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adverse_camber“There ya go, Letty. How’s it feel?”
Celerity examined her reflection in the mirror, uneasily. “It, um…” She stumbled over the words, not really sure how to vocalise how dismayed she truly was, without sounding obnoxious. “It’s… different? Er…”
The big femme had sat with an increasing sense of unease prickling like static under her plating as she watched the technicians install the test run of the new component. It was just a new ‘skin’, right now, to see how the final product would look and feel, a lightweight topcoat that attached to her chassis with a temporary adhesive, but once they’d checked for fit and movement, and done any adjustments needed, they’d composite up a more durable, long-lasting piece of plating, and install it properly.
As Eliška had warned, the lead shareholder had – on a whim, and apparently after discussing it late in the evening with one of her husbands – decided that Celerity needed to be more obviously feminine. Who in their right mind would want such an odd, blocky, androgynous creature in their possession? The new adjustment she’d ordered was mainly to make her newest acquisition’s chest slightly larger, with a far more pronounced and shapely bust, but in the process it covered her windscreen glass, and – more importantly, to the discomfited femme – her headlights. That meant when the proper new component was installed, not only would she look silly, her lamps would have to be completely disconnected as well. In a way, that made the ex-Policebot unhappier than the adjustments themselves. She could handle the ridiculous looks, just about, but losing her lights felt a little like they were taking one of her senses away.
The uncomfortable femme silently willed her body to find some way to reject the component, while Galina fussed around and checked the trim and fit and where any hindrance to her movement would occur, but sensed that even a “legitimate” reason like sheer physical incompatibility wouldn’t have much impact. What Pabishka wanted, Pabishka got, after all, and if Eliška couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with the goods? There were plenty of others willing to give it a go.
Plenty of other who seemed less scrupulous, too, to Celerity, and in a strange, roundabout way... if this absolutely had to be done, she’d rather have her friends working on her looks, now she knew what to expect, and trusted them. Besides, she felt Eliška was more likely to interpret Pabishka’s instructions in a way that was favourable to her, anyway, even if only to vex her rival.
“Hey, Letts? You still with us...?” Galina prompted, gently.
Celerity shook herself out of her introspection, and gave Galina an unintentionally-honest pained look. The dismay was very easily read from the big femme’s face; she glanced down at the technician and opened her mouth to speak, but no words actually came out.
“From a purely functional point of view,” Eliška suggested, gently, watching from the laboratory mezzanine. It hadn’t taken a great leap of thought to work out that Celerity was struggling with what to say in case she hurt anyone’s feelings. “Will that hinder your operations, at all?”
“Not physically, as such, but… I’m not going to be able to use my lamps,” Celerity observed, quietly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Galina look away, quietly, clearly not intending to say anything but also apparently hurt. She guessed that meant that the fessine had done a lot of work, and probably most of it just to get the new plating to fit as well as it did.
“I-I mean, that is, um…” Celerity hurried to explain and cover the perceived mistake, “aside from that, at an aesthetic, functional level? It looks fine.” Hideous. “I can handle this, and it won’t hinder my movement.” I sure as Pit can’t transform with all this bulk, though. “Thank you.” For making me ugly. Maybe Pabishka will lose interest now.
Galina smiled, gratefully, and hugged her thigh. “You don’t have to lie to save my feelings,” she reminded, softly, as the big femme crouched and carefully returned the gesture. “I’m a big girl. I can take it if you don’t like it. I kinda already knew you’d hate it, before I even brought it out of the mould room.”
Celerity remained quiet, just humming softly – almost imperceptibly – for her. It was a good reminder of how strange the giant machine was, when arms that could have angrily crushed the life clean out of the little technician for mutilating her instead just folded gently around her in apology for hurting her feelings.
“Listen,” Galina suggested, quietly, leaning back just a little so she could see her big friend’s face. “If I make an allowance for your headlamps, would that be better?”
Celerity managed a small smile. “Much. Thank you.”
As the giant passed, on her way back to the Pit, Eliška reached out and caught her fingers; Celerity hesitated and glanced down at her.
“Listen. Might feel hard to do, but try keep your chin up, eh?” the lab director said, gently. “Seems bad now, but you won’t be here forever.”
Celerity gave her a curious look. “Meaning?”
Eliška offered up a sneakily guileless sort of smile – and was that a flicker of a wink? “Oh, you know. You were born an eternity before we even evolved, and you’ll outlive all of us. Patience, eh?”
Celerity sensed that there was something the lab manager wasn’t telling her, but didn’t chase it. If she was trying to imply there was something going on, letting Pabishka’s sneaks catch wind of it would only be bad for all of them. “Of course,” she agreed, with a sad smile, and resumed her journey outside. Otto had instructed the site construction workers to hollow out an alcove for her, and was already flapping about and frustratedly insisting that she needed to be back so they could check it was the right size...
