by C. Gockel
She might have been Volka, but Volka had found a different path. First with Mr. Darmadi and now with Sixty and Carl.
Sixty was standing just beyond the woman, pistol in his hand. Volka could feel his eyes on her but couldn’t meet his gaze. She was too aware of him, and just the shadow of his body in the periphery of her vision was enough to make her remember the warm weight of his head on her lap. Her mouth watered. She licked her lips, but then she gritted her teeth. She wasn’t completely useless in this state; she could focus.
Sitting down on the bed next to the woman, Volka asked, “What’s your name?”
Rocking on the bed, the woman whispered, “Lydia.” She gazed up at Volka from beneath lowered lashes, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re that Galactican weere...Captain Darmadi’s weere, some are saying.”
“I am not his weere,” Volka said. “Not anymore.” It didn’t hurt so badly to say it now.
Lydia’s eyes went to 6T9. “He’s not with you, and it’s your time.”
Volka’s ears twitched, not sure the direction of the commentary. Volka’s eyes went to Sixty, standing with his back to the window, and felt a lump in her throat and an emptiness in her core. Her fingers twitched in her lap, and her lips parted. She felt hollow, gutted, and empty. She knew she should say something but was too addled.
Sixty spoke for her. “It came on suddenly and didn’t give me a chance to court her properly.”
Lydia turned back to Volka so fast that the other woman missed his robotic head tic.
Volka sucked in a breath. That had been almost…romantic. Her jaw became hard. It must have been a “pre-programmed line,” an accident, but it felt cruel. She swallowed. Life was cruel. Forcing her gaze to Lydia’s, Volka said, “We can give you a future.”
Carl had told the ambassador that she and Sixty would be staying out overnight, meeting with a potential recruit. How quickly lies became the truth.
6T9 stood beside Volka in the hallway as they watched Lydia disappear down the stairs. Volka had given her most of her remaining Luddeccean currency, and she had extracted from Lydia a promise to meet her at the church for art lessons in a month’s time. She hadn’t told Lydia that the Republic was looking for volunteers. Which was a good thing. They did need to get to know the woman first.
“Sixty,” Volka said. “Maybe it was fate that made this happen to me now. I wouldn’t have had the courage to come here without the season. Lydia would have died, and the perfect population of women who would want to join us, and who won’t be missed, wouldn’t have entered my thick skull.”
In over a hundred years, 6T9 hadn’t decided if humans’ tendency to rationalize needless suffering was endearing or aggravating. He might have said something to that effect, but Volka began idly tracing the muscles of his upper arm with a black-nailed fingertip.
His eyes slid down to her.
She was looking back into her hotel room. Her hand slid down to his forearm.
His Q-comm was reminding him she was monogamous, that he was not, and a relationship with her would cause her emotional distress. The trail of pleasant sensation left by her touch was reminding him that he was a sex ‘bot.
Volka’s gaze went to her hand, and she stared at it as though it didn’t belong to her. Yanking it away, she said, “I think we better settle and leave, Sixty.” Clutching the hand that had touched him in the other, as though trying to restrain it, she said, “Do you think you can do the talking?”
“Sure,” he said. “There is a bus at the North Gate?”
“I don’t want to take the bus,” she said. “I need to do something with this energy.”
“It’s eleven kilometers from here to the embassy,” 6T9 said. He glanced to the window. “And it’s raining.”
“I want to walk,” Volka said, keeping her eyes averted.
Like all androids, he was stronger and faster than a human. Like all androids, his “metabolism” hadn’t had millions of years to evolve to peak efficiency. He was running low on power. He looked through the doorway at what would have been their room and saw a bar. “I need to get some fuel,” he said, going inside. He retrieved two bottles of whiskey, turned, and found her blocking the door.
His circuits dimmed. It wasn’t hard to resist her since giving in would harm her and violate his programming. But he wished he could yank out his Q-comm or bang his head against the wall until it disconnected. At this point, his programming wouldn’t even allow him to do that. He couldn’t throw her down on the bed and use every line of code he had to have her forgetting her name…or Captain Alaric Darmadi’s name. He blinked. Where had that thought come from?
