Allie's War Season Two

by JC Andrijeski

  He was still showing me things with his light. He coaxed me into subtleties of motion and friction in my body and then groaned when I got it right...only to show me more, trying to get me closer to the exact thing he wanted me to understand. By the end, he was sweating, holding me under him as I fought to answer his mind’s pull, to shift my body where he wanted it, to tense or relax where he wanted me.

  By the time he came, he actually seemed to lose control. He cried out as he held me under him, extended all the way as his back spasmed in jerks under my hands.

  I lay there, fighting off an almost paralyzing feeling of...I don’t know. Guilt maybe. Regret. Maybe it was some form of self-disgust. Either way, it stayed with me, lingering in the background while he slowly brought his breathing under control.

  I would have to do this again, I realized. With other people I didn't know.

  It struck me again that, bravado aside, I wasn't sure if I really could do it. I knew the feeling was irrational. Seers did it all over the world, male and female. Hell, it was pretty much commonplace...almost every seer I'd met had done at least a short stint, apart from the monks and those seers who'd been raised in the Adhipan. Even Dorje told me he'd been forced to 'sell it' for awhile, as the seers generally phrased it, when he'd first entered the human world and desperately needed the money.

  I didn't think I was better than them. I just didn't want it to be me.

  Maybe it was the human-raised part of me, thinking that way. Or maybe they all felt like that at first. Maybe humans and seers really weren't all that different.

  For a long time, that was the only real cycle of thoughts that penetrated.

  It wasn’t until afterwards, when I was alone and having what amounted to a delayed reaction to all that Ulai had shown me about my anatomy in that hour or so, that I realized that Revik hadn’t told me anything. Like, basic things, about angles...and friction, and what females could do to slow down males, and where to pull on them to hold them at the edge, closer than I’d ever gotten Revik, even when I’d thought I was doing something similar.

  He’d done some of those things himself, of course...on the male side, anyway...but he’d never shown me anything about what I could do for him. I tried not to think about what it meant, in terms of how Revik viewed me...if it meant anything at all.

  The longer I thought about it, the more my head started to pound.

  Even foreplay. From what Ulai had shown me, a lot of “foreplay” happened during intercourse for seers...meaning before the males, at least, had extended all the way inside. What had felt too soon to me was, essentially, a human reaction to what he’d wanted to do to get me turned on. He hadn’t actually built to an orgasm for another thirty or so minutes.

  Some of my own gaps in education I’d already figured out, of course, watching Revik with those prostitutes in the Barrier. But the reality of it hit me again, harder in some ways, in those few hours of being alone after Ulai and I finished.

  At the time, however, I was more stunned, I think.

  For a long moment, I just lay there on my side, trying not to think and still half in pain as Ulai caressed my back, running his fingers through my hair. I didn’t know how tense I was until Ulai pulled me against him. Glancing at him over my shoulder, I peered through the curtains a second later. A kind of relief rippled my light when I realized Voi Pai had disappeared.

  Ulai kissed my cheek, still massaging the front of my body.

  “She left, yes,” he said, quietly. "The bonding is mostly complete. The rest will happen tonight, while you are sleeping..." I realized he was hard again, even as his hands roamed lower, less cautiously than before. “...And yes, I want you again...” he added, softer.

  I felt my face warm. I knew it was stupid to blush at that point, but I couldn’t help it.

  “So...lay it on me,” I said. “How bad was I?”

  I tensed a little when he paused before answering.

  Then he laughed, gripping my hair, tugging on it with one hand. Not answering me, he laughed again, pulling me against him, pressing his erection against the back of my thighs. His pain worsened as he did, and then he was kissing my neck, pulling me to my back, sliding a hand between my legs.

  “Your light is unbelievable,” he told me, kissing me again. “Gods...Esteemed Bridge...learn to keep your light in control. Or we’ll have seers fighting over you, even humans...”

  “But what about the rest of it?” I said, pushing at his chest.

  He shrugged with one hand, dismissive. “The rest you’ll learn. The light part...you can’t learn that.” He kissed my shoulder lingeringly, caressing my breast with one hand. “Can I teach you more?” he said, smiling a little as he leaned on me. “I want to show you something else...in fact, I want to show you a couple of something elses’...”

  I fought not to care that he’d basically told me I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I’d already guessed that, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. I felt another pulse of anger at Revik, but I couldn’t have articulated to myself why, so I forced it out of my light.

  The truth was, it didn’t really matter anymore, what I did.

  I couldn’t really think clearly about what came after this...meaning after I left the Lao Hu. Images of myself waiting tables in Bratislava tended to come to mind, and I wasn’t ready to go there yet. Although the thought of approaching Ullysa in Seattle for a job didn’t exactly appeal to me, either. I'd asked for the infiltration training. Hopefully, if I studied hard enough at that, and managed to earn even a low-level sight ranking, I'd at least have some options when I left.

  It was easier to just focus on that exact moment, push the rest to the background. Eventually I would have to pick up the pieces of my life...figure out what was left. Somewhere in all that I’d have to think about the fact that I was broke again, that I probably couldn’t go back to the States easily, that I had even less to my name than I had in San Francisco, and now I was a wanted criminal and hated by most of the seer community to boot. I’d also have to think about the fact that seers with no money usually ended up doing exactly what I was doing now.

