30
The thing about being second-oldest bothered Sheena. People thought she had to be responsible. The same with Felix because he was oldest of all. But he wasn’t locked away in the observation room with the little kids. She was. Because she was second oldest. Felix was doing something with his mother in the workshop where her father, Kel, Kevina, and Casey were building a torpedo that would blow up sea monsters. The whole notion of a torpedo was pretty zambo, and that Felix got to see it, even help make it, while she was stuck here with all the little kids made her mad.
Unfair. Unfair!
Sheena made a face; the rounded transparency of the observation dome barely reflected her image against a background of endless moving ocean. Her expression was indistinct, mostly just a silhouette. When she stuck her tongue out, she could hardly see it.
Why did Felix get to make a torpedo? Just because he was a boy? Or because his mother was Kevina, and Mom said that Kevina got away with murder. When Sheena had asked what murder meant, Mom had said it wasn’t like what the Unreconciled did, but just a way of talking. That Kevina, because she was beautiful, got her way more often.
“But you’re even more beautiful,” Mother had said, sharing that special wink. “Now, go take care of the little kids. It won’t be long. Just for a couple of hours until Casey, Iso, and Mikoru can finish their work.”
So Sheena had ended up here, staring out at the endless waves, all looking like liquid silver in Capella’s light. And Mom’s words didn’t make any sense. If Kevina got away with murder because she was beautiful, and Sheena was even more beautiful than Kevina, why was she here, stuck with little kids instead of making a torpedo?
The words of the song echoed in her head,
“London Bridge is broken down, broken down.
“Off to prison you must go, my fair lady.”
“Unfair! Unfair!” she declared in absolute rhyming indignity and even stamped her foot. Careful to keep from waking the babies. She might be mad, but that didn’t make her stupid.
For the moment, Toni played with a hollow aluminum tube, sitting on his butt on the floor. He held one end to his mouth, making hooo hooo sounds that echoed down the tube. Then he’d break into giggles. Next to him, Kayle sat in his diapers, drool running out of his mouth. Kayle was teething, and went wide-eyed each time Toni sounded his horn-tube. It was stupid, but what did little boys know?
The babies, Vetch and Saleen, were miraculously asleep in their blankets on the cushions. Their faces were slack, the little arms raised, tiny fists half clenched. The good news was that they’d both nodded off after Sheena had fed them from the formula bottles. The bad news was that sometime soon they’d crap themselves awake. When they did, Sheena would have to change them both.
Space scuz. That’s what it was. She was wiping up baby shit, and Felix was building a torpedo. Unfair. Unfair!
She would have shouted it out, but it would have awakened the babies. If the babies awakened, they’d crap. Sheena couldn’t even shout her frustration. And that just made it worse.
With no other recourse, she knotted her fists and jumped up and down, letting her feet pound the floor. Jump. Jump. Jump.
Toni watched, fascinated enough to stop blowing on his tube horn. Kayle swiveled his not-so-steady head around to look, and his brown eyes narrowed, unsure of what this meant.
That was when the door opened, and Felicity came in. She was wearing her yellow dress, the one made of some kind of packing Iso had found while they were setting up the Pod. Sheena had wanted a dress like Felicity’s the first time she saw it. The colors were, like, really, really bright. Yellow made Felicity’s black hair, eyebrows, and dark eyes look super good.
“Not your color, dear,” Mom had said. “You need a teal or turquoise with your red hair and blue eyes.”
Didn’t make sense. Yellow made Felicity pretty, but it wouldn’t make Sheena pretty? What kind of thinking was that? She thought it was just as dumb as making her watch babies while Felix built a torpedo.
“’Bout time you got here,” Sheena greeted, propping her fists on her hips and frowning.
“Mom made me wash.” Felicity seemed half asleep. Like her eyes didn’t focus. She held up her hands. “Said I got into oil. Said I was in Bill Martin’s cooking supplies. I told her it wasn’t me. She made me stay in our room while she went and checked with Bill. When she came back, she said I didn’t do it. She made me wash my hands. Over and over.”
