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adverse_camberWen hung her pail of detergent-laced water on the scaffolding, and settled on her friend’s shoulder with a long handled brush. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” she apologised, quietly, swirling the soft bristles in the water.
“Don’t be.” Celerity forced a smile, even though on the inside, her pumps were clutching in a way that bordered on painful. “If that’s the nastiest name she calls me, I’ve lived with worse.”
“Still.” Wen applied the brush to one of the seams around her friend’s alarm blinker and began to gently scrub the silt away. “She had no right to say it.”
Celerity offlined her optics and had to resist the urge to lean into the touch; after first spending a good portion of a solar orbit cooped up in an interstellar tin can with her nephew, who was angry enough to not be making any effort to be nice, then arriving here and just being bumped around the whole time, it made a nice change to have someone being kind to her.
With a small team of the Merchandise helping Wen out, Celerity’s grimy paintwork readily came up clean; the grungy blue and dirty citrine and smoky pale grey revealed themselves to actually be a medium royal blue and a strange almost fluorescent yellow on a white background.
“I don’t know what she was talking about, anyway,” Wen commented, kindly, giving her friend a considering all-over inspection. “You look perfectly fine to me. You’re not lumpy, or misshapen, or ugly.”
Celerity managed a little smile. “Thank you.” She knew the little female was just trying to save her feelings, because she knew she was big and heavy and not especially attractive, but it was nice to hear it, just for once.
“You don’t believe me.”
The words caught her wrong-footed. “I-… what? Of course I believe you!”
“Your voice says one thing, but your face says another,” Wen climbed up the scaffolding to be at eye level; the bulk of the restraining crosspieces had been removed, to allow the workers access, leaving behind just enough to keep the big machine in place. “I’m serious. You’ve got a very gentle, sort of motherly look about you. You’re certainly not ugly, Lara.” She smiled, and was reassured to see the grey lips curve in kind.
“Even my colours?”
Wen’s smile turned into a sort of apologetic grimace. “All right, you caught me there. It’s not the most… delicately effeminate of colour schemes,” she explained, awkwardly. “Even so, it’s not ugly! Just-”
“Garish,” Celerity supplied, glumly. “Or maybe clashing.”
“ Bright,” Wen argued, with a gently chastising smile. “And that, I would hazard a guess, is because you need to be visible. Correct?”
Celerity nodded, and dropped her gaze.
“Listen… being pretty isn’t all it’s made out to be, love.” Wen closed both hands around one large blue thumb. “A lot of the time, it’s more annoying than it’s worth.”
“You’re only saying that because you are,” the big femme argued, defeatedly.
“No-o, I’m saying it because it’s true. Would you rather measure your worth by how many males you’ve managed to get pregnant by?”
“Are you telling me that’s how you measure your personal worth?” Celerity fixed her on a sad stare.
Wen let her shoulders sag. “Again, no,” she admitted, softly. “Just… Please, Lara. I mean it. Being some incredibly attractive little creature… I’ve seen the fessine on the surface trying to maintain it, and it looks like it’s all just hard work! You have to watch what you eat, work on maintaining your looks, spend a fortune on cleansers and toners and lotions and makeup, and the instant you let your looks slip, you’re dropped faster than if you were hot.” She squeezed at her friend’s hand. “You’ve got beauty where it counts, where people will always remember it, and that’s inside you. Remember that for me?”
Celerity managed to nod. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, faintly. “I’m just… scared. A little bit. I’ve never…” Beat, and a pulse of cold air, to stabilise uneasy systems. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before. My people, we… we’ve only just begun to recover from millions of centuries of war. And… however terrible that all was, I knew what to expect. This is just… it scares me because I don’t know how to deal with it.”
“Well the first thing you need to know, so you can learn how to ‘deal with it’, is that Pabs’ bark is a lot, lot worse than her bite.” Wen kept her hands on her friend’s, while Celerity lifted her to her shoulder. “She’s a nasty old queynte, certainly, and some days she’ll yell and scream and punish you for nothing apart from look at her the wrong way, but she very rarely actually hurts anyone.”
