6.
 "I came back to reclaim something that is mine."
"And you go at night when the Authority is locked behind its gates."
"So do you."
As they made small talk, she licked her finger, which was shiny with grease. Her tongue was pink like melon. He would enjoy her warmth at his side, he thought. He enjoyed watching her mouth when she talked, her small nose that had freckles along the ridge, her gray eyes that were at once hard, yet vulnerable. She removed her leather tunic and laid it over the abbot's face, as if hiding herself from his gaze.
"We all have our secrets," she said. "I don't ask."
"Maybe you will help me."
"Then you go away."
"I might take you with me."
"Offworld?" She shook her head, unable to imagine.
He reached out to stroke her hair with his palm. She stiffly let him, but just for a moment.
The meal smelled good. She put the pan on the table and produced a wooden fork. "I only have one. We'll share."
"I already ate. I'll share a mouthful out of courtesy."
She seemed to like this. "Food courtesy. Good." She opened her mouth, extracted a mass of half-chewed meat with dainty thumb and forefinger, and offered. He opened his mouth, and she thrust the warm, saliva-pulped mass onto his tongue.
He felt sex hunger for her and swallowed the slippery mass without tasting it. "Thanks."
"You are welcome. I have been alone for a while." He didn't ask, and she continued: "My man was caught by the Authorities. He died last year in Hammerkill. I heard it through someone who came out crippled."
He said carefully: "At night, here in the tombs, do people speak out against Hammerkill?"
"You sound like a poliz."
"I'm not. I hate them."
"We all do."
"Can we do something about them? I've lost more than a year in Hammerkill."
"Down here," she said, "we know why the Authority is all-powerful."
"Why is that?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. You will learn if you stay with us. I have to get to know you.
"Us?"
"My people. If I trust, you meet them soon enough. Now what is it you are after?"
He reached into his pocked and produced the leather pouch. He let her look at the electronic appliance inside, which had the handle of a gun, the body of a calculator, and a laser light set to an exact frequency. "I was once employed by the City as a courier. I usually carried money or papers, but sometimes I carried other materials for the many corrupt officials. They would pay me good sidegeld, and I always had a roll for my onefem. We dressed good, ate good, drank good. We lived good, my babe and me. Then, one day, I was called to the High 88 Prism Pyramid, and there, way up in a beautiful office that was like a lush garden with birds twittering, I was handed a steel briefcase and told to carry it to a place on the edge of the city. It was heavy, but it seemed to lighten in my grasp. I felt a great power about it, but was afraid to ask."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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