by Brandon Hill
“Wasn’t meant to be. Like you said, there’s nowhere for them to run out there. It’s cold, hard reality. But after listening to your sob story, I guess you deserved that stupor last week. That being said, you’re never ‘in the mood.’ So how’s today for you?”
“Not looking good either.”
I was not looking directly at him, but I had anticipated his frustrated sigh.
“And why not?”
“My parents,” I said.
“Same spiel again?”
“Always. They keep on bringing it up every time I visit. I turn twenty-one and they expect me to climb into bed with the first unfixed girl that bats her eyes, or shows her ass to me. These are one of the times I envy you, Chester.”
“You’re saying you’d want to be fixed, if you had the choice?”
“Sometimes I think I would,”
“It’s just your folks, man. They’re always hard up on responsibility. Give it some time; they’ll settle down. Or maybe you’ll find someone.”
“Maybe. But then I think that they’ll have issues with whoever I find.”
“There’s always Keisha,” Chester said, sounding hopeful.
“We’ll see.”
I knew I wasn’t fooling him. Chester was familiar with that noncommittal tone in my voice, and I expected he would bring up the subject again before long. Sometimes, he could be worse than my parents.
We hopped aboard the train that delivered us to New Valis’s red light sector, and chose the meeting room out of the branching pathways that connected to the pleasure house’s main corridor. We moved past several other couples who were exiting the meeting room hand in hand with their choice of partner or partners for the private rooms down the other hallways, and shuffled into the noises of the meeting room’s usual crowds. My eyes adjusted to the lights from the fluorescent lamps above and the holos of news and sports from the tanks, and I found a seat for us. Chester made a bee line for the bar, where I saw Keisha, her rounded face and large, expressive amber eyes framed by dark brown curls clearing the remaining haze of drunken memory. She grinned broadly at me, and I managed a friendly wave, but not without a certain sense of foreboding. Realizing that I had just blown inconspicuousness, I went and plopped myself into one of the cloth sofas that formed a semicircle with its fellows around one of the standalone tanks. The sports channel was broadcasting reviews of the Gestalt tournaments on Siberna; amidst highlight clips of the two hulking mechanical juggernauts grappling in the arena, commentators were reviewing yesterday’s match between Ursa Major and Steel Dragon. The former was a powerful and skilled mainstay of the tournaments and defending champion; the latter was an upstart newcomer from the minor leagues, piloted by Alexa, a red-haired spitfire with attitude the size of her impressively dragon-like Gestalt, its red metallic chassis as beautiful as it was deadly.
“Steel Dragon’s a five-to-seven bet to make the semifinals this year,” said a familiar voice behind me after several minutes. Keisha’s dark-skinned arm curved around me and into my field of vision, presenting a mojito to me.
“Pilot’s a noob,” I said, accepting the drink, somewhat surprised that she knew what I liked. “And she plays dirty.”
“She’s never done anything illegal yet,” Chester said, resting in the sofa catty corner to mine. His hand was firmly grasping a bottle of Beauvoir-made beer. “Just dirty, like you said. Ripping out the cockpits is pretty lowdown, but there’s nothing about it that’s against the rules.”
“It should be,” I said. It’s a punk-ass move.” In my peripheral vision, I saw Keisha jump over the head of the sofa beside me and land bouncing in its cushioned seat, a flutter of color from the ribbons in her curly hair and the patchwork of earthen hues upon the blouse she wore over black jeans. She leaned into me, much to my dismay. It was always hard turning down a girl who flirted so obviously. It never went well.
“Well my money’s on Steel Dragon,” Chester remarked.
“It’s your money.” I gave a casual shrug, despite my discomfort at having Keisha so close. “Hey, by the way, I saw a Felyan ship landing outside today. You’re with security; got any idea what that’s about?”
“It’s inspection time,” Chester said. “They come by every ten years to run system maintenance. You didn’t get the memo?”
“Might’ve skimmed it,” I lied. I hardly ever looked at memos unless they had something directly to do with my department.
