by Tia LaBeau
I’m frozen. I don’t know what to do. “No, stop. There’s got to be something we can do to save the both of us. How about you wear the suit outside and try to fix this thing?”
“I could do that but then I’ll be using up air and thrust power. If I don’t use it, and send you out in it with its current stock, you’ll be able use it longer.”
“Hey, dude, you’re forgetting that I’m a fugitive murderess. If someone finds me out here, they’re hauling me the fuck away, so I might as well chance it out here, you know. Same end result, except I’m in control.”
Xerxes scratches his head. “Okay, this is your choice?”
I nod my head yes.
“I do not like it,” he says, “but I do not like the idea of you being hauled away either. Time me. If I take longer than ten thousand ticks to try and fix the mobil, let me know, and I’ll come back inside. Then you will take the suit as I have planned.”
“Okay,” I say. I also get another idea. “Can I borrow your comms. I can contact Olivinia Evawa, maybe she can help.”
“It will take her long to get out here. She may not make it in time.”
I take his communicator. He tells me the number to Moon Company Brides is already programmed in his phone. I place the call. There is no answer, not even the receptionist bot picks up. I wonder what that’s about. I hope everything is okay over there. I worry about Olivinia Evawa and the bot.
Some people don’t care about bots like they care about people. I care for bots the same. Bots deserve to be treated with some respect. I know, there’s no time to dig into the politics of all that, but I suppose with death knocking at my door, I just want the universe to know that Cleo fucks with robots. I have their backs and all that. For all I know robots are controlling all this shit.
Xerxes is in his suit by the time I give up on reaching Olivinia Evawa. Maybe she’s hiding from him because she figures he’s found out about me and wants a refund. Maybe she cut the answering service off so that there will be no digital evidence of him announcing that his new wife is the murderess fugitive Cleo Chou over the Moon Company line. If I had another set of coordinates I could call from, I’d be able to find out, since a call can be tracked by its location, Olivinia Evawa will know that it’s me every time no matter what device I use.
Oh well, I shrug. “Call for me if you need my help,” I say to Xerxes, who is standing in front of the airlock of the mobil with the helmet to his suit in his hand.
He motions for me to come closer. I do. He grabs ahold of me and kisses me hungrily at first, then gently.
I kiss him back. I wish that we had more time together. If we make it out of this jam, I promise the universe that I won’t bail out on him on Io. I mean, crap, he’s willing to die for me.
He brushes my cheek with his hand. I grab his hand and kiss it. “Go get ‘em,” I say.
“I will do my best to fix this mobil. If I do, you should be very grateful, yes?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
“And how will you show that gratitude?” he asks.
“You’ll just have to get this thing running and then you’ll see,” I say.
Xerxes puts on his helmet, closes the airlock, and drops off into space. Not far, of course. He’s turned on the thrusters so that he can keep himself afloat at a certain level. He disappears somewhere behind the mobil.
I pull myself back inside. The media feed isn’t working so I have no idea whether the security folks have any leads. For all I know, they’ve gotten to Olivinia Evawa and her navigator. The navigator knows what Xerxes plate number is after all. I know because I saw her punch his plate number into her console when he told her how to find his mobil.
My stomach growls. I’m hungry. Well, if I die on an empty stomach, at least I won’t have to worry about crapping my pants.
I pace around the mobil, waiting. I hope Xerxes can fix this darn thing.
After a while, I feel a jiggle. The jiggle is faint, probably Xerxes moving something around. Then I feel a roar of energy go through the mobil.
Xerxes comes back inside. “Fixed it,” he says. “Looks like somebody loosened my battery. Can you believe that? Who would do such a thing?”
He removes his suit. He hangs his head, then up it pops. He snaps his fingers. “I know who did it. Must have been Wix. Wanted to sabotage me somehow because he hates me.”
“Why does he hate you? And who the hell is Wix?” I ask frowning. “What have you done to this Wix that would warrant him trying to kill you?”
“Annoy him because I come from a rich family.”
“Oh, is that all?” I swipe my hand across the air.
Seems like poor people aren’t only ones to get screwed in this life. People can hate you for being rich and try to kill you for it. Rich man problems. Don’t know much about them.
I wonder what Hiternum Furmi, the mayor of Mars is up to now. I get an idea, but I’ll only come back to it if it becomes necessary. I’ll tuck this idea way in the back of my brain.
“So, since I’ve got us back on track, I think you have something you want to give me?” Xerxes asks.
“I do,” I say. Although we were so close to dying that I don’t think I can relax enough right now to get down and dirty. “How about we get sustenance first? I need energy for what I’m going to do to you.”
He grins and rubs his hands together. Then he jumps up into the cockpit. “Buckle in,” he says. “We better get you to the market fast. I need what you have to give me.”
“Is that so?”
“More than you know,” he says.
We reach the market not too long after.
He asks me what I’d like to prepare for a meal. “Ask for human sandwich stuff,” I say. He frowns. “You have a problem with human food?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “I’ve never tried it.”
“Are you serious?” I ask him.
He nods his head yes.
And to think I bit into that nasty, slimy thing he handed me from that jar earlier. I find myself pondering over how I can like him, and how he can like that stuff in the jar.