If I stare hard enough, Slipstream wondered (and half hoped), following a half-dozen strides behind Firewire with Fred sleepily riding his shoulder as they approached the ‘garage’, will I be able to get my gaze to physically melt holes into his back? The answer seemed to be a “no”, if his lack of success thus far was anything to go by, but that hadn’t stopped him trying, and the longer they walked, the more infuriated he got.
Like some innocent little bystander who’d got caught up in something completely outside his control, the brightly-coloured demolitions expert had covered the entire distance they’d travelled since they’d set out earlier in the day without even looking like he might attempt to run. Not only that, Firewire seemed to be making it a point to try and make as many friends as possible among the sough-dwellers, unlike Slipstream, who (until Firewire came along) hadn’t seemed to care that his ‘difficult’ moods and quick temper had put him on a slightly awkward footing with most of his hosts. Here to do a job, not make friends, thank you for your help, and that’s all.
By contrast, the slim amber male had a genial, polite manner and an overall sweet-natured mood, when not talking to his enemy, and that all seemed to be helping win him a little bit of support. Right now, one of the younger spurs was walking alongside him, smiling and chatting amiably with him about something Slipstream couldn’t quite hear without altering his hearing. It left Slipstream hurt and frustrated – they knew what he’d done, and they were still happy to forgive him, to treat him like some long-lost friend? And he was more than a little anxious that the fragger would somehow corral enough support among the Telluvians to convince them he was in fact in the right, that Slipstream was just an overbearing, violent thug supporting an unfair, almost fascist police state, and that they should just let him go. Primus, that they should turn the tables on them and arrest him in Firewire’s stead! And Lucy would turn into a poor, brainless vegetable, all because he was just a useless little drug-addled constable who couldn’t control his temper or just be nice when he had to-
“Heya, Seemy.”
The voice gently prodded him out of his thoughts. Slipstream glanced down to find Rasa walking at his side. C’mon, Seem. Be nice. Be… ‘talky’. Make a good impression. “Hey, Rasa,” he greeted, quietly. “Is-… is there a problem?”
“Nah.” The medusi reached up and found his hand, and threaded her fingers through his. “Just thought you could do with a bit of company.”
“…thanks.” He knew it was a lie – she was probably just keeping an eye on him; didn’t want him getting into a rage, flying off the handle, and making a lot of noise again – but he didn’t challenge it. Wasn’t as if it was so bad if he did let himself believe it – nice to think there was someone else that cared about him. “I… I was a bit lonely.”
Rasa smiled and squeezed his hand. “You coulda got Chickie to come walk with you,” she reminded, gesturing lightly to Mirii; the Siinu female was walking ahead with Ausra, discussing Stolica security and how easily they might be able to get into the city, particularly with two very large individuals in tow.
Slipstream shook his head. “She’s got better things to be doing right now.” He glanced down at the laima, and added, before she could challenge him on it; “Are we almost there?”
“Almost.” She gestured at the shallow ramp leading up out of the drain ahead.
“Good.” The relief in his voice came through loud and clear. “No offence, and I know it’s your home, and everything, but… I was worried we’d still be crawling around down here for days.”
Rasa chuckled. “No offence taken. And to be perfectly honest with you?” She cast a furtive glance around herself, and added, more quietly; “I’m outside of my comfort zone anyway. This isn’t my home district. I had to get permission from the head of the local Denizen group for us to come through, and I know he’s been watching us the whole time.”
“You’re not friends?” Slipstream felt a crawling unease run its fingers through his static field.
“We’re, ah, not on especially good terms, no.” Rasa winced. “He sees my… ‘colourful history’, shall we say… as a vulnerability. He’s never trusted that I’m not down here as an ‘insider’.”
“Well I trust you,” the blue mech said, quietly. “Might not mean a lot, from an outsider like me, but I do. You’ve helped us, and not asked for so much as a credit in payment.”
She snorted, good-humoured. “Even if I wanted payment... you don’t even have any credits to your name, here, do you?”
The little mech glanced away, humbly, and shook his head. “I’ll find a way of paying you if you want it.”
“Tch! Don’t be ridiculous, you silly spur,” she chuckled, and gave him an affectionate slap on the aft. “Getting an excuse to see my sister is payment enough. Now let’s get your oversized rump aboard our ship, and we can get moving.”
“All right...” Slipstream watched her slip past, and let his gaze follow her up the ramp to the vehicle lurking on its concrete platform like some sort of oversized, unfriendly predatory beetle in the shadows. He felt his static envelope grow discordant with dismay. Much as he wanted to rejoice that they had a way to get North without him having to do all the carrying and expending all his own meagre fuel supply? Travelling in this thing meant they’d end up wasting yet more time, and the payoff was seeming more and more like it wasn’t going to be worth it. The brutish vehicle sat squat and heavy on its six caterpillar-treaded wheels, painted up in a dingy selection of ugly olive and grey camouflage, and the small blue Policebot knew instinctually that it was going to be slow-moving. Cripplingly slow. It looked like if they covered a couple of hundred miles a day, they’d be lucky.
