Welcome to Chapter 29! Normally I wouldn't be posting again in the middle of the week, but one of you dear readers, sent an email to me over the weekend that motivated me to post an extra chapter. Thanks for the motivation Adel!
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29
To the mountains!
It was a three-hour drive into the rising sun to the Glosbe Mountains. It took an hour to get through the city and another two of steady climbing on winding, two-lane roads to get near our destination. The vehicle we rode in was kind of a small bus or van. It was roughly twenty-feet-long and the front half was similar to the busses I'd ridden before, except the seats faced front instead of toward the middle, and it had a driver's seat with regular controls. The back half was gear storage with access from hinged doors at the rear or from inside the vehicle.
Our gear consisted of tents, climbing gear, fatigues, military rations, water containers, our personal suitcases, and ten pounds of macadamia nuts, all jammed in the rear compartment. Well, nine pounds of nuts were in the back. The tenth was being steadily consumed by me. Neb drove. Under normal circumstances, a driver would have been assigned, but given the nature of our mission and the massive amount of power I was expected to unleash, it was decided to keep the training session to essential personnel only. That meant just the four of us.
We looked more like a team, as we all dressed like Neb in blue t-shirts, grey overshirts, and black pants. The black boots they issued to me and Shawn were a welcome change. Finally, a real pair of boots to wear; ten-inch height, belt-like straps instead of laces, black Kevlar-style material for the uppers, and grippy rubber treads on the bottom. They fit perfectly and felt great. They also had an extra shovel-blade tip on the toes and a firmer sole that made them suitable for climbing.
I found myself simmering with impatient energy as I endured the long, dull ride. There wasn't anything to do and very little to look at. The city was still unfamiliar enough to be diverting for a while, but once we got into the mountains, things became oppressively dull. Bem dozed in the bench seat behind Neb, while Shawn and I kept each other company in the back.
I tried occupying myself by maintaining a solar system of nuts next to my head, but as my telekinesis was getting easier, even that wasn't challenging enough to keep me busy for very long. To keep from losing my mind with idleness, I used my telekinesis and curious hands to dig through almost every piece of gear piled in the back of the van. My explorations were fun for both me and Shawn and treated me to many observations about our gear.
I found that the tents were fairly standard dome-style tents made of grey material that looked like nylon but felt smoother. As I finished with the mundane tents, I was tempted to investigate the climbing tackle, but my better judgement told me to leave it alone. Coils of tightly woven black rope dared me to tangle them. A startling array of clips, cleats, bizarre hatchet-hammer tools, pulleys, and who-the-fuck-knows attracted and menaced me at the same time.
The feeling was similar to seeing a tray of dentist's tools. I looked with the knowledge that at some point in the proceedings, I was sure to hurt and bleed, the only question was `when?' Climbing a mountain, instead of having dental work or climbing at a climbing center, provided the fun additional risk of falling from tremendous height and landing on unforgiving rock. I put my faith in the knowledge of our experts, Neb and Bem, to keep us safe, and failing that, Shawn's incredible capacity to heal our injuries.
I kept exploring and dug through four grey, interlocking crates that turned out to hold our rations. I was suspicious of the meals they contained. An ex-serviceman I'd worked with on Earth had once brought a military issue MRE' (meal ready to eat) to work. He wanted to show us how the US military fed its men. The meal was called, beef shredded in bar-be-que sauce.' He prepared the meal and offered samples. I don't know what came out of that tan plastic pouch, but it didn't look, taste, or smell like what it called itself. It's pretty bad when an alcoholic, two-pack-a-day smoker, who lives on take-out food says, `that doesn't look healthy.'
I hoped the Solum military was better fed than its Earth equivalent. The rations that I inspected were in grey cardboard boxes the size of a sheet of paper and a bit more than an inch thick. Each was labeled with its contents; `meatloaf and mashed potatoes, pulled pork and macaroni and cheese, chicken and roasted potatoes, lasagna,' to name a few.
"Looks like a TV dinner." I observed. Shawn didn't know what I was talking about. It occurred to me, as I thought about why he wasn't familiar with the concept of a microwave meal, that with technology like the culinarian, the whole processed food industry was irrelevant. The Earth habit of opening a can or microwaving a frozen meal was pointless when a few selections on a touch screen served up restaurant-quality food in seconds.
As the ration crates were the last of the gear that I was willing to disturb, I considered my curiosity satisfied and wondered what else to do. I looked out the window with my hands absently shoved in my pants pockets. My right hand closed around my Zippo. I'd stuck it there that morning as an after-thought and filled it from the can of fluid in the trunk of the Vic before we'd left The HALL.
