by Rizer, Bibi
I approach, cautiously, reminding myself that I have no evidence that real life Tully is anything like the one I sometimes encounter in my nightmares.
“Gentle as a lamb,” I whisper to myself. Then I’m close enough to see it is a person.
It is Tully.
He’s sitting on the floor under table, his arms draped over knees raised up in front of him, his head hanging as though he’s asleep. And I find myself frozen, trapped in a world in between making my presence known and tip-toeing away.
Even dozing, he’s beautiful. I’m tortured by the urge to touch him.
“Tully?” I say, almost involuntarily. “Tully?”
He looks up, his golden eyes focusing slowly.
“Oh,” he says. As though someone has just given him the answer to a perplexing question. Then he nods, a little smile growing on his beautiful face. “It’s good to see you, O’Mara.”
Chapter Five – Tully
“It’s not safe for you to be here.” She takes a step back as I clamber out from under the table, as though my warning applied to me. My sudden and confusing euphoria at seeing her has receded, leaving only anxiety in its place.
Women aren’t safe here. It’s one of the many paradoxes of the Pleasures that the vilest citizens come here not to buy sex but to make trouble. Many men who frequent the Amber Columns are nice men – I mean as far as male citizens can be nice with their privileged existence. But some men come here to prey on those weaker than them: male servants who have lost the protection of a citizen pass, Culls of course, and women, citizens or not. It is a terrible crime to attack a citizen woman in the Pleasures. But here in the Columns with all the secrets and shame, it’s easy to get away with if you know where the scanners are.
If O’Mara has gotten this far it means one of two things: the security network has latched onto her and is following her, painfully buzzing any male citizen who gets too close; or a servant is tailing her, waiting for the right moment to jump out and be the knight in shining armor. It’s a known tactic in the darker corners of the Pleasures, a favorite especially of Culls who rarely earn the tips that make life so much easier here. Gratitude is worth money in the Pleasures too, as are all the things that aren’t for sale in the outside world. Everything has a price.
O’Mara still hasn’t spoken. She looks at me, her wide brown eyes framed by silky skin and her thick doll-like black hair. I think for a second that maybe I’m dreaming.
“Wh-what were you doing under the table?” Her voice is plaintive, as though she’s been talking to me for hours and I haven’t been listening. But it’s a reasonable question.
“Hiding.” I answer. There are, of course, details to add to that, but hopefully those can wait. “Let me take you back to the East promenade. It’s not…”
“Safe?” she supplies. “You’re here.”
“It’s not safe for me either, but I don’t really matter.” I mean it to come out lighthearted. Like a joke, but when I see the expression on her face, I see that I’ve failed.
“Tully…” she finally says, reproachfully. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that.”
In all the times I imagined meeting O’Mara again, this is not how it went. Like a student being reprimanded by a teacher. What I remember about school, which isn’t much, that happened almost every day. I sort of want to crawl back under the table.
“Can I walk you back to the promenade?” I try again. “Let’s walk. It’s a nice night.”
She huffs and turns, striding back to the passageway, while I rush to catch up with her. Sure enough, in the shadows, the slender figure of a Cull I vaguely know gives me a quick nod and slips out of sight. O’Mara doesn’t even notice.
The protectiveness is part of our nature. Once a counsellor suggested to me it might be because of our odd hormonal condition, but I think it’s just psychological, cultural even. We all remember the stories of knights and princes saving damsels from dragons and ogres. Men are supposed to be heroes. When else would a Cull ever get the chance?
Or maybe we just know what it feels like to be weak and alone.
We emerge into the Columns, bathed in their amber glow and warmth as we turn back towards the Promenade. O’Mara walks with her arms crossed, holding her media jacket closed, pointedly not looking at me.
She’s angry at me, though I can’t imagine why.
“I can fix that,” I say as the last of the Columns recedes behind us. The bright lights and music of the East Promenade beckon us.
“Fix what?”
“Your jacket’s headphone jack. It’s not retracting all the way. Probably just a broken spring.”
“The heat function doesn’t work anymore either.” Still not looking at me, but speaking at least.
“You’ve tried a new battery?” She nods. “Hmm. Might be a dirty connector. I can fix that too. If you need new coils that’s a bigger job. I don’t have any coils but if you get them I can put them in. Otherwise it’s expensive. Might as well buy a new jacket.”
“I can’t afford a new one.”
“They don’t pay you well at Island News?”
“Ha! No.” She flicks her eyes in my direction at last. It’s brief, but worth waiting for. “Technically I’m an intern, so I barely get paid at all. If I joined a harem or had a child they would promote me but…”
“Too high a price to pay?”
She just shakes her head and sighs.
We walk in silence for a moment. A man hustles past us, on the way to the Columns. He’s shoving flat bread in his mouth as he walks. A cloud of garlic lingers in his wake. It makes my mouth water. I sneak a glance at O’Mara as she flicks the malfunctioning headphone jack off her neck. The skin of her neck is making my mouth water too. People think we don’t feel those things—we can’t feel them, but that just what they tell themselves so they don’t have to think about the truth.