Sheena stepped close, took Felicity’s hand and inspected it. Weird, it was shiny, felt oily. Like hers did ever since Felix had let her feel the algae. Even as she held Felicity’s hand, Sheena’s palms beginning to sweat and tingle. The more she rubbed her hands on Felicity’s, the better the tingle seemed to get. Like that was the right thing to do. It just felt that way. Rubbing the slick between her hands and Felicity’s.
“That’s enough,” Felicity told her, her eyes still staring off at nothing. Then she pulled free of Sheena’s grip and turned to Saleen, reaching down.
“Don’t wake them! You do, and you’ll clean their diapers.”
“They won’t wake,” Felicity whispered, still not seeing anything. Carefully, she took Saleen’s tiny little hand and began to knead it between her fingers. When the baby girl’s eyes flickered open, Felicity stuck her wet-shiny fingers into the little girl’s mouth. Immediately, Saleen began to suckle.
Do it! The impulse formed in Sheena’s head, not even like a thought, and she reached down, taking Vetch’s little hand in her own. She closed her eyes, feeling the damp slickness, like runny oil as she began to knead the baby boy’s hand. When his eyes blinked, and his mouth opened to cry, she thrust her fingers past his lips, feeling his budding teeth, his tongue working on the pads of her fingers. A thrill ran through her, and she closed her eyes as the infant sucked. She could feel his saliva, mixing with the slick moisture clinging to her fingers, beading on her palms. Sighing at the pleasure of it, time seemed to stop, waver, and slip sideways.
When she finally opened her eyes, the feeling was like she’d been away somewhere. Feeling weird, she jerked her hand back, blinked down at Vetch. He was staring up at her, his black eyes like marbles in his three-month-old round face.
On the floor, Toni had Kayle’s left hand in his, holding it like they were best friends. Toni’s right hand was in Kayle’s mouth, and he was sucking it with the same enthusiasm as if Toni’s hand was thick with sweet.
Felicity’s gaze had come back to focus. She blinked. “Why are we here?”
“Because Felix got to help make the torpedo.”
But somehow, Sheena wasn’t sure that was the right answer. Even as she thought it, she heard Saleen’s squall. The little girl kicked, the sound of her filling her diapers unmistakable.
31
The doors had been flung wide in Dek’s memory. The Transluna of his youth filled his head with images, replayed scenes from his past, the sights and sounds. And he relived his days dirtside on Earth. The family had an estate—a re-wilded place called The Tetons in west-central North America. It occupied a long valley bordered on the west by the Teton Mountains, on the east by the Gros Ventres Range, and included everything in the Snake River Valley between. And then there was St Lucia, the family’s private island in the Caribbean, with its mansion and grounds situated on the highlands between the two Pitons.
Both strongholds were Taglioni fortresses, empires within whose boundaries the family elders lived as a law unto themselves. There, along with their residences in New York, Hong Kong, and Transluna, they managed their share of the various extractive and manufacturing enterprises that fed The Corporation’s ravenous maw.
Granted, the Taglionis only controlled a portion of the economic engine that was The Corporation—the other families managed the rest—but it was enough to ensure their influence. Keeping it? That was the battle.
“Dek?” Talina�
��s voice intruded.
Pulling himself from images of Taglioni Tower in Transluna, he blinked.
For a moment, Dek couldn’t figure out where he was. Nothing made sense as the crystalline halls of Taglioni Tower faded into . . . what the hell? A sort of drab room appeared out of a rainbow haze of colors that dipped down into the infrared. His eyeballs ached as if they were about to explode.
He tried to sit up, discovered he was in one of those emergency bedrolls made of heat-reflective material that inflated into some semblance of comfort. The thing crackled stiffly as he moved.
“I was just . . . Where am I?” His voice sounded hoarse; flickers of sunlit Donovanian forest flashed through his mind only to fade back to this horrible and dimly lit room. From the curving ceiling, it was a dome of some sort. Faint gray light—filtered through scummy-looking windows—illuminated a series of beds, including the one he lay on. He could see closets and night tables.
