“Finished?”
“Yes,” she said. “If it’s finished, I can start something new.”
Tommy glanced around the small studio. There were no shelves, no other sculptures.
“What will you do with this one?”
“Break it apart,” she said. “Bring it full circle.”
She blinked slowly, her gaze distant. “Beauty is transient; so should be art. Here and gone, here and gone.”
The way she said it was so breezy, so entirely stoned, that Tommy felt a flush of sudden anger for her, sharp and reckless.
“Why are you here?” he blurted, and she turned her dilated eyes to him, her expression still.
“You’ve got talent, you’re beautiful,” he said, his frustration growing with each word. “You’ve got choices. What the fuck are you doing here?”
She stared at him a moment, long enough for him to realize that he wasn’t yelling at her, he didn’t know her or care to, but he didn’t know how to take the question back.
“Dying,” she said, and from her expression, he didn’t think she meant that literally—but it was an honest, sincere answer, a realistic understanding of her situation. About the last thing he’d expected. “I’m dying.”
* * *
Didi struggled with the decision about her piece all the way to her studio. Trace was asleep, out cold within a minute of hitting the sheets, and she’d promptly dressed and slipped out, eager to work . . . Until she remembered the decision she’d made two nights before, to end the piece where it was. She’d originally wanted to put in another figure, a woman or child being menaced by the creature, but after her last session, she’d been having second thoughts.
Is it finished? Can I move on? The internal struggle was a pleasant one, a process that filled her with hope and meaning as she slowly walked the main hall, alone in the quiet. If the piece was finished, she could start a new one, always an exciting session. But if it needed more, she would have the satisfaction of seeing it come into itself, becoming what it needed to be. That was also fulfilling, but in a different way.
She stepped from one hall into another, stopping at the studio door, still thinking. What she needed was a second opinion, which she couldn’t imagine trying to find. She had no friends on Fantasia.
A man stepped into her hallway then, one of the new ones from the ship. He didn’t have the look she associated with most of the people who came out, that beaten-down anger or despair or forced ironic glee. She decided that it was meant to be. She asked him inside, and he followed.
She pulled the damp sheet off the piece, studied it. It was good. And, she thought, I think it’s done.
He asked her if she’d made it, and she told him she had. He agreed that it was good—and then he was angry with her, a shouting stranger in her private room, and he wanted to know what she was doing here, doing the fuck here, and he hadn’t even answered her question. His words sank in, became an echo.
What am I doing here? She thought, and thought about Ri, this morning, and Trace, and the boxful of patches by her bedside.
“Dying,” she answered. “I’m dying.”
He stared at her a moment, looked at the statue again.
“Dying, or killing yourself?” he asked, his voice softer now.
Didi considered the question, considered the man. No one talked like this, not here. A romantic stranger, then. An idealist, perhaps, lost in a harsh world of practicalities. She understood that. He was in her space, but she’d invited him in, hadn’t she? The dialogue was inevitable.
“We’re all killing ourselves,” she said. “Trying to escape pain. Trying to be happy.”
“You need drugs to do that?” he asked. “You need this life? Are you happy?”
Didi frowned, not liking that he kept asking questions. She didn’t want him—hadn’t wanted sex in years, in fact—but decided everything would be smoother if he wanted her. It was a role she was comfortable with, being wanted, and she could make it happen. Lust was an idiot, easily encouraged, and it simplified most interactions.
She reached for her piece, stroked the alien’s long, veiny head with her small fingers. Subtly. Enjoying the texture, not just making a show.
“Sometimes I’m happy,” she said, and glanced up, saw that he was watching her hands moving over the statue, tracing the ridges and curves. “I have my work. I get lonely, though . . .”
The man blinked, looked up from her fingers, met her gaze. He was very pretty, his face soft and hard at once, his eyes a clear blue.
“You could stay and talk to me, if you wanted,” she said.
The man’s gaze hardened. He shook his head, backing away from her. The look on his face was terrible, pity and disdain, and she suddenly saw herself through his eyes—not a beautiful, haunting artist, but a one-trick addict trying to trade on things she wasn’t responsible for, her face and body and youth.
