+J.M.J.+
Male-Shaped Magdalen
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Some really hard writing here, very difficult sexual writing, no smut but very dark, very steely. When I wrote this, I actually was thinking of another Rumer Godden novel, _Black Narcissus_, which deals with the moral collapse of members of a convent of English nuns in a mission field in the Chinese Himalayas, and which was made into a highly controversial (but otherwise excellent) movie in the late 1940s. Like I said, I don't intend to make nuns look bad here, I'm only showing the moral odyssey of one very flawed Sister.
Disclaimer:
See Part One
"Perhaps you should have Sister Mercedes take over looking after the Mechas for a few days, until we can find a place for Joe," Father Marcus sad to Sister Madalaine when she went to confession to him the morning after the dream.
"That might be just the right thing to do," Sister Madalaine said.
"I'll talk to Sister Mercedes," he promised.
So for the next few days, she worked in the garden with Rufus, the old gardener, but even there she couldn't completely avoid Joe, though Rufus kept an eye out for "the young metal whippersnapper".
"Too bad you're not a laywoman still," Rufus said as they mulched the hydrangeas. "You'd make a nice pair."
She looked up at the older man's honest, lined face. "Don't tempt me, Rufus. I have a hard enough time controlling my own thoughts."
"Sorry. You're so like my own granddaughter that I forget sometimes."
She kept her eyes on Rufus's eyes the whole time they were talking, then she lowered them to the compost they worked into the soil at the base of the bush. She'd seen Joe on a path below them, looking up at her, not lecherously, but admiringly. She wished he would have looked at her with the former in his eyes, it would make his attentions so much easier for her to repulse.
"Your friend's getting cabin fever," Sister Mercedes reported to Madalaine after supper one night, two weeks after they had brought Joe to the St. Aquin House.
"Have you told him why he can't leave the convent grounds?" Sister Madalaine asked.
"I did; he understands, but he doesn't like it, if you can put it that way."
"It's the only way to put it. Is that why you're letting him roam the gardens?"
"It was the least I could do for him. He wanted to do more: he was making eyes at me all week."
"Uh oh," Sister Madalaine said, her cheeks warming.
"It wouldn't be so bad if he were of flesh and blood and I was an ordinary lay woman," Sister Mercedes said.
"It's too bad so few men these days are willing to be as gentle and considerate as Joe was programmed to be, then women wouldn't feel like they 'need' something like him," Sister Madalaine said, gazing out the latticed dining room window to the garden path below, where Terez, Rufus's granddaughter come to visit him, stood chatting with Joe. She moved out of the range of the window: a moment later, she entered the dining room through the garden door.
"What a charmer," she said, her face a little pink. She eyed Sister Madalaine. "Oops, I really shouldn't have said that."
"It's all right, you're only human," Sister Mercedes said.
"I shouldn't anyway, Ion might get suspicious if he found out who I was talking to, but that young fellow just gets to me!" Terez said.
"They built him that way," Sister Madalaine said with a shrug.
Nights were the hardest for her. All day long she could keep her hands and her head busy with work, but when she went to sleep on the cot in her cell, the thoughts and images she'd turned away came back to pest her. Of themselves, she knew the dreams were not sinful, but they assaulted her senses so hard that the images often carried over into the day, as floaters on the fringes of her mind. But she set them aside calmly. Flailing at them did no good: rather, it fuelled the fire and the images crowded into her imagination more intensely.
As long as her work kept her away from Joe, she had little trouble, but if she even ventured into the same space as he, some vibration passed between him and her and she caught herself blushing all over. He only had to look at her and that got her temperature soaring.
But, as she found out, she was not the only one suffering on account of Joe. More than once, Sister Irene, the gatekeeper had to drive Bo Bainbridge and his thugs off the convent steps. They'd always leave muttering things like, "Too bad he's only a mech and he can't infect you or get you pregnant, then you'd have to own up!"
Once in a while, Sister Madalaine couldn't help thinking they'd brought trouble to the convent when they'd brought Joe in, but to do otherwise would have ended in his destruction. The CRF had been trying to construct a sanctuary for Mechas in trouble and their sister-house in Salt Lake City had offered to help them, but this was still under construction and until then, they would have to house him in their guest house. There were a few research facilities that were curious about Joe's unusual sense of self-preservation, but they did not dare turn Joe over to them. Too many of these labs practised Mechasection, dismantling Mechas to see what made them work as they did.
