Ardor on Aros by Andrew J. Offutt Read Free Book Online Page A

as she could not feel mine: she was going to make it.
    She didn’t. What made that miserable gray beasty stop? It was days later that I learned: slooks, too, receive the projected thoughts of the people of Aros. And his master told him to stop and get the hell back. Confused, the slook dug in his forehooves, then his middle set, dragging, as is the way of slooks, the extra long back legs. Very efficient braking mechanism. Her brain registered the report of her ears: hooves drumming after her. Desperately she kicked the animal.
    At last he started forward, yielding to physical commands rather than vocal or mental ones: they hurt more. But he had hesitated just long enough, and that pause made a tremendous change in both her life and mine.
    Ard was alongside her, at the gallop. Without ever having seen a western movie in his life, he jumped.
    She woofed and tried to cling to the reins as his robed body crashed into hers. But Ard’s weight and impact were already toppling her from the saddle, and she released the reins as she—and I, in my mind—felt them start to cut into her/my fingers. She hung onto her sword, hoping she wouldn’t manage to cut herself with it when she
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    My mind felt the jar as hers did. With a heavy impact and a groan, both heightened by Ard’s weight. The monster fell on top.
    We do not roll. He merely lies atop me, on my back. His arms are a vise about my waist: pain. I gasp for breath, striving to get at my dagger. The sword is useless in this situation, but perhaps I can stab back…I gain the dagger hilt—and Ard exerts more strength in a lurch. Pain! My head roars. My eyes pop. Pain. I am sure ribs crack. I cannot breathe. Consciousness is failing. My fingers are as if mittened, scrabbling at the hilt of my knife.
    Ard releases me! I suck in all the air I can—drag out my dagger—Ard is pushing back from e. He is swinging a blow against the side of my hea—

5. The girl who was not Dejah Thoris
    I won’t try to keep you in suspense, or pretend that some miracle occurred, or that I valiantly dragged myself up, bounded in one mile-long leap to them, and chopped both of them into Vardor sausage. There was no miracle. No Aronian god popped out of the machine and intervened. I remained where I was, lying sprawled on the yellow desert. Through her mind, I “listened.”
    Ard had brought her down; Ard took his turn first. When she came to she was on her back in that soft yellow dust, her arms pulled up and back. The other Vardor, Oth, was holding them tight against the ground, which did not come close to requiring all his strength. Her legs were unfettered, as if that were of any value to her: the pain that awakened her was that of Ard’s entry. Apparently he accomplished it in about the same way mostly newly-web American husbands do (or did—you people grown up yet? Did the Freedom to Read of the Sixties help any?). Violently, suddenly, quickly, and totally without finesse or regard for her. Just do it and assume with o’erweening masculine ego that she’s loving every minute of it.
    Which, as it turned out, Arone women do.
    If Jadiriyah had been a maiden, she no longer had to worry about being snatched by unicorn hunters. Under a sky containing one big yellowish moon and, far across the heavens, another smaller one, I “witnessed”— experienced —a scene I’d only read about and seen—carefully presented. Ard had his Kang woman. Sprawled on my face on an alien planet, wallowing in soft dust (as she was, but on her back), I experienced all of it with the Jadiriyah. Rummaged by one eight-foot andromorph with blue-gray skin while his partner held her, she joined the ranks of girls who’ve had the experience without a hint of love. (About six-tenths, on Earth, except in California where it’s maybe eight-tenths. Here on Aros it’s closer to 9.99)
    I— I! —felt a jagged spear of pain,