by Myles, Eden
Rainer nodded. “Exclusive,” he said, which was apparently the modern term all over the world for almost-fiances. Rainer would understand that, if nothing else.
Wolf and I had discussed marriage quite frequently over the past six months, but strangely enough, I felt no burning desire to make things legal—though, of course, I loved my gentleman with all my heart. I guess part of it was the fact that I didn’t want Wolf to think I was another Anna, that I was in this for his money. Ironically enough, the marriage thing was now a point of contention between us—something I wouldn’t have expected from a man who claimed he didn’t believe in committed relationships. Wolf insisted that if I ever turned up pregnant, he would marry me, even if he had to drag me in chains down the altar, which, probably, he would. Then he’d insisted I wear his engagement ring. He asked first as my life partner, and then, when he saw how reluctant I was, as my gentleman. It was a very fine Namibian diamond, very pretty, but Wolf had nothing to prove to me or anyone else. I was his, now and forever. I didn’t need a pretty ring to prove that.
Eventually all this had led to a massive fight wherein I tried to explain to him that I was an independent woman, that he never had to worry about doing the right thing by me like it was 1873. I took contraceptives like a reasonable adult, and failing that, I was more than capable of raising Asia and any other child we might have. I had money. I had the magazine, which was seeing something of a revival of late. But Wolf, always the stubborn hothead, had blown up at me, muttered out a dozen violent German curse words, and slammed the door of our bedroom hard enough to rattle the pictures off the walls.
Later that night, I found him standing on the farthest outskirts of the estate where it bordered the Namib desert. I’d toured the desert already by daylight, but my moonlight it was simply breathtaking, like a shimmering sea of blue sand. I shivered in the cold, drawing the blanket I’d brought with me closer about my shoulders. I stood by Wolf’s side and looked out over the land he loved so much, the land that was in his blood and his bones, the land he was slowly bringing back to life, and listened to a particular clicking noise ringing out, like sticks being struck together. When I finally asked him about it, he said, “You’re hearing the grains of sand falling against each other. I used to leave my windows open in my bedroom at night, even with the cold, just so I could listen to that sound as I drifted off to sleep.”
Together, we listened to the clicking of the sand. Eventually I put my hand on his arm and said, “If you want me to marry you, Wolf, I will. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do, sir. I always do, don’t I?”
“I don’t want you to marry me, mein liebeling,” he confessed, drawing me close against the warmth of his body. “I just want you to never leave me.”
Emboldened by his statement, I shrugged out of the blanket so I was standing there in just my long, shivery nightgown. Then I lay down in the sand on my back and squirmed a little just to feel the course pliancy of it against my skin. The moon hung metallically above the desert, casting a light so bright it made me squint. It felt so good to lay there, to feel the wind and sand passing over me, to feel that old wolf moon kiss me. I started wondering if Africa was getting into me, the way it had long ago gotten into Wolf.
He watched me writhe in the sand for a bit before he slipped out of his jacket, lay down beside me, palmed my cheek, and kissed me. His mouth was hot and hungry. The make-up sex that night was amazing and mind-blowing. He let me ride him as hard as I wanted to, and he kept thrusting up and up into all my soreness, all the emptiness in my body, until he filled me to overflowing. Then he held me down in the sand and kissed me and rutted with me again like some wild animal in heat. I finally agreed to wear his ring, though I told him directly that we weren’t getting married—at least, not right now.
The following morning, my birth control pills vanished on me. More of Wolf’s games. I swore I had to watch him every minute! Wolf would do anything to get what he wanted.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the same was true of Rainer—if, under all that shyness, he had that same deep, instinctual ambition to succeed like Wolf, if he would turn out to be a terror just like his father, ravishing fair maidens everywhere. It was enough to make me want to hide Asia away forever.