The locomotion actuator for the gardener Mecha finally arrived on a rainy day when Joe was confined to the guest house.
Sister Madalaine set to work, installing the part on the old Mecha. she had its metal torso open as she worked amongst its metallic viscerae, when she had a strange feeling she was being watched.
She looked over her shoulder to find Joe standing in the doorway between the work room and the main room of the house. He leaned his shoulders against the doorframe, one hand on his hip, arm akimbo. She looked away, back to the Mecha on the table.
"You are a deft worker," he said. "You find much pleasure in what you do."
"I like helping people," she said.
"So you consider my kind to be persons?"
"Yes. Perhaps not exactly like Orgas, but equitably similar."
She heard his garments rustle as she came to her side. "That is something I have hardly heard from anyone, much less from the religious," he said. "Most religious folk I have encountered wither derided my kind or have used me in ways very much at odds with the spiritual nature they claim to possess." This last he said with a mocking note to his voice.
That didn't surprise her; she knew the types, the ones who warned others of making use of sex-Mechas and yet indulged in the very same activity.
He perched himself on the end of the work table, drawing up one knee and draping his arm over it, his body leaning back, leaning gracefullu against his other arm. He lowered his eyes, watching her at work.
"And what of you? To which coterie do you belong?" he asked.
"Neither," she said.
"But you have renounced the pleasure of a man's company," he pointed out.
"I have, and I think it's sinful for someone to make use of someone like you as a lover. But there are much worse things than that."
He smiled. "Such a contrast to those who regard me as a walking sin."
She tightened the bolts on the locomotion actuator and closed the access plate on the Mecha's torso. She hit the activation switch on the back of its neck.
The gardener Mecha pulled its body upright and turned its head, looking about.
"Can I move now?" it asked in a creaky old man's voice.
"Of course you can," she said, starting to help the gardener off the table and get its feet on the floor, but Joe got up quicker and offered her a hand.
"I would not be a gentleman if I left you to shift that by yourself," Joe said.
"There's a thoughtful young man," the gardener-Mecha said.
"One does what one can," Joe said.
The Sisters soon found an owner for the gardener Mecha; that afternoon, Sister Madalaine delivered it thence. This got her away from Joe for a few more moments.
But the dreams got worse. One night, a week later, she awoke dreanched with sweat, the tee-shirt and black leggins she wore under her habit gummed to her skin, her flesh still tingling. The dream had fooled nature into response.
She got up and went to the window to clear her head with a breath of night air.
Below, in the garden, Joe sat on one of the stone benches, the moonlight gleaming on his glossy black hair and garments, his eyes raised to the heavens. He looked toward her window. She knew that, as a Mecha, he had night vision, but could he see her at the window? A smile crossed his face, and she knew he'd seen her.
She couldn't take it any longer. God forgive her, but she just had to go down there and join him. Leaving her habit where it lay on her one hard chair, she pulled her shoes on and tiptoed down and out to the garden, careful so as not to be heard by the other sleeping Sisters.
She found Joe still waiting, exactly where he had been sitting before. He rose to meet her and helped her to sit down.
"And you came," he said. "Could you not sleep?"
"No, I was dreaming," she admitted.
He sat down on the bench beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She took his hands in hers, looking him in the eye. This was not for her, she told herself: this was for him so his stir-craziness would cease. Something like him had to continue his gallantries, even innocently, or else his ego-enhancer would go awry.
"Did you dream of me?" he asked, looking at her with what looked like a hopeful smile.
She nodded. "I did."
"And how did you dream of me? It might be within my power to make it come true."
"We were alone together, under a flowering bush...in each other's arms."
His smile smoldered and he looked at her with hooded eyes. "Such a beautiful dream, one I would gladly fulfill, had we the proper setting."
"There's a nook down by the river you'd love to see," she said. She stood up. He rose with her and let her lead the way down to the side gate.
She knew the combination for the smart lock on the gate, which the supply trucks used. She led him out beyond the low wall and into ther trees that surrounded the convent, down the slope to the river.
She'd often walked these woods, looking for the derelict Mechas that hid here, so she knew all the nooks and small caves above the river. She led the way, but Joe kept a hand on hers, at times reaching to steady her with his free hand.
_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_
She moved aside a branch of flowering mulberry just starting to blossom, uncovering a shallow cave, mossy-floored, but dry.
"Is this the bower?" he asked. "Here is the flowering bush."
"Yes, this is it," she said.
