The Path of the Four

“Looked like it, Joe.”

“It felt good. I’m a piece of shit for feeling that, but I’m not going to lie to anybody about it. Not to myself. Not--” He hesitated. “Not to you.” He nodded, and put the candy wrapper in his pocket. “I’ll tell you something I don’t feel shame about another type of good feeling I got with that mix-up in that hotel hallway. Fighting for somebody who needed someone to fight for him. That little native kid, you know? Those jerks playing him like a yo-yo. Fighting for that reason, that’s what the Universal Resistance League was all about. I didn’t know how much I missed that feeling.”

For a moment, Ariana thought back, to her arrival in the skies above Zah-Gre: “The magic word of the day? ’Secrets.’” The secrets Humans are keeping from each other, and the secrets some of you are keeping from yourselves.” Those were some of Brother Chaos’s words, when he hijacked the shuttle. That’s one, then, the secret Joe was keeping to himself. Who else to follow?

The silence lingered in the hallway.

Ariana considered Joe, a fat, ugly little man. She crawled over and kissed him on the nose.

“How long have you wanted to do that?” he asked.

“‘Fighting for somebody who needed someone to fight for him.’ Only since you said those words.”

Between his and hers, Ariana’s quarters were closer.

Ariana and Joe stood in the hallway, outside Ariana’s quarters. The hallway was beige, the doorway white, and the rectangular panel on the door silver. Ariana smelled roses, or thought she smelled roses.

She wore blue sneakers with Velcro straps, no socks, purple sweat pants, a white T-shirt, and a short, yellow plastic jacket. Her undergarments were as non-glamorous as one could get; she had bought them more than ten years ago, in Cleveland.

Joe wore a gray turtleneck sweater with a high, thick collar and black jeans, and high top sneakers.

Both, of course, also wore their identification/tracking badges. Ariana wondered about Babe logging the data about Joe coming to this door and going to the other side. Would anyone have any reason to access that information?

“Orlando, Ariana,” she said to the door.

The lock clicked and the door swung open with a tiny pop.

Ariana pushed the door and went in, the painted words and numbers ORLANDO, A., 953120 also swinging open.

Joe followed her.

The quarters were small. A narrow ceiling, and then part of the walls slanting down, then the walls vertical. There was a bed, desk, closet. There was a toilet/shower booth. There was a short shelf of thirteen, old-fashioned books.

Ariana sat on the bed. “Come here,” she said. Joe walked over and sat next to her. “Are you going to let me order you around?” She hoped the smile she said that with was charming.

“This is your idea.” Joe said.

“You can leave if you want to.” She paused. She said, “When was the last time you had sex?”

“Three days ago. There’s that place in the Old

City--” He did not finish his sentence and she did not interrupt him. “How about you?”

“Longer than three days ago, Joe.”

In sex, Ariana discovered Joe naked as a solid, hairy rectangle. She could think of none of her other lovers who left her with such a strong impression of a torso. Joe, unlike so many others, did not seem lost in the fog of his own vanity.

An architect had told Ariana once, not too long ago, before Zah-Gre, she should always keep her hair long. Otherwise, her lack of height and size would be alarming and disturbing. Most men in a sexual encounter with her had their brains cluttered with her getting, being, and staying on top, “--Just for your own safety. I don’t want to crush you.” As if sex was a matter of employee safety instructions and engineering. Joe, thank you, had indulged in no such chattering. He had just produced a box of Jones-Natterling Male Birth Control Pills, at the correct moment, taken one, and moved on.

It wasn’t quick. The only thing she had never liked about sex was when it was quick. If anybody ever forced her to categorize all men, she would designate the categories “the ones who take minutes to make love,” and “the ones who take hours.” This took hours. This was one reason she was a “spacejack” -- to leave behind the speed and rush on Earth. The pace of Human civilization got easier, more Human, the further one got from Mother Earth, in orbit, in Armstrong City (where Roger Brantley kept his private office), in Bradburyville, and way out here, on the other end of the Corridors.

There were hints, moments, and fragments of the quality of rough and casual sex in this encounter, the type of behavior Joe had hinted he had engaged in his free time. There was some of that, now with Ariana, in her quarters. This quality would come up in him, like an antique dimmer switch on a room light, then decrease and vanish.

She thought of an old roommate’s Saint Bernard and how she use to play with it.

(As always with her during sex, at some point, fantasy slid into her. It was different each time.)