Whiskey in hand, he approached the doorway. Volka’s ears came forward, and she rose to her tiptoes as he approached. She didn’t move out of his way.
“Volka, turn around and march down the hall,” he ordered.
She blinked and then frowned. Doing as she was told, she muttered, “I’m not an animal. I wasn’t going to…” But then she flushed, and her ears went back as they did when she was embarrassed.
“You’ve seen me with hardware malfunctions, Volka.”
Her hand slipped to his, his sensory receptors hummed, but she pulled it away too quickly. “Thank you, Sixty.”
They went down the stairs in silence. In the lobby, he went to reception and set the bottles on the desk. Reaching into his pocket for his remaining Luddeccean credits, he said, “I’d like to settle up. There was an incident with a fellow patron, and the door was damaged—”
“Don’t worry about it,” said the receptionist.
He opened his wallet. “I really don’t want to be any troub—”
“Just go!” she said.
He looked at the whiskey. It was barrel-strength, twelve-year, straight rye, from the Northwest province. It wasn’t inexpensive. “Let me pay for these—”
“They’re on the house,” she said.
6T9 took out the remainder of his currency. “No, that’s—”
The woman jumped back and held up her hands. “Please, don’t hurt anyone.”
6T9’s jaw went slack, and his circuits dimmed. “I can’t hurt you.”
She didn’t drop her hands. “Please just take them and go.”
For a moment he was immobilized, caught in a negative feedback loop. He was making humans afraid, failing his primary function at its most basic level. His Q-comm’s reasoning saved him: if he didn’t move, he’d prolong everyone’s misery. Picking up the bottles, he walked to the center of the lobby, and then realized he couldn’t drink on the street. It was early in the morning, and except for a few staff peering at him from around corners and from behind the desk, he and Volka were alone. Sighing, he opened one bottle and drained it. And then he drained the other. It was such a waste; it was good whiskey and he would have liked to savor it. A metaphor for the entire evening? He put the empty bottles on an end table, along with the contents of his wallet, and left with Volka.
The rain was cool, and the streets weren’t as crowded as the day before. Still, there were angry stares from just about everyone but the humans at the checkpoint who didn’t even glance at their travel documents.
They walked down the same road they’d taken the day before, but Volka was no longer animated and chatty. He almost wished she’d point out a reservoir of diphtheria, cholera, or typhus that she’d played in, just to end the silence. She began falling behind, and he looked over his shoulder, expecting to see her exhausted and flagging. Instead her eyes were bright, her ears were forward, and her body was bent low.
He stopped. “You’re stalking me.”
Three point three meters behind him, Volka straightened. “I was not.” The rain had soaked her through, and he could see every outline of her body. The chill, the rush of hormones, or both was giving her “hardware malfunctions.” His core programming insisted he help with the issue. His Q-comm screamed it was a bad idea.
Volka’s ears flattened sideways. “I was stalking you,” she admitted. “I’m so so
rry, Sixty.”
“Never apologize to a sex ‘bot for stalking them,” 6T9 said. He meant to be flip, but the words came out heavy and serious.
Her amber eyes met his. “But you’re more than a sex ‘bot.”
“Nebulas,” 6T9 whispered. It was a common enough exclamation, but nebulas filled 6T9’s ocular processors, and he didn’t see the steps he took to close the distance between them.
Volka lifted her hand to his cheek. 6T9 caught it in his own, every circuit in his body running hot. “I’d never be able to see Bart and Celeste again if we do this.” He wasn’t sure where the words came from—some combination of his programming that prevented him from hurting her and his Q-comm committing sabotage, probably.
Ripping her hand away, Volka bent low and growled. “I would slit them from sternum to naval and choke them with their own entrails!”
6T9 took a step back. “Well, that was disturbingly specific.” And it was why he couldn’t be with her.