“Mmm-hmm,” Chester pursed his lips in that shrewd way that told me that he knew I was full of it. “By the way, what was it your parents were saying?”
Inwardly, I cringed. It was no coincidence that Chester brought this subject up, which made things even more awkward than I wanted.
“It’s like I said, they keep pressuring me into finding a non-fixed girl. I’m only twenty-one. They keep on reminding me of my sister.”
“Sister?” Keisha piped up. “You have a sister?”
“Had a sister,” I said. “Her name was Francesca. She was unfixed too.”
“God, so lucky!” Keisha said, smiling with ardent interest. “Two kids spared the lottery!”
“She was trying to have a baby before she died,” I said, digging up the still somewhat painful memory of the mining accident that had buried and crushed her. “I work slag operations; it’s far less dangerous than what she did, but I think mom and dad worry about the same thing happening to me. And they worry even more when I say that I have plenty of time.”
“You don’t want to be a father?” Keisha asked. Her brow furrowed over her doe eyes as she gazed at me with a look that bordered on dismay and pity.
“No!” I said, leaning to the side opposite Keisha, but catching her before she fell undignified into the sofa. I hefted her into an upright position as gracefully as I could. “Sorry. No, it’s not that. They’re just pressuring me, is all. I haven’t really had a chance to play the field. You know, sow my wild oats?”
“Oh, okay,” Keisha’s voice had lowered into a wistful, disappointed monotone as she slumped forward in her seat. For a second, I was taken slightly aback. I’d never have pegged her for the melodramatic type
“Really, man?” Chester, now sitting bolt upright, fixed me with an incredulous glare. He gestured angrily, but discreetly towards Keisha. “What the hell?”
“What?” I retorted. I wanted to say something along the lines of,, “Well whose fault is that?” or “Why is it any of your business anyway?” But I bit my tongue. I wanted to speak to Keisha, but had no idea what to say. No words came to mind or mouth, except perhaps the most pathetic.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just never felt ready for anything deep at the moment.”
Had I stopped there, I might have gotten out of it easy. But even I realized that I’d gone a bit too far when I finished my excuse for an excuse with my final question.
“And besides … well … aren’t you working right now?”
I had no need to glance towards Chester to hear him groaning with dismay. Even I cringed at my words, knowing what they must have sounded like. And Keisha, the target of those words, was quick to give her feedback.
“Yeah. I do have to work.” Her tone was terse, clipped, and without a single word more, she stood up and strode off.
“So … are you born that smooth, or does it just take practice?” Chester said with a loud guffaw. And at that moment, I wished I had conveniently “forgotten” to leave my pistol in the weapons locker back at work.
“So what’s your deal anyway?” Chester asked, taking a long draft of his beer, emptying the bottle to a quarter full. In turn, I sipped some of my mojito, but the happenings of a moment before took the joy out of the drink. I placed it heavily upon the table across from me.
“What do you mean, what’s my deal?” I said.
“Jules, you had a smokin’ hot unfixed girl right there! She was hot for you like nothing else, and you brushed her away.”
“Not on purpose,” I protested.
“Look, m
an. I’ve known you since we were what, twelve? I’ve come to notice that you have a way of ‘accidentally’ doing things on purpose.”
“You set me up; you know you did! You knew I didn’t want to continue talking about my parents, and you deliberately brought it back up ... and in front of Keisha, no less!”
“No contest.” Chester shrugged with feigned innocence and leaned forward, pointing his bottle at me. “I was trying to help your sorry ass get some ass.”
“What if I didn’t want any ass?”
Chester sat silent afterwards, eyeing me with an indecipherable look.
“What?” I asked, once his stare had started to become uncomfortable.
“Well, your psych evals said you weren’t gay.”
“I’m not,” I said flatly, through clenched teeth.
“That was a joke, Jules.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Chester held his palms out. “It’s just that you can be a real mystery sometimes, you know that? I think your mom and dad see it too. I mean, think about it. When’s the last time you were with a girl?”
“Last year,” I said not skipping a beat. Cheryl Althea, remember?”
