The Archivist Read Online Free

standing here, until she reaches for my pipe and takes a long draw.
    “Your turn to answer a question,” I say when she hands the pipe back. “Why would an exquisite woman like you pour drinks in a bar, especially when you can handle a sling like that?”
    She is silent for a minute before she replies, “I was married for a while, but it didn’t work out too well. He died while fishing. Afterward none of this superstitious lot wanted anything to do with me, at least as a wife. Not that I wanted any of them either. I needed to do something to help Papa out, so it was serve drinks to sailors, or serve them something else across the street. At least I can respect myself after serving drinks.”
    Danae reaches for the pipe and takes another draw as she asks, “So… I guess you’re going back to the Archives after this?”
    “Well, that’s what I do. Retrieve items and bring them back.”
    “You have someone waiting for you to come home?”
    This time I pause, both because I know she is fishing and because there was a time, a place when someone waited. But that is a long-faded ghost of the past, and I lost the ability to go there a long time ago. There are lots of places I have stopped going to.
    “No. My home is the Archives, but my life is in the field. There was someone, but I lost her during the Demon Days.”
    If Danae picks up on the fact that I have a much longer lifespan than I appear to have, she does not reveal it. Few of us remain who had aging reversal treatments, back before the Crash, when it was still available.
    The Archives once estimated that only one out of a thousand people around the globe survived the initial year after the collapse. From what I have seen that is a generous figure, at least in the highly-populated areas.
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” Danae murmurs, and I hear genuine sympathy in her voice as she steps closer to me and places her head on my chest. “So we both know it. That loss which never really goes away. Wishing that the memory of the person could go wherever the person went to.”
    “You loved him then, that fisherman of yours?”
    Before answering she stares into the distance for a while. I feel some light sobs from her before she eventually replies in a small, quiet voice, “Yes, I did. He was my best friend as we grew up. We used to build forts in the boats that wrecked and washed up on the beach. When we were eight we had a mock marriage,” Danae says with a light laugh. “But to us it was serious. It never occurred to us that we wouldn’t grow old together.”
    Her gaze shifts up to me with the same empty eyes and downturned mouth that I sometimes see in the mirror, when I make myself look. It hurts to look at her, but I cannot turn away.
    Danae whispers, “Sheldon was a good man. You don’t find many of those nowadays.” She peers deep into my eyes and lets the blanket drop when she places both arms around my neck. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears as she asks, “Do you still think about her? Does it ever stop hurting?”
    I slowly shake my head, and reply, “It gets better. But no, it never goes away.”
    Tears well out onto her cheeks as she presses her face into my shirt. She says nothing, but sobs shudder through her body, and I feel her pain just as deeply as my own. I wrap my arms around her and fold her into me, until eventually her tears fade and she buries a long sigh into my chest.
    “Do you ever feel so alone, it’s as though the rest of the world doesn’t exist?” her muffled voice asks.
    I answer not with words but with my hands, caressing her back and shoulders gently, feeling her soft hair against my palms. The gentle warmth of her shoulder. I feel a hard response to the womanly scent of her arousal. She moans softly when I turn her face upward, and my mouth finds her full, willing lips.
    Danae’s arms tighten around my neck as she pulls her body against mine and my hands reach under her shirt. She moans again as I caress her full