Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

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.