“So... you, um… you don’t think she would order me smelted down, do you?”
“No, oh nonono. Certainly not,” Wen was quick to reassure, getting comfortable and wielding her polishing cloth over the large femme’s ‘audio light’. “She just said that because she’s in a bad mood. She’ll reconsider things, put her options to her advisory panel, see if her research teams can’t work out what they want to do now. Even if she can’t think of one single use for you – which I find extremely unlikely – she won’t destroy you. Trust me.” The little female stroked her aerials, comfortingly. “To start with, you’re more valuable to her than she wants to let on, and secondly, even she isn’t so cruel as to just kill you because she wants Otto to think he messed up.”
Celerity gave her a suspicious, anxious look. “I thought he was the lab director.” It sounded horribly petty, even to audios used to hearing tales of extreme childishness during the war.
“He is.” Wen nodded. “He’s also extremely important, in the grand scheme of the Nuori-Deuchainn power hierarchy. Pabishka has the overall say in how things are run because she has the money, but on a scientific basis, she’s got no idea, and he knows it. If she lets Otto think he did a good job by finding you, that’s an excuse for him to puff himself up and be intolerable for a few days. She’ll probably come back down here on her own and get another look at you, if I’m honest.”
Celerity nodded, glumly, and studied her feet. “I just want to go home,” she whispered, softly. “And it just all seems impossible. I can’t escape, and who’ll ever rescue me if they don’t know I’m here?”
“What about your nephew?” Wen continued carefully polishing the last kinks out of the dented antennae, knowing that her friend found comfort in the touch, if nothing else.
“…we’re… not on the greatest of terms.”
“You said you had argued.” Wen peered carefully at Celerity’s face, but the femme had finally managed to put on a carefully neutral expression. “I’m sure he’ll come and rescue you. He’s family! It’s what family do. Right?”
“Right,” Celerity agreed, forcing a smile, but her tones were flat. He’ll come find me. Once he’s arrested Firewire. And fixed Lucy. And forgiven me. If he remembers…
Slipstream had sat and pored over the results Rasa had given him for some time. Firewire’s route had drawn a big wiggly circle through the drains, and the pursuing Policebot was semi-amused (in a pained, despairing sort of way) to find that they had been following him completely by accident, after all.
“Holiday romance, huh?”
The unexpected voice bumped him rudely out of his reverie. “What?”
Danura plopped herself down on the ledge next to him, a plate of strongly-scented spiced meat with sauce and pasta in her lap. The fessine had joined Denizen society for reasons even more mystifying than Artur; rumour said she’d ‘escaped’ an abusive marriage after her third miscarriage, but she refused to talk about it. Whatever the truth of it was, Slipstream couldn’t really imagine her happily bonded to anyone, because she was brutally honest about everything, and brash and vulgar to boot. He wasn’t really sure if he liked her or not, and was coming down more strongly on ‘not’.
“Chickie over there.” She gestured towards Mirii with her fork before stabbing it into a thick slice of what looked like some kind of sausage. “I seen you got yer eye on her. Good choice! She’s a pretty girl.”
His brow furrowed very briefly. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
Danura barely looked up from wolfing her supper down. “Aw, come off it. You been watching her, and she’s been watching you right back. Two of you got a thing going on, I figured – or you will have, if you ain’t yet!”
He grimaced, unimpressed. “I don’t know what sort of ‘thing’ you think we ‘have’, but there’s nothing romantic about our relationship. We only met a few dozen days ago-”
“So? Never heard of love at first sight?”
“-and we’re only working together. Friends, at most. She agreed to help us when we first arrived, as she knew the language and the geography.”
“Riight. Now that’s an euphemism if ever I heard one!”
“Goodness, that is a long word you know,” Slipstream sniped, with a glaring sneer. “You’re just looking for things that don’t exist. And remind me why you’re so interested?”
