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  Heinlein’s Finches

  Robin Banks

  Heinlein’s Finches

  © Copyright 2016 by Robin Banks. All rights reserved.

  Written by Robin Banks.

  Cover Illustration © Copyright 2016 by Robin Banks.

  Cover design by Robin Banks.

  Excerpt from “Horrible Stories I Told My Children” by R A Ellis used with permission.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of Robin Banks.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  My advice is to try the best you can

  do the things you always wanted to see

  all the things you've never seen

  and crush the things you've hated

  Peri Akman

  Contents

  Year 2475 Terran Standard

  December

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  Year 2480 Terran Standard

  January

  Glossary

  Discography

  About the author

  Celaeno

  1.

  Year 2475 Terran Standard

  December

  A dreadful racket tears me away from my meditation. Gwen and Asher are charging up the tower, and by the sound of it something special must have happened. The stairs are narrow and winding, hardly suited to two people walking abreast, but they never let that bother them. They always keep pace with each other, even if it means occasionally banging into a wall, and of course that pace isn’t a walk, either. They tell me that people who’ve once lacked the space to walk will always run, given half a chance. I think I get it. Be as that may, though, I love my life and I love my neighbors and I wouldn’t give them up for the world, but sharing a tower with them is like sharing it with a herd of Terran elephants. Happy elephants, judging by their whoops and cackles as they charge right past my floor and crash into their door. Happy horny elephants, too, as they immediately seem to crash into their bed and into each other.

  My neighbors’ happiness has most definitely been earned. Their lives haven’t been easy. However, although I don’t envy them their past, at times I envy them their present. When that present involves fornication so unbridled that I can’t hear myself think and my godsdamn ceiling is shaking, it’s particularly hard not to be envious. But just as I am thinking that, I hear the familiar knock on their floorboards, and it’s my turn to charge up the stairs and through their doors and into their bed, where they wait for me with smiling eyes and open arms.

  It always strikes me as inappropriate to describe lovemaking as ‘epic’: the word has a connotation of self-aggrandizement, self-awareness, and self-approval that truly great lovemaking inherently lacks. But this turns out to be one of those couplings – triplings? – that seem to go on forever, like group laughing fits. As soon as someone stops, someone else starts. I wonder at times whether there is a given number of partners that could result in a never-ending session; when even people needing to go off to work and to sleep and to tend to the children would not end it, because there’d always be people still banging away. Like the fires of old, always kept smoldering; I’m sure that would make a fine tribute to some god, somewhere. Then I remind myself that musing about something I’m never going to experience is utterly pointless. I mean, it’s already a minor miracle that I’m experiencing this, here and now.

  By the time we’re all finished, the room has grown purple in the dusk. We’ve long missed our dinner and none of us cares. We’re all limp from sheer bliss as much as from the exertion, but Gwen is already perking up again, grinning her lopsided, undignified grin. Out of the bundle of clothes on the floor, she digs up a golden box that glints in the dimming light. Asher sighs his usual sigh and hauls himself out of bed to pour us all a drink. It looks like they might need it. This is trouble. Big trouble. Even in the poor light, I recognize the box. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t, really, being as it is one of the most popular sacred objects owned by the most popular church of the most popular local religion.

  “The reliquary of St. Robinson? Have you finally lost your mind?”

  Asher is grinning too, now, though I’m not sure if it’s at my shock or at Gwen’s skills.

  “You know,” purrs Gwen, “for such an important artifact, they seem to take very poor care of it. Hardly any security. Anyone could have swiped it. Really swiped it, I mean.”

  “Hardly any – but it’s on permanent display on the godsdamn altar of the godsdamn Cathedral!”

  Gwen guffaws. “Precisely. Right under everyone’s nose. Nobody would ever dare steal it, right? So they don’t guard it. I taught them otherwise. It’s good for them. Formative.”

  “Don’t try and pass this off as an act of generosity, milady,” Asher interjects. “You did this, as always, for your own entertainment. It’s all shits and giggles for you.”

  “Sir doesn’t approve,” Gwen sighs. “His disapproval is frankly crushing. But, you know, wise men keep going on about how it’s easier to sack Rome than to build Rome, and they forget to mention how much more fun sacking is. And fun is essential, Quinn.” She pokes me on the nose. “Essential to one’s survival. Essential to one’s sanity.”

  “As is freedom, milady,” drawls Asher. “The freedom that we’d have lost if they’d found you with that pretty trinket in your pocket.”

  “I thought I’d heard the church bells sound,” I realize suddenly. “I should have guessed that it had something to do with you two.”

  “I was merely a bystander,” Asher lifts his hands in surrender.

