Nomad

by JL Bryan

  "I'm saying he always picks a five-star restaurant, and he always pays, so you should definitely come."

  "Okay."

  "Okay?" He moved toward her. "Great. He'll think you're great, I'll make sure, don't worry." He kissed her hand, then his lips moved up to her shoulder and neck.

  "I wasn't worried. Don't forget about your female sexual images paper."

  "Fuck! I'll see you later. Sorry."

  Raven followed and locked the front door behind him. Audra leaned out of her room, her eyes barely open.

  "Why are we up so early?" Audra yawned.

  "Logan's always up early."

  "I hate early risers." Audra closed her door, and Raven hurried back to her room and locked herself inside.

  She opened the safe inside her crawlspace, then activated the data cube and called up its detailed records of Logan's life.

  Logan had four uncles. One was an attorney at a Wall Street firm. Another was a prison-industry lobbyist. Another was CEO of a company that manufactured voting machines. The fourth was an unemployed alcoholic living in a trailer outside Jasper, Indiana. None of them were named Henry.

  She shuffled through the biographies of key people in the Secretary-General's life, and she soon identified Henry Sheffield, described as a strategist or adviser to Logan Carraway during his future political career. Sheffield had been a Yale undergraduate, then earned a doctorate in Comparative Politics from Cornell. He'd worked at the State Department for a time before attaching himself to the rising political fortunes of the Carraway family.

  In 2013, Sheffield was sixty-three years old, a graying, balding, paunchy man whose face made her think of a frog. He currently worked as an unofficial adviser to Senator Carraway, Logan's grandfather, while heading a small lobbying firm on K Street. He had also been the architect of Logan's father's victorious campaign for Governor of Indiana.

  In Raven's own time, he was one hundred and fourteen years old and kept alive artificially by cybernetics. His liver-spotted skin had shriveled against his skull, black video eyes looked out from his eye sockets, and his hairless scalp was studded with gleaming silicon implants that expanded his memory and accelerated his brain. He was the global security advisor to Secretary-General Carraway, one of the top people in the dictator's administration. Raven watched a recorded hologram of a news program, in which the elderly cyborg gave a heated argument for escalating the prolonged petroleum war in the Central Asian countries surrounding the Caspian Sea.

  "Nice to meet you, Uncle Henry," Raven said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They met at a downtown restaurant furnished with dark wood and white tablecloths, lit by dim wall sconces. Henry Sheffield occupied a table at the back, drinking a martini, and he raised a finger at Logan.

  "There he is," Logan whispered. "Drinking an early lunch."

  "I wouldn't mind one of those," Raven whispered back.

  Henry Sheffield looked even more frog-like in person, with wide, thin lips and eyes that never seemed to blink behind his gold-wire glasses. He wore a conservative blue suit and polished black loafers. He stood as they approached, shaking Logan's hand and clapping him on the shoulder.

  "Quite a golf season this year," Henry said. His voice was low and had a strange, almost rubbery texture.

  "We ended in fifth place," Logan said.

  "That's what I meant," Henry said. "Quite an embarrassing season."

  "I had the best scores on our team, though. Totally pissed off the upperclassmen."

  "It doesn't matter. If your team fails, you fail." Henry smiled at Raven, but his dark blue eyes showed no warmth as they examined her. "This is the young lady you've brought to beautify our lunch table?"

  "Riley, this is Dr. Henry Sheffield. Uncle Henry, this is Riley, the cutest, smartest girl in the world."

  "I won't argue with you." Henry shook her hand, then glanced at the shape of her breasts under her sweater as he sat down.

  Logan pulled out a chair and stood behind it, and a long, awkward moment passed before Raven realized he meant for her to take it. He gave her an amused look as he sat down beside her.

  "Vincent Palmisano tells me you've not applied to the School of International Studies, nor have you so much as called on him since you arrived in New Haven," Henry said to Logan.

  "So what's good here?" Logan held up the menu as though he could hide behind it.

  "Logan," Henry said.