I’d heard through his handlers that, like Wolf, Rainer had an eidetic memory, but his mother had blocked any attempts on his part to learn English, like some desperate last barrier between him and his father. I couldn’t understand why a woman would be so hell-bent on separating a father from his son—but then, maybe I could. Rainer was Anna’s weapon, the one thing she had that she could use to hurt Wolf. But I’d also learned that Rainer wanted to learn English, that he had even defied his mother’s wishes to be here, and that told me something about him.
“Let me go check to see where Wolf’s gotten himself off to,” I told Rainer and then stalked off into the hallway that connected to the foyer.
My dad was waiting for me there and he said, “Looks like your man is hiding, baby girl.”
“Jesus,” I began, but then noticed that Wolf was descending the stairs, Asia clinging to his hand as if it were my daughter who had ousted him from our quarters. And probably she had. While I couldn’t seem to budge Wolf on some issues, Asia could get him to do anything she wanted.
Wolf was dressed very formerly in his tuxedo. Normally, I loved seeing him so dapper when we visited the Dollhouse back in New York, but right now he looked like he was about to attend a funeral—or maybe an execution, his own. Dressed in a caftan of blue, her hair in cornrows, Asia shone like a light beside him, looking remarkably sophisticated as she walked him down the steps.
Ever since the kidnapping, something rather amazing had happened to my daughter. For a while, she’d been nervous and out of sorts. She couldn’t even sleep alone without nightmares waking her in the middle of the night, and she’d spent almost every night snuggled against me in bed. When Wolf visited for Southern Sunday, she attached herself to him like a barnacle. After all, Wolf was her hero, the man who had saved her life. I had seriously begun worrying that she’d been psychologically damaged for life by the incident, but then one morning at breakfast she announced that she was going to be an architect and build houses in Namibia when she grew up. She sounded very determined to do that, very much an adult, and after that, she’d begun sleeping in her own bed again. Wolf had suggested we spend a few months at his estate, a way for my daughter and I to bond while Asia experienced the wonders of Africa, and I knew the arrangement would please not only Asia, but my father, who’d longed to see his ancient homeland for so long.
I marched up to Wolf and said, “Are you going in there or are you going to stay up in our rooms and hide out the whole evening?”
Wolf looked insulted that I was using my Mom voice on him. “I’m not hiding,” he insisted, though his normally gruff voice was tempered with something like fear.
“He’s hiding,” Asia informed me with a nod. “And he’s changed his suit three times, Mom.”
“I’m not hiding, ducky,” he told Asia.
“Wolf,” I said, and leaned up to palm his cheek so he looked at me, only me. “Go talk to him. It’s Rainer. Your son. You may never have the opportunity again.”
He pressed his lips together. His eyes were very serious, like a soldier standing before the firing line. “I don’t know him, Rachaela. He’s not the boy I knew.”
“Then get to know the man he’s becoming.”
“Anna’s probably turned me into a villain in his eyes.”
I thought about that, then nodded. “Rainer’s a smart boy, Wolf. I think he can make up his own mind.”
Wolf thought about that, but didn’t make a move until Asia smiled up at him. Then he pulled himself together and marched out to the conservatory. Asia and I stayed in the hall with my dad to watch their reunion from afar.
Rainer turned his head when Wolf entered the room, and a pale sweat seemed to break out over the boy’s face. Wolf clutched his walking stick
in a death grip and said something in German, very formal, like a greeting. Rainer answered him in kind as he stood up and made a little bow. It was all very Eighteenth Century-ish. The two men shortened the space between them until they’d reached the center of the room. Then they just looked at each other a long moment, like gunfighters in an old western movie. I knew Rainer hadn’t seen his father since he was eight years old. Wolf had lived ten years without knowing his son, knowing what kind of a man he was becoming.
I saw all that deeply buried pain in Wolf’s eyes, that vulnerability he almost never showed anyone. Finally, he said, “Mein liebes Kind. Mein Sohn.”
My dear child. My son. I knew those phrases.
The emotion broke out over Rainer’s face like water from a broken dam. He said, “Papa,” very clearly and in a trembling voice, and Wolf took the boy in his arms, held him tight against his suit, clutched the back of his head, and kissed the side of his neck. Rainer started to weep. Wolf said something soft and soothing in German as Rainer trembled and clutched his father tight.
