Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Sixteen

“Who were you talking to?” she asked when I returned, but I just shook my head.

“Any food?”

Claire let me pass her, entering the shack.

“I can make food,” she said. “Anything you wish.”

I walked to the faucet and poured some water in my hands, drinking the silty stuff.

“I’ll eat anything, just make lots of it.”

She smiled, waved her hand toward the bed and said, “Gwledd y duwiau,” and like if it was unfolding from the nothing, a massive feast rolled out atop the bed, including roast pig, breads, cheeses and skins splitting with wine.

I walked over and chuckled, grabbing a wine skin and unstopping it. “Forget eggs,” I said and poured the red fluid down my throat.

“So we’re staying?” she asked, taking a seat on the bed beside the food, but not bothering to eat.

I spilled some of the wine down my face and wiped it with my hand.

“We can’t, Claire. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, understanding the finality of my tone, but tried to convince me anyway.

“I know other places. Just as remote.”

Putting the wine skin down, I picked up a roll of bread, breaking it in half.

“That’s not really the problem,” I started, taking a small enough bite so I could still talk. “He’s out there.”

“Apogee,” she scoffed, shaking her head in disgust. “You have to save her.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, you’re right. She probably thinks I’m scum.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Besides, it’s not even that,” I started, moving closer to her. “What’s to say that we’re playing house somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and Zundergrub shows up. Huh? What if he shows up with fifty guys?”

I knelt on the floor beside her.

“He would need more than that, my dear. You forget who I am. Frankly, you forget who YOU are.”

Shrugging, I said, “Maybe.” I sat there for a moment, until she reached forward and toyed with my long hair. I was still getting used to it, and apparently she liked it. “But I’ve also learned it only takes one lucky shot to ruin even the best laid plans.”

She nodded, bringing her hand to my cheek and raising my face to hers.

“He couldn’t give a shit about you, Claire. If I go, you’ll be fine. If I stay, you’re always in danger.”

“Toujours le héros,” she said, flashing a wide smile. “Always the hero,” she translated for me.

“Yeah, I’m not much of a villain.”

“If I had met you three hundred years ago,” she said. “I wouldn’t be, either.”

She reached down and kissed me, her soft, warm lips a loving caress. We parted and I rose back up to meet her, now kissing her fully. Claire welcomed me to the bed, dismissing the meal with a wave of her hand, then gripping me tightly as I settled atop her.

When we were done, I left the bed and ran the tub with cold water, throwing myself in when it was halfway full. Claire was an aggressive lover, as had been her demon-imp persona in the mind-prison, and I’d be sporting a few dozen nasty new scars on my back if my skin were that of a normal man. My shoulders, arms, and neck would be bitten up to hell as well.

I had to bend my legs to fit fully in the tub, but the cool water after that hard exertion in the mid-day heat was worth any contortion.

Claire had fallen asleep in my arms and I’d held her as long as I could before my arms started feeling numb and my longing to wash away the heat took over.

The water was surprisingly cold, as its source was a deep well, and it felt fantastic to just lie there. I felt myself fading, about to fall asleep, when she stirred in bed and sat up.

“Mind if I join you?” she said crossing the room and coming to the tub.

“If you find a spot where you’d fit, you’re more than welcome,” I said.

She raised a foot, placing it beside my hip, facing me, and then swung over so she was straddling me, her small hips pressing down on mine. Leaning over me, she let her lustrous hair cascade on my shoulders, tickling and tantalizing me. Claire moved closer, letting me feel her small breasts in my face and lips, and using her arms to guide me so I could play. She was sensuous and soft, so unlike our previous session, and rubbed the sides of my face, the back of my head, and shoulders while I suckled, feeling her soft skin against my lips.

Reaching down to manipulate me, she helped me enter her, sliding down so we faced each other. A mischievous little smile crossed her face as she came closer and kissed me on the lips briefly, then continued kissing my cheek where I had been injured, my ear, and my neck as she rocked softly up and down, rubbing the inside of her hips gently against my groin. My hands worked her back, rubbing her soft skin, softly grasping at her buttocks and legs as she continued the slow rhythm. She arched her back, feeling herself getting closer, and I kissed her neck beneath her chin and down to her chest as I could feel her tightening around me and slowing down. Coming closer and closer, she rubbed herself on me, now barely rising at all, just using the torsion of her hips to climax, unable to keep from digging her nails into my back as her wave upon wave of pleasure spasmed over me. As she finished, I felt myself well upward and release as well.