  "Yeah, okay," Logan sighed. "I keep meaning to do that. I don't have to declare a major this year, though."

  "The sooner you decide, the easier it will be to select appropriate courses. Waste less time with these film studies and female gender studies and however else you're squandering your days."

  "I'm not squandering." Logan didn't raise his eyes from the menu. The waitress arrived with another martini for Henry and water for Raven and Logan.

  "Have you decided?" the waitress asked.

  "Have you?" Henry asked Logan.

  "Steak, super-rare, thanks," Logan said.

  Raven glanced down at the menu and picked out a yellowfin tuna with black rice, a fish that was extinct in her own time. The menu listed a number of extinct fish. She wondered whether these species were still alive in 2013, or whether the fish entrees were synthetic.

  "Henry wants me to major in International Studies," Logan explained when the waitress left. "The security concentration. They have a development concentration and a security concentration, depending on whether you want to help poor countries or control them, right?"

  "You know that is a sarcastic simplification," Henry said. "Order is necessary. Human beings are wild animals. Absent a powerful authority, they would kill each other in the streets."

  "These people?" Logan looked around at the lawyers, professors, and businesspeople quietly eating salads and fish. "You think they'd be ripping each other apart?"

  "Of course, if a strong system of law and order were not in place. Power uses violence to create peace, Logan."

  Logan sat quietly. He looked as though he were thinking over the man's words.

  "Why do you want Logan to go for that degree?" Raven asked.

  "Providence Security," Henry replied, and Raven shuddered at the words. "The company is expanding beyond domestic contracts, into international work. Embassies. Military bases."

  "Why would military bases need private security guards?" Logan asked. "Aren't they full of soldiers?"

  "An excellent question," Henry said. "It frees up the soldiers to focus on their core mission. More and more military and intelligence functions are now outsourced to private companies. International expansion will be worth billions of dollars in new contracts for Providence. Your grandfather and I have already laid the groundwork with our friends in Washington. This empire will be yours to inherit, Logan. I suggest you learn to rule it."

  Raven watched Logan as he nodded, absorbing the older man's words again.

  "Now, let's stop boring this poor girl as though she were a potential investor," Henry said in a much friendlier tone. "Miss Falcourt, what do you intend to study at Yale?"

  "Oh," Raven said. She cleared her throat and paused as the waitress arrived with a third drink for Henry. She hoped the subject would change, but Henry never took his eyes off her. Under the table, Logan took her hand.

  "I'm majoring in history, I think," she said.

  "An excellent foundation, but you'll need an additional degree to gain the value from it."

  "She's going to law school after that," Logan told him. "She's going to make the world a better place."

  Henry laughed. "I hope you've gained more from your experiences than Logan has up to this point. Yale offers so many opportunities, even to women now..."

  "I'm not actually at Yale. I'm at Albertus Magnus."

  "Oh?" Henry's eyes narrowed, and he cast a questioning look at Logan. "What does your father do, Miss Falcourt?"

  Raven quickly gave her story about growing up in foster homes. This did not elicit symp
athy and warmth as it had with Macey. Henry looked annoyed and shook his head.

  "She's very smart," Logan said.

  "I don't know how smart I am..." Raven mumbled. She could feel the temperature dropping in the room.

  "I'm sure you're bright," Henry said. "Logan dates so many lovely girls, and I do enjoy watching them come and go. Like butterflies in the garden." His smile was malicious. He drank more--he would probably need a cybernetic liver in the future to match his robotic eyes and arms.

  Henry did not speak to her again for the rest of the meal, despite Logan's attempts to draw her back into the conversation. Henry kept the topics light and shallow, sports and political gossip. He'd sized her up, found her lacking, and frozen her out.

  By the time they left the restaurant, she felt shaken. She'd been unable to make a good impression on Henry, and she worried how it might affect her relationship with Logan, who seemed to take the man's opinion seriously. She decided to try to make it a dead subject as quickly as possible.