He had to stoop slightly to accompany her into the depths of the grotto. She sank down on the moss. He sat down next to her reclinging on his side and pulling her down gently.
"I sense fear in you," he said. "I smell fear flowing from your skin. What have you to fear from me?"
"It's just...I know you need someone to elicit your attentions, and I'd be the first to say they wanted you to romance them up."
"But something holds you back...Is it because you are promised to the one who made you?"
She bent her head, avoiding his eyes. "Yes."
"I have heard your God described as a god of love and forgiveness. If that is so, could he not forgive you should you yield to your nature and my embrace for even this once?"
"He could, but I shouldn't take advantage of His love." She tried to think of a way to explain it that he could understand. "It would be like a woman forcing herself on you."
"That has been enacted upon me, but as soon as she started to force me, my being quiesced to her."
"And so God would let me do what I willed, even if it broke His law, but it would damage my end of the relationship with Him."
She ran her hand over his soft cheek. He needed female attention.
He responded, moving in, closer, lowering his face to hers in a long kiss. She withdrew her desire, letting him drink deeply of her. Although her flesh made total use of him, as only she could, since she knew what he was capable of, her spirit and will withdrew.
"Is your name Madalaine, or is it true that Catholic nuns change their names?" he asked, his lips against hers.
"It was Berlin," she replied.
"Berlin...ahh...a strong name for a strong woman. But I feel you going weak..." His hand ran down her cheek ot her neck and beyond. "Under may touch..." His hand found the hem of her tee shirt and slid underneath. "As pliable as a flower."
Her body might seem that way to his sensors, but her soul hardened itself, frozen, even as she opened his garments and let him unsheath her from hers and run his lips over every inch of her trembling body.
She'd cried out to God in her lovers' arms, but never like this. She detected a note of desperation, even contrition there.
_Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa!_
She fell asleep almost as soon as he had released her. As her awareness withdrew, she sensed both satisfaction and emptiness in her being.
She awakened, wondering where she was, why she lay on soft mass, damp beneath her bare skin, and who lay beside her, warming her flesh. Was this a dream?
She started to slip back to sleep, but she jolted awake from realization: Joe lay at her side, one arm draped over her, the other pillowing her head.
She sat up and reached for her clothes, knowing from the absence of her habit the enormity of what had happened, and avoiding Joe's eyes.
"We're in bad trouble," she said.
"Are we?" he asked, innocent.
"I am," she said, turning away. She pulled on her shirt and her blakc leggings.
"Have I served you well, you servant of the servants of God's servants?" he asked, still innocent. He knew nothing better.
She couldn't deny it. To say otherwise would have been a lie. "Yes, you have. You served my body well, but not my soul."
Daybreak glimmered in the mouth of the cave. She looked at him long enough to see the puzzled look in his eyes, the closest he could come to a troubled expression. "Not your soul?"
"It's not your fault," she said. "It's mine. I'm not of this world any more."
"I could tell that you once were a woman of experience," he said, almost teasingly as he reached for his own garments. "I could tell what you wanted."
She turned away from him again. First bell would be ringing shortly. How was she to explain this
Her ears pricked up. She heard voices, men's voices nearby. She edged to the mouth of the grotto and looked out. She recognized the voices of the Bainbridge gang, rummaging about in the bracken. She knew they searched the grottoes just as assiduously as her and Sister Mercedes had, so there was no staying put for her and Joe.
"What is it?" Joe asked, coming up behind her and trying to slip his arm about her waist.
She pushed him back. "They're coming for you."
"Who are they?"
"The same men who tried to stone you. Come on, we have to get back to the convent."
They crept out into the growing daylight. She heard loud cries, cut off by a loud crash in a grotto further upstream.
"I can't take you back to the house," she said.
"Why can you not?" he asked.
"It will be easier for them to catch you: I'll slow you down." He had put his hand on her arm; she pushed him away. "You'll have to go on...alone. You'll have to run, put as much distance between them and you as you can."
"I must tell you one thing: I have never sensed this before, but if I could, I would want to stay with you."
"Put my wants above yours."
"And what do you want of me?" he asked, almost eager.
"RUN!"
A beam of light from a flashlight nosed about in the bracken. She ran right into it, distracting them while Joe escaped.
"There she is! there's one of the sluts that sheltered that thing!" a voice yelled behind the light.
A bolt of energy hit her. She blacked out.
She came to in the convent courtyard, her clothes soaked. Father Marcus stood over her with an empty pail he set down on the ground.
"She's coming to," he said.
