Fighting Gravity

by Leah Petersen

  The experience of entering that dining room turned out to be much more intimidating and uncomfortable than I’d anticipated. I’d expected it to be like entering the dining hall of the IIC at Pete’s side. It was much worse. These people had no reason to be interested in anything about me and every reason to be unhappy about seeing me with Pete. They made sure I knew it, too.

  When dinner was over and we were leaving the dining room Pete turned to me. “There’s a performance by the resident string quartet tonight, Mr. Dawes. Will you be joining us?”

  “No, thank you, Your Excellence. I have some things I need to finish up in the lab.”

  The assembled regarded me with disbelief. Pete was hiding a smile. “Maybe next time, then.”

  Much later, Pete found me in the lab. “I came to see if you were close to finishing up for the night.”

  “If you’re asking me to come back to the room with you, then yes.”

  He grinned. “You know, you shocked everyone tonight by not coming to the concert.”

  “I got that impression. Doesn’t anyone ever say no to you?”

  “Rarely,” he answered. “And among those who were there tonight, never.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not my fault if other people don’t think for themselves.”

  He laughed.

  -

  The following evening, as I was leaving the lab, I turned down a hallway to find Duke Blaine there, clearly waiting for me. I cast a quick look around. I could take Blaine in a one-on-one, but he might have friends nearby. He seemed to be alone.

  I stopped a few feet away from him.

  “Can I help you?”

  “The proper form of address from one such as you is ‘Your Grace.’”

  I trembled with a rush of adrenaline but I didn’t respond.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he continued.

  “Walking back to my room—well, the emperor’s room, but, you know…”

  He went red. “Whatever you hope to get from or do to our emperor I will not permit it. Do you understand? Don’t ever make the mistake of believing you’re alone with him, or that no one will know. I have eyes on you you’ll never even see. And don’t get comfortable, either. You won’t be here for long.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  He stepped closer but then wrinkled his nose and leaned back.

  “It’s shameful that I should even have to speak to you, much less threaten you. But I will and I am. You’re a disgrace and an insult and I’ll make sure you’re dealt with. I promise you that.”

  -

  “What’s the matter?” Pete asked when I got back to our room.

  I looked at him, his eyes bright with happiness.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  -

  The rest of the week was so normal as to be unremarkable. The only real changes in my life were location. I went to dinner as I always had, but I sat in a different place. I went to bed every night, just in a different room. Of course, those changes meant everything, and they made my experience of normal things very different. And the encounter with Blaine made me twitchy about the way people looked at me now.

  The third night, I joined Pete after dinner in a luxurious lounge.

  The agenda for the evening was apparently socializing. I regretted my decision at once. The only thing that stopped me from bolting was the discovery of a chess tournament in progress. There had been one lord who had been left out of the competition because an odd number of players had signed up, so I was able to add myself to the roster.

  He was a decent player, but I had spent my formative years at the IIC among those who took chess very seriously at an early age. We weren’t allowed to be decent.

  I didn’t play my best, but I don’t think my partner realized I was going easy on him. I figured taking that tack was politic.

  Pete was not in the tournament for obvious reasons, lack of interest not being one of them. He sat beside me for most of our game, watching.

  We had an interesting public relationship. Everyone knew that I’d moved in with him, and had drawn the obvious and correct conclusion as to why. But we never alluded to our private relationship and no one else did either. Pete made no attempt to disguise his preference for my company, and yet we never touched in public. He called me Mr. Dawes and I called him Your Excellence. In my opinion, it was a ridiculous pretense, but it seemed to make it easier for the nobles to stomach our relationship.

  Our private relationship was the opposite of our public one in many ways. When we were alone, we were Pete and Jake; all difference in power, all distance between us was gone.

  Pete was affectionate and very loving in private. He’d never had any sort of real relationship, no one he could open up to or trust. It was daunting when I realized how completely he’d given himself to me. The need to protect him was overwhelming.

  Maybe if I had been older, I would have known how to do that.

  fg18

  We landed on Earth in the late afternoon.

  He went straight from the ship to his office and I went to our rooms. I was hoping to get my bearings in the huge palace. Jonathan led me through the grand hallways with a great deal of narration. By the time we entered the Imperial wing in the West Quarter I knew it would take me a few days to be able to find my way around. Jonathan assured me that it was well laid out and logical and not as bad as I thought.

  I’d assumed that Pete’s rooms on the ship would prepare me for his rooms in the palace, but I was wrong. I would realize later that the basic layout and features were the same, but it was so much grander in appearance and scale I didn’t even notice. It just didn’t fit to try to compare those rooms to these.

  The details of the décor at that time escape me now so many years later, but I remember an overall impression of grandeur and power. The rooms looked long lived in. Not worn or tattered, of course, but older materials, gold and platinum and other things long ago mined away on Earth, and real woods, sat beside verium accents and the crystallized plasma sculptures of Vir. It exuded a sense of permanence.

  There were two chairs in the reading room and I wondered if both had been there a couple weeks before.

  The windows that made up most of the west wall looked out over the ocean, somewhat diminished when set against the grandeur inside. The rooms were their own continent. I was completely intimidated. What had I gotten myself into?

