27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ten minutes later, after awkwardly hiking up my skirts and hoping a strong wind didn’t make it too entirely obvious that I wasn’t wearing any undergarments, we neared the cliffs.
By now, I’d long since lost sight of Ursa. I attempted to follow the trajectory he’d taken, hoping I would find some clue that would indicate where he had gone.
“Ursa!” I shouted uselessly over the loud roar of the engines as I scanned the horizon for any sign of him.
“Ursa!” some of the men took up the call with me. Which I thought was rather nice, all things considered, especially for men wearing fingerless gloves.1
As we neared the cliffs, I saw they were not a firm wall as they had appeared from a distance, but rather an intricate labyrinth of caves and crevasses and chasms. Ursa could be anywhere by now.
Feeling overwhelmed with helplessness, I tapped on the leader’s shoulder. “Can we stop for a moment?” I shouted into his ear.
He obediently paused the bike, and the others did, too. Idling in place, the engines gave out only a low thrum. I scanned the cliffside, searching for any sign of Ursa, but saw nothing. Where was he? “Ursa!” I called again, cupping my hands around my mouth to boost the sound.
To my surprise, a moment later I heard a call in response, coming from somewhere deep in one of the crevasses. I tapped eagerly on the leader’s shoulder, and he guided us in the direction from which the call had come.
After a few minutes, I tapped him on the shoulder again when I spotted something cast off in the red dirt. As he stopped, I peered closer and saw it was Ursa’s jumpsuit and boots.
Looking upward, I spotted him climbing one of the cliffs—no ropes, no equipment. No clothes. Just his naked figure making slow, determined progress up the rock wall.
“What the fuck?” one of the other bikers asked.
I suppose it wasn’t a sight one saw every day. “That’s him!” Hopping off the bike with rather less gracefulness than I would have liked, I recovered myself quickly, smoothing down the front of my dress before turning to face the group. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
The leader jerked his thumb up toward Ursa. “You wanna stay with this lunatic?”
I shrugged. “He’s my lunatic, you see.” Then, surprising us both, I stepped forward and kissed his gruff cheek. “Thank you again!”
It took a little more persuading, but I finally managed to convince the hoverbikers that Ursa and I would be fine on our own. When the last echoes of their rumbling engines faded away, I took in a deep breath, shielding my eyes so I could look back up at Ursa’s scaling form.
I’d been so needlessly worried that he would take a shining to one of the brothel workers.
Instead he’d seen one pair of breasts and gone running off into the desert, undressed, and started climbing a cliff.
I didn’t know what it all meant, exactly, but it was clear that Ursa was having a bit of a moment.
I suppose I’d had a few of them myself during our brief time together, so I couldn’t begrudge him that.
Instead I found a boulder that didn’t look too dust covered. After peering around it and rocking it/kicking it several times to ensure there were no snakes hiding underneath, I sat and waited.
Luckily it really was a lovely day. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face; a cool breeze drifted every now and then through the canyon to stave off any heat.
Some desert birds must have been brought here to repopulate in the wild, since I could hear them singing to each other from unseen places up in the rocks, and I saw a shadow of one or two drifting lazily up in the big open sky overhead.
Ursa must have noticed I was here, but he seemed in no rush to join me.
There was something very purposeful in the way he was climbing, some inner turmoil he seemed to be exorcising on his own.
So without anything better to do, I lay back on the boulder, watched the sky for a long while, then drifted off into a doze.
I don’t know how much time had passed before I awoke to the feeling of something nudging at my lap. Groggily, I opened my eyes to find Ursa—still quite naked—kneeling before me in the dirt, his head in my lap. Almost like he was praying and I was his altar.
“Ursa?” I tried to prop myself up on my elbows to look at him. “Are you all right?” I touched the top of his head, smoothing my fingers over his hair in what I hoped was a soothing gesture. “What happened? Why did you run away?”
He was silent for so long, I thought he might not answer me. Instead, when he spoke, I realized he was choosing his words carefully. “Town is . . . people are . . .” I felt the movement as he shook his head.
“Overwhelming?” I offered sympathetically, continuing to stroke my palm over his hair.
