Scouts

by Nobilis Reed

  And then I smelled something.

  I released her and stood up.

  She curled up, gasping for breath. Her shorts were soaking wet and there was a puddle on the mat beneath her.

  “Shirley, I’m sorry. Oh, vack . . .”

  Still panting, Shirley got to her feet. The front of her shorts was soaked too. “End of lesson.”

  If her expression left any doubt about her annoyance, her clipped speech removed it.

  I had never made Shirley angry with me before. I didn’t know how she would react, what she would do.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. My stomach started up with its twists and grinds.

  “Enough,” she said, and turned towards the showers.

  I had gone too far, way too far.

  “I never wanted this to happen.”

  “Of course not,” she said, stripping off her fouled clothes and dumping them into the recycler.

  I stood, nervously watching, until she waved her hand at the nozzles. “Go on, you probably need it too.”

  I undressed and got under the spray. I faced the wall, ashamed.

  Shirley took a deep breath. “If we’re going to play like this, we need to establish a rule. If either of us is in pain, or otherwise in real distress, then we have to stop right there. We need a signal we can give when it really, really has to stop immediately and completely. Struggling is half the fun, but an accident like this is not, and a real injury would be even worse.”

  “Um, yeah. I see what you mean.”

  “Each of us needs one. Don’t choose a signal like ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or ‘vack’ or anything like that. You make it a word you wouldn’t ordinarily say.”

  I considered. I would want my word to be something easy to say, but distinctive.

  “For me, it’ll be ‘tablet,’” she said.

  “Any reason it can’t be the same for me?”

  “Oh, show some creativity.”

  I had a sudden impulse to say Valka’s name, but it seemed silly and I held back. “How about ‘oxygen?’”

  “Good.”

  We finished our showers, dried off, put on fresh clothes, and headed out to the mess hall a little early for breakfast.

  And then, as we came around a corner, I was face to face with Valka.

  “Challers!” she said. A tentative half-smile came to her lips. “You’re looking good.”

  “You too,” I said, but it was a lie. Even though she had continued to fill out, the haunted look I had seen in our last encounter was worse. It hurt to see her like this.

  Masters came up behind her. “We have a class to get to, Valka.”

  “I’ll catch up, if it’s all right?”

  “Don’t be too long.” He gave us both a stern look before continuing down the hall.

  Shirley patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll get a tray for you. See you inside.”

  “Thanks.”

  Valka stood nervously, her arms wrapped around her middle. “I wonder if it would be all right with you if I sent you a message, once in a while?”

  I had my doubts. We couldn’t really be together anymore, so why prolong the pain? Not only that, I couldn’t understand why she would want to make this connection with me again. She was the one who had ended our relationship. Weren’t the reasons for that unchanged?

  But in spite of my doubts, I said, “Sure.” I leaned down to give her a nice, polite kiss on the cheek.

  She stiffened as I got close, but afterwards, she smiled. “Thank you.”

  I had the first message on my tablet the next morning. I didn’t want to watch it while Shirley was around, though, so I left it unread for the day. The distraction of knowing it was there balanced with the satisfaction of knowing how much she had wanted to send it to me. During my free hour after lunch, I went out for a walk on the oxygen deck and brought my tablet with me. I wandered down to a quiet spot by the river and set it down to play her message.

  From what I could see, she had recorded it sitting at her desk. Only her upper body and head was visible.

  “Thank you for letting me send this to you, Challers. I want you to know that I miss you. I’m sorry for dumping you the way I did; I really could have handled it better. I know it’ll be hard to forgive me for the way I treated you, but I still want to be your friend.” Her eyes were dark and hard to read.

  “I thought you might want to know what’s going on with me, so, if you’re still listening, I’d like to just go over things. I’m sure we’re studying most of the same things, so I won’t bore you with all that. It bothers me that I don’t get to see or talk with any of the other cadets here. I know I wasn’t much of a social creature back on the station, but I get lonely a lot. I guess that’s why I end up thinking of you so much.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get like this.” She looked up and tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it. “I’ve been learning about some of the jobs the Scouts do. You’d think delivering the mail would be a boring job, but when you get down into the information infrastructure of it, all the networks and coding and all that, it’s fascinating stuff. I guess you wouldn’t be interested; you never were back on the station, but you know me, I’m not happy unless I’m messing around in the guts of a computer. I’m learning a lot.”

  “Could you send a message back to me, about your research project? I really am curious to know.”

  Then, finally, I could see the hope in her eyes, the hope that I would respond, and I felt that spark I had been keeping alive inside my own heart flare up in response.

  The recording cut out. She hadn’t told me what was bothering her, but she had reopened the way between us, and that, at least, was good.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Having a good day?” Shirley gave me an amused expression as I walked into Technology class.

  “I got a message from Valka.” I replayed it for her.