I feel everything a normal man does. I just can’t do much about it.
As the noise and light of the promenade begin to surround us something occurs to me—something that might explain O’Mara’s strange mood.
“Have you been having nightmares?” I ask.
She stops so abruptly I have to backtrack.
“How did you know?”
I wince. Of all the citizens who played with my machine, I wish this rare side effect hadn’t happened to her. “It happens sometimes. I guess I’m in the nightmares then?”
She puts her hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. And I’m left wondering what horrific things I’ve done in her dreams.
“I’m so sorry, O’Mara. I didn’t even know that was a side-effect until about a week after we met. An old harem wife complained that she was having nightmares about her husband killing her that started after she visited me. I figured it out. I’ve changed the electrical frequencies since then but…”
She just shakes her head, her eyes still closed.
“Please,” I try. “You have to believe me. Whatever I did in the dreams I would never do those things to you or anyone. Honestly. I’m a pussy-cat.”
She opens her eyes at last, letting out a snuffled laugh behind her hand. Then she sighs. “Do the dreams stop?”
“If you…if you practice controlling the dreams a bit it stops. When one of the nightmares starts you can control it.”
She frowns at me, and begins walking again, towards the flashing lights and music. “So I can have one of the lucid dreams whenever I want?”
“You could learn to control some dreams. But it’s not as reliable as my service. But you can usually stop a nightmare. Or wake yourself up.”
“And how do I learn this?”
I wish I had a different answer for her. “You need to have a few more goes with my machine, but…”
“I don’t think I can afford that.”
“I’m happy to let you have a go for free, but they turned off my power when I lost my license.”
We walk into the growing crowd. Harem brides with ice-cream con
es matching their pink veils swirl around us. Two older women slurp on fruit smoothies. We walk past a table where a husband is holding court with a dozen wives, all of them devouring what I’m sure is a very expensive chicken dinner. The smell is intoxicating. I nearly trip I’m so distracted.
“Are you hungry?” O’Mara asks.
“No,” I answer, lying. I’m grateful for the noise and bustle of the promenade that covers the sound of my stomach growling. “Why?”
O’Mara frowns up at me. She’s really quite small, even for a woman. “Why did you lose your license?”
The urge to kiss her is suddenly overwhelming. I kiss women so infrequently now. Sometimes I’ve been tempted by women who engage my services. I was tempted by O’Mara. Her lips were soft and warm. I’m so tempted by her now I put my hands in my pockets to keep from grabbing her. I think the last vestiges of the Synthrogen are still flowing through my veins. I want to taste every part of her. I’m hungrier than I think I’ve ever been in every possible way.
I want to do things that I can’t do, that I lack the parts to do.
A popcorn vendor rolls by with her steaming cart.
“Are you hungry?” O’Mara asks.
“No. Do you want to go an watch the Lapis Lazuli light show? There’s one starting in about five minutes.” I turn and walk in that direction, stopping when I see she’s not following me.
“What’s wrong?” I say, seeing her glaring.
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not.”
“Tully, I can tell you’re hungry. Why don’t you just tell me the truth? I can buy you a meal. Have you run out of money?”
The teenager inside wants to stamp his feet, outraged that she can make me feel so ashamed, so unmanly. Instead I cross my arms, rubbing my hands over my elbows in a feeble attempt to make it look like I suddenly felt chilled.
“Tully…why did you lose your license?”
“Can we talk about this somewhere else?” Crowds of women flow past us now, half of them have food and they all smell and look beautiful. My head is spinning. “Why don’t we walk down to the farm?”
O’Mara drags me to a vendor and buys us both hot dumplings, which we eat as we walk. At least it gives me something to do with my hands. Suppressing the urge to run my fingers through her shiny hair is becoming exhausting.
We’ve been walking on the long winding path to the farm for about ten minutes when she asks again: “How did you lose your license?”
“It’s really dumb,” I say.
“So tell me anyway. I promise not to laugh.”
I take her empty bowl and my own and drop them in a recycling conduit, listening to the powerful vacuum sucking them away to the depot across the river. Through the razor wire fence, across the misty river, we can just see the lights of the processing sector. Unlike the Pleasures or the controlled areas, the processing sector functions twenty four hours a day. But it’s mostly mindless bots doing the work over there. They’re not likely to complain.
I sometimes envy them. That’s funny, right? I envy machines? Maybe that’s why I build them.
I think I linger a bit long there, by the conduit, looking over the water, because she changes the subject.
“It’s nice here, this path. I didn’t know this was here. What is the farm exactly?”
I turn, leaning back on the conduit pillar. “We grow most of the food for the Pleasures. Our food and some of the vendors’ food too. Have you never noticed that things taste fresher here than in the Controlled City?”
“I guess. Those dumplings were good,” she says. “Do you ever work there?”
“We take shifts. It’s hard work but I like it.”
“That explains why you’re so fit.” The blush rises in her face so fast I’m slightly surprised that she doesn’t swoon from low blood pressure. “Oh, fuck. I don’t know why I said that.”
