Beta

by Rachel Cohn

  It sounds like someone must be in distress.

  I walk toward the hut where the sounds are coming from and stand below the window. Through it, I see two bodies, a male and a female, black-haired and white-skinned, both nude, neither in distress. Perhaps the air has been pumped from premium to porny here on Demesne today, and indiscretion seems to be the result, whether my glazed eyes seek such sights or not.

  The couple’s coital gyrations are keenly symbiotic, as if each can sense what the other wants or needs at every moment. The intimacy is not like that between the Governor and Tawny—professional. Theirs is lusty and yet tender. If they weren’t clearly clones (by the vining I can see on their temples through their black hair), I’d assess their mating to have the humans-only feeling called soulful.

  I know what they are doing is supposed to be wrong, and it’s forbidden for clones. So why does their union look so right—almost beautiful?

  Her hands reach behind his neck to pull his face to hers. “Yes!” she loudly cries out. Their hands clasp as their bodies appear to culminate in a final moment of shared pleasure.

  He collapses on top of her and she pulls his face to hers to rub her cheek against his and run her fingers through his hair. I can finally see her face. Her glazed eyes may be that of a clone’s, but her expression matches that human one labeled cherished.

  That is the face I want to experience. With Tahir. For real.

  Her fuchsia eyes meet mine.

  The face belongs to Xanthe.

  Later that night, at bedtime, Xanthe appears in my room. She closes my bedroom door and observes me as she steps to my bed to turn down the sheets and fluff the pillows. She has never before done this nighttime preparation in my room.

  “Good evening,” she says.

  “Yes,” I respond.

  She takes an inordinate amount of time to fluff my pillows, as if she is waiting for me to commence conversation.

  “Do I get a chocolate on the pillow?” I ask.

  “Excuse me?”

  “A chocolate. With the bedtime turndown service.”

  Her face registers confused. And then she seems to grasp what just happened. “You…joke?” she asks. She eyes me up and down. “How do you know how to joke?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. It just happens.”

  “How unnecessary,” she says. “What other things can you do?”

  “I am a good diver.”

  “I have heard.”

  She waits for me to respond, but I don’t. It’s as if she’s running out the clock to see when I will acknowledge what—if anything—I saw.

  Perhaps we could do an information trade.

  “What are Defects?” I ask her.

  Her face pales, and I regret asking the question. It has set her expression to fearful.

  “I am not a Defect,” she proclaims.

  “Of course you’re not,” I affirm. “It’s just that no one will tell me what they actually are. Maybe you know?”

  By persisting with the question, I am trying to say without saying: I know your secret. Please, reveal this secret to me.

  Xanthe shuts and bolts all the windows in my room. Then she goes to my bedroom door, opens it, peers down the hallway to see if anyone is near, and shuts my bedroom door again. She sits down on my bed and gestures for me to sit down next to her.

  Quietly, she says, “Can you keep the information to yourself?”

  I believe she has accepted my trade. “I swear. Absolutely.” I touch her fingers, but she winces. I take her hand anyway, and clench. Please, I want my gesture to tell her. Trust me. Maybe we could help each other.

  She does not return my gesture, but she does not remove her hand from my beneath mine. Xanthe whispers, “Defects are clones who think they have souls. They feel. They rage. There have only been a few on Demesne. Once they were discovered, they were immediately returned, and expired.”

  “They think they have souls? Or they have souls?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Xanthe says. But her index finger latches on to mine. As if she is acknowledging something: hope?

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  Her face visibly softens, almost glows.

  “An oxygen leveler.” A-ha! So there was something different in the air today, but it wasn’t science. It was as untouchable as the air, something felt rather than seen. Could it be love? That impossibility would seem even more amazing than scandalous. “He lives in the clone quarters at Haven.”

  There’s an opportunity here. I must take it. “Do you know about the Insurrection?”

  Xanthe backs away from me, as if I have a disease. Did I take the questioning too far? “Of course not. There’s no rebellion on this island.”

