The magistrate scrutinized her from under bushy brows. “You are a dangerous woman.”
Simara struggled to swallow against a constriction of panic. Should she agree or disagree? Admit guilt or decline responsibility? She was bereft of social custom in this place.
“We don’t allow physical violence on Bali,” the official continued. “Life is too short and precious.”
“I understand and agree, sir,” she said, and raised her voice a notch for the benefit of Luaz in her cage. “Life is precious above all.”
“Serious charges have been brought against your account, and you have surely disgraced your clan.” He nodded with determination toward the cell where Luaz lay imprisoned in her stead.
Simara bowed her head, afraid to speak and trembling with fear before judicial authority.
“The law is clear in matters of romantic entanglement,” he said, “and I want to make your situation plain before you enter your petition.”
“Thank you, sir. My ignorance of your statutes is no justifiable excuse.”
The magistrate’s face seemed to soften a notch at her expression of humility. That was good. Maybe she was on the right track. “I may have sampled some strangely mixed drinks while visiting your festival for the first time,” she said. Was she laying it on too thick? Trying too hard? Surely intoxication was a common problem during Vishan.
The magistrate frowned. “You would do well to show some care in the future.”
Simara felt a surge of promise in her knotted abdomen. Did she have a future, some chance of penance? Could she dare hope for a simple slap on the wrist?
“Your clan mother has offered atonement for you and will suffer penalty in your place,” the magistrate continued, louder so that Luaz would not miss a word with her ear to the bars of her cage. “The Charter of Privilege grants her this legal right and is of no small judicial consequence.” Was that a hint of displeasure at potential paperwork, some legal jargon? Simara could sense an opening before her, an escape route through the choking haze of rules, but could not grasp it clearly, and could only stand downcast in confusion.
“However …” The magistrate cleared his throat to signal the importance of his upcoming declaration, as only a judge can do. “If it can be shown that the accused was partnered to another person in a situation of domestic violence,” he said, “then onus would fall on the male interloper to honour that commitment, and he would have no justified argument against any … self-protective gesture.”
“I did not know the girl was partnered,” Justin spoke up. “She gave no such indication and wore no scarf!”
The magistrate raised a palm. “The facts are clear, and let the truth guide us henceforth.” He turned deliberately toward Simara. “Unprovoked aggression does not go unpunished on Bali. Do you certify for the court that you are partnered with Zen Valda of Star Clan, son of Luaz who has redeemed your honour?”
Simara’s jaw dropped into a downshaft. Partnered? As in married? What the hell? So that was the bottom line of patriarchal law on Bali. The dice were loaded, the table rigged. She turned to Zen wide-eyed with surprise. What a crazy ride they had been on together in such a short time, like twin stars rotating in gravitational frenzy! First a handsome rescuer in the twilight, then a cute pool-boy sharing her breakfast beside a hot-spring geyser, Zen had turned out to be a hard-working and hard-drinking businessman. Now he was a man of heritage, son of the politician Valda, firstborn of Luaz, her redeemer suffering silently in her stead, paying the penalty for her sin. How could this be? She scrutinized Zen’s bruised and bleary face, searching for a signal, some portent from Kiva. Could this man be her partner, her potential soulmate destined to her by this convoluted trail? Did he care for her as much as she cared for him? Did he love her? His eyes were brown and beautiful, and his face was healing quickly. His honest smile emboldened her to speak with clarity from the heart. “Yes, sir, I do.”
The magistrate quirked a smile to indicate she was on a delicate track to freedom, and turned to her husband with a nod. Zen sidled closer and took hold of her sweaty palm, causing her to stiffen with shell-shock at his public touch.
“Simara and Zen of Star Clan, do you press charges of violation against Justin of Moon Lizard Clan?”
Carefully, Simara studied the magistrate’s graven face. A serious condemnation was clearly at stake, some crime of passion, likely with dire consequences. She turned to Justin to gauge his reaction. The blond boy looked as if he might pee his pants in consternation, but he dared not offer another outburst of complaint. His eyes pleaded for pity. A charge of violation? He had exposed himself in public in a moment of drunken romance, but he was hardly an adulterer. Would the other side of the interpersonal coin leave Simara open to slander as a slutty housewife inviting obscene advances, a shameful wench pandering to youngsters? What a sordid business.
“Certainly not,” Simara said. “It was an accident, a mistake, a crude clash of social customs after a long night of festivity.” She caught the eyes of the magistrate with a steely stare. “This young man deserves no blame on his record, and Luaz must go free.” On this she would stand her ground and stake her reputation, and damn their stupid rules!
The magistrate tightened his lips in deliberation for a moment and cast a glare at each person in turn to confirm his final authority. “So it shall be, and greater care will be taken by all. This matter is hereby absolved. Get your women out of here, Zen.”
Justin turned and fled quickly with downcast eyes as Zen helped Luaz from her prison perch. Simara stilled her pulsing heart as the magistrate tidied his desk with a smile of satisfaction at a job well done and a conundrum avoided. He probably had family waiting for a private Vishan celebration at home.