Maybe… maybe it’d be better to go home first, get Lucy fixed, then come back here for Lara, he thought to himself. And just trust nothing happens to her in the time I’m gone.
But what if something bad does happen? Or even has happened, already? What if they fished her out of the sewers but haven’t fixed her? They probably won’t know how to fix her, after all. What if she’s still slowly falling to pieces, still dying, still unstable? Dack would never forgive me. I would never forgive me. I have to get there, even if it’s just to find out if she’s ok. Promise I’ll come back for her.
...maybe I should go alone, get there faster. But how would I know who to speak to?
“Hey, Slips. Wakey wakey.” Ausra’s gruff voice broke through his reverie. “You coming, or what?”
“I-… sorry. Yes. I’m coming.” Slipstream gave himself a little shake and clicked annoyedly at himself, recovering just enough of his lost momentum to follow the travelling party up the ramp to the concrete platform. “I was just… just thinking. How long do you suppose it will take us to get there?”
Rasa glanced back and gave him a serious look, as if sensing what he was thinking. “If you’re having second thoughts about this,” she said, gently, “please, tell me. I won’t be offended. My friends can go on ahead if needed while I get you back to a spaceport.”
Slipstream averted his gaze, uncomfortably, concentrating on placing his large feet on the most stable bits of broken ground. “I don’t-… that is, I-I mean, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, and I don’t want to just abandon Celerity here,” he said, quietly. “But I don’t want to spend all my time travelling, either. The sooner I can get back home, the more chance my friends have of saving my sister. I mean-…” He fidgeted his thrusters, awkwardly. “If it’s going to take us months just to get north, it’d be better if I went home first, then came back for Lara.”
“Well, I don’t think it’ll take months, as such… maybe five or six days, at our top speed,” Rasa explained, measuredly. “We’ll manage, I don’t know… a few hundred miles a day, and Sostine is just a bit more than two thousand miles to the north. It’d be quicker to fly up there…”
Slipstream’s optics dimmed uneasily at the unappealing idea, and he took half a step backwards, but Rasa either didn’t notice, or didn’t realise the significance.
“…-but it’s not safe, up where everyone can see us, and we don’t have an aerial rig anyway.” Rasa gave him a probing look, as if to gauge his opinion. “Sound ok?”
Slipstream fidgeted and tussled with his thoughts, before finally nodding. “All right. Maybe a few more days won’t hurt. I just-… first we’ve got to get there, then we’ve got to find her, then we’ve got to rescue her, and… You know? By the time we’ve done all that, it could be a month later, and I don’t want to leave it too long. If we have any problems getting away, that’ll fall back on Lucy.”
“And Lucy is…?” Rasa prompted.
“She’s my twin sister.” Slipstream cycled cool air through his core, his central processors feeling stressed and tight. “She drives me insane, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.” He studied his feet, and added, faintly; “I’m worried I’ve already left it too long.”
“…is that who you were dreaming about?”
“What?” Slipstream shot Mirii an abstract glare, but she had her back to him.
“Hey, hey, don’t give her the evil eye.” Rasa gave him a gentle swat. “She just said she was worried about you. That your rest had seemed disturbed. I was the one who put two and two together.”
“Well I don’t ‘dream’,” he growled, irritably, climbing aboard the transport; it was a big vehicle, sure, but the roof of the cargo section was still low enough to force him to stoop. “None of my kind do. So I wasn’t dreaming about anyone.”
“Well, we’re not programmed to.” Firewire was already tucked neatly up into the furthest corner from the entrance hatch; he spoke quietly, and managed not to flinch when Slipstream’s glare landed on him. “Extremes of stress can cause faults, though.”
“Faults like…?” Rasa prompted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Slipstream protested, angrily, before Firewire got the chance to speak, choosing a window to look out of. “Because it’s irrelevant. I am not dreaming.”
“Seem? Shush.” Rasa pointed a vaguely chastising finger at him. “Let the man speak, for once.”
“But he doesn’t deserve-”
“Seem,” the medusi repeated, and Slipstream’s words grumbled into silence. “He’s a criminal, sure. We get it. That doesn’t mean you can just ignore his other rights. Including the right to be heard. It won’t do any harm to let him talk. All right?”
Slipstream muttered and folded his arms, self-protectively, and looked away, sulkily, jamming himself into a corner where he could glare out of the window.
“Firewire…?” Rasa prompted. “Go on. You were explaining about faults…?”
The slender mech glanced briefly at his bulkier rival, almost apologetically. “We periodically have to defragment our memories,” he explained, quietly, only too aware that Slipstream was listening and wishing bad things at him. “Otherwise we end up with vast stores of useless sensory data that we’ll never need ever again, and no room for valid memories.”
