The Strangeness Within Pt. 06

Javier cracked a smile, walking over to get a closer look until Kat threw a pillow at him.

"I will wrestle your face into this spot if you don't stop thinking about it," she said.

"Great," said Javier. "Now I'm not thinking about Andrea masturbating at all. Nope."

Kat threw the other pillow at him and flopped back on the bed.

"Gotta admit I almost died when she suggested a threesome," said Javier.

"Yeah, me too," laughed Kat. "I've never even seen her flirt with a guy either. You were quick on your feet as always, though. Must be a soccer thing. That and the hard body. And I'm sure it's harder than usual after all this."

She propped up on an elbow and leered at his crotch. He knew she was just flirting, but unfortunately she was exactly right, and Javier's shorts weren't hiding his erection too well.

"Kat," he said softly.

"Yeah," she said, flopping back on the bed. "Over the line. Sorry, Javier. Let's get our brains on track, then? Time to go over the target list."

After several rounds of their petty information warfare, they were becoming a pretty good team. Javier researched targets from the confusing set of InfoCorp locations and contractors. Then Kat would start poking around to see if there was any damage they could do over the Internet.

Sometimes it was Javier who did the work, spreading outright falsehoods or true but little-known damaging rumors on the investment Usenet groups. He doubted the really big investors paid direct attention to this stuff, but he liked to believe he'd seen some wobbles in stock prices thanks to his shenanigans. Anyway, it was something he was capable of doing.

More often they jumped to a straight-up hacking attempt that left Javier feeling completely out of his league, despite how much he'd already learned. Javier was starting to realize that Kat was remarkably talented, no matter how much she credited her shadowy "friends," the ones she always claimed did the hard work. Despite the fact they were targeting defense and intelligence contractors, Kat kept finding computers vulnerable to all sorts of mischief. And Kat made merry mischief wherever she could. It was hilarious and terrifying to see her dance around the room after she irrevocably corrupted the payroll information from one InfoCorp office.

They'd heard nothing from the old woman or Esther, even as all hell was breaking loose out here. Kat and Javier had effectively chosen a side, but they were going to do it their way, not Lukas's way. Raj had nonetheless been upset by their choice, and of late he'd become more distant. Javier didn't like that, but maybe it was just as well. Raj had a lot to lose, and they had to assume he was being watched more carefully than either of them.

They didn't have any real success that afternoon, but it could take her days or weeks sometimes, with automated dialers and other scripts she'd written to search as unobtrusively as possible. They were still in good spirits by the time they got into bed.

"Well, fuck," said Kat as they lay there. "I still smell her. Is it just me? Did a molecule of her get stuck and now I'm doomed to smell her until I stuff a tampon up my nose or something?"

"It's not just you," Javier said, trying not to laugh. "I wasn't going to say anything. I thought you changed the sheets."

"She soaked the fucking mattress pad," said Kat, starting to shake with amusement. "I should have thrown that in too, but I was lazy. God, she turns on the faucet sometimes."

"That must be inconvenient," said Javier.

"Yeah," said Kat. "Hey, maybe that's why she never lets me go to her place? This way she can fuck all she wants and let someone else clean up after her. It's annoying, but tolerable because she's such a fucking good fuck. Fuck."

"Got that out of your system?" Javier asked.

"Not really," said Kat, snuggling against his back. "Maybe this is inappropriate to tell you, but truth is the sex with her doesn't do much for me afterwards. I mean, it's incredibly fun, but even when she spends the night it's more like just two people sleeping in the bed together."

"Like us?" Javier said, amused.

"No," Kat said vehemently. "Nothing like that."

The silence stretched, filling with everything they never said. Whatever this was they had, it worked. But it felt so precarious.

"She probably snores," said Javier. "It's always the skinny ones."

"She's not skinny," Kat said. "Just, you know, athletic."

"What, like me?"

"No," Kat said again, with more irony. "No, not at all like you, Javier. So, you going to be OK sleeping here with girl cum stinking up the place?"

"C'mon," said Javier. "Not like it's the first time for me. Not even the first time in this bed. I'll just have nice dreams."