I'd considered taking a pack of T-Square cigarettes with me from my stash, but I hadn't felt even the hint of a craving for one since Shawn took my addiction away. The one I'd smoked the morning I'd woken up from my waking dream hadn't done anything except burn my lungs and make me feel bad. When I thought about it a little more, I realized that my fingers didn't even fidget for lack of occupation. I figured that meant my days as a smoker were officially behind me and was pleased about that.
I brought my attention back from introspection to actually see what I was looking at out of the windows. The view was quite pleasant. The mountains we drove through appeared to be made of the same blue stone that built Epistylium; some of it was bluer, and some greyer, with varying amounts of white flecks. The rock rose around us sheer, bare, and jagged as far up as I could see. The only green was at the road level where stunted scrub grew from piles of rubble that collected organic matter. Erosion veined the rock like the leaves of a tree and provided interesting patterns that resembled flowers, or snowflakes, or the licking flames of a campfire.
Shawn and I occupied ourselves by picking out the patterns and deciding what they looked like; the same as seeing shapes in clouds. It was good clean fun until Bem woke up. He sat next to me to point out what interested him and hiss the leering descriptions into my ear. "See that, that looks like...you know how when guys work out a lot, they get a square ass...gym ass. That over there, that's a male, male, female threesome. You see, the one guy is on his back and the other is..."
"I see it." I said to stop him.
"I thought you would." Bem shoved a suggestive elbow in my gut. "Look over there." Bem pointed to an alarmingly large oblong pattern carved in the rock from a seasonal waterfall that was dry at that moment. "Look at the size of it. That's what yours looks like, isn't it?"
As Bem leered and I blushed, the road curved, and the opposite side fell away to a scenic vista with a river at the bottom. Shawn crossed over to look. Bem took advantage of Shawn moving away to whisper to me. "What's he like?" Bem asked.
I knew what he meant. Bem was asking what Shawn was like in bed. I didn't want to answer him truthfully because the details of our lovemaking was none of Bem's business. I quickly decided to use Bem's question as an opportunity to fuck with him. I had a half an idea of how to answer him but needed to flesh it out. "What do you think he's like?" I asked to buy time.
Bem eyed Shawn. His left hand kneaded his right shoulder as he spoke. "He's quiet, doesn't get excited. I'd think he would be gentle, passionate but not aggressive. Likes to be led."
Bem's words helped me put the finishing touches on my idea. I was about to try to sell Bem something outrageous. I steeled myself to keep my face straight. "You don't know how wrong you are." I whispered to Bem and looked hard in his eyes. "You ever hear, `it's always the quiet ones?' That's him. He's vicious. He punches, bites, kicks, and slaps. He humiliates me. Calls me names. The sessions are always one-sided. He takes what he wants and leave me nothing. I tried to refuse once; told him I wouldn't let him abuse me. He got mad, punched my face and broke my nose. He left it broken and bleeding until he was done using me."
Wide staring eyes in a drawn face listened intently to my lies. Bem was buying it...every word. I was thrilled. "Why do you let him treat you that way?" He asked.
I leaned in as close as I could to whisper right in Bem's ear. "I love it." I breathed. "He said when we get home, he's gonna peel all the skin off my back with a paring knife. I'm so excited." I leaned away to see if Bem would swallow my most daring lie.
Bem stared at me, obviously disturbed by what I'd told him. Shawn picked that moment to come back from the window to sit with us. "You missed a beautiful view just now." Shawn gushed with his voice full of wonder in the beauty of nature. "The way the sunshine hit the river, it glittered like flowing diamonds."
Bem looked at Shawn, then at me, then back to Shawn. He grinned and punched my arm. "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" He yelled, startling Shawn and drawing an irrepressible grin to my face. I assumed Shawn's sappy sentimental description of the river below us destroyed the illusion of my elaborate lie. "You are a twisted fuck, Big Guy." Ben added.
"What did I miss?" Shawn asked.
Bem answered with a shake of his head. "I can't even repeat it. Peel my skin with a knife...weirdo. Your friend here," Bem set a hand on my knee, "he needs help."
I laughed and explained for Shawn's benefit. "Bem asked me what you were like in bed. I told him you were a dominant sadist, but that was perfect because I'm a submissive masochist. He bought it long enough to get a laugh."
Shawn didn't see why any of that was funny, so I let it drop.