"What happened?" she asked weakly. A group of Sisters surrounded her. Sister Consolata and Sister Tekla, the infirmarian lifted her up off the ground. "Where's Joe?"
"Don't worry about him just yet," Sister Consolata said, as she and Sister Tekla carried her up to the infirmary, Father Marucs following.
"You're very lucky to be alive," he said. "The Bainbridge clan dragged you here, wanted me to give them permission to stone you to death. They said they spotted you with Joe, but they couldn't catch up with him. They'd hit you with a bolt from a shock pistol, but they said you deserved worse."
"What did you do anyway?" Sister Consolata asked.
Now came the moment she dreaded. "The Bainbridges are right: I have done something worthy of death," Madalaine admitted. "I lay with Joe."
"I saw that coming," Sister Mercedes said.
"I wish I had," Berlin admitted.
They let her sleep in next morning, but she knew it had less to do with her frayed nerves than other considerations.
About midmorning, Sister Jeromeia came in. Berlin braced herself for the verbal firestorm bound to come.
"Don't start making excuses for yourself," Sister Jeromeia warned. "You know you're guilty."
Bring it on, Berlin thought.
"I guess YOU won't be renewing your temporary vows next week. Is this why you never made full profession? So you could duck out whenever it suited you?"
"I did it that way because I wasn't sure if I could handle it all at once: I just wanted to take it one year at a time." Berlin said.
"We took you in. You seemed sincere when you told us you thought you were called," Sister Jeromeia said, pacing. "But you turned your back on your vows. I've worked with dozens of Sisters over the years, but I never had one as ungrateful or pernicious as you. Beautiful work, Madalaine, or is it Berlin now?"
"I made a mistake. I didn't watch myself..."
"Shut UP! I wasn't finished talking, and I don't need to hear your excuses either." Sister Jeromeia leaned over her, looking her in the eye. "If you were my daughter, I'd have you flogged for this."
Berlin-Madalaine raised her head. "And who'd do the flogging? You? Father Marcus? You know he wouldn't help you with that. And how do you know that I'm not a masochist and that flogging would just get me wailing?"
Sister Jeromeia looked baffled but only for a second. A steely kind of disdain crossed her face.
At that moment, the door opened and Sister Superior came into the room. "That's more than enough, Sister Jeromeia," she said with a cool firm tone. Sister Jeromeia went out.
Berlin looked up at Sister Superior who sat down in the chair beside the bed. "I forgot how hard Sister Jeromeia could be," the older woman said.
"Maybe I needed it, all things considered," Berlin said.
"No, you didn't need that kind of ill-treatment. I know how sensitive you really are."
"I didn't do this because I was lusting after him. I did it just to keep him from going stir-crazy."
"Your devotion is to be admired," Sister Superior said. "However, that doesn't excuse breaking your vows."
Berlin bent her head. "I know."
Later that day, Berlin went to the storage room in the basement of the convent, where she found the box containing the clothes she had worn from when she had first entered the convent: a slightly form-fitting black tunic and leggings, and a sleeveless violet caftan with slits in the skirts, almost to the waist, which she wore gathered with a belt.
"So you really are leaving us?" Sister Superior asked, when Berlin came up to her room, to take leave of her.
"I had been considering taking a leave of absence to decide what I really want," Berlin admitted. "And to find Joe if he's all right."
"We know one thing: Bainbridge never got him, or we would have heard about it by now. Do you have any idea where he may have gone?" Sister Superior asked.
"I have an idea where he isn't," Berlin replied. "He won't have gone back to Haddonfield, and since that's so close to Rouge City, he won't have gone there. But if you were a lover-Mecha on the run, what would be your best place to hide?"
"Probably in plain sight amongst a lot of other Mechas."
"Which leaves us only one other possibility: Nova Vegas."
Sister Superior nodded. "If you must go there to find him, then do what you must."
Berlin put out her hand and clasped the older Sister's wrist. "Thank you."
"One thing: you know I don't condemn you for what you did or what you are doing. I'd probably do the same thing, fall for his charms, if I found myself in the same circumstances. I just wish you were leaving under better conditions."
"I may be back. I haven't found him yet and I might not find him at all. I can't tell you how this will end until I've reached it."
That evening, with some money borrowed from Father Marcus, Berlin rented a car and set out, heading west for Nova Vegas, keeping an eye open for any male hitchhikers in gleaming black.
Afterword:
I actually intend this to end here, but if you think it needs more closure at the end, let me know. I'll knock something together...
