Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (18 page)

Rowing
quietly
they
settled into
the middle of the current
orbiting the Lap, fighting its continual drag to the right. Ione
was
keenly
alert
for skulks, who
would
not hesitate to
approach
them in this
vulnerable
state.
She
would have felt better with more
women along, but the secret
of
their excursion was best kept between Emma and
herself. Manassa was technically a doyenne and should have been
told, but it didn’t matter in this case anyway—little as Ione
trusted her, she was the only person left to watch the flotilla and
would have stayed there either way.

A stream exiting from the Lap appeared on the
left, one of many feeding the circular channel they negotiated. Two
more emerged soon after that, then a dox in quick succession. They
guttered from a maze of flooded tunnels carrying water out of the
reservoir at high speed, and while some of the passages could be
navigated all the way back the source, they were gated from within,
impossible to pass. Ione wouldn’t have even considered trying to
enter the Lap by random exploration—even the strongest swimmer
would be quickly disoriented in the utter darkness of the twisted
and narrowing fissures and drowned before returning. The Lap was
thus secured from infiltration.

But one gate was supposedly left open in the
event of a total evacuation, marked by a water-borne flavor only
the women could detect. In her jumbled recollection of the hegira
the other doyennes had known specifically what to search for, but
they weren’t here now.

“
Start with this
one,
”
Ione
directed. T
hey rowed the bedboat
over to
a small stream
that sluiced through a dense thicket of rock-strewn
foliage
. As Ione fought the current, Emma
reached down and sampled a little water in her palm, questing for
something floral or fruity.

“
No… Nothing. It’s totally
clean. But now we know we can resupply ourselves, at least.” This
would be a significant consideration if they stayed in the area
given that the great circular current they traveled was soaped,
along with all its dependent waterways.

Ione nodded impatiently,
commenced
oaring again
.

The next outflow was
pure
. A
nd the next,
and so on. They were quickly tiring
;
it took some effort to
get
into each
channel
for sampling,
and Emma bitched incessantly.

“
Can’t we rest for a little?
We’re more than halfway around.”

“
You haven’t found
anything
?”

“
Huh-uh,” Emma sagged. “And
I’m starting to wonder if it matters. The last stream was tainted
with soap.”

Ione was instantly alarmed, forced to
question the wisdom of continuing their investigation. If the
skulks had found some way to foul the Lap itself then there was no
point in getting in; there were enemies waiting for them.

“
Fuck. Oh, fuck it all,
Emma. Let’s get out of here,” she despaired. “We’ll figure out
what’s next after we sleep.”

They returned to the camp in silence, hunched
low on the mattress, letting the current do the work of bringing
them full circle.

“
Hey,”
Mark
nodded when they were reunited on
the flagship.
Ione
coughed
,
remembering their excuse for leaving
,
tried to look sensually sated for a moment before realizing she had
no idea how to force the demeanor.

“
Did the scouts report
anything?”
Emma questioned
Manassa.

She nodded. “There are
definitely men around. Annie saw a large group organized
in boats.

“
Where?” Ione
demanded.

“
Down one of the channels
near the farthest upstream lookout
.”

Ione slumped, knowing the
massive advantage it would give the men if they approached with the
current when they attacked. She
slowly
turned to Mark, who shrugged, already familiar with her
suspicions.

“
Sorry, I don’t know
anything about them,” he murmured with a tired apprehension that
was either totally sincere or the guile of a supremely natural
actor. Ione glanced furtively at Manassa, wondering what she and
Mark had talked about in their absence.

“
Send four more women to the
upstream lookouts, and make sure they all know the alarm procedure.
Then let’s get to sleep,” she ordered, knowing if the trap sprung
soon their tired fleet would have no chance at all against
well-rested skulks.

Later, Ione
woke from a strange dream, rescued from its
monotonous loop by Mark’s hand on her shoulder.

“
What?” she muttered,
instantly suspicious.

He
motioned her to silence, leaned close to whisper. “Something
you
better
see.”

She glanced over to Manassa
and Emma
,
both
sound
ly
asleep. It
was Ione’s turn on their shared watch, and she wondered when she
had dozed off. It was no great concern; there were many other women
awake, and everything was quiet. Mark was a shadowy, muscular
cipher, squatting
silently
at the headboard in the
faint
glow of a red gnome far down the
channel
. She rose,
piqued
by
amorous
notions
that were
instantly dispelled
when she saw his expression better.

He was staring
at
a
bed
boat floating slowly
by
, a
big
six
-sleeper
.
This
was not alarming in itself; there were many
wandering
about unclaimed. It
yawed
slowly as it drifted
by
.

“
Why is it riding so low?”
she mused.

“
That’s what I was
wondering.”

