“You’re better in person, you know,” he told her. “I always thought you and Tiggerson weren’t right for each other.”
“Tiggerson’s a character,” she told him. “So’s Eunice Iverson. What you see on the show? That’s just acting. I can’t stand the guy in real life.”
Dek chuckled, slapping his naked thigh. “Bet, despite all those scenes, Tig never gave it to you as good as I did last night.”
“No.” He could see the effort it took her to smile. “You were . . . um . . . I guess wow is the only word.” For a moment, she might have been on the verge of tears, then that bright smile flashed back across her face. “Yeah . . . really, um . . . wow.”
Dek had noticed that about her. Klea Morena wasn’t nearly as smart, quick-witted, or cunningly competent as the Eunice Iverson she played in the holovid. So what? As far as he was concerned, it had been Eunice that he’d brought to one orgasm after another last night. That, after all, was the magic of it. Half the males and a quarter of the females in Solar System fantasized about sex with Eunice Iverson, the same kind of sex he’d enjoyed last night.
Hardening at the thought, he was about to reach for her when she slipped off the bed, walked naked to his bathroom, and disappeared inside.
Let her empty her bladder. He need only beckon with his little finger, and he’d be sliding his erection back into the most coveted vagina in all of Solar System. He lay back, remembering the widening of her eyes, her intake of breath, those happy moans coming from deep in her throat.
What the hell? He shot a hard look at the bathroom entrance. What was she doing in there? Not like they had an entire morning to spend with her sitting on the . . .
The door opened from the hall, his father striding in. Claudio walked like a man with a purpose, his heels clicking on the translucent floor, the elegant lines of his Dumont-tailored suit flashing in the room’s refracted light.
“Klea?” Claudio called. “You are no longer needed. Consider yourself free to go. If you’d like, stop by the breakfast suite. I recommend the quail eggs over caviar on thin-sliced salmon. A car will take you wherever you need to be.”
At his words, Klea emerged from the bathroom, a flash of relief quickly covered by that radiant smile that she seemed to produce upon demand. With a slight skip, the woman snagged her Clementine Saffrom evening dress from the floor where it had floated down the night before. She demonstrated remarkable skill and rapidity the way she slipped it on and sealed it around her perfect body. Never even missing a stride when doing it. Then she was out the door.
Claudio stopped at the foot of Dek’s bed, stared disdainfully at his fading erection, and said, “Conference room in fifteen minutes. The topic is molybdenum. Projections are that our mining operations in the Hilda Zone are going to be seven percent lower than our target figure. We need to—”
“Wait!” Dek threw himself off the bed, stalking up to his father. “You just dismissed the woman I was—”
“By all that’s scintillating, I did just that.” Claudio’s wicked smile bent his thin lips. “You are my eldest son. Did you think the lessons stopped when you shipped that courtesan whore off to the far reaches of the Solar System?”
“That woman you just dismissed like she was some household servant is Klea Morena! Last night I managed what no other man in this—”
“You managed?” Claudio laughed, head thrown back. “Oh, that is rich.”
Then his father’s designer-gold eyes narrowed. “How naïve are you? You think your charm brought her to your bed?” A hard finger poked into Dek’s face. “I won’t have you playing Hamlet over your puerile broken heart. So, this is a lesson. Learn it. You are a Taglioni.” Claudio pointed at the door. “That woman is one of the most desired in all of human space. And, at my request, she was in your bed last night.”
“Your request?” Dek cried incredulously, images of his flirting, of her resistance melting, of his insistence that she . . .
“All these years in this household and you still have no conception of power, do you?”
“Father, you don’t get it. She can say no to any man. Klea Morena is no one’s courtesan. She’s the most celebrated—”
“Of course she is. Why the hell else would I put her in your bed? You think you dazzled her? You’re barely seventeen. And a spoiled prig at that. No, boy, the lesson is that being a Taglioni, you can have anything you want. Any woman you desire. Own any person you want. Do you get it? In concert with the other families and the few individuals who have managed to win seats on the Board, we control it all. Everything. And, if it belongs to one of the other families, we can usually barter, buy, or otherwise find a way to obtain our heart’s desire.” He paused. “Even Klea Morena.”