Male-Shaped Magdalen
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Some really hard writing here, very difficult sexual writing, no smut but very dark, very steely. When I wrote this, I actually was thinking of another Rumer Godden novel, _Black Narcissus_, which deals with the moral collapse of members of a convent of English nuns in a mission field in the Chinese Himalayas, and which was made into a highly controversial (but otherwise excellent) movie in the late 1940s. Like I said, I don't intend to make nuns look bad here, I'm only showing the moral odyssey of one very flawed Sister.
Disclaimer:
See Part One
"Perhaps you should have Sister Mercedes take over looking after the Mechas for a few days, until we can find a place for Joe," Father Marcus sad to Sister Madalaine when she went to confession to him the morning after the dream.
"That might be just the right thing to do," Sister Madalaine said.
"I'll talk to Sister Mercedes," he promised.
So for the next few days, she worked in the garden with Rufus, the old gardener, but even there she couldn't completely avoid Joe, though Rufus kept an eye out for "the young metal whippersnapper".
"Too bad you're not a laywoman still," Rufus said as they mulched the hydrangeas. "You'd make a nice pair."
She looked up at the older man's honest, lined face. "Don't tempt me, Rufus. I have a hard enough time controlling my own thoughts."
"Sorry. You're so like my own granddaughter that I forget sometimes."
She kept her eyes on Rufus's eyes the whole time they were talking, then she lowered them to the compost they worked into the soil at the base of the bush. She'd seen Joe on a path below them, looking up at her, not lecherously, but admiringly. She wished he would have looked at her with the former in his eyes, it would make his attentions so much easier for her to repulse.
"Your friend's getting cabin fever," Sister Mercedes reported to Madalaine after supper one night, two weeks after they had brought Joe to the St. Aquin House.
"Have you told him why he can't leave the convent grounds?" Sister Madalaine asked.
"I did; he understands, but he doesn't like it, if you can put it that way."
"It's the only way to put it. Is that why you're letting him roam the gardens?"
"It was the least I could do for him. He wanted to do more: he was making eyes at me all week."
"Uh oh," Sister Madalaine said, her cheeks warming.
"It wouldn't be so bad if he were of flesh and blood and I was an ordinary lay woman," Sister Mercedes said.
"It's too bad so few men these days are willing to be as gentle and considerate as Joe was programmed to be, then women wouldn't feel like they 'need' something like him," Sister Madalaine said, gazing out the latticed dining room window to the garden path below, where Terez, Rufus's granddaughter come to visit him, stood chatting with Joe. She moved out of the range of the window: a moment later, she entered the dining room through the garden door.
"What a charmer," she said, her face a little pink. She eyed Sister Madalaine. "Oops, I really shouldn't have said that."
"It's all right, you're only human," Sister Mercedes said.
"I shouldn't anyway, Ion might get suspicious if he found out who I was talking to, but that young fellow just gets to me!" Terez said.
"They built him that way," Sister Madalaine said with a shrug.
Nights were the hardest for her. All day long she could keep her hands and her head busy with work, but when she went to sleep on the cot in her cell, the thoughts and images she'd turned away came back to pest her. Of themselves, she knew the dreams were not sinful, but they assaulted her senses so hard that the images often carried over into the day, as floaters on the fringes of her mind. But she set them aside calmly. Flailing at them did no good: rather, it fuelled the fire and the images crowded into her imagination more intensely.
As long as her work kept her away from Joe, she had little trouble, but if she even ventured into the same space as he, some vibration passed between him and her and she caught herself blushing all over. He only had to look at her and that got her temperature soaring.
But, as she found out, she was not the only one suffering on account of Joe. More than once, Sister Irene, the gatekeeper had to drive Bo Bainbridge and his thugs off the convent steps. They'd always leave muttering things like, "Too bad he's only a mech and he can't infect you or get you pregnant, then you'd have to own up!"
Once in a while, Sister Madalaine couldn't help thinking they'd brought trouble to the convent when they'd brought Joe in, but to do otherwise would have ended in his destruction. The CRF had been trying to construct a sanctuary for Mechas in trouble and their sister-house in Salt Lake City had offered to help them, but this was still under construction and until then, they would have to house him in their guest house. There were a few research facilities that were curious about Joe's unusual sense of self-preservation, but they did not dare turn Joe over to them. Too many of these labs practised Mechasection, dismantling Mechas to see what made them work as they did.
The locomotion actuator for the gardener Mecha finally arrived on a rainy day when Joe was confined to the guest house.
