Dulling the Pain

I intend to spend the next year or so writing stories for this setting and

Eternal's

setting, plus a few one-shots. (When I'm more confident in my skill, I'll start rewriting

Cold Steel

--I know some people liked it, but I feel like it could have been so much better.)

As for this particular story, it'll take a while to get to proper sex , but there's going to be a lot of sensuality, and if you care about plot, I'm doing something here that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Also, if you recognize where I'm getting the chapter descriptions from, don't spoil it in the comments. I'll reveal it at the beginning of the final chapter. (Figure it out, and you'll get a bit of foreshadowing--I didn't initially intend the parallels, but I was amused at how well it fit.)

"Are we there yet?" Maria asked in her best little-kid voice.

"Not for another two hours, no matter how much you whine." Captain Davison was not amused. He rarely was, and he was not the target of her question.

"What'll you do if she keeps whining, Cap? Put her in charge of scrubbing the toilets? I thought that was my job." Manuel--

he

was the target of the question. Repairman, handyman, and general odd-jobs man, he was by far the lowest-ranking of the crew. But it was nice to see another brown face in the sea of pink that was the space program, and he was not without a certain irreverent charm. They'd both taken well to the news that they'd be spending two months with each other on an isolated planet.

Of course, that was before spending a week in a ship that was cramped even by the space program's standards, all four crew members drinking each other's recycled fluids and fighting over the only movie player. A sufficiently skilled captain could maintain the chain of command in such circumstances, but Maria had yet to see any demonstration of whatever qualities had gotten Davison appointed to the position. In this case, he merely glared at Manuel before clomping off to the furthest point of the ship, not quite out of earshot.

Isaac was the eldest among them, and the absence of a proper leader, he did his best to keep order. "You have nothing to complain about, Maria. The higher-ups agreed that the rarity of life this advanced outweighed any questions about the planet's geology. Never mind that we've never once seen a planet with this distribution of metals--the strangest phenomena are concentrated in the lifeless zones, so you get to watch your plants grow, and I have to do my research by satellite. Besides, I've seen the eyes you make at Manuel."

Maria pretended to be indignant. "I do not 'make eyes!'"

Manuel switched languages to remark that she'd graduated to making faces. For about half a minute, the two bantered back and forth--but then they noticed that Isaac had one hand on his cross necklace. "You understood that, didn't you?" Manuel asked.

Isaac was clearly embarrassed. "I've been studying Spanish since shortly after we last met. I wanted to surprise you once my accent got better. The problem was that the more I heard you two say, the less I wanted to admit I understood it."

Maria and Manuel reddened in turn.

"Don't worry too much about it," Isaac assured them. "I know you two think of me as a good little church boy, but I, too, was in love once. Watching you two brings back good memories for me. These days, of course, I'd be at a disadvantage trying to make eyes at anyone." He gestured at the silvery orb where his right eye had once been, and Maria suppressed a shudder. Manuel, too, had a metal souvenir from the Procne incident, but it was inside his head, and she consciously avoided wondering what his face had looked like before reconstructive surgery.

"To be honest," Maria told them, "there's a lot going through my head. This could make all of our reputations, but you've always got to be a little afraid of an inhabited world. I mean . . ." She broke off, but she was well aware that the other two knew what she would have said. "I just feel like we should eat, drink, and be merry, you know?"

"It'll be fine," Isaac told her. "You'll spend the days looking at flowers under a microscope, and maybe you'll give one to Manuel. I'll become engrossed in soil composition, and I'll become quite boring to anyone who converses with me. And then we'll be home again. I, for one, have already made plans for when we get back."

Their conversation turned to other subjects, and Maria forgot any tension. She was thrilled to be studying a new planet, thrilled to be present at what might be the decade's greatest find.

If anything, she underestimated its importance--and overestimated the odds that any of them would return.

-- -- -- --

"I'd kill someone for a new movie right about now," Manuel told Maria, addressing her over their suits' radio.

"They're worried that you might kill someone if you got one," Maria responded. She was kneeling over one of the larger flowers, determining whether her environmental suit made her too clumsy to uproot it. With half her mind, she was thinking of a rhyme for "petals of scarlet" (though she'd yet to show anyone the notebook of poetry she kept.) With a quarter of her mind, she wondered what Manuel was doing outside. The rest was focused on . . . other subjects.

"Yeah, yeah, Procne virus, blah blah blah. I was at the Procne ruins. One of the zombies nearly debrained me. Maybe those things had just enough mind left to pilot a spaceship, but there was no way you could mistake them for normal people. I can understand why they give the second survey team the fuel we'll need to take off, but they could at least check in on us--we're not that far off the FTL route."

"I agree, it's overkill, but you've got to understand how command feels about this. We've found one alien ruin after another, and while the technology they've left behind has been useful, everyone's starting to wonder what exactly killed off so many species. Then people on Procne start hearing voices telling them to bash other people's heads open. They've got to be cautious."

"If they were really cautious, they'd take the expense to send us with two months of air. Instead, they're having us filter it from the atmosphere here, and they're giving the second team the weapons to blow us to bits if we all turn into zombies. We're just guinea pigs here."