How boring it would be to be a man! Men really had no choice, and only one path. Penetrate and go deeper. God, nature, and the universe, however, blessed women by giving them the power to bring in a partner, not just through obvious anatomy, but women could also bring men in through their skin, their eyes, their noses. There were traditional ideas about what a woman could do with her mouth. However, how many women knew or understood the taste of a man’s hair, shoulders, chest, and fingers? It was the difference between living in a town and driving through it, after being up all night, and drinking a pot of coffee. She would never prevent the second option, if it was in her power, but glad that the first, as a woman, was her natural way.

(In the fantasy, Ariana was walking along a river. She was wearing a long, white dress. It was day, sunny, on Earth. While on Zah-Gre, she never dreamed about being on Zah-Gre. Roses lined the banks of the river, and the rose bushes got thicker as she walked along. From the position of the sun, Earth’s sun, she imagined it was early in the afternoon, about two or three p.m. She was walking west, into the sun, into the sunset. Ariana’s pace slowed as she started to come across wolves and leopards, winding their way in and out of the rose bushes. They looked at her with, she thought, hungry eyes, but did not make a move toward her, or indicate any sign of hostility. There were many wolves and leopards. She didn’t stop and count them but there were at least a hundred. Her feet were bare. The cross and pentagram she always wore around her neck were much larger than usual, like the size of her fist. She walked on, and after a moment was walking below a great shadow. A shadow? Cast by what? There were no mountains near, nor trees, nor buildings. What was--? She looked up. Saw the head -- the big, floating, giant head. Who was that? The thing was so huge she couldn’t take in a clear image of the head--of features, of a specific identity. Her foot hit something. She looked and saw that she had struck, oh the strangeness of it, even for a fantasy, a cookie jar. She crouched down, in her bare feet, in her long white dress, her hair loose around her face, and picked up the cookie jar. Something was inside the cookie jar. Not cookies. This was her fantasy and she would just know if it was not cookies in there.)

Ariana and Joe fell into the same rhythm--not rhythms that were twins of each other, not the same beat, the identical musical signature. The possibility of that was a myth, one of many about sex, whose impossible stamp left too many too low on happiness. No, what this was that what they were both doing came from the same family of rhythm, a kind of cycling and spiraling up and down, up and down, up and down. With each cycle, they, in increments, reached a higher and higher plateau. Ariana suspected--no, knew Joe wanted to delay the moment of release as long as possible. It had to arrive, it must show up, otherwise there was no point to them being in this time, in this place, together. But the arrival of the moment of release would mean that sex could make its strongest case for being only sex, biology, mechanics, plumbing, nothing less and oh dear nothing more, as sex always did when it was over. For the moment, Joe went deeper and deeper into her, and Ariana explored the territory that was Joseph Whitney, “spacejack” on-site manager, ex-terrorist, a -- what was the Elizabethan term? A “bawd”? There was, for example, a tension in his neck that seemed invulnerable to the most imploring arguments, in the language of sex, in the syntax of arms, legs, thighs, that it should cease and desist and leave the premises forthwith. Ariana often carried a similar tightness in her lower back, but she had surrendered it near the beginning of the encounter. Then she wanted to grab both his cheeks, and kiss him, and in the kiss, try to disappear into his face, and she did all that as legs locked with leg and, to use an old-fashioned term, privates were not so private, for a while.

(She took the lid off the cookie jar and there was a brain inside.)

(In the fantasy, Ariana suppressed the desire to slam the lid back on the cookie jar with the brain in it and fling the whole monstrosity away.)

Orgasms came, an excellent touching of ground in the landing strip of need and desire.

(“Wait a minute,” said a leopard. “What do you think you’re doing?“)

In reality, Ariana and Joe began again their slow, spiraling climb back up the mountain of ecstasy, the heap of euphoria, and the pile of rapture.

Ariana wondered if, in some people, sex, for the moment, killed the need for language. In her, it woke up the need for language further, and she never picked one word for a thought, when three or five or eleven would do.

This is not just a hard man displaying a moment of tenderness, Ariana thought of Joe Whitney. I can also feel the fear in him, the loneliness. That is in everyone, isn’t it? We live with the state of being most often asleep to that universal fear and loneliness and, if we are lucky, we wake up to the truth, every now and then.

(Ariana glared at the leopard. “How else do you expect me to react? That was a disgusting sight. I mean--not disgusting by itself. I mean, disgusting to see in a cookie jar.“)

(“I don’t mean that,” said the leopard. “I mean, all you want to do is close it back up? You’re missing a great opportunity, if you do.“)

(“I don’t understand,” Ariana said.)

(The leopard snorted with disgust, stalked, and sauntered away.)

