He opens his eyes.
The lifter’s flight chief tells him they’re on final and the pilot will land on a disused stretch of tarmac a kilometer east-southeast of the beach.
He nods once to the flight chief.
The flight chief slides open the lifter’s wide side door.
Out this door, the Pacific Ocean reels under them as the lifter turns and descends. He smells the salt of the ocean air. The air is cold and whips through the lifter’s cabin.
He has been far and away from these Pacific Ocean beaches for a long time now.
He glances at his watch, then returns his gaze to the open hatchway. Below him, the scrub of twisting trunks of the shore pines terminate in a hard line where the sand of the beach begins.
The slanted rays of the late-afternoon sun pierce the lifter’s cabin momentarily blinding him. He closes his eyes in response. He feels he is still in a dream, can’t wake up fully.
The lifter jerks in the air, buffeted by the on-shore wind. The engines throttle louder, compensating.
And, after a few moments, he finds himself on the ground. He climbs out the lifter’s side door. The flight chief pushes his two bags out the open cabin door. The man takes the bags and walks away from the lifter.
The flight chief gives the man one unceremonious wave before slamming the door shut. The man watches the lifter climb back into the sky and move over the tree line and head inland, leaving the man’s view.
Quiet now, all but the sound of the surf.
He knows this place. It is a place not of comfort or joy, although it once was.
This place is a place inhabited by specters that are his memories.
And he knows her memory is still here.
He shoulders the two heavy bags and moves on.
False Night prevails when he arrives at the beachfront inn.
Or what was once a beachfront inn.
It is twilight, but different than twilight. A false twilight. The daytime sun is blotted out. He sees clearly in front of him, but everywhere a moribund shroud dominates. It’s as if the world has been plunged into the dim space and brief moments he experienced one hot summer day when he witnessed totality of a total solar eclipse.
Looking up at the open sky, he sees it. Between a break in the uniform wide flat underbelly of clouds, he sees the umbra-like strands of the Stigmata. For a moment.
The clouds close ranks.
The two-story structure that was once the inn stands alone near the shoreline and a former resort town now abandoned that, in its prime, provided a weekend destination for day trippers from the interior.
And lovers.
The cold wind rushes off the ocean and blows past him with no regard. His suit’s hood autoseals around his head.
He is drained from the trek from where the lifter earlier dropped him on that desolate stretch of beach.
And a memory?
He comes to the inn’s entrance. The ornate glass and wood double doors that once graced the entrance are gone. The industrial semi-airlock opens on his approach.
Inside, a uniformed sentry greets him.
“We’ve been expecting you, Inspector Yama.”
Yama nods once. He says nothing.
The sentry motions Yama to a wide chest-high dull metal table away from the airlock that apparently serves as a counter. The sentry moves to the opposite side. A holograph materializes above the table bearing the Ag Corps standard.
“Credentials, please.”
Yama presents his credentials.
Yama looks past the sentry to the open gaping circular hatch and narrow corridor beyond the desk. He notes the oblong air intakes. The ducts that run the length of the corridor. He detects a hint of disorder in the arrangement, an unkemptness.
He brings his attention back to the uniformed sentry. She’s young. But, they’re all young now. He was once young. And so was she.
“Everything is in order, Inspector” the sentry says. “Per the Directorate’s request, you now have full access to the entire Complex.”
Yama nods once to the sentry.
“I will escort you to your billet,” the sentry says.
Yama shoulders his bags and follows the sentry down the narrow corridor.
“You’ve arrived just in time,” the sentry says.
Yama talks to the back of her head. “How so, sergeant?”
“With False Night, we seal the Complex,” she says. “No one comes in. No one goes out. There are emergency pods positioned throughout the complex’s grounds in the event you’re unlucky enough to be caught outside. Here we are.”
The sentry stops before a rectangular hatchway. “Your credentials will open the hatch.”
Yama steps up the door, which promptly whisks silently open.