Dek stared at the door where Morena had just vanished like a dream. “You paid her to meet me last night?” It still seemed too fantastic to believe, but then, this was Claudio. No doubt it had been orchestrated with the full approval of Malissa, his mother. In fact, he could almost feel her touch in the whole thing: “Darling, let’s put Klea Morena in his bed. Slap this foolishness out of his head for once and for all.”
Father’s smile dripped satisfaction. “Paid? Good heavens, no. I asked. As a favor.”
“You just asked? And she came?”
“Boy, I am Claudio Taglioni. When I ask, whatever I ask, it always . . .”
The hiss of quetzal laughter sent a shiver through Dek’s gut.
In his mind’s eye, Claudio’s classically sculpted face began to morph, the beautiful blond hair turning yellow and then blood red. Father’s designer-gold eyes merged into a cyclopean sphere that flattened, split into three, and the wide lips stretched into a quetzal’s serrated jaws.
“Yeah, figures,” Dek whispered dryly. “If ever there was a quetzal in human form, it would be my father.” The man who’d snapped his fingers, and with a word, sent one of the most coveted women alive to his son’s bed. And, despite all that Klea Morena had been, she’d nevertheless had to comply. Because it was Claudio Taglioni’s command.
Dek’s gut burned with the injustice of it.
“Hate. Feel it.”
At the words, a burning, loathing fire burst through Dek’s chest. As it did he reached out, grabbed his despicable wretch of a father by the throat. He chortled with glee, fingers tightening on the man’s skin. Claudio’s throat collapsed under Dek’s iron grip as he crushed the windpipe and larynx. His father’s golden eyes began to bulge from their sockets, the man’s tongue protruding beyond his teeth as Dek made him suffer for every indignity he’d ever inflicted.
Through gritted teeth, he told his panicked father, “Whatever it takes to rid the world of you, you foul bit of human trash!”
“Dek! Damn it! Wake up.”
The words battered their way through the burning hatred. Claudio’s purpling face widened, became one with Demon’s, frantic and desperate as Dek choked the very life from it.
He felt his body shake, his head jerking back and forth. That implacable voice demanded, “Dek! Wake the fuck up! It’s Talina.”
He blinked, saw the quetzal image fade into Talina’s. Could see the similarity, the differences. “What the . . . ?”
“Who’s Klea?”
Dek shook the fragments of images, clinging like cobwebs, from his mind; his body was still riding the adrenaline high of choking his father to death. Burning in hatred and rage. God, he wanted to kill. To burn his father’s bones on a pyre of . . .
“Hey! Where are you?”
Dek, fought, managed to clear his head. His hands were knotted so tight the joints ached. Looked around in disbelief as he whispered, “I was in my bedroom. In Taglioni Tower. In Transluna. But I’m . . . in a clearing? What the hell happened? How did you get here? Where are we? What happened to my father? What’s happening to me?” He made a face. “And worse, what is that horrible smell?”
&nbs
p; Talina hunched over him, her rifle slung across her back. Beyond was Donovan’s turquoise sky, dotted with clouds. He could hear the chime. Hard rock ate into his back. Rock? Where the hell was he, anyway?
As Talina plucked a long string of something bloody from her matted hair and tossed it to the side, she said, “Demon’s fingering his way through your memories. Experimenting with different ways to stimulate your limbic system. He’s learning how to trigger whichever emotional response he thinks might be advantageous when the time comes to turn you into a weapon.”
“Shit on a shoe,” Dek rubbed his face. Struggled to clear his head. It was true. They were somewhere in the forest, on a hard patch of dark and mineral-speckled gneiss. He could look up at the sheer face of the mountain, see the endless crags, the cracked and implacable rock that rose to towering heights against the morning sky. All in all, a damn stunning view. But how had he gotten here?