  “Nonsense!” Gwen retorts sharply. “He interfered! I was just waiting for the opportune moment to bag the damn thing, and he belched! He belched so loudly that the entire church turned to give him a dirty look. It’s a wonder we didn’t get caught right there and then. That’s got to be the oldest trick in the book!”

  “But we didn’t get caught, did we? And you have to admit that the hardest thing was staying put after you got your toy.”

  “Staying put?” I shouldn’t want to know, but their methods intrigue me. It’s not every day someone makes away with the holiest of holy relics, after all.

  “Yeah. After a snatch like that, you can’t be seen trying to get away. Guards will chase anything that runs, or even moves too fast. So we had to stay put and continue our holy visit until the loss was discovered, with a priest shout
ing from the altar fit to raise the dead. Then we had to move towards the noise and mill around like nosey tourists, until we were made to vacate the premises because we were in the way. And it was damn hard standing there with the damn thing burning a hole in my pocket.”

  “I think I would have wanted to scram.” I’ve never stolen so much as a candy in my whole life, and merely imagining the fear and shame of being caught red-handed with stolen goods about my person gives me the shivers. Though, for these two, shame doesn’t seem to come into it.

  “It’s the hardest thing not to run when you know someone’s gunning for you,” Gwen nods. “I don’t know if anyone who’s not been hunted down gets it. You get so jacked up on adrenaline you can’t burn. Being able to finally run is such a relief.”

  “Hence our less-than-decorous entry into our humble abode. And hence all this.” Asher waves a hand at Gwen and me, still in a tangle of bed linens and limbs. “By the way, my congratulations on your stamina, kiddo. We had a massive adrenaline rush to burn through. You had no such benefit. I’ll chalk it down to the profligacy of youth.”

  “And there’s me thinking it was because I’m irresistible,” pouts Gwen. She must be in an unusually good mood. She never plays the coquette. She never abuses the power of her gender at all, really; I don’t know if that’s a natural inclination or an entrenched habit. Like most institutions that pride themselves on their genderlessness, the Academy is strictly old-school masculine in all of its manifestations. We’re all supposed to be the same here. All cadets will be Patrolmen, even the women. Cadets who don’t conform to that standard don’t tend to last long, or do well.

  It’s so dark now that I can barely make out the outline of our bodies, but they’re still looking at each other. It’s a wonder that as an addendum to a love like theirs I never feel like I’m getting a bad deal. Then maybe it’s not a wonder that with a love like theirs they might have enough to spare.

  But I’ve been daydreaming, again, and they’re still talking. Asher puts the light on. He looks and sounds serious.

  “That is out of the question,” he says sharply. “I don’t care what you do with the damn thing, hammer it flat or melt it or chuck it down the can, but you are not putting it back. You know they’ll tighten their security now. They’ll do twice as much as is reasonable to make up for how comprehensively they fucked up. And I will not be bringing you prison meals.”

  Gwen stops twiddling the reliquary and chucks it on the bed.

  “You’re right, of course,” she sighs. “I was just toying with the idea for the fun of it. I can tell between playing the game and suicide. But you would bring me prison meals, and you know it.”

  “Godsdamn you, woman,” he growls. “One of these days I’ll get you out of my system, and then you’ll be the one cursing the gods for the day you ever met me.”

  But as he says this, he’s walked back towards the bed, bottle in hand. Standing over her, he’s trickled moonshine all over her bare breasts and belly. She’s unabashed.

  “Well, you’re not going to let all this go to waste, are you?”

  We don’t. And then we finally all fall asleep, still tangled together.

  That night is one of Asher’s bad ones. I wake up suddenly, shaken from a deep, content slumber by a shattering stillness. Asher’s not breathing. The cessation of the wave-like motion of his chest jolted me awake, and the silence is unbearably loud.

  By the time I’ve realized what woke me up, why I’m so full of panic, Gwen is already in action. She’s kneeling by his head, cradling him in her lap, and is shaking him gently, stroking his chest. He’s rigid, as if his entire body was in a cramp, his copper hair soaked in sweat, his limbs faintly vibrating with tension. “Hush, love, I’m here, you’re here.” Gwen is murmuring a constant stream of near-nonsense, but it seems to work. He finally gasps and takes a deep, rasping breath. After a moment when we’re all holding our breaths in sympathy, he lets it out again and starts breathing normally.

  Gwen turns to me then. “He’s ok, loveling. I’ve got this. You go to your room and catch some sleep. Big day tomorrow,” she says to me in the same soft, murmuring tone. In the middle of this, still she finds time to think of me, of my needs. Or maybe this is now a private moment for them, more private than our earlier lovemaking?