Danura cackled. “I wanna see how you two get it on,” she admitted, openly. “Cuz unless it’s hid under there,” she unashamedly groped his pelvic armour until he made a noise of disgust and wrestled her easily away. “I don’t see that you’ve got any tackle at all.”
“If you mean a penis, no I haven’t!” Slipstream scooted away along the ledge, fuming. “That’s a piece of biological equipment my species don’t need in order to function. Just… get off and go away. She’s not even my kind!”
“So what?” Danura shrugged. “I’m laima, ain’t I? I’m hooked up with a sweet little Ondraii bitch. What’s species got to do with it? What’s gender got to do with it?”
“It’s different for you,” Slipstream defended himself, sulkily. “You’re biological. You tend to have the right… slots and pegs… to be compatible.” He bristled, a little bit. “Besides, I wish you wouldn’t describe your fellow sentients in such an unpleasant manner.”
Danura made a pfft noise and retreated to her dinner for a few blissful minutes of silence.
Just as Slipstream was beginning to hope she’d given up… she belched loudly and tapped her plate, and spoke up again.
“She is pretty though, ain’t she?” Danura pushed, with a knowing little smile.
You promised Rasa that you’d not hurt anyone, remember? So no angry tantrums. “I… suppose?” Slipstream didn’t move his head, preferring instead to look askance at her. “I think my tastes are a little different to yours. She’s, ah… not exactly the type of femme I’d traditionally go for.” He neglected to mention that he didn’t really have a ‘type’, and had certainly never been bold enough to approach anyone in a capacity deeper than just friendship. “I try and stick to my own species.”
Danura patted his arm. “D’aww. Keep tellin’ yourself that, love.”
“She’s… ‘married’, anyway,” he protested, quietly. “Whatever that means. Legally bonded, or something. So even if I did have feelings for her, I couldn’t act on them.”
“Sure you could!” Danura wiped her plate with a scrap of bread, and sucked noisily at her fingertips. “S’what they call an affair, kiddo, in that part of the galaxy where you’re only allowed one significant other. ’Sides…” She shrugged. “Her kind are kinda… how to put it… polygamous without the sexin’. If you’re real important, you can have more’n one wife. So she probably won’t care anyway. Happens in her society all the time.”
“Polygamy isn’t an affair. You can be polygamous and faithful. I’m not intruding on her marriage like that just because you want to get off, watching it.”
“What is this, keep on telling yerself she’s unavailable and hope y’ll eventually lose interest?” Danura challenged. “Just cause she’s married don’t mean you can’t talk to her. Plenty of married girls have male friends, y’know?”
“Your society is different from mine,” Slipstream pointed out, sullenly, resisting the urge to add thank God.
“Right, so ‘bonded’ couples ain’t allowed friends from the opposite gender, where you come from? Too risky, is it? That easy to have an affair?” she teased. “Love an’ devotion doesn’t mean anything. Some strong, attractive guy could just… whisk a gal off her feet, right? Once yer married, wham, that’s it. No outside contact, juuust in case.”
“Now you’re being facetious, and I don’t appreciate the tone of voice. And I’m busy. I haven’t got time to indulge in the non-existent fantasies that you think I harbour.”
“Aw, for goodness sake. Loosen up, kid, it’s like someone stuck a stick down your underpants and wound ‘em up too tight, this morning. If you like her? Go talk to her.” Danura gave him a little push. “It’s not like you’re gonna instantly get into some torrid affair, or anything.”
“Don’t call me ‘kid’.” He bristled. “I’m far older than you.”
“So act like it,” she scolded, playfully, using his shoulder to push herself up. “All you’re doing is talking to her, not swearing undying love and affection – yet. ’Sides, would it be so terrible if you did hook up? You’re both cute. You’d make a good couple.”
Slipstream glared hotly at her departing back, smarting. Uninvited advice was bad enough, but uninvited advice on his non-existent private life? It left him feeling physically violated, and furious. And infuriated that the fragger had seen right through him to the core of what was bothering him, without even trying! He propped his chin in his hands, and pouted, sullenly, watching the dinner-time hustle and bustle, unable to recover his interest in his figures.