Soon after that absurd moment, the bus crested a steep rise and turned sharply off the main road. We stopped talking to collectively look through the windshield. We'd pulled into a narrow, single lane cut in a low spot between two cliffs. We coasted a hundred yards and stopped at a gate of black glass with a sign next to it that read `DANGER, KEEP OUT, Property of The HALL, Trespassers will be Prosecuted.' Below the large, white sign lettered in red, was a card reader supported on the sign post closest to the road. Neb waved her HALL Pass at it. A chime sounded and the gate retracted into the ground.
Neb drove us through, and the gate rose to its former position. She made a sweeping gesture at the windshield as she steered a hard right along the inside wall of a box canyon. A flat-bottomed valley was a hundred feet below us and as lush and green as any of the Epistylium parks. I guessed it was about a mile in length by a third of a mile wide. The peaks that hemmed us in loomed at heights of three, four, and five hundred feet. We entered the canyon on a narrow end, made a right, then a left, to descend to the valley floor on a long, gradual ramp cut into the cliff face.
Less than half-way down the ramp, we slipped below the thick canopy of deciduous trees that lined the valley on three sides, and more of the valley features became visible. In the middle of the opposite long cliff wall, maybe two-hundred-fifty feet up, a tumbling waterfall shot from a fissure in the rock to stream down into a blue lake trimmed in reeds. Around the lake, was a grassy clearing dotted with wild flowers, around the clearing, were dense woods.
"The elite special forces train in this valley." Neb explained, her voice filled with nostalgia. "More team-building than training. This place is like a luxury resort compared to where the military holds its survival training. I haven't been here in half a century, but I remember it like yesterday. There are fish in the lake, small game, birds. Wild herbs grow in the clearing, peppergrass, tea, sweet goldenrod, and chickweed. The water from that waterfall is the best I've ever tasted."
It was strange hearing the hard-as-nails Neb tell a happy story. Her melodic voice made it sound like a fairy-tale. My first impression of our new surroundings matched what Neb said. The valley was cool and inviting. It would be easy to spend a week camping, fishing, swimming in the lake, exploring. Shawn had a question that interrupted my idyllic fantasy. "What's `small game?'"
"Squirrels and rabbits mostly, sometimes a possum." Neb explained.
"Why are they called game?" Shawn persisted.
Neb's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. The sharp glare they gave me told me she wasn't going to say another word. I didn't understand her hesitation, and I didn't understand why Shawn wasn't familiar with the term. I tried to reason it out, and as I reasoned, several pieces of information I'd gathered came together in my head. My logic told me that, if the meat from the culinarian is plants, then it followed that no meat on Solum, or at least in the PCS, is flesh. I followed that line of logic where it led and reasoned that there were no animals raised as food. That meant that killing to eat is not normal on Solum, and therefore hunting and fishing are foreign concepts as well. Shit,' I thought, I feel like I'm about to tell him there's no Santa Claus.'
I took a breath and tried to answer Shawn's question very carefully. "Shawn...uh...`game' animals are animals you hunt."
Innocent confusion twisted Shawn's features. "Hunt?"
"To uh...there's just no good way to say this...you hunt them for food."
Shawn cocked his head and cupped his right cheek with a soft hand as he thought about what I'd said. Understanding came to him slowly. As it did, his confusion quickly became violent revulsion. "You mean, you KILL them and EAT THEM? Why would you eat a dead animal? That's disgusting."
"No, it's not. You eat meat."
Shawn pushed himself along the seat until he was stopped by the door panel, like the act of distancing himself from me would somehow make my words less true. "What's meat got to do with dead animals?" Shawn demanded, his expression scrunched up with horror.
I rubbed my face and wished I hadn't said anything. "Christ." I said to my palms. "Shawn, the meat you eat is plants, but I'm guessing it wasn't always that way on this world. Beef, chicken, turkey, pork, bacon, fish; once upon a time, all that was from animals. Where did you think the bones come from in chicken?"
Bem came to my partial rescue with some helpful trivia. "There hasn't been an animal raised for food anywhere on this world for several centuries."
Shawn squeezed his hands over his ears and closed his eyes like he was trying to shut the information out. "I'M NOT EATING DEAD ANIMALS!" He shouted and rolled in a tight ball that refused to acknowledge anything I said.
"Neb?" I asked with growing desperation.
She shook her head at the windshield. "Hunting and cooking are distractions we don't need. That's why we brought rations. We don't have time to teach you to live off the land. Even if we did, the plains are barren. There's nothing to live on."
I pried Shawn's hands from his ears. "You don't have to. Shawn, we don't have to kill anything. Rations, remember?"
Shawn opened his eyes and cautiously unwound himself. "It's barbaric." He insisted.