  Xanthe is lying. The word is not in my database, so it shouldn’t be in hers either. Insurrection isn’t just a word I saw in Astrid’s book that the Governor happened to say earlier today. Whatever it is, it’s real. How could insurrection equal the concept of freedom?

  How can I let Xanthe know she can truly trust me?

  My confession could equal my expiration, but my knowledge of her carnal feelings could equal hers. We’re evenly matched. I need her to know that. I whisper, “I have a sense of taste. I love macaroni and cheese, and chocolate.” As I speak the words, letting go of the burden of keeping this information to myself, I can feel my body actually relax, as if my mind is allowing my body a measure of relief.

  For a moment Xanthe appears confused. First I was asking about the Insurrection and now I’m talking about food. Then she gets it. “Impossible,” Xanthe says. “Maybe because you’re a Beta. That must be it.”

  “Do you have a sense of taste?”

  “No!” she says, sounding offended. “I only require strawberry shakes.” She looks on the verge of panic.

  “There’s one more thing.” I pause. “I think…I have memories. From my First.”

  Xanthe gasps. “No. That’s unheard of. You remember her?”

  “I don’t remember her so much as I have visions that I’m sure are from her memory. It’s just one specific memory. It happens when I’m in the water.” I can tell by the furrowing of Xanthe’s brows that my revelation is not a good thing. Quickly, I add, “It’s probably nothing. It’s probably some weird Beta thing. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  Xanthe grabs both my shoulders, nearly shaking me. “Keep this to yourself,” she says. “Please. They could probably deal with you having a sense of taste. Maybe. But memories? No way. You’ll be labeled a Defect.”

  My bedroom door opens and Xanthe nearly jumps. Tawny stands in the doorway. “It’s lights-out time in clone quarters,” Tawny scolds Xanthe. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come on. Don’t be late.”

  Xanthe’s face goes completely blank, as if her chip has accessed a reset button. “Of course. I lost track of time. How fortunate you found me,” Xanthe says to Tawny, and she leaves my room without looking back.

  DESPITE THE NEW INFORMATION I HAVE gained, I will not add worry to my palette of human mimicry. Whatever the Defects and protesters are doing does not concern me, because I am here to bring the fun.

  Literally.

  It is Tahir’s eighteenth birthday. His parents have a lavish party planned for him that all the best people on Demesne have been invited to, but the afternoon party that the gang has arranged for him is the one they hope will really matter to their friend. Dementia and Greer say that Tahir has been asking them about me, so they have decided to give me to him for his birthday. They have wrapped me in a gift box with a ribbon on top.

  Dementia lands her Aviate directly on the sand at Hidden Beach, where Ivan, Farzad, and Tahir await our arrival. I crouch inside the box, breathing slowly within the small area. Inside, I see only darkness, but based on the hard pounding in my chest, I conclude that darkness may not only affect sight. I feel a surge of the human state irritation. This is my darkness to conquer, and it has nothing to do with what I can’t see. Why can’t I be Tahir’s
equal instead of his prize?

  The Aviate lands and the trunk pops open. I hear Farzad and Ivan standing at the back of the vehicle to lift the box out. Farzad says, “This is the dumbest idea those girls have ever had.”

  Ivan says, “Agreed. But what else can we give a guy who has everything?” Ivan pats the top of the box as if inside it has a puppy eagerly waiting to be sprung free. “Hang in there, champ. We’ll have you out of there in just a few minutes. The girls are putting a blindfold on Tahir as part of the surprise.”

  Farzad says, “Imbecilic. Truly.”

  Ivan repeats, “Agreed.”

  Farzad adds, “Hey, Beta. Did you wear a white bikini? That’s what did it for old Tahir.”

  Ivan says, “Astrid would never wear one for him.”

  Farzad says, “And your sister is no longer Tahir’s sometimes girlfriend. Correct?”

  “Correct,” says Ivan. “She was too smart for him anyway.”

  They lift the box and carry it from the Aviate. I feel it placed on the soft-textured sand’s surface. Through a hole in the side of the box, I see Tahir seated on a surfboard, blindfolded, with Dementia and Greer standing on either side of him. Dementia says, “We wanted you to have a special birthday-song surprise.”

