by P. J. Fox
Placing a saucepan on medium-high heat—see, he felt like telling Aria, he did know his way around a kitchen—he dissolved the karo syrup into a cup of distilled water. Talin watched curiously, asking the occasional question. “The mixture will turn clear,” Kisten explained, “when the cooking process is complete.” This process having been effectuated, he supervised as Talin poured the mixture into a couple of shallow pans and transferred them into the oven. They’d bake for forty-five minutes or so, after which time Kisten would show Talin how to remove the fuel—which would hopefully have attained a gelled state—and knead it together. Wearing gloves; chemical burns wouldn’t help his cause much in the kitchen.
Kisten poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down. He’d have to root out a few suitable storage containers, too. Taj might have something they could use. “If you can stand me teaching you something,” he said, “trust me, you can wrap any tutor we find around your little finger.”
“Provided I don’t blow it off.”
“That, too.” Kisten tapped his fingers on the table. “The medical care in Haldon is—substandard would be too charitable a description.” Haldon was a cesspit of disease and misery, for which the local establishment was ill-equipped. Kisten dreaded anyone in his family getting sick, and had often thought about what would happen if Aria did in fact get pregnant. A result that he both hoped for, and wanted to avoid at all costs.
“Please try not to get injured,” he told Talin. “Or at least, if you do, please try to arrange for the problem to be something that can wait on treatment until we reach the nearest base hospital.”
Talin gazed around the greenhouse. It was a huge, vaulted space that stretched away into a sea of green that reminded Kisten of the jungle where he’d first found Aria. There were creatures in this jungle, too, if less ferocious ones: squat, croaking amphibians with pebbly black skin that looked like nathrach and which Aria called toads, semi-aquatic birds that made strange noises and legions of those revolting little arboreal rodents. They scampered across the terra cotta tile floor, now and then, eliciting squeals of delight from everyone but Kisten.
Somewhere in the distance, a raptor screeched. The noise sounded like rending sheet metal. Talin froze. “What is that?” he asked.
“They’re called darinda. Hedari in the local tongue. Both words mean predator. As to what they are, no one seems too clear. Which I suspect,” he mused, “is largely due to tourism. Or rather, the tourism agenda that’s been more or less unsuccessfully pressed by the local government since I was a child. Come to Tarsonis, see the creatures. There was a mountain resort on Charon III, years ago, which had as its main claim to fame an unusually high rate of disappearances. There were creatures there, too, supposedly, and more than one mountaineer disappeared into the fog in search of them. Of course, years later it turned out that the so-called creatures were the resort’s owners who’d naturally been doing away with the unfortunate victims themselves in a bid to raise revenues.
“But during the years the scam held, the resort was one of the most popular in the empire.”
“So if these hedari turn out to look like fluffy little bunny rabbits, that’d be a huge letdown.”
Kisten had no idea what a bunny rabbit might be, but thought he understood the general idea. “Something to that effect,” he agreed, “and they’ll have nothing to frighten their children with.”
“Then they’re amateurs.”
One of the amphibians, newly liberated from a tub of lettuce in the corner, hopped across the floor. He wondered aloud if this strange, diminutive species—the largest was only about six inches across—was related to the nathrach and, seeing Talin’s face, found himself explaining something of the fauna on Brontes.
“Nathrach,” he said, “look quite similar but are a good deal larger and spit a liquefying venom.” Talin’s eyes widened. “They’re harmless,” Kisten assured him. “More or less. Their range is quite short—only a yard or so.”
“And this is what you call vermin? Oversized, venom-spitting toads?”
“Everything on Brontes is venomous.”
“You must fit right in,” Talin said morosely.
Kisten surprised his son by laughing. “I suppose I must, at that.”
Abandoning his chair, he went over to the oven to check on the makeshift fuel. He’d performed many such experiments himself, as a child, and was pleased in spite of himself that Talin seemed to exhibit a similar inclination.
He was testing the consistency of the mixture with a wooden spoon—wood, being inert, couldn’t cause a harmful chemical reaction—when Talin spoke. “What did you do to get banished?” he asked.
Kisten straightened. He’d known the question would come eventually. He hadn’t raised the issue, because it felt strange to admit failure in front of his son—and stranger still that he thought of this boy, this virtual stranger, as his son. He’d gone most of the last decade without thinking much about Talin at all, a fact that within the space of a few weeks had begun to strike him as profoundly strange. Even stranger was the dawning realization that he cared what Talin thought. He wanted the boy’s good opinion in a way that, frankly, he didn’t even want Aria’s.
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter, meeting his son’s gaze. “I tried to kill my uncle,” he said. “Unfortunately for me, I did it in front of five hundred witnesses.”
“Bummer.”
Kisten thought for a minute. “Talin, what did your mother tell you about me?”
Talin stared down at the table.
“I try not to punish people for telling me the truth.”
“She said,” Talin said carefully, and obviously with some courage considering his opinion of Kisten, “that you’re a drug addict and a liar who uses people and who treats women like shit.”
“I see.”
