Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

The thing he found most confounding was the strict population control program, which dictated that the arrival of every Permanent Foreign Immigrant reduced the quota of authorized pregnancies among native Nivians by an equal number. Inexplicably, the locals blamed the immigrants, or phigs, as they preferred to call the newcomers, rather than their own idiotic policies.

The office door opened but instead of Bragg, a girl swept in, skidding uncertainly when she saw Terson. Red hair framed her face and shoulders in soft curls, and obvious feminine curves strained under her sleeveless summer blouse, which had been cropped to her midriff revealing a firm, tanned stomach.

She gazed at him quizzically for a moment. “I’m here to see Captain Bragg.”

“He had to step out.”

“Oh.” A smile lit her face. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and sat down. “I haven’t seen you around before,” she decided. “My name’s Virene.” She extended her hand, surveying him with intelligent green eyes. Perfume wafted around her, ambrosia compared to the drunk tank’s bouquet.

He shook her hand perfunctorily. The brief contact set his heart thudding in his chest and he hoped that he didn’t smell as bad as he suspected that he did. If she detected his bodily fragrances, she kept it to herself.

“Your turn,” she prompted.

“I’m sorry?”

“My name is Virene,” she explained, hands turning inward to indicate herself, then outward toward him, “and your name is…?”

The feared blush rushed up from his collar. “Sorry. I’m Terson. You must be his…daughter?”

“Me? Absolutely not!” Virene exclaimed with melodramatic horror before breaking into laughter. “I like to think I’m his number one miscreant. So, Terson, what are you in for?”

“A series of unfortunate misunderstandings.”

“I’ll bet. I have been brought in three times for public indecency, although,” she grinned with a wink, holding out her arms, “I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me there’s anything indecent about this.”

He couldn’t, though the thoughts that rushed into his mind clearly were, and he was certain that each and every one advertised itself on his face for her to see. He stood abruptly. “I have to go.”

“Well, nice meeting you, Terson,” she said as he headed for the door. “I work at The Pit—you should stop by sometime.”

The door clicked shut behind him. The memory of her perfume lingered all the way to the street.

The cramped public housing they’d assigned Terson when he first arrived was infested with Saint Anatone’s entire population of addicts, mental cases and petty criminals. Terson had never been forced to tolerate the like on Hanstead Ranch and made no attempt to hide the disdain he felt for his neighbors, who returned it tenfold.

Phigs occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder, even among scum.

Mutual disdain escalated to occasional harassment and threats of violence before Terson discovered that there was an isolated area in which a man could travel with relative freedom: the two hundred kilometer band of coastal waters that ringed the continent between the northern thirty-eighth parallel and southern thirty-sixth. Flat, open water wasn’t exactly what Terson considered a wilderness, but it offered the only available respite from Nivia’s inhabitants and their bizarre rules.

The rent on a comfortable self-contained boat was exorbitant, but not beyond Terson’s means and he went out several times a month. Eventually the rental agent, admittedly motivated more by concern for the safety of his boats than the nautical idiot using them, pointed out that Terson could buy his own cheaper than he could continue to rent.

Mac Toner, the surly marina operator, appeared in the doorway of his office as Terson reached the boardwalk. “I see you fishing off my pier again you’re gone Reilly! Y’hear?”

“Blow it out your ass!” Terson snapped back.

“In the office!” Toner bellowed. “Now!” The frigid air inside chilled his skin as he entered. Toner followed him in, slamming the door and drawing the shade.

“What was that all about?” Terson asked.

“Environmental Protection’s got plainclothes hanging around again,” Toner explained. “Beer?”

Terson’s stomach rolled at the thought. “Sure.” The bitter liquid eradicated the aftertaste from the previous evening’s binge. “They watching my boat?”

“Yep.”

“You want me to pull out?”

“Hell, no!” Toner exclaimed, “You’re a pain in the ass, but the moorage on that monster of yours makes up for it. I just needed a show—those people in slip ten had a line out the window last night and maybe they’ll get the message before I get a fine.

“Anyway, that stuff you wanted came in,” Toner said. “I put it in your live-hold. You sure you know how to handle it?”

“No worries,” Terson assured him. He drained the bottle and sauntered down to the slip where his twenty-meter hydrojet tugged at its moorings in the gentle swell, as anxious as Terson to be off. Most people preferred to dock as close to shore as possible, but the craft’s starboard wing-in-ground-effect surface extended over the dock several meters and Toner had assigned him a slip at the very end of the pier, leaving the adjacent slips vacant.

It was as much an aircraft as a boat, but like all WIG craft the hydrojet’s altitude was limited by its wingspan to thrust ratio: ten meters in this case. The three fifteen-hundred horsepower jet turbine engines could propel it to a speed of three hundred knots in flight. One engine on either side of the nose swiveled to vector exhaust beneath the wings where flaps and wingtip endplates created an air cushion to help lift it out of the water during takeoff. The third, in the tail, added additional forward momentum. A two hundred horsepower impeller provided propulsion on the surface.

Terson stepped up on the deck and took the package Toner had left in the live-hold down to the galley. Inside he found one hundred rounds of 7.62mm ammunition and twenty-five 12-gauge shotgun shells, all carefully triple-wrapped to prevent inadvertent contact with the lead shot and bullets. Acquiring the illegal ammunition had proven inordinately expensive, but Terson had little confidence in the biodegradable rounds available to the general public.

He showered and ate and found himself pacing restlessly through the boat. He’d intended to fly out to the Humboldt Archipelago for a week or so before the altercation that landed him in jail again. He could still make it by dark, but his mind kept turning to a certain pleasant smelling green-eyed redhead.

The islands could wait, he finally decided, at least long enough to divest himself of the fantasy.

The Pit lay in the ring of establishments that invariably sprang up around college campuses. Smoke glowed in multi-colored lights flashing on the dance floor. Bass rhythms beat against his chest; relentless noise blasted his ears. The crowd consisted of stylish young people his own age. Terson’s clothing, though clean, was more suited to working class joints and the distinction was not lost on the revelers who eyed him with casual disinterest if they noticed him at all.

Virene hadn’t told him exactly what she did. She looked too young to tend bar, but he didn’t see her among the waitresses delivering trays of drinks and appetizers. He bought a beer and circulated through the club, his vision hampered by the crowd. He’d grown several centimeters without Algran Asta’s crushing gravity to compress his spine, but he would never be a tall man by Nivian standards.

She walked out from the kitchen toweling suds from her hands, hair pulled back in a tail, dark and stringy with moisture. She held a glass of ice water against ruddy cheeks and laughed at something the bartender said.