Before crossing the threshold, he turns to the sentry. “Thank you, sergeant.”
“Anything else, Inspector?”
Yama shakes his head. “I’m going to sleep for a while.”
He steps into the dim room of his quarters and the door whisks silently shut behind him.
She wraps her arms around his back and raises her head, gently biting his left shoulder.
“Ouch,” he says.
She tells him she wants it quick; but, he doesn’t want to come that soon.
She is prone on the blanket the two of them spread in the tall Pacific reed grass a ways back from the beach, her skirt pushed up to her waist, her panties wrapped around one of her ankles, his nude torso wedged between her open thighs.
He is well in her. The two of them move in unison as two people do who are familiar with the body of the other. Familiar with the wants, the desires. Of what neither of them say, but innately know.
A mild offshore wind rustles the twisted branches of the tall shore pine that hang over them. The sun light breaks over her face, her lips. She closes her eyes and gives him a wry smile.
“What?” he says.
“What are you waiting for? Come already.”
He bears down on her as a man sometimes does when he is given license to, to be greedy and to seek his pleasure without regard to his lover’s.
“That’s it,” she whispers.
She turns her head to the side and away from him. Her long hair blows over her face concealing her except for her mouth, her red lips, and that familiar wry smile…
Yama wakes up.
He answers the comm-link.
“Yama.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Inspector,” comes the sentry’s voice. “But I have an urgent message.”
“Go,” Yama says.
“There’s been a new development. The Commander requires your presence in Operations immediately.”
“Right,” he says. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Very good, sir.”
Yama terminates the comm-link.
He sits up in the bunk and puts his feet on the hard floor. He runs his hand through the cropped hair of his skull.
After a moment, he stands up. He changes into a fresh duty uniform and picks up his technical pad.
The sentry is waiting outside his quarters.
In the dark of the False Night, the two of them proceed through the maze of Complex’s underground tunnels to Operations.
Both of them are prone and side-by-side on the blanket.
The palm of his left hand rests on her mons cushioned by her pubic hair, his fingers are at rest farther down.
“Are you cold?” he says.
“No.” She stretches in the noon sun under the branches of the shore pine. “There! You can see it. Just barely becoming visible. Even during the day now.”
She points heavenward to the cloudless sapphire sky.
He shifts his head and looks up.
A smear of black, barely perceptible but visible, runs across the sky from horizon-to-horizon.
“We think it’s going to get denser,” she says, her eyes not shifting from the sky, “as it moves between us and the sun. Obscures the sun even more. It’s billions of kilometers in length. God knows how wide. Or thick.”
He feels himself becoming aroused again as he absentmindedly touches her. She grows wet, her lips becoming heavy, her clitoris growing and stiffening into a small, small pebble under his fingertip.
“Goddammit I hate it when you only act like you’re listening. Enough of this.” She removes his hand from her vulva. “If this thing, this interstellar dust and gas band blocks even more sunlight…”
“I know,” he says. “I edited your paper, if you remember. Free of charge, I might add.”
She gives him a look of derision. “Nothing is free with you. There’s always some price.”
He rolls to her and moves his thigh over her legs. “Let’s fuck again.”
She pushes him away and glances at her watch. “Shit. It’s past one. We’ve got to get back and get transport back to the city. I’m supposed to be at University by this time tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. He must tell her. He knows he must, but he’s a coward when it comes to this. “Um, there’s something…”
“Yes?”
She stands up, pulls her skirt down, and starts buttoning her blouse.
“This is my last pass for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be able to do this again.”
She smooths her skirt. “What do you mean?”
Reluctantly, he finds his trousers.
“I’m being deployed.”
She stops.
“You had the last forty-eight hours to tell me this, and now you tell me?”
He sits up and shrugs his shoulders. “What can I say?”
“How long will you be gone?” she says.
“Don’t know.”
“Will I be able to talk to you?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says.
“Why don’t we get married?” he says.
She stares at him.
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