Real? Or imaginary? How did he tell anymore?
“You don’t,” the voice hissed inside.
Talina Perez was standing over him, arms crossed, looking down with a serious expression on her exotic face. “It’s morning, sunshine. You hungry?”
A flash . . . and he was crouched over a chamois. His clawed forelegs were locked in the beast’s sides as he twisted his head, pulled, and severed meat and bone with the serrated teeth in his powerful jaws. Savory, rich blood and hot flesh filled his mouth.
Saliva, ripe with the taste of peppermint flooded around his tongue.
And as quickly, the image disintegrated . . . and he was back in the dim bedroom, looking up at Talina. His stomach twisted and gurgled.
“Food?” he asked, still tasting peppermint and raw chamois despite the fact that any memory of eating the creature had to be illusion.
“Baked squash. I stuffed it with poblanos, apples, and purple sweet potatoes, put it in the oven last night, and miracle of miracles, it’s ready to eat this morning.”
“Beats the hell out of raw chamois,” he whispered to himself, throwing back the inflated blanket and swinging his legs out. The swelling in his left was down to the point that the wrapping Raya Turnienko had put on it hung loose. And the tingling pain was gone.
Standing, it felt normal. Taking a step, it was as if he’d never been injured.
“You all right to attend yourself in the toilet?” Talina asked.
“Yeah, I . . .” He fought his way through the haze that packed his skull like thick fog. “Two Falls Gap, right? I don’t remember anything after the couch in the front room. It was starting to rain. And now you tell me it’s morning?”
“The very same. Figures you don’t remember me getting you to bed. If I didn’t know what was going on in your brain, I’d have called you psychotic.”
“What was going on in my brain?”
Her level stare almost unnerved him. “Um, not that I’ve got a good psychiatric term for it, but I’d call it image chaos. If we’d had a scan of your neural function, I’m betting it would have shown every part of your brain was active. One minute you’d be crying, the next enraged, then paralyzed with terror, back to crying, then aggressive as hell, just to get maudlin, scream for a bit, and back to crying, and all the while talking about your father, Miko, some relative named Fango, and a whole bunch of people I never heard of. Like, who was Kalay? You kept telling her you were sorry.”
Kalay. He shook his head, pulling on his shirt from where it lay on the nightstand and walking for the doorway. He didn’t have to tell Talina about Kalay. She was too many years gone, though he could picture her face so clearly. That gorgeous olive-toned skin, her almond eyes, the perfection of her cheeks and high forehead.
He closed the bathroom door behind him to symbolically shut Talina out. At the first of the sinks, he stopped, braced himself stiff-armed, and stared at his image in the mold-spotted mirror. What was it with his eyes, the hollow look to his face, as if the cheeks were thinning? Was that really him?
“See what you are,” the quetzal voice inside told him, and his image seemed to glow orange around the edges. Shifting. Flickers of green began to form along each side of his nose. Pale blue was darkening across his forehead. As he watched, the colors brightened, and his face morphed, flattening. The mirror began to warp; the image split into three, which gave him a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
For a fleeting instant, a finger of fear reminded him of Batuhan, which faded into a quetzal’s visage. Not Flute, the shape was wrong. And the mouth didn’t have Flute’s familiar angle. Not Rocket’s, either.
“Demon?”
“Your true self. Not even quetzals are so heartless.”
“No. I suppose they aren’t.”
He clamped his eyes shut, arms trembling as he steadied himself on the grimy sink. Swallowing through a sudden knot in his throat, he made himself remember what he looked like. The designer-yellow eyes that shaded into green, his straight and perfect nose, the dimple in his chin. That pink and shiny scar disfiguring his cheekbone. Sandy hair, with a wave on top of his head.
“You’re my handsome young hero.” Kalay’s words took the place of Demon’s, her lilting Greek accent filling the vowels with life.
“There are no heroes, my love. They died in another age.”