“So, who’s Klea?”
“Klea Morena.”
“The actor? The one who played Priss Talahan? Eunice Iverson? Seela Fitch? That one?”
“That’s her.”
“No wonder your flagpole was at full mast and you were sweating pheromones like an elephant in must. And that’s just for the fantasy version.”
“Nothing fantasy about it.”
Talina’s gaze narrowed. “You’re kidding. You mean to tell me—”
“You don’t want to know.” He struggled to sit up. “Where the hell are we? I have a vague memory of mobbers. That shit of a quetzal must have picked them from my memory. From when I was . . .” He stopped, staring at the bits and pieces of gore that were scattered about, at the bloody spatters and chunks of tissue that clung to his coveralls. A red string of guts hung down from his shoulders. A severed mobber’s head, the three eyes staring, lay next to his boot.
And then the stench began to make sense.
Talina flicked a chunk of bloody tissue from her shoulder as she stood. “That was real. And they were dropping down to turn you into a thin-sliced meal when I finally caught up with you.”
“That’s why he let me go,” Dek realized. “Demon was scared of the mobbers.”
“Yeah. Find something that terrifies him. It’s one of the few ways you can learn to kick the miserable shit out of your head.” She helped him to his feet. “Come on. We have to get back to the dome. Wash the mobber guts out of my hair and clothes. It’s about a kilometer. How you made it this far is beyond my understanding. You should have been a meal five times over.”
“I was a quetzal.” Dek let her lead the way, appalled by the carnage littering the rock. Invertebrates were already flocking to the bits and chunks, swarming the still-dying mobbers that flopped on the unforgiving rock. “Where’s my rifle?”
“Back at the dome. The last place it should be. I burned up a whole magazine on that flock. I’m empty. Out of rounds. And covered in blood and guts like we are, who knows what kind of predator we’ll attract. Which is why we need to beat feet back to the barn before one of those flying freaks gets the bright idea to come back and finish what they were starting.”
“On Donovan,” Dek quoted, “a full magazine trumps all the mystical teachings in the universe.”
“Been hanging around Shig, huh?” She stomped a bleating mobber dead with a hard heel, led the way to the north edge of the outcrop, parted the still-agitated leaves, and started down the steep slope.
“I don’t want to live like this. It’s reliving hell.”
“I don’t know what your version of hell is.”
“That rage you shook me out of? I was strangling my father with my bare hands.”
“Must be fun to be at your house for family time at Christmas.”
“We don’t celebrate Christmas. Holidays are for lesser beings who are in need of occasional relief from the drudgery of their normal lives.” He felt a sense of relief to be back in the forest, away from the ruination of blasted wings, guts, and blown-apart bodies.
“If that’s how your dad feels, I’ll strangle him for you.”
“Trade you my Christmas for yours,” he told her as he ducked a vine and willed his feet to find the same purchase she’d used to descend the squirming roots onto the dim root mat at the bottom of the slope. As he did, he let the memory come. “I can smell it. See the steam rising off that pot on the stove. The one with the dent. There are big red tiles on the floor, and the table is a ponderous wooden thing. You are putting some kind of stoneware plates on the—”
“Hey.” She turned, an angry frown marring the smooth lines of her forehead. “You have that? In your head? In that kind of detail?”
“Yeah. But this time the bowl isn’t there. I see your mother. A tall woman, thin, her hair in a ponytail that hangs down her back. She’s wearing a white cotton dress with a floral pattern. Stops at her knees. Muscular brown calves. She’s wearing sandals. And her smile. . . . I like that about her. How she—”
“Stop.” Talina started off again, moving fast, the set of her shoulders reflecting her irritation. “How much more of me is inside that head of yours?”
“Makes me jealous.”
“What? Sharing my memories?”
“No. That your mother loved you like that.”
41
Donovanian TriNA. If the stories were true, the molecules were a nightmare turned real, an insidious presence that crept into the blood and took over a person’s body. Especially children. They had all heard the stories about Kylee Simonov, who was so wild she’d never set foot in Port Authority.