  She turns to Asher, his eyes now open but unseeing, the pupils enormous in the dim light of early dawn. “I’m so sorry, love. I shouldn’t have taken that risk. It was reckless and it wasn’t necessary and it was too much.” She’s stroking his face, her voice still soft but full of sorrow. I think the tears on his cheeks are hers, but I cannot be sure. “I won’t do it again. We won’t do it again. It’s going to be ok.” And then his shaking stops and he shoots out a hand to grip her elbow. She doesn’t even flinch, but I do. He’s holding her so tight it must be hurting her.

  “Don’t. Say. That. Not ever.” His voice is hoarse and halting. “To take this from you, to take this part of you from me. To be only half alive? Never do that to me.”

  He’s looking at her so fiercely I’m scared for the both of them. Scared for myself, because none of this is healthy or normal and I love them so. What will come of me the day they finally mess up, or just implode? I cannot go back to life before them. Well, I could, but I don’t want to. I’m ashamed of myself, of my selfishness and need, as I slink out of their room. They can’t see me, her hair making a curtain around their faces as she bends down to kiss him.

  [Two days later, the reliquary is miraculously found on the altar of a less-known church in a quiet part of town. There was no challenge in it, Gwen laments. After her coup, it’s a bit of a let-down, really. But Asher hardly ever puts his foot down, and when he does he’s always right. Her little escapade has been enough to get the imp of mischief off her shoulders for a while, anyway. Though what could she possibly do next time, what could she do to top this… I can see her already plotting her next caper and, much as I love her, I don’t know how that man of hers puts up with her.

  Still, for a little while, it will be business as usual. Until the next time, anyway.]

  January

  The morning bears no trace of the night that went before it. It’s a special day – the first day of the first term of the new year. Even routines feel unusual when you’ve had a break from them.

  When I get to the zero g training Tank, still bleary-eyed, Asher is already in there, dancing in the water. Well, he’s reconfiguring the obstacle course, but his movements are so smooth that it always looks like dancing to me. He’s speeding back to the start of the course and I try to look at him as he always encourages me to, to turn my verbal brain off and feel his vectors in my body. And when I finally get them, I can feel he’s going to miss. He’s heading there and there, at high velocity, and he will miss his landing and crash on the side wall.

  Groundlings always seem to think that what we do in the Tank, which they broadly see as some kind of underwater gymnastics, can’t hurt us. As if smacking against a solid object at speed only hurt if there’s a gravitational component involved. Clumsy as I am, I know better, though I have to admit that the biggest bruises I have suffered have always been to my ego. Still I brace myself for the inevitable crash – and right in front of a gaggle of newbies, too – until Asher does something with his body my brain insists is impossible. His outside hardly moves, but he somehow twists and contracts in a way that totally alters his vector. He lands perfectly on the starting point, not even the slightest recoil to suggest his initial speed. And no, he didn’t use his propellers.

  I expect the newbies to oooh and aaah, but of course they don’t. On their first day, they have no way to evaluate what they just observed. Give them a session or two, and they might realize it, but then Asher would see that as a failure in his teaching. “When I do my job right,” he insists, “chicks can’t see the beauty and mastery and computational requirements and blah blah blah of what I do. They just do it, and never think twice about it. A teacher shouldn’t make h
is subject feel special, or esoteric. A teacher should make it seem so damn easy that anyone could do it.”

  I’m not anyone, as I’ve proven time and time again. I’m not merely bad at floating; I’m a new, hitherto unimaginable level of hopeless. That’s why I keep putting myself through this class even though I don’t have to. I’m an Adjunct here, not a cadet. I’m here to teach, not to learn. Well, I’m mostly here to shuffle papers around and spy on the students, but I’m definitely not here to learn. Luckily the Academy allows me to sneak into the floating program as a perk of the job. It’s the third term I do this, and every single time I drag myself into the Tank I hate myself for it.

  As Asher waves us in, I have to suppress a surge of shame. It’s me and a bunch of chicks, I’ve done this before, and I’m no better than them. In fact, some of them are much better than me. Someone in my position simply shouldn’t be this useless, particularly in front of students.

  As I think that, I hear Gwen’s voice in my head repeating, for the umpteenth time, “Of course. An Adjunct of the Academy should be better than every cadet at every subject. Never mind the chicks come here with their own unique set of experiences, skills, and aptitudes. An Adjunct ought to be superior in every way. And the Priest of Ishtar ought to be a champion baker. And the Abbess of New Kildare should surpass any concubine in the arts of loving. Because with authority comes all-knowing.”

  Put like that, it doesn’t make any sense, but I hate to be so inept at this. Though Asher says that I’m not; that my body is fine, but I’m thinking about this so hard that I’m getting in the way of my own doing. “You’re so focused on what’s going on up there,” and he taps my forehead, “that you’re not allowing your body to feel what needs to be done.” I get what he’s saying. I just can’t do anything about it.