Their bodies were practically transparent. It was easy to make out their fine wiry bones, their round pulsing red-violet stomachs, their threadlike blue veins, as they went shooting by overhead. Their blood-red eyes were finely faceted, glinting as they caught the light.
Beautiful, yes. But as they coursed through the air above the ship a strange rain fell from them, a faint shimmering shower of dark glittering drops that bit deep and burned wherever they touched.
In the first few moments no one realized what was happening. The initial nipping bites of the fliers” secretions were barely perceptible annoyances. But the pain was cumulative: the acid worked its way in, and what had been an odd little mild itch turned quickly to agony.
Lawler, standing in the shadow of the foresails, was shielded against the worst of the bombardment. Some scattering outspray caught him along his forearm, not enough to provoke more than a frown. But then he saw dark mottled scars beginning to appear on the polished yellow wood of the deck just a short distance away, and he looked up to see his shipmates howling and prancing wildly around, slapping at their arms, rubbing at their cheeks.
“Get down!” he called. Take cover! It’s coming from those flying fish!”
The airborne attackers had passed over the ship now and gone on beyond. But already a second wave of the creatures was rising from the sea off to starboard.
The entire onslaught lasted close to an hour, half a dozen waves in all. Afterward, the victims lined up one by one in Lawler’s infirmary to have their burns treated.
Sundira, who had been in the rigging when the fliers came, was the last one to come. She had been wearing nothing but a twist of cloth about her waist, and blisters were rising all over her body now. In silence Lawler dabbed her with ointment. She stood naked before him and his hands moved over her skin, rubbing the ointment in around her nipples, along her thighs, up her crotch to a point a fingerbreadth’s length from her loins.
They hadn’t made love since before the night of the limpet. But Lawler found no desire stirring in him now as he touched her, even in the most intimate places.
Sundira noticed it too. Lawler could feel her muscles tensing beneath his probing fingers. She was drawing herself up tightly, angrily.
She said finally, “You’re handling me like so much meat, Val.”
“I’m a medical man trying to care for a patient who’s got a bunch of nasty blisters all over her skin.”
“That’s all I am to you now?”
“Right at this moment, yes. You think it’s a good idea for a doctor to start breathing hard every time he touches an attractive patient’s body?”
“I’m not just any patient, am I?”
“Of course you aren’t.”
“But you’ve been keeping away from me for days. And now you treat me like a stranger. What’s the problem?”
“Problem?” He gave her a troubled look. Tapping her lightly on the hip, he said, “Turn around. I missed the ones in the small of your back. Where’s there a problem, Sundira?”
“Am I right that you don’t want me any more?”
He dipped his fingers into the ointment flask and rubbed the stuff on her just above her bare buttocks.
“I didn’t know we had a specific schedule. Do we?”
“Of course not. But look how you’re touching me now.”
“I just got through telling you,” Lawler said. “Let me try again. I thought you were here for medical care, not for lovemaking. Doctors learn early that it’s never a good idea to mix the two. But also it might have occurred to me, not as a matter of ethics but just one of common sense, that you wouldn’t want me to come on to you at a time when you happen to have painful blisters all over your skin. Okay?” This was the closest thing to a quarrel they had ever had. “Does that sound reasonable, Sundira?”
She swung around to face him. “It’s because of what I did with Delagard, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You hate the idea that he had his hands on me, and more than his hands, and now you don’t want anything to do with me again.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. And I’m right, too. If you could see the expression on your face just now—”
Lawler said, “We were all out of our minds while that thing was stuck to the hull. Nobody’s responsible for anything that happened that night. You think I wanted to fuck Neyana? If you want the truth, Sundira, it was you I was looking for you when I first came up on deck. Not that I could even remember your name, or my own, in the condition I was in. But I saw you and I wanted you and I headed toward you, only Leo Martello got to you first. And then Neyana caught hold of me and so I went with her. I was under the influence, same as you, same as everybody. Everybody except Father Quillan and Gharkid, that is. Our two holy men.” Lawler’s cheeks were hot. He felt his heartbeat climbing. “Jesus, Sundira, I’ve known about you and Kinverson all along, and that hasn’t stopped me, has it? And on the limpet night there was you and Martello first, before Delagard. Why would what you did with Delagard matter to me any more than what you’ve done with all the others?”
“Delagard’s different. You hate him. He disgusts you.”
“Does he?”
“He’s a murderer and a bully. He got us all thrown off Sorve Island. Ever since then he’s been running this expedition like a tyrant. He beats Lis. He killed Henders. He lies, he cheats, he does whatever he feels like doing in order to get his way. Everything about him is loathsome to you, and you can’t stand the idea that he’s fucked me too, now, whether or not I was in my right mind when I let him do it. So you’re taking it out on me. You don’t want to put your mouth where Delagard’s mouth has been, let alone your cock. Isn’t that so, Val?”
“You’re doing an awful lot of mind-reading, suddenly. I never knew you were telepathic, Sundira.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Is it so or isn’t it?”
“Look, Sundira—”
“It is, isn’t it?” Her tone, which had been hard and cold, softened suddenly, and she looked at him with a tenderness and longing that surprised him. “Val, Val, don’t you think it disgusts me too, to know that I had that man inside me? Don’t you think I’ve been trying to wash myself clean of him ever since? But that shouldn’t be your problem. I don’t have spots on my skin where he touched me. You have no right to turn against me like this, simply because some alien thing clamped itself to the side of our ship one night and made us commit acts that we never would have dreamed of doing otherwise.” Then there was bright anger in her eyes again. “If it isn’t Delagard, what is it? Tell me.”
In a voice thickened by shame Lawler said, “All right. I admit it. It is Delagard.”
“Oh, shit, Val.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t think I even realized what was bothering me myself, not until you flung it in my face like this. But yes, yes, I suppose that on some level it’s been eating away at me since that night. Delagard’s hand crawling around between your legs. Delagard’s blubbery mouth on your breasts.” Lawler closed his eyes a moment. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m acting like a stupid adolescent kid.”
“You’re right on all counts. You’re being very silly. And I want to remind you that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have let Delagard screw me in a million years. Not if he was the last man in the galaxy.”
Lawler smiled. “The devil made you do it.”
“The limpet.”
“Same thing.”
“If you say so. But it never happened, not really. Not by any conscious act of mine. And I’m trying as hard as I know how to unhappen it. You try too. I love you, Val.”