Luaz came close and placed a palm on Simara’s shoulder in motherly love. “Whatever you do,” she said, “go with the grace of Kiva always.” Her flagrant touch was a signal of celebration mixed with sadness, a welcome to the family mingled with recognition of divergent paths ahead, the last goodbye so soon.
“Of course,” Simara said. “Thank you for everything, and bless you.”
Zen seemed sullen and thoughtful, probably still suffering a hangover, and they followed Luaz home in silence, trudging in single file down narrow corridors of hewn rock while Simara battled with her imagination. What must Zen be thinking, forced into a marriage of convenience with a strange alien girl? What behaviour might he expect from her? To serve and obey in some traditionalist fantasy? To cook his meals and keep his cave clean? And what about sex, or what passed for pseudo-sex in this backwater world? Simara was certainly not practised in the art of erotic massage.
Back in their private quarters, Zen took off his ceremonial cassock and folded it in a drawer for safekeeping. He dug his money belt out of hiding and strapped it on under his leather loincloth. “We should probably go,” he said.
Simara put on an airy smile with a show of good nature. “Yes, I think I’ve caused enough trouble for one Vishan.”
Zen winced and nodded. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Zen studied her with a hint of perplexity. “So we’re good, then?”
Simara shrugged. “I’m ready to leave. Do you need to say goodbye to anyone?”
“I didn’t go back to her.”
“What?”
“Jula,” he said. “I didn’t see her while you slept.”
So he was still thinking about his ex-girlfriend, and on his ersatz wedding day no less. Simara frowned. Wait a minute, did he suspect she had sought out Justin to gain revenge for some imagined slight? Simara squinted at him. Had they stumbled together into some complicated interpersonal morass? “Zen,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster, “it was a simple accident with Justin. I didn’t think anything bad about you or Jula.” She cast her hands down at her hips. “My brain doesn’t function without digital support. I really am as stupid as I appear on this planet.”
He
grinned at her theatrics. “Don’t say that. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever known. You have mysterious wisdom.”
“Well, let’s get out of here before I break some new religious observance. I can hardly wait to get home to our hot tub.” She splayed a palm for him to lead, and followed his beautiful butt with thanksgiving as he ducked under the door tapestry in an escape to freedom. They gathered their breathers from lockers near the entrance showers and slapped on guck from a cauldron of pesticide near the tunnel opening. The buggy had a full solar charge, and the late-day sun baked the desert like a griddle. DNA-blasting rads rained down on them, spectral messengers of infertility, and Simara could imagine her cells shrieking and popping as they bounded across the sand. Cosmic rays, gamma rays—Bali was whipped daily by solar flares and too close to the sun for civilization. She could never live here as a colonist in these primitive conditions, cut off from the V-net and separated from mothership. She was only half human in this place—less than half. Digital life was her true existence, not this torture in the body, this tedium of flesh.
Sand gathered in her tunic and shorts and chafed her blistering skin raw with every movement as she sucked hot air in her breather. Her mythical sandman was at the wheel again, his skin caked and fissured with dry mud. A garish striation of pink cloud blocked the sun as it waned to the west, a brief shadow of respite. A trio of sand lizards loped across the dunes, pacing their path for a few minutes before falling behind such difficult prey. They passed the monument where Cary the pilot lay resting at peace in a foreign and dangerous land.
In time they arrived at their bunker and parked the buggy under an overhang of camouflage. Simara stretched aching legs to touch ground again and steadied herself on shifting sand. Zen plugged in his solar charger and joined her at the entrance to their nest. He blocked her path with an arm and bent to one knee to investigate the rock. He rose and surveyed the horizon. “Someone’s been here,” he said.
A chill of electricity stiffened Simara’s spine, an urge to fight or flee. An intruder in their home? “How do you know?”
Zen pointed. “Spiderwebs are broken. I feed the star spiders here to keep a healthy colony. By now the entrance should be covered with a spoked wheel of webs.”
Simara peered into the tunnel darkness. “Could they still be inside?”
“We can’t chance it. Only an offworlder would be out during Vishan. Or a bounty hunter. We’ll have to go.”
Simara whirled to squint into the blistering desert. “Go where?”
Zen shrugged. “Find some shelter. Build a new campsite.”
“Are you kidding me? Spend a night with the scorpions?”
“Keep your voice down,” Zen said as he turned back toward the dune buggy. “It’s you they’re looking for.”
A reverie of shock took hold of her for a moment, a vacancy of momentum. She stood staring into the badlands of Bali, wondering what the hell was going on. Her stepfather did not have the resources to hire a bounty hunter on an alien planet. Who else would care enough to track her down?
“Simara,” Zen said as he eased his electric buggy quietly close, “get in.”
She climbed aboard and scrabbled for her buckle, back on the road to nowhere. “I honestly don’t know anything, Zen,” she said as they sped away. “My stepfather was paid an allowance for me from a sponsor. It wasn’t much. I always assumed it was just some welfare subsidy from the government. I have my work online where I live in a virtual world. No one cares about me.”
“I care about you,” Zen said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“We can’t cower in caves the rest of our lives.”