“Is that what you do when you sleep?”
Firewire inclined his head, thoughtfully. “If ‘sleep’ is when you go dormant? Then yes, it is. Technically? We can stay awake for as long as we have the energy to do so, but without periods of dormancy we end up getting sluggish.”
“Like any computer with a full memory, I guess?” Rasa nodded her understanding.
He nodded. “Essentially. It’s a little more complicated, but that’s basically it.”
“So how do dreams come into it?”
“Well, this is just hearsay,” Firewire admitted, guiltily. “And probably nothing like what you experience. But… As I understand it, what you would call a ‘dream’ is when a mech is ‘awake’ during a defragment, reliving the memories their cortex is sorting and discarding. If a memory is strong enough, it gets mixed up with other waking thoughts, and…”
“And there you have a dream. Or a nightmare, I guess,” Rasa agreed. “I can imagine that if it’s stress causes it, the dreams aren’t too good.” She looked briefly askance at Slipstream, but he was staring determinedly out of the window, as if to prove how much he didn’t care that they were talking about him. The medusi sighed, rolled her eyes. “I’m going up topside to check our route’s been plotted right. You guys better behave yourselves...”
Slipstream managed to maintain his hostile silence for an hour or so, glaring out of the window at the scenery passing by. Even the patient Mirii gave up trying to talk to him, for a while; she settled herself on one of the high storage shelves, to chat quietly with Fred. The little felnid still hadn’t quite managed to relax around the crowd of big strangers – and more to the point, didn’t trust them not to put him in a box again – and tucked himself away somewhere high enough that he wouldn’t get trodden on to watch proceedings.
Eventually night began to draw in, and the setting sun dropped just low enough in the sky to cast a skein of intense orange direct into Slipstream’s optics. He grumbled, uncomfortable, shifted his shoulders, and turned to face inward, although his gaze remained low and he refused to meet anyone’s gaze.
Rasa quite sensibly elected to act like nothing untoward was happening, in an attempt to draw him out of his bad temper. “Why don’t you guys try get some rest?” she suggested, passing a self-heating carton of soup up to Fred. “Conserve your energy, and all that? We’ll let you know when we get there.”
“Do you have any spare cables anywhere?” Firewire wondered. “While you don’t have any suitable fuel, we can probably pull enough for our needs off the vehicle.”
“Well, sure, but… I don’t know if it’ll have the right connections…”
Firewire smiled. “My self-repair system can make it fit,” he reassured.
Rasa nodded. “Fair enough. Slipstream?” She glanced down at him. “Can I get you anyth-”
Before she could finish her sentence, he interrupted, gruffly; “I’m all right. Not tired.”
She gave him a more probing look. “Not resting because you don’t want to dream is a little extreme, don’t you think…?”
“It’s nothing to do with that,” he growled, softly, flashing her an angry glance, but his folded arms were more of a self-hug and his lips were drawn together in a distressed pout, not compressed into their usual fine angry line.
“…Not to mention, your mental health will suffer if you keep it up.”
Slipstream’s glare hardened, insulted. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t dream!”
Mirii slipped quietly down off her shelf. “You experienced something, m’chi,” she reminded. “If it was a dream, it is nothing to be ashamed of. It does not mean you are broken.”
“I don’t. Dream,” he repeated, firmly, averting his gaze.
“Well, if it wasn’t a dream, then it must have been a hallucination,” Rasa observed, softly. “And... well, bluntly? I’m not sure I feel overly comfortable with the idea of travelling with you, if it was.”
He glanced up, lips parted in a little oh of hurt, looking more than a little shocked at the statement.
“Let’s face it,” she went on. “Would you want to travel with an unrestrained, giant, psychiatrically-ill alien who’s incredibly strong, apparently suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, and who has already shown their propensity for violence?”
Slipstream matched her gaze, as though trying to check if she was trying to catch him out. “I’m not a threat.” To his great annoyance, his words came out as a sort of pleading complaint. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Maybe not.” Rasa spread her hands. “But it doesn’t help bolster my confidence in your words when you keep glaring at him like you’re a step away from kicking his nose in.”
In the background, Firewire finally gave into the temptation to flinch.
“How long before you decide we’re dangerous? Decide we’re a threat that needs to be neutralised?”
“That’s not fair-!” Slipstream protested. “I never said-”
“You’re a police officer. The above world says we’re criminals. You arrest criminals. We only have your word that you’re not down here ‘undercover’. The pair of you could just be good actors, for all we know.” Rasa stared him down until the lilac gaze diverted elsewhere. “If you can lie about your mental health, about something as simple as whether or not you dream...? What else are you willing to lie about?”
“You’re not being fair.” Slipstream hung his head and studied his knees. “It’s nothing like-... I don’t dream.” It sounded more like a plea than a statement of fact. “I’m not lying to you. I don’t-… I’m not supposed to dream.”