Though we were done, she began her slow up and down slide again, now looking at me with a playful grin.

“Very nice,” she said, still catching her breath.

“Oh yeah,” I replied, just as breathless.

Framing my face with her hands, she moved closer, kissing me deeply, and longer than she had before. So long, in fact, that I started thinking of how silly I had been, trying to be the damned hero, thinking I could make a difference.

If Apogee was in any danger, she was a big girl, and she had friends in high places.

Claire paused, her face suddenly concerned.

“Please tell me you’re not off somewhere,” she demanded.

“I’m right here,” I said.

Shaking her head, she continued rocking her hips, the tightness alone keeping me still aroused. “You went away. I can tell.”

I just stared at her face, inches from mine, unwilling to answer.

“She’s not here,” Claire said. “It’s me here. This,” she continued, using the slow grinding of her body to make a point. “This is real. And I am here with you, because I want to be. So forget her.”

She kissed me again, pressing harder against my body, making me go deeper than ever before.

“I’m real, and I am yours.”

“I know,” I said, almost in a breathless state of shock.

Taking my hands, she placed them on her breasts, “These belong to you. You can do with them as you wish. And this,” she reached down with her right hand, opening herself wide for me, rubbing her index and forefinger on herself, and on either side of my penis. “This is for you to do whenever you want.”

With the rocking motion, and her manipulation, it didn’t take her much longer. She steadied herself with her free hand on my chest as the waves rolled through her, eyes closed and biting her bottom lip. She knew I was watching, enthralled by her performance.

Her breathing became heavier and heavier and her motion more and more aggressive, splashing water across the room, and I gripped the edges of the tub tightly, bracing myself against her hips slamming into mine. Finally she climaxed, pressing down against me, harder than ever until it was over.

She left me inside her, grasping the back of my neck with her left hand and laying her head upon mine, forehead to forehead.

“Be mine,” she said.

“Yes,” I responded feebly, eager for her to continue, to never stop. At that moment, I would have given anything for her not to stop. I reached down, grasping the back of her legs, just below her buttocks, and brought her up above me, leaning against the inclined edge of the tub. She cradled my face and kissed me softly at first, spreading her lips, her mouth probing mine.

And as the sun rolled overhead, we kissed and made love, again and again. I was hers and she was mine.

The next morning, I slid out of bed, leaving Claire to rest without me, and walked out to the dawning outback. I had a violent itch in my wrist, located around Haha, which I was coming to understand was his way to let me know that we needed to talk. The robot would never give me a straight answer to why he wouldn’t communicate with me in front of Claire, and I never bothered to push him for it. It was like two realities. One was a physical/sexual experience the likes of which I had never had before with a woman so ravenous that I was quickly coming to understand there was little I could do to slake her sexual hunger. The other reality was everything aside from our little game of house, a reality that Haha would soon bring me to, as if I were losing myself in a mind dream all over again.

And who would blame me?

I indulged the desires of such a beauty, time after time. I had been denied too long, with my only release in months or years being virtual imaginations, intangible and elusive.

I’m a man, and I have needs.

But Haha knew how to get my attention in spite of it all, and he drew me away for early morning conversations on the dusty plain. It was clear he was unhappy with the present situation, and we would have to do something soon to find a satisfying conclusion. I strolled into the bar and checked some drawers until I found a dusty, old 12-volt battery like one used to power a golf cart or an alarm system. I put my wrist over it and a tendril of cabling bore out of my skin, breaking off into two bare copper ends that attached to each terminal on the battery with a tiny spark.

“Not a lot of power left,” Haha said. “But it will have to do.”

“Why don’t we just go to Alice?” I suggested that morning after taking a long silent walk out into the bush. “I’ll find a netcafe or some other Internet connection, you can upload to your mainframe and everyone will be happy”

The pause in reply was almost answer enough, letting me know that he disagreed so much that he had to find a gentle way to get me to understand.

“The mainframe is just a depository of memory and program subroutines spread among the botnet for security reasons, Blackjack,” he said after a while. “To upload the rest of me there would just isolate me from the physical. I need to reconstruct my avatar. Only then is the mainframe pertinent.”

“I don’t have the materials or tools to rebuild you,” I said. Or the inclination or desire to, I almost added.

“You’re making the mistake of thinking I need a full battle droid construct,” he said, exasperated. “Just a minimal architecture, with independent mobility, is all I need. After that I can rebuild the rest myself.”

“And the hurry for all of this is?”