Volka’s ears folded like they did when she was ashamed, but she didn’t stop growling.
He couldn’t make himself continue walking. “You’d have to lock me up on the asteroid and never let me go just to keep the galaxy safe,” he whispered, not sure if it was a wish or an observation.
Eyes wide, completely without guile, Volka said, “You could lock me up, too.” The words put a million wonderful images into his mind. That would be exquisite…for a time.
“Neither of us really wants that,” he said.
Volka’s shoulders fell. “No, I suppose not.”
She didn’t move, though, and neither did he. A part of him was picturing the smooth trunk of a Prime palm just meters away. He could lift her up and brace her against it. She’d wrap her legs around his shoulders and later his hips. The sound of the rain would muffle her gasps and cries.
That wasn’t going to happen. He was caught in another knot of inconvenient programming. His higher understanding was warring with what he was designed to do. He needed an escape. His Q-comm sparked. “You called out to Alaric in your sleep.” Rusty gears, why did he pick that to break the mood?
Volka looked down the road. The patter of rain increased. “I had a dream about him.”
6T9 could imagine what type of dream it was. He found himself scowling and touched his brow. Were his emotional expression applications failing him?
“Sometimes…my telepathy…makes my dreams of him real.” She started walking down the road. Touching her temples, she said, “Carl doesn’t know what is happening…Solomon is out hunting. But I know Alaric’s lost something…something important.”
Volka gasped, and then broke into a run.
22
The Manna
Luddeccean System
Alexis stared out the window of the Manna, the ship that carried food to New Fargo and the other moons of O8. When they’d first departed, Luddeccea had looked like a cloudy blue marble, and then it was a distant blue star. She thought she’d feel a sense of loss and failure leaving but clutching the sleeping Markus to her chest, she felt infinitely lighter. Free. Now they were traveling at near-light-speed, and between the long-range fighters protecting the ship, she saw nothing but gray.
When she returned to Luddeccea, Alaric would be in space again, and the new house would be done. She wouldn’t have to face him—not immediately—nor face Silas every morning. She felt a twinge in her gut and closed her eyes. Her public humiliation had been too much to bear, but it was Silas’s private betrayal that drove her out in the end. He’d covered for Alaric, concocted stories about Alaric’s relationship with Volka being over years ago—despite what happened on Libertas and aboard the Merkabah!
“I know Volka,” Silas had insisted. “She wouldn’t be involved with a married man.”
Alexis’s mother’s words returned to her. “You can’t trust men. It’s always in their best interest to look out for each other.” She had been right. Whether they screwed women or screwed men, men were always screwing women over.
She opened her eyes again and took a deep breath. The ship was nothing like the pictures she’d seen of the Leetier, the fancy civilian craft that traveled between Luddeccea and Libertas. Aboard the Manna, there was only a tiny cabin for passengers. The space was about the width of a bus, but not as long. There was a restroom at one end she hadn’t ventured into. The floor was made of exposed grav plating—coppery-colored metal with a waffle-like pattern. The seats were pairs of benches facing one another. The most that could be said for the benches was that they were padded, neatly patched, and the safety straps were new and very secure—she’d struggle to get the thing unbuckled, she was sure.
Besides Alexis and Markus, there was a tidy but shabbily dressed family—a mother, father, and four girls, the youngest still nursing. They were settlers, obviously. Probably farmers convinced to leave the harsh Northernmost or Southernmost region of Luddeccea. The Luddeccean Guard was attempting to make its mining colonies more self-sufficient and was luring anyone with experience in agriculture with promises of stable, dependable wages.
The rest of the passengers were members of the Luddeccean Guard. The captain of the vessel hadn’t been happy to see them. “What are they doing here?” he’d demanded of his second in command. “We don’t want them on this trip with Mrs. Darmadi.”
“They’re on their way home, sir,” his second had said. “They’re on leave while the Gabriel’s docked for repairs. We can’t turn them away.”