I almost asked him if he ate any meat on Earth, but decided he'd been traumatized enough. I sat next to him, threw my arm around him, and pulled him into me. "Just relax."
He huddled against me. "I could never eat an animal. I mean, they're alive like we are. It's only a small step from them to us. I can't imagine. I could never eat you."
Bem sniggered. "You're missing out then!" He barked and his sniggers turned to peels of cackling laughter. Even Neb chuckled. I turned scarlet and Shawn, the Solum native, colored with embarrassment.
As that minor crisis faded from an emergency to an anecdote, the van reached the bottom of the stone ramp. Neb turned us onto a rutted track that led through the trees toward the clearing. We bounced along it for a hundred yards or so until she pulled off the road and parked in the shade. We piled out. I stuck the bag of nuts I'd been munching in my pocket and left the solar system floating and revolving next to my head.
Neb took a deep breath, like she was trying to pull the essence of the nature around us into her body. She shoved both her rolled sleeves above her elbows and the right immediately dropped back down her forearm. Bem opened the rear of the van and folded the doors back. Neb took charge. "Bem, you and Shawn set up camp and get some water. Church and I will rig some ropes for after lunch. It's ten after eleven. Should be ready to eat at noon?"
Bem gave her a surprisingly genuine "yes ma'am." Neb beckoned me to the rear of the van and gave me some orders. "Elbows bent, hands out in front of you, close your fists." I did as I was told and felt like a robot from an 80s cartoon. Neb pulled coils of rope from the vehicle and hung one after the other on my forearms. She stuck a hammer-hatchet and a handful of these pins with rings on them in her back pocket and marched toward the waterfall side of the canyon.
I hurried up next to her and she explained the plan. "That cliff face," she pointed to the right of the waterfall, about mid-way between it and the edge of the canyon, "is three hundred and fifty feet from the ground to the summit. The top is a flat ledge big enough for all of us to gather. We are going to rig a main rope and a safety. You make this easy because no one has to free climb to set the first rope. I'm going to ride your elevator to the top."
"Got it." I said just to be saying something. Since our face-off and eventual meeting of the minds, Neb had slowly been warming up to the rest of us and was much less the dictator she'd started out. I respected this version of her more. I also think it was easier on her.
We got to the cliff. I built the platform as directed and piled the ropes on it. Neb stepped on and leaned against one of the sides I'd built around the platform. Just before she ascended, she reached out to snatch a nut from my solar system. I felt her hand close on it and released it to her grasp. She looked down at the nut as she rolled it in her palm. "You're getting very good at this. Up please." She said and popped the nut in her mouth.
Both the compliment and the `please' shocked me, but I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. I was happy that Neb was becoming the person that Bem suspected she was hiding. I also appreciated the amount of trust it took for her to ride my very unusual, very new, and invisible magic power up the side of a mountain.
I raised her to the summit and moved her according to hand signals. She rigged the ropes, dropping each down as she secured them. They extended a little more than half-way to the ground. I lowered her to a point above the end of the ropes and stopped while she rigged two more that unfurled until the ends fell in the dust at my feet. I lowered her the rest of the way. Back on the ground, she took a small timepiece from her t-shirt pocket and checked it. "Just noon." She observed. "Let's eat."
We went back toward where the van was parked and saw that Shawn and Bem had camp set-up in the clearing, right at the edge of the tree line. Two grey tents stood on the grass, a four-seat folding table between them. A grey tarp was roped from two trees to the tops of the tents to keep the sun off us while we ate. One open crate of rations and four clear plastic water containers stood next to the table.
Bem sorted through the ration packs. He found one he wanted and set it on the table. Neb asked for a roast beef, and Shawn wanted lasagna. Bem found them both, handed them out, and raised his eyes to me for my selection. I remembered some of the ones I'd read in the van. "I'll have a meatloaf and a pulled pork please."
"There isn't a meatloaf and pork." He objected. "There's a meatloaf and potatoes." He held a box up. I took the proffered meal and leaned passed him to dig through the crate. I found a pulled pork and macaroni, stacked the one on top of the other, and waved the stack at him. "Meatloaf and pork...see?"
"Right...you're a giant. I forgot." He stood and brushed his knees off. He sat down with his meal, chicken and potatoes, and slammed the box down on the tabletop. Neb did the same. Bem explained for the uninitiated. "It breaks a capsule in the bottom of the tray that causes a chemical reaction that heats the food."