His eyes were drawn – without much difficulty – to the little gold figure sat on the other side of the room, discussing something with Ilta, the petite, rufous “Ondraii bitch” that Danura was dating. He found it hard to believe that such a graceful, pleasant creature could have chosen such a loudmouthed yobette for a partner, but… stranger things had happened. His own parents were hardly a match chosen for their intrinsic compatibility! They came from opposing factions altogether, it was something of a miracle they’d held off shooting at each other for long enough to even get together in the first place.
All right, so he had to (grudgingly) accept Danura’s judgement; Mirii was pretty, as aliens went. He still couldn’t bring himself to describe her as ‘his type’, whatever that was, but she was sleekly built, and elegantly balanced; her movements were smooth, and graceful, and every bit as fluid as any motion any organic being was capable of. And she was kind – she spoke nicely to him, and was respectful of his feelings, and gave him some good advice when he wasn’t thinking logically.
He reassured himself by thinking he wasn’t so much attracted as curious, comforted by her similarity to him. She was like him in so many essential ways – a mechanical, computer-brained sentience, built not born – and yet so unalike at the same time, dainty and well-built, clothed in a tough, smooth skin that hid all her essential mechanisms. Part of him still couldn’t really believe she was a machine.
Danura must have caught him watching her – he kicked himself, inwardly – because she deliberately took the long way around the central table to put her utensils away, so she could walk past Mirii, who now sat alone at the table.
“Better watch that one,” he heard her comment, in a stage whisper that he knew she wanted him to hear. “He’s got those bright li’l eyes on you.”
“Beg pardon?” Mirii sounded confused rather than angry or upset, watching as Danura slid into the seat next to her.
“That guy you, ah, ‘arrived here’ with? Slippy, or whatever his name is? He’s-been wat-ching yoou,” Danura ended on a playful singsong note.
Slipstream diverted his attention back to his display screen and grumbled privately to himself. Why did everyone insist on calling him cute? And Slippy? Please Rasa, let me clonk her just ONCE… He knew he shouldn’t even listen – their voices were low anyway, and it would have been so easy to save himself from temptation, but he was peeved, and wanted to make sure she wasn’t spreading lies about him, too. …He retuned his hearing, and listened in.
“I know he has. We are working together,” Mirii agreed. “He is probably impatient to get back to work.”
“Impatient to be doing something, for definite,” Danura observed, offhand.
“What do you mean?”
Danura smiled so sweetly, you could almost see her halo. “Oh, nothin’. You just… never stopped to wonder why he’s lookin’ at you?”
“I already told you I know why.” Mirii’s fine features drew tighter into a suspicious frown. “What is your point?”
Danura leaned closer and whispered something that Slipstream couldn’t catch; if Mirii’s expression was anything to go by, he was glad he didn’t!
“You are disgusting,” Mirii denounced, giving Danura a chastising glare. “And are you trying to get me to have an affair? I already explained to you that I have scarcely been married two years,” she scolded, quietly.
Danura waved a hand. “It’s just a bit of fun,” she argued, dismissively. “You’re a smart girl, you know your limits, and even I know you ain’t gonna ditch your husband cause you had a fling with a cute guy you met on holiday.”
“But that would be being unfaithful! And unfair. Why would I take pleasure in going behind my husband’s back like that?”
Danura gave her a serious look. “Aw, come on. Why do you guys keep insist on attaching such a big meaning to it, huh? ‘Faithfulness’? What’s that got to do with anything? You’ll still love your hubby just as much.” The laima had a twinkle in her eye as she added, wickedly; “Maybe more, if the kid can’t perform!”
“But marriage is a, a… a lifelong commitment!” Mirii sat straighter and channelled a little pure-blooded Kiravai scorn down her regal nose. “Why would I choose to devote myself to one person if I go and sleep around behind his back?”