Maria realized that Manuel was genuinely angry, and she decided it was best to change the subject. "Personally, I think this place is better than any movie. No carnivores, gentle winters, and it looks like we could breathe the air even without the filters. Don't you want to just take off that suit and run around?"

"Not until I'm sure I won't catch anything from it. I'm a rebel, not an idiot. And if you take that helmet off, you're not getting kissed for a week."

"I'm serious. You see those things up in the sky that look sort of like birds? I was looking up and watching one of them, and it was almost like I heard a voice, telling me that I could join it if I'd just take off the suit."

"Sounds like one of those movies that ends with an eyeless ghost showing up in the mirror. On a less creepshow note, have you seen Isaac lately?"

"He said he was going to go investigate something. I'm not sure what--we're quite a ways from the nearest of the metal mounds he keeps going on about."

"Maybe he took off his suit. Wonder if his ghost will still have a metal eye?"

Maria pretended to laugh, but she had already talked to Isaac. Neither he nor Davison had understood.

Whatever had spoken, it had chosen her.

-- -- -- --

Why am I doing this?

she thought, standing alone several miles from camp, and perhaps the whole story could have ended right there. But an

I have to know

followed shortly, and a rush of fresh air sealed all their fates as she removed the helmet of her suit.

"Who are you?" she spoke aloud into empty air.

Visions flashed into her head, visions of a mind awakening into sudden pain. It pushed away all that pained it--

the mounds of metal

, she thought--and it found itself alone. It created lesser selves, living and growing off the light of the sun, and other lesser selves to walk the land and soar the skies, but for countless millennia it had known the existence of no minds that weren't its own.

Something had landed, something made of painful metal, and things like but unlike its recent visitors had come out. They had been full of pain and anger, but it had lived its whole life with pain and anger, and it had reached out to them. One alone had been peaceful, and with its aid, that peace had been brought to others. As each one joined the union, the great mind's pain had lessened.

They left, and a bit of its mind went with them, watching them, guiding them. They had spoken to others of their kind, convinced them that they no longer needed to suffer. And then they had met some who refused to yield--who called its gift a disease. There had been pain, slow and agonizing, as one after another of its followers was slaughtered, until at last the great mind was alone again.

"Procne," she said. "It was just like Procne."

The great mind was surprised. She felt it rummaging through her head, searching for memories of Procne.

Another of my kind

, the voice said without words.

Perhaps driven insane by the pain of the metal, and bringing even more pain. But I do not wish to harm you. I only hope that you'll accept my burden, as those before you did, and that you won't leave me here alone. I offer each of you a gift in return, according to what you most desire.

"What I most desire? I'm not sure I know what you mean."

Your own wish is simple for me, a childhood dream that your body cannot fulfill. It will take you half an hour to climb the hill on your right. The other side is a sheer cliff--stand atop it, without that metal-lined suit, and I will give you the sky.

-- -- -- --

In a thin shirt and pants, she stood at the edge of the cliff, looking out onto endless fields of flowers. "I still don't understand what you're doing," she said, "but I'm ready."

It started in her chest--a feeling that she recognized, from idle hands in the shower, but magnified beyond anything she'd known before. Her heart beat faster and faster, and the feeling followed her blood through her veins. There seemed to be a thousand hands inside her, gentling molding and changing her.

Do you remember when you were young, before you started to lose faith in God?

the great mind asked her. Her body felt lighter and lighter.

There was a mural of heaven on the outside of the church, and you stared at it every time you passed by. You longed to dwell in God's domain.

The feeling concentrated in her back, growing and growing.

You longed to fly on angel wings.

Before she could process that statement, her shoulder blades had what could only be described as an orgasm, and a sudden force tore open the back of her shirt.

She pitched forward, but new instincts guided her. She spread her new wings--

my angel wings

, she thought, not knowing whether to laugh or scream--and she caught the air, searching for an updraft.

The flowers stretched out like a quilt below her as she circled and spiraled.

This can't be real,

she thought.

I can't be flying. The physics involved--

and then she lost herself in the freedom of the air.

-- -- -- --

For half an hour, she soared over the flowers, flying almost to the edge of the lifeless lands. For half an hour, she forgot all of her fears--but at last, she returned to the cliff edge, and as she landed, she asked the question she most dreaded.

"Are you God?"

It took her a moment to recognize the sound inside her head--it was her own laugh, repeated back to her by a being that could not laugh on its own.

You might say I'm the god of this world,

the great mind told her,

but I cannot believe in the God that you know

.

I spent too long in pain with no one to help me. God gives no gifts, and receives none, but I have given to you, and you have given to me as well, sharing the peace inside you.

"About that--I'm grateful for the gift, but I can't accept it right now. Manuel might trust me, but the others would just be afraid."

There was no pain as the wings shrank back into her, only a vague sense of loss. Her heart seemed to be beating impossibly fast, and she knew that she was still changed, just below the skin.

Of the four who have now come here, you're the only one without pain. I understand your mind now, and maybe I'll be able to talk to the others. If I can stop them from fearing me, you'll be able to fly free, and they, too, will gain from my gifts.

Before Maria sealed herself away again in the suit, she left a parting thought for the great mind.

"Procne was bombed until the deserts became glass. If you speak to them, you'll have less than two months to convince them to trust you."