  "I don't think he likes me," Raven said. She took Logan's hand as they crossed the New Haven Green toward the brick towers of Yale's Old Campus. Orange and red leaves littered their path.

  "Uncle Henry's just not a warm person," Logan said. "He's very analytical. He's kind of a genius, but not very emotional."

  "Like a computer." Raven thought of Henry's future self, withered and largely replaced with cybernetics.

  "Exactly like that."

  "He was nice to me at first, then he acted like he hated me."

  "How could anyone hate you?" Logan kissed her cheek. "I'm sure if he gets to know you--"

  "You really can't see it? As soon as he discovered I wasn't a fancy Ivy-Leaguer--"

  "Listen." He grabbed her arms a little too roughly. Anger flashed in his eyes, and she caught a glimpse of the future dictator inside him. "Uncle Henry is always trying to tell me what to do--what classes to take, what extracurriculars to join, and yeah, who I date. What sucks is my family usually agrees with him. But I don't care, Riley. He can give me his opinion, but I'll always do whatever the hell I want. And I want you. Fuck him."

  "You're kind of hot when you're angry," Raven said, and he kissed her. She felt relieved, but only for the moment. If Henry was going to be a counterweight, trying to pull Logan away from her, then she needed to draw Logan closer.

  "I have to get to class," he said, still holding her. She touched her fingers to his lips.

  "You're coming over tonight," she whispered. "Thanks for bringing me, anyway. It means a lot that you wanted me to meet him."

  "Sorry if you had a bad time. I'll make it up to you."

  "I can't wait. Bye, Logan." She walked on toward the bus stop at the next corner, while he crossed the street to the campus.

  At home, she made preparations, cleaning and organizing her apartment, studying her wardrobe for an outfit, keeping her mind focused in the present so she wouldn't have to think about the future.

  She finally decided to bolster her confidence by dressing as though she were planning to visit a nightclub in the year 2064--black boots with high heels, stockings, miniskirt, a skimpy black top. She dusted her face and chest with glitter, and she painted her face in the fashion of the future clubs, lots of stark, artificial colors meant to downplay one's vulnerability and humanity. She watched herself in the mirror as she adjusted the metallic pink wig she'd found in Audra's room. She was someone else now, a cold, deadly beauty who would stand out in a dark club.

  Audra was working at the dining hall that night, so Raven had the apartment to herself. She met Logan at the door, dressed in her club clothes.

  "Wow, I didn't recognize you for a second," he said. "Where are we going?"

  "Nowhere." Raven took his arm and drew him inside, locking the door. She'd turned off all the electric lights and lit candle nubs on the tables and kitchen counter. A slightly warped Pink Floyd record played on Audra's turntable. Raven didn't recognize most of Audra's music, but this slow, psychedelic soundscape felt familiar to her. She'd heard an accelerated, distorted version a few times in the clubs.

  "Look at this place," Logan said.

  "Sh." Raven kissed him, sliding her fingers around the back of his head to pin him in place. She felt his hands move down her bare shoulders, then down her back, across her thin, fake satin shirt. One hand cupped her through her miniskirt. She felt him thick and aroused against her stomach.

  After a minute, she pulled away and left him for her bedroom, without looking back. He followed. Her room was lit by a single candle on her desk. She turned her back to it, facing him. She wanted to keep her scars and burns in shadow.

  Raven didn't say a word as she undressed in front of him, until she wore nothing but her stockings and boots.

  "Come on," she said.

  He began to unbutton his shirt, then seemed to lose control of himself. He picked her up and tossed her back on her bed, then climbed on top of her, kissing her everywhere. Raven ripped at his clothes as if she, too, were overcome with desire, and he stopped long enough to help her undress him.

  He lay on top of of her again, and she felt him, long and hard against her inner thigh. She opened her knees wider and closed her eyes, and he kissed her as he entered her. Her body, strangely, seemed entirely aroused and ready for him. She wondered how long it had been since she'd done this with anyone. Her spotty memory couldn't tell her.

