Her resolve faltered. ’Am I interrupting something?”

The young blood with the colors squeezed out a low wolf whistle. “Stop that,” Eric said softly.

“Hey,” said another through a mouthful of teeth like curved yellow knitting needles. “I thought we was like all pals here. Share and share alike. No property.”

Eric looked at him. The boy with the teeth suddenly paled. He shot to his feet, staggered against the doorframe next to Moonchild, then managed somehow to eel out without touching her. His two buddies followed, stumbling all over each other in their eagerness to get outside without coming in contact with the slim young woman.

“What did you do to them?” she asked Eric, who still sat cross-legged and serene, like a slender youthful Buddha.

“Showed them the error of their ways,” he said with a smile. “We don’t tolerate sexism here.”

“So you have the power to give nightmares as well as beautiful dreams.”

He held his hands palm up and open on his thighs. “To every yin there must be yang. You’re Asian; surely that’s no surprise.”

She shook her head as if trying to drive away the omnipresent bugs, swarming in that especially frenetic way they did just before the rains hit again. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“They brought disturbing news,” he said. “Word on the street back home is the government massacred the jokers they took prisoner on the Rox.”

“No!”

He nodded. “It’s the rumor. But I believe it. Don’t you – really, deep inside?”

“I can’t. The government – it’s America! They’d never do anything like that! They wouldn’t permit it.”

“Then why,” he said calmly, “are you here and not there?”

She was in his arms, clinging to him like a baby monkey, weeping. He sat statue-solid, statue centered, holding her and whispering endearments into her hair until she cried herself out.

She rose. He looked up at her, calm and unsurprised as she stood over him. Her hair fell heavy across his forehead, his face. She put her hands on the tortured badlands of his cheeks.

She bent and kissed his knobbed and scab-like lips.

His eyes widened in surprise. Her tongue slid over his lips, insinuated itself between. He accepted her, caressed her tongue with his, then thrust it into her mouth.

She broke away, straightened. She reached up and removed the half mask, pulling it off over her hair. The right side of her face was stained with a port-wine birthmark like a splash of paint.

“Tsk, tsk.” Sitting back propped on the heels of his hands, Eric shook his head. “In a camp full of jokers you hide such a small deformity. I’m not ashamed to show my face.”

If he was trying to bait her, she refused to rise. “My mask is symbolic. And it is fitting that I wear it. Understand, I am a creature of the night.”

She stepped back into the shadows and was gone. Eric uttered a soft cry of surprise, started to stand.

“Wait,” her voice said. She seemed very near, but squint as he might, he could see nothing.

A bare foot emerged into the wan light-pool of the lantern, a leg, and then she was standing again before him. She was nude. Her breasts were small, pink-tipped and conical. Her pubic bush was a dainty vertical band, very sparse.

“I am a creature of light and darkness,” she said in a husky voice, “mostly darkness.”

Standing astride him, she drew off the denim vest he wore, pulled his white T-shirt up over his head. The skin of his chest was ridged and folded. She ran her lips over it.

He caressed her head with his rough hands. Her fingers worked inexpertly at his belt and the buttons of his jeans. After a moment he grinned at her and guided her hands away.

“I guess there are some things even an ace can’t do,” he said. She stood up, an uncertain look on her face. He unfastened the pants himself, slid them off.

He grasped her by the hips, kissed her in the midst of her bush. She gasped and grabbed his head with both hands. Her breathing went stop-and-go as he ran his tongue down the centerline of her pubic thatch.

The tip of his tongue slid down between her smooth-muscled thighs, parted the tangled hair, found the lips of her pussy and teased them apart. Her fingers drilled into the sides of his head.

A strangled sound escaped him. He pulled his head back. She looked down at him in confusion and disappointment.

“Careful, love,” he said. “You damn near squashed my head there. Don’t forget, you’ve got an ace’s strength.”

“Oh, dear. I am most terribly sorry.” She started to pull away, blushing, almost weeping in embarrassment.

He grabbed her by the buttocks and buried his face in her. She put her head back and moaned, practically collapsing onto him.

In less than a minute she cried out, sharply, sounding almost frightened. She rocked her hips forward into the sweet, insistent pressure of his tongue. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, froze, relaxed her hands to keep from harming him.

She pushed him away. “That was quick,” he said, looking up at her with her juices shining on his misshapen face. “You’re easy to please.”

“It was so… so intense,” she said breathlessly. “I was not expecting it.”

“Don’t tell me nobody ever did that to you before.”

“Not… that I recall.”

Eric shook his head. “Then I can confidently say your taste in men has improved, Isis.”

He straightened his legs. He put his hands on her waist and drew her down. She allowed herself to be drawn to her knees, down.

She went rigid as the head of his cock touched her pussy. Then she sat down upon him, moaning as he entered her.

“Ahh -” He took her face in his hands. “Haven’t you ever done this before either?”

“I – I don’t know.” She threw herself forward, breasts flattening against his chest, arms looping around his neck. She put her chin on his shoulder and rested her cheek against the roughness of his neck.

He drew up his knees, put his hands up behind her back, and began rocking his hips. The friction of his corrugated chest on her nipples was both painful and delicious. The sliding within her made it hard to concentrate, hard to breathe.

She heard the voices yammering within her. She firmly pressed them down. She did not ask much for herself – she did not know how. But this was what she wanted to do. This moment was hers.

She came again, three times, before they finished together, he lying on his back, body arching into her, braced at shoulders and heels as his head thumped heedless on the planks, she upright and astride, head tossing, hair waving like anarchy’s flag. Their hands were locked at the ends of outstretched arms. They cried, and strove together.

Drops of sweat fell into the midst of the desolation of Eric’s chest. Then she collapsed onto him. He held her, murmuring and caressing her hair.

When she was in control again – too soon, too soon; her control was so iron and constant that liberation had been as sweet as the physical pleasure – she raised her head and smiled at him.

“No dreams?” she asked, teasing, tentative lest he take offense.

He laughed, out of breath. “Whoa! I’m enjoying the dream we have here together. You’re generating this one, babe, and you’re doing just fine.”

She slid partway off him, slippery with sweat, resting an elbow on the harshness of a plank. “It is a dream, isn’t it?” she said, holding down the babble of voices within, but marking their presence. “All this – it’s not real, is it? It’s the hatred and injustice and war outside that are real.”

Her mind filled once more with the pastoral symphony of visions Mark had experienced at that first rally, when he and she and the rest first laid eyes on beautiful Eric. A land of peace and nature and harmony, where no smokestacks broke the sky and the words and stares of bigots no longer assailed jokers like thrown stones.

“That’s real, Isis. That’s the reality. It’s the rest that’s the dream – the nightmare. What we’re doing here, we’re dispelling the nightmare. Breaking the spell of the dark magic of Western values, Western materialism, Western linear thought.”