“Do you deny it?” Talin demanded hotly, the momentary détente shattered by this sudden and unexpected fit of emotion. “Everyone talks about how you’ll fuck anything that moves—or holds still long enough. I mean, why did you even get married in the first place?”
“Because I love her.”
“Why does she put up with you?”
“Because she has to.” Kisten’s gaze darkened.
He was about to tell Talin what he thought of him but, abruptly, he changed tack. Rejoining Talin at the table, he sat down. They had another half an hour or so before the fuel finished cooking. After which point, he supposed he’d have to show Talin how to construct a proper engine block. The boy might hate him, but Kisten couldn’t let him blow himself to pieces even so. He might end up choosing a profession where all his limbs were required.
He looked down at his coffee, and then up at his son. “Talin, there is…some truth to your mother’s claims about me. Or there was, a long time ago. I was…very young when I had you, and ill-prepared for the challenge. Which”—he held up a hand, forestalling Talin’s undoubtedly cutting response—”hardly absolves me of my mistakes. And there have been many, and not just with you. But I like to think that I’ve learned from them. Yes, I like women and yes, I have a great many women friends. But I also like to think that I treat them with respect and, above all, honesty. Your stepmother is well aware of my activities, and we, ah, respect each other’s boundaries.” Which, for the most part, was true.
“But she’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Kisten said honestly. He wasn’t at all sure that Talin was right on this particular score; he and Aria had been honest with each other, from the beginning, about his failings and her needs and she knew that he loved her. More than she loved him, although she was too kind to agree with such a statement.
He studied his son. “Not all men are like Ishmael, although I realize that you haven’t been given much cause to agree with such a statement.” Ishmael, if he was ever unlucky enough to encounter Kisten, would find out what it felt like to eat his own cock. That Aleah would take up with such a companion, even in th
e face of firm evidence that the man was a pedophile, had shocked him badly. Kisten had never had a high opinion of the woman, but thought her at least to be a human being.
Talin shrugged noncommittally. Whatever brief moment of warmth they’d shared was over and if the hostility wasn’t, perhaps, quite as acute as it had been last night, it was still present. Their détente, Kisten had decided, would be of long duration. The best they could hope for, at this point, was endurance. And ideally, eventually, some measure of understanding.
“I’ve never picked on anyone who couldn’t defend themselves,” Kisten told him honestly, “and never taken advantage of a woman if I could help it.”
Most of the women in his life had been, in their own way, happily married to other men. And Renta knew what she wanted—and didn’t want. If she’d truly wanted to marry him, as ill-advised as such a proposition would have been, he thought he probably would have married her. As it was, they were better off as they were. They were neither of them domestic types, and somewhere out there was a man she’d love as much as he loved Aria.
He paused. “Be kind to your stepmother. She’s had a harder life than you realize, and wants to be here about as much as you do.”
SIXTY-TWO
Aria studied the vast expanse of the polo field, its edges crowded with spectators. She couldn’t believe so many people were this excited about doing something so stupid. Of all the sports in the world—if riding around on gigantic, ill-tempered animals waving elongated croquet mallets could properly be considered a sport—this had to be the most idiotic. Football she understood, and swimming, and diving. As a ballerina in her younger years, she also understood too that many activities dismissed as pretty and games did in fact require incredible feats of athletic prowess. Anyone who thought ballet was easy was welcome to stand en pointe for an hour.
But—polo?
The polo field itself, as well as the clubhouse behind it, predated Kisten’s arrival by some years and had been the pet project of a much earlier governor. Who had, rather inauspiciously in Aria’s opinion, also died horribly. Dying horribly seemed to be quite a popular trend in Haldon.
Kisten’s contribution had been to rebuild the clubhouse and resurface the field itself, a billiard table-like sea of green that measured almost a thousand feet long by half again that width. There were goals at either end or, rather, enormous posts spaced twenty odd feet apart from each other. Aria, who had never seen a polo match before, couldn’t see how passing a ball the size of a tangerine through an aperture that size was supposed to be difficult. Nevertheless, Kisten considered the object a challenging one and was particularly proud of his latest civic improvement.
He had some odd notions about participation in team sports that, she had to admit, seemed to have some merit. Morale, welfare and recreation programs gave soldiers and their families something to do. One advantage of living under a fascist regime, Aria had discovered, was that nobody lacked for support—with anything. There were child, youth and social service programs, various all-purpose family programs that promised to teach skills from shooting to knitting, community recreation in the form of everything from parks to polo matches, job training and placement services and who knew what else. A few of these programs, focusing on teaching women to actually do something, Aria had started herself.
Families, Kisten had said in his recent address on the topic, serve right alongside their soldiers, enduring the same privations and fears while providing the unconditional love and support that truly makes our army—and our empire—strong. But unlike their soldiers, to whom in most cases they’ve devoted their lives, families receive little to no recognition for their sacrifice. And colonial life was a miserable business at the best of times, as everyone knew. So let the inauguration of these new programs, including the opening or, in some cases, reopening of much needed recreational facilities stand as our pledge to provide families with a quality of life commensurate with the value of their service.