When he forced his eyes open, stared into the mirror, it was to see himself restored in the glass, the image somewhat blurred by the film and specs of mold.
In the stand beneath the sink, he found a rag. Used it to scrub off the mirror, though it still left streaks. His face—but for his eyes and the zygomas of his cheeks—looked the same. Right down to the triangular scar. What was it about his eyes? As if the pupils were expanding. And something . . . wait, it was as if his cheeks were wider. Or was that just the cheap and streaked mirror?
He used the toilet, then washed. Tucking in his shirt, he stepped out into the hall and padded to the main room. Talina stood over the counter, was using a fork to pull apart a large squash. A puff of steam erupted from the split skin, and he could see the thick orange interior, packed as it was with poblano, apple, sweet potato, and garlic.
“Let’s eat,” Talina told him, dishing it out onto plates. “Don’t have my red sauce, but hey, we’ll live. Might be able to shoot a crest or a roo later. Add a little meat to the mix.”
He sat, trying to center his thoughts . . . only to have Kalay’s image fill his vision. Her voice whispered softly; the way her smile parted those full lips exposed perfect white teeth. Her laughter had always been magical.
And with the image came the pain, loss, and sense of self-loathing. And he was there, as he had been that day when he first knew he loved her with all his heart.
Kalay sat across from him, a sparkle in her animated sienna-brown eyes. The wind teased the young woman’s long dark hair, curling it over a tanned shoulder to spill down over her left breast. Behind her, he could see the Caribbean where sunlight glittered on the deep aqua tones as patterns of waves faded to the far horizon. He knew that vista. They were on the veranda at the St. Lucia mansion.
“Kalay, want some of this?” he asked, raising his fork with its prize of smoked crab. She leaned forward, snatched the white meat with a quick bite. Chewed. And uttered a moan of pleasure as she savored. He watched her firm throat work, wishing he could run his lips over that marvelous skin.
“Damn it!” The popping of hands as they clapped to together brought him back.
“You here? Hello! Food’s getting cold.” Talina snapped, shattering the image. “That’s almost five minutes, Dek. Figured the next thing I’d try was a punch to your jaw.”
He clenched his hands to stop the trembling in his arms. “Why’s he so obsessed with her?”
“Who?”
“Demon. He keeps triggering memories of Kalay. What’s he want with her?”
“Who’s Kalay?”
&n
bsp; Dek rubbed his sore eyes, wondered at the way his sense of smell had his mouth watering at the odor of squash, garlic, and poblano. At least it wasn’t pus-sucking peppermint.
Dek picked up his fork, speared some of the thick, yellow meat, lifted it, froze as he almost offered it to Talina as he just had to Kalay.
“Stop fucking with my mind!” he shouted. Fought to control the trembling in his hand, got the fork to his mouth and let the flavor of squash roll over his tongue.
Eat. Just make myself eat, he thought. That’s it. One forkful after another. Chew. Enjoy. Swallow.
From the look Talina was giving him, she wasn’t going to let the question drop. “Kalay? Part of my training to be a young man. All of us. We’re groomed, educated, prepared in all ways. In politics, history, economics, technology, social engineering, political science, resource allotment, the arts, etiquette, and pretty much every skill we should be masters of. I had just turned fifteen. Kalay was nineteen and recently confirmed in the Eros guild. The family chose her to be my introduction to the erotic arts and refined social behavior. A young Taglioni must be totally competent, familiar, and comfortable with all the intricacies of sex.”
Dek smiled wistfully. “It’s common for a boy to fall in love with his first courtesan. I just fell harder than most. Problem was, so did she.”
“How’d it end?”
“We tried to run. No one gets far in The Corporation. Father was furious. So much so that he bought her contract from the Eros guild. Made me sign the transfer order that shipped her off to Okeus 1-7 out in the Van Oort Cloud.”
“Okeus? Series of survey and mining bases, right?” Talina asked. “Number 1-7, that would have been one of the stations waaaay out there.”
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