Kat pressed against him more tightly.

"Yeah, you go ahead and do that," she said.

* * *

Esther lay on her back, legs raised slightly, body trembling. Mark was shifting around silently, and she knew she could sense him if she tried, but the surprise was always such a delight. She moved her hand to touch the other nipple, and it was then that his tongue touched the patch of bare skin between her legs. Her most secret place, the one she'd never been able to reveal to Javier.

She pushed that thought aside with a practiced motion. She needed this pleasure for reasons that were terribly serious, and she refused to feel guilty about it. Javier would understand, surely.

But Mark was so good with his tongue. He was both subtler and more decisive than Nicola, and when he found something she liked, he never forgot it. Physical motions were always that way for him, despite his other memory difficulties.

His tongue was wider than Nicola's, but somehow he could form the tip into a shape just narrow enough to press inside her, and press he did. He filled her up and then some, turning his tongue slightly to scrape against all of the nerves she hadn't understood were connecting inside of her. His lips and teeth kissed and rubbed the sensitive ring of flesh outside, and every little motion sent lines of pleasure shooting out to her back and her chest. He was a patient, kind, talented lover, and she liked him a lot. But he wasn't Javier to her. He wasn't even Nicola, when it came down to it. Still, if she could stop fussing, maybe he would get her what she needed.

Especially if she told him.

His breath was warm, tickling the fur of her legs and butt. Carefully she took hold of one of his hands, pulling it further back between her legs. He hesitated when his finger neared her anus, pulling his mouth away from her slightly.

"Get your finger wet," she said. "Just press it inside a little. I like that a lot."

"Really?" Mark said, seeming confused. But of course Nicola hadn't liked it.

"Yeah," she said. "It will help me come."

Those were apparently the magic words, and the thought made her a bit sad. Despite every attempt, she felt as though she were using him, and he was mostly doing her a service. Maybe there wasn't any way around it.

Her own body never got more than a little moist, but there was plenty of saliva to go around. Carefully Mark began to press his little finger against her. It was as big as anything she'd put in her butt. She'd forgotten how much bigger his hands were than Nicola's.

From her own explorations, she knew how to help, bearing down against him embarrassingly. And just like that, he slipped in a small amount.

"Perfect," she muttered, stroking his face. "Just wiggle it there. Don't try to move too much."

It was a potent combination: a finger in her anus, Mark's magical tongue working her tiny vagina, and her own hands touching her back and her chest. In a few minutes she started to breathe faster, and Mark squeezed her hip with his free hand.

"Oh," she breathed, feeling the room begin to dissolve. "Oh, Mark."

..........................*** Chapter 36 ***...........................

Esther turned the wooden sculpture in her hands. It was mostly wild grape root, twisted by Abuela into these oddly beautiful figures during the hours of her meditations. Esther had tried to replicate the technique, but she didn't have the strength or perseverance. It was strange to think of Abuela as physically strong, but of course there was no reason she wouldn't have been. She'd seemed remarkably healthy right until the end.

Esther might have even more changes than Abuela. The old woman had cautioned her about extrapolating too much, but there was every reason to believe Esther might also live a very long life. Abuela said that was not unusual for those with the changes, though she'd known no one else with her extraordinary lifespan.

It was a kind of vertigo to imagine that future stretching so far ahead of her. The responsibility that she was starting to assume. The loneliness as she outlived her friends.

But first she had to survive and protect herself. Esther closed her eyes and began her meditation, letting her hands run over the sculpture. And sure enough, something like Abuela's map began to assemble itself in her mind.

It was more than a snapshot, but it was still dead. Whatever circumstances had been present when Abuela made this were gone now. But the structure of Abuela's map was so much simpler than the chaotic, churning mess of connections that Esther usually struggled with. Exploring this frozen map of Abuela's gave her clues that Abuela had never had a chance to teach her. It was a legacy, though even Abuela hadn't realized it.

"No, child," she'd said. "I don't know what these mean, any more than you understand your drawings or Nicola her melodies. I agree they're part of our cognition, but out of context they seem no more meaningful than those pictures of firing neurons in the brain."