(“Forget it, lady. If you can’t even recognize a clue when you hear it, that’s your problem.“)

The kisses of his mouth, like candy, too strong, too sugary, hard but slippery, brittle and unbreakable, but she would break it and, oh yes, she did. Smelling of alleys, streets, fields, three planets, and the little artificialities we fling up between the stars. She wanted to hurry away with him, with Joe, to that special place with no name, and no boundaries.

(Then the river, as she followed along, went under a bridge. As she looked at it, at the bridge, the bridge adjusted itself so, if she were to go forward, she would have to cross it, for all other possible places to walk had disappeared, becoming nothingness, becoming darkness. “It’s a funny thing about bridges,” the bridge said to her. “Some bridges, when you cross them, it just means you’ve never eaten peanut butter before, and now you have. Or you never wondered what orange would sound like, if it was a sound, instead of a color, and now you have.“)

(“Orange is also a fruit,” Ariana said.)

(The bridge shouted at her. “Don’t interrupt! Anyway, as I was saying, other bridges are not like that. Once you cross them, everything is different.“)

(Ariana crossed the bridge.)

Delight in the male, delight in the blood and sweat, skin, smell, and taste of this man, in all men, like a fine piece of clothing one would wear.

(Halfway across the bridge, Ariana looked down.)

(This is what she saw :)

(“Spheres connected by an immobile tube whatever flying deck of aside and lost strained to keep his body in it a stand pressure suits without helmets suit was a way on each body was getting and the seemed ready Whitney strapped into his to crash the space station to disappear into his suit tucked red letters sat of a printed like the back of her suit monitors they showed a three-dimensional animation of the personnel Ariana Orlando use the utility handles itself through with a loud animal the personnel to dozen men and let God filling the shuttle was heavy and floor vanishing and two at her neck she pony tail strapping herself into an empty chair Ariana looked up the emergency alarm do his beige not visible was it the ship she in her bald Joe her skinny short hair with a few gray communications corporation that employed everyone on the ship “C” and “T” had small blue and Christian on front of the shuttle Joe had long dark pressure had tucked her the knuckles of us into her suit currently a were one-letter, the logo goodness in the universe it must work itself left hand at the strapped in rows in chairs bolted to the there is of God and suit playing cards with in tiny we cannot shuttle --” )

(Ariana had a question for the bridge.)

(“What is that down there, that nonsense?“)

(“‘Nonsense’? It is space/time.“)

(“That, down there, is space/time?“)

(“Part of it, yes,” said the bridge. “You’ve understood space/time as a separate, malleable quality since you were eleven. Are you ready for everything that means? Are you ready for the truth?“)

In the middle of everything, Ariana considered asking Babe to lower the foot-candles of light in her quarters. Wasn’t that Earth-based reasoning? To an Earth gravity hound, “romantic” might mean a certain type of music, a certain type of food, a certain type of lighting. But to “spacejacks,” surrounded always by the darkness of outer space, a room, and its walls, and its contents, and its occupants which were, no question, there, solid and real, this state was the most romantic of all, because it was the furthest from the feel of work.

(Ariana continued to follow along the banks of the river.)

(Michael stepped out of a shadow.)

(Again, a shadow cast by what? The giant, mysterious head was gone now and there were no trees, buildings, or anything else around.)

(But this was a fantasy, happening at another level of reality, another level of mind as, elsewhere, she and Joe Whitney made love. So, the sense things made didn’t have to be realistic.)

(So perhaps Michael had stepped out of the shadow of death.)

(Michael wore a tuxedo.)

(And she wore a long white dress.)

(Like they were both dressed for their--)

(Oh no. Oh God, no.)

(Deep in her mind, she split in two. Part of her said no, stop it, this is wrong!)

(And part of her, in the fantasy, embraced and kissed her brother as her groom and he embraced and kissed her as his bride.)

(Hell, thought Ariana. I can smell Hell coming into existence, just for me, and God and all His angels and the Devil reserving me a place down there, just for knowing about this now, about myself.)

Ariana’s eyes snapped open, she took in a tight little puff of air, and she shuddered.

“Something’s wrong,” Joe said. “I hurt you or something?”

“No, no,” she replied. “I, I, uh, I just laid on my arm. An accident. My fault. It’s OK now.”

At last, Joe lay on his back, next to her, sleeping, snoring.

She laid next to him, soaked in wakefulness.

OK. Now what?

In a twinkling, it came to her when she had planted this strange seed in her head, in her heart.

It started when she was ten years old. Michael was twelve, almost thirteen.

He was playing softball with the parish team, in a park.

Ariana sat on the sidelines and watched with Poppa and Momma.

As a softball player Michael made a great future lawyer.