Around her now, mostly ignoring the still-empty field, families were picnicking in the pleasantly cool air. The rain was holding off, although tents lined the field to provide shelter should any be required. Children ran in circles, laughing. It was hard to believe, watching, that this was an evil empire.
Politics aside, on a day to day basis it didn’t feel much different than home. The food was worse, of course, and certain things still struck an off-note—she’d never get used to the open acceptance of slavery—but acculturation had been disturbingly easy. Because things were essentially the same, where it mattered. She had a husband, and friends, and was basically a housewife with all the duties, obligations and freedoms that that position entailed. She went to dinners and films and shows and watched sporting events. Children still threw bags of cereal at their parents and laughed hysterically at the results. One child in particular appeared to be shoving fistfuls of the stuff up his nose.
Another of Kisten’s social welfare programs, and the one responsible for building the field, involved personal improvement through menial labor. Those sentenced to short time in the brig, or civilians being held for petty offenses in the precinct jails, or those simply indisposed to work productively had been introduced to the delightful concept of work release. They built polo fields and football pitches and tennis courts, rebuilt roads and dug drainage ditches, molded bricks and mixed mortar and assisted in the design and construction of public parks. One particular find, a drug-addicted landscape architect, had proven to be particularly useful. Even more so after he’d been presented with the choice of pursuing his craft in relative freedom or nursing his vices in jail. Kisten had a use for everyone, whether they wanted to be used or not.
She thought of Zerus with a pang. He’d been dead a long time, his ashes long ago dissolved into the water and reabsorbed into the earth. She liked to imagine that he was helping the flowers grow, and remembered him sometimes when she saw a particularly lovely one. She really had liked the irascible old coot, but he’d been too embittered and inflexible for the brave new world in which he’d found himself. Kisten didn’t miss him; had made his father tell his mother, not because he couldn’t face the idea—Aria didn’t think there was anything Kisten couldn’t face—but because he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Here’s your lemonade.” This from Talin, who’d reappeared on her left.
“Oh,” she said, recovering herself. “Thank you.” She accepted the glass with a small smile. Talin had objected strenuously to being assigned the role of nursemaid, and would much rather be out on the field. However much he disliked his father, he loved the idea of careening around getting violent and bloody. They were, Aria mused, more alike than they realized.
A shadow fell over her, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up from her position in the lawn chair. “Hello, dear,” she said.
“Come with me,” Kisten told her. “You, too,” he added, to Talin.
Grumbling unpleasantly, Talin followed them through the crowds on the lawn and out onto the field. “This,” Kisten said, introducing Talin to an outsized brute the color of black coffee, “is Esmerelda. She’s eight.”
The term pony was a misnomer; Esmerelda was at least sixteen hands high. Most players, according to Kisten, agreed that the horse represented the greater part of a player’s game. The best were thoroughbreds, but quality went beyond breeding to temperament, stamina, length of training and, most importantly, the relationship between man and beast.
Because the game was significantly harder on mount than on rider, most changed mounts as often as was practicable; in a high scoring game, that meant once per period, or chukker. No one had, so far, been able to satisfactorily explain the origin of the word to Aria. Only that each chukker lasted seven and a half minutes, during which time each horse might gallop as much as three miles. Not to mention, the sudden stopping, starting and turning placed significant strain on their bodies. Poor Esmerelda.
Kisten usually played at least six horses per game, but Esme
relda was his favorite. She’d recently arrived from Brontes, and nuzzled her master’s shoulder affectionately. A highly intelligent animal, she regarded Aria with blatant suspicion.
The other players began appearing. They, like Kisten, were dressed in exactly the sort of ridiculous riding outfit that Aria had come to associate with the nobility. Except most of them weren’t; the various teams were open to officers and enlisted men alike and neither acceptance nor placement depended on rank. A captain might find himself being coached by a private; sporting events were the one place where rank was irrelevant, and the men—just as Kisten had predicted—loved it. And so far, the effect on overall morale had also been excellent. People, native and foreign-born alike, were getting to know each other as people.
Kisten, naturally—and annoyingly—managed to look spectacular in his dark blue shirt and, of all the wild things, white pants. He was wearing riding boots, knee pads and, gloves tucked under one elbow, was buckling on a helmet. His shirt was emblazoned on the arm and chest with the number three, designating him team captain.
His opposing number on the other team was a sergeant who Aria recognized but whose name she couldn’t place. He greeted her enthusiastically, and Talin as well. The remainder of his team was made up of another sergeant, Lei’s husband, and the infamous Captain Gore.
Kisten’s team included some friend of Captain Gore’s, Aros and, Aria was surprised to see, Setji. Setji, at two, was the other top player on the team. Aros, at four, was defensive. Since all the players changed positions all the time, Aria wasn’t sure what the numbers really signified. Three was generally considered the strongest player and four the weakest, but four was also one of the most vital positions in the game and one was essentially the center forward. Three, meanwhile, didn’t appear to do much at all.