The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 20 —UAC— “… chance and fate…”

For Malena Graham, it had been an adventure, a happy floating party. Leaving the Allied Transcon compound for the first time, riding the tram toward the city of towers, exploring the unfamiliar streets between the Rice station and the club-after six weeks cooped up in the training pressure cooker, it was all delightfully, refreshingly new.

To be sure, the Noonerville nannies weren’t happy about seeing pioneers going into the city, but they did not try to forbid it. Instead, they settled for pressing locator bands on Malena and the others and extracting from them a promise to steer clear of the screamer clubs and the North End neighborhoods.

Tipped that morning by a friendly fitness instructor, Malena had industriously recruited four others for the outing, two from center staff and two other colonists, including, to her surprise, Thomas Grimes. She had half expected she would have to twist Grimes’s arm, and had been unsure that she had a good enough grip to succeed.

There had been no reprise of their lovemaking of a few nights before, nor even much acknowledgment in eyes or words that the encounter had even taken place. At times, the older man had seemed uncomfortable, even embarrassed, in her presence. She had meant to press the issue and find out what was in his mind, but so far he had managed to dodge an accounting.

But when she called him at midday and told him what was happening, Thomas volunteered, “If you’re going, I would like to come along,” even before she could ask. That was a pleasant surprise. She hoped it meant that he had worked out whatever conflict he had over what had been, for her at least, a warm and tenderly erotic time. And though the outing was not really a date, when she dressed, she chose her clothing—outer and under—with an eye to pleasing him, and a thought to how the evening might end.

Though Thomas had been quietly reserved all night, he had hovered close by her in a familiar, if very proper, way. He sat with her on the tram, paid for her wine and chocolate cheesecake, rearranged the chairs so that she was not condemned to sit in the back of the auditorium. And through it all, he paid almost no attention to Isa, the sloe-eyed medical technician who seemed to be drawing everyone else’s glances.

A gentleman, she thought. How nice to be with a gentleman. When the lights went down and the painfully nervous young musician stumbled his way on stage, Malena had reached for Thomas’s hand, and though he started at first, they had watched most of the set with fingers entwined.

But when the rousing last number was over, Thomas had excused himself and disappeared into a confusion of bodies too dense for Malena to follow him, even with her eyes. And now the intermission had come and gone, the music was starting again, and the seat next to Malena Graham was still empty.

“I’ve lost track of Thomas,” she said, leaning toward Isa. “Can you see him anywhere?”

Isa craned her head and looked back toward the annex. “No,” she said after a few moments. “Why, are you worried about him?”

“I’m just confused.”

“Did he say he was coming back?”

“He said, ‘Excuse me, there’s something I need to do.’ Or something like that.”

“Maybe he got caught in his zipper. Do you want me to check the dunnaken?”

“Oh—I suppose not. It seems silly.”

“Maybe not. He’s old. Old people get sick. Or maybe he said the wrong thing to the wrong person,” Isa said, rising. “You never know, in a strange place. I’ll give a look.”

“You’ll miss the music—”

Isa glanced toward the stage and grimaced. “That’s okay. I must not be in the mood.”

The answer to the mystery was delivered by a stranger, a white-whiskered man wearing a yellow Wonders T-shirt—the uniform of the club employees. While Isa was gone, he appeared suddenly beside her and crouched down where she was sitting. “Excuse me. Are you Malena?”

She looked up, trying to see his face in the dim light. “Yes. Why?”

“I have a message for you from Thomas?” The messenger seemed unsure of himself.

“Right, Malena. What?”

“He asked me to tell you that he had to leave, that he was very sorry, and that he would see you back at the center.”

She gaped. “When did you talk to him?”

“Three or four minutes ago. I was on the counter, so I couldn’t get up here until now.”

Isa returned at that point, creating a traffic jam in the aisle.

“Was he sick? Did he say why he had to leave?” Malena asked.

“He didn’t look sick to me. He looked anxious. Or in a hurry.”

“Was he alone?”

“I didn’t see anyone with him.”

“Sssh,” someone nearby hissed.

Malena glared in the direction of the sound. “I can’t believe he just left.”

“I’m sorry. He just asked me to make sure you got the message.” His face apologetic, the messenger backed out of the aisle and retreated, making room for Isa to move past.

“He’s not there,” she said.

“Sssh!”

“I know,” she said, catching Isa’s sleeve and pulling her into her chair. “They just told me he left.”