And I thought then, Yes, everything will be all right now. Everything will be just fine.
* * *
SNOW
By Madeline Apple
“Ship’s log, date: 5513-01-14. En route to extrasolar planet Osiris,” William said clearly into the auto-communicator pinned to the collar of his lab coat. He swiveled in his chair and picked up his medical tablet before getting to his feet in his personal flight quarters. “Dr. William Hunt reporting. We are twenty-seven days out and closing in on jump star 00067. We expect to rendezvous in approximately 72 earth hours. Checking on Subject BL-009-8123 in medical bay 11.”
He navigated the twist of sterling white corridors, passing a few hard-faced guardsman along the way, until he arrived at the proper bay. Normally, medical staff were expected to take a guardsman in with them as escort whenever they performed an exam, just as a precaution, but this far out into space, with so few corporate suits from Home Office to look over their shoulders, the guardsman who worked for Helix Laboratories had a tendency to become lax in their duties.
Not that William minded. He was a large man who had never required any kind of bio-mechanical augmentations. He’d spent a decade in the military medical field. He was more than capable of subduing a subject when he must. And anyway, the clones produced at Helix Labs were programmed to be docile as befitted their purpose.
He punched in his security codes and the door irised open to let him enter. Subject BL-009-8123 lay in a stasis capsule full of amniotic fluid, another reason a guardsman was completely unnecessary. The clear glass of the capsule was indestructible, and the subject easily programmed through her DNA. Right now, the computer had rendered her immobile and the creature watched him approach with a wide, uneasy gaze.
William took a moment to examine the notes on his medical tablet, then went over to the capsule to read the display that hung overtop it. The computer had already begun a full diagnostic of the subject, everything from blood pressure and heart rate, to brain and body scans. Even her DNA was on display, running in sharply defined numbers and figures across the lower half of the display. She was in excellent health and had obviously been well taken care of in whatever Helix nursery she had been developed in.
She was also exquisite, one of the finest specimens he had ever laid eyes on—the obvious product of expensive craftsmanship. She was long and lean and almost perfect white by genetic design, without a normal pink blush to be found anywhere on her body.
Instead, her flesh bore the pale bluish tint of milk as requested by the Helix Lab patron who had commissioned her design. He thought it should make her look cold and dead. Instead, it made her a creature of extreme contrasts, like a young pin-up girl rendered in black and white, hair so black it looked blue, skin so white it looked ghostly, eyes almost perfectly black, and lips as red as extinct roses. Her eyes were huge and rimmed in thick black lashes that looked like clippings of her amazing hair, and her face was as dear and exquisite as china. As he had the computer drain the tank and the glass folded back for his examination, he admired her naturally pouting lips, smooth-as-ceramic skin, and full rounded breasts, tipped with pale blue nipples that stood at proud attention.
She even smelled good, a light, loamy fragrance mixed with roses. The scent alone aroused him, made him feel slightly drunk, as it was designed to. He ignored the tightening of his trousers and said, “My name is Dr. William Hunt. You were brought out of stasis three days ago. Do you know your name? Do you know how to speak?”
The girl lay there immobile, staring up at him, unaffected by his words or her own nudity. Her eyes flitted over him and her lips parted, but otherwise she was silent.
He knew it was idiotic to talk to a sex toy, but he couldn’t help himself when they were designed to look so human. He much preferred the Bunnygirls, Catgirls and Foxgirls he normally examined, human DNA expertly mixed and combined with whatever animal the patron favored to produce exquisite humanoid women with elongated ears, whiskers, tails. But this toy, like all the rest, had been developed without a prefrontal cortex—the part of the human brain that was involved in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, and decision making skills. She was a blank personality incapable of higher thinking. He had to remember that. She could not reason, she had no identity, and like a household pet, she could only communicate in the most primitive of ways.