Alexis could only guess the captain was worried that they would be rowdy. Even without the captain’s commentary, Alexis would have known they were in the Guard by their haircuts, straight backs, and green duffels with doves emblazoned on the sides. They’d sat closest to the door of the cabin, gallantly giving the seats nearest the single window to Alexis, the other mother, and the girls. Despite the captain’s fear, they’d been on best behavior, although one of them had been nervously tapping his foot the whole trip. The Gabriel had been in heavy fighting near Kanakah. Alexis took his nervousness to be PTSD.
In his sling, Markus began to fuss. Alexis pulled him out and laid him on her knees. “Outer space,” she said, in sign and speech. “We’re on a spaceship.”
“You meeting your husband at New Fargo?” the woman across from her asked, and Alexis mentally tagged her as being from the Southernmost province, rural and poor. Her mother would say, “The sort of person we cut off with a single, polite but dead-end reply that does not allow for further conversation.” Alexis had forgotten On the Origins of War at home and regretted not having it to raise as a shield from boring chatter, so she used her mother’s method.
“No, I’m just visiting my parents,” Alexis replied without even looking at the woman. “My father is Colonel Laou, head of the base on New Fargo.” Since civilians did not normally visit New Fargo and return to Luddeccea, it immediately told the other woman that they were not the same class of people.
At mention of her father’s name, though, Alexis saw the fidgety Guardsman’s foot stop tapping. She glanced up and saw his gaze shift to one of his companions and the faintest hint of a sneer on his lips. The other man actually rolled his eyes. She knew what ordinary Guardsmen thought of her father. That he’d gotten his post by family connection and was too stupid to know it. Beyond being merely incompetent, he was also rumored to be conceited and vain.
Did she want to be her father? She remembered Holly and the admiral at the dinner the other night and how easily they had spoken with a simple farmer and his wife. Taking a deep breath, she raised her eyes and gave her kindest smile. “My name is Alexis, by the way. What is yours?”
“Charisse,” said the other woman. She smiled shyly at Alexis, revealing crooked teeth.
Whatever was Alexis going to talk to her about? “I am taking Markus here to visit my mother,” she ad libbed. “She was very sad not to be able to meet her new grandchild.” It was a lie. Her mother hadn’t even tried to get him documents for the trip. When the captain of the ship had m
et her at the dock, he had been surprised to see Markus. “What are you doing with him?” he’d demanded, face red. His second in command had even said, “Sir, we can’t take him. He has no papers.” But Alexis had said, “I won’t go without him.” And she wouldn’t have. Silas and Alaric could take care of the older boys, but not precious, little Markus. She’d decided that if they turned her away because of Markus, she’d take it as a sign from God she wasn’t supposed to leave.
Eyes flicking about the busy dock, the captain had said, “Don’t make a big deal of it. We were told we have to bring her. Whether he comes or not doesn’t matter.”
Now, Alexis repeated, “All grandparents want to see their grandchildren,” as though saying the words could make it true. Alaric’s parents had wanted to meet him, even though Markus was deaf. She swallowed. Pasting a benign smile on her face, she searched for some other idle small talk to share with this woman she had nothing in common with.
Charisse saved her. “You’re teaching him sign language. We taught it to our daughters. I had a cousin who was deaf, and my mother and aunt swore that teaching all of us sign language made us much less cranky as toddlers.”
Charisse’s husband, who hadn’t said a word in the hours since takeoff, said, “Seemed to work on our girls.”
Alexis leaned forward, very interested. “Really?”
As Charisse began telling her about her cousin, it barely registered when the jittery Guardsman said, “That’s strange. The fighters are peeling off.”
She was so drawn into the conversation with Charisse that she wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the hull of the ship reverberated with a metallic clang. The jittery Guardsman was up in an instant.
Alexis looked out the window in alarm. There was nothing but gray outside—the radiation left over after the Big Bang, when God formed the universe—that gray meant they were still at lightspeed.