Didi wanted to say something, to stop him, but she didn’t know what or even why. She simply watched him leave, feeling a terrible surge of emptiness when the door closed behind him.
No, she thought, she promised herself. It was because of Trace. He paraded her around like she was a doll, a prize, and no one was allowed to touch her unless he was there, watching. Talking, telling her she was his while someone else touched her. Everyone knew that.
She took a deep breath, centered herself. Men and women, the pursuit, the fuck—it was a game. She could choose to remove herself, spiritually. She did. She would, for the price of her box of patches and her art, and Trace didn’t have the monopoly on MX7. Soon enough, she’d be gone from this place.
“And I can choose to be touched, if I want,” she said aloud, whispered, and saying it made it true. “I choose.”
Later, perhaps, after she got in some work on her new piece. Later, she would find the blue-eyed stranger, and ask him his name.
The beautiful alien was finished. Sighing with satisfaction, she picked up one of the wires and sliced through it, began chopping it to pieces, tossing the chunks into the recycle bin. Here and gone. Trace was asleep, she had herself and her time, and a future coming on that had to be better than what she had now.
Everyone is dying, all the time, she thought, and was comforted.
* * *
Pete felt bad about Tommy, but half a stick and three drinks later, the bad feelings had receded considerably. He sat with M-Cat and Lyle—Simon and Jessa had gone off for a date—and Taryn, all of them laughing, Lyle and Taryn telling stories of life on Fantasia. A kung fu movie played loudly on the big screen, and around them, the party was getting agreeably sloppy.
Lyle had just finished a real howler about a guy who’d lived there for a few months a year or so back, and got it in his head that he wanted to eat some real meat. The dumb shit had actually volunteered for a pen run, beat one of the cows to death with a shovel, hacked off a section, and hauled it back to camp—only to find out that the flesh had been saturated with chemical sedatives, and wasn’t safe to eat. The kicker was that Trace had sent him right back out to the pens to clean up the mess.
“Lucky the bugs didn’t get him, two runs in one day,” M-Cat said.
“Nah. Remember Dachan?” Taryn said to Lyle, and Pete missed the first part of what she said after that, too busy looking at her. Thinsuits left nothing to the imagination. He could count the beads on her nipple rings.
“. . . and he must have gone outside every chance he got,” she was saying. “Pen runs, panel checks—”
Lyle was nodding along. “Even that one time the outer lock jammed, on the pen lock.”
“Right,” she said. “Volunteer, all the way, must have faced ’em like twenty times. Never got a scratch, either. Crazy fucker.”
“Gotta be crazy to volunteer,” Lyle agreed.
“I sure wouldn’ta gone out, if I had a choice,” Pete said, vaguely surprised at the slur in his voice. The drinks were strong, the stick even stronger. He felt good, really loose.
“But you did it,” Taryn said. �
�’And you didn’t freak out, either. Lot of first-timers do.”
“Didn’t kill one, though,” Pete said, and thought of Tommy again—Tommy had capped the bug that had come at them—and took another drink. He felt a surge of drunken brotherly love. “My brother, man. Tommy was awesome out there. Didn’t hesitate, you know?”
Everyone nodded respectfully. Lyle even raised his glass, and Pete decided these were good people, fuckin’ Tommy didn’t even know how good they were. He went back to counting Taryn’s beads.
“So where do the bugs come from?” M-Cat asked. It was apparently his first trip to Fantasia.
Lyle grinned. “They’re Jessa’s.”
Another round of laughter, and Lyle shook his head. “Nobody knows, for sure. I guess there used to be more cameras out in the tunnels, but a lot of them have gone offline, gummed up with bug spit. Not like we can go out and fix ’em, right?”
Taryn picked up. “There’s a camera in one of the breeding areas, but it’s not a real good angle, and they don’t use it all the time. Anyway, the times we could see, the bugs carried these giant eggs in from somewhere. But nobody’s ever seen the egg-layer.”
“Naw, I meant where’d they come from in the first place,” M-Cat said.