I take a step forward, closer to her. “It’s possible I have better body in your dreams than I do in reality.”
Her blush deepens and she looks down. “Oh? I don’t think so.”
I reach out, lightly touching the material of her sleeve, sliding my hand down, slowly. It’s not like I haven’t done this before—the things I do here in the Pleasures are always a kind of seduction—but I feel just as giddy as…well as I did with things I did long ago, things my dead twin did before I was cut. Normal teenage things: a girl I liked, an awkward advance. It’s like I’m reliving it.
I’m nearly thirty years old and I’ve never made an actual pass at a woman. At least not one old enough to wear a proper bra. My teenage fumbles, more inspired by the world crumbling around me than any real feelings, are all I have to go on. And like everything else from my old life, I barely remember them. For all intents and purposes I’m a different person. Not that boy. Not the man he would have turned into.
Not really a man.
“There are parts that the dream Tully has that I don’t have, though. Right?” I say. I don’t know if I mean that to be flirtatious or a disclaimer. Maybe she’s forgotten who she’s talking to, whose fingers she’s just intertwined with her own.
“That doesn’t matter.” She turns her eyes up to meet mine.
“It doesn’t?”
“I mean, I’m sure it matters to you, but it doesn’t matter to me.”
I can’t help it any longer: I slide my free hand over her neck and cheek and into her glossy hair. “O’Mara…this is…not wise.”
“Fuck wisdom.”
I shake my head, laughing, and inch my face a little closer to hers.
“Why did you lose your license, Tully?”
“I stole something from a citizen.” We’re speaking in whispers now, though we’re all alone. No one to hear anything out here but sleeping chickens and fireflies.
O’Mara rests her free hand on my hip, gripping me through my sweater. “What did you steal?”
Her breath smells like dumpling soup and mint. An odd combination, but I think I’d find it sexy if I wasn’t so confused. I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be here. This will end in tears.
MY tears, as well as hers probably.
“I stole a diamond bracelet. From an old harem wife.”
O’Mara frowns up at me. “What did you want with a lady’s bracelet?”
Our noses touch, her brown eyes go out of focus.
“I wanted to give it to someone,” I say, my own eyes drifting shut. “I wanted to give it to you.” And then, so I don’t have to explain anymore, and because I really want to, I kiss her.
Chapter Six – O’Mara
Tully kisses so tentatively, unlike the first time he kissed me, when he was “priming me” for the most intense sexual experience of my life. This kiss is nothing like that, because I realize that first kiss was just business. This one only lasts a second, there is no tongue or groping, his hands curl around my arm and the back of my head. But gently—his touch is soft.
And yet, in the brief time it lasts, I feel the same kind of intimate connection I did with the imaginary version of him I encountered in my first dream. Kissing Tully is like kissing someone directly on their soul. There’s something beyond erotic about that; I could cry and orgasm at the same time. When he withdraws and stares down at me with his golden eyes I forget to breathe. My core aches, sending a shooting jolt of desire and need up my body. And of course, I want him desperately; want him to do things I know he can’t.
It’s as though he knows. He gives a little shake of his head as he looks at me, and those golden eyes glass over.
“Do you know much about us?” he asks. “About how we are?”
I just shake my head. Of Culls, he means. I’ve looked it up. I’ve read some things. But people don’t like to talk about it. There’s an attitude that eventually they will all die and we can forget about them – forget it ever happened.
“I take these hormones,” he says. “If I don’t take them then I’m like a child, a young boy. But it’s hard to get them
balanced. They’re expensive and mostly I buy black market ones and they can be a bit unpredictable. So the levels are…messy.”
I find my voice at last. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I just want you to understand. I’m not a thief. It’s wrong to steal. Wrong and stupid, especially for non-citizens. But my…chemical state means that sometimes I act like a teenage boy. Impulsive.”
“So you had an impulse to steal a pretty bracelet? For me?”
He actually hangs his head.
“Why do you say this as though it’s a bad thing?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Tully, no one has ever had any kind of generous impulse towards me. At least not since my mother died.”
He leans down and kisses me again. This one is a little deeper than the last, and our hands untangle from the tentative places on arms and hips and wrap around each other. He slips his hands inside my jacket and links them behind my waist.
This time, when we part, it is him that is speechless, and breathless. I watch him for a moment before speaking again.
“If I joined a harem there would be no impulses. My contact with my husband would be scheduled like a haircut. Some husbands buy gifts for their wives but it’s all ordered and planned, each gift has to be equal to the next or there is conflict.”
“There must be men who want something different.” He nudges my cheek with his nose.
“You want something different, don’t you?”
“I’m not a man, O’Mara. I’m not even a citizen. I’m nothing.” But he kisses me. And this time there is no reluctance. His tongue invades my welcoming mouth and caresses mine as he tightens his grip on my waist, pressing our bodies together. And in that moment, wrapped around me, his tongue inside me, his breath mingling with mine, Tully isn’t nothing.
He’s everything. Everything I’ve ever wanted. More man than any woman has ever had.
“Are you okay?” he asks, pulling back. “You made a noise.”