“O-ver-whelm-ing,” Ursa agreed grimly, stretching the word out by each of its syllables.
The town had been much what I imagined it would be, as had the people, but I tried to consider it all anew from Ursa’s perspective. He’d seen so very little of the universe and what it had to offer. All of its varieties.
Ursa himself was so straightforward and honest and good. He did not pretend to be anything he wasn’t. He did not have it in him to trick or lie or cheat. And so he likely couldn’t understand why others might do so.
Treading carefully, I began my very best to explain the whole complex hodgepodge of humanity. “People are . . . complicated. Not all of them live the same way. Love the same way. Like the same things or agree to the same values.”
“Values?” Ursa echoed.
I considered how best to describe that. “Morals. Ideals. Your beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad.”
“Bad.” Ursa shuddered against me. Reaching up, he gripped my hips on either side, as if to tether me to him. “Town is bad.”
From his perspective, I could see how it might seem that way.
People begging, lying, stealing, living in filth, ignoring the poor, selling themselves for profit.
It was funny, really: In our early days together, I’d noticed everything about him that was uncivilized, all the ways he was rough or uncouth.
But civilization could be just as harsh, just as violent and unyielding.
Nevertheless, I felt compelled to defend human society. “Not bad. Complicated. Some good, some bad. Sometimes things that seem good might not be good for everybody, and things that seem bad can be a necessary evil.”
“Ne-ce-ssar-ee evil?” It was clear Ursa was not familiar with the concept, and he did not bother to hide his skepticism.
I floundered about for an example. “Well, take commerce, for instance. All those people selling their wares out on the street. It might make them seem greedy or desperate, but it’s how they make money to feed their families and buy clothes and do all the things they need to do. Without it, how would they survive?”
Ursa scoffed. “Hunt. Fish.”
“Not everyone knows how to do that,” I reminded him gently.
“I know.” Ursa tightened his grip on me, lifting his head to meet my gaze. “We stay here now. Out here. No more ship. No more town.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“We stay here,” Ursa repeated obstinately. “No more ship.”
I laughed—not because I found it particularly funny, but because, what else could I do in the face of such a preposterous suggestion/command? “Ursa. Be serious.”
He growled low, his blue eyes flashing. “Serious.”
“We can’t stay here,” I protested. “We don’t have any other clothes, or money!” Even if I ever got access to my accounts again, there wasn’t enough to support the two of us for a lifetime. “What will we do? How will we survive?”
Ursa proceeded to paint me a verbal picture of what he’d imagined for us.
I’d try to write down exactly what he said, but I can’t remember the precise wording after all this time.
And, if I’m being honest, although his vocabulary and speech patterns had improved immensely, he was still somewhat limited,2 and it would be very difficult to convey the exact meaning of what he said absent his inflection and body language.
Anyhow, this was what Ursa envisioned for us, more or less: We would live in the cliffs.
He would find a suitable cave to turn into a den.
We would live much like we had on Earth, with him hunting and protecting us from harm, and me gathering supplies like berries and kindling and whatnot.
Our lives would be very simple, just the two of us, with no outside distractions.
And he would make sure I had everything I needed. Skins. Food. Pleasure.
I could have reminded him that we were in an entirely different environment to Earth, one that had been terraformed for human living, yes, but borne out of the natural environment already available on this planet.
We had no idea what plants and animals had been bred here, or if they would be enough to sustain the kind of lifestyle Ursa was describing.
Why bother, though? There was simply no way I would agree to living like that. On Earth it had seemed possible. It had been possible, and we’d been happy.
But here? With a thriving port town so close by, many of the conveniences of modern living right at our fingertips, and no Rawley hunting us down?
I would want to venture into town several times a week to see people and learn the news of the universe and gather supplies.
The same town that made Ursa agitated and anxious.
It would be a terrible point of contention between us, that much was plain.
It was not possible, living a completely remote life here. But I had no idea how to tell him that, not when he’d already sacrificed so much to stay with me.
“Don’t you think you’d get bored or lonely, just the two of us?” I tried, testing the waters. “Wouldn’t you want to occasionally see other people, too?”
“We make others,” Ursa told me decisively. “Our cubs.”
Our cubs?
Our cubs?