Habu. James B. Johnson
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Even as she watched, fascinated by the alien phenomenon, his eyes milked over; after a short time, human intelligence looked out at her.
A strong gust of wind and rain threatened her, taking her balance away.
Reubin steadied her with his left hand. It wasn’t just the possibility of falling which frightened her.
She motioned him back with her.
He took a drink from the bottle of 150 sour mash he held, and then rose slowly. Tique backed against a strong wind to a double seat near the center of the roof. Reubin followed her.
She sank onto the seat, found the controls, and raised the bubble until Reubin stopped her halfway. At least it was on the upwind side, blocking the shrieking wind.
Reubin stood in front of her, soaked, the water streaked on his face mimicking tear streaks. He was breathing heavily, as if interrupted during some physical feat.
Overcoming her initial revulsion, she signaled him to sit next to her.
For a moment, he resisted. Then he shrugged and sank beside her. He held out the bottle.
She wasn’t going to, but she changed her mind. She took the bottle and tipped it to her lips. The strong sour mash burned her throat. She held in a cough and gave it back to him.
“What are you doing up here?” she asked.
His face contorted and he didn’t answer. In that moment she saw he was vulnerable. No mask. Another Reubin Flood.
She sat with him for a while, not pushing it.
Finally, he said, “Challenging the elements.”
“The weather or the universe?” she asked.
He looked surprised. “Both, I suppose.”
A sheet of rain whipped around the partially closed bubble and blew over them.
Suddenly she realized it. “You were up here grieving.” Her voice rose to overcome the roar of the wind and she worried that it sounded accusatory.
He took another drink and didn’t answer her.
That was what he’d been doing. Maybe he wasn’t so...frightening after all. Or would the term be disconcerting? She found herself constantly revising her opinion of him.
Lightning flashed over their heads and immediate peals of thunder throbbed through her body, threatening to turn her insides to liquid.
“I had to do something,” he said, not raising his voice so that she had to strain to hear him.
A strange cathartic, she thought. A strange man. “I understand.”
“Do you?” he asked. “I have sorrow, I have grief. Those have been my only companions in times past.” His face fell. She knew he was grieving for Mother whether or not he admitted it. She had to read his lips to understand what he next said. “It isn’t the first time for...for me.” He finished lamely and Tique knew that he’d been close to confiding in her.
He drank again and so did she.
She felt that finally they’d reached an accommodation—an uneasy one, but an accommodation nonetheless.
All the more difficult because of his strangeness. What tragedy had struck him?
“Something in your past?” she asked, mesmerized. “This happened to you before?” What was he talking about?
Again he drank deeply and stared off into the storm.
The silence stretched between them, punctured only by the chaos of nature awry.
“Would you tell me about it now?” she asked gently, changing the focus of her questioning. “You and Mother? About you?”
He shrugged and looked off into the storm.
“Who are you and where do you come from?” A last try. She’d speculated before that he was one of those closemouthed Original Earthers.
He drank and remained silent.
“I’d like to know about Mother,” Tique said awkwardly. “I know the story as she told it, but there are gaps.” She felt she was exposing some of her inner self to this strange man. And immediately realized that was probably what he was afraid of. She threaded her right arm through his left.
He sat there, staring into the night.
Tique waited. After a while, she said, “You know, I resented you from the start. You were taking Mother away from me. Then you came in here like some sort of self-appointed bigwig, demanding, taking, not giving. I hated you because you intruded upon my loss. Then I thought about what you said. You said that Mother was going away with you, so Fels Nodivving or somebody killed her. You admitted it was your fault she’s dead now. What am I to think? Tell me, Reubin Flood. What the hell am I to think?” At the end her words poured out. “And you didn’t even show grief or sorrow, no pain or distress, or even remorse at allegedly having caused all this.” Until now, she amended to herself.
“I mourn differently than mosst humans,” he said without looking at her. “For I have had more practice. More opportunity. But I do sso in my own fashion.” His voice had taken on that strange sibilant manner. He seemed to realize this and shook his head as if to clear it. He upended the bottle once again.
Tique felt an unusual chill travel through her body when he’d spoken thusly. The chill, she felt certain, was an atavistic fear of something deadly, something unknown. She took the bottle from him and swallowed several gulps of sour mash. Then she looked at him and he seemed human again.
Vulnerable again.
She returned the bottle to him. She’d pried too deeply into him, his makeup, his past.
“I find I can talk about Alexandra,” he said. The dissonance was gone from his voice.
Lightning flashed and the skies clashed, providing an eerie background to his story.
CHAPTER THREE
REUBIN
Reubin remembered it all and told little. He had first met Alexandra Sovereign on the planet Karg. Specifically, hastily leaving the planet Karg.
Reubin leaned into the wind. The airbarge he’d hijacked buckled from enemy fire. He slewed the ungainly machine so that it flew with the left front quarter panel facing forward. Thus the rear of the barge and its cargo acted as a buffer between him and the enemy fire.
An energy beam ignited a crate of Leninist Army manuals on the edge of the barge. The wind whipped the flames into a trail behind them. The craft shuddered as a missile struck somewhere below.
Habu was awake fully now, figuratively leaning over Reubin’s shoulder, observing and biding his time. The serpent had lurked just under the surface, no longer somnolent for the battles they’d just been through. Sometimes Reubin had called upon Habu and his abilities.
*I am here. Ready.*
-I know. Not yet. I might need your reflexes shortly, Reubin told the other.
*I am ready.*
Reubin didn’t want all of Habu. He never wanted all of that creature. But over the centuries they’d reached an accommodation. For survival. Of both. Because of Habu, Reubin, at the end of his lives, courted danger. Thus, in turn, he needed Habu. An unbreakable cycle which Reubin would gladly escape. Habu in full control frightened him. But Reubin respected Habu’s talents and abilities and, when necessary, used them.
Down deep, Reubin was worried. For the compulsion to court danger had been limited to the tail ends of his lives. However, during this life and part of the last, he found himself drawn to perilous situations.
He forced his attention back to flying the barge.
Reubin’s hands flew over the controls to compensate for the gaping hole in the