  I would have to think about all of that, and decide which of the twenty or so crappy options I had seemed the least unpalatable.

  But now wasn’t that time.

  I had a cool twenty million to work off before then. Given that I had no idea what that meant, in terms of either time or people, there was no point in getting worked up over what came after. Anyway, I’d finally done what I’d told Revik I didn’t know how to do.

  I’d had casual sex with another seer.

  I looked up at Ulai. He was watching my face, and I saw that empathy in his eyes once more. After a pause, I slid my arms around his neck. I felt him react as I did, pain rippling off him as he coiled his light carefully back into mine.

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging. “Go ahead. Teach me everything.”

  THEY DIDN’T LET me see any actual clients for another few weeks.

  Which probably should have been a relief, but actually just stressed me out more, maybe because it built the whole thing up into my head until I was barely eating after a few days.

  I tried to keep my brain in kind of a ‘static’ place with the whole thing...meaning, one foot in front of the other, not thinking about what I was doing, but just going with it, like I would with any new job or project. I definitely avoided thinking about what I ‘was’ now, technically-speaking...much less what any of my friends back home would say if they ever found out.

  In particular, I tried not to think about my parents, or how my mother would probably cry for about six months straight if she knew where I was right now.

  I didn’t want to go there, so I just deleted that part of my thinking. I deliberately focused on the trees, doing my best to completely ignore the forest...even when it was trying to bludgeon me in the face. Voi Pai, in particular, seemed to find my human-like take on all of this either funny, painfully naive, or ‘human-religio-prudish,’ al
l in about equal measure.

  Strangely, I got the feeling that some of this was even driven by compassion.

  She at times resorted to ridiculing me to force me to cut it out. Once or twice my depression about the whole thing even seemed to make her angry...or possibly offend her, if such a thing were possible. In any case, her reactions were enough to convince me that, at some point, she’d taken her own turn at this time-honored tradition.

  Either that, or someone close to her certainly had.

  Oddly, the whole thing seemed to make her like me more, too. Maybe because it leveled the playing field between us...or maybe it was some sisterhood thing I only halfway understood. Maybe it was simply because she viewed me as ‘one of hers’ now, and therefore falling under her protection. Since my first night at the compound, I couldn't help noticing that I felt differently towards the other Lao Hu seers, and they felt far less like strangers. I'd dreamt about most of them that night, and while I couldn't remember a lot of the specifics the next morning, I found I knew a lot about the seers I met...and they all looked vaguely familiar to me, even when I was reasonably certain I hadn't met them before. I also knew most of their names.

  Most of my basic freedoms were returned to me within the first two weeks. I was also given access to a lot more of the construct...far more than I ever had while staying in the City as a guest the year before. Voi Pai assigned me my own living space, gave me access to all of the gardens and open spaces, and essentially treated like any other resident of the City.

  There were exceptions. Most of those had little to do with me, personally, and everything to do with either my new role for the Lao Hu, or the additional security measures required to keep me alive. No one, from the highest ranking members of the Lao Hu on down to the lowliest human servant, had access to me without extensive security screens.

  I found this out almost by accident, actually. I went for a walk in the Imperial Gardens and happened to notice one of the human gardeners I recognized from before. Strangely happy to see the old guy, who’d always had a kind word for me, I waved in hello.

  He approached me a moment later, smiling, and holding a trowel. I thought nothing of it until the six Lao Hu guards I hadn’t known were following me had guns on the poor guy, forcing him to his knees on the stone path. I watched, mortified, as they conducted invasive scans of his light and person before they let him go...and couldn’t help but notice that the old guy had peed himself he’d been so afraid of the Lao Hu guards.

  After that, I didn’t wave to people.

  During most of that period, I spent the majority of my “training” hours with Ulai. He ended up sleeping at my place a lot of the time as a result...often enough that I got sort of used to having him around. He had me practice on a few others as well, letting me take my pick of a group of infiltrators and guards who had apparently volunteered. I don’t know if it was more or less disturbing that there didn’t seem to be a lack of volunteers.

  Voi Pai had a few of the other female consorts spend time with me, as well.

  Unlike with Ulai, she didn’t specify how I was supposed to spend that time, which I admit was a relief. Being around them wasn’t as strange as I might have thought. In fact, it was a lot like hanging around any other group of female seers, only the consorts were a lot friendlier than the majority of infiltrators I’d met.

  I picked up a fair bit through listening to them talk.

  Looking at it objectively, I guess we were all supposed to get along, too. Maybe Voi Pai was trying to soften things for me with that, if nothing else by reminding me I wasn’t the only seer in the City working in a similar capacity, despite myths to the contrary.

  Three of these consorts decided to adopt me, in a manner of speaking. They came by my place just about every morning to talk. Within a few days, they were also inviting me out for walks, for meals, for winter garden parties of various kinds...even to see a movie in the main theater of the Imperial residency.

  “Charlie” spoke almost perfect English. She had some kind of Chinese name, too, which I heard Ulai mention, but no one else seemed to use it.

