Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  He studied it thoughtfully, then shrugged. Basting the torn edges together, he glued a long strip of discarded silk across the tear and let it dry before he painted on a layer of thin varnish to waterproof the surface. He left it balanced against the open doorway before he went to sleep, and found it gone in the morning.

  Two days later, the old man walked straight into his room, and without a glance in his direction began to cook a meal using Nathan’s own food supply. He watched carefully as the old man expertly chopped his vegetables, adding pinches or handfuls of different spices, and stirred it into a hot oiled pan. The old man served one platter for Nathan, one for himself, and they ate together in total silence. It was certainly the best meal he had had since his release. When they had finished, the old man cleaned up their dishes before he left without a word or glance.

  If Nathan had any hope he might start up a friendship, it was quickly dashed, the old man ignoring him as studiously as before. He tried to reciprocate, walking into the old man’s room with food to prepare another meal, but had been firmly and all but physically ejected. A debt had been paid, that was that.

  Nathan spent a good deal of his time sitting on the lumpy sleeping mat in the alcove, his chin resting on arms crossed on the window ledge, gazing out the moon-shaped window. This was the only truly pleasant aspect of his apartment, the view overlooking the city all that kept the room from being claustrophobic. He still had trouble with bad dreams. When he couldn’t sleep, he sat in the dark and stared out into the night.

  The city, which he later learned was called Sabtú, extended out in the valley below him, bisected by the river. The lights of the old town glittered in the dark like gems of necklaces thrown down carelessly. The rest of the city fanned out from the narrow hills at the mouth of the valley and spilled into the basin for thirty miles. Streets branched off to looped clusters of residential villages, each quarter populated by its own extended family network, complete with small markets and cafes and entertainment. A cluster of bridges roped across the river, and on the other side of the river, a compact mix of tall spires towered at the core of the city, gleaming white spikes and turrets blended together like fused crystals. The lights of taxis and long public trains lit the roadways. Long boulevards trailed from the center like crooked spokes of a half wheel, and at their far ends, the roads ended at the walls of sprawling private villas of the High Families, the palatial estates tiny cities in their own right on the hillsides. He eventually determined which of them belonged to the Nga’esha, the massive fortresslike walls snaking their way across the hillside, nestling where the river forked on the edge of the city.

  Most days, the haze of mist obscured the horizon around the city. On a clear morning, Nathan could see as far as the agricultural fields, rolling land cleared of the massive native trees. All he had wanted to do was to walk out into the fields to examine the drones trundling along the rows of crops, sunlight glinting from their metallic beetle backs as they searched out what few bugs had managed to elude Vanar importation screens. There had been no fences, no gates that he could see, but he’d only reached the edge of the fields before he’d been stopped politely but firmly on the road by solidly built women in drab green coveralls. Sitting between them, sweating and terrified, he’d been taken back to the city in their maintenance patrol hoverfloat and dropped off at the first street they came to. He didn’t attempt it a second time.

  Sometimes, if the clouds had lifted far enough, he could even just make out the black band of indigenous forest in the distance that surrounded the edges of the city like a lake of darkness. The Vanar cared surprisingly little about the native rain forest, their efforts concentrating on terraforming an ever-increasing expanse of land. Vanar or Hengeli, human beings needed food evolved from the same genetic foundations, native Vanar flora too primitive and too alien for human physiology. Narcotics the Vanar derived from the native svapnah were not as strong or as effective as those of other off-world sources, nor could Vanar hardwoods compete with the giant forests of other long-established timber companies.

  Occasionally, he saw a convoy wandering through the jungle toward Dravyam to the south, or the high-speed train to Praetah in the northeast, lights winking briefly before it disappeared, burrowing its way through the dark. Far behind him, hidden on the other side of the mountain, cargo lifters launched from a remote airfield, bright specks of light like shooting stars in reverse, arrowed at an angle into the night sky.