Michaela had met Talina Perez, looked into the woman’s inhuman eyes, tried not to stare at her peculiar cheekbones or the alien shape of her face. She’d felt as if Perez was something “other.” Just being in her presence had been upsetting. That she’d almost murdered other human beings while under the influence of alien TriNA made her even more disturbing.
Now they were afraid of it here? Among one of the children? Was little Toni, too, going to become a half-human monster like the Perez woman?
“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” Vik Lawrence muttered in a harried voice as she peered into her microscope’s imaging screen.
Michaela had followed the microbiologist into the lab after the breakfast dishes had been cleared. Not that anyone was getting much done, most of her people finding ways to stand around in little groups with like-minded friends, all trying to figure out what Toni’s paralysis meant. Discussing whether they should or shouldn’t fly the little boy to Port Authority. Periodically checking on their own children, alarmed to find that most had a slight fever, muscle aches, and sore joints.
Iso was giving Felicity aspirin and had confined her to bed. She said that she was sweating enough to stain the sheets. Anna had checked her and could find no sign of fever or incipient paralysis like Toni exhibited. But her sweat remained curiously slick, almost oily.
Gabarron—never anyone’s favorite given her usually sour disposition—was now on call, going from kid to kid, taking temperatures and blood samples, peering into eyes with her scope, and tapping on chests and bellies.
For their part, the children were adamantly maintaining that none of them had ever, ever, taken anything from Iso’s storage closet. They all swore that not one of them had seen Toni playing with any detergent bottles or cans of any kind of oil or lubricant. And that was probably true. Not only were the toxic chemicals all accounted for, but the children were constantly underfoot, always within sight of an adult. The only time they were ever unsupervised was when they were in “science club” in the observation blister. Whatever science club was.
Nothing that resembled oil had been in the observation blister. The place consisted of a transparent dome with cushioned benches. Period. The safest place on the Pod for a kid to be.
Toni’s exposure remained a mystery.
The bio lab where Michaela watched over
Vik’s shoulder was on the Pod’s west side, second level, directly over the living quarters. Scientific and diagnostic equipment packed the room, everything necessary for a preliminary cataloging and study of Donovanian marine life. It had microscopes, FTIR, genetic sequencers, its own dedicated quantum computer, centrifuges, racks of test tubes and sample jars, imaging equipment, spectrometry, freezers, a Level 5 biohazard unit and incinerator, hood, and vent, as well as a myriad of other tools and chemicals.
“So, here’s what I’ve done,” Vik said. “I’ve used the centrifuge to precipitate some of those seawater samples that Kevina collected. I’ve siphoned off the liquid, leaving a sludge consisting of microorganisms. This, I’ve placed on the slide and stained. And wow. It’s a whole wild and incredible biota the likes of which I’ve never seen. But, that said, the plankton morphology could almost be terrestrial. I stress the word almost. I mean, there’s claws, cilia, eyes, scales, limbs. First thing that’s readily different? Trilateral symmetry in all the multicellular organisms. The stuff we might equate with plankton. Second thing that pops? When you increase the magnification, all of these lifeforms are composed of prokaryotic cells. That means no nucleus.”
“Same as the land-based organisms.”
“Right. But it’s still early in the cataloging process.” She pointed to a row of sample jars. “I still have a backlog of thirty samples that Yosh, Kevina, and Odinga want analyzed. The memorials have me three days behind on running them. Maybe when I can get to them we will find eukaryotes in one of the more complex and advanced marine organisms. Maybe an order that hasn’t transitioned to land.”
Vik glanced sidelong at Michaela. “Our job is to check the boy for TriNA. To do that, we’ve got to isolate some TriNA and feed the data into the scope. I’ve chosen a single-celled specimen from one of Kevina’s original water samples as the easiest source for locating TriNA. Keep your eyes on the screen.”
Michaela crowded close, watching as the tube-shaped image of a microorganism resolved. “Do we still call it a cell?”
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