“Yeah. She slipped you something in your drink, you know. You were all over her like stink on a pig afterwards.”
“Yeah, but, the point is that I- Wait, she did what?”
I paused, with cold realization freezing my insides.
“Yeah. I saw her. You turned down ten girls at that party; Cheryl got sick of it. I guess you were going to get some birthday sex one way or the other. I’d have just been thankful that she was fixed.”
I had no words for the amount of disgust that filled me at Chester’s words. At that moment, I could barely look him in his freckled face without wanting to punch it. The mojito turned to urine in my mouth.
“Oh, thanks,” I said, my words dripping with every drop of the sarcasm that I had fully intended. “Thanks a lot for the assistance.”
“Well, it’s not like you were unhappy about it,” Chester said, and his words only served to fuel the already seething anger in my stomach into a full blaze.
“I wasn’t in my right freaking mind!”
“Jules, you hardly ever show interest in girls,” Chester said. It was astonishing to me that he could be so cavalier about something that was tantamount to rape. “Are you even aware of that? It’s not normal, man. You needed it!”
“Like hell, I did!” I shot out of the seat, ready to step over to Chester and leave him with a black eye and possibly a bloody nose. But my better judgment took over. Violence was strictly forbidden in pleasure houses, and neither I, nor Chester had any desire to be kicked out and risk being banned. Instead, mojito in hand, I stalked over to Chester and leaned forward, hovering above his seat and looking him square in his green eyes, which were wide with surprise and borderline fear. I thought of grabbing the lapels of his shirt for added effect, but decided against it.
“Listen here, Chester Boleyn,” I rarely ever used Chester’s full name, unless extremely drunk, or extremely angry, and my disposition was far into the latter. My words were quiet and exact. “I’ll choose to mate with who I want, on my own terms. It shouldn’t matter to you if I stay celibate, or want to screw everything with two legs and two X-chromosomes. I’ll take a girl for pleasure when I want, and I’ll fulfill my civic duty when I’m damn good and ready. Got it?”
Not waiting for an answer, I took a big swallow of my mojito, coughing against the ground mint leaves that stuck in the back of my throat, and slammed the near-empty glass onto the adjacent table before storming out of the pleasure house.
2
All that frustration had me wound up tighter than I thought possible, and my drink had failed to relax me. Only one thing now, would. I stopped by my home to fetch my belt of tools. I lived alone. It was a luxury afforded my class, as the unfixed were expected to start families. Everyone else, rendered infertile by the common draw of our lottery at birth, like Chester, lived in communal lodgings, with private areas for “quality time.”
The tank, which had automatically switched on at my arrival, was broadcasting a news report about the Felyans’ arrival. Crowds of protesters had gathered at the New Valis spaceport, waving signs like CATDOGS GO HOME and HUMAN TECH FOR HUMANS. Vaguely, I recalled the same thing happening during their last arrival. Of course, I was only a kid at the time; politics meant little to a ten year-old, and of course, I became friends with a Felyan. She taught me a great deal about her people, and we became very close to the point where her leaving broke my heart. So such vitriol was alien to me.
Disgusted at the display, I shut off the tank with a verbal command, and removed the tiny scraps of copper, iron, cement, and stone that I’d pilfered off of the day’s collection of slag from my pockets. They were wrapped in plastic and still wet from the pure anticontaminant gel I kept in the decon room as I placed them in the lead coffer on my workshop table with the rest of my collection of raw materials. Carefully, I locked it with the key that I kept beneath the short leg of the table, and placed it atop my filing cabinet. Making sure that I had enough material stowed away in my tool bag’s secret compartment, I hurried off to my workplace.