  “Better than a hologram!” says Greer. She removes his blindfold with exaggerated flourish. “Ta-da!”

  Tahir regards the box. “What’s in the box?” he asks, sounding more polite than curious.

  “Open it!” squeals Dementia.

  He stands up and as he approaches the box, my heart beats faster still. His nearness does something to me. Breaks up the darkness in a very confusing way.

  I hear the ribbon cut off from the box and therefore I do as instructed. I open the box by flinging myself up from my crouched position. I stand with my arms wide, in a victory stance, and pronounce, “Happy birthday, Tahir!”

  Over my white bikini, the girls have placed a beauty pageant sash lettered with the words MISS HAPPY BIRTHDAY. But if the girls hoped for a great reaction from Tahir, he does not give them one. Apparently my skimpy white bikini and nubile flesh do nothing for him. I must try harder. As commanded, I switch to pageant strut setting and sing the “Happy Birthday” song to him with beauty contestant bravado. I strut and careen and bounce along the sand, projecting warmth and enthusiasm for this great holiday.

  “Happy birthday, dear Tahir! Ha-a-ap-py birth-da-a-a-y, to-o-o yo-o-ou!”

  I place my hands on my hips and deliver a smile and a wink.

  Tahir smiles his signature grin, his full coral lips curving upward as he flashes a glimmer of bright white teeth, but the expression in his eyes feels completely at odds with his smile. His eyes are blank, as if he could not be more bored. My performance must have been flawed. The day is overcast and slightly chilly, and there are goose pimples on my arms and my teeth are chattering slightly. My aesthetic is all wrong.

  Still, the girls clap enthusiastically at the finale of my performance while Ivan and Farzad shake their heads, trying not to laugh.

  Tahir asks, “Where’s my towel?”

  Farzad retrieves Tahir’s towel from the sand.

  Tahir comes over to me and wraps the towel around me. “You are cold,” he states. “Return to the Aviate until you warm up. I will build a campfire.”

  I return to the Aviate. But I am already warming up.

  Tahir does not want to play games on the beach or swim today. He seems content just to sit in silence at the campfire on the sand and to stare at me through the fire’s sparks and crackles while the others carry the conversation.

  Greer bemoans her limited choices for getting off the island now that she’s completed her high school equivalency exam. She did not get accepted at Biome University, and the few colleges where she did get accepted are all in boring places or floody places.

  “When do you start at BU?” Greer asks Tahir. “I’m so jealous.”

  Tahir says, “My parents deferred me for another year to give me more time to recover from the accident.”

  Farzad says, “So how are you spending your time back in the world? You can’t be in physical therapy all the time. Are you allowed to hovercopter yet?”

  “Not yet,” says Tahir. “Mostly I spend my time relearning what the accident caused me to lose.”

  Dementia says, “I wish I could get amnesia.”

  “I do not have amnesia,” says Tahir.

  Greer says, “She just means you seem a little forgetful since… Are they still giving you sedatives or something? You seem quieter too. It’s weird to be here at the beach without you cranking some music and racing the boys on the sand.”

  “And ogling the girls,” adds Dementia.

  Tahir’s stare has remained intent on me.

  “I think he still ogles,” observes Farzad.

  “Yes, I still take pain medication,” says Tahir.

  “Ever think about joining the military instead of going to BU?” Ivan asks Tahir. Ivan did not bother with college applications; the military was his only choice—or, rather, his father’s choice for him. “They’ll help you get back into shape.”

  “Yeah, and get all buff like this bad boy!” says Dementia, giving Ivan’s newly bulging biceps a playful squeeze. She turns to Greer. “And the uniforms are so cute. Maybe you should consider the military too, Greer? It would give you something to talk about with the Aquine working for your dad. You know, get him to help you with the application, help you train for the Base.”

  Farzad says, “Wait—there’s an Aquine working for Greer’s dad?”

  Greer nods. “Yeah. He’s fresh off the Base. He’s doing the annual report that no one cares about to the Replicant Rights Commission.”