  But as elegant as it was, Sabtú was small for a capital city and an unimposing center for the planet’s government. Compared to the glittering cities of other planets in the settled systems, Sabtú appeared almost naively provincial. But appearances, Nathan knew, were deceiving. To his eyes, Vanar houses most resembled half-melted wedding cakes, built from natural materials and decorated with colored glass windows, copper tiled roofs, open atriums, and fountains and breezy verandas drenched in flowers and climbing ivy. Its rustic ambience was careflully crafted, with all of Vanar’s sophisticated technology deep underground, hidden under a veneer of simplicity. Nathan tried not to think too much about their technological capability he had already experienced at firsthand.

  It was as much an act of minor defiance as boredom to grow a mustache. He’d only once let the hair on his lip grow as a teenaged boy, curious to see how it would change his face. The spotty growth had made him look even more an ungainly adolescent. After a few months, it was a relief to finally shave it off. Now it grew in with an adult luxuriance, a thick red gold he enjoyed stroking with his fingertips. He kept it immaculately trimmed with a pair of tiny scissors, every hair clipped neatly in a line just meeting his upper up. He smiled whenever it was stared at in the streets, with a strange perverse pride.

  When the rains let up, he escaped the monotony and loneliness of the charity shelter by walking through the parks of Sabtú. Taking advantage of a sunny day, he was grateful to have the freedom to wander, open air on his skin. The trailing edge of his sati hung limp from one shoulder, the heat of the sunlight against his bare head as he wandered through the wooded park. He stopped to admire a dense mass of purple linaria growing along the winding path, then crouched on one knee to let his fingers trail through the rich earth under a carefully pruned ginkgo. When he stood, he plucked one of the ginkgo’s rounded leaves, rubbing his thumb across its surface as he studied the splotches of yellow against the dark, vibrant green. He absently wondered what the pH of the endless rainfall was, missing his portable analysis lab kit, and was trying to diagnose what might be causing the discoloration when a light touch on his arm made him jump.

  As he turned his head to look at the woman standing beside him, someone grasped him by his other arm. He caught the glint of a bead inserted within the woman’s right ear. Each of them had a tiny button of black protruding from the hollow of the throat where a subvocal transmitter had been surgically embedded. The rest of the implant was barely detectable, the spidery threads of a subcutaneous parasite wrapped around the windpipe just visible under smooth skin. He recognized a couple of the devices clipped to their more functional than decorative belts, as well as the emblems pinned to their shoulders. White kirtiyas over white saekah, theirs was not the unbleached drab colorlessness of his linen sati but pearl white, iridescent, luminous white. The color of power and authority.

  The color of police.

  The two Dhikar smiled at him, professional cold smiles as each of them kept one hand on his arms while the other remained casually loose, palm open and ready. His mouth suddenly dry, for a wild moment he was convinced he was being arrested for picking leaves. As they pulled at him gently, urging him down the gravel path, he tried to explain, unable to think of the Vanar words to protest his innocence. He was physically stronger than either of the women, but before he could object further, one of them had almost lazily grasped his wrist. The implants under her skin vibrated, and sharp agony shot through his entire body, bringing him gasping to his knees. The humming stopped, but the pain lingered. Even s
o, he knew from previous experience he’d gotten off lightly. They led him stumbling down the pathway, incapacitated, murmuring to him encouragingly, but warily cordial.

  Another woman in a white kirtiya sat on one of the carved stone slabs Nathan had never been sure was meant to be sculpture or bench. Her face was dappled in the shadows of a tree, bent over an open reader balanced on her thigh, one leg tucked under her, deceptively benign. Light winked from her sati clip, the polished stones a deep wine color. The women stopped him a few paces from her, the three of them lined up side by side with their hands firmly gripping him between them.

  As she looked up, Nathan recognized her, even expecting her. He would have been surprised had it not been her. Vasant Subah. He knew what the words meant now in Vanar: spring morning. Her dark eyes would have been pretty had their expression not been ice cold.

  The two women did not relinquish their grasp on him, his arm still numbed to the shoulder, preventing him from greeting her with anything more than a small bow of his head. At the same time, he remembered he still held the ginkgo leaf in his other hand, the one not numbed. His fingers closed over it, crushing the tender evidence in his sweating fist.

