"We have all the time in the world," he said.
She set out the carefully packed plates, and the carefully wrapped food, and the carefully wrapped utensils. "Slowly," he said. "You have to make sure that everything is in its place. Everything is exactly where it needs to be."
She nodded, feeling feverishly hot.
They ate. There was no moment when his eyes met hers, and she wanted to scream, wanted to throw the food down and throw herself into his arms, wanted to feel his lips and hands and tongue all over her body, just like she'd read in the books, seen in the holos. She longed to do the same for him. Please God, please, let this be the time, now, here...
But her silent pleas went unheard. He continued to concentrate on his food, eating as slowly and carefully as if it were a tea party.
She watched his hands. So large and strong. They moved with such certainty. Such strength. Hands like that could do anything, could take anything that they wanted.
She thought she was going to die. Please...
"Excuse me." He broke the silence for the first time in five agonizing minutes.
touch...
"Would you hand me the butter?"
me. I love you so...
She nodded silently, and grasped the small platter, extending it to him. His hand reached out, and their fingers met.
And their eyes. And she was falling forward.
And then their lips.
And then it was everything, every moment she had hoped for, so exhilarating that even the brief, sharp pain as he eased into her only increased the impact as dream crossed over into reality. A fierce, tender, laughing, tearful, all consuming experience.
His lips and tongue. And God, his hands. So gentle. So strong.
Hands like his could do anything. Take anything they wanted.
She thought she was going to die.
Trish Chance was bored. Aaron had a plan, sure he did, but right now his plan was to do nothing... and meanwhile they were trapped on the island, unable to go to the mainland, under suspicion but forced to be polite to the First.
Trish left the comm shack wearing a wide grin. Smile and smile and be a villain, she thought. She didn't have to spend all her hours sulking. Edgar was an eager student-and so grateful, too. And everyone was so surprised! The comm shack was centrally located, which meant it was near everyone's place, and if Trish kept visiting Edgar everyone on the island was going to know it.
Her grin faded when she saw Carolyn McAndrews approaching with a purposeful look. Carolyn had tried to adopt Trish in the early days, when no one was quite sure how to raise the Bottle Babies. Trish had been ten years old, and eager to have a permanent home rather than the communal nursery. But not that eager, not in that home.
Now Carolyn was coming at her. "Trish!" she called.
Trish slowed, hoisted a smile into place. "Hi, Carolyn."
"Have you got a minute to talk?"
"Sure. What's up?"
Carolyn quieted as Julia Hortha and Manny Halperin strolled past in deep conversation. When they were out of earshot, she said, "I'm sorry things didn't work out for us, earlier-"
"It was along time ago, Carolyn, and you had your own children to take care of. I can't blame you for putting them first."
"Did I? I suppose I did," Carolyn said. "It comes of-of living alone.
Trish, I think you've fallen into a-well, a kind of role."
"A role?" Trish was genuinely puzzled. "What kind of role?"
"You and Edgar. And before that, Derik, and Terry-you were their first, sort of the Initiator."
Trish giggled. "I guess I kind of fell into that, yes. Edgar too." Her smile went exotic and mysterious. She assumed a thick and flagrantly faux accent. "I like to teach the young ones zee arts of love."
She laughed, then let it die when Carolyn didn't join in. "I did that, Trish. I slept with any man who didn't have a partner. None who did, at least not that I knew of, but a lot of men. And look what it got me."
Trish shrugged, genuinely missing the point.
"I'm alone, Trish."
"What do you mean, alone? Everybody likes you." Nobody listens to you, she thought, but who would? Smile and smile-"You're one of the heroes of the Grendel Wars. Carolyn and the horses."
"Trish, every man would sleep with me, but none of them wanted to take me down the rapids. Now I'm getting old, and no one wants to live with me."
Sudden understanding. She must think she's my mother. "Oh, that.
That's not what I'm looking for, Carolyn."
Carolyn grasped her arm. Trish looked at the hand, and decided to let it remain there.
"Trish, it's a bad thing to be alone. Don't you want to belong to someone? To have someone who belongs to you? You have nothing but casual relationships-"
She laughed in Carolyn's face. "In a world with less than five hundred people, there is no such thing as a casual relationship. We're all family."
"Imagine yourself alone, with no defenders, at my age," said Carolyn.
Trish was incredulous. "Defenders? Defend from what? Do you think I'm going to starve in the snow without a man to protect me? Nobody starves on Avalon. Nobody goes without. And I'm tougher than I look, lady. I'm stronger than, almost any man here-and men aren't any better at hunting, or producing, or anything else than women are. Didn't you get the word? There was this thing called the Industrial Revolution. That made us equals, that and Zack Moskowitz's grendel guns. And then there was birth control. Maybe your mother forgot to mention it to you."
Carolyn smiled, not a thin smile but with genuine warmth. "You might be surprised at what my mother taught me. And Trish, dear, my sister and I did win places on this expedition, and we didn't owe a damn thing to any man for that, either!"
"That's the spirit. I have to go now."
"No, wait, this is important. Trish-it's a terrible thing to be alone-"
"It's also a terrible thing to have ice on your mind," Trish said, and made as if to leave. Carolyn blocked her path, but Trish knew that she had scored a direct hit, and for the first time felt a tiny trace of remorse. She wiped it from her mind. Who gave her the right to lecture me on morals?
"I don't seem to be explaining this very well," Carolyn said. "I know they call me a hysteric, but there's more to this than you think." Carolyn struggled for words. "Sometimes hysterics has nothing to do with ice crystals in the brain."
Change in conversational direction, or change in tactics? "Sure, you can be scared into it. What was it that got you, Carolyn? Grendel fever? Seems to have done it for everyone else."
"No, not grendels. That was awful, but... it was earlier, Trish. When Ernst came out of cold sleep and he was a m-moron, and he barely remembered m-me. And old friends were dropping dead all around me. It turned out half of us were damaged and we couldn't be sure of the rest.... It was Hibernation Instability. Ice on our minds, we said. We were trying to be polite!" Her eyes defocused, as if she had forgotten she was talking to another person. "We were trying to be polite..."
Trish had heard it before, too many times. This wasn't insulting, it was pitiful, and just plain boring. "Excuse me, Carolyn," she pushed past the older woman. "I'm almost sure I have something to do, somewhere else."
"I'm trying to help you," Carolyn said. "You're playing with something you don't understand."
"And you do?"
"I understand more than you do."
"Carolyn, I doubt that."
"I know you do. When I was your age I was sure I knew everything, too."
"And you didn't?"
"Of course not."
"But that was back on Earth. I've watched some of the old Earth dramas. I once did sixty hours straight of ‘General Hospital'! That was Earth, Carolyn, and this is Avalon, and life isn't like that anymore!"