“Cuz it’s just sex? Just something fun to do?” Danura wrinkled her nose, dismissively. “I guess you believe in none o’that before marriage, either?”
Mirii was physically incapable of blushing, but her manner gave it away.
“Slippy’s a grouchy little punk, sure, but he’s a cute one, too. He jus’… you know. Needs takin’ in hand an’ taming before his anger gets the better of him.” Danura smiled, and for once it was a genuine, gentle look. “I bet he’s a real sweetie, under all that aggro. He’s just gonna… self-destruct before anyone gets to show him that.”
Mirii smiled, reluctantly. “That, I am sure of. But you have picked the wrong woman to do so.”
“Tch. Now there was me thinkin’ you cared about the guy.”
“I do,” Mirii confirmed. “But not so much that I will go behind my husband’s back for him.”
Danura just smiled, knowingly, and gave her a quick peck on the cheek before directing her attention elsewhere and going to try and pounce on Ilta. Mirii watched her walk away, a puzzled cant to her delicate brows, before finally dismissing it and moving away.
Slipstream put his hands up as she came closer. “I didn’t put her up to that, I promise.”
“And I did not for one moment imagine that you did,” Mirii reassured, smiling at him; he imagined all the little electro-reactive polymers pulling tight beneath her skin, and shaping her lips into a curve, and… in spite of his best efforts, he… smiled, a tiny bit, back. “I am glad you are happier,” she commented, settling next to him.
Slipstream grunted, softly. “I’d be happier if that… tart… hadn’t stuck her nose into my business,” he groused, glaring poisonously at Danura’s departing back. “We shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of… disrespect. I’m going to talk to Rasa-”
“I do not think that is necessary. We do not need to make enemies here,” Mirii soothed, hastily. “We will only be among the Denizens for a short period of time, and her behaviour is… annoying, but not intolerable.”
“Well she doesn’t seem to have anything against making enemies.”
“I don’t think insult is what she intends,” Mirii argued, gently.
“Could have fooled me.”
“I am being serious!” Mirii scooped up his hand and squeezed his fingers. “I think what she intends is for us to simply be happy in each others’ company. She simply… preoccupies herself with the part involving coitus.”
“We were happy before, weren’t we?” Slipstream commented, staring sadly down at their intertwined fingers. “Or have I misjudged that, too?”
The tiny gold fingers wove more carefully between his larger blue ones. “Of course we were! I just do not think people like Danura understand platonic friendships very well, especially between members of the opposite gender.”
The big femme had not only been washed clean but sanded back to a sort of brushed silver when Pabishka finally returned to the Pit with Otto, to get a better look at her. The matt metallic look softened her outline somewhat; she was still heavy, with her angular outline and bulky lines, but without the severe, segmented paintjob it was just that fraction less obvious, made her a tiny bit more feminine. The only colour that remained on her was on her face; her anxious blue optics, which remained fixed on Pabishka, and the blue darts on her cheeks.
After several minutes just looking, walking slowly back and forth in front of the silver giant, Nuori-Deuchainn’s primary shareholder finally nodded, satisfied. “Better,” she allowed, at last. “Much better. Amazing what just being clean does to a machine, and it almost looks attractive without those hideous colours all splattered across it.”
“So… you’ve changed your mind about having it smelted down?” Otto prompted, hopefully.
“Mm, for now,” Pabishka agreed, and added, to save face; “The effort and expense needed to separate out all the components is more than we’d get for it, anyway.”
Behind her back, Otto rolled his eyes, tiredly. “So now what are we going to do, Madame? Would it not be a good idea to start research?”
“Mm, perhaps, tomorrow. First of all, I’m going to be taking it to a shareholder meeting tonight,” Pabishka explained, not once allowing her gaze to stray from Celerity’s. “You may as well come too, Otto, seeing as it’s your find.”
“When you say meeting, you mean one of your parties, or course,” Otto commented, sourly. “You know I don’t like them.”