“Oh,” Lyle said. “No secret. Word is, Msomi got ’em from a 7-Heavy who worked for one of the big corporations, Weyland-Yutani or someone, Bio-tech, maybe. Just like a half dozen or something at first. He was negotiating for more before he found out they were, whatcha call it, pathogenic.”
“Parthogenic,” Pete corrected automatically, and was a little too drunk to notice that Lyle’s smile faded.
“Whatever,” Lyle said.
“What the fuck’s partho-what hey?” M-Cat asked. Taryn giggled.
“Means if they don’t have a female, one of them can turn into one. I guess there are like, lizards that can do that. Or frogs.”
“And only the babies eat, far as anyone can tell,” Taryn added. “And just to get bigger. Once they’re grown, they don’t seem to need much of anything.”
“So why aren’t there, like, fifty thousand of them?” M-Cat asked. “Ya’ll feed them every couple of weeks, right?”
Pete felt compelled to answer, delighted at having figured it out in his condition. “Because they kill a bunch every couple of weeks, getting to an’ from the pens. Since the bugs can’t breed without hosts, they can totally control the population.”
“Wow, you got that all by yourself?” Lyle said. “You musta gone to college.”
Pete laughed along with the rest of them, not sure if he was being insulted, not worrying too much about it. Taryn got up for more drinks, M-Cat lit another stick. It was still early, the whole night stretching ahead of him in a strange, exciting place, a place he could tell stories about for the rest of his life. And Taryn had been sitting pretty close to him. He didn’t have any credit out here but thought maybe she might want to—
“Aw, shit,” Lyle said, looking up at the door that led into Ops. Didi, Trace Berdella’s girlfriend, had just walked in.
His beautiful, perfect girlfriend, Pete thought, gazing after her. A number of conversations seemed to drop in volume as she walked slowly across the room, got herself a drink. She leaned against the wall, her dilated gaze passing over each face while she sipped delicately from her cup. Many of the faces were looking back. A pudgy, soft-faced man stared at her with cow’s eyes, another man grabbed his crotch and laughed, a low, mean sound.
“Damn, she’s fine,” M-Cat said.
Lyle shrugged. “Yeah, but way gone. Patches like six, seven times a day. At least. And Trace owns her, I shit you not.”
He lowered his voice a little, leaned in. “He makes her fuck other people while he watches, among other things. I know Moby did her once. Ana Lewis, too, when she first got here. Fucked up. But hot, right?”
Taryn had returned with a couple of cups. “I think Didi’s looking for company,” she said.
“Guess Trace isn’t sleeping, after all,” Lyle said.
Taryn smirked. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“What, you think she’d risk going it solo?” Lyle asked.
“Has before,” Taryn said.
“How the fuck do you know?” Lyle asked, and Taryn’s smile widened.
“I know all kinds of things,” she said. “You know she used to be in flight school? Came from money, I heard. Dropped out to be an artiste, got patch happy. Now she’s a fucking strawberry.”
Strawberry. A woman who traded sex for drugs. He’d heard that, somewhere. Pete wasn’t quite following the conversation, his attention fixed on Didi, but the slang reminded him of something.
“Hey, what’s a lop?” he said, and Didi looked in their direction—and focused her brilliant eyes on Pete. She stopped looking elsewhere, her gaze fixing.
“Shit, College, she’s lookin’ at you,” M-Cat said.
“You don’t want to touch her,” Taryn said quickly. “If Trace is awake, he’ll be watching. And if he’s not, and he finds out about it, you’re bug chow.”
“I thought you said she’s done it before,” M-Cat said. “And who gives a shit if someone else is watching? Fuck, man, I’d tap that.”
Pete was hearing it, but was having trouble looking away from Didi. She was smiling, a little, still staring into his eyes.
“You trying to get him killed?” Taryn snapped.
“Aw, don’t be jealous, baby,” M-Cat drawled. “You come sit by me.”
Didi licked one corner of her mouth, using just the very tip of her soft, pink tongue, and Pete was having trouble concentrating, now, watching her. She started walking toward their table.