From Ambika’s wind synth came the startling sound of a hunter’s horn, a ripping echo in the hard-walled room.

“Left? What a prick. What do you want to do?”

“I want to pop him and then eat something chocolate.”

Isa grinned. “Can’t do either of those here, unfortunately.”

“Then why don’t you leave?” suggested the complaining voice.

“Well—I don’t think I really want to sit here for another hour listening to this.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Isa. “This is college city. Ladies Night Out. We’ll go find some fun on our own.”

“Hooray,” said their annoyed neighbor.

“What about the others?”

“I’ll check.” Isa leaned forward and whispered in the ear of the man in front of her. After a few side whispers, she sat back. “They’re going to stay.”

At that point, Ambika’s instrument began barking and baying like a pack of hounds. Malena rolled her eyes. “What is it they say about those things? An ill wind that nobody blows good?”

Malena’s syrupy drink sparkled with glittery stars and an orbiting comet-shaped glow bright enough to cast flickering shadows on the table.

“It’s not fair,” she said, holding the tall glass at eye level and staring into it.

“What’s not?” asked Isa, looking past her toward the couch-lounge, where some sort of holoshow was under way.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to conceive.”

Isa smiled. “Oh. That.”

Gulping down a swallow, Malena tipped her glass and studied the changing dynamics. “It’s in the glass, not the drink,” she pronounced, setting it down. “Here’s what’s unfair. You can have any man you want, and you may not even be any good in bed. I’m terrific and I just about have to knock them down with my chair to get them to notice me.”

“Forget Grimes. He’s a prick.”

“No, he isn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “If he was a prick I wouldn’t care. He’s sweet. He’s a gentleman. And he did this to me anyway.”

“Then there must be a good reason, and you’ll find out what it is tomorrow.”

“I know what the reason is. The reason is me,” Malena said. “I don’t get it. What do men want, anyway? Besides you.”

“Men want sex, power, and to live forever,” Isa pronounced.

“So do I. That doesn’t explain it.”

“Men want to plant their seed in strong healthy women who’ll raise their kids without asking too much from them in return.”

“Now we’re getting to it,” said Malena. “They look at you and they say, ‘Oooh, good genes.’ Not to mention, ‘I’ll bet I could get it up with her.’ They look at me and say, ‘Next, please.’ ” She emptied her glass and placed it on the reorder disk.

“Just the ones who’re running on autopilot. And it’s no favor to me to have that kind sniffing around.”

“Gives you the prick of the litter.” She giggled drunkenly at her own joke.

“Not really. Because maybe the one I want is the runt with a brain, and he’s liable to take one look at the mob he has to fight through to reach me and write it off. I think you’re better off than I am, really.”

The drink droid had trundled by, and Malena’s glass was again full of glittering stars. “Do you really want the runt?” she asked, raising her eyebrow and her drink.

Isa smiled coyly. “Sometimes.”

“And?”

The smile widened. “And sometimes I want the big strong no-brain who’ll fuck me till I faint. So sue me.”

“Ha. I thought so.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No,” Malena said, swirling the stars in her glass. “I don’t suppose it is. So men want sex, power, and to live forever. What do women want?”

“Deep down?”

“When we’re in no-brain. Screaming genes.”

“You don’t know?”

“I thought you were an expert. I’m asking an expert.”

Isa thought for a moment. “Women,” she said finally, “want babies and security.”

“Ugh. Can I be a man instead?”

“You said you wanted to know.”

“I take it back.”

“You could argue with me.”

Malena sipped at her drink. “Not when you’re right.”

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you? It’s the same game now as it was a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. Nothing changes. We want relationships. They want friction. We want commitment. They want freedom. We want to make nests. They want to carve notches.”

“In words of one syllable: We want to get them, they want to have us.”

“Q.E.D.”

“You left out one important fact.”

“What’s that?”

“When it suits us, we can be just as shallow as the next man.”

Malena raised her nearly empty glass. “To mindless recreational sex.”

“Say that louder and you’ll have plenty of men over here.”

“To vibrators I have known and loved,” Malena declaimed, wobbling in her chair.

Isa laughed easily. “You know, sometimes I think the natural partner for a woman is another woman.”

“Sometimes I think so, too,” said Malena. “Except women’s energy is all wrong for me.” She paused. “Do you think Bonnie and Ambika are lovers?”

“Probably.”

“What do they want, deep down?”

Isa pursed her lips and considered, then smiled cattily. “Talent.”