  Ivan, Dementia, and Farzad all laugh at the absurdity of the annual report no one actually cares about, but Tahir does not. Tahir says, “But Aquine do not join the military.”

  Greer says, “Traditionally, they haven’t. This guy is the first from his clan. It’s, like, a big deal that he left to join the world. He’s unbelievably beautiful. All that master DNA works delightfully on him, I must say.”

  Dementia says, “He’s so pure. Such a shame. No naughty dalliances for the forbidden Aquine. There’s just something so ridiculously beautiful and romantic about mating for life.” She pulls on her hair and kicks some sand into the fire. “At least you have options, Greer. My parents won’t let me off this island.”

  Says Ivan, “You wreak enough terror here. I don’t think the world can handle you, Dementia.”

  Dementia laughs. Then she emits a loud sigh and turns to Tahir. “Dude, I’m sorry, but someone has to say it. You are so boring now. I think some ’raxia ought to cure you of that. You game for the dare?”

  Tahir shakes his head.

  Farzad scoffs, “You never used to turn down a dare.”

  So challenged, Tahir says, “Then let’s do ’raxia.”

  Ivan says, “Finally, happy birthday to Tahir!”

  Through the fire, I observe Tahir. His hazel eyes sear into me, and I marvel at how this human prince can stare so keenly into my eyes but does not feel compelled to look away. The intensity of his stare could burn a hole through my soul. If I had one. I wish I did, if only so I could understand the appeal of their ’raxia.

  The gang have tried a new kind of ’raxia—Ivan’s custom blend. Farzad’s review of Ivan’s ’raxia: “Strange brew, bro. It’s less ambient than regular grade ’raxia. Makes me feel relaxed, but also like I want to punch through a wall. Weird combo.”

  Greer, who, because it’s Tahir’s birthday, has foregone her usual disdain of ’raxia and has joined the gang’s ambient indulgence today, says, “Yeah, I forgot how sweet this stuff can make you feel. I’m, like, all tingly. But I also want to punch something.” She playfully jabs Dementia’s arm. “Kidding. Sorta!”

  “I’m experimenting with steroid components in the ’raxia. This batch has some testosterone,” Ivan informs his friends.

  “That how you’re ge
tting so strong?” Farzad asks Ivan.

  Ivan nods. “Yeah. My new ’raxia. And my new Beta.”

  Dementia says, “If I suddenly grow a beard, I’m gonna cut you, Ivan.”

  They laugh. Greer says, “What do you think of the ’raxia, Beta?”

  My review of the ’raxia: “Meh.” At Ivan’s orders, I have taken one of the pills, but I feel no different. I still don’t get why the human teens indulge in these capsules.

  Dementia says, “I heard ’raxia affects clones differently. Makes them crazy.”

  Greer giggles. “I overheard Ivan’s dad and my dad talking. I think that’s why the Aquine is really here. To investigate some link between ’raxia and Defects.”

  No one laughs with her. Even high, they don’t joke about Defects. “Not funny,” says Ivan. “And not true. Look at her.” He points to me. “No effect.”

  I shrug and admit, “Nothing.”

  The ’raxia has had its effect on Tahir, however. “Beta,” he calls to me. “Come here.”

  I step over the sand to where he sits by the campfire. “Sit down,” he commands.

  I sit down on the sand next to him.

  “No,” he says, and for the first time I see the spark in his hazel eyes that his friends have reported missing since his accident. “Sit on my lap.”

  The gang applauds. “There’s our Tahir!” says Farzad.

  “Feeling good,” says Tahir. “Different. So much sweetness.”

  Ivan nudges my arm with his finger. “Go sit on Tahir’s lap like he said.”

  Tahir sits cross-legged on the sand, and I stand up and insert myself into his lap. I have never been so near and close to a human boy like this before. I don’t think it’s the ’raxia that makes me feel intoxicated. It’s the press of Tahir’s warm flesh against mine as my back leans into his bare chest. He breathes onto the back of my neck, where the word BETA is aestheticized, and my skin feels on fire.