Haha laughed. “I grow tired of hearing your grunting sex rituals. Though, from her aural responses, it is pretty clear that you are quite effective.”

“I guess we could see if there’s a hobby shop or something like that in Alice,” I said.

“You would think since I’m an artificial intelligence,” he continued, “that I wouldn’t be embarrassed by sitting on your hide like a flea while you have coitus with that woman to oblivion, but in fact, I would prefer not to have to endure the hours upon end of it.”

“You sound upset,” I said, watching the sun rising, its rays streaming over the distant vegetation.

“To be frank, I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Haha, I’ll fix you up, ok? I just don’t want to walk into the biggest town in the Northern Territory just a few days after we scared off the proprietors of this place. When all is said and done, I’m still a wanted man, you know.”

But Haha was still on the other subject, mechanical as ever. “I don’t want to discuss your sex life, Blackjack, because I’m frankly shocked.”

“What?”

Haha was silent, unsure how to continue, but I pushed him, “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m bothered, that’s all.”

“About me and Claire?”

He said nothing.

“You knew something was going to happen, Haha. I’m sorry you’re stuck to me like this, and that you have to endure me doing ... you know ... what we’re doing. But this wasn’t my idea.”

“I don’t mean that, Blackjack.”

“I don’t mind giving you a second chance to live, and you being a parasite on me and all that, but you have to be patient, man. I can’t just run out to the city and hit the nearest Radio Shack because you’re getting antsy.”

“I mean hiding out here while there’s a heavy burden on your shoulders,” he said suddenly. “I mean Zundergrub. I mean Apogee.”

So that’s what it was. Somehow, my coupling with Claire, wasting time out here in the Outback, was destroying his paradigm for what I should be doing. After all the shit I had been through, the silly robot wanted me to be the hero. I couldn’t even take a few days for myself?

“What about Apogee, still angry at her?”

“What do you care?”

“Excellent Aristotelian logic, Blackjack. Answer a question with another question,” he said. “But you can’t believe that I’ll be so easily thrown off, do you? Again, do you think she could have saved you from your fate?”

I shrugged, watching a small lizard stalking an insect on a tree branch. The lizard noticed me watching and panicked, forgetting her prey and racing higher on the tree to safety.

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“The things we did,” he said. “They weren’t nice.”

“You did them too, Haha. Are you saying we belong in jail for all that stuff?”

Haha waited, giving the question full consideration of his limited processing power, before answering, “Yes.”

“And you think I should just turn myself in?”

“No.”

“Shit, then what do I do?” I asked him, but the answer was right in front of me, always right at the tip of my tongue. I knew what I needed to do, what I had to do. I just didn’t have the courage to admit it to myself.

“That’s for you to decide,” he said, always sidestepping the issue. “But staying here is not deciding.”

Regardless of what the stupid robot said, I wanted to stay here. I wanted to make love to her over and over, to forget the world, let them all burn. I wanted that more than anything, to live a new life, even if it was feeding an undead creature with little bits of my soul. She was beautiful and the best love I had ever had. And I had never eaten so well.

In a few moments, Claire would wake. We would eat and make love again, and the day would pass and soon be forgotten. I knew, staring hard at the early morning sun rising in the horizon, that I was living a lie. I was in another mind-dream, only this one of my own devising, and I’ll be honest: I didn’t really care.

We ate and made love, and slept and woke again and made love again, before I bothered to broach the subject with her.

“We need to go to town,” I said, and the silence that followed told me all I needed to know about what she thought of the idea.

“What do you need?” she said, her glare measured.

“Clothes, to start,” I said, motioning to the dirty overalls I wore. “But I also need to find out what’s going on.”

She stood from bed and walked naked to the faucet, looking at herself in the mirror.

“Worried for her?” she asked finally.

“And for him,” I admitted. “He won’t take his failure to kill me lightly. Besides, we need to know what’s happening, if they’re looking for us.”

“I could kill him,” she said, still gazing upon her own reflection, her face and tone of voice devoid of any emotion. “I could kill him right now. It would be easy.”

“He’s slippery,” I told her.

“He can’t escape my powers.”

“Claire, it’s something I need to do for myself.”

“I could fix everything right now, and you’d be done with him forever,” she said, turning to me and leaning against the sink.

I got up from the bed and came up to her, placing my arms on her waist, but her posture was defensive, almost hostile.

“Everything in my being is telling me that I have to be the one to stop him,” I told her, angling my face toward hers, though she refused to return my affection.