Sister Madalaine set to work, installing the part on the old Mecha. she had its metal torso open as she worked amongst its metallic viscerae, when she had a strange feeling she was being watched.
She looked over her shoulder to find Joe standing in the doorway between the work room and the main room of the house. He leaned his shoulders against the doorframe, one hand on his hip, arm akimbo. She looked away, back to the Mecha on the table.
"You are a deft worker," he said. "You find much pleasure in what you do."
"I like helping people," she said.
"So you consider my kind to be persons?"
"Yes. Perhaps not exactly like Orgas, but equitably similar."
She heard his garments rustle as she came to her side. "That is something I have hardly heard from anyone, much less from the religious," he said. "Most religious folk I have encountered wither derided my kind or have used me in ways very much at odds with the spiritual nature they claim to possess." This last he said with a mocking note to his voice.
That didn't surprise her; she knew the types, the ones who warned others of making use of sex-Mechas and yet indulged in the very same activity.
He perched himself on the end of the work table, drawing up one knee and draping his arm over it, his body leaning back, leaning gracefullu against his other arm. He lowered his eyes, watching her at work.
"And what of you? To which coterie do you belong?" he asked.
"Neither," she said.
"But you have renounced the pleasure of a man's company," he pointed out.
"I have, and I think it's sinful for someone to make use of someone like you as a lover. But there are much worse things than that."
He smiled. "Such a contrast to those who regard me as a walking sin."
She tightened the bolts on the locomotion actuator and closed the access plate on the Mecha's torso. She hit the activation switch on the back of its neck.
The gardener Mecha pulled its body upright and turned its head, looking about.
"Can I move now?" it asked in a creaky old man's voice.
"Of course you can," she said, starting to help the gardener off the table and get its feet on the floor, but Joe got up quicker and offered her a hand.
"I would not be a gentleman if I left you to shift that by yourself," Joe said.
"There's a thoughtful young man," the gardener-Mecha said.
"One does what one can," Joe said.
The Sisters soon found an owner for the gardener Mecha; that afternoon, Sister Madalaine delivered it thence. This got her away from Joe for a few more moments.
But the dreams got worse. One night, a week later, she awoke dreanched with sweat, the tee-shirt and black leggins she wore under her habit gummed to her skin, her flesh still tingling. The dream had fooled nature into response.
She got up and went to the window to clear her head with a breath of night air.
Below, in the garden, Joe sat on one of the stone benches, the moonlight gleaming on his glossy black hair and garments, his eyes raised to the heavens. He looked toward her window. She knew that, as a Mecha, he had night vision, but could he see her at the window? A smile crossed his face, and she knew he'd seen her.
She couldn't take it any longer. God forgive her, but she just had to go down there and join him. Leaving her habit where it lay on her one hard chair, she pulled her shoes on and tiptoed down and out to the garden, careful so as not to be heard by the other sleeping Sisters.
She found Joe still waiting, exactly where he had been sitting before. He rose to meet her and helped her to sit down.
"And you came," he said. "Could you not sleep?"
"No, I was dreaming," she admitted.
He sat down on the bench beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She took his hands in hers, looking him in the eye. This was not for her, she told herself: this was for him so his stir-craziness would cease. Something like him had to continue his gallantries, even innocently, or else his ego-enhancer would go awry.
"Did you dream of me?" he asked, looking at her with what looked like a hopeful smile.
She nodded. "I did."
"And how did you dream of me? It might be within my power to make it come true."
"We were alone together, under a flowering bush...in each other's arms."
His smile smoldered and he looked at her with hooded eyes. "Such a beautiful dream, one I would gladly fulfill, had we the proper setting."
"There's a nook down by the river you'd love to see," she said. She stood up. He rose with her and let her lead the way down to the side gate.
She knew the combination for the smart lock on the gate, which the supply trucks used. She led him out beyond the low wall and into ther trees that surrounded the convent, down the slope to the river.
She'd often walked these woods, looking for the derelict Mechas that hid here, so she knew all the nooks and small caves above the river. She led the way, but Joe kept a hand on hers, at times reaching to steady her with his free hand.
_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_
She moved aside a branch of flowering mulberry just starting to blossom, uncovering a shallow cave, mossy-floored, but dry.
"Is this the bower?" he asked. "Here is the flowering bush."
"Yes, this is it," she said.
He had to stoop slightly to accompany her into the depths of the grotto. She sank down on the moss. He sat down next to her reclinging on his side and pulling her down gently.