  “That’s great!” She gave me a little hug and pulled away to look at me, eye to eye. Her lips were pursed around a little smile and I could see satisfaction in her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Look at yourself. When you first came here, Masters and I were intruders on your relationship with Valka. Now you’re inviting me to celebrate with you when that relationship is reawakened.”

  “Yeah, I guess I have changed a lot since then.” I thought of Trace and Suna, and smiled to myself.

  “I knew you could do it.” She leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It wasn’t a particularly passionate kiss, but it was more than a peck.

  “You kissed me,” I said.

  “Why yes. How observant.”

  “You’ve never kissed me like that before.”

  “I haven’t?”

  “You’ve never kissed me at all. Not on the lips.”

  She bit her lip. “I guess I haven’t.”

  I saw a glimmer in her eye, something going on behind them, and I had a suspicion what it was. Before I could pursue it, though, she took her place at the desk behind me.

  “Time for class,” she said and summoned the holographic lecturer, and that was that.

  After we returned to our room from dinner, I got my tablet out.

  “I’m going to send a message back to Valka, and I want it to be just from me. Could you give me ten minutes?”

  “Certainly, Challers.”

  When the door closed behind her, I pulled up the recording program and my finger hovered over the touchpoint that would start it up. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was going to say. I waited a few seconds longer, then jabbed the screen.

  “Hi, Valka. Yes, I listened to your message. Thank you so much for sending it. Of course I forgive you. Will you forgive me for driving you away? I’m sorry I hurt you, even if I still don’t understand how.

  “I know what you mean about being isolated. I’ve hardly spoken to anyone but Shirley since you and I split up. It seems really strange, compared to the crowds on Stakroya, but even with all the pe
ople around, were there really that many people we could talk to? I know you didn’t talk to your parents much, and I didn’t have many friends outside my family. I think a lot of them knew we wouldn’t be staying on the station for long and didn’t want to get close.

  “Your research project sounds fascinating. Will you send it to me? I’d love to see it. My research project about the Ovors got very high marks. Shirley is letting me continue my studies into some of the other newgens in that part of the galaxy. Pretty funny, after I reacted so strangely to meeting the Chevalier newgens down by the river, huh? But it’s fascinating. It makes sense, though. So much about how we put our societies together comes from basic physical needs: food, water, shelter, sex, companionship, all the rest. When you change how those needs work, you change the way society works. I wonder what it’s like to live on some of those newgen stations?

  “I suppose that’s all for now. I can’t wait for another message from you.”

  I cut the recording, attached my Ovor research project to it, and sent it into the academy’s messaging system. It struck me that it was the first time I had used it. Before then, I didn’t have anyone to send one to.

  While I waited for Shirley to return, I sat back in my chair and thought. Did I really want to get back into a relationship with Valka? She had hurt me when she pushed me away and it still hurt to think about, even after the time that had passed.

  Then again, the hesitation I felt that night with Suna told me that, deep down, I really did hope I would get together with Valka again, that somehow she would be my first. I didn’t know how that could happen, though. After our training was over, Valka would go on a ship with Masters, I would go on a ship with Shirley, and our first times would be there, in those ships, propelling us out to some distant star to start our training cruises. There didn’t seem to be any other way, or at least, any other way that didn’t lead to the Fleet or the Merchants.

  And if I couldn’t be with the woman I loved, then I was going to love the woman I was going to be with. To do that, I needed her to love me.

  The door opened and Shirley poked her head in. “All done?”

  “Yeah.” I shut off my tablet and put it away. “I’ve been doing pretty well in my classes so far, right?”

  “Oh, yes, quite well. Why do you ask?”

  “Would it be allowed for us to go out to the promenade, and maybe visit some of the clubs? I’ve been past there several times and I never see any cadets in there.”

  “It happens sometimes. You just don’t see them in uniform.”

  “In that case, I think I deserve a reward for how well I’m doing.” I cocked my head to one side and smiled, trying to look challenging rather than petulant.

  She considered for a moment, then shrugged. “All right, sounds like fun. Let’s go.”

  It turned out that there was a clothing synthesizer near the exit for just that purpose. With a few minutes work, we had a sharp outfit of trim black pants and a loose gray vest for me, and a knee-length white dress for her. Even though we weren’t in uniform, we were still wearing the colors that marked our respective ranks.

  When we got to the promenade, I led Shirley to a dark club with lots of flashing lights and loud music. I had passed it many times before and of all the clubs on the promenade, this was the one I wanted to go to.

  At the door, I growled to myself. “Vack, Shirley, do I have credit here?”

  Shirley nodded. “You do, but save it. I’ll pay.” She waved her hand over the bouncer’s handheld implant reader and we went in. “You get a payment to your account every thirty days. You can check it on the tablet; I’ll show you when we get back.”

  I nodded and led Shirley out to the dance floor in the middle of the club. All in all, it wasn’t very big, but even so, it wasn’t crowded. I knew from my nighttime excursions that people didn’t start coming out until later. There were just a few other couples, and they were all focused on each other. Most of them seemed to be Scouts, dressed in white, though there were a few colorfully dressed civilians, as well.