Shawn followed their example and wacked his box down. I did the same for the meatloaf and tried to sit at the table. I couldn't. The table was too small. There wasn't enough space between the fixed seat of the bench and the tabletop to wedge my girth. I ground my teeth and swore. I was getting very tired of being too big for everything. "Fucking Munchkin Land...just call me Dorothy." I grumbled and put the lid on the ration crate to sit on that. Another thought took some of the anger out of my grumbling and relaxed my clenched jaw. `Ars is a little like the Wizard of Oz.'
We waited a few minutes for the meals to heat and opened the boxes. They were just like TV dinners, a grey cardboard tray, with compartments for each food item, and a clear film over the top. A flat cardboard fork could be broken from the front of the tray and a cardboard knife from the back. I peeled the film back and dug into what turned out to be a very good meal.
Each had a meat, a starch, green beans and a brownie. There was no salt and pepper or other condiments to add, but it didn't really need them. I missed ketchup on the meatloaf, but it was in brown gravy that was a nice substitute. I finished the first meal quickly and slapped the second meal down to let it heat. "Is there a trash bag?" I asked.
"You won't need one." Bem said, a forkful of chicken hovering in front of his mouth. "The tray and the box are made of starch. The box is waterproof only on the outside and the tray only on the inside. Put the tray back in the box, dump a little water in it, everything disappears."
"That's very environmentally conscious." I said as I tore into my second meal.
Neb shook her head. "Purely a tactical concern. Helps troops move without leaving a trail of litter for an enemy to follow."
I thought about what Neb said and rolled her statement around in my mind. I struck on something that didn't make sense. Enemy.' I thought. In a world of no war, who is the enemy?' I asked what I wondered. "Neb, how big is the PCS military?"
Neb ate the last of her roast beef from the tray and slid the tray and utensils back in the box. "No large standing forces if that's what you're asking. There is a robust police force that has basic military training. They can be activated in times of crisis. The active military is made up of special forces teams that solve problems as they arise. The Protectorate is the largest country and continent, it is also the global peacekeeper."
"Does that mean you and Bem are both special forces?"
Neb looked along her eyes at Bem, then answered me with what seemed like caution. "Different types, but yes."
"What kinds of problems do you solve?" I asked.
Neb looked away. Bem took up the conversation. His shallow, dead eyes were back and he pointed his cardboard knife at me. "We don't discuss those things, not even between ourselves. All you need to know is, Warrant Officer Torolus and myself are both uniquely qualified for this mission."
Bem's uncompromising look, his angry tone, and the way he referred to Neb by her title, made me realize that the question was out of bounds. I stretched my watchband and lowered my eyes to the tabletop in shame. "I apologize. The question was...I should know better than to ask things like that. I'm...I apologize for being insensitive."
"Yes, well...sorry doesn't cut it." Bem said sharply and stuffed the knife that he'd been pointing at me in the box with the tray. "I think you owe Neb and I more than words."
Oh shit.' I thought. I fucked up big time. I hope this doesn't ruin our relationship. Why don't I ever close my mouth?'
Bem didn't make me wait too long before he issued his demands for what he considered the right apology. "I think Neb deserves the tent to herself tonight and I deserve to be the meat in a Shawn / Church sandwich."
I released the watch with a snap and rubbed my neck. "I should have known that's where it would wind up."
Bem grinned. He was nothing if not self-entertaining. "I should tell you, Big Guy, no one has ever resisted me like you. You can't keep it up. I will have you, BEFORE we leave for the mountain."
I took a second to really look at Bem. I had to admit that I was attracted to the sinewy blond with the close beard and the always neat clothes. The man showed enough hair at the collar of his shirt to make me wonder how much of a coating his lean body had. The obvious comparison to the mostly smooth Shawn made me wonder what the scratch of a close beard would feel like if applied to the right places. I also wondered what Bem's body would feel like under my hands and what kind of a lover he would be. I wondered who he was and what he'd sone in his life. I wondered how old he was. Neb had given us some indication of her age, but Bem had told us very little about himself.
None of my musings about Bem's body or his sexual prowess meant that I was ready for another partner. I also didn't understand why Bem was attracted to me, other than the fact that my size made me a curiosity. I assumed that was enough for him to want a `romp' as he put it. If nothing else, I was glad he was honest about what he wanted, and I told him as much. "I appreciate your directness. No games, just a simple statement of intention. It's useless though, you will not have me."
Bem offered his hand across the table. "Shake on being direct."
I took his hand. He tightened his grip around my hand, jerked it to his face, and licked the back of it. I pulled away from him and swore. "I don't know what your problem is," he said through more of his leering cackle, "I'm just being direct."
I dumped some water over my hand and scrubbed it on my pants. `Just be glad he's not humping your leg.' I thought.
"Lunch over." Neb announced and rose from her seat.