“You want to save her,” she said, pushing me off and trying to move past me. I grabbed her, held her in place. “You want to be her hero so she can f*ck you for thanks, Suis je redresse?” At first, her eyes were filled with fire and rebellion, but I softened my grip, put my hand to her face.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” I said. “How I feel about her ... it’s not something you just turn off. Regardless of whether she felt it in return. But it’s something that can fade in time ... is fading already.”

She placed her hand on my chest. “Is there any room for me here?”

“Yes,” I said honestly, cradling her face in my hand.

Claire smiled.

“But I don’t know if I can rest until I’ve found him. Until I’ve killed him.”

She grew serious. “And if he kills you?”

I smiled. “You don’t have any magic that brings people back from the dead?”

“I do. But it’s not pretty. Pieces fall off.” She reached down and grabbed me. “Some pieces I would miss.”

She kissed me and eased me toward her, but I held back, and walked toward the bed.

“What is it?”

“There’s another thing,” I said, trying to find the right words.

“What?”

I pointed to my wrist. “I’ve been carrying Mr. Haha around with me,” I said, but from her facial expression, it meant nothing to her.

“Before Hashima, remember all that?” Claire nodded. “I had some companions.”

“Influx, that boy, and the robot. And Zundergrub.”

“Right. The robot is Mr. Haha. On Hashima, Zundergrub attacked him and Cool Hand – the kid, that was his name. He caught them by surprise, right when we least expected it, and he killed Cool.”

I paused, remembering my friend.

“Well, he also destroyed Haha,” I continued. “Most of him. Under this scar is what remains of him.”

“The rabbit man?”

“Yes. It was a sentient robot. That means he had his own mind, he controlled himself. Anyway, Haha helped me against Zundergrub in the end. Without him, I would have died.”

I walked over to her and showed her the knotted scar around my wrist.

“He buried himself in my skin and he’s been here ever since.”

She was still confused, unsure what it all meant, but she touched the mangled skin with her soft fingers.

“You owe him a debt?”

“Something like that. I want to rebuild him. Partially, at least. Mr. Haha is alive, Claire. He’s like a real person almost, and I’d like to get some parts to make him a new avatar. A new body.”

“He has been here the whole time?”

I nodded.

“And he and you talk?”

“Sometimes, but–” she slapped me and tore off, but I managed to grab her arm and whirl her back to me.

“Lâchez-moi!” she said, punching me in the face with all her strength but the blow was like a soft caress.

“No, I won’t,” I said, bringing her closer to me. “This is real,” I took her hand and placed it on my chest. “I am real,” I said, moving her hand to my face. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“I don’t like lies,” she said, struggling against me.

“I didn’t lie,” I said, releasing her. “I was just waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

Claire shook her head and moved back, freeing herself of me.

“I remember when you were on the run, the first time. When you got into all the trouble. There was this place on the Internet where they would talk about you.”

I nodded. “That’s Haha’s blog.”

“Yes. This thing. At first it was you and that other woman. J’ai oublié son nom putain–”

“Influx,” I said, knowing she meant the leader from Retcon’s villain team.

“What?”

“Her name was Influx.”

“The fake blonde bimbo,” she spat and I nodded. “I bet you say you didn’t f*ck her either, right? Then it was you and Apogee, playing lovebirds. I saw some of it.”

“It was Haha’s feed. He was recording everything and uploading it to his blog.”

She swallowed, suddenly vulnerable, her eyes wide in terror.

“He’s not doing that now,” I said, answering her fears. “He can barely even communicate. There’s little left of the robot.”

“Please promise me,” she asked, and I understood her worry, that the world would see her at her weakest.

“On my honor, Claire,” I said.

She just stared at me for the longest time, afraid that I might be lying, and finally reached out, grabbing my hand and rubbing the scar on my wrist.

“Do you trust him?”

I shrugged. “I think so. He might be a robot, but from my experience with him, Haha was an honorable soul.”

“A very big difference between honor and friendship.”

“He’s the only friend I have left in the world,” I said staring at the floor.

“So the three of us against the doctor and his army?” She smiled, “Or do you want me to wait for you here, like a good wife, while you go off to war?”

“No, that’s not–”

“I am more powerful than you, or than this stupid rabbit man or doctor and all his little men.”

“I know,” I said.

“And if my man goes to war, then I go to war,” she finished, pushing me back against the bed and coming closer to me, pressing her naked body against mine.

“How else am I to make sure you’ll come back to me?”

Claire kissed me and dug her hands into the hair on the back of my head, pressing me closer to her.

“Where else would I go?” I said.