But Abuela had been wrong about that. The sculptures, anyway — Esther still couldn't make any conscious sense of her own drawings. Perhaps you needed the perspective of a different view.

Esther breathed and listened and smelled and felt. And finally she began to see.

Abuela's map was a defense mechanism of a sort. Interacting with the raw chaos of Esther's natural sight was exhausting and frustrating, while Abuela's map put a more human order onto things. She'd flown along beside Abuela often enough that with a little help from these sculptures, she could begin building Abuela's map herself.

She was throwing away immense amounts of information. But wasn't that the point? She was looking for special butterflies in the vastness of possible events, and she would never find them without restricting her view. But she now understood there was a price to this simplification: most of the butterflies were flying above, below, and beyond Abuela's map, or in dimensions that couldn't even be described so simply.

But Esther didn't need to find every butterfly right now. She needed to understand how to keep herself safe, and the first task for that was surveillance.

Esther had occasionally extended her own senses as far as town. And a few times she'd listened much further, at least as far as the Bay Area the time she'd found Raj. But what she needed were not heroic efforts, but something she could maintain at all times, even while sleeping. Abuela's map seemed like it might be the key to that. Even if it only allowed her vision to extend as far as the town in all directions, that would be enough warning to hide or escape.

It would have kept Abuela alive. It might be the thing to keep Esther alive. So she ignored the growing headache, a side effect of trying to force her thoughts into Abuela's shape.

Breathe, listen, smell, feel. And see.

* * *

"We've got a letter!" Esther said when Mark returned. "I actually saw it, in the box! I wonder if it's another one from Raj."

Mark nodded slowly. "Or perhaps one of her old friends, unaware she's passed. Or junk mail. I don't know how, but she gets that sometimes."

Esther bit her lip. If it was from Raj, they needed to read it immediately. But she hated the idea of going into town for a piece of junk mail. Unfortunately, she doubted she'd be able to read the letter from here. Though her perception was steadily growing, finding the letter at all had felt like a fluke.

Mark could drive the truck, though he'd admitted he had no license, so that was a last option. They'd been relying on sporadic visits from Jacob for supplies. She didn't like to lean on him for this, but the last letter from Raj had been filled with vital information.

"Could you get Jacob to pick it up?" she asked. "Drive down as far as the gas station pay phone and give him a call?"

Mark nodded. "That makes sense. Could you write down the number for me? It's best if you draw it as a pattern of buttons to push."

As soon as Mark left, Esther felt tremendously vulnerable. She hated how much she had to rely on him for her physical safety, let alone everything else he provided. But she was finally able to do something for him as well.

Carefully she arranged herself on Abuela's favorite reclining chair, cradling one of the wooden sculptures, the one that always seemed to help most with this task. It was even easier than last time to slip into Abuela's map. She realized a part of her had never quite slipped out of it since that morning, and that was a very good sign.

She couldn't sense quite as far as the town, but she smelled the metal and rubber and diesel of Mark's truck. And the complicated scent of Mark himself. Quickly she folded the perceptions together, everything about the truck and the body she knew intimately, all of it into a single dot: Mark. He was safe, and she couldn't sense any other vehicles.

When he finally returned, Esther was jubilant.

"I watched you the whole way," she said when he got out. "I'm still watching, almost as far as the gas station. I don't think I'd reliably sense a single person that far, but surely that's several days for a person on foot. I'd sense that soon enough."

"As long as the person on foot wasn't like me," said Mark. "Or even Andrew."

Esther frowned. But he was right. Mark was very quiet and difficult to spot even from a closer distance. And he could cover that distance in well under a day. She still needed to improve.

That evening Jacob arrived with the letter and a few of their standard supplies.

"I'm afraid it's pretty dull," he said, handing her the letter. Junk mail, of course. But Jacob made good company for dinner.

* * *

Esther jolted up in her bed. She wanted to run, but she needed to understand why.

She breathed, focused, and felt. There, on the road far below them.

"Mark," she whispered. She saw him sit up easily, awake as always in an instant.

"Someone is approaching in a car I don't recognize," she said.