He came to the table while Isa was off dancing—dancing with a round-faced woman from the next table. The cues Malena had missed had been overheard and pursued by another.

“Hi.”

Malena peered up at him. Tall, clean-faced, dark-eyed, a wrestler’s build. “No, I will not pretend you’re an old friend. When she comes back, you can introduce yourself,” she said. “ ‘Pleased’t’mount ya, miss,’ oughta do. But you have to fuck her till she faints.”

He slid easily into the empty seat. “Been drinking Starshines, haven’t you?” he said with a gentle smile.

“I have, until the droid cut me off. So this is as silly and suggestible as I will get tonight. Enjoy it while it lasts,” she slurred. “Now, about Isa. As far as I know, she is not a lesbian, just disillusioned. Like me.”

“I really didn’t want to meet your friend,” he said. “I came over to talk to you.”

She pointed to the airchair, sitting empty against the back wall, a meter away. “Before you get either of us excited, you should know that I go with that.”

“I know,” he said. “You were at the concert, weren’t you? At Wonders.”

“Until it got silly, and the dogs chased us away. Were you there?”

“I work there. In the annex, behind the counter. You came to hear Chris McCutcheon, then?”

“Proudly. One of our own.” She lifted her drink. “These are fun even when the droid leaves out the kicker.”

“He’s a colonist, isn’t he? I know you all were from the Project, but—”

“He is not a colonist,” she pronounced firmly. “He is a shy little librarian with one good song to his name. Which, by the way, has been playing in my head all night. Look at me, I’m flying free, swimming in the Starshine—”

Her visitor sat back in the chair. “That’s what I told them. Someone at the club said he was a colonist, but I was sure that they weren’t allowed to leave the grounds.”

“Then you were right for the wrong reason,” Malena announced. “I am living proof that they do indeed let the animals out of the cage.”

“Really?”

“Really. You see before you one of the Chosen. I would get up and bow but I can’t—I’d fall down first, and how would that look?”

“I guess that rules out my asking you to dance,” he said with a wry smile.

“Only if you want to dance standing up.”

“That’s the only way I know,” he said apologetically.

“And you call yourself an educated man,” she said. She squinted across the table at him. “I was right. You’re cute. Why are you talking to me?”

“Because I like you.”

“You do? The last man who said he liked me ran away the first chance he could.”

“He was a fool.”

“Yes, he was. Maybe you can help me. I’m taking a survey,” she said, throwing her shoulders back and taking a deep breath. “Do you like my tits?”

He looked surprised, then smiled. “As far as I can tell.”

“And if I were lying naked on top of you, would I have to talk you into touching me?”

“No.”

She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “Then why don’t you take me home and fuck me till I faint?”

“Home to where? The center? Or my place?”

“Do you have an alarm?”

He smiled. “Of course.”

She pressed the button of the homing pack through the fabric of her breast pocket, and the airchair came to life and edged between the tables toward her. “What’s your name?”

“Evan.”

“Evan. I’m Malena. Let’s go make a mess of your bed.”

Malena lay back in the passenger seat of the battered Ford Courier, her eyes heavy-lidded, her peasant skirt and ruffled blouse in a jumble on the floor at her feet. Only the lacy surprises she had worn for Thomas remained in place, if somewhat askew.

She had been surprised when Evan led her to the flyer, parked in an alleyway two blocks away from the speed bar. Expecting that he lived nearby, she had primed herself for quick gratification.

But she did not mind the ride, even though Evan had had little to say since they lifted off, even though it seemed to her that they had been in the air a long time and had left the city far behind. He had not made her wait, and his hands were warm and strong, his fingers knowing. Even with his attention divided between a car and a woman, he was keeping them both flying.

Presently, he began to neglect her in favor of the Courier, just as she got that falling-fast sensation in her gut, a sensation that was unpleasantly enhanced by the alcohol and polypep soup in her bloodstream. Before her distress could mount to a dangerous level, however, there was a slight bump and the hiss of a leaky landing coupler.

“Here we are,” he said, and hopped out into the night. As he came around the flyer to her door, she struggled to a sitting position and peered out through the window. There were no lights, and the light of the waning moon betrayed no structures.

“Here where?” she asked as he opened the door.

“It’s a surprise,” he said.

“I have to get dressed,” she said, reaching for her clothes.

He reached faster and tossed them to the far side of the flyer. “There’s no one here,” he said with a grin.