“I’ll park at the station dock,” he says maneuvering his mobil towards the station. The station is a decent size, big enough to have a couple of shops, power ups, and so on.
“Don’t let anybody in,” Xerxes says. “And I’ll be grabbing you a suit. We have to make sure that we don’t end up in that sort of trouble again.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” I say, saluting him.
“Come here,” he says to me. “I need to feel you up, make sure I know what size you are.”
“You need to do no such thing. I take a size ee for spacesuits.”
“Let me check and make sure. You might have lost a bit of weight since you’ve been on the run.”
I shimmy over to him and stand before him. “Go ahead, size me up.” He runs his hands along my body
“Hmm, hmm,” he says. “That feels like about a size ee.”
“I can tell what size you are just by looking at you,” I say.
“Is that so?” he asks. “Am I big enough for you?”
“More than plenty,” I say licking my lips. I back away. This conversation is devolving.
Xerxes pushes past me, opens the door, and goes through the tunnel from the dock.
I lock the door. Then I go to the back of the mobil, to take a rest.
I turn on the media feeds again. Nothing about me, this time thank goodness. I flick through looking for something to watch, something to take my mind off of things.
There’s nothing on that I feel like watching, but it’s probably because I’m antsy. I wish I had finger nail polish or something, that way I could paint my nails right now, which is what I usually do when I feel nervous. I do have polish on my nails already, so I guess I could busy myself picking it off.
As I scrape at the gold polish on my nails, I think of Xerxes’s nails, then his hands, then his arms, his chest, his legs, his neck, his face, his wang. All nice s
tuff—what a surprise he is.
And to think I was going to ditch him on Io. I suppose it’s still an option, but I don’t think it’s a smart one. I mean, he’s big so if I need to fight somebody off, he’s the kind of guy I’d want having my back. He seems to like me just the way I am, which is refreshing, and he hasn’t told me any stupid lies yet, which is nice.
When he gets back he lays some food stuffs out on the table. Seaweed, paste, onions, and lettuce, all imported from Earth. Says so on the food wrappers.
This food must have cost him a fortune.
“You didn’t have to buy all this,” I say.
“I asked for the best human food and this is what they gave me at the market.”
He reaches into another large bag and pulls out a pack. “Go on, open it,” he says.
I open the pack. It’s a spacesuit, size ee. It’s a very pale pink color. “Eww, why pink?” I ask him.
“I think this color will look good on you,” he says.
“So we’re at the buying gifts stage of our relationship. That’s nice, but I don’t have anything to give you.”
He reaches behind me and squeezes my butt. “Yes you do,” he says.
“I like you, Xerxes,” I say. “If I don’t get dragged off to prison, spending time with you wouldn’t be a bad way to go, unless you intend on giving me back to Moon Company Brides, you know, return me?”
“Why would I do that,” he says. “I’ve already paid for you. I plan to get my credits worth.”
I slap him playfully and I twist up my mouth. “I don’t quite like this arrangement we have,” I say.
“Well I do,” he says. “Now please, make us food so that we may move on to bigger and better things. I will continue the course to Io.”
I make the sandwiches. He has plenty of water to drink, so we drink water. He drinks more water than he eats. “What’s wrong” I ask. “You don’t like your sandwich?”
“I do like it, that’s the problem. I’m trying to make it last longer.”
“Here,” I say shoving the remaining portion of my sandwich at him. “Take mine.”
“No, I couldn’t,” he says. “You need to eat.”
“Look dude, you were willing to die for me back there. The least I can do is give you the last bit of my sandwich. Besides, I’m getting full.”
I shove my food at him. He stares at it, then snatches it out of my hand and shoves it into his mouth. He’s got the strongest jaws. Makes sense. He looks like he’s been carved out of marble.
I watch him chew his sandwich. I find myself getting a bit nervous about what’s coming. See, I only grabbed one extendable from the Moon Company Brides office. I’m not even sure why I grabbed it. I guess subconsciously I was hoping that I’d get lucky. I didn’t know the half. Now I’m beating myself up. I could have asked him to get some more extendables at the market I guess. Although, that would have made me seem hasty. What does that matter? It doesn’t I guess. I don’t think Xerxes cares about such things.
I’m wondering if and when I’ll tell him what really happened back on Mars, but that’s not all I have to decide. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to let the lack of extendables keep me from rocking his socks.
Location: Deep Space, Population: Unknown
The murderess, or fugitive, who I will now call Cleo because I know that’s her real name, is hiding something from me. I know this as I stare at her, right now inside my mobil.
That makes us even, I suppose because I’m hiding something from her too. I wonder how she will feel when I tell her that I only wanted a bride so that I could buy an asteroid. I don’t think she will take it too well, and I will need her to be present at the purchase. But that’s the other problem. She needs her anonymity. One cannot be anonymous when purchasing an asteroid.
I suppose I cannot risk her life like that, for the sake of my plan, so I am unsure of what to do now. After all, what do I really know of her? She has yet to explain to me her connection to the murder on Mars.