  Charlie was cool, but definitely quirky. Her hair hung long down her back, framing a face as flawless as Voi Pai’s, but significantly more Asian-looking. She didn’t wear her hair up in any of the traditional styles used by a lot of the other girls, and her make up and clothing were generally Western. Her eyes were dark, with flecks of green the color of new pine needles. They stood out against her pale skin, large and innocent-looking inside a baby-round face.

  She also had a pet snake named Gulag that a human servant named Ugi carried around for her. A python of some kind, “Gulag” maxed out at about a fourteen to sixteen inch diameter in his middle, and looked capable of swallowing small children whole.

  I didn’t ask her if she knew the meaning of her snake’s name in English...or if he ever came along with her while she was seeing clients. I didn’t really want to know the answer to either question, to be honest...and anyway, most of the time when we hung out, she wanted me to tell her all about the United States. Specifically, Charlie was obsessed with American movies...male action stars in particular. She also liked pro wrestling, which she grilled me on endlessly every time I saw her, no matter how often I told her I knew absolutely nothing about it.

  Miao, Charlie’s best friend and sometimes-partner, was a lot more quiet.

  Even so, I felt like I got to know her a little better, maybe because her light was a little more accommodating and open, so it was easier to get a feel for who she was under the more obvious things. Small and elfin in appearance, Miao had a cultured quality that contrasted well with Charlie’s gregariousness. Her Prexci reminded me of Vash’s, as if she’d learned to speak it during a different historical age.

  Funnily enough, rather than Charlie, she was the favorite of many of the American and European men who came to China for commerce or government business. She did a better job of maintaining the illusion of exotic other; as a result, she kept a fairly stable list of clients to whom she, as she told me with a wry smile, gave “the Ancient China treatment” on a regular basis.

  Although seer prostitution was technically illegal in China, it was considered a “favor” or “gift” from the Lao Hu to offer a consort as a token of goodwill to select individuals and representatives of countries or industries. Because of the interdependent relationship of the Lao Hu and the Chinese Communists, they often extended these “favors” to those persons deemed important in stature to the Chinese government on request.

  In return, they were compensated well by the government for the service.

  It was also considered “impolite” for those receiving such a gift to not provide some measure of compensation directly to the Lao Hu, as well. Part of this was meant to indicate that the particular gift had pleased whoever it was. But, more importantly from the Lao Hu’s perspective, the client’s compensation also signified a gesture of mutual respect. The Lao Hu, as well as the Chinese humans themselves, were extremely sensitive in regard to any hint that this gift had not been freely given, or that it resulted from some version of seer slavery that even remotely approximated the Western versions.

  As these gifts were acknowledged to be a great honor for the recipient, to not provide some sort of compensation in appreciation was tantamount to a direct insult. As a result, any future gifts would not be granted to that particular person...or company, for that matter, if they represented an organization rather than an individual.

  The whole thing was b.s., of course.

  Like a lot of things in the City, I couldn’t help but see it as an elaborate and ritual-laden cover for business as usual for seers and humans. I admit, it disappointed me a little, given that the Lao Hu and the Chinese had a rep outside of Asia of treating seers more as equals than their less-enlightened cousins in the West.

  Like most myths though, some truth existed in the b.s., too.

  For one thing, I was the only consort I saw collared. In fact, I
was the only seer I saw collared, anywhere in the City...and the reasons were pretty obvious, given the telekinesis and the need to keep my exact location somewhat unclear to seers even within the City.

  I also heard both Miao and Charlie talk about refusing clients.

  In the cases I heard them discuss, the refusals had occurred for different reasons...but the fact that they could refuse at all struck me as significant. Consorts or not, they still had some discretion around who they let into their bed. Their handlers did as well, for reasons they didn’t even have to share with the clients. A no was a no from the Lao Hu. They didn’t have to give a reason for the answer, or even listen to a petition to have that answer changed...which also happened on occasion.

  Ulai had already mentioned this to me, that I had rights of refusal, as long as I didn’t abuse them. He told me that he would likely refuse some too, either for security reasons (the security protocols around me were ridiculous when it came to clients), or because he picked something up in their thoughts that made them “unworthy.”

  I didn’t ask what he meant by this exactly.

  I did find it somewhat comforting though, when I heard Miao talk with enormous distaste about a client who had been thinking about the female seers in subhuman terms and had been refused out of hand, with no rights to re-petition. Being an ignorant, racist jerk was enough to get you the boot, apparently.

  I admit, after my experience in the White House, I found that gratifying.

  I tried to do my best to tune out most of the sex trade stuff, though, to be honest. I kept my focus on infiltration instead. I’d officially joined a group of Lao Hu apprentice seers, and I let those lessons consume my thoughts pretty much 24/7, at least when I could. To my enormous relief, I didn't have to push Voi Pai for this part of our contract at all. A pair of guards simply showed up at my door and led me and Ulai to my first class...and when I arrived, Ulai uncollared me. The three of them picked me up later that same day when the class ended. Since the classes were daily, and around four hours long...and I wasn't seeing clients yet...that left me a lot of time to practice on my own. I used every minute of it, at least that I could.