“Don’t,” Taryn said, but M-Cat and Lyle were both urging him on, their voices low and insistent, and she was so beautiful. She wasn’t in the sex industry, wasn’t looking for a trick, and she was coming toward him.
She stopped at their table, looking only at Pete.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He tried to be casual. “Pete.”
Didi leaned down, whispered in his ear.
“Why were you so angry?” she asked. “Was it Trace? Because I want to be touched, Pete. I choose. And I want you to touch me. Will you? Will you touch me, Pete?”
Pete leaned back, looked at her, confused and drunk and entirely turned on. What the hell was she talking about? He knew he was a good-looking guy, he’d never had trouble getting laid, but this was unprecedented—and not a little weird.
She backed off, still not looking at any of the others, and then turned and walked out of Ops, her form slender and graceful, round hips rolling beneath threadbare sweats.
Fuck. He wanted her, bad; she was gorgeous and strange, a combination he’d always found irresistible. But she was Trace Berdella’s . . . And would he have to perform in front of Trace? Was he drunk enough to make that possible? What she’d said, the “I choose” bit, he didn’t think so—but that meant if Trace found out about it, maybe . . .
Maybe they have an understanding, he thought, and thinking it, realized it had to be true. Of course they did, it was exactly the rationalization that his erection had been waiting for, since the second her warm breath had touched the cup of his ear. Pete gulped what was left of his drink and stood, swaying slightly.
“Gotta use the head,” he said. “Back in a few.”
Taryn looked away, disgusted, while the two men exchanged grins, M-Cat putting out a fist. Pete tapped it with his own and then followed the mysterious beauty out into the hall. Behind him, someone laughed, and someone else clapped, but all he heard was the blood rushing through his ears, all he felt was the heat in his crotch, leading him on.
* * *
After giving Wes Allen an extensive tour of the labs, the chemists took him to Ops, to show the newcomer what a Fantasian party was like. The men and women there were excited by the deaths of two of the workers, their conversations overloud; the scientists chose a table at the back of the room. Leona Mayer, the only f
emale chemist, had stayed at the lab—she disliked socializing of any kind, and someone needed to monitor the vats—which left only Albert Beck and Derin Chopra to teach Allen what he would need to know. They discussed safety procedures, scheduling, locations within the compound. Allen listened dutifully, often repeating what they told him.
Then she walked in, beauty of light and dark, stilling each callous, wagging tongue. Those that dared speak had their words crash against her aura of disregard before reaching her, leaving her untouched. Albert Beck watched, letting his eyes feast, aware that he might never see her again.
The other two men at his table finally stopped speaking, focusing on Beck, on the source of his distraction. Wes Allen, the man who’d come up to take Beck’s place, spoke in a monotone.
“That’s Didi,” he said. “Trace Berdella’s girlfriend, if I’m correct. She was not introduced to me, but I heard him say her name when we got off the ship. Not her surname, though. I believe she is an MX7 addict.”
Chopra and Beck knew all this already, of course, but Allen was clearly on the autism spectrum—mild Asperger’s, probably—and was therefore prone to all sorts of inappropriate social mannerisms; stating the obvious often went with the disorder. Beck’s best friend growing up, Andy Tripoli, his little brother Paulie was on the spectrum. Nice little kid, but he’d had some issues. Repeated everything, stressed out really easily, would laugh or yell suddenly for like no reason at all. He could also memorize anything, long lists of totally random information. Beck had discovered since that a lot of autistic types gravitated toward the sciences, tech or math, mostly; they were generally quite bright but with poor “people” skills. Allen wasn’t the first Beck had met, and surely wouldn’t be the last.
Chopra nodded. “That’s correct. You would be wise to stay away from the females here, though, except for Dr. Mayer. They spread disease.”
Beck forced himself to look away from Didi, saw that the new chemist looked vaguely horrified. Those with autistic traits tended to take things literally.
“Only if you have sexual intercourse with them, Wes,” Beck added. “Dr. Chopra dislikes women. It colors his perceptions of them.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 11