“Slipstream.” Rasa hunkered down so she could be in his downcast line of sight. “Please. If you’re scared-”
“Terrified.” His admission broke through his lips in the tiniest husk of a voice.
“Then let us help.” She reached forwards and took his hand, gently, folded it in both of hers. “To ask for help when you need it isn’t a sign of weakness. We won’t think any less of you. And you’ll give us a reason to continue to trust you. While you continue to deny everything, you’re putting my friends – and me – on edge. They’re already asking me whether you’ve done something terrible, which is why you won’t talk. Whether you’re the criminal, whether having you with us puts us at risk.” She squeezed his fingers. “Please, hon. We trust you. Just trust us back. Let us help.”
“I’m just-... scared.” He stumbled across the words, trying vainly to find the right explanation. “You know how if you don’t look at something, don’t think about it, it’ll go away?” He took his hand back and folded them together in his lap, in a vain effort to keep them from trembling. “Until Lucy vanished, it-... this-... this hallucinating every time I try and defragment... it never happened! I engaged dormancy and that was it, I knew nothing between offlining and waking back up. And now-... it’s... I don’t want to rest because I don’t know what I might see.”
Mirii settled on an old workbox beside him, quietly, and mantled an arm gently across his large shoulders. He leaned in to her side, and she could feel the almost imperceptible tremor in his plating.
“I was programmed with the ability to ‘dream’, after a fashion, from the moment of my construction,” she explained, gently, stroking his antennae and listening as the crackles of static began to fade. “And if it helps… it does not make it easier to handle the bad visions, just… less unanticipated.”
“How do you cope with it?” he wondered, faintly. “What’s the point to this… this self-torture, anyway?”
“By learning to use it as a tool, we can give it purpose, and make it less threatening.” Those very words were the only way Sei had finally succeeded in teaching her to control her own nightmares. “We can use it to look at a situation from a different perspective, and find the details we may have missed in the heat of the moment.” She gave him a smile, and bumped her regal nose gently against his cheek. “Your subconscious processors wish only to inform and educate you. If it happens again? Try instead to face it, not fear it.”
He gave her a tiny squeeze, and she could feel that his trembling had eased, a little. “Thank you,” he said, softly, and she could tell he meant it.
“Tell me about it,” she suggested, at last. “Explain your dream. Perhaps we can think a way through it, and find some meaning in it if we work together…”
Yes, dearest. This was a brilliant idea, Pabishka congratulated herself, daintily licking the sauce out of a fruit pastry hors d’œuvre, watching her party guests mill around and enjoy themselves in the room before her regal perch. The change of pace will do everyone – Charm included – some well-deserved good.
She called it a party, although everyone knew that was really an euphemism; Pabishka did nothing without ulterior motive, and this – like all her other events – was just another fancy way of showcasing her wares. And that included all her wares, for a change – both the newest selection of designer creatures from the genelabs, and her most popular ‘companions’ from her spa, Aurous. The guest list was as exclusive as ever, including some of the most affluent, important laima in the entire city. If you weren’t a rich shareholder – or one of Pabishka’s current targets, like the uncomfortable Juris trying not to attract too much attention, over there in the corner – then you weren’t welcome.
She announced events like these surprisingly infrequently, for all the money they made her – but then, that made demand all the higher, and some people were willing to pay almost anything the medusi’s company cared to charge for the opportunity. In spite of the way Pabishka liked to announce the event sneakily, almost all the tickets – especially the rare ‘staff’ tickets, which entitled the bearer to join the staff for the evening – usually sold out in minutes.
Pabishka relaxed a little and flexed her claws comfortably against the back of her footstool – a lean, handsome, barely-clothed businessman who’d paid an inordinately large sum to wear a collar and be furniture for the evening. He made a funny noise of pleasure/pain as her neatly-manicured toeclaws drew blood. She endured his sagging spine for a few seconds more until it became clear he wasn’t going to straighten up on his own, then gave a good hard jerk on his leash, and he hastily straightened himself back up. She curled her lips in the briefest of satisfied sneers before returning her attention to the real reason she’d decided on a “fun night out”.
Charm sat at the side of the room, on an oversized black velveteen slouch cushion, her knees folded and her feet tucked demurely around to one side, listening patiently to the curious people milling around, wearing her usual placid, genial expression – the one that just invited conversation. And conversation she was getting – fired at her from more angles than she could follow.
Pabishka couldn’t really help smiling, for a change. Freshly painted specially for this evening in a new coat of black, gold and deep turquoise, and polished up to such a high gloss it was as though she were made of perfectly carved wet ice, the silly machine was actually managing to look pretty, as unbelievable as it sounded. Little pieces of jewellery flashed and glittered shyly when she moved, and when a person added to that all the little patches and ruffles of lace and black velvet like the little bolero jacket she wore? It was no surprise she’d attracted a crowd of curious visitors. Spurs were falling over each other to share a few words with her. The medusi snorted, privately; it was almost as if all the flocking idiots thought they stood a chance with her!