  She didn’t return his salutation, simply staring at him impassively for a long moment before snapping the flatscreen shut and placing it on the bench beside her. She stroked light fingers along her forearm absently, as if unaware of her habitual action, the implant pushing up the skin of her wrist into knotted ridges. He glanced at it, then forced himself to look away, his heart twisting hollowly in his chest.

  “The public exposure of male pubic hair is considered indecent,” she said finally. She spoke in Hengeli, her accented voice mild. It was the complete lack of anger or hostility that frightened him more than had she shouted. He felt suddenly sick, wondering how they had found out about Namasi.

  She waited, and when he didn’t respond, she said, “Complaints have been made. To continue to intentionally exhibit your sexual hair is not only obscene, but deeply offensive.” Now he was confused, and that frightened him even more. Sexual hair? Then he understood, almost laughing with the tension. He reached up despite the grip on his arm to touch the edge of his mustache incredulously.

  She smiled, a thin, polite grimace. “Get rid of it,” she said. “You won’t be warned again, ajah ae malinam.” The insult was spoken in such an amiable tone, he didn’t realize until he’d translated it in his head: worthless shit from a goat. She waited until she was sure he’d understood. Then she stood, and the two women on either side released him and followed her at a languid pace. His hands trembled badly as he pulled the edge of his sati over his head to conceal his face.

  The attendant at the baths was an old man, bad tempered and sullen, and Nathan was sure it gave him a certain malicious delight to strip the offending hair from the face of the foreigner. Without his mustache, his upper lip felt oddly sensitive. That night, he swam by himself in the baths, trying to exorcise his fear by sheer physical exertion, but it left him feeling sick and depressed.

  He sat staring out of the tiny window, his wet hair cold against his back, while his fingers constantly brushed the denuded skin of his upper lip. Fear wore out to a numb rage, memories of the months of interrogation obscuring the view of the city below.

  “It’s just a goddamned mustache,” he murmured to himself, trying unsuccessfully to convince himself.

  That night, he dreamed again. A dozen blue-robed women silently watched his futile efforts to dress himself in an endlessly long length of linen that seemed to grow out of the cracked floor. His wrists were weighted down with heavy gold bracelets studded with jewels, locked together like manacles, making it impossible to drape the cloth around his hips. The folds frustratingly slipped from his nerveless fingers. The cloth crumbled into dust in his hands. He looked up at his silent judges as Vasant Subah stepped over their cardboard figures.

  She glared at him with undisguised distaste, dark eyes over high, sharp cheekbones. The skin of her forearm writhed, drawing his unwilling attention. He stared in helpless fascination as the implant came alive, metamorphed into a black insect slowly waving long stick legs as it oozed out from under her skin and crept around her wrist, intimate in its wiry knowing embrace. His own skin crawled. He would do anything, he knew, say anything, submit to anything to escape that creature’s touch.

  “Answer the question,” she said, but her voice was Yaenida’s. He was startled; he couldn’t remember being asked any questions, but suddenly wanted desperately to answer them, wanting to make this woman believe him.

  The sati in his hands vanished, as if sucked back into the center of the earth. Vasant Subah pointed over his shoulder. “It is for your own good.” He looked behind him at the whitewomb in dread. Thousands more squatted in long rows, so many they vanished into the dream-darkened horizon. He tried to run.

  Without knowing how he had gotten there, he was abruptly inside it, the whitewomb skin sealed up behind him without a seam, jelly crawling down into his throat, filling his lungs.

  “Mer’iv báat sunoh,” he called to the obscure forms moving outside the whitewomb wall. He pressed his fingers against the pulpy skin, begging. “Listen to me, please . . .” The shadows continued on, ghost figures, unconcerned. He woke to more rain, clawing his way into consciousness and gasping, the air too thick and humid in his lungs. His head pounded with a vicious headache.