  Mentally, I thanked Valka for insisting that I learn to dance—or at least, that I let go of the feeling that I looked like I had a nervous condition and just do it. Shirley wasn’t familiar with my style of dancing, but she adapted quickly, incorporating some of the moves from partner movement.

  I kept my eyes on her face, on her eyes when she’d show them to me. When she looked up, she always saw me looking directly into her eyes. It couldn’t have been too hard to figure out what I was doing, but she didn’t say anything. It felt, more than anything, like a struggle. Wordlessly, I was trying to get her to open up to me, to let herself feel something for me. The music made conversation impossible, and after agreeing to come out, she could hardly stop after only a few minutes. She was trapped, in a way. It seemed odd to be trying to win her over like this, but everything seemed odd.

  When the music turned to a somewhat slower song and I moved a little closer, she smiled and took a step back.

  “I’m a little tired!” she shouted over the music. “Let’s get a drink!” She mimed a glass and pointed to the bar at the back of the club.

  The music there was a bit less intrusive and we could hold something of a conversation. Shirley called up the menu on the counter controls and punched in an order. The mechanisms in the back of the bar delivered two glasses, one of which she handed to me.

  “Alcohol’s allowed?”

  “In moderation. Getting drunk isn’t.” She raised her glass and touched it to mine, then took a sip. Seeing a quizzical look on my face, she said, “Old tradition. Probably dates back to the First System.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just what you do.”

  I tasted the drink. I didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like. I liked it, sort of, but it wasn’t what I was there for. I looked around the club.

  “A lot of Scouts come here, looks like.”

  “Yeah, it’s good to get out and away from the ship in between missions, to get to know people. When a cruise is over, you’ll have a chance to pick a new partner from the available candidates, and it’s good to know who they are.”

  “Do you always get your pick?”

  She shrugged. “Not at first. The more prestige you have with Command, the more likely you are to get your pick. But if someone with more asks for you, then that’s who you get.”

  “I see. How do you get prestige?”

  “Discovering new resources, volunteering for dangerous missions, recruiting. Anything above and beyond the usual duties.”

  “That’s why you recruited Valka and me.”

  She blushed. “Partly. That’s why we went out looking for someone to recruit. The medical analysis said we’d be compatible and, I have to say, it was right.”

  “Medical analysis?”

  “Female attraction is a funny thing. It has a lot to do with things like how you smell. The computers can tell, based on our genetic makeup, how likely we’d be able to make a connection.”

  “I see.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Valka has the same compatibility with you that I do.”

  I nodded, looked around the club again, and then back at her. I drank some of the wine, watching her over the top of the glass.

  “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Looking into my eyes. How did you put it? Creating something ‘real.’ Whatever that means.”

  “Yes. I am. Do you want me to stop?”

  “Challers.” She gave me a dubious look. “Think about what you’re doing. Are you saying that staring into each other’s eyes is actually going to create something beyond what we already have? We live together, we study together, we have sex on a regular basis. I like you. I have the crazy idea that you like me too. What more do you want? What more do you expect to accomplish?”

  “Are you saying it’s meaningless? Silly?”

  “I wouldn’t
put it that way, but yes. I think it is a little silly. There’s a lot more to a relationship than gazing into each other’s eyes.”

  “Is there any harm in it?”

  “No, of course not. Except maybe as a waste of time.”

  “We’re here, having fun. Wasting time.” I leaned closer and set my glass down, still half full. “So no harm at all. It’s safe, right?”

  She took a big swig of wine and shook her head. “You’re a romantic, you know that?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Someone who believes in the power of love to overcome every obstacle—that all you need is to love someone deeply enough, completely enough, and everything will turn out all right in the end.”

  “In that case, maybe I am. And why not?”

  “It’s going to hurt when you realize the world doesn’t work that way. Falling in love, really falling in love, leads to a great deal of pain.”

  “And yet you still love Robert, even though every time you have to say goodbye, you hurt all over again.”

  She looked down. “That’s different.”

  I finished my drink and took her hand. “Come on. Finish your drink and let’s dance.”

  When she looked up, she wore a crooked smile and shook her head. “All right, Challers. All right.”

  We danced close, closer even than when we practiced our partner movement exercises. I held her close and, before long, she was holding me, as well. We had our thighs between each other’s legs, grinding against each other. She might have been trying to get me turned on enough that I had to leave, or it might have just been the way she wanted to dance. It didn’t matter, though, because she was finally letting me in, letting me through the doors of her eyes.

  We stayed there, our dance slow and sensuous in spite of the changing music, for what seemed like hours. Our gazes stayed in that mutual reflection the whole time, and by the time we were too tired to stand any longer, I could tell that something had changed. It wasn’t anything overt, or even anything I could point to in any logical way, but I could feel in my heart that I had finally gotten through. We didn’t try to talk. The thudding music made it impossible. I didn’t care. Words would have been a distraction.