It was pleasing to see her relaxing and making friends, though, Pabishka mused, watching the dopey thing interact with her admirers. She actually looked at ease, for once. Comfortable, even – her pale grey face bore an expression that was very subtle, but definitely happy. After all that fuss she’d made at the start, whining and crying and pleading to go home? The relief Pabishka felt at slowly beginning to win her over was a sweet, reassuring warmth, deep in her chest. Soon the giantess would be happily and contentedly won over, and the, ah, ‘political situation’… would resolve itself.
At least that wretched little green nuisance had finally backed off. Pabishka felt her brow wrinkle up into an involuntary sneer of irritation. She snatched up a bright pink cocktail from one of the serving girls and gave the glass a good hard swirl, activating the drug inside it and generating a cloud of bright twinkles. Perhaps it’d help her mood, medicating it away with a little euphorigen.
A’nali-awen was proving to be the proverbial thorn in her backside – even before the giant current target of her sympathy had showed up, the worthless little scrap of DNA had been causing political trouble in the Pit. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest of someone had announced that yes, the genebank was one of the Denizens, after all. At least back then, she’d been sneaky about it, because right now? She wasn’t even making the slightest effort to hide her distaste for Pabishka’s plans, and feeding ideas of rebelliousness into Charm’s big, gullible head, no doubt. Promising to get her out and back to her damned “sweetheart”, who was probably only pretending he cared for her in the first place because he was being nice, because damn. The machine was a very large woman, and could probably do some serious damage to anyone smaller than she was.
Even though she had no definite proof, Pabishka knew that was what Wen was up to. Don’t worry, dear. We’ll get you home. Back to your beau. She curled her lip, scornfully; the xenoform wanted a fight? Then fine, a fight she was most definitely going to get. The laima hadn’t got to where she was by being a pushover – if backed into a corner, those elegantly manicured red-painted claws were more than capable of delivering a good hard blood-drawing kick to somewhere that hurt.
What was perhaps the most galling about the whole situation, however, was the way that sneaky little green wretch had trapped her into a corner, and she couldn’t get rid of her. (Damnit!) As soon as she was old enough to form the opinion, she’d pleaded with Pabishka not to be sold. And the medusi – content that the scrawny, straggle-feathered creature was unattractive enough to be unsaleable, and half hoping it’d die like her science team said it probably would – had agreed. Even indulged the little one’s paranoia and written it down! Yeah yeah, fine, I promise never to sell you, slaughter you, give you away as a gift, whatever, now run along and make babies like the good little breed-whore you are. Should have added in, provided you do what I tell you to do, and don’t stir trouble, Pabishka scolded herself, not for the first time. In the event you piss me off, all prior agreement is immediately null and void. So now she was stuck with the conniving little… queynte! And reduced to hoping she’d accidentally-on-purpose ‘fall’ under the wheels of one of the animal-carrying big-rigs.
At least, she consoled herself, glaring into the fading sparkles in her drink, the little meddler had been whisked away by that spur, Juris. That he was a reporter had initially made Pabishka more than a little uneasy, but he had a very rich and powerful family (hence his invitation), and since they’d first met some months ago, the pair seemed to be doing nothing more than a little ‘mutual grooming’, not swapping horror stories about Pit life, so she was happy to let them continue. Besides, if they got close enough, the silly spur could be instrumental in ridding the medusi of the do-not-sell problem. The advice she’d taken a while ago from one of her lawyer friends suggested that if Wen didn’t suffer a terrible, fatal ‘accident’ (which would be such a shame, of course), then the only legal way she was going to be shot of her was by getting her accepted into a new family. If she could get the alien married off and happily settled down far, far away from Nuori operations, the Pit would suddenly get a whole lot less political.
Plus, a marriage would have the extra advantage of bringing Juris’ whole family to Nuori; Juris’ father had been one of Pabishka’s targets for the longest time-…
“Madame Pabishka?”
The medusi picked her attention out of her glass and turned to look in the direction of the voice, to find a dainty fessine beckoning to her from the sidelines. She (just about) wore the uniform and the crossed keys of Pabishka’s largest establishment, but the older laima didn’t recognise her – and she knew she’d remember a girl that pretty. And that surgically-enhanced.
Pretty or not, she was breaking the rules. Pabishka narrowed her eyes, challengingly, and asserted, coldly; “You are not one of my staff. What are you doing in here?”
“No, ma’am.” The intruder bowed very steeply, apologetically. “Please, forgive me. I had to come in disguise or I wouldn’t have been able to get close to you. Your receptionists are very… obtrusive.”