He watched her tremble as her muscles bunched and released as she attempted—unsuccessfully—to move, struggling against her own programming.
“I know you don’t understand what’s happening,” he went on, “but you’ll soon be able to move again and I promise you no one will hurt you…”—he checked his chart—“…Snow.”
The girl made a little moaning sound in response.
Had he spotted recognition of her name in her eyes? But no…that was impossible. She had been manufactured only a few weeks ago according to her patron’s design, and then packaged and suspended for transport to Osiris. Even if the nurses and guardsman who had brought her here today had used her name, she would not have been exposed to it long enough for her to recognize it.
To be sure, though, he checked her brain scan. There was nothing there to indicate that she understood anything at all. But the idea continued to bother him as he went about his physical exam of her. He scanned her DNA to make certain it was sound, then checked her all over for signs of injury or bruising during her transport.
He knew the patron, whoever he or she was, would not appreciate damaged good—or a slipshod exam that failed to discover those damages. And when he bothered to check the patron’s details, he instantly became even more nervous. It would seem Her Majesty Queen Maria Lucretia Grimhilde III, the reigning monarch of Osiris, had commissioned the girl’s design. The woman was a legendary perfectionist. William had spent just one evening dining with the arrogant, overbearing Queen and her entourage on earth, and he was determined to never repeat that nightmare again.
Snow managed to clamp her teeth down on his thumb while he was removing her breathing tubes, and he quickly jerked his hand back. He saw real anger flash briefly across her face, and he wondered if she had been mistreated in some way over the last few days, perhaps by a guardsman with little self-control. “That’s not very nice, Snow. You’ve nothing to fear from me,” he assured her. Unlike the Queen, when she finally gets her careless hands on you.
Being more wary of her teeth, he looked her over carefully, looking for traces of mishandling that had been covered up. He traced the elegant slope of her neck, ran his fingers over her clavicle, and down to the tips of her breasts. According to her records, she was designed to be easily stimulated to lactation. He pinched the nipple, and a tiny bead of bluish-white liquid appeared. He wet his fingers with it and tasted it. It tasted sweet and warm. He imagined it must be incredibly erotic to suckle at those full breasts.
Snow blushed a pale blue and strained to move as he worked her nipples, recordin
g on his medical tablet how well they worked according to their design. She groaned and tears filled her eyes. William recorded those too. He had seen sex toys cry, but only on command, and only according to their programming. Some patrons enjoyed having sex toys who cried in order to enhance the experience of sexing them, though he never understood the draw himself.
And he had never seen one cry of its own accord. He checked her brain scan again but it was normal, almost flatlining, really. It was obvious that Snow was mimicking some action she had witnessed. Sex toys were incapable of human emotions like shame or fear, but they could learn to mimic. He had seen Girls of Paradise, their DNA mixed with exotic birds, learn to sing by only hearing a song one time.
“Snow,” he said again, looking her over, her fearful struggles against her own weakness. “Snow, do you understand why you’re here?” Why did he sound so hopeful? “Do you understand anything at all?”
But she didn’t answer.
* * *
Snow struggled against her mounting fear the way she struggled against her immobility. Ever since she had been awakened from stasis, she had been absorbing the ambient computer datawaves all around her that no one else seemed capable of seeing. Pictures, data, languages, mathematics…her brain sucked it all up in a whirlwind storm. Only three days had passed and she was now learned in thousands of years of human existence, including what Helix Laboratories was all about. What she was all about.
That was the worst thing. She remembered a time not very long ago when she neither knew nor cared about anything, except for a few simple comforts—food, warmth, being touched, being safe. She knew how to pleasure a man or a woman, but only because that information had been programmed into her DNA. Ignorance truly was bliss.
But then they had put her to sleep for the purposes of transportation and had awakened her only three days ago as her rendezvous point grew near. Her point of delivery. She was to be delivered to her mistress, her Queen, on the planet Osiris. And that’s when her personal hell had begun. That’s when she knew who, and what, she was, and what was expected of her.