door after them. “Till I got to Minerva, I never knew how wonderful the words ‘room temperature’ could be,” she said.

“You know it.” Emmett grinned a lopsided grin. “Of course, they take on a whole other meaning when the walls of the room are made of ice.” He turned serious again. “You did a hell of a job there, Sarah, a hell of a job.”

“Thanks,” she said, most soberly. “I don’t quite know how I did it, but I guess I did. Right now I’m just so glad to be back here in one piece that I can hardly think about anything else.”

“Glad to be alive. I know what you mean-do I ever.” The grin got wider. Suddenly Emmett let another yell rip free. “Hot damn, gift, we did it!” he shouted.

He hugged her, tight enough to make the breath hiss from her lungs. Her arms went around his back. The solid feel of him against her was a welcome affirmation that she was alive. He tilted her face up and kissed her.

She was kissing him back before she wondered whether she ought to be. “Mmm,” he said, back deep in his throat, without letting up on the kiss. Then his mouth slid to her neck; his teeth gently worried the lobe of her ear.

She closed her eyes and let her head 1oll back. “Nice,” she purred. Perhaps because of her brush with death, every sensation, the touch of his tongue against the soft skin under the angle of her jaw, his warm breath on her cheek, seemed deliciously magnified.

His hands were on her hips, planted there as if without the slightest doubt they belonged. “Come on,” he urged, nodding back toward the cubicles.

She did not hesitate. She had known for months that he wanted her and occasionally wondered how she would react if he ever did anything about it. Then the question had been academic, and easy to answer with a no. Now… “Why not?” she said, feeling almost drunk on excitement.

His hand guided her into Pat’s cubicle. It was the one farthest forward, but afterward she wondered if he had chosen it because it held nothing that belonged to Irv or Louise and could set off guilt.

That was afterward. During, she only wanted him to go on. She stood while he quickly undressed her, then did the same for him. They embraced again. He steered her to the foam mattress and lowered himself onto her.

Low comedy briefly ousted desire. “Wait!’ She wriggled frantically. “Get up for a second!”

“What the-“ Frowning, Emmett took some weight on his elbows.

That sufficed. Sarah reached under herself and threw aside whatever it was she had been lying on. Her arms went around his neck and pulled him back to her. “Now!” she said.

Had she not already known he was a test pilot, she might have guessed it by the way he took her. He flew her as if she were some new plane, she thought before all thought vanished, trying this, trying that, seeing how she responded, what the limits of her performance were. Gasping, she doubted she had any limits.

He laughed when, at the end, she tried to sink her teeth into his shoulder. “Easy there. Shouldn’t leave marks,” he said, mind still in full control even as his body quivered and drove deep into hers.

That brought her back to herself faster than she wanted to return and brought her also to the beginning of anger. She suddenly suspected-no, she knew-the flying itself was more important to him than the plane he flew. Being just another test vehicle on which he could prove his expertise grated.

He sprang up from the mattress and bounded down the passage. “What the hell?” she squawked, startled out of annoyance.

“Radio buzzer.” His words floated back to her. “I wonder how long it was on while we were busy here.” Then she heard the insistent signal, too, and started to giggle. He had paid some attention to her after all. She heard him pick up the mike. Then he called loudly, “Sarah, you’d better come. It’s about Lamra.”

She raced to the control room. Only when Emmett handed her the microphone did she realize that they were both still naked. She didn’t care. “What about Lamra?” she demanded.

“Hon?”

It was Irv. It would be Irv, she thought. Now she cared who she was standing with, and how. She felt herself go hot, then cold. But what Irv was calling about mattered more than anything, at least for the moment. “What about Lamra?”

Lamra looked at herself. How funny I look, was the first thought that went through her mind, well ahead of I’m alive and the surprise that accompanied it. Her budbulges, which had been so firm and full, were split open like ebster fruit and sagged clown almost onto her feet. Great strips of the sticky hide the humans used to hold things together clung to her skin. She supposed they were helping to hold her together.