Pabishka smiled, although not particularly kindly. “A shareholder meeting,” she repeated, calmly. “A late-night private viewing, while we’re showcasing the rest of our new Merchandise. See what interest our customers may have in it, if any, or whether your, ah, instinct… is wrong. Again.”
Otto muttered disgustedly under his breath.
Pabishka ignored him. “Is that understood, machine?” She elevated her voice, to be sure Celerity could hear.
“I’m big, not deaf,” the Policebot observed, softly, and flinched away from the shiver of pain that passed through her from the EM-collar she now wore.
“I didn’t ask for lip, I asked if you understood.”
“…yes, ma’am.”
“Good! That’s settled then. We’ll be leaving in just over two hours, just before sundown. You, you and you.” She pointed to the three closest specimens in view. “Liaise with my staff and get it appropriately decorated. Makeup, a bit of glitter. The usual. Anything to make it actually look female. Got it?”
She watched as the three nodded confirmation and scattered away, to find the appropriate staff. Satisfied, she turned towards the lift to tend to her own ablutions.
“Madame Pabishka?” a soft voice spoke from close to her feet.
The medusi turned and glared down at the smaller female as though there were a bad smell under her nose. “What?”
“I know it would be terribly impudent of me to ask,” Wen commented, keeping her head respectfully bowed, “but I wonder if I may accompany you?”
“It would be extremely impudent,” Pabishka agreed, in a growl. “And unforgivably so unless you have a good reason for it.”
“I have developed a good rapport with the newcomer,” the smaller female explained. “She has only been with us a very short time, and is not familiar with the society we live in. She may become alarmed, even frightened, at the meeting. I simply want to be able to come so I can convey reassurance and guidance to her.”
Pabishka narrowed her lips into a suspicious line, but nodded. “All right,” she accepted, at last. “You can come. You’re an animal handler anyway, aren’t you? Joined the staff of our displays before?”
“That’s correct, ma’am.”
Pabishka hmph-ed. “I thought I’d seen you before,” she accepted, ungraciously. “So long as you are aware that I may need your services elsewhere. We have a new trice to display, I don’t want anyone getting bitten.”
“Yes ma’am.” Wen bowed very deeply, and watched as the laima vanished away into the lift.
By the time Wen had finally got all her own affairs in order, Celerity’s temporary “makeover” was almost complete. And she looked… well… deeply uncomfortable would be a good description. The gentle giant moved only her eyes, to give Wen a dispirited look, while the workers scrambled over her; they had already finished decorating her face, and were now busy adhering small acrylic ‘gemstones’ to strategic places on her, to give the illusion of wearing jewellery. “I’m not sure I like this,” she said, querulously. “I feel silly. And I know I look hideous.”
Wen tried to smile for her. The makeup was rather caked on; thick, upswept eyeliner and vivid lilac-blue eye-shadow, and soft charcoal coloured lip-gloss that gave the big femme a dramatic and very strange thick-lipped pout.
“You look fine,” she lied, gently, watching as one of the ruta carefully adhered a traditional, delicate filigree piece of jewellery to her brow, between her eyes. It was the only dainty thing about her, right now, and it… clashed, somewhat, with everything else she ‘wore’. “And you only have to wear it for a little while.”
The transporter she was directed to was the rear vehicle in a convoy of four; Celerity at first felt halfway inclined to say she could transport herself, but ultimately decided that the less they knew about her, the better. If they knew she was a shape-shifter, things might get even harder…!
The vehicle was a high-sided lorry, of some sort; there was apparently the facility to install additional floors on the inside, presumably for transporting animals, but right now it was just a big, hollow cuboid. She crept aboard, uncomfortably, and huddled up into the furthest corner. It all felt very big and very empty, in here; the only light came from a small, square panel in the roof, and the glare of amber streetlights spilling in through the narrow gridded windows high up.
As the engine started up with an uncomfortable cough, Celerity hugged her knees up to her chest and wondered if this was how animals might feel, on their way to slaughter.
