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Sleep Well
By RD Rivero
April 15, 2000
**final version**
The capital of Venus teemed with the vibrant activity of the early
evening. Lamps flickered as the city’s buildings, tall and wide, cast
ever-lengthening shadows across its busy, crowded streets. Summer air
suddenly -- suddenly but passively -- emitted the gentlest, coolest breeze
as the sun, colossal and misshapen, loomed uneasily over the cloudy, hazy
line of the horizon.
Marsala leaned -- the skeletal, metal chair groaned. He scanned the table
upon which were a cup of water and a dense tome. The manuscript was
colored with red marks and decorated with rough edits. Within the nook
between the pages and the spine were uncapped pens set to keep place. The
thin, opaque leaves quivered -- he, too, shivered for the effect of the
night’s encroaching currents was so bitter, so cold, different and
unexpected yet quite distinctly familiar. It was the temperament of death
that he had come to know well, too well indeed.
He sighed and shut the book -- scribbled across its cover in darkened ink
was the title: “Histeria: Neosapien History from 2069 to the Present.”
A waiter appeared and asked: “Will that be all tonight, sir?”
“Yes, yes, Jacob. May I have the bill?”
The terran presented a slip of paper and said: “You know, sir, you don’t
--“
“But I do, my old friend, I do.”
He smiled and nodded -- stepping aside he asked: “If I’m not too forward
to asked, I wondered when your net book will be published?”
“Soon,” the neosapien replied, readying his payment. “Soon enough.”
Marsala tugged the unfinished history under his arm as he trekked from the
café, through the streets, to the outskirts of the metropolis. From the
urbane to the rustic. From the jungle of skylines to the wilderness of
farmhouses. Rough bushes and brittle shrubs. Sparse, dilute forests whose
trembling trees were echoing choruses of minute sounds.
On the opposite side of the road -- that had faded from asphalt to gravel
-- was a single couple. In the mid-teens, the man was neosapien and the
woman was terran. Their eyes met, their bodies leaned into one another.
They embraced, they kissed and he fled the scene as fast as could without
drawing attention.
He wanted not to see, not to remember what he had had and had given up.
Yet despite his singular determination, he could not escape her. He could
feel her, her arms draping his shoulders; he could sense her, her face
warming his breast with the softest most intimate of kisses. They had
wanted each other so much for so long that they had succumbed to the
weakness of their strongest desires. They had been intimate once only
after the war: she so fragile, he so gentle, they submitted entirely to
their pleasures.
But he left -- he had to. It was the hardest thing he ever did that he had
to do. It was a new world, untamed and unformed, that demanded his
undivided attention to fashion into wholeness out of the ruins of the old
world from start to finish. Perhaps he could have found a better way, a
kinder way -- but he was ruthless and determined. Perhaps he could have
been more sensitive, more considerate of their mutual needs -- but it was
the past, fixed and immovable, and it was pointless folly to second guess
their actions. And at the end of that long, arduous path, he had the fruit
of his labors to point to the correctness of his actions: the terrans and
neosapiens had been integrated into one culture, thoroughly, seamlessly.
It was the ultimate consummation.
The unsettled sun was crawling, inching toward its inescapable and
unstoppable ritualistic death. The distorted skies were dimming, thinning
to reveal the emerging vast and ancient cosmos resolving from the
unintelligible mishmash of stars to the recognizable forms of
constellations.
The road he traveled straightened and the farmhouse he sought was at last
aview.
He was met at the gate by a small boy as tall as his knee. He dropped the
tome amid tufts of rocky, flowery grass. He raised the youth up to his
shoulders, holding him tightly, binding him safely with his arms.
“I was wondering when you’d return,” the boy said.
“I’m sorry I was late, JT. I promise tomorrow we’ll have the whole
afternoon to ourselves.”
“Will you ever show me Mars, Uncle?”
He kissed the child’s brow and said: “When your school’s up.”
The adult was silent, the boy was silent and for the shortest longest time
neither said nor did anything to disturb the serene tranquility of the
autumnal scene.
Marsala knelt and let JT stand astride the solid ground.
“I love you,” he said, giving the youth the manuscript -- it was almost
too much to bear. “Put it in my room with the others.”
“I love you, too, Uncle.”
The same eyes, he thought, whispering just under his breath. The child
looked at him suddenly -- a slight breeze spread his hair across his face
- he pushed back the yellow strands and said: “You better head home. Your
mother will worry.”
“Are you coming to dinner?”
“I’ll sit with you.”
From behind, from the open doorway of the homestead a female figure
emerged.
“Good night, Uncle.”
The boy turned around and walked from the gate to the entrance. Treading
quickly and uneasily, he passed through the oblong door with the slender
woman of long, blond hair. The two vanished into the mist and fog of
shadow -- the darkness of the structure. Watching all the while was the
blue-skinned humanoid smiling.
Marsala strolled not to the farmhouse but to a less-traveled and
uncared-for portion of the homestead. The trail of sorts -- that existed
more in his mind than in reality -- cut across from the gate to the edge
of a cliff where the mighty corpse of a tree stood, dead and alone. He
recalled a time when it had not been so, when it had been green and
fertile. He approached the rotted arbor slowly, cautiously, until the
object -- the polished, rounded granite -- was visible amid the gnarled
and withered roots. He fell to his knees over it, tearing, sobbing, his
hands, his fingers, roamed its withered surface and explored its eroded
words that he himself had carved: “Sleep Well Nara Burns 2156.”
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