“Remind me why I should forgive you for stealing a uniform, breaking and entering, and sneaking around as staff, when most people have to pay for the privilege?”
“Because I need to talk to you,” the fessine explained, with a long, meaningful glance in Juris’ direction. “About your staff.”
“So talk.” Pabishka folded her arms, threateningly. “Impress me enough with the quality of what you want to talk to me about and I might not have you thrown out through the front, where everyone can see.”
“I’d prefer-… I mean…” The green eyes swung back to stare at Pabishka. “Can we talk in private, ma’am?”
Pabishka lifted her chin, warily. “All right,” she accepted, standing. “This time. And this doesn’t get you off the hook. If I’m in any way dissatisfied with what you dragged me away for? I’m still kicking you out.” The medusi gave her a critical (if ever-so-slightly lascivious) visual once-over, her gaze lingering meaningfully on the fessine’s bust and hips and narrow waist, and curled her lip in a half-smirk. “...After I take back what you stole.”
The fessine blanched in a most satisfying way, her soft lips drew together into a rosebud pout, and she nodded, curtly, just the once, subtly pinching her legs together at the threat. “Yes’m.”
“As for you?” Pabishka pulled up on her footstool’s collar so he was forced to look her in the eye. “Stay. Just because I’m not here it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Move a muscle before I get back – and I will know if you have – and I’ll tear up your ticket. Got it?”
He trembled and stammered a hasty “y-yes ma’am”, like a good little servant, and she smiled and rewarded him with a tender little kiss on the nose.
Pabishka encouraged her unwanted guest down the corridor to the staff offices with a not-particularly-friendly slap on the rump. She knew it was going to end up putting her in a sour mood, and that was guaranteed to ruin the party spirit for everyone else – and not only were tickets expensive, some of her clientele were known to be, ah... litigious. Sure, so she had the money to placate them, but there was always that risk they’d withdraw funding, and once she’d dug her claws in? She wanted to keep them in.
“So.” The medusi placed herself in her office doorway, to remind the intruder whose territory she happened to be stomping around in. “Talk. Who are you, and why do you think you’re so important that you can just... go against all my rules, and break in here?”
The fessine folded her own arms and lifted her chin, trying to play down her nervous trembling, but her toes continued methodically kneading the carpet, uneasily, betraying her confidence. “Because I needed to talk to you, and your receptionists just kept saying they’d ‘leave a note’ every time I tried to get to you in person,” she snapped out, in a clipped little voice.
A flash of such unashamed, undisguised pique flashed through the tense green eyes at the explanation that Pabishka couldn’t help smirking. She half expected the younger female to follow it up with a stamp of her delicate little foot, fists trembling at her sides, but being out of the public eye – and totally at the mercy of the bigger female – had apparently put the dampers on her temper.
“And I know they weren’t leaving you the messages,” the female went on, stiffly. “The bunch of fluff-headed twits think they’re smart enough to decide if I’m important or not on your behalf.”
Pabishka smiled; the little brat was obviously slandering her hand-picked staff on purpose, in an effort to rile her up. Not going to rise to the bait. “That, sweet-cheeks, is why I have receptionists,” she replied, drolly. To keep annoying little gnats like you away. “I found my girls are pretty good at working out who the timewasters are.”
“How could they possibly know I’m a timewaster when they don’t even know what I wanted to talk to you about?!” The fessine’s voice grew even more irritatingly shrill.
“Then talk, or so help me I will throw you out myself.”
The younger female smoothed the folds out of her near-nonexistent skirt and took a breath, apparently to stabilise her nerve. “I’m… concerned.” She expelled the words in short little bites of sound. “About the reporter. Juris. Your animal handler is taking an… unnatural interest in him.”
That’s all it is? Pabishka arched a brow. “And why is that of concern to you?”
“You do know whose son he is, correct?”
Pabishka snorted her amusement and rolled her eyes. “Of course I know whose son he is. Why do you think I invited him?” She fixed the intruder on a half-glare and quirked a sardonic eyebrow. “Unless you believe he somehow managed to find the funds to pay his own way...?”
The fessine pursed her lips, and shook her head, curtly.
“So I repeat. Why is it of any concern to you?”
“That doesn’t matter-”
“I beg to differ. You’ve broken into my place of work, and are now making unreasonable demands when I should really just boot you out, firm enough to leave my clawmarks on your backside.” Pabishka firmed up her glare. “This is the last time I’m going to say this; why do you need to know?”
“My name is Maaike, and I work for the secret service,” the femme explained, bluntly. “Your... your creature... has links to the Denizens of the Undercity, here. We’re deeply concerned to see that you’re allowing her – even encouraging her – to foster a friendship with Stojan’s son. Do you honestly not see what sort of risk that carries?”