“I need my chair, at least,” she said, twisting sideways in her seat and smiling up at him.

His eyebrows flashed. “No, you don’t,” he said, suddenly seizing her wrist and pulling her roughly from the flyer. She fell gracelessly to the ground, barking her bare legs on the door frame.

“Goddammit, what are you— Evan, stop!” she shrieked.

Ignoring her protest, he dragged her several meters across the stony hard-packed dirt, away from the flyer. He left her there for a moment, shaken and confused, while he returned to the flyer to shut the passenger door—killing the only light—and retrieve something from the trunk.

She watched, doing nothing, her mind barely grasping the danger she was in. She could not flee, she could not hide, and only if he were horribly careless could she overpower him. Her shockbox was in the pocket of her skirt, hopelessly out of reach. The only way out was through Evan—placating him, persuading him, somehow satisfying him. And she did not know what that would take.

“Evan, it can be good without being rough,” she said as he approached her. Her voice was shakier than she had hoped it would be.

“Oh, I can’t fuck you,” he said, circling her, his tone sarcastic, his words taunting. “I’m sure I’m not good enough for one of the Chosen.”

Scrabbling in the dirt, she twisted as he moved to keep facing him. It was then that she saw what he held in his right hand—a stout stick as long as his forearm and as thick as his thumb. Fear cleared the fog from her mind.

“We can do it right here, Evan,” she cooed. Come on, come on in, come close enough for me to reach you. She tugged awkwardly at her skirts. “It’s all right. Let’s do it. I can make you feel wonderful.”

He laughed. “You don’t know yet who I am, do you? I didn’t bring you out here to fuck you. I brought you out here to kill you.”

The impossible words glanced off her, unprocessed and undigested. She stared at him dumbly.

“You think you get everything you want, don’t you?” he went on, his voice now calm, his tone amused. “Blessed daughter of the Earth, touched by the gods. Little queen of time and space. What’s so fucking special about you?”

He moved so suddenly she could barely see him, one quick step toward her, the stick raised high. She flung up an arm as the stick came down and there was a horrible sound, crack-crack, like two saplings snapping, splintering, except the sound was wet and muffled and the saplings the twin bones of her forearm.

Malena cried out in shock, wondered for an instant why she felt no pain, and then screamed as the distorted arm fell limply into her lap and a hundred million nerve endings awakened from their shock. A warm wetness spread over her thigh, and she saw with horror that her skin had been laid open by the blow, as by a razor edge. Moaning, she looked up at him wonderingly.

“You don’t look so special now,” Evan said, hovering out of reach. “You look just as scared as any poor slob. I saw a guy hang himself by accident once. He had the same look on his face—like he was surprised to find out he could die. Funny, it was sex that got him in trouble, too.”

“Please—”

“Please what? Please let you go? Please don’t kill you? Are you hoping it bothers me to see you bleeding? Dream on, Malena dear. I want it to hurt. This is the end of your life, Chosen One. I want it to last forever.”

With her good hand, Malena tried fruitlessly to staunch the flowing blood. “Oh, God—”

“Save it,” he said coldly. “Don’t even try. You can’t talk me out of it. This isn’t a lark. I didn’t wake up this morning and say, ‘Gee, what a great day to recycle some poor trot.’ I’ve been ready for weeks. You’re a gift, a pure sugar treat for a good boy.”

“You’re crazy!” she shrieked. “You’re fucking crazy!”

“Thank you! I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t said that at least once.” He leaned in closer to her. “But you’re wrong. I’m not crazy. I just hate your guts.”

His arm went up, the stick came down, and the razors sliced deep into her good shoulder. She did not have the breath to scream. Blood ran, spurted, streaking dusty skin. She could not lift either arm.

“No—”

“You still don’t know who I am, do you?” he hissed. “I’m the leveler. I’m the collector of debts. I’m a soldier of the Earth. I’m the hands of Jeremiah, and you’re the Chosen. I chose you. I chose you to die.”

He whipped the stick in a blinding-fast sideways stroke, and she screamed as the side of her head exploded with thunder and fire. She spun away, collapsing into a quivering huddle, the web of light in her eyes fast fading.

An immeasurable moment later, the murderous dragon’s tail came down once more, across the back of her neck, shattering the bones of her spine and the delicate tissues within. She jerked soundlessly. But it was only reflex, for whatever was life and consciousness, whatever was Malena Graham, was gone. All that remained was the slow death, the quiet transformation from delicate machine to dust.