"How far?"

"A little closer than the gas station. They just took the turn, though. There's nothing else up here but logging roads, and it's not one of their trucks."

And it was the middle of the night. They had to take it seriously.

Mark agreed. "We should leave immediately," he said.

They had a plan for this. But there was a crucial decision to make, depending on who was coming.

"Mark," she said softly. "Could you come down and help me? I have to see if it's someone with the changes." Someone who might even hear their truck at a great distance.

Mark slipped quickly into bed with her, his body warm and comforting. She spooned against him, feeling his erection pressing against her buttocks, and then her lower back. Then his sure hands were touching her, and she shuddered as the sensations washed over her. Her vision contracted to the space containing the two of them, but that would change again.

There was nothing really romantic in this, but it wasn't a casual or tawdry thing either. Mark cared about her, and he accepted her body for what she was. When it came, her orgasm was a weak thing. But it was enough.

She exploded from her body, hurling herself into the vast space. It was a poor metaphor, of course, because here in this universe of glowing connections she understood a truth much more easily than in Abuela's map: you could never leave home, and location itself was another abstraction. Esther was just another bundle of connections, and even as she stretched her mind to find the sounds and smells and vibrations belonging to the intruders, she could feel her own body's connections to them. Because everything in existence connected to everything else.

Finally she had what she needed, and she collapsed against Mark. He was gently stroking her chest, kissing her on the back of the shoulder, and murmuring something she didn't understand.

"There's a sensitive person with them," she said. "Maybe very sensitive. We can't risk moving the truck. We'll have to be extremely quiet."

Mark abruptly rolled out of bed, dressing quickly and efficiently. It hurt Esther to see how easily he switched from comforting lover to — well, no, he never switched at all. He was Mark the whole time, and she needed to stop expecting him to be like Javier. Even with Nicola he'd never spent the night in bed together.

They always kept the camp very clean, in part as preparation for a time like this. Mark shoveled everything recently used into two big garbage bags and ran off to hide them far away in the forest. Esther finished packing Mark's small bag with some food and essentials in case they had to be away for some time. The intruders had passed the last fork and would be here within twenty minutes. They had to run.

When Mark returned, Esther took his hand. She'd never had a way to truly test this, but she thought it was possible. With a bit of struggle, she could convince the deep, suspicious part of her that Mark was part of her, and that he needed the sort of screening she naturally provided for herself. Abuela had provided this secrecy for everything in her cabin as a matter of course.

Mark nodded once, and then they set off, at first very slowly so that Esther could move more quietly, and then steadily faster to gain distance. Finally Esther stopped. The intruders had nearly reached camp, and they needed to hide.

Mark pulled her into a small, cozy space where two cedars leaned together. They opened the small groundcloth and sat quietly, Esther listening and Mark holding her. At this modest distance Mark likely could also hear some of the movements in camp.

Esther breathed and listened, letting Mark's slow heartbeat fill her body and calm her terror. There were three people in camp. The sensitive one was in charge.

"Looks empty," said one of the other men. "She was probably telling the truth. They knew someone would come looking soon enough, and without the old woman —"

"I'm not so sure," said the sensitive one. "It smells inhabited. Like someone else has driven here recently, or had fresh food. And that truck looks too nice to have been abandoned. Stop moving around and let me listen."

Esther tried to hold absolutely still, though she felt like a quaking leaf against Mark's relaxed stillness. But after an uncomfortable minute she heard the man speak again.

"Nobody nearby. I'd have sensed them within five miles or so. Too far for a quick escape into the woods, if they heard us driving up. Let's go. Prime said to leave the place alone, and I see why. It's a nice bolt-hole. For now, we have other fish to fry."

"I guess the new girl's legit," said one man.

"Hot, too," said another, and they all laughed. But they were heading back to the car.

Five miles. When the intruders were over ten miles away and still moving, Esther sighed softly.

"They're really gone," she said. "They were Lukas's people, checking out Nicola's story. She sounds safe."

Mark sighed as well, squeezing her arm. When the intruders were finally out of her own range, the two of them returned to the cabin rather more slowly than they'd left.