Turning the Grain 1 by Longyear Barry B

Author:Longyear, Barry B. [Longyear, Barry B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Analog Science Fiction
Published: 2009-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

That night Gordon watched Pela sleep. His gaze traced her eyelashes, the line of her lips, the turn of her nose. Dr. Taleghani had been correct. She was very beautiful. Pela: daughter of Cualu and Tahm of the Black Mountain Clan. Pela Sleih: Pela of the Furs. He caught himself thinking what it would be like awakening in this existence without that face as his first sight, her voice removed from his day.

He settled back and stared at the night sky above the dying fire. Gordon had been with women before. There was that psych major in Arizona when he had gone to college for a brief period after the Army. Before her was the high school English teacher in Columbus when he had been in sniper school at Benning. In between was that watercolor artist in Port Elizabeth in the Namibian Containment that crisped a third of southern Africa. They were all emotional parking places, though. The romantic love thing—commitment, attachment—had always eluded him. He’d never felt a sense of belonging anywhere with anyone—except through a sniper scope.

Over his life he had seen men who said they were in love. Some acted very silly about it. Some had been very dangerous. The sanest ones had been married. So too had been the most miserable.

Hosteen Ahiga had outlived three wives. He had loved, he said, the first and the last. The second he had married out of obligation. “She was a Christian woman,” he had said. “She talked with scorn about spirits I walk with. I must go to church and believe as she believes if I want to be saved and have her love.” He shook his head. “I don’t listen to her when she talked like that. I walk in beauty, my heart is calm. So then she wants a divorce. That’s best and I agree. Before she goes to the lawyer, though, she come down with sickness. All over in a few days. Her heart, says the Bilagana doctor down in Albuquerque. She had a Christian ceremony. I went to her church one time for that.” He turned his unwavering gaze toward Gordon. “They tell me, ‘Take off your hat.’ I went home.”

Gordon looked at Pela’s face again, uncomfortably reflecting that the most intimate relationships in his life had been with those images in the crosshairs just before squeezing a trigger. Pela had saved Gordon’s life, she cared for him, she had buried his comrades, she’d dressed his wounds; she was, as Dr. Taleghani said, very beautiful. Pela wanted him, she was a woman of substance who knew her way around in this world, and Gordon wouldn’t hurt her even for a ticket back to his own time. And there might still exist just such a ticket. In the future her God’n might just pick up and vanish. There would be no way he could bring her back with him. The Timespan chiefs would eat off their own faces first.

The future—Gordon reached to his pack, found the locater, and looked at the readout.

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