Dark Of The Woods

rocked with her. He lifted her face and kissed her nose. It was tiny and warm against his lips. He kissed her cheeks, neck, hair, lips… And she kissed back, with enthusiasm. He felt her tongue against his, her tears mingled with his.
    And the corridors of God's mind knew love…
    They told him Demos was a place without danger. Yet there had been the spiderbats when he had landed. The bird diving at the windscreen of the grav car on the way up from the port… the rat in the demolished gas shelter… And now the love he had for this alien woman. Yes, that was the most dangerous thing of all. And though Proteus floated only a short distance down the ancient passageway, this was the one danger the machine's powers could not protect him from…

Chapter Three
    The days seemed to pass as swiftly as the leaves fell from the yellow trees. One fled after the other with such rapidity that autumn was soon fast upon the fringes of winter and the air was nipped with the chill of coming snow. They were usually oblivious to the cold, for there was the warmth between them, the heat of their bodies. Occasionally, as the afternoon waned beyond the portals of the aviary and she would be required to return to the Sanctuary, he would begin thinking of the hopelessness of the situation and a chill would work its way into the base of his spine and crawl upwards along his back like a spider. It was in the fifth week of their lovemaking that time jerked to a hah in its rush past them, and he was forced to confront the nature of their future in a responsible manner.
    "When must you leave?" she asked, her head against his chest, her lips trembling on his skin with the words she spoke.
    "My notes are pretty complete."
    "Soon, then?"
    "I can't put them off much longer. Suspicions will grow."
    "What can we do?"
    He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, trying to clear his head to think. "There are two possibilities, I guess. First, I could fight the miscegenation laws through the courts. That's going to take most all the money I have. And I still might lose—most likely will lose—and go to jail anyway. The other way is for me to leave, have you smuggled off Demos, smuggled onto another world—some backwoods place—and buy a place deep in some wildland area where the neighbors wouldn't be a problem. Then live in secrecy. There are a good many danger points, like smuggling you off, getting you onto a second world without customs finding you…"
    "The first would not be so criminal. Maybe they would take that into consideration."
    He said nothing, suddenly filled with a panic that threatened to take control of him. It had been all right to theorize about what they could do, to let plans roil over one another in his mind—but to speak them, to talk about them as if a decision must be reached, was more than he could stand up to. He lit a cigarette, savored the smooth smoke of the drug weed, hoping it would relax him more quickly than usual. He tried to speak, to talk over the problem with her, but the words wouldn't come. When she asked what was the matter, he found he could not even look at her. A coldness, a terror, a calculated emotionlessness had seeped into his mind and was struggling to take over the reins and guide his actions.
    For a long while, they lay together, saying nothing, listening to the occasional noise of animals in the trees outside and the far and melancholy cry of the Wintercrest, a white, lavishly feathered bird common in the cold months on this part of the continent.
    Finally, she asked, "Are you married?"
    His voice bounced into his throat unbidden, "Yes." It fell into the air like hot, smoking lead. It was the way out, the way to avoid losing everything. He was not married, of course. But if he could lie, if he could say that he was, if he could dismiss all of this so swiftly with that one, three-letter word, didn't that prove that there wasn't the land of love here that he had once thought there was? Yes. That was it. He had been following along a dangerous trail with only disaster at the end, lulled by infatuation and mistaking that for love. If he had really loved her, he would not have hesitated a moment to risk everything to have her. He would not have lied so glibly, so quickly, so easily. He had very nearly blown everything for infatuation, for lust mixed with curiosity, and that had been sheerest folly.
    They were silent a time.
    "It's just as well," she said at last. She hesitated, blushed for the first