Mystical Tales of Romance Page 10

meaningful relationships, they never cease talking about women as complex toys. I want no part of that.”

  She turned her head to one side. “I remember seeing that ‘mission’ business. Nothing else matters, you said. So when you promised your wife you would heed her advice and try to find a successor, did you know then what kind of woman you were looking for? I gather looks really weren’t much of an issue.”

  His eyes had drifted down to his hands on the back of the chair. “Among the many conversations we had during her lifetime, we agreed I would never make it alone. Not in the sense I couldn’t live as a bachelor, but that I couldn’t keep the mission alive without a partner, someone who could at least understand some of what drives me. I need someone who catches the loose ends that fall free when I find myself wrapped up in something that consumes so very much of my limited human resources. With a partner, the mission doesn’t suffer quite so much as it would if I stumbled along alone.”

  He looked up at her. “No, I don’t care what she looks like. Sure, I have tastes; every man does. Having those satisfied is mere icing on the cake. What matters most is someone who has a clue to what drives me. I learned long ago, before my first marriage, when two people spend time together sharing something so much bigger than themselves, genuine love and passion are sure to follow. That’s another of those facts about our wiring.”

  It was now or never. Becky rose from her chair, walked to the door. Resting one hand on the handle, she paused. Then she closed it. Turning back, she put her hands on her hips. “Am I stupid for asking if there is any cake here at all, and do you see enough icing?”

  She was in arm’s reach, just barely, from where he sat. He leaned out and took her hand. “It had to come from you or it would never work. I had no idea it would be this quick, but I was more worried you’d never ask. Yes, there’s cake and plenty of icing.”

  11

  Waking up in his arms, she decided she had never slept so well in her life.

  Naturally, they had discussed the implications long into the night. She knew she would probably never understand all of it and didn’t care. She realized those women who accused him of being a misogynist in comments on his blog had no more idea what they were talking about than the flirty trio. Somehow the expression “in love” just fell flat before her reality.

  Frankly, it was her job to know what to do next. That was the easy part. Making the changes to her personnel file would be the biggest job. The rest of the bureaucratic tangle they would play by ear. She was confident in a way her experienced cynicism could never match.

  They would write their own ceremony simply as a means of crystallizing this for the people on the installation. Last night he made a tiny ceremony of adopting her as the covenant successor to his first wife, henceforth known to them as her predecessor. Then he pulled out the rings they had worn. Becky put his back on his finger, and wasn’t the least bit surprised the other fit hers well enough. They were plain silver bands, but more than fancy enough for her. The man was what really mattered.

  He took the time to make her understand, assured her most earnestly of all the things about her that constituted icing on the cake for him. She warned him a woman would always have doubts, always need reassurance on that point. He warned he she would need to get used to someone who couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  What surprised her most that night was how little he surprised her. All the mind-numbing, virtual earthquakes in her soul had prepared her better than she could expect. She knew him. A good deal of what she dared to hope was accurate enough. He was more ordinary than the flirts ever could imagine, yet more wonderful than they could have recognized. They were on the wrong planet. She had already been halfway across the space between when he showed up, calling her to his planet. Now, she was lost at home and determined to enjoy every minute of exploring it. She was surprised to discover she hadn’t the slightest fear anyone else would interest him.

  He had to leave early today, so she kissed him long and hard goodbye, leaving him to get his bike and laptop ready. Bouncing down the entire three flights of stairs, she jogged to her dorm room and grabbed her shower kit. No way would she skip the morning workout with the other women. For once, a little gloating just felt right.

  Everyone said she looked so different, and not simply because she chose to leave her hair down. The gym attendant said it: She was a lady with sparkle.

  Light Switch

  Fighting to spring love and beauty from a prison is worthwhile.

  Setting: Near future, locations as told in the story

  1

  The breeze was light, sun warm; a very nice day for this far north. Thomas leaned back against the post at the corner of the cabin, closed his eyes as his head spun with the memories of how he ended up somewhere near the coast of Finland, near a town they called Sauvo.