Ione chewed a
knuckle,
turned to wake Emma and stopped,
realizing this would not be possible without rousing Manassa
tangled next to her, and likely everyone else nearby. They were
exhausted and there was not yet justification for that. She bit her
lip in hasty consideration, then realized there wasn’t time to
debate options as the boat would soon be out of sight. She could
easily shout for help if the situation required it.

Crawling carefully to the
prow to minimize the effect of her departing mass, Ione
dexterously slipped over the side of the boat,
barely disturbing the water. After a momentary reconciliation with
its enveloping warmth, she stroked with silent precision for a
point of intersectio
n with the drifting
bedboat.
Mark caught up with
her
as
s
he
reached it, and
their bodies
ranged
side
by
side,
kicking to
stall
its
movement
.
Ione waved to
a
smart
slipper named Celestia on
watch
nearby, signaled for
silence; one of the few commands that was reliably acknowledged by
the women. A powerful odor wafted to her nostrils. Fighting down a
sudden anxiety, she
pulled
herself
up
to
stare
within the
vessel
.

Ione
blanched
at the sight of its cargo,
understood instantly that the women were going to be assaulted
soon
.
“You see
anyone?”

Mark shook his head, and she surveyed the
current carefully, pulse hammering, then decided it was necessary
to investigate further. “C’mon.”

They clambered
a
board, dripping in the
warm
subterranean
humidity
, and
she
reached out to touch the thick
cubes of white soap, heavy enough to load the
craft
down
and
arouse Mark’s curiosity. The slippers on watch upstream obviously
hadn’t noticed anything unusual about it.

The baleful, sweating potency of the soap
brought her to a sudden confrontation with the past—there was
enough of it onboard to spoil a large body of water. She was beset
with imagery of the cozy riparian dwellings once inhabited by her
people; open caverns adorned with every manner of luxury—rugs,
tapestries, beds and couches, toys and clothes for fun, and sweet
juices to embellish the pure, life-sustaining waters they drank and
swam.

An ache formed inside, a sorrow she had not
yet acknowledged, and Ione wrenched her mind back to utility with a
savage self-loathing for their present situation. It was the same
story all over again.

And now she was alone with a
man that had been a dangerous skulk just before some inexplicable
and frankly dubious transformation of identity had taken
place.
Ione had no idea who to trust, felt
an anxious cry welling up, a sound waiting for expression since
waking to Manassa’s kiss.

Mark
shook her gently
,
and she
started,
realized
she’d
been
muttering randomly,
shivering despite the warmth
. He
put an arm around her and they
leaned back against the headboard, legs stretched
out
over a sex of
pale
soap blocks, arranged
as a six of close-packed rows with a six of cubes in each
file.

T
hen
she was sobbing
. T
he
anxieties
of the migration came spilling out onto Mark’s shoulder,
vented the first chance she was away from Emma and Manassa. He held
her and they floated thus for a time, lost to the world
beyond
their
silent
embrace. He gently cleared his throat when her trembling subsided
finally, motioned to a set of oars.

“
We should get
back.”

She looked up to see
t
hey had long passed the most distant women
on watch. The bedboat was trapped in a shadowy lagoon denting the
outer radius of the circular current.

Her foot slid sideways,
hesitated, then touched the edge of a
soap
cube,
pristine
version of the
eroded b
anes
discovered
upstream from their long-lost
home
,
leaking
tendrils of spoiled water that reached with silent antipathy for
the women she loved, to find them at last—there was no eluding such
an enemy—ending life as they had known it. This catastrophe had
prompted a singular meeting of the doyennes, the only time she and
Emma had seen this small group of governing couples together in one
place. Then came the migration and the rest of her mind-twisting
history, and her shameful reawakening…

Soap. Ione was
roused to
an old
fury by
its
implacable menace, ever reaching from high waters
to find the low ones where they fled.

Mark shifted beside her,
uncoupled from her embrace, stood suddenly
.
He
reached down and
she watched
in bleak
astonishment
as
he
muscled a gleaming block
overhead
,
hove it
deep into scrub above the waterline where it could do no harm. The
effort sent the boat
rolling
chaotically
, and Ione grabbed his
waist
with a stifled
yelp
, dragging his mass into her
low-planted embrace.

She found his manhood in
abrupt conjunction with her lips, and as they steadied
the
mselves
the
inadvertent confrontation goaded him
to
firmness
.
They were still for a
moment, eyes
meeting
.

“
We really should get
back,”
Mark
whispered uneasily
.

“
We’ve come too far.
I
t would be exhausting to fight back
upstream.
We’ll go all the way
around,
” Ione decided, and
at this
pronouncement
his penis stiffened decisively.
She
felt a desire restively biding its time overwhelm her customary
control, erupting to actualization.