Maaike; Pabishka couldn’t help her amused snort. Figured that even her name referred to rebelliousness. For a spy, she sure was skittish, though. The medusi folded her arms, and lounged artfully against the doorframe. “Let’s see, um... he removes her to a cosy little apartment at the top of a tower block, they get to making babies, and she’s suddenly far too busy to maintain any kind of actual link to the Denizens?”
“Or she drags him down with her. She’s not going to suddenly forget her history, what we collectively did to her. She’ll drag his whole family down, in the process!” Maaike glared. “Getting someone so powerful on their side might make the Denizen uprising almost impossible to quash!”
“I think you overestimate how powerful that worthless green scrap of DNA is. She’s just an animal handler. She has no contacts outside of the Pit.”
“Well, she contacted Juris easy enough.” Maaike folded her arms and puffed up her chest; the longer Pabishka failed to kick her out, the more comfortably bold she grew. “I think you’ve had her tucked away in the ‘safe, secure environment’ of your labs for so long, you’ve started to think she’s tame.”
“…Or perhaps I thought she’d be easier to keep an eye on, while she remained under my thumb.”
Maaike advanced with a slow swagger in her step – Pabishka watched her close the gap between them, feeling her pulse quicken. Brazen little queynte must be wearing pheromones, she thought to herself, forced to work hard to look unaffected. The secret agent – or whatever she was. Jilted girlfriend? – stopped when she was only centimetres from her, well within the medusi’s personal boundaries.
“Unless you want the youngling being indoctrinated into Denizen ways, and losing a lucrative sponsor in the process?” Maaike threatened, gently. “You’ll sever the link. Allow it to continue, and you could end up being the one prosecuted for allowing illegal activities to continue under your brand name. Do you understand?”
Pabishka managed to smirk, although she really wanted to slap her. “I hope you don’t actually intend me to think she’s a serious threat.”
Maaike used her discomfiture to slip past her and into the corridor. “It’s up to you, of course,” she accepted, with a shrug. “I’d hate for someone of your social standing to be brought down by one of her own products.”
Pabishka let the smile finally slip as she watched her visitor strut away. The evening was still young, and her mood had already been blunted by the intrusive little whore. Better take emergency precautions, she advised herself, lest the evening go completely flat.
She fished what looked like a small, flat, blue-green boiled sweet out of her purse, and flicked it into her mouth. It rapidly disintegrated in her saliva with an initial flush of peculiar chemical sweetness, which turned into a pleasantly sharp acid-citrus flavour. It shivered delicate, distracting fingers up her back and made her feel abruptly awake, as though someone had dunked her psyche in a bucket of ice-water. “Bliss” was one of the newer euphorigens cooked up by the scientists in Chymist, an older company bought up by the Nuori Conglomerate at the start of Pabishka’s reign. The drug’s safety profile was… dubious, at best… but her genework report said it’d be safe. Just had to wait a while for it to kick in.
So. Was this her first confirmation that the ungrateful little green brat was dabbling in ‘politics’? If it was, she was seriously going to have to think about getting some more legal advice. It might be just the excuse she needed to tear up that wretched “contract”. In spite of her efforts not to, Pabishka grinned to herself. Oh, to be able to shred that horrible bit of paper and sell the current bane of her life to somewhere nasty!
Unless – and it too seemed suspiciously plausible – the fessine herself was cooking up a story to remove Wen from the picture. After all, the way she’d looked at that wet-behind-the-ears youngling spur? That was definitely more than the thoughtful glance of a secret agent. It had been the look of a hungry, needy femme, sharp with desire and bitter resentment.
Well, so long as either method successfully got rid of A’nali-awen, and as soon as possible, she didn’t much care what the truth was. Then she could get back to being happy and comfortable and making money. Pabishka gazed out over the little crowd of partygoers with a warm, euphoric sort of love developing deep in her chest, as at last the Bliss started to kick in. Now that stupid, interfering little tart had gone, she could get back to the important business of enjoying herself.
And her footstool – tired, but still keeping up his end of the bargain, back straight, patiently waiting for her to get back – suddenly looked… irresistible. She swaggered over with an emphasised sway of her hips, and sat down beside him, well aware of the curious (inebriated) stares she was getting.
She extracted his ticket from her pocket and waved it under his nose. “Ticket,” she commented, smiling.
“Ticket...?” he agreed, confusedly.
“Ex-ticket,” she clarified, and deftly tore it in half.
He gave her a confused and very disappointed look; she smiled and tugged gently on his leash, pulling him off-balance so he slumped into her. He jumped and tried to straighten up, but the medusi had mantled a strong arm around behind his back.
“…Where’s the rush?” she wondered, sweetly, stroking a finger down his nose.
“I-I didn’t mean to be presumptuous!” he squeaked, alarmed. “You tore up my ticket!”
“No-o...” She laughed, and bumped their noses together, producing another little blue chip of Bliss from her pocket. “I’m upgrading it...”
PS Firewire, stop trying to be cute. ¬_¬