  It rained for four days, a constant lukewarm drizzle too tenuous to be anything more than annoying. At night, the lights of the city were obscured in the glitter of the crystal drops of water running from the edge of the roof jutting over his window. Nathan’s window faced west, and in the morning, the light poured in on his face, golden on clear days, the color of molten lead on cloudy days. At sunrise and sunset, he was high enough to look down on sharp-winged black swallows, the patch of white between their shoulders, sweeping and tumbling close to the building. Higher above him, the specks of dark purple martins spiraled, trilling as they rode the air currents to feast on insects driven up by the rain. By midmorning, both martins and insects vanished, seeking shelter from the humid afternoon heat to wait for evening.

  The humid heat slowly turned his tiny room in the public residence into a sauna. After four days of confinement in his microscopic apartment, the constant noise of his neighbors echoing down the hallways, not even the heat, the rain, or insects could keep him inside.

  Fear locked him in, loneliness drove him out, enough to risk another encounter with Vasant Subah.

  He left his apartment, beginning the slow climb down from the complex to the narrow street emptying out into the city below. The streets, at least, were swept clean if not dry, and by pulling the end of his sheer sati over his face as a screen, he could discourage the worst of the tiny gnats still hovering in clouds.

  While the white sati marked him as an outcast, it also gave him a certain luxury of isolation, free to roam the wide, sculpted boulevards with tiny oases of parks, winding streets lined with shops and tall Vanar houses, all curves and melting shapes. Steel gray clouds hovered close to the ground, the rumble of thunder in the distance, and when the rain began its slow drizzle, he ignored it, as did most Vanar habituated to the endless wet. Within minutes, his clothes were soaked, and he held his well-patched umbrella up more to keep the water from running into his eyes than for any hope of staying dry.

  He was not the only one on the streets, but he was one of the few men outside, and the only one unaccompanied. Naekulam were supposed to be socially invisible and politely ignored, but he knew he wasn’t an ordinary naekulam. Whenever the curious stares became too uncomfortable, he stood in front of shop windows, pretending to examine merchandise he could never even hope to afford.

  As he turned away from one of these shops, he caught sight of her, at first not recognizing the tall woman in the red sati. It was more her gait, the roll of her walk that jogged his memory. Then he saw the flash of dark auburn hair.

  “Lyris,” he said to hi
mself, a blaze of hope singing in his blood. Then, louder, “Hey, Lyris, it’s me!” The woman didn’t turn her head as she walked away from him. Here it was, his chance to get off this god-damned planet, escape from this nightmare. He broke into a run after her, hobbled by the wet cloth adhering to his legs. “Lyris!”

  When she didn’t respond, he thought he might have made a mistake, but when she turned a corner, she glanced back at him, the glimpse of her face enough. “Lyris!” He jerked up the edges of the sati, freeing his legs to run. If he saw it, he didn’t understand until later that she had sped up her pace, trying to avoid him. “Lyris, wait...”

  He grasped her arm lightly as he reached her, forcing her to stop. She swiveled her head to one side, then the other, as if she wasn’t sure which way to turn to look at him. “Lyris, it’s me, Nate.”

  He wasn’t prepared for the hostility as she spun around and glared at him. “I know who it is,” she said harshly. “Everybody knows who you are. Leave me alone, Nathan, okay?”

  “Lyris, you have to help me, please. . . .”

  “Let go of me!” She shook off his hand fiercely. “I want nothing to do with you, Nathan. Don’t bother me, or I’ll call the Dhikar, do you understand? Just leave me the hell alone!”

  He stared after her, too shocked to feel hurt as she walked swiftly away. Disbelieving, he mouthed her name. A sudden flurry of motion out of the corner of his eye made him turn his head just in time for a stinging slap to his face. He staggered, then nearly fell as a short, furious woman jabbed stiff fingers hard against his chest. He was taller than she, outweighing her by nearly half, and he stared at her as she berated him loudly, jerking at his sati, shaking an indignant finger in his face, shouting at him angrily. A small crowd formed as women stopped to watch, a few grinning. They laughed as she pushed his chest again.