  I settled into a chair in the reading room and attempted to lose myself in a book, but I couldn’t get over the uneasy feeling that I was trespassing, or that the room itself didn’t find me worthy. It was a relief when Pete arrived later. He came up from behind and slid his arms around me, his chin on my shoulder. “Hungry?”

  I was, but that wasn’t what I wanted at the moment. I pulled him through the rooms and we made love in the huge bed. Besides a desire for him, there was some need to “conquer” the room. It sounds ridiculous now, but I know I was thinking at the time of proving that I wasn’t cowed, that I had every right to call these rooms my own because Pete wanted me there.

  After a delicious lovemaking session he led me to a garden within the Imperial wing. On a flat pebbled area in the center of the garden there was dinner spread out for us. The breeze carried the tang of the ocean.

  The meal, the quiet conversation, the soothing silences were the perfect antidote to my jangled nerves. Pete examined me from time to time, considering.

  “Better?” he asked as we lingered over wine.

  “Yes.” I sighed.

  “I was worried there for a while. You looked like a rabbit about to bolt.”

  “I admit, I considered it.”

  We stayed in the garden until the sunlight filtering in from above gave way to the approach of night. And we remained a bit longer, as the stars became visible through the trees. It was peaceful and perfect and I forgot everything else but that I was with Pete.

  -

  The next morning he walked with me to the transpor
t. Pete wanted me to put off my visit to the IIC until after the return celebrations, but the whole thing sounded like an extravagant form of torture to me so I begged off. He didn’t try to persuade me.

  He led me to a private courtyard, and parked there was an enormous transport. The Imperial arms were on the side. Anyone who saw this would assume the emperor himself was on board.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned. He was grinning. “This isn’t for me, is it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Pete, this is one of yours.”

  He shrugged. “It’s one of the smallest ones, if that makes you feel better.” He was chuckling.

  “Don’t do this to me. Please?”

  He leaned over, wearing his mischievous grin, and kissed me. “You’ll survive.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered. He laughed and then pulled me close in a real goodbye kiss.

  I knew it didn’t really matter if I rode in that thing. I was going to make a spectacle of myself at the IIC with or without it. The embarrassing transport seemed somehow appropriate; just another thing conspiring to make my life as uncomfortable as possible. Life was exacting a steep price for my relationship with Pete.

  I followed Jonathan aboard the transport. He led me first to the very back and the main bedroom there; I followed, grumbling about needing a whole bedroom on a trip that would take less than a day. And, of course, I was the only passenger. He showed me a private sitting room attached to the bedroom and I opted for that over the large, empty lounge. I picked up a book and sank into a chair facing the window but I never even opened the book. Instead I brooded.

  I’d never had a comfortable position at the IIC. Even after those horrible early months passed and I found my niche with my precocious scientific abilities. I didn’t mind being an outsider, it left me free and unencumbered by unwritten social rules in a way that the accepted could never be. But I was discovering that passive exclusion and active rejection were two very different things.

  I wanted very much for the IIC, for my home, to be a sea of calm in the midst of this storm I’d walked into; the tempestuous, dangerous game of social politics at the highest level. But I wasn’t a fool to wish for foolish things. I knew I could expect resentment from those who had not been distinguished as I had, especially all of those who were older and more experienced than I—in other words, everyone.

  Even more than that was the problem of Director Kagawa. Thinking of him made me squirm.

  But worst of all was the thought of facing Kirti and confessing. Though she knew I was coming now only for a visit, I’d let her believe it was a step toward moving back to the IIC again. I ached for her to understand. For my choices, my happiness not to hurt her. I’m not one to delude myself either so I didn’t waste time hoping for the impossible.

  My thoughts drifted back to Director Kagawa, and I realized I could probably obtain access to his records now, if I asked for them. I tried to sound casual as I asked Jonathan if he could get them for me, and then to not act surprised when I had them within minutes. He hadn’t even asked why I wanted them.

  It was as bad as could be. He’d been Resettled. He’d spent three months in a Resettlement camp and then had been reassigned to a job in a small rural town. On a landscaping crew.

  I felt sick. Nothing he had ever done to me warranted the humiliation a high class, educated man must have felt, being reduced to manual labor like that. I could recall every whipping he had ever given me, and all the ones I’d gotten at his instigation. The months and years struggling to overcome the reputation he’d set me up with, and to secure my place at the IIC that everyone else had by right. I still couldn’t find justice in what had been done.

  Of course, I knew that what he’d been condemned for was more than just his personal offenses against me. He’d had a prestigious Imperial position and so much that was important to the future of the Empire had been his purview. But he’d worked against the Intellectual Committee’s decisions just because he was petty and let his prejudices make him shortsighted. That the Empire hadn’t suffered the loss of my innovations and discoveries was in spite of his efforts, not because. It still felt like my fault.

  I did a quick check and discovered that the town he’d been assigned to, Stolven, was only two hours out of the way of my planned route. I sent Jonathan to tell the driver to take us there. I had to know.