"I sense fear in you," he said. "I smell fear flowing from your skin. What have you to fear from me?"
"It's just...I know you need someone to elicit your attentions, and I'd be the first to say they wanted you to romance them up."
"But something holds you back...Is it because you are promised to the one who made you?"
She bent her head, avoiding his eyes. "Yes."
"I have heard your God described as a god of love and forgiveness. If that is so, could he not forgive you should you yield to your nature and my embrace for even this once?"
"He could, but I shouldn't take advantage of His love." She tried to think of a way to explain it that he could understand. "It would be like a woman forcing herself on you."
"That has been enacted upon me, but as soon as she started to force me, my being quiesced to her."
"And so God would let me do what I willed, even if it broke His law, but it would damage my end of the relationship with Him."
She ran her hand over his soft cheek. He needed female attention.
He responded, moving in, closer, lowering his face to hers in a long kiss. She withdrew her desire, letting him drink deeply of her. Although her flesh made total use of him, as only she could, since she knew what he was capable of, her spirit and will withdrew.
"Is your name Madalaine, or is it true that Catholic nuns change their names?" he asked, his lips against hers.
"It was Berlin," she replied.
"Berlin...ahh...a strong name for a strong woman. But I feel you going weak..." His hand ran down her cheek ot her neck and beyond. "Under may touch..." His hand found the hem of her tee shirt and slid underneath. "As pliable as a flower."
Her body might seem that way to his sensors, but her soul hardened itself, frozen, even as she opened his garments and let him unsheath her from hers and run his lips over every inch of her trembling body.
She'd cried out to God in her lovers' arms, but never like this. She detected a note of desperation, even contrition there.
_Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa!_
She fell asleep almost as soon as he had released her. As her awareness withdrew, she sensed both satisfaction and emptiness in her being.
She awakened, wondering where she was, why she lay on soft mass, damp beneath her bare skin, and who lay beside her, warming her flesh. Was this a dream?
She started to slip back to sleep, but she jolted awake from realization: Joe lay at her side, one arm draped over her, the other pillowing her head.
She sat up and reached for her clothes, knowing from the absence of her habit the enormity of what had happened, and avoiding Joe's eyes.
"We're in bad trouble," she said.
"Are we?" he asked, innocent.
"I am," she said, turning away. She pulled on her shirt and her blakc leggings.
"Have I served you well, you servant of the servants of God's servants?" he asked, still innocent. He knew nothing better.
She couldn't deny it. To say otherwise would have been a lie. "Yes, you have. You served my body well, but not my soul."
Daybreak glimmered in the mouth of the cave. She looked at him long enough to see the puzzled look in his eyes, the closest he could come to a troubled expression. "Not your soul?"
"It's not your fault," she said. "It's mine. I'm not of this world any more."
"I could tell that you once were a woman of experience," he said, almost teasingly as he reached for his own garments. "I could tell what you wanted."
She turned away from him again. First bell would be ringing shortly. How was she to explain this
Her ears pricked up. She heard voices, men's voices nearby. She edged to the mouth of the grotto and looked out. She recognized the voices of the Bainbridge gang, rummaging about in the bracken. She knew they searched the grottoes just as assiduously as her and Sister Mercedes had, so there was no staying put for her and Joe.
"What is it?" Joe asked, coming up behind her and trying to slip his arm about her waist.
She pushed him back. "They're coming for you."
"Who are they?"
"The same men who tried to stone you. Come on, we have to get back to the convent."
They crept out into the growing daylight. She heard loud cries, cut off by a loud crash in a grotto further upstream.
"I can't take you back to the house," she said.
"Why can you not?" he asked.
"It will be easier for them to catch you: I'll slow you down." He had put his hand on her arm; she pushed him away. "You'll have to go on...alone. You'll have to run, put as much distance between them and you as you can."
"I must tell you one thing: I have never sensed this before, but if I could, I would want to stay with you."
"Put my wants above yours."
"And what do you want of me?" he asked, almost eager.
"RUN!"
A beam of light from a flashlight nosed about in the bracken. She ran right into it, distracting them while Joe escaped.
"There she is! there's one of the sluts that sheltered that thing!" a voice yelled behind the light.
A bolt of energy hit her. She blacked out.
She came to in the convent courtyard, her clothes soaked. Father Marcus stood over her with an empty pail he set down on the ground.
"She's coming to," he said.