When he had failed for the twelfth or thirteenth or fifteenth time to make a connection with the ball when he swung the bat, to close his fingers around the ball as it fell out of the sky right to him playing left field, Poppa said, under his breath, “This is starting to be disgusting.”

Momma said, even more under her breath, “Michael isn’t having a very good today day, is he?”

Little Ariana Orlando just noticed how beautiful her brother was.

Tall and thin, his raven hair peeked out from under his red baseball cap. His dark eyes gleamed and sparkled in the afternoon sun. His tongue would dart out from behind his full lips to lick sweat off his Roman nose. Worried at times (as he should have been--he was a lousy baseball player) he would sometimes hold his square chin in one hand. An orange tank top clung to his sleek, sweaty torso. His denim cutoffs revealed his slender legs where a fine sheath of dark hair was starting to grow.

Now, back in the present? The only real option was -- what? Whatever one did when one wanted to leave everything behind, and suicide, being a nun, and going to a psychiatrist were all distasteful options. Whatever one did. Where ever one went.

She sighed.

Everything boiled down to keeping her mouth shut about this and trying to carry on, like nothing was different.

The magic word of the day? Secrets. The secrets Humans are keeping from each other and the secrets some of you are keeping from yourselves.

Yeah. Right. Thanks a lot, Brother Chaos. Asshole.

The com panel on Ariana’s wall buzzed.

Joe woke up.

Ariana got out of her bed and pushed the “talk/listen” button on the com panel.

“This is Orlando.”

Jafari’s voice came out of the com panel’s speaker.

“Miss Orlando. According to Mr. Whitney’s tracking badge he--Uh, is he there?”

Joe got out of Ariana’s bed.

“What is it, Jafari?”

“You need to check out a news transmission that’s on now.”

Joe looked at a small clock that hung in a corner of the room, a photograph of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out on the face of the clock.

“What news transmission? We don’t have one going out for another forty-six minutes.”

“It’s coming out of Golden Horizon,” said Jafari’s voice out of the com panel’s speaker. “The Friendship Bureau’s in-orbit office. Human Security is doing it with them. And they’re using our on-camera talent.”

“Jafari, what’s going on?”

“Tap into the transmission, Joe.”

“Babe--”

“Yes, Joe?”

Babe’s voice came out of a speaker out a corner, near the floor.

“You heard, Jafari.” Joe’s chubby hands indicated a spot in the middle of the room. “Show me and Ariana. Right about here.”

A hologram faded into existence in the area Joe had requested.

It showed a part of the coastline of the Northern Land. Ariana wasn’t sure where.

And, much more than before, boats were coming out of the Center Land, and two or three or four or five Lower Clan Zah-Gre in each one, and this time the numbers of the Lower Clan Zah-Gre were so great they, and their spears, blotted out just about everything else.

Ariana backed away from the hologram, up against the nearest wall, shivering as she touched the cool wall, a blunt reminder of her nakedness.

“Audio.”

The word came out of Joe’s mouth in a tiny whisper.

“I’m sorry, Joe. What do you say?”

“Give me the damn sound, you stupid piece of software!”

Sound started to come out of the hologram.

“--Seeing what is not the whole situation, but what we can show you,” said the voice of the swept back white hair man. “We have confirmation that the Friendship Bureau and Human Security have sped up legal actions against the two Human males who endangered the life of the Outer Clan Zah-Gre child earlier today in the Old City. We also have confirmation that native authorities have passed this information on to the Lower Clan, via contacts in the Inner and Upper Clans. Nevertheless, what we are looking at does seem the beginning of some sort of military action against the North Land, where the Human population on Zah-Gre is the most concentrated, an action taken, we can only assume, because of the endangerment of that native child, by Humans. At this moment, Human Security and Side Clan contingents speed to key invasion spots on the Northern Land coast, with the biggest concentration near the Rim Village of Kah-Zee. As strange as it may sound to Humans, agents of the Friendship Bureau and the Upper Clan are also continuing diplomatic efforts to avoid an actual invasion, fight, and bloodshed. Said Captain Roselle, chief of Human Security, ‘We have the technological firepower to stop this military advancement right on the coastlines. But, and I’m not a diplomat, the resulting harm to Human/Zah-Gre relations could last for centuries.’ The biggest note of hope is probably the involvement of the Inner Clan. The Inner Clan Zah-Gre Ab-Druh heads to Kah-Zee to make a special appeal to the front line of that division of the invasion force, a special appeal for peace.”

Ariana was already throwing on her clothes when the voice of the swept back white hair man said “Inner Clan.”

Joe looked from the hologram to her, frowned, and said, “Babe, lose the hologram.”