The Felyans had already begun to arrive, beginning their work. They passed me by in the corridors, moving in pairs that consisted of two of the three subspecies, or kya of their race. An’Kya Felyans looked almost human, but with striped patterns on their skin, hair that had a tousled, almost wild look about it, and a whip-like furry tail that grew from the base of their spines. Hara’Kya Felyans looked simply like animals that had just recently learned to stand erect. Not quite catlike or doglike, they were covered with shaggy fur that ranged from dark gray to bright orange, with the same striped patterns as on An’Kya Felyan skin. They moved on all fours when they walked and stood upright when they guarded their respective partners. The An’Kya Felyans wore a uniform of blue tunic and pants with a leather tool belt at the waist and feet that were clad in sandals. The Hara’Kya Felyans wore little clothing, save a loincloth and a wide leather belt where a vicious-looking knife was sheathed. They stood beside the An’Kya Felyans who worked on pipes, environmental controls, and communication terminals, casting hawkish glares at everyone who passed, invoking them to give the aliens a wide berth. I remember my mother explaining that the guards were there as an assurance that humans would not pry too deeply into their technology, which comprised most of the workings of our cities’ habitats. We were allowed to operate them, but only Felyans could repair or upgrade them. Knowing from childhood that the technicians and their guards made poor conversationalists, I left them to their work.
I rarely ever did my artwork at home. It was too quiet and my tools made a great deal of noise, which would disturb the neighbors, who lived close. Instead, I took an elevator down to the lowest levels of the city, to a place miles below the farthest reaches of the pollutants that leached into the soil.
I could feel the arboretum’s humidity before I arrived, and the elevator doors opened to the sound of running water, and the sight of trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers forming a verdant canopy over a pebble-strewn path. The scents of green and life invigorated me as I made my way to my favorite spot. Beams of artificial sunlight broke intermittently through the tree boughs, and I heard the sounds of squirrels and birds scurrying and singing among the quiet branches.
My spot was secluded in one of the deepest reaches of the arboretum, away from the main traffic of the pathways, and in a place where all the noise of my work was drowned out by the woods and the waterfall from the reclamation plant in the levels above. It was a spot so obscured by bushes and undergrowth that even lovers looking for a spot for a tryst did not know of it. I moved away from the path and pushed through the forest, letting memory and the sound of the waterfall guide me until I broke through the last wall of green.
I froze instantly, as I saw that I was not alone there. Someone was sitting upon the sole
bench in that clearing, surrounded by my unfinished projects: figurines, trinkets, and jewelry that I had run out of raw materials for. A thousand questions ran through my mind, chief among which was how I would talk my way out of what could be a very dangerous situation. No regular citizen had access to materials such as the ones I used. Would I have to buy the person’s silence? Could that person even be bought?
And then, I relaxed in equally sudden relief as I realized that the shape and colors of the intruder were decidedly not human.
“What would a Felyan be doing here?” I said to myself in a low voice. As I approached the stranger from behind, my fear had now been replaced by a sense of cautious curiosity. I could first see that it was female, and a Re’Kya Felyan at that. I figured that much from the clothing and the length of and embroidery in her long, black hair, as well as the gray fur with black stripes that ran down her body, well-groomed and not at all shaggy like that of her Hara’Kya cousins. Males of any Felyan kya did not embroider their hair; also, Felyan clothing was not terribly different from human clothing. It was just that female Re’Kya Felyans tended to wear less of it. Her apparel was a green wraparound tunic that covered only her top and shoulders, and a thin, black, ankle-length skirt clasped upon a ring that dangled from the brown leather belt that encircled her hips. Like most Felyans, she was barefoot –not that she needed shoes with the padded soles of her feet. I watched as her long tail twitched with keen interest at something that she was regarding closely.
The Felyan’s long, furry, tapered ears twitched, and she stiffened. And I knew that she’d heard me. I saw her place the unfinished trinket she had been studying -a copper bracelet with intricate etchings, upon the bench as she stood and dusted off her dress. The way she did this sparked off a sudden glimmer of recognition, but I could not exactly place it until she turned fully around.
The image of a child’s face struck my mind as I saw her. It was more rounded than what looked at me now, but with the same bright, expressive, violet eyes that framed her elegant muzzle, which was banded by two horizontal stripes. Her hair framed her face like twin curtains, accentuating the graceful curve of her ears.