The Life of the World to Come Read Online Free PDF Page B

wound up on the lawn with the bath overturned beside us, and he was on top of me, peering down through the lightning flashes. He was looking into my eyes as though he’d only just recognized me.
    And how good was it, what we did there on my tidy little lawn? I’ll tell you. If I suffer in darkness for a thousand years because of what I did afterward—I won’t care.
    By great good fortune the water under the tamales had not quite boiled away by the time we went back inside, and the house was filled with the earthy smell of corn. I lit lamps and pulled on an old shirt to set out our supper. He wrapped a towel around his middle and sat down at my rough-hewn table, watching me lay places for us. Two places, after all this time.
    Once, long ago, I’d laid out an intimate supper for two, just like this. We had sat together in a tiny circle of light at an old wooden table, in our own little world, as beyond in the darkness the wind howled and a hostile fate prepared to tear us to pieces the minute we stepped outside the circle.
    It isn’t really a happy memory. Nicholas had been sullenly desperate and I had been fearfully desperate, a good little cyborg feeling real qualms about running away with a mortal
man. Before that night ended my heart had been broken irreparably, and Nicholas, furious and terrified, was running to meet his death. Thank you, Dr. Zeus.
    But I’m an old wicked cyborg now, aren’t I? Long past desperation. And how sweetly the rain beat on the roof of my house, and how snug and dry we were in my lamplit kitchen as the blue evening fell, and how sleepy and calm we were there together.
    And calmly, over our supper, I did the first of the things that will damn me if I’m ever caught. I told Alec, in great detail, all about the Silence in 2355, together with some rather necessary bits of temporal physics to enable him to use that shuttle effectively. So very classified, and I divulged it! He knows, now, Dr. Zeus’s fear of the unforeseen apocalypse; he knows his window of opportunity, and what to plan for over the next four years. Whatever his plans may be.
    I gather he has some kind of ally he calls the Captain, who is apparently the captain of his ship, though I’m a little confused on this point because I also had the impression he sails alone. But this Captain may be dead, which is one of the things he’s gone off to resolve/revenge.
    The talk depressed him. He reached across the table and took my hand as we spoke. What kind of emotional life has he had? I could cheerfully kill his ex-wives, I think.
    Oh, yes, I’ve changed. But I would burn in Hell for his dear sake.
    I may yet.
    He helped me wash the dinner dishes, and we hung his thermal underclothes up to dry before the fire, and at last we climbed into my narrow, creaking bed. Last time I’d lain in a real bed with him, he’d been Edward, and we’d been on the run all day and were too exhausted to do more than drift off to sleep together. Not this time! The bed has a permanent list to starboard now, and we were lucky it didn’t collapse in extremis . I really ought to fix it, but I can’t bear to. Just looking at it makes me smile.
    He warmed me right through, my mortal lover, and afterward drifted off to sleep in my arms. I lay watching him by the light of the fire. I might have lain there studying him all night,
newly fascinated by all the details I’d never forgotten: the cleft in his chin, the funny swirled patterns in the hair on his arms.
    But the night wasn’t mine to idle away so pleasantly.
    I rose and pulled the blanket up around his shoulders. He sighed, reaching for me. I slipped out into the rainy night, to do the second thing for which I will surely suffer one day.
    The shuttle lay dark and abandoned, its sprung hatch gaping open in the rain. I looked in and saw the tiny green lights on the control panel, dimly illuminating the access port. I made my assault, forced it to give up the secret I wanted.
    The bomb was wired under