“I know the terrain, the secret places. We can keep moving.”
Simara shook her head. “I can’t stay on Bali. I don’t belong here.”
“Okay, then, we’ll head for the spaceport.” Zen looked up to check the raging sun on the horizon. “Due west. We can get a fresh battery at Katzi’s hideout and be there by morning.”
Simara turned to study her benefactor. “Do we have enough cash from the salvage for a boost?”
Zen nodded his breather. “Enough for a first-class ticket to Cromeus.”
“Oh, mothership, really?” A surge of delight swept up from her abdomen in a victory dance, but caught on a corner of her heart at the thought of leaving him behind. “Come with me,” she blurted.
The mythical sandman paused in slow deliberation as they bounded across the dunes. His hands went white on the wheel as he grappled with possibilities. “This is my heritage. I could never leave Bali.”
“Yes, you can and you will,” Simara said, taking his hesitation to heart. “You weren’t born on this planet. Your mother told me the truth. You were conceived in space in a genetic scrubber just like me. We’re not beings of gravity. We were born weightless, floating free. We’re both just visitors on this ghetto world, just passing through town in a cloud of stardust. We’ll buy two tickets to Babylon and work our passage to Cromeus on the trader route.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t priced it out.”
“You could sell the buggy to Katzi and cut him a deal for the unsold merchandise.”
“What would we do on an alien world? How would we eat?”
“Not a problem at all,” Simara said. “We’ll build a trading business together. I’ll claim my adult stipend to get some scratch money, and sponsor you as my landed husband. You’re valuable to the system, Zen, like salvage treasure. The government knows you’ll be an active consumer someday—that’s all that matters, moving goods and services from planet to planet. We’ll be set up as a team. It’s not hard to be successful when no one else is trying.”
Zen hung his head, but seemed to be warming to the idea. “You can make it happen?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with confidence, taking his assent for granted now. “I know the celestial mechanics like the back of my hand. Babylon is on a fast elliptic approaching opposition with Bali this month. That’s why I’m here. Sure, you can boost to Cromeus in a couple of weeks if you accelerate all the way to the midpoint, but you can’t make any money blowing antimatter out your ass like that. Smart traders tag a free ride orbiting Babylon and take their time, then boost across to Cromeus just before the long apogee into darkness. No trader worth his trash spends winter on Babylon. Trust me, this is my natural world.”
The mythical sandman turned to face her as the buggy coasted. “Are you sure you want me to come along? I won’t be much good up there.” The mesh on his breather gave his voice a mechanical edge, but the undertone of meaning was clear. He wanted to know the truth about their relationship. He wanted some confirmation, some reason to leave everything he had ever known for a girl he had just met. What did he expect from her? Love, sex, a bonding of souls? This was not a simple business decision for him. He wanted more, but Simara had nothing to offer, nothing that she could understand. She was an empty husk without mothership, barely functional at all without the V-net, but she could not bear to lose him now.
She reached to place her palm on his naked shoulder. “I’m sure, Zen. I don’t have much, perhaps nothing at all, but everything I have is yours, I promise.”
PART TWO
ZEN
FOUR
Zen studied the booster rocket from across the tarmac as he parked his buggy under a solar collector at the spaceport. Emblazoned with the Transolar logo, a red shield with horns of fire, the rocket looked like a giant arrowhead with shiny wings atop a slender silver shaft, a projectile to pierce the heavens of Kiva. He had seen a launch only once, as a child on an outing with his father, and the memory seemed distant now—a rumble of thunder that quaked the ground under his sandals, a white, spouting flame of condensed energy and angry clouds of smoke. Valda had travelled regularly in space to argue politics on Trade Station along with his elected peers, an annual pilgrimage to fight for native recompense and civil rights for miners. His father had died a bitter man in the end with dreams unfulfilled, his constit
uents still living in slavery to the Transolar monopoly and surviving on subsistence income. The huge corporation owned a slice of every business deal and controlled all facets of society from behind a nebulous curtain of intrigue. Transolar was the only link to the human populace on Cromeus and Babylon, the sole source of space technology and the only hope for any escape from Bali.
Zen plugged his cable into the solar collector and buried the keys under a wheel for Katzi to find later, his final payment and last goodbye to his old partner. A new life in the starry heavens awaited with the girl of his dreams—an exotic skyfall princess whom he had seen naked but had yet to touch in sexual glory. Simara needed time to heal. He knew enough about that, having fled into the desert for his own time of spiritual replenishment after the death of his father. All wounds congeal over time, and old scars become less sensitive to touch. Zen grabbed a bundle of clothing from the backseat as Simara stretched her legs beside the buggy. She was beautiful even in her breather, lithe and strong, a good worker. He pulled a purple sari from the pack and draped it around her shoulders.
“Remember to cover your hair when you get through the showers,” he said. “And fold a swath of material across your nose and mouth like I showed you. You’re Loki, a veiled mystic.”
“Don’t act so nervous,” she said. “We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon.”
He scanned the parking lot for webcam surveillance. They were probably on camera even now. “Okay, just keep your head down and follow my lead.”
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