"We're building a bridge," she mumbled. "The two of us, two worlds joining. That means we're human after all."
He wanted to ask what she thought she meant. But he was busy freeing his own shirt, and she'd sat down heavily on the edge of the bunk. The cold air didn't help his mood, it actually raised goose bumps on his skin. He climbed into the bunk beside her, quickly pulling the thin quilt over the pair of them.
She started kissing him again, ranging over his face and neck. A hand closed round his cock. One elbow rested uncomfortably on his sternum. What she must have intended as a suggestive caress felt more like an irritable tickle down the side of his ribs. The whole event was completely unerotic. He couldn't believe it; not after he'd spent most of the day anticipating this moment.
Finally he managed to roll the pair of them around so she lay underneath him. He could barely keep his erection going; to help he had to keep thinking about a couple of the girls from the Strip last week, how lively they were. Joona smiled up drunkenly at him and groaned as he slid farther inside her.
Fortunately, the whole miserable entanglement was concluded quickly. "God, I love you," she said. "This is what I want."
"What is?" He managed to find a space on the bunk that didn't squash the two of them together, even though he was in danger of falling off. When he looked back at her she was already asleep. She started snoring.
He found a thick T-shirt and put it on, then spent ages lying beside her, staring up at the cabin's invisible ceiling, unable to sleep. Nobody's fault, he kept telling himself, the circumstances were wrong, that's all. The cabin, the air-conditioning, the wine: an unfortunate combination. Tomorrow will be better.
The express terminus at Edinburgh Waverley had been dug underneath the original station, leaving the surface structure untouched. They hauled their luggage up the escalators to the big old sprawl of platforms underneath their arching glass-and-iron roofs, and found the local train over to Glasgow. Old-style induction tracks still threaded through the center of the city, passing below the ancient castle perched on top of its rocky pinnacle. Lawrence watched it slide past, fascinated by the massive stone blocks and wondering how the hell the builders had moved them into position without robots.
Once it was outside the suburbs, the train accelerated smoothly up to two hundred kilometers an hour. That was the fastest it could manage: the track in this part of Scotland was still using the same route that it had for centuries, laid down in the first decades of steam engines. It followed the contours of the rugged Highlands, curving too sharply to allow the train to reach its usual top speed. Even though there were no more farms, the district parliament had never obtained enough funds to straighten the route through the wild glens and restored woodlands. The cost of drilling new tunnels through hard Scottish rock and constructing viaducts over broad valleys was simply uneconomical given the volume of traffic. So anyone traveling the Highlands had almost the same journey as the Victorians who'd originally pioneered the route. There was even an old iron rail laid alongside the induction track, where enthusiasts kept a couple of old steam engines chugging up and down the coast, pulling early-twentieth-century first-class passenger coaches along behind them. A huge tourist attraction in the summer.
As they had arrived at Edinburgh station in the early morning, Lawrence was able to see the countryside in clear daylight. Queensland and some sections of Europe he'd seen were just as rugged, but nothing on any planet he'd been on was as green. With spring coming to the Northern Hemisphere, the trees were fresh with new leaves. Heavy rains had soaked the ground, giving the grass a healthy, vigorous start to the season. He took the window seat and pressed himself against it, smiling contentedly.
This section of the journey was the one that he enjoyed the most.
They reached Glasgow in the middle of the morning and changed trains for Fort William. If anything this journey was even slower. But the scenery made up for it. He couldn't believe the long, rugged glens, and the lochs with their dark mirror water that went on forever. Their splendor made him aware of how much humans belonged in this environment.
Joona sat beside him with her arm through his, pointing out various landmarks. Ever since she woke up she'd acted differently. Attentive and eager, as if their night together had allowed them to reach some new level of understanding and commitment. He didn't know what to make of it at all, though the affection was enjoyable. It made it seem as if they were more of a couple. Certainly anyone walking through the coach would assume so.
Fort William was the end of the line, its station just above the shore of Loch Linnhe. They stepped out onto the platform and Lawrence tipped his head back to look up at the mountain looming over the small town. The entire slope was covered with pine trees, their dark shapes packed tightly together.
"Is that Ben Nevis?"
"No," Joona said brightly. "That's Cow Hill; the Ben's away behind it. You'll be able to see it from Grandma's over in Benavie, if the weather stays fine." She glanced out at the choppy gray water of the loch. Dark clouds were streaming in from the southwest. "Rain's on its way."
Her grandmother was waiting in the station parking lot. Joona let go of his arm and waved frantically as she ran forward. Preconceived notions Lawrence had built up about Granny Beaumont being some quiet little old lady with her gray hair wrapped in a bun and wearing a long tartan skirt vanished there and then. The woman was only as tall as Joona, but she was a picture of health, with dark red hair only slightly tidier than her granddaughter's. She was wearing tough cord trousers and a long olive-green coat splashed in mud. He didn't see how she could be a grandmother to anyone in their twenties; she couldn't possibly be past fifty.
"So you'll be Lawrence, then." Her accent was thick, but easy enough for him to understand. They shook hands.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And we'll have none of that nonsense. I'm Jackie. Now come along with the pair of you, into the van. I've to pick up a few things first; then we'll go straight home." She ushered them forward. The van was a three-wheel pickup, with an egg-shaped driver's cab ahead of an open cart section. It must have been twenty years old, composite bodywork fraying along the edges with fiber strands bristling out of the cracks and odd-colored patches epoxied over the larger splits. The cab's curving windshield had yellowed with age and ultraviolet, reducing the visibility considerably. There was no steering wheel, just a broad handlebar.
"Still works, then?" Joona said.
"Of course. Sugarhol is the easiest fuel you can brew, and no duty on it, either. That's why they stopped making cells that could burn it."
Lawrence kept a perfectly straight face as he climbed into the rear of the pickup. The chassis rocked about as he tried to find a reasonably clean piece of floor to sit on. Joona passed their luggage over the tailboard to him, then climbed up. She pulled a thick woolen hat out of her coat pocket, then produced some gloves. "Don't worry, it's not far."