  She again had the odd feeling of watching from a distance as Riley, a girl constructed out of nothing but lies and illusion and Raven's body, made love to Logan, crying out and raking her freshly painted nails down his back.

  She remembered the first time she'd done it, though it hadn't been an experience worth remembering. She'd been fifteen, lying on the gravel roof of a condemned warehouse in a rusty industrial district. Below her, she could hear the pounding, screeching music from the club below, one of the nameless illegal night spots that sprang up and disappeared among the ruins, shifting locations to avoid the police.

  The boy was older, and she didn't know his name. She remembered thinking he was cute and dancing with him, but she didn't remember how they'd ended up alone on the roof together, because she had scrambled her brains with an assortment of candy-colored pills that night.

  She remembered the feeling of her bare back scraping against the gravel, and looking up at the dull red glow of the city against the clouds of smog above. Her mind had drifted out of her body, up and among those toxic clouds, only distantly and numbly aware of what her body was doing far below.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Giving herself to Logan opened a floodgate. Her body seemed entirely willing to respond to his touch--her body and her brain held very different opinions about the boy who was destined to rule much of the world.

  He began spending every night at her apartment, and over the next two weeks his possessions accumulated in her room--jeans, dirty t-shirts, socks, textbooks, a black and gold Bulgari watch. Audra complained about his nightly presence and claimed he was getting in the way of Raven dating better guys.

  Raven had taken her annual contraception pill since she was twelve years old, so she had months before she needed to worry about pregnancy. He was experienced, and he knew how to touch her. Sometimes she could feel her body craving him when he was away, and she stomped on those feelings in disgust. She knew she was just desperate for some kind of intimacy, even if it was false.

  She joined him on the nights when the Yale Climbing Club met at the rock climbing gym. He took her out to a different restaurant almost every night, some of them elegant, others small, local dives with amazing food. They took excursions into the state forests beyond the city, where Logan liked to make love outdoors, on mats of fading leaves, their bodies bare in the November chill. She would lie back with Logan on top of her and look up at the trees reaching away into the empty blue sky, all their autumn beauty fallen away, leaving only bare skeletons to wait out the coming winter.

  Logan invited her home with him for T
hanksgiving break, tempting her with horseback rides at his grandfather's estate in Indiana, but she resisted. Her connection with him seemed to be forming well, and she didn't want to risk anything. Being surrounded by his family on their home turf was a situation full of risks, fraught with chances for her to ruin everything, especially with Henry already against her.

  On Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, she drove him to the airport. She would drop him off, then keep his car over the holiday. Raven had never owned a car, but she'd stolen and driven her share of them. She looked forward to having her own for a few days.

  Before they reached the airport, he told her to turn off onto a tree-lined street with small houses.

  "Stop here," he said.

  "This house?" She stopped at a house that looked like a faded yellow barn.

  "It doesn't matter which house. I want to give you something." Logan opened a side zipper on his suitcase and brought out a black velvet jewelry box.

  "Aw, I didn't get you anything." Raven hesitated, staring at the box. It was too large to hold a ring.

  "Go ahead."

  She lifted the lid. A glimmering silver necklace hung with moonstones lay on the velvet inside. Raven's eyes widened--her scavenger instincts told her she could get a good chunk of cash for it. It was an expensive piece.

  "Logan!" she said, surprised. "I didn't expect...anything, really."

  "It matches that bracelet you always wear." Logan reached for the silver bracelet on her arm, with the time-travel device disguised as a simple moonstone. She automatically pulled her arm back from him, not wanting him to touch it. "You must love that thing. You even wear it in the shower."

  Raven laughed. "It's sentimental. This necklace is beautiful. It's a perfect match."

  "I took a picture of your bracelet while you were sleeping."

  "You did?" Raven cast a worried look at her time-travel device--her timepiece, Eliad had called it.

  "So I could show it to the jeweler. You really like it?"

  "Of course. I love it. Thank you, Logan, you're sweet." She gave him a long kiss.