"What happened?" she asked weakly. A group of Sisters surrounded her. Sister Consolata and Sister Tekla, the infirmarian lifted her up off the ground. "Where's Joe?"
"Don't worry about him just yet," Sister Consolata said, as she and Sister Tekla carried her up to the infirmary, Father Marucs following.
"You're very lucky to be alive," he said. "The Bainbridge clan dragged you here, wanted me to give them permission to stone you to death. They said they spotted you with Joe, but they couldn't catch up with him. They'd hit you with a bolt from a shock pistol, but they said you deserved worse."
"What did you do anyway?" Sister Consolata asked.
Now came the moment she dreaded. "The Bainbridges are right: I have done something worthy of death," Madalaine admitted. "I lay with Joe."
"I saw that coming," Sister Mercedes said.
"I wish I had," Berlin admitted.
They let her sleep in next morning, but she knew it had less to do with her frayed nerves than other considerations.
About midmorning, Sister Jeromeia came in. Berlin braced herself for the verbal firestorm bound to come.
"Don't start making excuses for yourself," Sister Jeromeia warned. "You know you're guilty."
Bring it on, Berlin thought.
"I guess YOU won't be renewing your temporary vows next week. Is this why you never made full profession? So you could duck out whenever it suited you?"
"I did it that way because I wasn't sure if I could handle it all at once: I just wanted to take it one year at a time." Berlin said.
"We took you in. You seemed sincere when you told us you thought you were called," Sister Jeromeia said, pacing. "But you turned your back on your vows. I've worked with dozens of Sisters over the years, but I never had one as ungrateful or pernicious as you. Beautiful work, Madalaine, or is it Berlin now?"
"I made a mistake. I didn't watch myself..."
"Shut UP! I wasn't finished talking, and I don't need to hear your excuses either." Sister Jeromeia leaned over her, looking her in the eye. "If you were my daughter, I'd have you flogged for this."
Berlin-Madalaine raised her head. "And who'd do the flogging? You? Father Marcus? You know he wouldn't help you with that. And how do you know that I'm not a masochist and that flogging would just get me wailing?"
Sister Jeromeia looked baffled but only for a second. A steely kind of disdain crossed her face.
At that moment, the door opened and Sister Superior came into the room. "That's more than enough, Sister Jeromeia," she said with a cool firm tone. Sister Jeromeia went out.
Berlin looked up at Sister Superior who sat down in the chair beside the bed. "I forgot how hard Sister Jeromeia could be," the older woman said.
"Maybe I needed it, all things considered," Berlin said.
"No, you didn't need that kind of ill-treatment. I know how sensitive you really are."
"I didn't do this because I was lusting after him. I did it just to keep him from going stir-crazy."
"Your devotion is to be admired," Sister Superior said. "However, that doesn't excuse breaking your vows."
Berlin bent her head. "I know."
Later that day, Berlin went to the storage room in the basement of the convent, where she found the box containing the clothes she had worn from when she had first entered the convent: a slightly form-fitting black tunic and leggings, and a sleeveless violet caftan with slits in the skirts, almost to the waist, which she wore gathered with a belt.
"So you really are leaving us?" Sister Superior asked, when Berlin came up to her room, to take leave of her.
"I had been considering taking a leave of absence to decide what I really want," Berlin admitted. "And to find Joe if he's all right."
"We know one thing: Bainbridge never got him, or we would have heard about it by now. Do you have any idea where he may have gone?" Sister Superior asked.
"I have an idea where he isn't," Berlin replied. "He won't have gone back to Haddonfield, and since that's so close to Rouge City, he won't have gone there. But if you were a lover-Mecha on the run, what would be your best place to hide?"
"Probably in plain sight amongst a lot of other Mechas."
"Which leaves us only one other possibility: Nova Vegas."
Sister Superior nodded. "If you must go there to find him, then do what you must."
Berlin put out her hand and clasped the older Sister's wrist. "Thank you."
"One thing: you know I don't condemn you for what you did or what you are doing. I'd probably do the same thing, fall for his charms, if I found myself in the same circumstances. I just wish you were leaving under better conditions."
"I may be back. I haven't found him yet and I might not find him at all. I can't tell you how this will end until I've reached it."
That evening, with some money borrowed from Father Marcus, Berlin rented a car and set out, heading west for Nova Vegas, keeping an eye open for any male hitchhikers in gleaming black.
Afterword:
I actually intend this to end here, but if you think it needs more closure at the end, let me know. I'll knock something together...