  Once I’d made the decision, I wouldn’t allow myself to think of what I was doing, of what I was planning to do. So I challenged Jonathan to a game of chess. I wasn’t surprised to discover that he was a good player and the game kept me occupied enough that the time passed without me completely obsessing over Kagawa.

  fg19

  Before long we stopped and I found myself in front of a small hospital. I looked at Jonathan, puzzled.

  “When I searched for your friend’s address, I found that he is currently a patient here,” he explained. I stifled the guilt at his assumption—that I did not correct—of Kagawa being a friend.

  “What is he here for?”

  “Apparently, he fell down two flights of stairs. Though, the doctor recorded that the injuries were suspicious.”

  “Suspicious?”

  “Far more damage to the face and torso than would be expected in a fall.”

  “Someone beat him up.”

  “I didn’t say that, sir.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and entered the hospital with him on my heels. I was about to approach the reception desk but Jonathan got there before me. He informed them that I was there to visit Mr. Oshiro Kagawa and that I’d want to talk to his doctor first. The woman at the desk looked annoyed but when she saw the Imperial crest on Jonathan’s uniform, her eyes widened. “Of course, my lord, immediately.”

  A very few minutes later a middle aged doctor came rushing out into the lobby where we waited. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting my lord. I’m Dr. Shale.”

  “Mr. Dawes,” I corrected. “I’m no lord.”

  He blinked. Taking in the scene and apparently skeptical of my denial, he replied, “Of course, Mr. Dawes. I apologize for my error.”

  “Forget it,” I said, but I was irritated. “You’re Mr. Kagawa’s doctor?”

  “Yes,” he answered, his expression grave. There was much more in his look than an affirmative to my simple question.

  “Why is he here? How is he?”

  “He fell down two flights of stairs, I’m told,” he hedged. “He’s doing well. Recovering. But I’d like to keep him here at least another day.”

  “Dr. Shale,” I said, in my best imitation of one of the more arrogant lords, “please tell me what it is that you think really happened. It’s obvious you don’t think he fell down the stairs.”

  He cleared his throat. “Sir, Mr. Kagawa was attacked. I have no doubt of that.”

  “Why?”

  “His injuries are not consistent with a fall. That’s a beating if I’ve ever seen one. And it’s not the first time he’s been in here with similar injuries.”

  “How many times before? Any why?”

  “Twice before, his injuries have been bad enough to land him in the hospital. Though that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been other instances. As for why, of course, I couldn’t say, but Kagawa isn’t exactly the sort of man this town sees very often. His manners and the way he speaks, and acts…Well, he doesn’t fit in with the rough, uncultured sort you find here. There is a particular man, Rohr Lieffson, who seems to take Kagawa’s ways as a deliberate affront, as if Kagawa just being who he is means he is looking down on the folks here.” He made a disgusted noise. “And, with him being Resettled, well Lieffson appears to be determined to put Kagawa in his place. Whatever that is.”

  “I’d like to see him, please.”

  “Of course,” he answered. “Right this way.”

  I followed him down one hallway, then another, until he stopped in front of a generic hospital room door. He gestured inside and I nodded my thanks as he turned away.
I stood outside for a long moment, rallying my determination, then stepped into the room.

  He was lying in the single bed, eyes closed, and didn’t appear to hear my entrance. His injuries were obvious even from the doorway. Most of his face was bruised. His left eye was swollen closed, his mouth so puffy that it was at least twice the proper size. I took a few steps farther into the room and his one good eye opened lazily. When he saw me his eyes went so wide that the swollen one cracked open.

  He shot up, with a wince of pain. “Mr. Dawes.”

  “Please, don’t get up, Dir—Mr. Kagawa. The doctor said you’re still not well.”

  “I’m well enough,” he said, but the strength of his voice and the way he went white when he tried to move gave the lie to that.

  “Please,” I said, moving to the side of his bed and laying a hand on his shoulder to enforce the request.

  He looked up at me, half embarrassed, half afraid. There was a long, awkward silence.

  “Mr. Dawes, I—”

  “Who did this to you?” I interrupted.

  He blanched. “I don’t know what you mean. I fell down the stairs.”

  “Please, sir, I’d like to help. Who did this to you?”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Sir?”

  “Why would you help me?” he asked.

  Shame washed over me.

  “Sir,” I hesitated. “I can’t expect you to believe me, but I never intended for anything like this to happen. I didn’t mean…” I was horrified to feel tears burning behind my eyes. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to sound so awful like it did. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you’re here now, hospital or no.”

  His eyebrow went up. “An accident?”

  I wanted to cry. Of course he’d never believe that of me. He’d only assume I was so vicious because that’s what he would have done. I wanted to protest that even if he was petty and mean-spirited, I was nothing like him. I didn’t.

  “I’m sorry I got you Resettled, sir. I tried to stop them.”

  He sighed. “You didn’t get me Resettled, Mr. Dawes, I did.” He looked down, as if struggling with something. “It’s clear that you did belong at the IIC, I should never have tried to undermine the Committee’s decision. It was gross mismanagement of an important position. They weren’t wrong about that. They didn’t take me away because of what you said. It just made them investigate the matter. What they discovered got me Resettled.”