Chapter 33

I woke in the cave after four hours of sleep. A'moth was gone. I lounged around for a while, thinking about life. A'moth's story about Chungieran sex really shook me up. Not just my personal situation, but the fact that the dominant male gender on her world intentionally changed their reproductive act to be unpleasant. Somehow, I can't see the guys of Earth jumping on that bandwagon, no matter how crowded life got. But then again... Oh, I don't know. It was just that I was face to face with a truly non-human way of solving a problem... It was scary...

A'moth popped back a little after 2 AM with a breakfast from around the world. We feasted on spinach, pistachios, oranges, pineapples, and raw oysters, everything super fresh. She gathered up the trash and jumped to her garbage dump in Antarctica, returning in less than a minute.

I walked to the slit entrance of our cave and looked outside. The sky was unusually clear that night. We'd been having lots of cloudy weather. It was just past full moon, and the moon was high in the sky, probably near its transit point. With my Chungieran eyes, I could see as well as a human on a cloudy day at noontime.

I smiled at A'moth. "Up for being a teacher a little early today?"

She smiled back. "Oh, you bet! I'm dying to know what you can do."

I was soon standing on the familiar ridgeline. A'moth was about ten feet away. "Just jump to me, here by my side."

I stood there feeling puzzled for a while, trying to remember how I had done this. And then I was there in an instant, less than an inch away. I lost my balance and bumped into her. "Oops! Sorry!"

She gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. "No problem. Gary, that was great! How are to feeling?"

"Fine."

"Really?"

I took a moment to think. "Yeah, really. I feel okay."

"Great! Here's what I want to try next..."

We jumped around the canyon for hours. It's as easy as walking, once you get the hang of it. No, what am I saying?! It's a lot, lot easier! And fun!

... until you try to jump too far. A'moth had me jumping to destinations I could already see for a while and that was fine. Then she kept jumping me further and further away and having me jump back to our first location, either solo or jumping her too. Her eyes lit up at first when I jumped her back with me, but she didn't say anything. She just kept increasing the distance until we were almost three kilometers away. The sun was just coming up. I tried to jump back, and suddenly, after all the feelings of pushing through easy water, it suddenly seemed I was trying to push through molasses.

A'moth saw the look of tension in my face. "Gary, we should quit. Don't push it if it's hard."

I didn't follow her advice. I forced the jump, found myself on the ledge without A'moth, feeling dizzy and ten feet away from where I was trying to be. I had one foot hanging over the great unknown and I started to fall off the cliff. A'moth appeared just as I jumped again. I went only ten feet but now I had such a headache I just sat on the ground and held my head with both hands. "Oww," I whimpered.

"Oh nuts Gary! I pushed you way too hard!"

I winced. A'moth seemed to be talking very loud, even though I knew she wasn't. I took a deep breath. It seemed to help, just a bit. "No you didn't. It was just my last jump. And you warned me not to do it..."

A'moth disappeared for a few seconds and got me a glass of ice water. I was soon lying down having my head petted. Her lap is so soft and inviting. My head wants to live there forever...

One week later...

Earth time: Sunday, March 27, 2033 5:34 AM Eastern Standard Time (36 minutes to sunrise)

Aina time: 7:23 PM, day 223 of 1436 H.E. (37 minutes after sunset)

It was pouring rain outside our small cave. Fortunately the floor tilts down slightly at the exit, and the back of the cave had damp air but dry rocks. A human eye would have still seen the outside as pitch black, but I could easily see the approach of dawn. Of course, A'moth could jump us anywhere in the world to practice, but she said as a student I would be better off staying in Tucker County.

There are distortion waves coming from the Blue Ring. A'moth says it makes jumping more difficult. But the path will open in 29 days, April 25, about ten minutes before 5 PM. The critical question is, how well can I jump in Tucker County one month from now? So A'moth wants me to keep practicing here. It makes a lot of sense...

I was cuddling with A'moth in the back of the cave. She had just fed off me, just a few swallows, and then she playfully suckled me until I orgasmed. We do it for the pleasure and the bonding, to express our love for each other. She was purring happily in my arms...

"A'moth?"

She opened her eyes and smiled. "Yeah?"

"Tell me about your childhood, learning how to jump..." I had been nudging A'moth to do this for the last week. She didn't want to bias my expectations with her experiences. So much of jumping is confidence and doing what you expect you can do...

A'moth sighed and kissed me. "Yeah, okay! I did my first jump near my twelve birthday. That's a few years early for a Chungieran, at least for a girl anyway. I never got around to asking about how well the males jump..."

"Ah..."

"My first year, I could only jump with a direct visual lock on my destination, maybe a hundred meters. I learned the trick of jumping from visual memory when I was thirteen, it was an immediate boost to jumping up to five kilometers. I learned the trick just in time to save my life... Over the next seven years, I doubled that to ten kilometers."

"What?! It took you seven years just to double?"

"Yep! And it's my understanding that's a fast pace. My mom would have been very proud of me." A'moth smiled at me in the dim light. I saw the point she was making.

It's been a week now since I first teleported on my own. With A'moth's help, I've been practicing every day since. For six days, I kept doubling my distance every two days, and then yesterday, nothing! No improvement at all, from before dawn to after sunset. A jump-line of 23,140 meters was a piece of cake, even jumping A'moth with me, and 23,141 meters by myself was a brick wall my mind didn't want to touch. I thought about A'moth's rate of progress, and started to feel like an idiot for moping last night.