  The whole world was falling apart, but not the same pace in every place. It was all a jumbled mixture of government edicts, hiding and clandestine meetings with Bibles, dogs barking in the night and travel. Then it was a long string of trucks, flat rail cars, woodland trails, wading through swampy river bottoms — it was all confused. The only good part was he had only himself to worry about. His wife and left him years before.

  At some point Tom ended up on the East Coast in a bar full of fishermen and the like. He remembered distinctly singing Christmas carols as some sort of defiant act, and getting the patrons to join him in rousing choruses for which most could hardly remember the words. It was literally singing for his supper, but he was careful not to take all the offered drinks from the merry men.

  He ended up on a cargo ship. Hardly capable of seaman duties, he worked in the kitchen, taught classes on anything he thought he knew better than the crew, and sang at dinner whenever they asked. Tom had been careful to sing songs he could get them to join in, because his voice was only passable. Aside from the singing, it was his ability to fix the battered old computers and some of the electronics on the ship which made them glad they had dragged him along. He never told them it was mostly intelligent guessing, recalling what he could from what had been a major hobby in his youth.

  But the one thing which endeared him to the ship’s officers was his imposing size and dislike for getting drunk. A good bit bigger than average, Thomas had been a football lineman in school, and had stayed in decent shape through his adult years.

  There were a few port calls, and too frequent trouble from a small portion of the crew, and Tom was always sent along to ride herd. They insisted on staying out way too late in Helsinki, and then tricked Thomas into getting on the wrong bus. Instead of the port, he woke up in Sauvo. He didn’t even have a passport, and knew better than to request one at that point. US embassies had become forbidding places under the new regime back home. But he got directions back toward the coast. Maybe he could find a fisherman to take him out the ship, which wasn’t scheduled to leave for a week, yet. It was a long walk and he was nearly out of Euros.

  There on some lonely road just outside a tiny village, as the sun was going down, he saw the skid marks leading off the pavement and into a shallow but steep sided draw. There were still patches of dirty white and snow banks here and there in the higher elevations. In the bottom the truck sat just short of some old gravel road, buried up to the tops of the tires in snow, a pool of half-melted white protected by the deep shadow of the draw. Where he stood at the edge of the road was just about even with the top of the freight trailer.

  The Finnish chatter meant nothing to him, but it seemed no one was really interested in getting the rig out. Finally, he decided to ask in English if he could help, simply because it would help him pass the time and forget his own problems. Maybe he could get a meal or a ride out of it.

  Near as he could make out, there was a general strike of some kind. Since there was no loss of life or serious injuries, there would be no emergency services. The only towing rig available was an old farm tractor, too small to handle a loaded truck and trailer. Apparently the lo
ad was a major supply run for the area. The driver was not involved in the strike, but the only other people around were mostly retirees and the like. This was vacation land, and still sparsely populated that time of year. Yet, even the unloading of a truck was covered by union contracts.

  But Thomas wasn’t.

  It took him a few minutes to hike around to the small gravel road down near the truck. He stashed his sea bag in the limbs of a nearby tree, and then waded out to the back of the truck. After a bit of haggling with the truck driver to avoid outright payment for services, he opened the tailgate and proceeded to look over the freight. He knew his late-middle-aged muscles were going to hurt an awful lot tomorrow, but he had done plenty of such work in his youth. Eventually, between him and the truck driver, the freight was off and stacked on a tarp in the middle of the gravel road a few meters away. It was midnight, but the old man with the tractor had waited, watching in amusement the heavy work. Then it was time for the shovel work, making less abrupt the slope on the side of the gravel bank.

  With a lot of careful maneuvering between the old tractor and the truck, eventually it was hauled out upon solid ground. By dawn, he was nearly dead, but the truck had been reloaded and was trundling slowly down the