So far, though, she has made moves to prove to me that I can trust her. This makes me feel like a hypocrite. I ask her to be truthful with me when I have not been truthful with her. I feel guilty also because I am starting to care for her, like her actually, and with that comes all sorts of requirements for allegiance.
“I have to tell you something,” she says.
“What is it? Please don’t tell me that you are indeed a murderess and you’ve ridden all the way out here with me to murder me as well.”
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t be telling you I’m going to kill you, silly. Trust me, if I were to murder someone, they’d never see it coming.”
That sends a bit of a shiver up my spine. I swallow. “So you would murder someone?”
“No, definitely not, but there have been times when I’ve wanted to.”
“Like when?” I ask.
“Like I wanted to murder my ex because he’s a fucking pathological liar.”
“Wow, okay. So I get it, you don’t like lies.”
I guess the reason as to why I’ve married her is irrelevant now. What matters now is the reason I stay married to her. I’m not sure of that, yet.
“That’s not what I was going to tell you, although after I spill my beans, you may want to murder me,” she says.
“I could never want to do that,” I say.
“I’m out of extendables.”
“Oh,” I say. I grit my teeth. “I could kill you.” I feign ringing her neck.
She laughs, but it’s not funny, not any of it, especially the part about the extendables. My body aches to have her once more.
“So, I guess we could just fool around,” she says.
“What does fooling around mean?” I ask.
“Touching each other, rubbing, licking, sucking, you know stuff like that,” she says.
“That won’t be enough. If I touch you like that, I’ll want all of it.”
She looks down. “It wouldn’t be wise to have sex without an extendable.”
“Not even for a married pair?” I raise my eyebrows. “I’ve been scanned by Moon Company Brides. They wouldn’t have allowed me to utilize their service if I had a venereal disease.”
“Hmm,” she says touching her chin. “But I could get pregnant.”
“A hybrid baby?”
“Yes, a baby. Oh my gosh,” she says covering her face with her hands. “I can’t believe we’re even discussing this. We can’t have a baby.”
We’re married, but wow, do we exist in the strangest limbo imaginable.
“I can pull myself out of you before I ejaculate,” I say.
“That’s your big plan, huh? You guys have upper school on Sewvi, right? I know you’ve learned that pulling out never works.”
“It works for Sewvians.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I do not work exactly the same as a human male,” I say. “I can shut that part of me off, the ejaculation. Nothing comes out unless I want it to.”
“How do you do that? Do you use some kind of Jedi mind trick?” she asks wiggling her fingers in my face.
“A what?”
“Never mind. I take it you haven’t seen Star Wars. We’ll have to watch it someday, the whole fucking series too. And let me tell you, I don’t care what people say about the prequels, I love those bitches. Classics, dude. Anakin Skywalker is sexy and boss.”
I frown. I have absolutely no idea what Cleo is talking about. It would take an eternity to understand her I think. Star Wars? Never heard of it.
“Come here,” I say.
“No, you come here,” she says,“but no funny business. I don’t think I’ll be letting you knock me up this evening.”
“I promise you I can stop myself from getting you pregnant. We have no use for prophylactics on Sewvi, at least not when it comes to birth control. We do use them to protect us from venereal disease. I think I can trust that you are clean.”
She seems clean. She smells fine. Ther
e are no visible signs of disease.
“How do you know I am clean?” she asks. “There are diseases that can’t be seen necessarily. Diseases that kill.”
“You have one of those?”
“No,” she says.
“How can you be sure?”
“I just had my ladies exam at the medicenter not too long ago. I’m all clear, baby.”
“So once again, it all boils down to trust with us,” I say.
“That’s marriage, isn’t it?” she asks with a smirk. I can tell she’s disappointed. I dare say that she wants me as bad as I want her.
“So, what are we to do?” I ask, but before she can answer, I get a signal on my watch. It’s a message from Clint. “All’s clear it says. Says we can go back to Clint. False alarm.”
“Are you kidding me? We almost died out here,” she says.
“I know, crazy,” I say, shaking my head.
“So I guess you’ll want to go back?”
“Yes, of course. I’d like to purchase an asteroid, and I’d like to find out if my suspicions are true of Wix Loc.”
“You can afford an asteroid?” she asks me.
“Yes, but I need a human wife to do so.”
“Oh,” she says, “so that’s why you got yourself a Moon Company Bride?”
I look down at the floor. “Yes,” I say eventually.
“Hmm, so you were willing to just up and marry someone for a piece of property?”
“Yes,” I admit.
She turns around. “Can we let this bed down, I think I’d like to lie down?”
I wonder if she’s upset. Still, I let the bed down for her. “Are you okay? I ask her.
“Sure, I’m okay. Every thing’s peachy. Say, would you mind keeping us on course for Io? I can pay you to drop me there since it’s out of the way.”
“There would be no need for you to pay me,” I say. I jump on the bed and lie down next to Cleo. I think I’ve hurt her feelings. She rolls over with her back turned to me.
“You know, we could stay married. Maybe try being like a real married pair.”
“I’m a fugitive. What kind of wife can I be? I’m on the run. Besides, this whole thing was orchestrated under stress.”
“I suppose it started that way, but I like you, Cleo.”